AND AN ISLAND NEVER CRIES

I leaned my forehead against the sliding glass door and told my mother that I didn't know when we could have my husband's funeral. The Texas Hill Country was green with live oaks, but powdered dust lay on the road. We really needed rain. "Mom, I asked Randy to do an autopsy. He's doing me a favor to put Mac ahead of the rest. I don't know when he'll finish. A day or two, maybe."

 "Maybe? Georgia,  honey, the whole family is here and"---she bit her lip. "I'm not trying to worry you, but your Dad's blood pressure has been way up. He forgets his medication and gets agitated when I remind him, and--Lord, I know it's so hard on you."

"Something's not right," I said, still leaning against the cool glass. "I want to be sure. I'm not going to tell Randy to stop now. Look, I never thought I'd have to think about a funeral when I'm only thirty-nine. It's so crazy for me with Mac not being here."

 She was silent for a moment, an unusual thing. I watched the children playing outside. We had two acres of land just outside Boerne, ten miles north of San Antonio, with tall twisting live oaks and a lawn we'd sown with wildflowers. In a few months there'd be a glorious blanket of Indian paint brush, bluebonnets, yellow daisies, and pink primroses, an amazing show of God's beauty. Now it was dry with yellow straw. Mac McIntyre and I had built this house as a refuge from our jobs at University Hospital. He'd been anesthesiologist, and I was a surgical pathologist. We had driven one car to work, sharing a ride, sharing our lives. Three days ago I'd had everything I ever wanted.

 My sixteen year old, Elizabeth, was hunched on the porch swing with her favorite pink sweatshirt pulled over her knees. Two of her cousins were with her, but she stared ahead blankly, not seeing them. She'd pulled away from me every time I'd reached to comfort her. My son Andrew, eleven years old, had curled up in my lap earlier today, wanting to be cuddled. This afternoon he was defending the top of the wooden fort from another cousin. His red curls bobbed bright. Suddenly I saw my big red-headed bear of a husband laughing as four-year old Elizabeth stood on top of the fort for the first time. My eyes blurred and I couldn't see anything.

 "Mom, I'm going for a walk. I'm sorry if everyone feels cooped up, but they can go home if they want to. I'll bury Mac all by myself if I have to." I walked down to the gate, refusing the offer of Spunky and Rambler to go with me. The dogs crowded disconsolately against the gate when I let myself out, then loped off toward the back of the house, the yellow lab leading the black mutt as usual. As I walked on I noticed that the prickly pear was dong well along the fence line, purple fruits shining against the gray-green pads. My neighbor's huisache tree was sending long silky lemon-yellow streamers down over its branches. The scent always meant the beginning of spring to me.                                                                                                  

In five minutes I was at the corner where Mac and I walked three times a week. We always turned from Marlin Drive onto Aqua on the way home. The houses were a mix of old and new Hill Country living. Behind me were the frame houses of Tarpon Springs, set back from the road with chain link fences and open metal gates, typical of rural Texas. Ahead was the Fair Oaks Ranch subdivisions, with mansions topping the low hills for a better view. Our own home was a hybrid, a large lot with huge live oaks, a metal fence with a gate, and three thousand square feet in a contemporary design.

As I looked at the new construction,  I realized that Pam and Terry had come up behind me. My neighbors were artists, cheerful bohemian types who called their house the BOMOMA, Boerne Museum of Modern Art, and decorated it inside and out with eccentric touches. Outside sculptures in their yard popped metal heads above their weedy natural grass lawns. Mac and I chuckled about them, as Terry and Pam no doubt laughed about our barbecue grill, sprinkler system, and massive log fort. But we had become good friends just the same.

 Pam nodded a greeting to me, a muted version of her usual cheerful hello. Her graying hair hung down in the style she'd had since her college days, and she carried a print cloth bag slung diagonally across her body. I had run out of the house in my oldest jeans, a dirty white long-sleeved T-shirt, and a down vest. I turned to face them.

 "I had to get out of the house. I'm glad you guys are here. I haven't been able to get a walk..."I stopped talking as I realized just where I was. We all stared at the scars on the road, the swerving black skid marks which stopped about thirty feet ahead of me. It was too easy to imagine the speeding teenager, the thud, the broken body tossed to the side of the road. Suddenly I was overcome by my hatred. What an idiot I had been to start walking without thinking! But it had happened so close to home. Was I forever going to be trapped in my house because my husband had died four-tenths of a mile from his front door? Everything and everyone was closer in a small town. The sixteen-year old driver was in Elizabeth's grade at Champion High School. He had worked at the HEB grocery store where we shopped. Would I have to leave my place of refuge, as well as the love of my life, just to avoid all memories of Mac's death?

