WINTER FOR TWO

Summary

The novel returns to the present day as the narrator finishes reading the notebook. However, the woman in the bed does not look back at him while she stares out the window. In all these years, the daily pattern has not changed. He sees the visitors arrive each morning, and he wonders what secrets they keep. Then, he tells the reader that soon he will reveal some of his own.

The narrator is beginning to feel his age, saying he is as rusted as a junked car twenty years in the Everglades. The staff does their best to make him comfortable, but age always wins out. He reads every morning to the woman in the bed, because it is something he feels he must do. Not because it is his duty, but for another, more romantic, reason. However, in spite of spending their days together, the doctors will not allow them to spend their nights together. He understands why, but sometimes when the mood is right, he will sneak into her room and watch her sleep. For, if not for her, he would never have married, and when he looks into face, a face he knows better than his own, he knows he has meant as much, or more, to her.

The narrator then reveals that he has been married to this woman for almost forty-nine years, forty-five spent in the same bed, but separate rooms for the last four. He doesn't sleep well without her, two hours a night if he's lucky, but he knows that soon, it will be all over. She does not know this. His entries in his diary have become shorter and take little time to write these days. Time is growing shorter.

When he cannot see her in the evening, he spends his time as the reader. He goes from room to room visiting his friends and reading to those that he knows most need to hear his words. Sometimes, they ask him about his wife, and sometimes, he whispers about their adventures together at art shows in New York and Paris and the rave reviews from critics in every language. Sometimes, he just tells them that she is the same, and that's when they turn away, reminded of their own mortality. So, he reads to them to let them know who he is. He knows that, if she could, his wife would accompany him on his nightly excursions, because she loved poetry so much. He observes, Poetry brings great beauty to life, but also great sadness, and I'm not sure it's a fair exchange for someone my age. A man should enjoy other things if he can; she should spend his final days in the sun. Mine will be spent by a reading lamp.

Now, he reaches for his wife's hand, and she responds with the familiar gesture of her thumb softly rubbing his finger. Finally, she turns to him and tells him that he had read a beautiful story. By this, he knows that this is going to be a good day, a very good day. She asks him important questions such as: I've heard this before, haven't I? She loves the story, because it makes her less afraid. She also wonders if it's true and if he knew these people. She even asks which one he finally married. The narrator always responds with vague answers so as not to upset or confuse her. He just says, You'll know. By the end of the day, you'll know.

He convinces her to take her medicine by taking his own as a pattern, and then, as they sit together, the birds begin to sing, just like the ones that had serenaded them all those years before. Then, she asks the question that always breaks his heart, Who are you? This question prompts him to tell the reader that they have lived at the Creekside Extended Care Facility for three years now. It had been her decision to come there so it would be easier for him. They had boarded up the home in which they had lived for all of their marriage, because they couldn't stand the thought of selling it. Then, they had come together to Creekside. He knows she was right to insist they do this, because there is no way he could have made it alone, given that he has his own illness to contend with. His hands are crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, but everyday he takes her hand in spite of the pain. Furthermore, his kidneys are beginning to fail, and his heart rate is decreasing every month. Worse than all that, his cancer has recurred, this time in his prostate. However, he is visited often by his four living children, and he is comforted by the fact that they are his heritage. Sometimes, he wonders if his wife dreams of them or of she thinks of them at all. There is just so much about her that he doesn't understand anymore.

He wonders what his daddy would think of his life. He can no longer picture his father very well, and he knows that in another ten years, if he's still alive, he will have forgotten his father's face completely. If not for his diaries, he would swear that he had lived only half as long as he really has. He reads the events of his life and wonders where it has all gone, because much of it he cannot remember anymore.

Now, in response to her last question, he says his name is Duke and that he is here for her. She apologizes, because she doesn't understand anything that is happening to her right then. She begins to weep and says. Help me, Duke; help me remember who I am. Or at least, who I was. I feel so lost. So he lies again as a way to protect her from her fear and tells her that her name is Hannah, and he says she is a lover of life, a strength to those who shared in her friendships. She is a dream, a creator of happiness, am artist who has touched a thousand souls. She's led a full life and wanted for nothing because her needs are spiritual and she has only to look inside her. She is kind and loyal, and she is able to see beauty where others do not. She is a teacher of wonderful lessons, a dreamer of better things. He tells her, furthermore, that there is no reason for her to feel lost, and he recites a poem by Walt Whitman about how nothing is ever really lost. He is such a comfort to her lost mind that she asks him to stay with her for awhile. He takes her hand and invites her to take a walk.

Next, he tells the reader that she had become famous for her art and was labeled as one of the best southern painters of the twentieth century. Her paintings are in museums around the world, but he has kept only two: the first one she gave him and the last one. Sometimes, he cries when he looks at them, and he doesn't know why. The years they had together passed wonderfully with children and holidays, graduations and weddings, their photos becoming images of two people aging gracefully. It has been a lifetime that seems so typical and yet uncommon. He had expected the typical old age with retirement and travel, even hobbies, but always time spent together. He knows their lives cannot be measured by their final years, but he spent a long time denying what was happening to her. So, when the doctors finally diagnosed the Alzheimer's disease that was destroying her brain, it was even harder to bear. He thinks, It is a barren disease, as empty and lifeless as a desert. It is a thief of hearts and souls and memories. His children, like him, were brokenhearted, and his friends were scared for themselves. This was all four years before.

When Allie (this is the first the narrator reveals her name in this final chapter) learned the truth about her future, she became even more organized. She rewrote her will, left specific burial instructions, and wrote letters to everyone. Then, she made arrangements for her and her husband to move to Creekside. Sometimes he reads the letter she wrote to him and is reminded of a cold night with Allie wrapped in a quilt and sitting in front of the fire. He also reads the letters he had written to her over the years, the ones her mother had never given her. They make him realize that romance and passion are possible at any age. He reads one he also wrote on their first anniversary when she was pregnant with their first child, and then he reads one he wrote to her after one of their sons died at the age of four. He says, When you cry, I cry and when you hurt, I hurt.

After he reads all the letters, he comes to the last one he had written her. He tells her that the porch is silent except for the sounds that float from the shadows, and for once, he is at a loss for words. He says he needs a poem to fully express what he feels for her. He tells her how the morning after they learned the news about Allie, his children were sitting around the kitchen table. When he saw his daughters, he was amazed at how much they looked like their mother. It inspired him to tell them the story of how she came back to him, from the crab dinner to how Allie had told Lon that she had chosen Noah. He said that he didn't know what Lon was thinking as he tried to talk Allie into staying with him, but Noah was sure it had to be just like the way he had felt when she had left him only hours before. Nonetheless, Lon behaved like a gentleman, and Allie came back to Noah. He told his children over the next four hours how much they had meant to their parents as they grew up. Later, he sat in his rocker and wondered who he would have become if she hadn't come back to him.