It’s been such a long time since I’ve had my mom around that I didn’t realize how much I actually needed her. I’m glad the mom from my childhood entered today - the protective, caring one.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she finally asks me, her delicate, thin fingers lift my chin up to look into my dull eyes. I regard her beautiful, oval face, her Roman nose and her light blue eyes. Her short, spiked blonde hair is framing her face. Her lips are creased in a line with worry, but the only other sign of age is the subtle piece of extra skin forming under her chin.
Even at sixty, she still emanates the radiance that so many men have flocked to, craved to tame, and struggled to keep up with. I wonder how she never gave up hope of finding that true love, how no amount of break ups could hinder her search. She is the only woman I know who can bounce back over and over again - each time remaining just as optimistic as the last time she tried.
“Yeah,” I say, after serious thought.
“What are you going to do?”
“It all went so wrong. You have no idea, Mom.” I remember the day I found out so clearly. We were back at the Allerton in Chicago.
There he was. In front of me. There I was. Naked. No makeup. Raw, and full of sleep. I would never tell my mom I was naked, but I was, and that’s what made it even more crazy, reckless and sad, in my mind.
Of course I forgave him for standing me up at the airport. I had to. There was nothing else I could do. I was incapacitated from the love I felt for him. Call it build up, call it what you will, but I knew at that first moment I saw him again that I would never be the same woman.
“What can I do to make it up to you?” he asked after I led him up to the hotel room. He was wearing khaki shorts and a green shirt. His beard was longer than the scruff I remembered.
“Kiss me, and tell me you will never, ever do that again.” He kissed me. But it wasn’t just a kiss. A kiss wouldn’t make more tears fall down your face. A kiss wouldn’t pause time. A kiss wouldn’t linger on your lips all the way down to your toes for five years. He took my chin, as he did so many times after that, and said he would never, ever do that again.
I pulled back, and said, “My trust in men is already close to none. This definitely didn’t help.” He stepped towards me, but I held up my hand. “Right now, I’m just happy to see you, but you know this will come up later, and you’ll have to do some major explaining.” He tried to protest, but I was going to be the one making the decision. I had waited too long. I wanted him, no matter what the consequences. I didn’t let him speak any more that night. My lips devoured his words, and I took him to bed, and let myself feel his arms and legs around me like I had been waiting to do for so many months.
The next morning and afternoon, we made love. I don’t know how it happened, what time, or even how many times. It just felt so natural. All I remember were arching backs, sweat combining into one, thighs shaking, deep moans and cumming in unison. Ecstasy unlike anything I had felt before. We didn’t get out of bed until that afternoon.
There was no such thing as games at that point.
After hours of tiny kisses and long gazes, I got out of bed, naked, and walked to get us a glass of champagne from the hotel room fridge. That’s when he stood up, his bare chest strong and bold.
“Come ‘ere,” he grabbed me to him.
“I’m here. It’s you who wasn’t,” I said to him.
“Ouch. I deserve that.” I pulled myself to him in any case.
“Yes, yes you do, and will for a while to come.”
“I just…I wish I could tell you how much I’ve thought about you over these past four months. How much I fantasized about you. Now, you’re here, and I’m here. I didn’t expect it to happen this way.”
“What way?”
“There’s a reason I didn’t show up last night.”
“Ok….” I tilted my body so I can see his eyes. This feels important.
“When I went back to England, I stopped by my doctor’s,” he pulls away and shuffles his feet. “Those headaches ever since climbing Mount Kilimanjaro were just getting worse, and even migraine medication wasn’t working. So, I figured he could sort me out with something. I described the throbbing, and he figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a scan. Since he knew I was leaving soon, he expedited the process, and got the results back fairly quickly.
“I didn’t think anything of it, so I packed my things and came here. The results weren’t back in time, but I wasn’t going to miss seeing you. Clearly.”
“Clearly,” I repeated.
“Hear me out. Erm, this isn’t very easy for me to explain. I haven’t told anyone else yet.” I don’t remember how he prefaced it. I still don’t know why he chose that moment, or if I ever thought to even cover up my chest. All I remember was the fear I suddenly saw in his water-colored eyes as he explained to me the truth.
“I won’t…well, I won’t….” He cleared his throat. “I don’t have much time left. The doctor told me this morning. He told me, I mean, yesterday morning. What day is it again? Ha.” He tried to force a laugh.
He was dying, and didn’t know how long he had to live. The doctor thought a year, at most.
If my jaw could have hit the floor, it would have. Instead, I gasped. My next instinct was to hug him and hard. But I didn’t. I had so many questions that I could have asked. I will never know why, but in that moment, the only thing I could think to do was to punch him as hard as I could, and then run into the bathroom and lock the door.
My mom snaps me out of my memory, and brings me back to Baltimore and the present time. “Where is Chelsea?” she asks.
“On her way home from work.”
“And Ivy?”
“She’s sleeping. Mom, I wanted to come to you last night, but I felt so ashamed for everything that’s happened.”
“Honey, you’ve had a whirlwind of a life these past five years. I haven’t exactly been the most supportive. But, I’m here now. To be honest, I’m the one who feels so ashamed.” Her words echo. Shame is a ridiculous feeling that we let ourselves feel. I want to tell her that. But instead, I sigh.
