I start to feel sorry for her despite myself.
She continues. “And Gabriel said he was breaking up with me because you… you. I couldn’t take that. You were here for what, a few months? He and I have been doing our thing for over a year!” She shakes her head. “A whole year of my life.”
She touches her cup of cold coffee. “I’m all alone.” A tear runs down her cheek and she says it again, and her voice is bleak, a tone that chills me because I know the feeling. “I’m all alone.” Her voice is barely audible.
I fumble in my purse and take out the stick, which is still in there. I hand it to her. “Actually, you’re not. This is your first family portrait. Those two lines? Those are you and the baby. The one whose heart is beating right now inside your body. You look at this good and hard before you make any decisions. Because there’s a person inside of you. And you have the chance to change your life and theirs, too.”
I stand up, hands shaking. “I don’t like you, Arielle. But that doesn’t matter to the baby. You can be a better person. A good person. It’s not too late.”
I walk away, tears falling. She calls after me. “Shai? I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.” She actually sounds sorry, but I can’t bear to see her a second longer. I turn the corner and I’m gone.
She’s sitting on the rock wall where I told Michael about the fort, her curls blowing around her shoulders, mittened hands around her knees. I clamber to her side over the rocks and she looks up, startled, then smiles before a frown takes over. “Hey.”
I hand her a cup of coffee. “It started out hot but now it’s lukewarm. I asked for extra cream, the way you like it.”
She tugs off a mitten and drops it beside her, and her fingers touch mine as she takes the coffee. I want to toss the cup into the lake and grab her hand, but I sit beside her, arranging my long legs. She is small next to me, and curvy even in her coat. She’s the one who called me, after dozens of my calls ending up nowhere. I don’t know what she wants to say, but I’ll take any chance to beg for her forgiveness.
She looks out at the water and points left and starts talking in the middle of a thought. “When I was a kid, I’d look at those buildings and think that Chicago was the center of the universe. We had this pulsing powerful mass of water, and buildings that reached up to the sky. A city so full of people and life, everything beautiful and everything ragged, all of it.”
“Ragged, how?”
“We’d drive down North Avenue to get to the lake, all the way from the suburbs, and you’d pass through different neighborhoods along the way. Like rock strata in a canyon, each one distinct. There would be blocks of boarded-up buildings and graffiti and garbage, dirty angry blocks where the people sat slumped and vacant at the bus stop and people walked fast, closed off, on the street, fists shoved into their pockets, heads down. And other areas where the cafés glistened with neon and glass windows so clean you barely saw them, and the women strolled with gourmet strollers and purses slung casually on their shoulder with no danger of anything, and the trees were manicured and had their own curly black square fence, wrought iron, and everything looked washed clean, like after a fresh rain.”
“I know what you mean.” I’ve driven that long street, too, and seen the changes pass by the window.
“But they all kind of belonged together, you know? All those pieces, the ugly ones and the beautiful ones, they were all part of the city. Part of the whole. Necessary, even.”
“Yeah.” I nod. She’s talking about more than the city, now, I’m sure of it.
“Like the pictures in your house.” She doesn’t look at me.
I know which ones. “Irene got those when we first married. She said they were like opposites, and they balanced perfectly.”
She nods. “I think I would have liked Irene.”
I think about that. “You probably would have been friends.” It’s hard to wrap my mind around it, though. Because part of me still wants Irene back, a small part. A larger part—the part that accepts that she’s gone—wants Shai, nobody but Shai. It’s a struggle that will always live inside of me, I think, two opposite feelings. How strange that these emotions are captured by the pictures on my wall.
“So why did you want to talk to me?” She’s still not looking at me, and she hasn’t taken a single sip of her coffee. Her hand is clenched on the cup. Maybe she forgot that it’s there.
“Because I love you.” This wasn’t how I planned to start, but the words come out anyway, and then I’m glad.
