Just Once

by Lori Handeland

  They took the train into New York City, where a car waited to drive them to Soho.

  ‘I could get used to this,’ Charley said.

  ‘You don’t miss riding in an ox cart or a rickshaw or a helicopter?’

  He opened his mouth to say no then realized he did.

  ‘You do. I knew it.’ She squeezed his hand.

  He hadn’t realized she held it.

  ‘You need to get back to work.’

  For the first time since he’d stood on that dock in Fish Creek, the urge to see new places, new people, new images framed by his camera arose within him. His fingers tingled.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I do.’

  The gallery was lit up like the Fourth of July. Even the sienna-shaded brick sparkled. The windows gleamed. Had someone scrubbed the fire escapes? Or maybe the white paint was as fresh as it looked.

  They were early, per Belinda’s request.

  ‘I hate it when I’m at a show and I have to wait around for the artist to arrive. So goddamn pretentious.’

  Charley thought it was goddamn pretentious to call him an artist, but he refrained from mentioning it.

  Inside, waiters loitered near the bar. One of them hurried over and took their coats.

  While Charley had chosen the photographs, he’d left the framing, the sizes, the layout to Hannah and the gallery owner. He was astounded by the finished display.

  Black and white photographs hung on barren white walls, color on a background of dark gray. Smaller photographs, which you had to step in close to see, contrasted with larger ones where you had to step back. He’d never considered how much size mattered.

  Charley coughed to cover his snort.

  Every photograph had been framed first by a thin strip of black matt, then a white matt that stretched to the edge of each black lacquer frame. The stark simplicity emphasized the complexity of the subject, while the similarity of borders and mountings drew the entire essay together.

  ‘God, Hannah. It’s stunning.’

  She didn’t answer and he cast her a quick glance. Her face was as bleak as the walls, her eyes shining like the glass in the windows.

  ‘Hey …’ he began, and she shook her head.

  ‘I’m OK. This is your night.’ Her eyes flicked to the photographs. ‘His night.’

  Charley had created the image he’d imagined – pills pouring from a stormy sky on to a graveyard. Very artsy. They’d ended up using it for the invitations. While the picture didn’t fit with the others, it did catch the eye, make the viewer pause, raise a little ruckus. The invitation had been used for a profile in the New York Times. People had been calling and begging to be invited ever since.

  Maybe artsy had its uses.

  Charley had had to fight to get Hannah to include the photographs he’d taken of her. Eventually she’d come to understand that she was as much a part of Heath’s story as Heath was himself. Or at least she’d humored him.

  The photographs of Hannah bathing Heath’s sweaty face, feeding him in the darkest part of the night, watching him sleep as the sun streamed through the windows and across his hospital bed, scrubbing blood out of his T-shirts, sleeping in the chair at his side, tearing that protestor’s signage into itty-bitty pieces drew a lot of attention.

  People smiled at the picture of Hannah and the protestors. Whenever Charley looked at it he smiled too. That was what a warrior goddess looked like.

  The evening proceeded without a glitch. Hannah’s mother and, for a change, her father arrived. Air kisses ensued.

  They were both dressed in black. Gerald’s tux nearly matched Charley’s. So did almost every man’s in the place.

  Belinda’s dress hugged her still-toned body, then swirled around her ankles whenever she walked. The diamonds at her ears, throat, wrist and finger had to be worth the gross national product of a small to mid-sized Caribbean nation.

  ‘Hannah, keep your father company.’ Belinda dragged Charley off to introduce him to executives from Balfour Publishing, art critics, reporters, reviewers.

  Oddly, or maybe not considering Belinda, she didn’t seem to see the photographs of her son as anything other than a commercial endeavor. While Heath’s friends and co-workers, a few lovers, stared at them with damp eyes, some with damp cheeks, Belinda kept her back straight and her lip stiff.

  Charley lost track of time, and when he searched for Hannah again, she was gone.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to an art critic who was expounding on an artist who painted only the dead.

