WINTER FOR TWO (continued)

Summary

Finally, Noah puts the pages of the letters aside and sits at his window watching the sun go down. Dusk, he realizes, is just an illusion, because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel, he remembers wondering, to be always together, yet forever apart? He finds it ironic that she chose to read the letter at the exact moment that that question had popped into his head. It is ironic, because now he knows what it's like to be day and night now; always together, forever apart.

Noah and Allie now sit together at the creek – once again they are surrounded by the birds and the geese. She begins to ask him questions about the birds, whether they come there often, and even whether he's married. When Noah answers yes about his married state, Allie asks what his wife was like. He replies, She was my dream . . . I think about her all the time . . . There could never have been another. Hesitantly, Allie asks, Is she dead? to which Noah says, My wife is alive in my heart and she always will be. Her next question is interesting, Why are you spending the day with me? to which he answers, I'm here, because this is where I'm supposed to be. All these questions and his soft, non-threatening answers make Allie feel closer to him and unafraid. They sit comfortably in silence then and Noah thinks that silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is a great paradox. He tells the reader that he is purposefully vague about answering her questions, because he has seen how a waterfall of information that is her life can be crushing. So he changed how he spent his time with her. As a result, they have more moments where they can sit by the creek and fall in love all over again.

As they walk on through the afternoon, Allie tells Noah that she thinks she has an admirer – him – and that he leaves her surprises. She pulls out a little slip of paper that she had found under her pillow on which is written a poem. He just nods his head in acknowledgement of the love poem he had left her. At the door to the home, she stops him and makes her face him, saying, I don't want to forget you or this day and I'm trying to keep your memory alive. Noah wonders if his routine with her will work this time, but then he knows it won't. Nonetheless, Allie tells him to just feel the moment. He does, and he feels heaven.

Noah then explains to the reader that Allie is worse than when they first came to the home, but compared to the other three who have Alzheimer's, she is doing amazingly well and all because of Noah's devotion and the reading of the notebook. The doctors consider her a miracle and study the two of them. They want to be able to explain it scientifically, but Noah says they can't possibly understand it if they only use their training and their books. Most days, she cries and is terribly afraid, but sometimes, like this day, her emotions are normal, even if her memory is still lost.

When they arrive at her room, Noah has arranged for them to have dinner together. There is candlelight everywhere, and the table is set only for two. They sit down – with only apple juice in their wine glasses! – ready for a romantic dinner for two. She tells Noah that she knows who Allie went with in the end – Noah - and he softly says that yes, she did. She takes his hand, and the thumb begins to move softly over his finger. The miracle happens again as she looks at Noah and falls in love with him all over again. She gives him a look from another lifetime that makes him whole again. He tells her that he loves her deeply and she, for the first time in a long time, calls him Noah and insists she loves him, too.

Then, he begins to see signs of concern in her eyes, and she tells him that she is so afraid of forgetting him again. She just can't bear to give this up. His comforting answer is, I'll never leave you. What we have is forever. However, he can't hold back the night and he can't keep the thief away. She stops looking at him with the loving stare and begins to imagine she sees little people in her room. Finally, she cries out in panic, Who are you? and Noah must call the nurses. He stares at her until they come, but she never looks back. When the nurses arrive, they have to comfort two old people, a woman shaking in fear from demons in her mind and a man who loves her more deeply than life itself, crying softly in the corner, his face in his hands.

Later in his room, Noah speaks to Dr. Barnwell, a man who devotes more of himself to his patients than he does his family. He is amazed that Noah was able to speak with Allie for four hours and tells Noah that it's a sign of how much they have always been meant for each other. Nevertheless, Noah says he still feels very much alone just like the doctor must feel.

Eights days after this wonderful day with Allie, she has not shown any sign of returning to any normality. Noah wakes up with a headache. He sits in his room waiting for Allie to awake so he can go to her and read again. He watches the creek from his window and thinks about how it is a paradox as well. It is a hundred thousand years old and yet it is renewed with every rainfall. Then, it happens: Noah begins to have a stroke. His final thought as he falls unconscious is that he has left Allie alone without the story.

