excerpt from Dancing on Ashes
by Anne McGravie

Chapter I

An old pail, rusted, filled to overflowing with red-hot ash.

It was a ridiculous image sitting in Isabel Macauley's mind 's eye, distracting her from what her oncologist was saying. Not that what Donald McGrath was saying required Isabel's full attention. Not that she was being critical of her doctor, who had taken such good care of her for the past two years. It was simply that God or fate had intervened in the progress of her cancer to call it a day. She was pragmatic, willing to accept that at eighty-six years of age she could hardly complain of a life cut short.

The image of the rusty, ash-filled pail was vying with Dr. McGrath's words for Isabel's attention "Always new research." " Must hang in there." "We 're not giving up." Isabel had hung in there and now was giving up, had cautiously anticipated a remission and now bowed to the cancer's ultimate triumph. She was not afraid to die, just hoped to die quickly, without fuss. Of course she had not shared, would not share these feelings with her oncologist, who was still urging hope, even as Isabel read death in his eyes.

The image of the pail persisted as Isabel left her doctor's office and walked on to Michigan Avenue, crowded with late-afternoon shoppers. The haunting image persisted through her near-collision with a rushing, harried woman carrying Macy's and Filene's Basement's and Banana Republic's shopping bags. The image persisted through Isabel's navigation of the busy Avenue as she walked north, intending to board her bus at the stop outside Water Tower Place.

Though annoyed by the thoughtlessness of the woman with the shopping bags, Isabel refused to let the encounter unduly upset her. It was not in her nature to react in anger. She did allow a comment to herself as she prepared to walk on, brushing her sleeve meanwhile to remove any evidence of the too close encounter: "Women who over-shop should consider their girth in relation to the breadth of the sidewalk." Any possibility that the shopper had overheard the remark was removed by the horn of a passing taxi.

Her bus was pulling up to the stop as she approached, and she got on, patiently stepping up to the platform that the driver should have lowered for her. As she stood by him, fumbling in her bag in search of her transit card, the bus lurched, almost throwing her off balance. With a new acceptance of life's common vicissitudes , she abandoned the search and deposited two dollars and change in the fare box, then found a window seat and sat down.

A lovely winter's day was the city s reward for enduring the snow and ice of the past few weeks. Clear sunshine, a light wind, a day when a jacket or a wrap was sufficient. As a rule, Isabel enjoyed this ride up the Outer Drive, the sun glinting on the windows of the high-rises beyond the park on the west side of the highway and, to the east, the lake, vestiges of ice floating on its gray-green surface. Today, she needed to use this time to compose the phone call she would make at eight o = clock, the time of evening when she, infrequently, called Edward. When they were younger, her calls to her much younger brother had been more frequent. Now there was so little to say, but obligations are obligations: Edward was her only family, and he did seem to appreciate her phone calls. She hoped to comfort him in his grief over her condition. She would remind him that he had friends--and again she found herself refraining from her usual critical assessment. They were his friends, chosen by him. Who was she to pass judgment? She would concentrate on the positive---a relief no doubt for Edward, who always felt the need to defend his choice of friends. ( "It's not like they're junkies or low-lifes." ) She would remind him that he was blessed with good health. She would assure him (and this she did not even half-heartedly believe) that her death would not remove her from him; she would always be watching over him. No, death was final. All contracts with the living unenforceable. That she would not tell Edward.

That settled, her mind began to drift, back to a time when her whole family was alive and young and living in Edinburgh. So long, long ago, why think of it now? Why not? Had she ever stopped looking back? Wasn = t that what her life had become? She had let the present slip away, let any promise of the future become mired in the "what should have been" instead of the "what is possible." Of course, it was natural to look back, examine her life that was about to end, weigh its few successes and many failures. She would not, however, fall into that trap of sentimentally judging her actions, wishing she had done this instead of that. She had done what she had done. Enough. If she had her life to live over? Yes, she would live it very differently. Whatever she had done, she had always been aware of the main consequences, always courageous enough to accept the what-comes-after.

Granted, she did not have Edward's optimism and generosity towards others. Even now, in her half-baked willingness to change, be better, within reason, even now, she could not envision herself reaching out to others, embracing them as Edward did.

She smiled at a sudden memory, of Edward in his first year at Loyola University. He was still living with her then, in the Near North, and would take the bus to and from school on the far north side. One bitterly cold afternoon, he left the campus to go home. The bag woman he passed every day, whose abode was a warm grating in the pavement, was distraught, raging. Someone had accosted her and stolen her cart containing the remnants of her life. Edward reacted in the only way he knew, he emptied his coat pocket of the few dollars and change it held, placed them near her, and hurried away. At the bus stop he realized that he had no money for his fare. Ahead of him was a long, cold, and necessarily brisk walk of fifty-some blocks.

Suddenly, Isabel's vision of the pail of hot, smoking ashes was back. This time the pail was tipping slightly, the ash spilling. Isabel grabbed the seat rail in front of her, startling the man sitting beside her from a doze. The spilling pail had jogged something that threatened to become a memory. Without understanding why, Isabel knew she had to blot out that memory, at once and completely.

Instead, she would think about the leaking shower head in her bathroom that had yet to be fixed, the item on her United bill she must question, anything--anything anywhere that memory has no pass to enter.

