My mother’s secret was that she never planned to meet her friends. The riddle of who she was. It was her thirtieth birthday. It was her least favorite month of the year. I had always liked January. I liked ice. It was beautiful, like diamonds, the brightest thing in the world. I liked to write my name in the cold, foggy window of my bedroom with my fingertip. I liked how black the sky was, how the stars seemed to hang down lower in the sky. It was before I cut off all my hair, froze my heart, blamed myself for everything that had ever happened. I was thinking about the future back then. I was looking forward.
My mother had something else in mind. Ned didn’t want me to know, so he hid the dishes she’d set out before she got in her car. He hid the fact that our mother hadn’t intended to come back. But maybe I knew anyway. Maybe I saw it on her face, in the sadness of the days before her birthday. I had caught her crying in the bathroom on more than one occasion. Our mother was the sort of person who didn’t do well alone, and even though she was with us, she was alone. She’d never heard the story of the girl who climbed up the mountain no one had ever climbed before. I hadn’t thought it up yet. She didn’t have any wishes left, or at least that’s what she must have believed, so the idea of a birthday might have stopped her cold. Nothing had turned out right. Except maybe us, maybe that’s why she left us breakfast, so we wouldn’t be worried and hungry. She probably didn’t even consider the way we would miss her. Each and every minute of each and every day.
I wondered if my mother’s last thoughts had been of us. Her children, home and safe. If her heart broke, it wasn’t because of the ice but because of us. Good-bye to us. Me on the porch, my brother at the window, the bats in the eaves of the roof. Good-bye. Good-bye. This last moment, that last moment. The ever after. The swirl of the sky.
If someone had told me of her plan, I could have chased after the car for miles. But it wouldn’t have mattered. She had already decided. She took one last moment of care to make certain we wouldn’t be hungry when we woke. When she saw the ice she probably felt she was lucky. Maybe that was her final wish. Some luck for once in her life. The life she’d had enough of. When she leaned down to kiss me good-bye maybe I heard it in her voice. She said, Good-bye, my darling girl. It may have been easier to blame myself than to think she would leave us that way. If she came back now, I do think she would know me; she’d still recognize me.
I have become the head of the reference desk in the library in Red Bank. Back where I used to be. A citizen of New Jersey. I never miss a day of work, and I’m a careful driver. I do check my tires in the fall, so they’ll be ready for the winter to come. I have now counted thirty-two colors of ice, from indigo to scarlet. Maybe it’s the chemicals they use to salt the road, maybe it’s the way the light filters through the bare trees, maybe I’m just more sensitive to color than most people. In our house, every room is red, each a different shade: ruby, scarlet, cherry. Some people think it’s all the same, but the tones couldn’t be more different, as much so as black from white. Jack says I see what I want to see and hear what I want to hear and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Paint the ceiling red, if that’s the way you want it. He’ll be surprised when and if I do. He doesn’t seem to mind surprises. One time, when I drove back from Florida I had the Newfoundland, Harry, in the car. Frances had retired, off to France as she’d planned, and I was always one to adopt a pet.
“Did you meet a bear on the road?” Jack asked me when I let Harry out of the car.
“I met you,” I said.
“You’re trying to flatter me so I don’t see how huge that dog is.” Jack had laughed. “He’ll take up half the living room.”
And that was the end of the conversation. Jack just whistled for the dog. He had faith in me and in my choices. We left it at that.
This is what I know, the one and only thing. The best way to die is while you’re living, even here in New Jersey. Even for someone like me. You’d laugh to know how long it’s taken me to figure that out, when all I had to do was cross over the mountains. When I walk to my car in the parking lot on winter nights, I have often noticed bats, a black cloud in the darkening sky. They bring me comfort. They make me feel you’re not so far away. To think, I used to be afraid. I used to run and hide. Now I stand and look upward. I don’t mind what the weather is; the cold has never bothered me. I hope what I’m seeing is the ever after. I hope it’s you.