Noah is unconscious on and off for days. The doctors are worried about his chances and thinking he cannot hear, they speak in grim tones about his prognosis. He tries not to think of these things, but concentrates on Allie instead. He has never imagined that this is how it would end, and perhaps because of this idea, he wakes up and is welcomed back by all the staff. Two weeks later, he leaves the hospital and returns to the home where he has become an epic adventurer as he tried to navigate the halls. He is weakened on one side and needs more help than before. On the evening he returns, a nurse comes in to check on him and tells him how good it is to have him back. Allie and all the staff have missed him.

After the nurse leaves, he begins to contemplate his condition as a prisoner of his own flesh and then he asks himself, Who are we, Allie and I? Are we ancient ivy on a cypress tree, tendrils and branches intertwined so closely that we would die if we were forced apart? He then looks at the picture of Allie that he keeps by his bedside, taken when she was forty-one years old. However, the picture can't answer his questions, and he puts it aside. Tonight, he is alone with Allie down the hall. Then, he begins to leaf through all his pictures, dried flowers, and letters that she and he had saved over the years. The last thing he opens up is his wedding ring, which he can no longer wear because of his arthritis. It is unchanged. It is powerful, a symbol, a circle, and he knows there could never have been another. He finally puts it away and reads once more her final letter to him. She tells him in it, . . . My heart had been captured, roped by a southern poet, and I knew inside that it had always been yours. Who was I to question a love that rode on shooting stars and roared like crashing waves? . . . I love you for many things, especially your passions . . . Love and poetry and fatherhood and friendship and beauty and nature . . . I fear the pain I know you will go through . . . So I love you so deeply, so incredibly much, that I will find a way to come back to you despite my disease, I promise you that. And this is where the story comes in. When I am lost and lonely, read this story – just as you told it to the children – and know that in some way, I will realize it's about us. And perhaps, just perhaps, we will find a way to be together again.

Reading Allie's promise to him again makes Noah rise and walk towards the hallway. He sees Janice, a particularly stern nurse when it comes to the rules, sitting at the desk. He knows she will never allow him in the halls at night, so he waits and hopes she will leave. When it looks like she's there to stay for awhile, Noah walks out anyway, and for a moment, she doesn't see him. However, he is soon discovered, and when she tells him he's not allowed in the halls at night, he says he's just out for a walk. Janice knows, however, that he's going to see Allie and reminds him of what happened the last time he tried to see her at night. His response is to tell her that it's their anniversary. Janice then gets tears in her eyes and tells Noah all that he and Allie and their ongoing love has meant to everyone who works there. She says she's going for coffee, he better not do anything foolish, and she leaves him alone.

For the first time in years, he feels warm as he begins his trek to Allie's room. He stops worrying whether he will be caught. He is a stranger now. He cannot be stopped . . . he is a midnight bandit, masked and fleeing on horseback from sleepy desert towns, charging into yellow moons with gold dust in his saddlebags. He imagines he can lift Allie in his arms and ride off with her into paradise. Then, he realizes he is just a foolish old man. He lives a simpler life now, but he is still a man who believes in magic. He finally reaches her room and steps in to see her lying quietly with the covers halfway up. For a moment, he shivers, because the air in the room is stale, and he thinks it's their tomb. He has a poem to slip under her pillow and enters the room, closing the door behind him. Though he knows he should not, he sits on her bed while he slips the note under her pillow. Then, he gently touches her face and strokes her hair. He feels the wonder and awe a composer must feel when he first discovers Mozart. Then, she opens her eyes, and he knows she will begin to cry and scream. So, before she can, he leans forward and kisses her gently on the lips. He feels a strange tingling that he hasn't felt in years as her lips rise to meet his. He feels the warmth of her body and allows himself to become a mighty ship in churning waters, strong and fearless, and she is his sails. He kisses her cheeks, her lips, and then listens as she takes a breath, fearful that she will cry out. Instead, with fingers carefully unbuttoning his shirt, Allie murmurs softly, Oh Noah . . . I've missed you. It is another miracle – the greatest of all! – and there's no way Noah can stop his tears as the two of them slip towards heaven.

Notes:

This final chapter is really open to interpretation. Obviously, it is meant to show the reader Noah's devotion to Allie and how the promise she made to him comes true. However, the ending – when they begin to make love and she recognizes him at last – can just be interpreted as a miracle of recognition and a heavenly moment of love together. Or it can be interpreted that they die together just as they lived together. The latter is an even more romantic way to think of the two characters, albeit somewhat unrealistic. Nonetheless, it is an interpretation the reader must consider as the book comes to an end.