The bus was fast approaching her stop before she became aware of the familiar surroundings. A quick pull of the cord above her head brought the bus to a halt. It was a relief to be home, walking on the familiar street, with the park and the beach beyond it. She was tempted to walk to the esplanade and sit on a bench for a while, just sit looking out at the lake that was like a sea, like the sea that washed the shores of the two places she had once thought of as home: Edinburgh, where she was born and lived for twenty-one years, and the Irish island off the coast of Donegal, where her mother was born. No, Lake Michigan, huge as it was, was not a sea, could never become the sea she needed now, that bearer of good memories needed to replace the reality of what she had allowed her life to become. Even as she longed for the memories of the person she once was, she dwelt on the closed-up, tight-lipped, gimlet-eyed person she was had become.

With a new resolve to, if not change--what was the point when she was dying?-- at least try to repair her relationship with her brother, she entered her apartment. It had been her intention to make a salad for dinner. Instead, she threw her bag on a chair, tossed her jacket on the same chair, kicked off her shoes, and slumped on the couch.

Slowly, she relaxed and closed her eyes. The final visit to the oncologist--she had decided that it would be final, though she had not shared the decision with him yet--had, to use one of Edward's favorite sayings when he was young, taken the stuffing out of her. She was alone, the rest of her family dead, lost so suddenly so long ago. Who would mourn her? Not that it mattered. She'd be dead. But it did matter. She recalled a newspaper article she had read about potter'sfField, the burial place of convicts who died without families to claim their bodies. A priest and an elderly woman were always present, volunteers, at the interments of these unloved dead. Edward would be her witness, but would he mourn her? The thought was terrible , yet she could admit now that if she had not kept their relationship alive, Edward would have slipped away from her years ago. She did the telephoning. She kept track of his birthdays and bought him gifts and invited him to lunch. His birthday cards to her and last-minute gifts were always the results of her promptings. All outward signs of her love for him. Yet there was no warmth in her feelings for him. When he tried to talk of his friends, she would interrupt with criticism of them. Of course, she had done it for him, wanted him to have friends who were more . . . more educated, more worthy . . . No! No! No! Edward had the right to choose his friends. She'd always meddled . . .

What was the point of it all? She was alone now. Too critical for her friends. Too careless of their feelings. Why had she changed so drastically? When did she change? It was all to do with losing her family. She had never been able to lay it to rest. For the first time in an extremely long time, Isabel cried, hot tears pouring down her cheeks, sobs hurting her throat, hands groping for the hanky in her skirt pocket. Damn it to hell! A Kleenex was what she needed, a man-size Kleenex, a box of them, instead of the demure little hankies she had clung to for so long, hand-washing them, ironing them, placing them in a linen-paper-lined drawer, ready for tucking in a pocket or putting in a handbag before leaving the apartment.

For some time she had been aware of a telephone ringing somewhere, not her phone, but nearby. The ringing stopped. She now heard a voice, louder, nearer, speaking--to her. "Ms. Macauley? Ms. Macauley, the hospital's been trying to get you. I'm Ed's friend Chaley--Johnnie Chaley? Me and some more friends are at Ed's apartment. We were with him when he had the attack and--and--well, died before the ambulance got here. Sorry, I should've--I meant to break it easier to you . . . We'll stay here in Ed's apartment till you come."

The tears dried up like rain on hot stones. Isabel's body seemed on fire, then quickly turned ice-cold. Somewhere, Edward was calling to her, his voice muffled by--was it tears? She wanted to call out to him, but her lips were frozen shut. She wanted to say, "I know you're dead, Edward, dear. It's all right because soon I'll be dead too."

Chapter 2

Edward's voice was clearer now, sounding very young. "Izzy, Will's torturing my cat again. Make him stop!" And now her own young voice was answering, "He's only playing with her. And she's Granny's cat, Silly."

But what was happening? Had she only dreamed that Edward was dead?

Where was she? The couch she'd been sitting on had changed. It was now old, black, a rocking chair, stuffed with pillows . . . God in heaven, she knew this chair, Granny's chair, sitting in its place before a dying fire in the island kitchen.

She sat, stiff and unmoving, taking shallow breaths, her eyes fixed on the frighteningly familiar hearth. Her clothing had not changed; she could feel the collar of the woolen blouse at her neck, the silk lining of her woolen skirt at her knees. She even had the involuntary thought that she should not have removed her jacket earlier, because it was cold in the kitchen.

All right, she was dreaming that she was back on the island, sitting in her grandmother's chair in her grandparents' house. But the dream was too real. She touched the wood arms of the chair, curled her fingers round them, felt the scars, the rubbed parts, saw the faded spots, scuffed from usage. Stretched forward to feel the waning warmth of the fire on her face. This was no dream. The how and why were beyond her, except for a passing thought that, since she remembered telling Edward that soon she would be dead too, this might be her special heaven. It was conceivable that heaven was not one place but a variety of places tailored to where we might wish to spend eternity, she reasoned now. If that were true, the island would be her first choice. It was where she had been happiest C until her the tragedy.

The kitchen had been dark, lit only by the firelight. Now it brightened. Now the tall elegant oil lamp that sat on the wide windowsill flared up, throwing its white and gold glow across the room, bringing everything into focus. Now Isabel felt a strange calmness: the whys and wherefores did not matter; the purpose of her transport to the island would or would not become known to her; if there was a plan, so be it.

She attempted to lie back in the chair, and the heaped pillows fell to the floor in a jumble of colors and patterns. Isabel rose to pick them up, recalling the number of times she had picked up these cushions at her grandmother's plea and replaced them, stuffing them in to support Granny's back. At that moment the latch on the front door was lifted, footsteps crossed the porch, and a large hunched figure appeared at the kitchen door and spoke:

"Back again, Izzy? I' ve been expecting you this long while."