The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles Read online

  “Is Daddy going to die?” Nell whispered, as if her words had the power to make it true.

  “Daddy is very, very sick,” I told her, “but the ambulance people are doing everything they can to help him. They are going to take him to the hospital, and I need to go hold his hand and make him feel better.”

  Susannah had started crying really hard now. “Please, Mommy, promise he will get better!”

  How do you promise a child something like that? You want to give them hope, to comfort them, but at the same time what if something happens (or perhaps already happened), then what? How can they ever trust your word again?

  “The only thing I can promise right now is that no matter what, your father loves you both so, so much, and that I will call you as soon as I can. I have to go help Daddy now. Barbara will stay here with you until I get back.”

  I grabbed the girls, holding them tight. Nell handed me her teddy bear for a kiss.

  “Bye, Delfigalo,” I said, pressing my lips against its brown fluffy head.

  Susannah’s kitty was next.

  “Bye Kitty, Kitty Cat. You guys take care of Nell and Susannah, OK?”

  What happened to me that night? What was that tunnel, that light? And why did Mark send me back to live life without him?

  I’ve heard of wormholes, where a combination of space and time can connect extremely long distances, billions of light years away across different universes and different points in time. Reflecting back on it now, I wonder if I got caught up in a time travel vortex, as my spirit unknowingly willed itself to follow Mark to the hereafter, or wherever pure hearts and gentle people go. And while the experience may have lasted a mere few seconds, the reality was that it took me the better part of four years to return.

  2

  DOA

  “We are on the eve of death. Hard to tell when the slide started, but it’s been decay ever since. And now I’m alone. I was alone yesterday. I’ll be alone tomorrow.”

  —Excerpted from Mark’s journals

  Mark’s friend Billy also raced through red lights to reach the hospital that night. It would be the third time in eight years that he had received “the call.” I wondered if he knew that this would be it; if he thought to himself, Pittman isn’t going to make it this time.

  Billy is a doctor, and a former wildlife vet in Africa, so he’s someone who can handle these types of out-of-control things. That night in the ER, after putting me in the family waiting room where I was supposed to sit patiently, he spoke with the doctors in that way that doctors do, all hushed and official.

  Cracking the door to listen, I heard Billy start to cry.

  I’m not sure how anyone expected me to understand without being told outright that meant Mark was gone. Deceased. Not-coming-back-to-life. Instead, I waited. Wasn’t someone supposed to burst in to announce that they had miraculously revived him? That he would need a bit of time to recuperate and then he could come home?

  I guess I wasn’t meant to leave the room, otherwise I would not have found the medics who were supposed to be saving him standing there talking and laughing as he lay motionless on the bed.

  “What are you doing? This man needs medical attention! You need to revive him! Help him! Fix him! Do something!” I begged.

  They just stood there, unable to meet my eyes. Maybe they had been laughing about how hard it was to get the fat bastard off the stretcher and onto the bed. Maybe they were making jokes about the hair on his back or comparing the mole above his left butt cheek to the size of a quarter. I get it, ER humor. But this was my husband and that was our mole.

  “Haven’t you read the news reports about the man who came into the hospital dead, but got revived after forty-five minutes of non-stop CPR?” I railed. “You can’t give up on your patients like this! What if it were your husband or your wife lying there?”

  They quickly fell back into place, untangling wires and restarting CPR, as a nurse led me back to the padded room. A few minutes later, a doctor appeared, wearing a look of forced sadness on his face.

  “Mrs. Pittman,” he said as he stood in the doorway, looking a little nervous and distinctly uncomfortable. “Your husband has passed.”

  “What do you mean, passed?”

  “Passed,” he repeated.

  “Passed? Passed what? Did my husband pass gas? Or are you telling me he’s dead? Because if you are telling me he is dead, I am telling you you’re wrong.”

  “I’m very sorry. Your husband passed away.”

