After Linda Died
By Albert N. Katz
January 15, 2023
January 15, 2023
After Linda died, Dave rented a cottage in Prince Edward Island, the Gulf of St. Lawrence visible from the deck. Situated up a narrow long winding beaten-earth road cut into a thicket of trees, there were three or four other cottages in total, once the road turned into a large clearing. But it being early autumn, none of the others were occupied, and that suited him just fine. He had told people that he was coming to this remote place to kick start his creative juices, though, in truth, he just wanted a space freed from his children continually seeking assurances that he was fine. Free from the sympathy of friends. Free of any memories of any place shared once with Linda. And, he wanted to be alone when he received the results of his prostate biopsy and, if bad news, not having to negotiate additional rounds of commiseration.
The cottage was perfect. Large and sunny, there was a well stocked kitchen, a comfortable bed, and an easy chair in which to read the books he had taken with him. The emptiness comforted him. He fell into a routine. Just as the sun was rising he would watch from the window of the bedroom a black fox climb the steps to the door looking for eatable garbage, before slinking back down and disappearing into the surrounding thicket. As the sun rose higher, he would hear a warbler start singing; the sweet-sweet-sweet of their songs keeping him company throughout the day. In the late morning, he’d walk to the white-sanded beach, empty as far as he could see and wade in the chilly water or skip rocks. Later, he’d sit on the deck, read, and observe the nearby osprey nest. It was empty now, the birds having flown south for the winter but imagined it when the adults would sweep down over the water and dive, returning to the nest with a fish still wiggling, and the youngsters taking their first hesitant flights, in ever-larger concentric circles; learning the tricks of predation. And before dusk, his fox would reappear, bringing home its hunting successes. The loneliness and quiet was a restorative, and when he thought of Linda it was from earlier days, and not those at the end.
But then the days of continual sunshine and gentle breezes ended. It rained and blew, and, with his routine disrupted, unwanted thoughts started intruding of Linda, in bed, moaning, a drugstore of bottles on the bedside table, and he dispensing them as directed by an excel spreadsheet he had created. He tried writing but after a few paragraphs lost interest. He considered driving into Charlottetown but found no energy to brave the rain, start his car.
Trying to restore the serenity and distract himself from memories of Linda, immobile at the end, he found some small relief in studying the world from the enclosed, screened back room, into which he crammed his reading chair and a fold up table. He started using that room for eating his breakfasts and made it his control room through which to study the outside, transformed by wind and rain. He focused on watching the water drip down the screen, and onto the field slopping down towards the beach and away from Linda. He felt the tension in his shoulders slowly relax again.
By the third day of almost continuous rain, the smell of ocean salt had been slowly colonized by the smells of late autumn: damp pine and the dry rot of leaves. These were older smells, alien here, unwanted smells. They were the familiar smell of his old neighborhood in another province, and in another time. Smells that carried him unbidden to a place he had abandoned to go study at a university far away, and to which, for almost 40 years, he had returned only for brief trips to mark transitional events. He had stalked its well-bounded limits once, marked by streets beyond which he did not wander. Here he had played street hockey, and here he got his first job as a grocery store packer for 6o cents an hour. And it was there that he had his first girlfriend. Ellen, with her coal black hair, had brought Dave to her house when her folks were at work and took off all her clothes and whirled around him like a naked ballerina, laughing you can look but cannot touch.
Transitional evens: Weddings, births, but mainly deaths.
He had returned to watch his mom and dad and sister Joanne die of cancers, just as he had watched Linda. Each time feeling more helpless: Leukemia, uterine, colon. Each of which feasted on the body in its own way. Each of which hollowed away at one’s humanity. For a fleeting second he added prostate to the list but quickly repressed it, feeling it disrespectful to join that company in his current condition, not yet knowing what fate awaited him.
Dave had been with his father when his mother died, prostrate in a hospital bed, tubes running clear fluids into her body, and then later with him when Joanne died, she in her own bed with her husband holding her, like some scene of the pieta. He watched his father strike the bedroom wall in anger. Striking at God, blow after blow after blow.