  The man nodded and continued to expound to the others unfortunate enough to stand in their circle without even missing a breath.

  Hannah’s father leaned against the bar with a glass of something the shade of caramel that smelled a lot like jet fuel.

  ‘Where’s Hannah?’ Charley asked.

  ‘She was staring at that picture over there.’ Gerald pointed at the floor-to-ceiling photograph of a healthy, golden, tanned, grinning Heath that took up the entire entryway of the gallery. ‘Then she ran out there.’ He switched his pointer to a pair of doors in the corner of the gallery. ‘I thought maybe she needed to piss.’

  Hannah’s father was crude for a Wall Street … whatever he was. Although Charley didn’t know any other Wall Street whatevers but him.

  Well, if Hannah had needed to piss she’d gone out the wrong door. The first one was unlocked and opened on to the alley. No sign of Hannah out there. The second read Staff Only. He went through it anyway.

  He found her in what appeared to be the employee lunchroom. Tables, coffee maker, microwave, refrigerator. She stood in front of a spectacular window – all of the windows in the gallery were spectacular, which was probably why it was a gallery.

  She looked perfect framed there – her hair so soft, her dress so dark, the window sparkling like a bright diamond, her face reflected in the large, pure sheet of glass.

  Her eyes were dry but sad. As Charley came up behind her, he saw his eyes matched.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Charley set his hand on her shoulder. He couldn’t help himself. He rubbed his thumb along the curve of her neck where her skin was so soft and it smelled like the color yellow. Sunshine, daybreak. Light in an eternity of dark. He inhaled, caught just a tinge and shivered.

  She covered his hand with her own. Hers was cold.

  He turned her to face him. ‘Is it too hard for you to see Heath?’

  ‘It’s wonderful to see Heath. He’d be so thrilled. Center of attention. King of the show.’

  Charley didn’t think it would help to point out that Heath would have been mortified by many of the photographs that showed him in very bad shape. Heath had never looked at any of the pictures and Charley didn’t blame him.

  ‘If it’s so wonderful, why are you in here?’

  ‘I …’ She glanced around with the lost expression that was becoming all too familiar. As if, without Heath, she was missing something she knew she’d never find, but couldn’t stop searching for anyway.

  Charley drew her into his arms.

  She laid her head on his chest. She only came up to his sternum.

  He pressed his lips to her hair and she relaxed into him. ‘That helps so much. Thanks.’

  A hug. A kiss. That helped? So simple, yet she was so grateful.

  That gratitude made him feel … larger somehow. Was that a good word? Definitely the opposite of how much smaller and smaller he’d felt every day since he’d seen that purple swimming suit floating, floating, floating.

  ‘I couldn’t have managed all this without you.’

  ‘What did I do?’ Charley asked, then wished he could take it back.

  They both knew what he’d done, what they’d done. What they should probably stop doing immediately.

  He was such an asshole, except Hannah didn’t think so. Hannah thought he was a hero.

  ‘You were here for me,’ she continued. ‘You understand. I wish you didn’t. I’d do anything so that you didn’t have to feel what I feel. Al
l this …’ She took a breath and it hitched in the middle.

  If she started crying now, he might join her.

  ‘Loss,’ he blurted, then cleared his throat. ‘Devastating, never-get-over-it-in-a-lifetime loss.’

  She leaned back in his arms, her rear end pressing against his wrists, her breath puffing against his chin. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  He kissed her. She tasted like she smelled, of flaring heat and a cool golden moon. He licked her teeth; he pulled her closer.

  He thought she gasped, except the body he held so near to his own did not make a gasping movement. It made no movement at all. In fact it stilled, as did he.

  Charley lifted his head.

  Hannah’s eyes were still closed. He’d made her forget everything in the world but him and that made him feel strong, powerful, almost magic. Three things he hadn’t felt in …

  A shimmy in the window drew his gaze to the reflection of his wife, framed in the doorway for just an instant before she spun away and was gone.

