Adrian at thirty-five had been barely recognizable. Holding up his tumbler of iced water, he saluted her. “I still miss you,” he said.
A year and a half ago she had been the healthiest woman he knew. Then, within weeks, she was suddenly tired, not feeling well, nauseated. Oh, Adrian, he thought, forgive me. I was so elated, so certain you were finally embarking on a rolling sea of morning sickness. A baby. The baby we always wanted. But you knew, didn’t you?
He tilted his head back and ran one hand through his thick hair, still wet and unruly from the shower. He tried to block out the memory of picking her up in his arms that day and saying, “If you’re pregnant, you’ll make me the happiest man on earth.”
Her smile had matched the glow in the photograph. But ten seconds after twirling her around and setting her down, she ran to the washbasin, deathly pale, deathly sick. When they saw the family doctor the next morning, Allen grinned and said, “Just tell us, Doc. When is the baby due?”
Allen had never considered any other diagnosis until the doctor came back into the examining room. “Adrian is not pregnant,” he said kindly. “But let’s run some blood tests and see what’s making her so tired. I’ll call you when the reports come back.”
Four days later he referred them to a hematologist “What’s wrong?” Allen asked.
“Mr. Kladis, let’s not get alarmed. Let’s just see what the specialist says.”
What he had said was “acute myeloblastic leukemia.”
“What are you telling us?” Allen demanded, sitting with Adrian across from the large mahogany desk.
Calmly, the physician repeated the words and added his medical mumbo jumbo. “We’ll do a bone-marrow aspiration and chemotherapy to induce remission. Chemo may give her an extra few months.”
Allen had doubled his fist and lunged forward. If it had not been for the grace of God and Adrian’s swift grip on his wrist, he would have knuckled the hematologist’s jaw and silenced his bluntness.
“My wife is not dying!” Allen had shouted, his angry words bombarding the four walls. “She’s as healthy as I am. We swim every day at the club. Sail on Lake Washington. Ski all winter. Don’t come in here with your crazy diagnosis, doctor. My wife is pregnant. Take another look at those tests.”
“Don’t, Allen,” Adrian had said, reaching across the chair and clutching his arm. “I’ll be all right You’ll see. We’ll fight this together.”
But it was a crushing, one-sided battle. Five months later, he sat by her hospital bedside, barely touching her bruised hand, not holding her the way he wanted to do because her pain was too severe. She was shockingly thin. Dark half-moons clung beneath her sunken eyes. She had fought a good fight—but she was losing. For days she slipped in and out of consciousness. On that last day, she came out of the murky depths of a coma and cried, “Allen, take me home.”
His grip tightened on the mantel as he remembered the lie fitly spoken. “I will, honey, as soon as you’re better.”
You knew I was lying, he recalled. But I wanted to take you home again.
A tiny smile had touched her cracked lips. “What’s happening to me? Where do I go after this?”
“Honey, I don’t understand. What are you asking me?”
“I’m dying. You know that, don’t you, Allen?”
He nodded, not wanting to lie to her anymore.
Her chest heaved. “But what happens to me when I die?”
He’d spent hours thinking about that—a mahogany casket with a white-satin lining. A cemetery plot, six feet deep. A miserable memorial with useless platitudes. He didn’t need anyone to remind him how lovely she was, how much he loved her. But Adrian hadn’t wanted to hear about a casket or cemetery plot any more than he did. She’s talking about herself, he thought. About what happens to her when she dies.
He had struggled to his feet, leaned down and kissed her lips gently, the weight and pressure of his chest forcing the oxygen tube to hiss. “Honey, I’ll get the chaplain for you.”
“No, don’t leave me…I’m afraid. You tell me.”
How could he? He didn’t know. She winced as he took her hands. “You’ll go to heaven.”
“What’s heaven like, Allen?” She closed her eyes, her breathing raspy. Then she was back again, fighting to stay alive long enough to find her answers.
He groped for lessons from his childhood: the memory of his grandmother talking about heaven. “It’s a pretty place,” he said. “I know that. Streets of gold. A river of life.”
It kept coming back, thoughts he had ignored for years, and doubted for some of them. He saw desperation in her eyes and longed to comfort her. “There’s no pain there, Adrian. No tears.”
“How do you know?” Her words were barely a whisper.
“My grandmother. She believed all of that”
“No tears?” With great effort she lifted her hand and touched his bristled chin. “Won’t I cry for you, Allen?”
He held her hand against his lips. “Not half as much as I will cry for you.”
As he stood in his living room, his hand shook visibly as he put the tumbler down again. He gripped the shelf as he thought of Adrian asking, “Will those I love be there?”
“My grandmother is there.”
“No one else?”
He nodded, tears coursing down his cheeks. “God,” he had said. “God will be there. And his Son.” His grandmother had said the Son would be on the right hand of the Father—that He would be there to greet His children.
The oxygen had bubbled as Adrian gasped for air, her breathing so labored that Allen held his own breath. “Don’t leave me,” he begged. “I love you.”
Slowly she focused on him, her eyes more glazed now. “How do I get to heaven, Allen?” she whispered.
On the wings of angels, his grandmother had said. But he wasn’t certain. He didn’t know where truth ended and his grandmother had improvised on her picture of eternity. But he did remember Grams declaring, “The way to heaven is through Jesus.”
He leaned down, his face on the pillow beside Adrian. “Jesus is the way. You won’t go alone. Jesus is here to go with you.” He was quoting his grandmother again, and saw a flicker of hope in Adrian’s glazed eyes. “Jesus,” he repeated.
“Jesus,” she said. She pushed the oxygen prongs aside. “Hold me, Allen,” she had cried.
And he did, tenderly, lovingly, gently caressing her, his cheek pressed against her own. Ten minutes later the nurse gripped Allen’s shoulder. “It’s over, Mr. Kladis. Your wife is gone.”
He stared now at Adrian’s photo on the mantel. “She’s gone, Mr. Kladis,” he repeated solemnly.
To heaven? Yes, he was certain Adrian had been borne on the wings of angels—surely his grandmother had told the truth—and that she was safely there now. Pain free. With not even a tear for him. But in the eleven months since her death, he had shed enough tears for both of them, buckets of them in the shower, more as he lay in the empty bed alone, crushing her pillow against his chest
After her death, work became his salvation. He poured himself into the planned merger between Larhaven and Fabian. During Adrian’s illness, the merger had been tabled. Now, with the threat of a third party bidding for Fabian, Allen had attacked the project with renewed energy.
He ran his hand over his bare chest, willing the tightness to go away. Unraveling to his height of six-foot-two, he secured the strings