  I get that no one wants to do this part of the job, but how difficult would it have been to offer me some sort of lifeline? Something like, “We tried everything possible, every medical treatment known to man.” Or, “There were twenty doctors working on him, including Dr. Oz who we flew in via Air Force One to help save your husband. There was nothing more we could do and we are very, very sorry.”

  I asked for time alone with Mark, expecting to hear no, that it was against hospital rules or something. Instead, a nurse gently held my arm, escorting me back to his room, Trauma E-330.

  For some reason, I tiptoed. He looked so sound asleep, I didn’t want to wake him.

  “Mark, it’s me. Are you okay?” I whispered, sticking my finger under his nose to check for breath.

  It was so cold in there. Bloody tubes protruded from his nose and a spool of wires clung to his chest. The monitors were all turned off.

  “You have to wake up now,” I sobbed, gently shaking him. Blood began oozing from his nose. “Please wake up, baby. No more stupid doctors. I got rid of them. They’re gone. You can get up now. It’s over. Time to come home.”

  No answer.

  I lifted his arm into the air. It thudded back down and dangled off the side of the bed.

  I pulled his eyelids open: empty brown eyes staring at nothing.

  I kissed his lips: they were white and cold.

  I held his face in my hands, put my ear to his mouth. He wasn’t breathing.

  If there was one thing that would wake him up, it was this. Drawing the curtains, I reached for him—down there. His penis lay sleeping on his thigh as I held it in my hand, squeezing it just right. Nothing happened. That’s when I knew he was truly dead.

  Quietly, secretly, I stripped the wet, bloody clothes from my body and got into bed with him. Positioning his heavy arms around me, I nestled my body against him, resting my head in the exact spot on his chest where it always fit so perfectly. It felt perfect now, too. It was just the two of us, away from all the people and the sirens and the screaming. Calm, alone. Together.

  I traced his face with my fingers; his forehead first, then the eyebrows and down to his cheeks. I kissed him all over his beautiful face, like a mother kisses her babies, in tiny white flutters, one after another after another. Head, shoulders, knees, and toes. Eyes and ears and mouth and nose.

  It didn’t matter to me if anyone could see or hear from the next room or hallway. They couldn’t take him away from me. Not yet. We had a lot to talk about, like how I needed him to watch over Nell and Susannah, to guard them and not let anything bad happen to them. He needed to promise to send an angel to take hold of the wheel when they learned to drive. Dislodge a chicken bone from their throats. Pull them up from the bottom of the pool. And for right now, to read them books at night after tucking them into bed.

  Wiping away the tears that had splashed down his face and neck, I made promises I knew I could keep—to honor, remember, and to respect him always. To be the best mother I could be. To stand tall, the three of us together, with him and for him.

  I’m not sure how long the body keepers let me stay. An hour? Two? But now one of them stood in the doorway, letting me know my time was up. I licked Mark’s finger to loosen his wedding band, removing it from his swollen finger before sticking it in my pocket and leaving the room. I did not say goodbye. That’s the one thing I refused to say.

  I signed the hospital papers, noting how the ER doctor had changed the time of death to 11:59 pm on Nov
ember 24, instead of dead on arrival, 2:28 am, November 25. Billy told me it was to spare our family from crying in our stuffing for years to come.

  Shock. Disbelief. A freezing of emotions.

  It felt as though I was following the instructions of an internal voice. Say “thank you” to the nice people, Laura. You need to go home now. Just leave your car in the parking lot and walk; it’s only a few blocks away. Clear your head. Lean against a tree. Feel the hard cement on the ground, the cold night air on your face. Search the sky for that gray tunnel with the twinkly lights. Walk past the house. Go around the block. Just keep breathing. Keep walking. Compose yourself.

  Then stand there looking back through the window into the dining room. Yes, the table is now empty. And it always will be. It’s okay to be afraid you won’t make it through the night, much less the rest of your life.

