“Thank you,” he says, and he kisses my neck.
“You’re…welcome?” I feel his breath sticking to my neck, my collarbone. I shift around and kiss him back. God, I could spend the rest of my life kissing him.
He pulls away for a moment. “I didn’t expect you to work through this.”
“Neither did I.”
“And, I did take voluntary redundancy. I didn’t lie to you about that. It just happened at the right time, I never knew until I got back.”
“What now? Are you still going to travel the world?”
“I’d like to go where you are.” He feels so comfortable – again, like I’ve been hugging him for my entire life. After some time has passed – I have no idea how long – I pull myself away and look up at his handsome face.
“OK, but first, I need to know one more thing.”
“Just one? Not three?”
I laugh. “Ok, maybe I have another one.”
“Give it to me.” He straightens up.
“I wanted to ask you what your middle name was.”
“You want to know what my middle name is?” he asks, bewildered. He wasn’t expecting that.
“Yes,” I laugh. “Are you going to repeat every sentence I say? It’s more important than you think, someone’s middle name. It’s the name that only people who are truly close to you know. Unless you’re Martin Luther King Jr., or Sarah Jessica Parker. Obviously everyone knows their middle names.”
“Never thought I’d hear those two names in the same sentence. I think I see what you mean. OK. So this isn’t a trick question, just to be sure?”
“No, not a trick.”
“It’s David,” he answers.
“Guy David Lockhart,” I say, rolling it around my mouth for a try. “That’s a good, solid name.”
“Thanks,” he says and laughs. The crinkles in his eyes are back, but they are less boozy and more filled with sun and Canada. His eyes are sweeter than I remember them, I didn’t think that would be possible. “Never thought about it like that. And yours?”
“Mary,” I say.
“Adele Mary Cruz,” he says. “I like it. It sounds like a song.”
“Yeah, or a big boat.” We both laugh – our laughs swim together with the seals. He wraps the other arm around me again.
“Thank you for coming here,” he says. “When you hung up on me at the hotel again, I figured that was it. Then, when I was able to be honest with you the next day, well, that didn’t exactly go as planned.” I can tell he’s being careful how to phrase his wording. He doesn’t want to scare me off again.
“I guess I could have reacted a bit better,” I grimace. “Punching you in the eye is not how most people want to be treated when they admit they have, ah hem, a cloud…I assume. I just didn’t know what else to do. I’ve never punched anyone. Not that I would know, or anything…what it would be like to admit that.”
“Well, I had run many situations around in my head, and I have to say, I didn’t think of that option for a reaction. But, then again, there is no right way to react with this type of thing, especially after how I treated you. I’m honestly surprised you came around at all. I mean, I am just a guy you met one night in Vegas.”
I flinch. “Please don’t say that. It makes me feel like you really believe that.”
“I don’t want to believe that.”
“So, don’t. Because you’re not.” He always said that I say ‘I love you’ at this point. But my version is very different. We fought about this over the next five years at many different parties, family functions, even our own wedding. In the end, we always agreed that it didn’t matter because it was said, and we did indeed love each other.
‘No, you loved me first,’ was the phrase that followed us wherever we went to visit mocking friends. We smiled because we knew in our hearts that we loved each other in the same moment.
“Here you go!” My mom sings as she comes back in the house. I realize I am crying again. “Oh, no. Honey.” She plops the Lemon Jello Cake on the coffee table and takes me back in her arms.
“I was back at PEI with him. That was the best afternoon I’d ever had,” I hiccup between sobs.
My mom rubs my tears away. “That man loved you like no other.”
“Like no other is probably the only thing I know for sure.”
“I know it’s not what you want to hear,” my mom says, “but this isn’t your end. Nor is it his. You have Ivy. He lives on in Ivy, and so will you.”
I’ve heard that most couples take forever to find a name for their child, but we knew when we saw how zealous, loyal and beautiful the ivy was that crept up the side of our house (we had bought a tiny bungalow in Seal Beach two years ago, a small beach town on the Pacific Ocean about 35 minutes from LA). We knew that was the type of name that would never grow old, that would be eternal – like our love. That was the type of girl we wanted to raise.
I grew up fast with Guy. I went from a quarter life crisis to a full-fledged adult life in the blink of an eye. One month I was being sprayed by pepper spray and singing along to Sublime in my beat-up Ford, and the next I was taking the love of my life to radiation, buying a house, and planning how to survive with The Cloud getting fuller and darker, and figuring out how, one day, to be without him, all while learning how to be with him. There was also more to deal with.
After I quit the play, I got a few calls, but I turned them all down. I was just no longer interested. The idea of reading off someone else’s words in a fake world built by someone else felt so false. How could I possibly go back to that now? How could I waste my time being someone else when my life was so full - in so many ways. I wanted to be in my life, finally. No one else’s.
So, I did the rational thing, and took up writing. It was honestly the first time I felt in control of something.
I could create my own moments, my own worlds, and my own characters. I was no longer under the spell of Hollywood, and wishing they would pick me. I could now determine my characters’ fates, and opinions and truths. When I finally let go of acting, it never felt more right.
Sam finally realized the same thing, and used her theater background to make a difference. She studied theater therapy to treat patients with her talent.
“These tears have a mind of their own, mom,” I say in between sobs. “But, I’m really thinking about how lucky I am. I can’t stop thinking how most people never get to experience what I had – that true love. That true love that made me feel vulnerable, safe and just, well, comfortable. That’s such a mundane word - ‘comfortable’ - but it’s so right.