She doesn’t move much, maybe a little tensing of her body. “You hurt me. What you said. It made me die inside.”
“I’m sorry.” The words mean nothing and everything. “I can’t take back what I said, but I promise that if you let me try again, I’ll spend a lifetime fixing it.”
She shakes her head. “Some things are too broken to fix.” Her hand trembles on the cup, and I think her voice is hopeful, like she wants me to prove her wrong. “Like some sadnesses, we talked about when we first met. Too big.”
I take the cup and lean away from us to put it down a safe distance away, then I grab her hand. She lets me, and even squeezes. “Some things are. But not this. Because—” I take a breath. “Because we’re both strong people, and forgiving people. I think we need each other. I think we have a good, strong love between us, and with Michael. And because we know that life is a fucking crapshoot, and life is angry and ugly and full of pain. But we also find the kind of joy in each other, too, the happiness that makes us able to handle the bad parts. I want to handle it with you.”
I put both of my hands on her one. “I want to be with you. Those things I said, they came from a place inside me that’s still broken and ugly and rotten. Being with you is helping fix that part of me, but it’s a slow process. There’s no way to forgive what I did, so I’m asking you to be with me anyway, even if I’m a shit sometimes. And I’ll get better and better. We can be happy together.”
I don’t know if this it at all appealing to her. It sounds flat and lame and stupid. But she still lets her hand rest in mine, so I have hope. I keep talking. “After my wife died, and then Michael got sick, my life fell apart. What I had with Arielle was my escape, and when I met you, I realized that it was the wrong escape. I wanted to escape into you instead, because with you it wasn’t running away, it was embracing what I had in front of me. Being with you made me know how to make my life whole again, with Michael. How to be happy. But I got scared, because it was too good. I was terrified that if I embraced it, and lost it, I wouldn’t survive. So when… I used any excuse to drive you away. I’m sorry.”
“You tore my soul into shreds.” She’s looking at the water.
There’s no answer for this. I did it. I know I did it.
“When I said those things, I tore my own soul apart, too. I became the monster that terrifies me in my dreams. The thing that’s uglier than any cancer. I turned into everything that I fear—losing Michael, losing my sanity, losing my life. I broke, Shai. I split apart and my demons came out and tore into you. It was the foulest thing I’ve ever done, and it kills me that I did it to you, the person who means the most to me. It’s not fair, and it’s not right. I don’t know how I can ever apologize in a way that even explains. But that anger, it’s gone now. I don’t have ugliness in me anymore. What I can offer you instead is hope and love and the promise to always honor and cherish you, to treat you with respect and concern and passion.”
She blows out her breath, pulls her hand from mine and puts her mitten back on. Neither of us speak for a long time. I glance over and see her chest rise and fall with her breaths, her coat moving up and down.
“I thought about it, Shai. I was going to ask you to be with me, even if you had someone else’s baby. I know, now, that you can’t have children. But I need you to know that I was ready to accept it, no matter what happens between us. Okay?”
She turns to look at me. “Why? Why would you want me if I had someone else’s baby?” Her ga
ze is fierce and sad at once.
I shrug. “Because I love you. Because I decided it didn’t matter. Or it did matter, it mattered a hell of a lot, enough for us to figure things out anyway. Because it was a life, Shai, and it was part of you. And because I’ve had enough death. I want to embrace life, from now on. With you.”
She looks away, back at the water, and she’s quiet. The wind howls softly around the edges of the beach house and the rocks.
“What are you thinking?” My voice is low. This is the moment of truth, and I either get what I want, or I don’t. Either way, I’m going to be the best father I can be. I’m going to be present and kind and be the rock that Michael needs, and I’ll always be grateful to Shai for helping me get to this place in my life.
She doesn’t speak, but tilts to the side and leans her head onto my shoulder. I shift to put my arm around her. My heart is pounding.