Dave was there also when his comatose father exhaled his long last gasping breadth, sliding slowly away, no more anger to give, no God at which to lash out. And he was there, with their three children, at Linda’s bedside as she was passing. She was no longer worrying about them at the end. He didn’t, and wouldn’t, ask his kids about what they remember of her final hours, of the memories they have. What memories will his children have of him at his end, he wondered, if the biopsy shows that the cancer germinating in his prostate has spread it’s tentacles from organ to organ, started on the road to hollowing him away from within
His shoulders tense again, Dave stood up, walked around the cottage listening to the whish of the trees being driven in the wind, the patter of rain of the roof. He made some coffee before returning to the rain dripping down the screen, and to the field beyond, now turning darker as the sun, a pale blur in this weather, moved closer to the horizon. He thought he saw a movement, and, sure enough, there was his fox, back from the hunt, carrying the limp body of a small rabbit in its mouth. It stopped almost centrally placed in front of the backroom screen as if posing so that Dave could get a front row view. The fox seemed to look at him, grin and tear off a chunk of meat. The fox twirled, playing with his food, enjoying the rain. This is my domain, stranger, he thought the fox was telling him.
Linda would twirl also, but not away, always closer. Before the treatments had caused her to lose her hair and she started wearing a wig, she had the most perfect shade of brown hair. It reminded him of sparrows. It bounced, took flight when she laughed. And she laughed often. He remembered how she had laughed when first they had met, more than forty years earlier, at a party when he was a graduate student. She had attended as the date of another guy and though she treated Dave as an affable drunk initially, she had left with him. They had slipped into bed and into one another that first night, it being the 60s after all.
He had often thought it was a wonder that they had ever got together in the first place, and a minor miracle that they had stayed together for so many years. They both knew they should have nothing in common, which, on one level was true. He is Jewish, she Catholic. He was a big city guy, she from a small rural town. He came from a working class background, socialists, she from a solid upper middle class conservative family. She loved crowds, being with people, talking of what bothered her. He was taciturn and slowly worked through issues internally. And yet those differences never undercut the bond that embraced them.
Their years together were not always smooth but they knew how to support one another, bring the other into the light when life’s disappointments seemed overwhelming. When he was in despair, she would look at him with her feral green eyes, grab him by the shoulders and order him to snap out of it. Have faith she would say, talking to Dave but a reassurance for herself as well. “Have faith; this is just a blip and will pass,” More often than not she was correct, and what had seemed to be an insurmountable disappointment turned out to be minor after all.
When they heard her cancer had returned , she repeated the mantra “Have faith. This too will pass.” But here she was wrong. Some distress is insurmountable. “Have faith” were almost her last words, though he knew the words, that time, were meant for his ears and the ears of their children because by then she had finally accepted the inevitable, her feistiness and boundless optimism packed away.
Dave stood up again coffee mug in hand, agitated, angry at himself for thinking of his old neighborhood, and the memories they awakened of death, and more death, of people loved and lost. He had almost reached the kitchen sink, planning to wash the mug when there was a distant boom, and the lights flickered and then went off, pulling Dave back to the here-and-now. He knew that the transformer was by the main road and would be repaired in due time. But knew also that given it was the off-season, and the remoteness of the site that due time might mean the better part of a week. Nothing he could do. He felt his way to the back room for one last look but it was now a deep black and he could no longer see the fox. In the dark he groped his way to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and with difficulty found the bed and crawled into it.
It took Dave a long time to fall asleep, one thought after another chased through his mind. He thought of his fox, knowing that in the light of the next morning he might find bits of uneaten rabbit flesh and bones “hidden” under the bush near the deck, and that, if so, he’d leave it so the fox could retrieve them at its own pace. He thought of Linda near the end, moaning in pain, as he frantically searched the bedside drug store to give her the right ones at the right time. He thought of the prostate biopsy and whether his cancer had spread tentacles into new territory, but that thought quickly transformed again into Linda. But this time she was not the Linda in pain, hollowed out at the end. This time her hair was sparrow-brown. Her face was in rapture like the Madonna from a medieval painting, It was the same radiant look she had the night he met her and after the birth of each of their three children. Think of all the positives you have in your life she was mouthing to him. Have faith. Have faith. He fell asleep finally, thinking of Linda laughing, with her skirt blowing in a summer breeze, twirling like the foxes’ tail, laughing melodically, like a warbler. Sweet-sweet-sweet.
