Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [77]
He did finally call, exhausted and less than interested in telling me right then everything that had happened to him in the preceding eighteen days. So I waited the interminable hours until he would be home, got to the airport early, and watched each plane land, searching the windows of those that taxied by for his face. Finally he was in my arms. I would only have him for hours before he left with John for Africa, to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. He bathed and ate and slept, and I watched him sleep, sitting beside his bed, my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. I rose to move his laundry or, when he woke, to get the newspaper articles I had saved for him. But I needed that contact, his smell, the soft brush of his hair. I ran my hands over his fingertips and across his newly shaved face. I drew my finger softly against his eyelids and brows, and I traced his lips. I could not leave his side. I could not get enough of him, particularly since I knew he would go away again. I just never knew there would come a time when he would go away forever. I wished for one more touch. But it would not be enough, I knew. I would only ask for another, or for the warmth of his breath. Things I could not have and for which I should not have even dreamed.
The Learning Lab kept me from dreaming, because it kept my mind in the present. Most of my time was spent working on the web page, which I had finally improved on since my first Geocities effort, keeping the students reasonably quiet, making sure the e-mail was running and that the printers had paper, that the candy wrappers were in the trash cans and the students’ questions answered. It was rewarding, demeaning, and exhausting all at once. And there was no place I would rather be. I was there one night when I got perhaps the best gift of all. The director of the Lab was Steven Killion, a gentle man of quiet strength, enormous intelligence, and astounding patience. When John and I finally left for Washington, we confidently left the physical care of our son’s memory to Steven and to Sarah Lowder, who matched Steven in gentle goodness, and our ability to do so says all I ever need to say about these two.
One night, Steven was at the Learning Lab late, again, and I sent him home. John was working, so I could stay on with the two students left at the computers. They were a sturdy girl and a younger boy, her brother undoubtedly, and she was helping him. After a while, the telephone rang, and the woman at the other end asked if Alyse was there. I turned and looked at the girl. Could that be Alyse? Alyse Tharpe? It was. I called her to the phone and asked her to see me when she had finished. A few minutes later she came over, and I told her who I was. Alyse had been in elementary school with Wade. They’d been in the same classes, and they had, memorably, been in the same fifth-grade production of Julius Caesar, which looked from the audience like an indistinguishable clutch of twenty-five ten-year-olds, who—because there were three fifth-grade classes—would periodically walk offstage and be replaced by another indistinguishable clutch. I cannot remember anyone else’s part, not even Wade’s, but I do remember Alyse’s role. Alyse was the seer, and the line she delivered is now my favorite: “Beware de Ides of de March.” Alyse and Wade had gone on to different middle schools and then to different high schools. They had lost track of each other. And now she was here at the Learning Lab.
“Alyse, I’m Wade’s mother.” Pause. “Wade Edwards.” Pause. She looked blankly back at me. “Wade, from Root Elementary.”
Her face lit up. “Wade!” She hugged me, and then she pulled back in horror and in grief. “Wade?” She looked at his picture on the wall. “I know that face. I just couldn’t remember why. Oh, Wade.” She hadn’t known he had died. She hadn’t linked the boy she knew on the playground at Root with the name on the Learning Lab she was using. Now, for the first time, she began to grieve the loss of her friend. We hugged each other in the middle of the Lab, and then we sat and I told her about Wade.