  Frankie

  On the way home from the clinic, the sun put on a show as it set, painting the sky the colors of a Georgia O’Keefe masterpiece.

  ‘Holy hell,’ Charley said. ‘Pull over.’

  He pressed the shutter release on his camera several times. ‘This is fantastic.’

  They sat on the hood of her car hip-to-hip until the sun was gone recording, together, something they’d never shared. How sad was it that they’d never watched the sun go down together? How many couples did?

  Probably quite a few.

  Except they weren’t a couple, no matter how much it might feel as though they were.

  Several cars sped by. One honked and a kid leaned out the window. ‘Go, Grampa!’

  Charley made a soft sound of amusement. ‘Kid needs his eyes checked. Won’t be a grampa for another fifteen years. Twenty if I have my way. Do I need to have a talk with Lisa about boys yet?’

  He needed to have a talk with Lisa about boys never, which was about the same time he’d be a grampa. Should she try to tell him the truth about their daughter?

  ‘Charley …’ she began.

  He smiled at her with such joy, she couldn’t do it. Would it be better to tell him when he was sad? When he was sick? She had no idea.

  Frankie climbed off the car. ‘We should get back.’

  ‘Sure, baby.’ Charley climbed docilely into his seat.

  She could get used to his agreeing with her about everything, even if it was completely unlike him.

  ‘Ice cream shop after dinner?’ he asked when they drove past one.

  How many times had she wanted ice cream over the past twenty-plus years? Imagining herself a lonely old woman at the ice cream shop had cured the craving every time.

  ‘I don’t think I need ice cream.’

  ‘Who does? But you want some, don’t you?’ He winked, and before she could stop herself she laughed.

  The sound was so light, so free and young, so the her she’d been so long ago that she barely recalled it, she immediately stopped.

  ‘Don’t.’ He touched her forearm.

  She jerked, causing the car to jerk too. ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t stop laughing. Ever.’

  But she had. And until right now, she’d been afraid she didn’t know how to start. It never would have occurred to her that she’d start again with Charley.

  She could think of several things she’d like to start again. With him.

  She had to be very careful. Charley might be the man she’d once loved, but she wasn’t the woman who’d loved him. She’d never be that woman again. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be.

  But as the days passed, and they shared many of the things they’d once loved, and many of the things they hadn’t gotten a chance to share before their love had died, Frankie started to feel like that woman, and it scared her. Because she’d missed the person she’d been more desperately than she’d ever known.

  She woke smiling. She laughed. A lot. She ate whatever she wanted. She drank whatever she wanted as well. It was a vacation in the land of chemo. Who’d have thought it would be so magnificent?

  Summer kicked into high gear with the arrival of a bazillion tourists. She and Charley did their best to avoid them by driving to out-of-the-way places whenever they could and taking pictures together. Not so much because Charley’s hands still shook – they did – but because they’d never realized how great it would be to experience together something that had always defined them.

  Yes, they’d shared photography. But they hadn’t really shared it. Not the way that they did now. With Frankie’s hands atop and beneath Charley’s. With her cheek next to his. He used her cameras. She used his. They photographed each other. They snapped selfies. They giggled and chortled. Some days you’d never know one of them was dying.

  Other days … Charley couldn’t get out of bed. Everything hurt. He was so tired he could barely open his eyes. He slurred his words because of the drugs. He couldn’t keep anything down, even chicken broth or ginger ale, despite the anti-nausea meds. Many nights he didn’t sleep.

  Frankie should have stayed up with him, but he exhausted her. He always had.

  Charley never mentioned that he spent the darkest hours alone and awake, but she surmised from his red-rimmed eyes and pale complexion when a night had been particularly bad.

  He lost weight. His hair began to fall out. First his eyebrows, then most of his eyelashes, leaving him with a wide-eyed, overly plucked look.

  ‘The hair everywhere else is going fast too,’ he said. ‘Legs, arms, chest.’ He wiggled his eyebrows, even though he no longer had any. Instead his brow bones lifted, then lowered. ‘Down under.’