“Can we get some cake?” I ask my mom. Guy loved his cake. I want to do anything that he would be doing right now. He was like a little kid when cake was around.
“Of course, I brought your favorite.”
“Lemon Jello?” One time, Guy downed an entire Lemon Jello cake on his own. He was teased about it by my grandmother for years. I think about eating the entire thing myself, and feel nauseous. He was always the one to help me with what I couldn’t finish.
“You know it.” My mom heads back outside to her Camry.
I hear the slap of wood on wood as she exits - same as the cantina. My mind goes back to the cantina on Prince Edward Island - PEI, as the locals call it. I headed there a month after Guy told me about his brain cancer. I still can’t believe I waited that long to see him again. But this memory of PEI always comes to me as if I am right there, right now.
The campground can’t be that big, I think. I wonder where he went. I decide not to worry until I find out where my room is. He could be anywhere. Such a strange choice of location. So remote, but strangely surreal. A mosquito buzzes in my ear. I swat at it.
I’m enjoying the crunch of the gravel under my feet. So visceral compared to the roar of my Ford’s engine. And the air is so sweet and light. Honeydew tickles my nose, but I don’t see any around. The path turns to grass until I reach the sand. I roll up my dark blue bellbottoms and tiptoe out of my beige sandals. This velvet sand is more delicate than Santa Monica sand, sticking to my feet, turning them black like soot. Large, flat slabs of rocks crouch out of the water, the black, shiny seals resting and flapping every so often.
I find an empty rock and perch myself on it. The waves are beginning to overtake the sound of the seals until they have all swum away and it is only the crickets and lapping that I hear, followed by an occasional cackle of laughter from the cantina. Lightning bugs glitter an
d glow around me, curiously landing on my shoulder or on my hand.
The sun has finally set. The moon reigns.
“You were supposed to have found me by now,” the voice behind me says.
“I figured you would find me when you were ready,” I answer.
“It wasn’t me who wasn’t ready,” he answers back. I turn around to face my Guy. He’s repeating almost the same words I uttered to him back in the hotel in Chicago.
“I don’t know about that. I’d say someone else wasn’t ready, ready to be completely honest,” I say, looking out into the water. The wind is picking up and goose bumps are forming on my skin. He rubs my arms for me. “It was almost easier that way – being angry at you. Now, what am I supposed to do?” I ask.
“You can trust me to have a good time. We can get to know each other, and see if we like each other,” he says in the most charming English accent ever.
“I already know, and I’ve already wasted a month,” I shake my head.
“No, I wasted four,” he says softly. His grip around my body gets tighter.
After he told me he had cancer that night at the Allerton, I hid in the bathroom for a few hours, mostly staring at the blue, black and white tiles, wondering how many people had sat on that same floor after being told by someone they were falling in love with that they had cancer. I had never known anyone with cancer.
I had never dealt with death, besides my cats, and my great grandfather when I was five. How was I supposed to deal with this? He stayed out in the bedroom trying to convince me to come out. But I just couldn’t see anything past the cancer at that point, or the devastation. I realized I couldn’t deal.
I took the next flight to LA. I don’t remember much about that month in LA. I went through the days paralyzed. I quit the play mid-way through rehearsals. I was a mess.
After weeks of phone calls and voicemails from Guy left unreturned by me, it was Muhammad, my trainer, who finally snapped me out of it. “Adele,” he said in his booming voice, while I was doing bicycle crunches and had just pushed “ignore” on Guy’s third phone call of the morning. “So what if he has cancer? So what if he didn’t tell you the entire truth up front when he found out? He finds out a week before he’s promised the girl of his dreams that he’ll meet her in Chicago that he has a year to live. What would you do?
“I don’t know.”
“Exactly. And, you knew the moment you saw him how you felt about him. Have you ever felt that before?”
“Well, no,” I said, crunching my abs faster.
“Ok, then.”
“But, how do I know it’s not just the circumstances?”
“Which set of circumstances? The one where you saw him at a bar and felt a pull so intense that you could conduct electricity through your fingertips? The one where you checked your Blackberry endlessly for four entire months? The one where you hired a personal trainer just so you could get in the best shape of your life to be with a guy? Or the one where you met a guy in Vegas, you fell in love at first sight, waited four months to be with him, and then when you finally see him again, you punch him in the face the first moment he is honest with you, and leave on the first flight back to LA?”
Ouch. I could no longer hide from my fate. Muhammad was right.
So, I finally called Guy back. He didn’t hesitate. He would do anything to get back in my good graces. We had both realized that there was no way we wanted to be apart like this again. Of course, I made him promise a million times that he wouldn’t stand me up. I was nervous that he would, but I was sick of being afraid of getting hurt. It was time to really put myself out there.
Guy bought me a ticket on the next flight out to Canada. He was visiting his great aunt and uncle who owned a campground there on the island. After I left him for LA, he didn’t want to stay in Chicago. I was also glad to not have to go back to Chicago.
It was time to figure this out - whatever “this” was. But the moment I heard his voice again, the moment I saw him again in PEI, I knew I had to deal with this.
