Tell Me a Story Read online

  Dedication

  To Patrick

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Start at the Beginning

  Chapter 2: Long Distance

  Chapter 3: First Steps

  Chapter 4: Going Courting

  Chapter 5: Where Do We Go from Here?

  Chapter 6: Wedding Bells and Other Mishaps

  Chapter 7: A Room of My Own

  Chapter 8: In the Family Way

  Chapter 9: From One Storyteller to Another

  Chapter 10: Joining Together, Coming Apart

  Chapter 11: It’s a Maine Thing

  Chapter 12: A Writer’s Life, Here, There, and Everywhere

  Chapter 13: The Bottom Falls Out

  Chapter 14: Real Characters, in Life and Fiction

  Chapter 15: Only Love Can Break a Heart

  Chapter 16: Location, Location, Location

  Chapter 17: When Everything We Do Isn’t Enough

  Chapter 18: The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men

  Chapter 19: Birthday Bash

  Chapter 20: Dark Days

  Afterword

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by Cassandra King Conroy

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  I don’t remember driving home, but I must have. My car, which had been in the hospital parking lot for most of the day, was now in the garage. It was January, but I wasn’t cold as I walked from my car to the front door. Or maybe I was. I have no memory of going from car to house either. It had been a horrific day that started with an ambulance taking my husband, half delirious with pain, to our local hospital, and it had ended with a devastating diagnosis. Now, I was back in the safety of our house.

  But not for long. I had come home to pack our suitcases for another ambulance drive. This one would be taking my husband to Atlanta, five hours away, even though a winter storm was heading that way as well. It’d be a race to see who got there first, the ambulance or the snow. Later I’d learn that the storm easily won.

  But I wasn’t thinking of snow and the hazardous drive, except somewhere in a corner of my mind. I was trying hard not to think anything at all. If I stopped long enough to think, I wasn’t sure what would happen. I could lose it, fall to pieces. That rarely happened to me, but this was different. I’d always been stoic to a fault. Stiff upper lip and all that crap. Never let them see you sweat. I had a tendency to push the pain down so far that the surface remained calm and collected. Thankfully, I was numb as I entered the house in the late afternoon light of a winter sun. The shock of my husband’s diagnosis had hit me hard, like a splat of cold water that takes your breath away. It shouldn’t have. I should’ve seen it coming. Maybe I knew all along but wouldn’t let myself acknowledge it, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt like I’d been blindsided, slammed by the proverbial Mack truck.

  The ER doctor had been kind. He was from New York originally, he told us, and was still adjusting to the South. Our family doctor, with the fabulous Dickensian name Lucius Laffitte, had arrived soon after his office hours. Dr. Laffitte’s familiar presence immediately comforted me, or would have, if comfort had been possible. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known why the ER doctor had ordered the MRI. Earlier that week, my husband’s CAT scan had shown something suspicious in the area of the pancreas. “Pancreatitis?” I’d asked the gastro doctor. My voice must’ve held a hopeful desperation that he’d heard too many times in his profession. He had not been able to reassure me, though he’d tried, avoiding eye contact.

  Both the ER doctor and Dr. Laffitte had been on the phone since getting the results of the MRI. It had been the ER doctor who had delivered the bad news as our grim-faced doctor stood by his side. There was a growth on the pancreas, along with numerous spots on the liver. “A growth?” I echoed in disbelief. The gastro doctor had mentioned it only as a possibility, the worst-case scenario.

  “What’s a pancreas?” my husband, Pat, asked. A large man with shoulders the width of the bed his IV was hooked up to, he and the bed took up most of the space in the crowded ER cubicle. His question wasn’t facetious; it was just Pat. He took little interest in matters of health. Or rather, he’d only developed an interest in the past few years, after a scare had forced a major lifestyle change. For three years, he’d been living healthier than any of us ever thought he could be. He’d stopped drinking, was eating well, exercising every day, losing weight, and looking bright-eyed and happy. And now this. The irony was too much to take in. Later Pat told the doctors that healthy living would kill you quicker than anything.