  Frankie got the picture. Vividly. ‘Ugh! Stop talking.’

  ‘Let’s have a head-shaving party.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like much of a party. What happens?’

  ‘You shave my head. No one cries.’

  ‘Woo-hoo,’ Frankie muttered.

  ‘I’d rather it was all gone at once rather than having pieces of myself falling out all over the place.’ Charley handed Frankie his electric shaver.

  Frankie had been finding chunks of his hair in the oddest places. Just that morning she’d yelped when she’d seen some on the kitchen floor and thought it was a mouse.

  She turned on the shaver and finished eliminating what chemo had begun. Then she peered into the mirror along with him. His bald head shone whiter than the rest of him.

  ‘You’re going to need SPF-fifty on that dome.’

  He appeared so upset she was afraid he might cry and spoil their weird party. And how weird would it be that he’d cry about his hair when he hadn’t cried about anything else. Ever, as far as she knew.

  ‘Or maybe a hat?’ she continued. ‘I’ve always loved a man in a fedora.’ She’d been born twenty years too late for fedoras but she’d never stopped giving up hope that they’d come back.

  Charley didn’t answer.

  Until today he’d been unfailingly cheerful, even when he was losing a lung in the toilet. Attitude was everything. She couldn’t let his falter.

  ‘Hey! Why don’t I do mine? Then we’ll match.’ She lifted the shaver toward her own head.

  ‘No!’ He yanked it away, tossing the thing into the garbage can so hard it broke. ‘Your hair is gorgeous.’ He picked up a hunk and let it slip through his fingers the way he always used to.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  ‘I’ve never seen colors like this.’

  Her hair had no color, unless you counted the fifty shades of brown and gray.

  Charley was due to have chemo next week, which would start the cycle all over again. A day, maybe two days of status quo. Another of bone pain from the shots he received to increase the white cells the chemo obliterated. Some nausea, which could be controlled fairly well by meds, but not completely. Some days of exhaustion from all of the above. All of that interspersed with a good day here and there, followed by
several good days in a row leading up to being hit again with the Mack Truck that was chemotherapy.

  ‘You want to go to Bay Beach?’ He seemed to have forgotten his hair, or lack of it, at last.

  Bay Beach was an amusement park on the other side of the bay in Green Bay. Frankie had taken Lisa there many times. Back in the eighties the tickets had been a dime each. Even though the tickets now cost a quarter and most of the rides required two tickets or more to ride, it was still the bargain of the century.

  Charley had never gone there, though Lisa had constantly begged him to.

  ‘Maybe we should wait until Lisa gets here. I did promise her I’d go with her next time.’ Charley stared out the window at the dock. ‘When’s she coming again?’

  Frankie was saved from answering by the shrill summons of her phone. As the only people who called her these days were Hannah or Irene she started searching for the device. The way Irene had been behaving lately, Frankie almost hoped it was Hannah.

  It was.

  Her cell was plugged into an outlet in the kitchen. She considered unplugging it and going into her room, but Charley went into his and shut the door. She hoped he didn’t plan to peer at his new bald head in the mirror.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re calling to cancel again,’ Frankie said.

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘No buts. You need to see him. Maybe the tumor is shrinking. Maybe he’ll remember you.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Hannah agreed, but she didn’t sound hopeful.

  Was that why she’d cancelled her visit twice already? Because she was afraid Charley would stare at her blankly? Or worse, that he’d stare at her and call her ‘nut bag’ or some other nickname he’d come up with.

  Hannah’s excuse had been an emergency at work.

  ‘A fashion magazine emergency?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘They do happen. Lately, every single day.’

  Frankie knew that things weren’t going any better at You, both because of what Hannah had said and because Irene had texted her about it. She’d seemed to be chortling, if one could chortle in a text.

  ‘You’ll be here Friday?’

  ‘Saturday,’ Hannah corrected.