#3. The White Lady

“It’s the finale”, she said. Last appointment with the Rochester Urologist. 

It had been all summer long back and forth, each trip another chapter. He’d become used to sitting beside her in the Ford truck cruising the highway and now the golden rod was here and summer was ending. Carpets of it shining in the sun, mile after mile of open country and blazing golden rod here in upstate New York and the Canadian border about four hours north and Ohio ten hours west on the way to Rochester again.

The appointment was 2:15 that afternoon and we took our time stopping for gas on the edge of Cortland near where we’d rendezvoused a few week earlier. I went in for coffee while she pumped the gas.  

You know how you used to get hot coffee out of a glass beaker or a dispenser with a faucet or sometimes a thermos? First you find the cups and the half-and-half and sugar. Also the stirrers. Then you pour the coffee and you’re in charge. Usually no spill. All ok.Sometimes the milk’s in a carton in the fridge nearby.

I looked for the coffee station but saw nothing familiar and then I noticed an older  gentlemen standing in front of a battery of machines with blinking instructions and touch screens like in a casino. I was bewildered. Fortunately the gentleman noticed and issued instructions as if he were Lieutenant Sulu. Many different kinds of coffee. Press here for medium size cup. Press here if you want room for milk. Where’s the sugar? In a paper sachet pack that’s hard to open. And now find a lid and make sure it fits, because. 

I’d been coming to Rochester for years. Long ago on a chilly night close to the Fall Equinox we’d first meet by a roaring bonfire. The small crowd gathered around the flickering flames that night must have wondered what I was drinking. Her sapphire eyes glinted and her laugher fell in peels like church bells and bubbled up from her chest and I held her for a moment and wanted to kiss her and don’t remember if I did. The fire burned into the crisp night sending fingers of flame to the stars. 

It was soon after when the embers were still smoldering that she suggested we hike a nearby trail, a mile up a steep stony track to a plunging waterfall and a ledge that overlooked the Delaware River all the way to the Endless Mountains and the Poconos in Pennsylvania. We were alone and the day smelt of wet leaves and the river shone silver and black as it curved and reflected the light on its way to Trenton. 

We lay together in the orange sun on the lichen covered rock and she pulled my arm when I ventured closer to the edge. The sun was warm and a Zephyr breeze stroked our skin. But by the time we scrambled down the mountain at dusk that a day, the fire was out, which was not a bad thing. Passion, lust and friendship do not always mix. And the bonfire ashes became sustenance for a long friendship.

The finale was an anticlimax. The Rochester Urologist seemed more technician than doctor beating at his keyboard. He was rounding off and the questions about chemo and surgery were more for legal protection than serious. So I walked out of there holding the bag so to speak and it was probably a life-long sentence. 

“Where should we go to celebrate?”, she asked and I thought for a few moments.

Usually I’d suggest Swans’ German Deli  or Palmers’ Market. Palmers was a sixth generation fish monger, butcher shop, where you ordered at the counter - lobster bisque, seafood chowder, pulled pork and Philly cheese steak. Atlantic haddock, wild caught cod, and the fresh sea scallops were less than twenty bucks.  

Swans was a German Deli and Market on a residential street. There were long wooden communal dining tables and a deli cabinet and counter loaded with sausages all made out the back in the kitchen. There was a stuffed boar’s head on the wall. The schnitzel was outstanding and the foaming beer poured from a barrel hit the spot. Both were closed that day. 

“What about that Greek joint?” I asked. Once before we’d had a good Greek salad there. It overlooked The Erie Canal. The canal connects Lake Erie in the west with the Hudson River to the east and eventually the Atlantic Ocean. There’s a path along the side for bicycles and pedestrians and restaurants perch along its edge. We sat watching the rowers push their sculls up and down the canal, the mild late summer sun twinkling on the water and waited for the food. She ordered a dry white wine. I had iced water. She picked up the tab and ordered baklava to go.

That night they watched I am Celine Dion with hot tea and the baclava.  It was a documentary and showed Celine’s journey through an illness called Stiff Person Syndrome that affects about one in a million. The movie showed excruciating scenes of her cramping as medical staff massaged, manipulated and encouraged  until, after about thirty minutes, the spasm subsided. The illness had taken her voice and cancer had taken her beloved husband some years earlier. And yet the show must go on and she walked us through her extensive shoe collection and performance costumes and her two boys infant drawings protected in plastic. A warehouse full. 

She was fragile, almost skeletal, wore no makeup but in performance she transformed, sang from her heart and moved like a panther and the crowds roared. But now her voice had failed and she was fighting back. The documentary was released a few months before the Paris Olympic Games. And soon after it was announced Celine Dion had agreed to sing at the opening ceremony.

She hadn’t sung publicly in four years and it was raining heavily that night and she insisted she’d sing live and you could see the raindrops on the shinning grand piano lid reflecting the spotlights. She sang from the Eiffel Tower. She was a glittering silver thread of beauty amid the splendor. And when finally the camera moved slowly to close-up, you could see the silver in her eyes  and triumphant kundalini power exploding inside and she stood like Lady Liberty belting out Edith Pfaff’s Hymme a l’amour echoing through the cobbled streets of Paris. 

Driving home to Hancock a few days later I wondered if it’d ever return. It seemed an end point. How was it she was so good to me? It was not transactional in any way. I think marriages and love are transactional but this was not. She asked for nothing. Sometimes as we drove to a quite lake beach, sailboats dotting the horizon, the low green coast line curving away to a distant point, memories of distant lands, Portsea and Papua New Guinea, the great oceans of the world and deep flat lakes like this I wondered if it was a dream. 

Across the road was a metal plaque: “The White Lady" it announced. "A grieving woman’s ghost and her wolf-like hounds appear in the night mist searching this roadside for her lost daughter.” They say she had an over protective mother and there’s something about a lover too according to legends and lore. The trees are mature and majestic and nearby a pond with tall reeds on its edge reflects the light. 

I sat beside her in the Ford Truck and listened to the stories drinking in the vistas trying to absorb as much as I could because now the days grow shorter and winter is coming and the great wheel turns. 

Philosopher, poet and rock n roller, Nic Cave lost two sons and it almost broke him but over years he’s fought back with a message:

Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act as small as you like - like reading to your little boy or showing him a thing you love or singing him a song or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in . In time we come to find that it is so.

And so it was.