Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold Page #7

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they were just sitting

across from each other.

People often said that he

finished sentences for me, well, he did.

He was between me and the world.

He not only answered the telephone,

he finished my sentences.

He was the baffle between me

and the world at large.

You know how children are,

they always feel left out.

Once, we talked about

what kind of mother I had been, and...

she, to my surprise...

said, "You were okay,

but you were a little remote."

I didn't think this at the time.

I didn't see how it was possible,

because her father and I

so clearly needed her.

Which is kind of the way

we tend to deal with our children.

Later, we realized that maybe

we haven't been listening to them at all.

We'd been listening to the very edge

of what they say...

without letting it sink in.

- And Q got married.

- Mm-hm.

How soon after they met

did they get married?

Quite soon.

I wonder if you were

concerned about her.

We were concerned about her.

But...

not so much that she was getting married.

That seemed like...

At that moment, it seemed like

a good... thing for her to do.

What was...?

What more were you concerned about?

I was concerned because she was

drinking too much. That was...

the first concern.

She called me and said, you know,

"I... I... Susan, I... I have this...

I have a new boyfriend."

And I said,

"Oh, wow, well, that's fantastic."

And she said, "Oh, my God, he's...

He's just amazing and I'm so happy,"

and I said, "Well, where...?

Where did you meet him?"

She said, "You're not gonna like it."

And I said, "Well, what?"

She said, "Well, he works at

a bar down... That I go to sometimes."

"My parents love him, my dad...

They're really happy for me."

She said,

"If you take this away from me,

this is the greatest thing

that has ever happened to me.

I really...

I don't even think I can... I can...

talk to you...

if you can't be happy for me."

Oh, they were so pleased and happy,

and Quintana looked so happy.

Everything seemed to be going so well,

and then we all,

you know, trooped over

to the parish part of the house

for a little wedding reception.

We wished them happiness,

we wished them health...

we wished them love

and luck and beautiful children.

On that wedding day, July 26th, 2003...

we could see no reason to think

that such ordinary blessings

would not come their way.

Do notice...

we still counted happiness

and health and love and luck

and beautiful children

as ordinary blessings.

Quintana had been too sick

on Christmas Eve to come to dinner.

In the morning she called

and said she could hardly breathe.

She had gone to the emergency room

the night before,

but it was back again.

By the time she got to the hospital...

she was in need of dramatic care.

She was very near death then.

Quintana had been taken in with...

With something that seemed...

not that serious, like the flu, or...

Or something like that.

But it had quickly developed into...

Into something else, and she...

um...

was in the ICU, and she was...

She had a tube down her throat

for breathing and... And, um...

Um...

So, when... And John...

talked about all that,

and talked about it in detail, but, um...

His voice just sounded different

from any time I'd ever heard it.

John's voice just started to break

and I've... I've never...

um...

I had never heard him like that.

He was sobbing and saying, you know,

"Quintana is so sick, I just don't know...

I'm just so worried."

We sat down.

My attention was on mixing the salad.

John was talking, then he wasn't.

His left hand was raised

and he was slumped motionless.

I remember saying, "Don't do that."

When he did not respond, my first thought

was he started to eat and choked.

I remember trying to lift him

from the back of the chair

to give him the Heimlich.

I remember the sense of his weight

as he fell.

First against the table,

then to the floor.

That night I got a call saying...

"Listen, uh, I just spoke to Nick Dunne,

I have something terrible to tell you."

And I said, "Oh, my God, Quintana died."

And she paused and she said,

"No, not Quintana, but John."

On the night that he died...

I came back here.

There was... not much...

There was not much else to...

To do, you know? I called your father.

That was the first thing I did.

And...

I had that obligatory conversation and...

then...

that was it.

After John died, you know,

it was... It was like a...

It wasn't like an Irish wake,

it was like a Shiva.

There were people at the house...

all the time,

until you told them to leave.

I was up there a lot

for the next couple of weeks.

Her daughter was in...

Still in intensive care and...

And John was gone.

And I remember we were

all concerned she wouldn't eat and I...

I found that she would eat congee.

Uh, so, I would go to Chinatown

and get congee,

which is sort of a... A rice porridge.

And finally she said, "Calvin,

I think we've had enough congee."

By that time,

I had gotten married to Rosemary.

We lived around the corner.

Often, Rosemary would come over,

but this particular night...

uh...

which I think was fairly early in the...

In the going...

we went into, uh, John's office

and Joan opened one of the closets.

She was just standing there,

thinking for a while.

I'm looking at all this stuff assuming

we're both thinking the same thing,

that you have to

get rid of these clothes eventually.

She said, "But what if he comes back?"

And...

all I remember is that...

at that moment,

it didn't seem far-fetched to me at all.

In fact, it seemed plausible.

There couldn't be

a funeral for John

until Quintana was well enough

to go to it.

For the funeral she was not...

You know, she didn't seem too strong.

- Yeah.

- You know, then.

And, uh...

you know, she made a plan to...

To go to Los Angeles...

- the next day.

- I hate to say,

but I encouraged her to go to Los Angeles,

I thought it'd be good for her.

I mean, I was totally wrong.

On the other hand,

it could've been a pretty idea.

The day in Malibu, right?

But it wasn't.

That's what she wanted?

To go to Malibu where...

Yeah.

Where she was raised.

Yeah, of course.

She came off the plane

and fell and hit her head and...

You know, she thought she was okay and...

- As those kind of brain injuries,

- Mm-hm.

Suddenly, she wasn't okay.

The fall at the airport

sent Quintana into a coma.

Two years of rehabilitation followed,

but at the end,

she lost her will to fight back

and her health rapidly declined.

That summer, she just finally let go.

Grief turns out to be a place

none of us know until we reach it.

We know that someone

close to us could die.

We might expect to feel shock.

We do not expect this shock

to be obliterative,

dislocating to both body and mind.

We might expect to be prostrate,

inconsolable, crazy with loss.

We do not expect to be literally crazy.

Cool customers who believe their husband

is about to return and need his shoes.

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