  As doctors are prone to do, the ER guy began to sketch on a pad, reducing our fears to a stick figure with strange little squiggles here and there. Pat and I listened intently as the next gruesome procedure, a biopsy, was laid out. Dr. Laffitte left to begin the calls. Beaufort Memorial, where we were, didn’t do liver biopsies. Even if they did, there were no rooms here. It was January, and everyone in South Carolina was apparently in the hospital. No beds were available in nearby Charleston at the university medical complex either. At least we had a cubicle here, we were told. In Charleston, patients were lined up on cots in the hallways of the ER. Although Pat was too ill to be sent home, we’d spent most of the day taking up space now needed for other emergencies. It was a bad time to be sick.

  After what seemed like forever, an ambulance was lined up to transport Pat to Emory Hospital in Atlanta. His youngest daughter worked there and had arranged everything after my frantic call for help. As all things Conroy tend to be, the whole drama quickly turned into a comedy of errors. A rare snowstorm was approaching Atlanta fast. The South dealt with snow by closing everything down, even major highways. No local ambulance drivers would go to Atlanta with snow coming. Plus it was late afternoon, with the unwelcome prospect of driving in the dark if something wasn’t done soon.

  Suddenly a bearded giant of an ambulance driver showed up with a stretcher about half the size of the ER bed that Pat had been on for hours. Grinning broadly, he told us he had just moved here from Michigan and wasn’t afraid of a little snow. Southerners were nuts, he added, and I wanted to hug his neck for such an astute observation. When I left the hospital to get our suitcases, I knew Pat would be in good hands.

  Or at least he should be with the capable-looking ambulance driver. The friends of ours whom I’d left with Pat were another matter altogether. Bernie, and then another friend, Mina, had arrived about the same time after I’d called family and friends to report what was going on. Both of them were shaky with apprehension but trying to put up a good front. They were a study in contrasts. Mina, a lithe but muscular Japanese woman, was Pat’s personal trainer, and Bernie, a stocky little Jewish guy, his best friend since high school. Mina was stern and serious and business-like while Bernie had been, and remained at age seventy, the class clown.

  Poor Pat, I thought as Bernie came bustling in cracking jokes, determined to make him laugh. And even as sick as Pat was, it worked. His mood lightened as though the words liver biopsy and mass on pancreas had never been spoken. Mina pushed me firmly out the door and told me to go home and get the suitcase. Mister Pat, as she called him in her broken English, would be fine until I got back. She could massage his shoulders and make him feel better. It was going to be all right, Miss Cassandra. I was not to worry. Worry was very bad for you.

  At home, my numbness carried me through the packing. It was hard to imagine snow as I stared blankly into the chest of drawers where our sweaters were. I didn’t even own a coat; the winters were so mild in the Lowcountry. Shawls or light wraps were sufficient. Pat had a jacket, thankfully,
hanging in the downstairs closet. I couldn’t remember what he’d worn when the ambulance came that morning. Did he even have on shoes? I couldn’t remember anything. I’d catch myself standing with a piece of clothing in my hand, staring into space, then have to literally shake myself to get back to the task at hand. I have no idea what I packed.

  I carried our two overnight bags downstairs and set them by the door. Then I wondered if I’d packed enough. Surely we’d be home in a day or two! But the weather was supposed to change, and if we ended up staying longer we’d need different clothes. I’d heard folks at the hospital talking about it. First the freak snowstorm, then in a couple of days the weather would be almost seventy. On top of everything else, global warming was sending us a message to ignore at our own peril.