Today, though, it was definitely too soon to be here. I bent over the ditch, vomiting and crying, and only stopped when Pam patted my back comfortingly. Looking at the road again, I still saw the horrible black marks, but now I noticed something odd about them. "Look at that," I pointed."the tracks stop in the middle of the road. I thought the kid came around Marlin too fast onto Aqua, and caught Mac at the corner, but look. What was Mac doing way out in the middle of the road? Our house is to the right."

 Terry advanced to the end of the skid marks, his gray ponytail hanging over his denim jacket. "Georgia, you're right. From what the paper said, I thought it was like you said, at the corner. But didn't the boy say that Mac was out in the road?"

"Yes, but I didn't believe him. The police said he'd been speeding, and they gave him a breathalyzer, which he passed. I thought he was lying about where he'd seen Mac." They were silent, then Pam said, "But couldn't he have been walking a different route that morning?"


"No. He'd been gone for thirty minutes. He was coming home." A cool breeze rumpled my hair and I shivered. The down vest wasn't enough to keep me warm. I'd never been cold in it, but then I'd always had my husband next to me.

All of a sudden I wanted to be anywhere but at this intersection. "I've got to go. I've got a house full of people. They all want to help, but because I want a full autopsy on Mac, it's slowing down the services."

Pam grimaced. "Why do you want one? I would think that as a pathologist, you'd be the last person to want it. You know what they're really like."

 "I do know. But this is the only way I can know for sure how Mac died. Coroners always said that it's the last debt that we owe the dead."

When I got back to the house, my brothers were watching a football game on TV, but they clicked off when I came in Respect for the widow, I guess, For the first time in my life I envied the Victorian women. At least they knew they had to wear black for a year and not go out into society. Today mourning roles were unclear. After a funeral and a reception at the bereaved's house, everyone but the family could return to their lives.

My family had come down to support me. I had let them down by my delay. I took a deep breath before telling them I'd get on with it. The phone range, almost unheard in the crowded den. My sister-in-law grabbed it and handed it to me over the heads of several small children. I took it into my room. Clothes and coats were stacked on the king-sized bed, which helped narrow its achingly large emptiness.

. Randy's high-pitched whiny voice broke into my thoughts. "Georgia? I'm glad I could catch you. You were right to suspect something. This was absolutely fascinating, quite a combination of natural and traumatic causes of death. Quite unique, actually! I'm glad I got to see this!"

Randy Farnsworth had been the ultimate awkward nerd of my medical school class. He might have had Asperger's, or just been very shy. He always meant well, but had no communication skills at all. The rowdies of the class had teased him, and I had laughed then,too.

 Now I hung anxiously on his words. "I don't care how exciting it was, tell me what you found!"

 "Oh, sorry, sorry. Mac had a cerebral aneurysm. It was a berry aneurysm and it bled, badly. It had spread pretty far and was already compressing his brainstem. They go very fast once they get to that point, you know. Sure, the accident caused a lot of trauma, but he wouldn't have lived another two hours. Nothing could have saved him, Georgia."

 I set down the phone blindly. That's why Mac had been out in the middle of the road. He had been staggering wildly as the enemy in his own brain launched its assault. The boy was right about his story. Even though he may have been speeding around a corner, he wasn't the sole cause of Mac's death. When an aneurysm burst, it caused the worst possible headache in the world. Then came the loss of motor control and vision. Mac would have become confused and terrified. He had probably never seen the car at all. Even the pain of the impact might have been lessened if he were semi-conscious from the bleeding inside his skull. Being struck down like that had probably saved him hours of agony. I had asked for an autopsy and now I knew the truth. I could feel the edge of my icy hate for the teen driver start to melt.

 "Mom!" I shouted as I burst back through the door, startling everyone."Mom, it's okay. They finished the autopsy and it's okay. He had a bleed in his head, and now that I know that, it's okay. We can have the funeral tomorrow." I ended up sobbing in my mother's arms.

 A week later I lay curled up under a quilt in the too-big bed. I thought about the job Randy had offered me. I wasn't sure I could face University Hospital anymore, alone. But Randy had offered me an opening at the Bexar County Crime Lab downtown where I could re-certify as a forensic pathologist. Concentrating on a new field of study would be a distraction from my grief. After all,it was because of the medical examiner's office that I had any peace at all. When I learned the truth, I had been given a gift. Maybe in the future I might be able to give it back to someone else. I made a decision. In the morning I would call Randy and take the new job. Pulling my pillows as tight as I could against the empty space that would never go away, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.