she taught a little less but worked more, and Stuart lost a big contracting job suddenly, but then found a new one building more or less the same thing, as far as I could tell. Lola went to Ecuador to visit her parents, and while she was gone a curt but capable male therapist named Mitch came to the house. Nothing monumental happened—except the one monumental thing that was happening, slowly and swiftly at the same time, all the time.
And yet I was surprised when, one afternoon when we were alone in the backyard, sitting in lounge chairs I’d dragged from the deck to the edge of the canal, Dennis handed me his writing board. It read: BEEN THINKING ABOUT MY FUNERAL.
It was the afternoon of the yacht club’s annual chowder party, an event we hadn’t skipped in more than fifteen years, since we’d first become members. I imagined that Grady and Gloria were there at this moment, drinking beer from colorful plastic cups, eating Gloria’s deviled eggs with caviar, being served chowder by the senior members of the club. I didn’t miss it. I didn’t ask Dennis if he did—I knew the answer. Dennis had always enjoyed that particular event.
“OK,” I said.
Dennis wrote carefully, with difficulty, I WANT TO BE CREMATED.
I closed my eyes. “I know, baby.”
WE HAVE TO TALK, he wrote.
“OK,” I said again.
SCATTER MY ASHES IN THE BAY, he wrote.
I nodded.
MY FATHER TOLD ME TO TELL YOU—he made sure I’d read, then erased with a cloth he kept in his lap, and started again. THEY DON’T WANT THE HOUSE. SELL IT. I shook my head. He erased again, nodding fervently. GIVE 1/2 TO MARGO. SHE WILL NEED IT.
“Is she having money problems? Do you know something?”
He hesitated, then shook his head and wrote, MONEY ALWAYS A PROBLEM.
I laughed a little, and laughing made me cry a little.
He wrote, THE BOAT—DON’T GIVE TO STUART. GIVE TO PAUL.
I hadn’t given a thought to what would happen to the boat. It was worth eight thousand, maybe ten thousand at the most, but I knew boats didn’t hold their value, and I supposed giving it to someone who would appreciate it was worth more than trying to make a little money. “Why?”
He wrote, FOR FISHING. He erased, then wrote again. HE’S BEEN HUNTING ONE JUST LIKE IT.
“Fine,” I said.
UNLESS YOU WANT IT.
For a moment I thought about this. Maybe I would keep the house, and maybe I would take the boat out on my own and—what? “No,” I said.
GIVE MY FATHER’S WATCH TO STUART.
“Fine,” I said.
AND KEEP MY CUFF LINKS AND ROD— He made sure I’d read, then erased and started again. FOR HER NEXT HUSBAND.
I laughed and he laughed, and out of habit I glanced around to make sure no one had seen, and gestured for him to erase. This was not something we’d allowed ourselves to mention before, but in that moment it seemed as though this possibility—a divorce for Margo, a second husband—was not all that awful, not any kind of tragedy. When we were quiet again, he wrote, WILL YOU— but then he stopped and erased.
“What?”
He shook his head.
“Will I what? Ask me.”
He studied my face in the way he did sometimes. He paused with the marker in his fist, deciding what to write.
“Are you asking if I’ll stay in Miami?” I said.
He put the marker down and nodded, swallowing.
I thought for a moment, and then said, “Of course I’ll stay. This is my home.”
And I justify saying it, because Dennis was alive and sitting beside me, and as long as he existed in this world I would have stayed. How could I answer him except this way? As long as he was flesh and blood and had the ability to ask the question, that was my answer, and in this moment I even partly believed it myself. And I think my answer gave him peace.
We’d graduated from so many gadgets by this time: the cane, the walker, the voice box, one electric wheelchair, and then a better one. By April, when the mangoes started to ripen on the trees and the frangipani trees started to drop their pinwheel blossoms, he wasn’t speaking or walking at all, and could barely make it down the swimming pool steps to exercise with Lola. Instead, they lay on the back deck and she pushed his muscles around for him, bending his knees to his chest or stretching his arms above his head. By May, by the time of my fifty-first