  That’s where my friend Kim found me. Yes, okay. A shower is a good idea. Wedging off my shoes, I held up my arms as she pulled the white ribbed sweater over my head. She unzipped my jeans and tugged them down to my ankles, as I stood shivering on the porch in only my underwear. She cleaned me up with a wet towel before sealing the clothes into a plastic bag. Everything was red.

  She did the same to the house, making everything tidy. Stripped the sheets, gathered the blood-soaked piles of laundry, bagged up the syringes, tubes, and gauze left in the hallway. That’s what friends do; they spare you the details as you stand in the shower, watching pink water swirl down the drain.

  I steadied myself to see my girls. They needed me to be clean and strong, to hold them and kiss their tears.

  “Didn’t Daddy come home with you?” Susannah asked, her eyes seeping with fear.

  How do you say no when you can’t believe it yourself?

  “He’s not coming home,” I heard myself say.

  Nell pulled the covers down from her face. “Ever?” she whispered, as though saying it any louder would make it real. “You mean forever as in, ever and ever? Or just tonight?”

  “Forever...as in forever and ever.” I know they will always remember those words when they think about that night, when they play it over and over in their minds like I do.

  “I’m so sorry, girls. I am so, so, so sorry.”

  Keep going, Laura. Don’t fall apart. Not now. Don’t sugarcoat things by saying God took him, or that he now lives in heaven playing harps with the angels. It would only confuse them more. Best just to say it.

  “I have something to tell you that will be very hard to hear,” I began, gathering them into my arms, “and that will make you really sad. I have no other way to tell you this. Daddy got very sick and he died tonight.”

  With those words, I gained a more powerful understanding of what it is to be a mother. It went beyond promising a tiny baby the world. It was just as my own mother would feel as she held me in her arms to make room for my tears.

  The girls were too old for baths but wanted to get in the tub together and have me wash their hair like I did when they were little. We formed our famous “pings,” when you pull the soapy strands straight up into spikes and look in the hand-held mirror, laughing at the silly hairdos. But there was no laughter tonight; only whimpering and shaking. I tried anyway—tried to go back in time to those lollipop dreams and sticky “I love you” kisses. They held their noses under the faucet to rinse, the magic giggles now gone. I toweled them dry, dressed them in the pajamas Kim had put in the dryer to make all soft and warm, and got in bed with them, picking up where their father had left off in reading The Golden Compass. Part Two, Chapter Twelve: “The Lost Boy.”

  When they eventually fell back to sleep, I lay next to them, silently weeping like the giant willow tree in our backyard.

  3

  Where Do You Keep the Frying Pans?

  “Solitude and silence is often called for when too many questions are asked of the person who doesn’t have any answers.”

  —Excerpted from Mark’s journals

  Thankfully, Mark’s family understood why I didn’t want anyone to rush to the rescue.

  “I understand, honey,” his mom said in her very practical Midwestern way. “There’s nothing we can do now anyway. You take care of yourself and the girls. We’ll come in a few days.”

  My mother would not take no for an answer. When she found she couldn’t get on the next flight out, she began packing up the car to drive—all the way from North Carolina to New York.

  “Mom’s on her way to your house,” my sister, Wendy, called to tell me.

  “Make her turn around, Wendy. Tell her no. I need time. I can’t handle this. Not yet. Not now.”

  Everything could wait until Monday. I needed time alone to think. To process. But even as I sagged down onto the couch, I realized it was useless. First my mom would be here, and then...everyone. The house would fill up with people crying in the living room until it was time to cook a meal. And then I’d end up taking my stress out on them, when all they were doing was trying to be kind and helpful.

  “Where do you keep the frying pans?” they’d ask.

  Look on the hanging pot rack right there above your head.

  “Do you have any salt? And flour?”

  The spices and baking supplies are in the cabinet next to the stove on the left. No, the second shelf.

  “Are the eggs fresh?”

  Yes. That’s why there are four chickens in the backyard. To lay fresh eggs every day.