THE END
The cottage was perfect. Large and sunny, there was a well stocked kitchen, a comfortable bed, and an easy chair in which to read the books he had taken with him. The emptiness comforted him. He fell into a routine. Just as the sun was rising he would watch from the window of the bedroom a black fox climb the steps to the door looking for eatable garbage, before slinking back down and disappearing into the surrounding thicket. As the sun rose higher, he would hear a warbler start singing; the sweet-sweet-sweet of their songs keeping him company throughout the day. In the late morning, he’d walk to the white-sanded beach, empty as far as he could see and wade in the chilly water or skip rocks. Later, he’d sit on the deck, read, and observe the nearby osprey nest. It was empty now, the birds having flown south for the winter but imagined it when the adults would sweep down over the water and dive, returning to the nest with a fish still wiggling, and the youngsters taking their first hesitant flights, in ever-larger concentric circles; learning the tricks of predation. And before dusk, his fox would reappear, bringing home its hunting successes. The loneliness and quiet was a restorative, and when he thought of Linda it was from earlier days, and not those at the end.
But then the days of continual sunshine and gentle breezes ended. It rained and blew, and, with his routine disrupted, unwanted thoughts started intruding of Linda, in bed, moaning, a drugstore of bottles on the bedside table, and he dispensing them as directed by an excel spreadsheet he had created. He tried writing but after a few paragraphs lost interest. He considered driving into Charlottetown but found no energy to brave the rain, start his car.
Trying to restore the serenity and distract himself from memories of Linda, immobile at the end, he found some small relief in studying the world from the enclosed, screened back room, into which he crammed his reading chair and a fold up table. He started using that room for eating his breakfasts and made it his control room through which to study the outside, transformed by wind and rain. He focused on watching the water drip down the screen, and onto the field slopping down towards the beach and away from Linda. He felt the tension in his shoulders slowly relax again.
By the third day of almost continuous rain, the smell of ocean salt had been slowly colonized by the smells of late autumn: damp pine and the dry rot of leaves. These were older smells, alien here, unwanted smells. They were the familiar smell of his old neighborhood in another province, and in another time. Smells that carried him unbidden to a place he had abandoned to go study at a university far away, and to which, for almost 40 years, he had returned only for brief trips to mark transitional events. He had stalked its well-bounded limits once, marked by streets beyond which he did not wander. Here he had played street hockey, and here he got his first job as a grocery store packer for 6o cents an hour. And it was there that he had his first girlfriend. Ellen, with her coal black hair, had brought Dave to her house when her folks were at work and took off all her clothes and whirled around him like a naked ballerina, laughing you can look but cannot touch.
Transitional evens: Weddings, births, but mainly deaths.
He had returned to watch his mom and dad and sister Joanne die of cancers, just as he had watched Linda. Each time feeling more helpless: Leukemia, uterine, colon. Each of which feasted on the body in its own way. Each of which hollowed away at one’s humanity. For a fleeting second he added prostate to the list but quickly repressed it, feeling it disrespectful to join that company in his current condition, not yet knowing what fate awaited him.
Dave had been with his father when his mother died, prostrate in a hospital bed, tubes running clear fluids into her body, and then later with him when Joanne died, she in her own bed with her husband holding her, like some scene of the pieta. He watched his father strike the bedroom wall in anger. Striking at God, blow after blow after blow.
Dave was there also when his comatose father exhaled his long last gasping breadth, sliding slowly away, no more anger to give, no God at which to lash out. And he was there, with their three children, at Linda’s bedside as she was passing. She was no longer worrying about them at the end. He didn’t, and wouldn’t, ask his kids about what they remember of her final hours, of the memories they have. What memories will his children have of him at his end, he wondered, if the biopsy shows that the cancer germinating in his prostate has spread it’s tentacles from organ to organ, started on the road to hollowing him away from within
His shoulders tense again, Dave stood up, walked around the cottage listening to the whish of the trees being driven in the wind, the patter of rain of the roof. He made some coffee before returning to the rain dripping down the screen, and to the field beyond, now turning darker as the sun, a pale blur in this weather, moved closer to the horizon. He thought he saw a movement, and, sure enough, there was his fox, back from the hunt, carrying the limp body of a small rabbit in its mouth. It stopped almost centrally placed in front of the backroom screen as if posing so that Dave could get a front row view. The fox seemed to look at him, grin and tear off a chunk of meat. The fox twirled, playing with his food, enjoying the rain. This is my domain, stranger, he thought the fox was telling him.
