by Sarah Price
Despite her anger, Tia knows exactly what Abby means. The postcards were their relationship, the core of their friendship. She decides that she can’t scold Abby for the way she delivered the news. Instead, she turns back to what really matters. “So how did you find out?”
Abby sighs. “I started getting headaches which I can normally deal with but it quickly turned into severe migraines. When I started throwing up for no reason at all, I knew it was time to go to the doctor.”
“Something was wrong.”
Abby laughs, “At first I thought I might be pregnant but then I quickly realized that that would require being with a man. So, they poked, prodded, and shoved me into every type of tunnel with cameras taking pictures of every inch of me.”
“Oh Abby,” Tia says, hating to hear what Abby had gone through and hating the fact that she hadn’t been there for her friend.
“Several CT-Scans and MRIs later,” Abby continues. “I was told I have grade four primary brain tumor and that, because of the location, it is inoperable.”
“How is that possible?”
“Luck, I guess.”
“That is nowhere close to being funny.” Tia frowns at her friend. She wonders how Abby can joke about this. She wonders how long it took for Abby to get to this point of acceptance. She wonders if she would have the same strength as this woman before her. Taking a deep breath, Tia asks Abby the typical questions that family and friends usually turn to when just told about a serious illness they have no control over. “So what can be done?”
“Nothing.”
“Abby, there has to be something they can do for you.” Tia jumps up and starts pacing. The word nothing echoes in her mind. “We live in the twenty first century, not medieval England! Don’t tell me that modern science can lift and tuck and change a face but that there is no treatment for this type of cancer?”
“I didn’t say there wasn’t.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Tia, sit down and take a breath. You are making me dizzy.”
Tia walks over to the bed and sits on the edge of it. Her right leg is kicking back and forth at a furious pace, something that she does every time she is nervous or feels stressed.
“I’ve been to some of the best doctors in Europe. A tumor of this size carries a life expectancy of at best of six months to a year and that is with all of the treatments available.”
“And without them?”
“Who knows really? Anything less than that. I am still here, two months into this.”
“Why aren’t you going for treatments, Abby? Don’t you want to live longer?”
“Of course I do,” Abby says. “But not if it means just breathing in and out. I want to live…not just exist.”
Tia looks away and toward the open window across the room, focusing on a tiny spider that is making its way across the windowsill. She stares at it, willing it to move to the safety of her web, knowing that if she wanted to, she could kill it with one swipe of her hand. Living vs. existing, she thinks. Isn’t that so like Abby?
“Tia, I thought it through. This is not one of my crazy, last minute decisions. The treatment they would have me on, it would be a whole cocktail of experimental drugs with several weeks of radiotherapy, followed by intense chemotherapy. My hair would fall out, my kidneys could shut down and I would probably be in bed, puking my brains out. And after all is said and done, it will only prolong my life by a few months. I don’t want my hair to fall out. I want my hair to stay on top of my head if I can help it but more importantly, I want to enjoy the remainder of my life as much as possible while I can.”
Tia looks away for a moment so Abby does not see the tears starting to form.
“Quality over quantity. Didn’t they teach you that in med school? Oh, I forgot, you never finished.” There is a mischievous tone to Abby’s voice and Tia shoots a quick glare in Abby’s direction.
“Again, not funny, Abby,” she says. What she really wants to say is how hurtful that remark was, even if it were true.
“Hey, listen to me,” Abby says. “I may be dying but I am still living. I just don’t know how much living I have left.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“Because it is. I won’t lie. It took time to come to terms with this. You are just coming into this now, at the end. Everything you are asking, I’ve already asked. Everything you are feeling, I have already felt. I’ve done the denial, then a lot of the anger, punched a few walls, asked the ‘Why me, God?’ question and I am now in the ‘I don’t give a crap anymore’ stage.”
“The ‘I don’t give a what’ stage?” Tia can’t believe what she’s hearing.
“Yes. I didn’t create it, I can’t change it, but I sure can accept it. It’s the ‘I don’t give a crap’ stage. I’m going to live like I’m dying,” she quips and winks at Tia. “I’m smoking cigarettes.”
“But you don’t smoke!”
“I do now. It’s not as if lung cancer is going to get to me first,” Abby teases. “I drink too much and I’m enjoying that, too. In fact, I have been working on riding a bull.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“About everything but the bull.”
Tia lets out a small laugh despite herself.
“I am in a good place now, Tia,” Abby says.
“How could any of this be good?”
“Because I have no other choice. I have to play the cards I have been dealt. I have to decide how I want to spend my time and I choose quality over quantity.”
Tia and Abby
Quality over quantity was how I would categorize Abby’s postcards to me once she met James. A year after the whole koala bear fiasco with the kids, I received a postcard from Abby talking about this wonderful man. The first postcard described how they met.
