V. went again to the Friels' house. Today, she was going to take Amy to visit her own mother. V. looked forward to both seeing her mother and hanging out with Amy.
V. pulled up into the Friel's driveway. She saw that Rick's car was not there. Relieved, V. went to the door and rang the bell.
Amy came out, ready to go.
"Hi!" V. said. "Hope you're ready for a drive!"
"How long is it?" Amy asked.
"A little over an hour," V. said.
"You make it sound like it's way out in the country when you talk about it," Amy said.
"It is," V. laughed. "As soon as we hit Route 219, suddenly it's Hicksville."
As they got closer, they passed a horse and buggy.
"There are a lot of Amish people in the western part of the county," V. said. "Old order Amish."
"You mean the kind of people who don't use electricity?"
"Exactly."
"What county is it?"
"Cattaraugus," V. said.
"What's the name of the town you grew up in?"
"Machias," V. said. "We have the County Museum there."
"You must be proud of that," Amy said.
"Oh, yeah," V. laughed.
Helen Ardanowski, V.'s mother, was out on the front porch as they drove up. Amy was charmed with the country atmosphere.
"Hello, dear," Helen greeted both girls with a hug. Amy smiled warmly. It did not surprise her that V.'s mother was warm and affectionate.
They walked through the garden, Helen insisting on giving Amy a few bulbs and plantings. Afterward, they sat on the porch and drank iced tea.
"So how did you two get to be such good friends?" Helen asked.
"I sort of forgot to tell my Dad where I was going one day, and he ended up thinking I was missing, and V. and her partner found me," Amy said, pretending to look ashamed of herself.
"I'm glad it turned out OK. Where were you?"
Amy explained how she'd gone with her sister Amanda on a plane trip to see the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C. and had to turn her cell phone off to get into the Federal Reserve building, so that her father had not been able to contact her for several hours.
"My mom died a few years ago," Amy said. "So Dad is extra vigilant."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Helen said. "V. knows about losing a parent."
"Exactly," V. said. "That's why Rick lets us be friends."
"Who is that, Amy's dad?"
"Yes," V. answered.
"V. went to the nurses' ball with Dad," Amy told Helen. "That's a big deal annual event in Port Charles, at the hospital. For charity."
"Oh, really," Helen said, arching her eyebrows at V.
"We just needed dates," V. said, getting up and going for more lemonade for Amy's glass.
"V. doesn't go on a lot of dates," Helen said, conspiratorially, to Amy.
"That's really amazing," Amy said. "She's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in real life."
"Why, thank you, Amy," Helen said.
V. felt herself turning red. "Thanks, Amy," she said.
She turned even redder when Amy said, "I know my Dad thinks so, too."
"Venus tends to be hesitant," Helen said, to Amy, nudging her elbow. "She is forever making friends of any man who shows an interest in her. That wonderful Jasper Jacks, for example. And that handsome Detective Taggart. So many others."
V. rolled her eyes. "Oh, Mom, enough. You have a wild imagination."
Helen looked knowingly at Amy, who grinned back.
Rick got home to the empty house. He knew Amy was out with V., and wondered if he would get a chance to talk to V., or if she would avoid him, or for that matter, if he would avoid her.
He went up to his bedroom, where Joyce seemed most present and likely to help him out, somehow.
He took the photo of Joyce from its place on his dresser and sat down on the bed to look at it. He leaned back onto the pillows and looked at her side of the bed. He wondered if he would ever wake up one day and not have as his first thought, "Joyce is not here." Sometimes, he still expected to find her downstairs, just having gotten up before him, humming over the coffee pot or some treat for the girls.
There was a box on his dresser that he never looked into. It had a collection of sympathy cards he had received after Joyce's death. He could not bring himself to throw them out, of course. He never looked into it. It was a sort of decoration.
Today, however, he got up and went to open it. He sat back down on his bed and flipped through the contents.
It was reassuring and comforting somehow. The cards contained the usual trite verses, but the signatures reminded him of the people who had sent them. The people who had attended the funeral and helped him out during that immediate time rose to his view, and he thought of them with gratitude.
One of them was from his long time friend, since high school, Duane Edwards. He and Duane had lost touch to some degree, but recently, had seen more of one another, so that the card touched Rick more right now. There was another signed by all of his colleagues at Jax Corporation, including the owner, his boss, Jaspar Jacks.