  I stood by the front door with my hand on the doorknob to have what felt like one last look at the house that Pat and I loved so fiercely. In April, it’d be four years since we moved into this cozy home perched on a bluff overlooking a tidal creek. Our lives had been so peaceful since then, despite the usual troubles that all of us face as we make our way through the perilous journey of life. Within the span of three years, I’d lost both my father and my youngest sister, who had also been my dearest friend. I couldn’t bear to lose anyone else. The thought terrified me, and I turned quickly to go. Neither could I stand to be away from Pat for more than a minute. It was crazy, as though my being there would change the outcome of anything, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d only been gone a few minutes but was panicky at the thought that they might take him away before I got back to the hospital.

  When my gaze swept by the kitchen, I dropped my hand from the doorknob. It hit me that neither of us had eaten anything all day. That wouldn’t do. I wasn’t hungry but felt weak and in need of something to keep me going. Since Christmas Pat hadn’t been able to hold down anything except smoothies. But he’d need something for the five-hour ambulance drive, and I had a small thermos that’d be just the thing. I’d make him a smoothie before I left.

  The kitchen was our domain, mine and Pat’s. In our eighteen years of marriage, we’d navigated it together until we’d settled into a routine that suited us both. I did the everyday cooking, and Pat was brought in for special occasions. It was too exhausting otherwise. He had an exuberant personality and larger-than-life presence; unsurprisingly, he prepared meals in much the same way. We could’ve fed half of Beaufort with the dishes he fixed—large robust stews, huge platters of pasta that he’d learned to cook when he lived in Italy, salad greens tossed in a bowl the size of a washtub. I’d been flummoxed not to find any small bowls or containers in his house when I first moved in, until I realized that Pat had no need for them.

  I threw yogurt, frozen berries, protein powder, and a banana in the thermos then whipped it to mush with a hand blender. The smoothie done, I opened the fridge to see what to take for myself. Only when I uncovered a pot did I remember. Had it only been yesterday that I’d made chicken and dumplings in an effort to tempt Pat’s failing appetite? After the harrowing events of the day, I’d totally forgotten. Although one of my and Pat’s favorite dishes, my chicken and dumplings were such a pain to fix that we rarely had them. But God, were they good! Without bothering with a fork, I fished out several dumplings with my fingers and ate them cold. Figuring that’d keep me going the rest of the day, I closed the fridge and grabbed the thermos.

  At the door I set the thermos down next to my purse and suitcases to make one last bathroom run before leaving for Atlanta. I wouldn’t be allowed to ride in the ambulance and would need to put the pedal to the metal to follow it, they’d told me. En route to the bathroom I couldn’t resist pausing by the wide expanse of glass doors in the back of our living room. Just beyond the bluff, sunbeams sparkled on the wide, slow-moving creek like a scattering of crushed diamonds, and my breath caught at the sight. Late afternoon, leading into sunset, was our favorite time here. Pat and I would stand together in reverent silence to watch the movements and changing colors of the creek. Often, he would reach for my hand.

  With that thought, I staggered backward and reached blindly for the sofa. I didn’t make it. Instead I found myself slumped on the floor, rocking back and forth with both hands over my face. I heard a godawful wail, like that of a wounded animal, and it took me a minute to know it was coming from me. With no one to witness my pain, no reason to hold it in, I curled up on the floor and cried loud, gasping sobs until there were no tears left.

  I have no idea how long I lay there, dazed and spent, until I pulled myself together. Despair had caught me by surprise, but it wouldn’t happen again. After several deep breaths I got up, wiped my eyes, and walked away. More than anything I wanted to go back to before. I wanted to be sitting on the sofa with Pat as we watched the sunset. I wanted us to fix dinner together while we talked about our day, and how our writing had gone. At the door, I picked up my stuff and went outside without looking back.

  Chapter 1

  Start at the Beginning

  It began one cold evening in February 1995, when I met the famed author Pat Conroy at a party in Birmingham, Alabama. He was at the height of success for a writer; after dominating the bestseller list for months, his blockbuster 1986 novel, The Prince of Tides, had been made into a movie with Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte in 1991, nominated in seven categories at the 1992 Oscars.