She starts talking. “When my sister died, I died, too. We were twins. People always say the cliché, you know? Part of me died with her. But it’s actually true. When you’re in a relationship with somebody, you dedicate part of your brain to them: Recognizing their face. The banter you have with them. The memories, their voice. Even their smell lights up neurons. When they go away, that part of your brain becomes vacant, empty. The synapses don’t fire. And that is a death for you, because that part of your brain—the part that came alive for them—withers and sits idle. I think it’s like a druggie trying to go to rehab, in addition to the pain of the loss. Do you know what I mean?”
“I never thought about it that way, but yes. When my wife died. Yes.” I think about how hard it was to live without her, how I’d hear her voice even when she wasn’t there, and swear—swear!—that it had really echoed down the hall. “Once I thought I heard her talking, and although I knew in my mind it wasn’t real, I had to check. I ran out and looked for her. When I didn’t find her… I mean, I knew I wouldn’t. But when I didn’t, the loss, the anguish—I felt the moment of her death all over again. My chest hurt so badly that I had to sit down to recover, just on the floor, right there.” The memory is sharp and cuts into me harder than most.
We’re silent. Then she says, “I’m sorry I never told you about my past. I was afraid to tell you. Afraid you’d not want me to be Michael’s therapist. Not want me as a person.”
I pull her tight with my arm. “Shai—”
“You were right. It was a lie of omission. I wanted you to be honest with me, and I wasn’t with you. It’s just… I closed that part of me off so tightly that I couldn’t let it out. I felt like I’d die, literally die, if you heard it and rejected me. There are other things I don’t talk about, either. My parents. My face.”
“Tell me when you’re ready.”
“I need to tell you now, Gabriel.” And now her voice shakes. “I’m just scared.”
“Shai?”
“No, just listen. Please. Hear me out. I have demons, too.” She trembles in my arms. “They’re bad, Gabriel. I don’t want to let them out because I’ll hurt you the way you hurt me. I’ll freak you out.”
“Tell me.” I’m dying to know, even though I’m sure, fucking positive, that nothing she says will change how I feel. “You always say it’s best to get things out in into the air.”
“Yes. I do say that.” She takes a breath. “Mani was the one who was always the best at things. She ran faster than I did in races. She got better grades. She won essay competitions, and never missed at double Dutch. She wore her clothes more easily, laughed faster, made friends quickly.”
“Were you jealous?”
“Not when it was just her and me. We were tight. Everything she did better, she did for both of us, does that make sense? If she laughed first, she’d hold my hand and laugh with me, too. She made friends first and shared them with me, gave them to me, did it for both of us. When she won an essay prize it was because she wrote about me and how wonderful it is to be a twin, and it was like we both won. We were one person, really, just split into two bodies. That’s how it was. But when other people came into the picture? Yes. I was so jealous it made me sick inside, a lot of the time. And…”
She breaks off and leans into me, adjusting.
“And?”
“And this is how I got the scar on my face.” She points to it. “This isn’t a pretty story.”
“Just say it.”
She swallows. “After she died, my parents were cold to me, distant. We were so messed up as a family. Nobody knew how hard it was for me. Nobody. It was like losing an arm. Both of them, and my legs. And my voice. Okay? When you’re a twin, a sister, losing that person is like losing all the people in the world and living alone after the apocalypse. I was phenomenally, crushingly alone. And nobody understood. My grades slipped, and my attitude was horrible, and my parents were constantly on me.”
I hug her, not knowing how to comfort.
“And one day when I came home with an F average in chemistry, and my mom found a joint in my purse, they blew up. Yelled at me. Told me I was failing life. Told me I had to get it together. My mom said every time she saw my face, she saw Mani. And how Mani would never have smoked pot or failed a test. So I freaked out and broke down. I took a knife from the knife block and I-I cut my own face, Gabriel. I told her that she’d never again look at me and see Mani. She’d see just me, ugly, broken, inferior me.”
“God.” I don’t have words for this.