Linda would twirl also, but not away, always closer. Before the treatments had caused her to lose her hair and she started wearing a wig, she had the most perfect shade of brown hair. It reminded him of sparrows. It bounced, took flight when she laughed. And she laughed often. He remembered how she had laughed when first they had met, more than forty years earlier, at a party when he was a graduate student. She had attended as the date of another guy and though she treated Dave as an affable drunk initially, she had left with him. They had slipped into bed and into one another that first night, it being the 60s after all.
He had often thought it was a wonder that they had ever got together in the first place, and a minor miracle that they had stayed together for so many years. They both knew they should have nothing in common, which, on one level was true. He is Jewish, she Catholic. He was a big city guy, she from a small rural town. He came from a working class background, socialists, she from a solid upper middle class conservative family. She loved crowds, being with people, talking of what bothered her. He was taciturn and slowly worked through issues internally. And yet those differences never undercut the bond that embraced them.
Their years together were not always smooth but they knew how to support one another, bring the other into the light when life’s disappointments seemed overwhelming. When he was in despair, she would look at him with her feral green eyes, grab him by the shoulders and order him to snap out of it. Have faith she would say, talking to Dave but a reassurance for herself as well. “Have faith; this is just a blip and will pass,” More often than not she was correct, and what had seemed to be an insurmountable disappointment turned out to be minor after all.
When they heard her cancer had returned , she repeated the mantra “Have faith. This too will pass.” But here she was wrong. Some distress is insurmountable. “Have faith” were almost her last words, though he knew the words, that time, were meant for his ears and the ears of their children because by then she had finally accepted the inevitable, her feistiness and boundless optimism packed away.
Dave stood up again coffee mug in hand, agitated, angry at himself for thinking of his old neighborhood, and the memories they awakened of death, and more death, of people loved and lost. He had almost reached the kitchen sink, planning to wash the mug when there was a distant boom, and the lights flickered and then went off, pulling Dave back to the here-and-now. He knew that the transformer was by the main road and would be repaired in due time. But knew also that given it was the off-season, and the remoteness of the site that due time might mean the better part of a week. Nothing he could do. He felt his way to the back room for one last look but it was now a deep black and he could no longer see the fox. In the dark he groped his way to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and with difficulty found the bed and crawled into it.
It took Dave a long time to fall asleep, one thought after another chased through his mind. He thought of his fox, knowing that in the light of the next morning he might find bits of uneaten rabbit flesh and bones “hidden” under the bush near the deck, and that, if so, he’d leave it so the fox could retrieve them at its own pace. He thought of Linda near the end, moaning in pain, as he frantically searched the bedside drug store to give her the right ones at the right time. He thought of the prostate biopsy and whether his cancer had spread tentacles into new territory, but that thought quickly transformed again into Linda. But this time she was not the Linda in pain, hollowed out at the end. This time her hair was sparrow-brown. Her face was in rapture like the Madonna from a medieval painting, It was the same radiant look she had the night he met her and after the birth of each of their three children. Think of all the positives you have in your life she was mouthing to him. Have faith. Have faith. He fell asleep finally, thinking of Linda laughing, with her skirt blowing in a summer breeze, twirling like the foxes’ tail, laughing melodically, like a warbler. Sweet-sweet-sweet.
THE END
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After 43 years as a research psychologist, Albert N. Katz (he/him; pronounced as “cats”) retired from academia and started a new career as a writer of short stories and poetry. Since retiring, his stories have appeared in anthologies, genre-based and literary magazines, His story “Hocus-Pocus won the 2020 flash fiction competition from Whispering Prairie Press/ Kansas City Voices. His poems have appeared in such diverse literary journals as Abyss & Apex, Ascent, Backchannels, and Rattle among others. He lives currently in Fredericton, NB Canada with his wife and two rescue cats, far from his three children living across the wideness of Canada.
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