A Watershed Year Read Online Free Page A

publishing, had sidelined her own career. It had been Angela to whom Lucy had confessed her deep desire to have a baby, her anguish and guilt at the thought of the time that had slipped by as she took care of Harlan; Angela who had rubbed her back with a circular motion that made her feel dizzy, imparting these words: “Somehow these things work out, Lucy. It’s all part of the ride.”
    And now it was Angela passing on more condolences. More “I’m sorrys” from the dean, colleagues, students, friends.
    How many times had she heard those two words in the past few weeks, spoken with the same sincere tone? She could fill a swimming pool with the sorrow other people felt for her grief, but then what? Was she expected to immerse herself, dive to the bottom, and then rise up through their offerings, becoming whole again? She wished she knew how it was supposed to work. Her vision, which had become briefly blurred, returned when she focused on the dark skin on Angela’s smooth forehead.
    “I’m sorry, too,” she said, though it came out in a cracked, strangled voice she didn’t recognize. Angela nodded and closed the door.
    Lucy took a deep breath and opened her laptop, trying to decide if she could teach her ten o’clock class without bursting into tears. She had called up her e-mail, hoping to be distracted by the task of deleting spam, when she saw a subject line that said “A Message from Harlan.”
    Her heart began to thump in a frightening, arrhythmic way. The e-mail had been sent from an address she didn’t recognize. She checked the date, assuming it had somehow been held up for months in some shadowy Internet limbo. It had been sent that morning. She then assumed it was a cruel joke, or a perverse spam message that had copied a frequently used name from her old e-mails. A sudden palsy in her hand made it difficult to open the message.
    Dearest Lucy,
    First off, I’m not talking to you from the grave. I had my old friend from MIT set up a program that sends e-mails on specified dates in the future. I’m writing this in November, but if it works, you won’t see it until January. I debated about sending the first one earlier, but I thought it might be cruel to hit you with this too soon after my death. By now, I hope you will have forgiven me.
    So why am I sending this at all? Maybe it’s only a selfish impulse to leave something of myself behind: I won’t have any children, I neverwrote that book on the Crusades, I made nothing with my own two hands that will stand the test of time. But I hope it’s more than that. I hope it gives me a chance to explain why I chose to leave the way I did, to document the journey of the past year, and to let you know how much you mean to me. Yes, I could have told you face-to-face, but I was afraid I’d make a mess of it. I needed to write my drafts, see the words, and make them right. That’s what I’m trying to do now as much as my energy allows.
    I remember so clearly the night I told you about my diagnosis and how you refused to believe it. Even I didn’t quite believe it then, although a small voice was already telling me to accept the inevitable. So strange that we were locked out on your balcony that night. In a way, that set me up for what was to come: peering inside at the warm and comfortable place I want to be but having no way to get there.
    They had a catheter pumping chemo drugs into my chest just a few days later, and you refused to leave, punishing the doctors with questions based on your Internet research. You sat beside my bed with your laptop and a notebook, drilling me on my symptoms and test results as if you could turn yourself into an oncologist in a matter of days if you tried hard enough. You came close, too.
    I didn’t really mind that first chemo treatment. I had a few days of nausea, but I was distracted by all the cards and letters and friends. Remember when I was the popular sick man? The nurses used to joke that I needed an auditorium for