Dear Tia,
I went and did what I swore I would never do. Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? I am in love! His name is James Reynolds. We met at a karaoke bar just as I finished singing my rendition of Purple Rain. He leaned over to tell me how much he enjoyed my unique singing voice. I told him I didn’t know if he was paying me a compliment or a veiled insult. We laughed about it and haven’t stopped laughing since. He has the sweetest smile and the kindest eyes. You would be impressed with him-he actually works and isn’t one of my “hippie” friends I know you love so much. He is a computer consultant, which sounds way too fancy for me to be dating. He’s been staying in Australia on business and is winding down in two weeks. He’s moving to London and has asked me to join him. I know it may seem rash to you but I’ve said yes. There is something about him that makes me want to follow him wherever he goes. We click, Tia, and isn’t that what love is all about, taking chances? So I am off to England, home of the Queen and Big Ben. Wish me luck.
Abby
Abby’s postcard took me by surprise as I never expected her to fall in love so quickly and so completely. For months after that, I received constant updates through her postcards and James was always involved one way or another. When she moved to London a month later, it was because of James’ job. When she found an apartment in Hampstead, it was because James had loved the neighborhood and thought it would be a great place to live. When they had decided on a vacation spot a year to the day they met, it was James who suggested going to the Fiji Islands.
I was not used to Abby allowing another person to run her life and make her decisions. It was always the other way around. It was always independently fierce Abby lecturing me on Michael or my parents telling me what to do and living my life for me-never Abby. I suppose I could have rubbed it in, written her back or called her, teasing her about how the tables had certainly turned and who was being critical now but I just didn’t have the heart to do it. Abby seemed so happy, I couldn’t burst her bubble. Besides, who was I to judge? Hadn’t I been the one to defend Michael to Abby regarding my life decisions? Wasn’t I a big enough girl to know what was best for me? Didn’t the same rules apply to Abby as wel
l?
So over the course of a few months after that particular postcard, I relished in hearing about the first of everything with James. In a way, I was thankful to Abby because it made me appreciate my relationship with Michael, however difficult it was becoming. Through Abby, I was able to relive my firsts moments with Michael in my mind, which allowed me to stay sane, in a world consumed with children, homework, a workaholic husband and an empty house.
After about a year, I thought for sure talk of marriage would soon pop up in her postcards but there was never any news of an engagement. The closest to that was Abby’s mention of a gift that James had given to her on their first year anniversary together.
Tia,
Can you believe it’s been a year? Time sure flies when you are settled in domestic bliss. I came home last night to candles, soft music, a home cooked meal and James. The highlight of the night was his gift. Inside a tiny box was a shiny something special for me; a silver bracelet with the inscription that read: To Our Lifelong Journey Together. I bet you thought I was going to say “engagement ring.” Sorry to disappoint. I know how much you love weddings but, you know what? This bracelet means more to me than any two-carat sparkler.
As I look at the bracelet now on my wrist, I can honestly say I am happy.
Abby
And I was happy for her as well and found myself living through her, trying to feed off of her happiness. Things with Michael had gone from bad to worse. It wasn’t so much that we were fighting- it was more that we were living separate lives. He would come home late at night from work and I would already be asleep in bed, exhausted from my own work and the children. I would get up at the crack of dawn to get the kids ready for school while Michael slept in a half hour more. On Saturdays, he would go into work until the late afternoon and then we had a day and a half to spend together as a family. We had really no time to spend alone. We drifted from being a couple in love to being more like parental roommates. So Abby’s postcards with her tales of love captured me like no other romance novel could.
And then it just stopped. A few months after the ‘silver bracelet’ postcard, gone was any mention of James in Abby’s postcards to me. Just like that…with no reasons given. It was as if someone ripped the last page of a fairytale book leaving the reader wondering what really happened to the “happily ever after.”
Chapter Eight
After spending the rest of the early evening catching up with Abby on news of family, friends and travels, Tia returns back to her room with all the time left in the world to finally think about Jack.
Unlike the hustling and bustling city that Tia had left only a day before, in Muro, the nights are silent. Only the sound of the ocean breaking against the shore and Tia’s thoughts fill up the spaces in between. In that silence, Tia breaks down about Abby, how fragile she has become, how little time there really is left. Her mind flutters, back and forth, to Abby and then to Jack. Could he be one and the same? Could the person who led her to her room in the morning be the same boy of her childhood? It makes sense. He would have taken over the Inn after his father’s death. His name is the same. What clinched it for her was the way he said for her to call him Jack. It was as if he was sending her a cryptic message that only she could decipher, a little love note, a secret between the both of them. After all, she was the one who had given him that name. All at once, the memories come flooding back and she is happy to go there, anything to escape the pain she is feeling over Abby.
She thinks about those summer days spent with Jack on the beach, lounging around, absorbing the warm rays of the sun with all the laziness reserved for teenagers who have nothing yet to worry about, no concerns, fears or pain to fill their minds with. The love of her life without any of the responsibilities that goes along with it when a person reaches adulthood-the same responsibilities that destroyed her relationship with the second love of her life, Michael. It takes her back to the summer when she was fifteen years old and Jack was sitting next to her on the beach, sharing a towel with their toes buried in the sand.