There was a little pamphlet which had been handed out at the service, with Joyce's name and dates and an agenda of the speeches and songs. Joyce's niece had read a poem, which was printed out in full in the agenda:
"You can shed tears that she is gone,or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she'll come back,
or you can open your eyes and see all she's left.
Your heart can be empty because you can't see her,
or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember her only that she is gone,
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back.
Or you can do what she'd want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on."
David Harkins (British Poet, b. 1958)
Rick didn't remember the poem, though he remembered Joyce's niece reading it. He had been in such a stunned state at the funeral. He could remember, even see in his head, who had been there and could to this day seem them speaking at the podium if they did so. But he did not remember a word they had said.
Now he looked at the words of this poem, and they seemed to leap out at him now, four years later, telling him to live on without Joyce.
He felt lighter; as though someone had lifted a burden from his neck.
He went downstairs and then out into the backyard. He did a little of the work in Joyce's garden, thinking that now it was Amy's garden.
About a half an hour later, he heard the car pull up into the driveway. He stood up and put the garden tools down and went into the house and washed his hands in the kitchen.
The door opened. Amy and V. were chattering. He heard Amy's laugh. He waited a moment and then walked out into the living room.
"Hi, Dad," Amy said. Her hands were full, as she held a box of plantings. "Look what Mrs. Ardanowski gave us," she went on. "To improve our garden."
"That's nice of her," he said. "How was your trip?"
"It was great," Amy said. "V.'s mom is really nice. So is Machias. The little town V. comes from. Out in the country, and with Amish people around. I'm going to take these outside," she said, looking down at the box.
"I'll help you," V. said.
"Oh, no, just have a seat and relax, V.," she said. "I'll be right back." She went off, gaily, trying to be outside before V. could protest or leave or follow her.
V. looked at Rick.
"Sit down, please," he said, politely, seconding Amy's invitation.
"Sure," V. said, sitting down. "How are you?" she said. She sounded sympathetic, almost. He felt a twinge of he knew not what, at becoming an object of her compassion.
"I'm OK," he said. He sat down. "Really. I had a – moment of epiphany."
"That sounds interesting," V. said, trying to sound casual.
"I miss Joyce," he said. "All the time."
"I know," she said.
"Of course you do, because you understand. You miss your father."
"I do," she said. "Very much. You're right, I do understand it. Though of course, there is that difference that I don't understand what it's like to be married. I've never been married. So never having had it, I can't imagine losing it."
"It has a lot that is the same," he said. "That individual, that you saw every day, who is never coming back. And you're close to your mother, I can see. She must have given you some idea of what it is like."
"Some idea," V. agreed. "Still, that's not like experiencing it. Nobody expects me to replace Dad, ever, and I certainly don't have to forget him. You have to be able to remember Joyce, not forget her, while at the same time maybe having someone take her place and not having that person feel like they are second best somehow."
"Yes," he said. "I need to feel a way around that. I know it's been done before, I'm not the first widower ever . . . . " He trailed off, then looked at her. "You just – deserve as well as Joyce or anybody else. To be first, like you said."
"I suppose," V. said. "This just desserts thing of yours," she smiled. She began to feel that perhaps he was torn, and that was progress. "Maybe you can think of it as me deserving what I want, rather than some abstract concept of a man who's never ever been in love before. Leave that up to me, and if I find I want to be the second person to be first with someone in a particular instance, maybe I deserve it."
"You do," he said. He got up and went to the window. Amy was working away in the garden. He turned back to V., who had stood up.
He stepped back towards her and took her hand. She was right in front of him, and breathtakingly beautiful.
He leaned down and kissed her, slowly and softly, and then let go of her hand and put his arms around her and drew her close. They kissed again, longer this time, and she put her arms around him.
"Thank you for being patient," he said, holding her close. Her head leaned on his shoulder and he bent his head to touch hers, and felt safe for a moment.
"I think you may be worth it," she said, pulling her head back, and leaning up to kiss him again.
They stayed together like this for a little while, until he said, "Do you want to go and get her or should I?"
V. laughed and said, "I'll go." He took her hand for a second, as if to tell her he regretted her moving away from him. V. smiled and squeezed his hand quickly. Then she went out to the back yard to Amy, feeling a lightness in her step that she had never felt before.