  If I’d arrived at the party a few minutes later, Pat and I would’ve missed each other altogether. Later, we’d claim that fate brought us together, because of the near misses and coincidences of the way it happened. Pat had flown in that afternoon from New York, where he’d been working on the final rewrites of his upcoming book, Beach Music. He’d come to Birmingham to receive an award at a literary conference. He hadn’t wanted to interrupt his editing, had tried to get out of making the trip, but his publicist wouldn’t let him cancel. Tickets had been sold, the program printed.

  While Pat Conroy had reached the summit all writers dream of, I was just getting started. My first novel, several years in the making, was coming out soon. Exactly how soon I wasn’t sure; I’d signed the contract with a small press three years previously and the book was finally a reality. I was living in Montevallo, Alabama, at the time, a college town thirty-some miles south of Birmingham, where I taught composition and worked in the writing center at the college.

  Like Pat, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the party, but for entirely different reasons. I’d always been shy and ill at ease at social occasions, cocktail parties in particular. Standing around making small talk with strangers felt forced and awkward to me. That fateful evening I had two parties on my calendar, both in Birmingham. The first one was a dressy, formal affair, which I especially dreaded. At least the second, a meet and greet to welcome the visiting writers at the Southern Voices Literary Conference, should be more relaxed.

  At the appointed time I picked up one of my closest friends, Loretta Cobb, for the drive to Birmingham. Loretta and I were not only friends but also colleagues since she directed the writing center where I worked. The two of us went way back, having gone to college together and remaining close ever since. Her husband, Bill Cobb, had been my mentor and writing professor. As one of the presenters at the literary conference, he was already in Birmingham and would be meeting up with us at the second party.

  Loretta opened the car door and crawled in with curlers in her hair and a makeup bag in hand. At least she’s dressed, I thought with a smile. Notoriously time challenged, Loretta always completed her toilette en route to a destination, even when she was the one driving. She and I had known each other so long we were familiar with and tolerant of each other’s idiosyncrasies. Good thing, since both of us had plenty. “I like your outfit, girlfriend,” I said in greeting.

  “I’ve had it forever,” she said dismissively as she buckled up. Southern women always deflected a compliment. It’s expected.

  “Timing’s everything tonight,” I reminded her as we pulled out of the driveway. “Don�
��t forget—if we linger too long at the first party, we’ll miss the second one.” We’d been over this several times; unlike me, Loretta loved parties and was excited about having two on the same night. From past experience, I knew that getting her away from one and to the other would be a challenge. She enjoyed meeting new people and had a well-deserved reputation as a great hostess and conversationalist.

  During the half-hour drive to Birmingham, Loretta put on her face and did her hair as we chatted about the difference in the upcoming events. The first party was a large, fancy shindig being held for a good friend and former classmate of ours who’d been made partner of a prestigious law firm. Although Loretta and I were honored to be included in the celebration, we weren’t likely to know anyone there except our friend. Hers wasn’t a crowd we ran with. The hostess’s home address revealed that we’d be in high cotton, which intrigued Loretta but filled me with dread. Birmingham society did high cotton well.

  The second event would be more familiar territory for us. There, we’d be with others like us: English teachers, librarians, writers, patrons of the arts. The party was being held at the head librarian’s house in an upscale but less swanky part of town. Loretta forced me to admit I was excited at the prospect of meeting the writers from the literary conference’s impressive lineup that year. In anticipation, I’d put some books in the car in case I got a chance to get them signed. It seemed impossible that this time next year, I’d be attending the festival as one of the presenters, with my own book to be signed. With a first book, it’s unimaginable that anyone would ever ask for a signature.

  When we finally located the grand house of the first party, perched high atop Birmingham’s Red Mountain, my heart sank. Slowed by heavy traffic on our way, we’d arrived later than planned and the place was packed. We ended up parking several blocks away, and I stopped Loretta as she opened the passenger door, all dolled up now and looking glamorous. “Loretta? Let’s just tell her we came, okay?” I pleaded. “So many people are here she’ll never know the difference.”