“I punched you in the face,” I say, trying to hold back my smirk, and looking up into Guy’s eyes.
“Don’t worry, I won’t punch you back.” He kisses my forehead. His tone goes somber. “But that was the most shite I’ve ever felt in my life - even worse than when I found out the day before. And not because you hit me hard - your right hook could use some work.”
I playfully punch him on the arm. “Don’t tempt me.” I pause. “I know what you mean though. I haven’t been able to sleep since I left Chicago. All I wanted was to be close to you.”
“What took you so long?”
“You threw me for a couple of loops, Guy. I can handle a lot, but first of all, you stood me up. Second of all, you drop that bomb.”
“I know.”
“I don’t trust easily, which normally protects me, but with you…I had just been through so much that night. I’d hit my limit. And, I had let myself trust you - and it was all broken, and now I know it’s not your fault.”
“I should never have let you leave alone from the airport. God, the thought of you standing there alone, waiting for me.” His voice trembles ever so slightly.
“That was the second worst feeling of those two days, yes.” The heat from his body is slowly defrosting my chills. “So, why did you stand me up? I mean, I know it must have been hard to deal with everything, but why at that moment? After so much time and effort spent getting to know me? Didn’t you know that I would have understood, somehow?”
“I almost flew straight back to England, to be perfectly frank. Even with all of those headaches in Africa, I never expected to be diagnosed with that. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my family. I was going to stay here to go be with a girl I had only technically met once. My nieces, my sister, my mum and dad - I knew they would want me home. But I had to go to you. I knew I had to. You started to mean so much to me in such a short amount of time.
“Then, when I got to the airport, and I saw you there, I couldn’t move. It just hit me. All of it. How could I get you even more involved now that I knew I was going to die? I paced around the airport for hours. I panicked more when I saw you leaving me again. I saw the cabbie stop. I thought you were going to get out.”
“Wait, that was you? The guy running towards the cab? I was sure it wasn’t you. I thought you were some maniac. My heart was racing so fast,” I say.
“I guess I didn’t want your opinion of me to change, and I knew that the moment I told you about the cancer, that it would.”
“So, you just stood there and watched me look like an idiot who flew all this way to be with a guy I met one night in Vegas?”
“I’ve never in my life been overcome with such emotion as I was when I saw you for the first…well, the second time. You were so beautiful, and the moment I realized what I had done, you were off in the cab.”
“But I sat on that bench for a good hour!” I am taken aback by the amount of anger I feel. I’m not being fair to him, I know I’m not, but I can’t help it. If I don’t get it out now, I never will.
“I ran through every single scenario in my head before coming to pick you up, and having cold feet was the last thing I ever would have expected. It’s not like me, but I know I’m such an idiot, and I am so, so sorry. Bollocks, I didn’t want it to be like this.” He picks up a stone, and hurls it into the wind. He shakes his head. I let out a chuckle. “Why are you laughing?”
“Just that word - ‘bollocks’ - it’s such a ridiculous word.”
“Very British, I suppose.” He gives me a warm, tired smile.
“Yes. Very. So, it’s OK,” I finally say. “I can’t imagine what it must be like. But, I have to ask you something else that I was thinking about. Were you really taking a voluntary redundancy, as you said? Or did you really quit your job? You definitely didn’t know about the…um….”
“Cancer,” he finishes the sentence for me. “It’s OK. It’s hard for me to say sometimes too, but
I like to think that the more I say it, the less it controls me, and the less important I make it.”
“Like the more you see the images of the planes flying into the twin towers, the more it seems like a scene out of some movie, and the less it seemed like it ever happened?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you really believe that works?”
“No.”
“For me, every time the news played that video of the second airplane hitting, I cried harder, I think.”
“Yeah,” he says as his shoulders fall.
“Maybe let’s call it something else, yeah?”
“Like what? Call the cancer something else?” He asks.
“Yeah, what if we called it ‘The Airplane’.”
“Wow. OK. Um, sure. Why not?” He fidgets around on his rock, carefully keeping hold of me.
“You don’t seem so sure.”
“It’s an intense thing to call it ‘The Airplane,’ isn’t it? Meaning, that at any moment it can strike, and my tower could collapse.”
“True,” I shudder. His body isn’t keeping me warm anymore. “I just want it to sound nicer.”
“It can’t. I wish it could sound nicer. But, on the other hand, the truth is, the airplane hasn’t come yet.”
“Yeah, and at least we know it’s coming this time. We can prepare.” We sit there in silence, listening to the faint sounds of life on the campground, holding each other and breathing the other in, watching the fictitious airplanes disappear in the sky. “Let’s call it ‘The Cloud’ then – that’s a bit more airy, right?” I suggest.
“‘The Cloud’ is definitely better than ‘The Airplane,’ yes. OK then, whenever we talk about it, we’ll refer to it as ‘The Cloud’ hanging over us.”
“Maybe it will rain, maybe it won’t. I can handle that – rain isn’t so bad. It only gets you wet, but you can always dry off,” I say. “And yes, a cloud is still ominous, but it’s also fluffy, and….”
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