“I was twelve. I was in puberty. I was fucked up. The cut wasn’t deep or life-threatening, but it left this faint scar. And I was smart enough to do it on the side, because I was vain enough to know that it wouldn’t show much there. I was in control enough to run the blade just over the surface, real shallow. It hurt like hell. Stung. Like vinegar in a paper cut, worse, but I did it. I didn’t want to seriously injure myself; what I wanted was to hurt them. In that moment, it was worth it to me to scar myself to hurt them. And it did hurt them. The looks on their faces—”
She takes a break, and keeps talking. “And after that they put me in intensive therapy. At first I was like how you use to be; I thought therapy was stupid, useless. But then it helped, and I knew that I needed to be a therapist, too.
“So I started studying and I turned into the perfect student. And the next semester I went to a boarding high school, and my parents let me go the first time I asked. I think they were as glad to get me out of their sight as I was eager to get away from theirs. I mean, Mexican families don’t do boarding school, Gabriel. They just don’t. But they let me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“And then I went to college. And just recently, in the past week, I made peace with them. You know? I went and talked and we’re trying to fix things. It won’t be easy, but it’s a start.”
“That’s fantastic.” I squeeze her hand. “Shai, that’s great.”
She shakes her head. “No matter what I do, I’ll always have that in my past. No matter how great I am with kids, or how helpful I am to families, I have that scar. It’s not just on my face, Gabriel, it goes all the way down into my heart and soul. And I never told Allison how I got it. I thought that if she knew, she’d never hire me, because she’d think I was too broken to work with broken kids. I was sure that it made me understand them better, and that my experience—that I came through it stronger—made me even better at being a therapist. And I’m an excellent therapist. I’ve been called the best, until now. But. My past. Do you want to be with someone who has that?”
Her voice is hard and bitter and I don’t hesitate for a single second. “Shai, I want to be with you no matter what. I meant it, and I mean it. We’re both scarred. We can heal each other. My scars are on the inside, but you’ve seen how deep they go. And then you helped them heal.”
She looks at me, for the first time, and the hope and fear in her eyes makes such a rush of protective compassion surge in me that I kiss her without thinking. Her lips are cold but her tongue is warm, and she kisses me back. At first we’re tentative, the
n it seems we both gain confidence at the same time, and the passion comes out, and I pull her to me, my hands touching her, hungry for her, only her.
“You think you’re broken, but you’re a fixer,” I tell her. “You fixed Michael. And me. You took our twisted relationship and you evened it out. I know how many other kids you help in your job. You take ugly things and make them better. You’re beautiful. You have a fire inside you, that’s what you have. A fire that lights up the world.”
“I messed up with you and Michael. I crossed all the boundaries. Got too close to both of you.”
“No.” My voice is fierce, but I need her to understand this. “What happened here, with us, is as much my fault as yours. And I’m not sorry you came into our lives, and I’m not sorry we had a relationship. And I’m not sorry you fell in love with me, and with Michael. I wouldn’t change any of it. Except how I treated you at the end. I’d change that. But not a single other fucking moment, Shai. Because being with you? It meant something, to me and to Michael both. You came into our lives and you made them better, a lot better. And if you had to cross boundaries to do that? I’m fucking grateful for it. I’m sorry about your job with Allison. But that doesn’t change who you are as a person, and it does not take away all of the amazing things you’ve done in your career. You can move forward, Shai. In any direction you want.”
She smiles, but when I open my mouth she touches my lips. “I can’t be a therapist anymore. Not just because Allison practically fired me. I mean, I could start my own practice if I wanted to. I can’t do it because it’s killing my soul each time I work with another damaged kid. I just can’t help getting too involved, and then when I leave it’s devastating to me. And each time it doesn’t take away the guilt I feel over my sister. There’s more I have to tell you, but later. Just about how I felt, and dealt with everything. So I’m going to write for now, but it’s going to be a big change. I need to figure out my destination.”
A Handful of Fire Page 23