Tia and Jack
“Is there anything you can’t do?” He asked me as if I was the most exotic person he had ever met, having just finished aligning all of the colors back again on the Rubric Cube I was working on.
I smiled and playfully chucked the cube in his direction, deciding to keep to myself the fact that I had been working on the puzzle for weeks now, pouring over it for hours at a time.
He caught it and smiled back in amazement as he turned on his stomach on the beach towel he has laid out right besides me. I have spent the last three weeks of my summer vacation laid out on a beach towel next to Jack, utterly and completely happy. It is every young girl’s dream come true-to have a handsome young “prince charming” in training besides her, adoring her and everything she does.
“There is something I can’t do.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I can’t dance.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“No, it’s true. Born with two left feet. Doctor told my parents nothing they can do for me. Just have to live with it.”
“Well, that’s going to be a problem.”
“Problem? Why?”
“Because I plan to ask you to dance tonight at the fiesta.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I want to dance with my favorite American.”
“I’m the only American you know and I bet you say that to all of the girls.”
“No one as pretty as you.”
I had not yet learned the art of subtlety at fifteen. Although we had been flirting for weeks, I didn’t have the nerve to tell him how I felt about him. And as much as I wanted it to happen as it did the summer before, Jack was nowhere close to kissing me again. We had held hands a few times and my head leaned against his arm once to watch the sunset. We horse played in the ocean and he even had me on top of his shoulders to throw me back into the water but it was all so superficial. There was nothing there as intimate as a slow dance. I had stopped hoping in the possibility until that day.
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
In celebration of its patron saint, there was a party planned, a fiesta, that evening in the center of the town for all of its residents and neighbors. Each fiesta was different in its ceremonial process of honoring the saint, but was the same in terms of food, drink and two bands that played music all night long for young and old to enjoy. The bands would start with traditional Spanish songs for the elderly wishing to relive their youth, knowing that they would soon retire to their homes for an early evening in. The band would then move on to more contemporary songs for the young and restless, knowing that they would be the ones to stay up until the crack of dawn the next day.
I had worn my hair up in a loose ponytail, making sure to have a few strands circle my face in what I hoped were wistful curls. I spent hours choosing what I would wear and finally settled on a white knit sweater on top of a pink tank top and denim mini skirt that was very fashionable in the 80s. Despite my better judgment, I decided to wear my new white high heel shoes. The shoes were not stilettos or even close to it but at my age, I was not used to any heel and the fact that I wasn’t joking when I told Jack I couldn’t dance, made me more uncomfortable and afraid that I would most likely fall on my face. Still, I wanted to look sophisticated and sexy that night and the heels sealed the deal.
Judging from the expression on Jack’s face when he saw me that night, I knew that I chose the right outfit. He walked over to the band and I could see him whispering into the singer’s ear, as he nodded and smiled back in agreement. Then after a few moments, the band struck up a classic Madonna love song and I smirked a little as the singer muddled his way through the words of Crazy For You. Yes, it was old-fashioned and corny but as Jack walked over to me, dressed in a light blue pull over sweater and denim jean, I didn’t care. All I could hear was the pounding of my own heart as he stoppe
d right in front of me, and held his hands out to me.
“Tiadora, would you dance with me?”
“Are you sure? I can’t dance, remember? I’m sure to step on your toes.”
“I’ll take that risk.”
“You are one very brave person.”
“No, I’m a very lucky person.”
And we danced, not perfectly, out-of-sync and definitely with some pain involved as I stepped on his shoes more than once with my new white high heel shoes but it was magical and we didn’t care about anything but that dance.
Tia wakes up the next morning in the same clothes she was wearing the night before. She realizes that she must have drifted off to sleep as soon as she laid down on the bed to rest her eyes-the jet lag, the shock of seeing Abby sick and the surprise encounter with Jack left her exhausted. The dream of Jack and her is still lingering in her mind. Tia showers, dresses, only to return to Abby’s room after breakfast. She opens the door and sees Jack standing right in front of her, saying goodbye to Abby. How long was he visiting with her? He smiles at Tia and steps aside so that she can come in. Even though she knows it is childish, Tia keeps her eyes down, focusing on the crack in the floor directly beneath her instead of looking into those dark eyes of his, the same ones she remembers from years ago when she was as close to him as to feel his breath on her lips. The dream still fresh in her mind, she feels all of the awkwardness that she felt back when she was fifteen.
Even when he speaks, Tia doesn’t dare look up, so sure that she will give away how she is feeling with just a glance.
“Did you have a restful evening?”
“Yes,” she says. “I slept like a baby.”
“Was everything in the room to your liking?”
“Yes, everything was perfect. Thank you.”
Despite her better judgment, Tia looks up just in time to see that smile of his again. Her stomach does a little flip and it’s as if she is fifteen again laying next to him, on a towel at the beach. Tia cannot believe the effect he is having on her, how strong it is even though years have passed since they were together last. He turns back to Abby just as he brushes past Tia, so close to feel a small shock of electricity.