  After battering the fish in flour, fresh eggs, and salt, then frying it, everyone would sit down to an awkward meal where even small talk seemed inappropriately out of place. We would then eat in silence, watching the clock tick on the wall, until finally the dog scratched his head and the clank of his collar tags would somehow kick off a conversation about bed bug infestations, especially at nice hotels. The mundanity of conversation would be too much for...someone, perhaps Mark’s father, who would then politely excuse himself from the table to go upstairs where no one would hear him sobbing into a pillow.

  The families would soon ask if they could go through Mark’s things, to take something that reminded them of him. Albums, clothes, or, if I wouldn’t mind, perhaps his Hunter Thompson book collection?

  Right now, all I wanted was to bolt the doors on our lives. Everything he touched had become sacred; nothing was to move an inch.

  “Please don’t take his coat off the chair,” I would say, feeling panicky whenever someone entered a room. “That’s exactly where he left it.”

  “Please don’t put his newspapers in the recycling bin. Those were the last words he read.”

  “Please don’t remove his half-empty water glass from the nightstand. I’ll just...let it evaporate.”

  Family and friends would need to enter the Mark Pittman Hall of Fame at their own risk.

  At night, my mother would want to sleep in our giant king-sized bed with me. But I didn’t want her to, because then the pillows wouldn’t smell as much like Mark anymore. I needed them to smell like him as much as possible and for as long as possible. Still, I needed her to comfort me, to fill that empty space and to hold me each night until I cried myself to sleep, the same as I did for my own daughters.

  4

  What Is Past

  Is Prologue

  “Talking to the stars. That’s what it’s all about. It’s the only time they can hear you when it’s dark and you’re alone. That’s when the one-on-one work gets done, not in the force of fits and starts. It’s when you gently surrender to the Amen.”

  —Excerpted from Mark’s journals

  They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die, and I now know why. Alone at night, I would stare out the window looking to the stars as the chapters of our lives replayed themselves, like the pages of his long-forgotten journal being wind-whipped down the street.

  It was five years after Mark’s death that I found a green folder labeled: “Mark’s writings.” That’s strange, I thought. How could I have missed this? We had shared a desk and filing s
ystem for fifteen years. Yet there they were, thirty-five double-spaced typewritten pages; dispatches from a long-haired motorcycle trip he took back in the 70s.

  The more I read, the more I heard his whisper in my ear. The sensation was both warm and eerie, filling me with cosmic context—even more than the sunflower did.

  That’s when I called the most sane person I know.

  “I’m not sure I believe in reincarnation or an afterlife or heaven or hell or any of that stuff, but what do you think of this?” I began breathlessly after my step-father answered.

  Some sections narrated the exact same emotions I had been experiencing. Others detailed several of the remote places that the girls and I inexplicably felt drawn to.

  But then, there were the parts about Samuel, a fictional character he created whose death exactly mirrored his own. It was as if Mark had already lived a previous life, or lives.

  The writings revealed moments in parallel, describing many of the places the girls and I visited in the years following his death where I felt him suddenly appear by our sides, as though to walk with us or to lead us.

  It was this presence that propelled me to ignore all warnings and drive through wildfire areas to get to Sedona. And now, could it have possibly been Mark who guided me to drive for sixteen hours straight to visit his father and stepmother-in-law? Her cancer diagnosis came just a few days after we left.

  I could hear tears in George’s voice. The only time I’d ever seen him cry was at Mark’s funeral. “Honey,” he said, “I remember all of it. I didn’t know how to comfort you then, and not now, either. Maybe these are just incredible coincidences?”

  That’s why I had waited to tell him the rest—the parts about “Samuel,” who plowed fields as a homesteader in Kansas back in the 1860s. He had a wife, Ruth, two unnamed daughters, and a son called Isaac. They prayed a lot, which I guess is what you do when you don’t know if the rains will come.

  “Mark wrote about Samuel collapsing and vomiting blood and dying. The details, the way he described it...was exactly the same as his own death,” I told George.