“I thought about that everyday - how lucky I was. With us, that feeling was so extreme because he was always going to leave me. It was that reality that made him late to the airport. He knew that if he came into my life, that I would never, ever be able to forgive him. But he also knew that if he didn’t come into my life that we would both be miserable.”
“And I guess that’s what I didn’t understand. That’s why I was so angry with him for lying to you in the beginning,” my mom says.
“He didn’t lie, mom,” I feel myself getting angry. “I really wish you wouldn’t say-”
“He did lie, Adele – by not telling you the truth as soon as he found out. He didn’t give you a choice. But you never saw it that way. You always just let it slide - ”
I interrupt her. “I didn’t just let it slide! I hate it when you say that. Why should he have told me over the phone? I deserved to have had the choice in person. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
“But seeing him only made it harder - the physical side of things sometimes takes over, and….”
“Don’t put your issues on me.”
“If he had told you over the phone, it would have given you the opportunity….”
“The opportunity for what, mom?”
“It would have given you the opportunity to have chosen a different life.” She says what I knew she always thought. She says what I had thoug
ht a few times myself, but would never let myself explore.
“Don’t. Don’t. I can’t. I can’t do this now.” I am struggling to breathe between sobs. “I just buried him, mom. I just buried my husband, and now you – you…”
We buried him last week in England. I couldn’t make it up to his coffin. I sat in the wooden seat clutching Ivy, kissing her head and rocking back and forth. I couldn’t stop rocking. I felt like if I stopped rocking, then I would drop Ivy, I would fall to the floor, and I would lose all control.
“Honey, I’m sorry,” my mom struggles to find the words. “Let’s just….”
A surge of strength overcomes me. My breathing slows down, my shoulders go back. “Yes, there were some days when I resented it,” I say. “But when it came down to it, I knew there was no one else who could compare to what we had. No man in the world was better than him. And for you to sit here, and…Guy and I could be lying on our couch watching stupid TV or hiking Runyon Canyon, I would look over at who was beside me, and I had no idea how I had ever gone without knowing him, or loving him. Nor did I want to remember the days without him.”
The right words aren’t coming to me, but I continue. “His hand on my back made me stand taller, his voice in my ear made me more confident, his love allowed me to believe in myself.” I lash out. “But I guess you don’t know what that feels like, do you?” My voice rises. “Do you, mom?”
My mom stares at the floor. “Honey, no. No, I don’t what that feels like. I don’t think I’ve ever truly loved anyone like that.”
I don’t expect that answer - that raw, honest answer. I look down at my thirty year old hands - where did five years go? We sit in silence for many minutes. I look over at my mom; her frown lines are becoming more deeply embedded. I found the true love that she had been searching for her entire life. I am being so cruel.
“It wasn’t all easy, mom. The tumor really affected his attitude. The last couple of months were actually….” I struggle for the words, and to breathe. I haven’t admitted this to anyone yet – not even myself.
I hear a cry from the other room. I glance at the guest room, and back to my mom. The lump in my throat is being acted out by Ivy’s scream. I stumble to the crib to go pick her up and plop myself down into the rocking chair. Thank God Chelsea’s mother is such a planner and put this room together – although I never expected to be the first out of Chelsea and I to have kids.
Ivy is falling back to sleep. I feel jealous. All I want to do is go to sleep since Guy died. I try to ignore the fight that happened a moment ago.
The last few days, as The Cloud was coming faster and Guy and I felt more and more like two defenseless pigs in a straw house; I held it together as much as I could. He was so clear and lucid in his final hours, (which I heard would happen) but didn’t stop it from feeling so bitter sweet.
The night before ‘the storm came’, he was smiling, making jokes. Guy was affectionate to me during the five years, but he’s also English, so it didn’t come as easily to him as I would have always liked. That last night, he couldn’t keep his hands off me. It was absolutely lovely. I like to think that God gives us those last memories to make up for the pain that follows death.
I felt so blessed to have him for one minute, let alone five years – no matter what his state of mind.
After Canada, and scolding Guy for not getting treatment immediately, he went under for surgery to have it removed. Then, he started chemo.
The more I researched cancer, the more I was convinced his diet was contributing, so we got him on a low dairy, low animal protein diet that was high in fruits, nuts and vegetables. He jokingly complained the whole way, but he slowly got better. I like to think that this contributed to his longer than expected life. To be honest, we didn’t know why exactly, but he was a fighter.
There was a moment we even thought The Cloud was gone completely, and the skies were clear.
That was when we started trying for Ivy. He was feeling strong at that point. Before I met Guy, the thought of children made me dry heave. But, when I was with him it was the only thing that made sense. Some women just need a baby. I needed to find a husband before I could need a baby. We had been trying for over a year.
I bought a pregnancy test on my way home from filming an independent film. Both my mom and my sister talk about the fact that the moment they became pregnant, they knew.
I had no idea.
Maybe I just didn’t allow myself to be hopeful for anything for fear that I would be let down. I hadn’t had my period in nearly two months, so I figured it was time to at least figure out for sure if I was or wasn’t.
I walked into the house, expecting Guy to be watching the Manchester United game that he had recorded that morning, but he didn’t answer when I called his name. I went into the bathroom, peed on the stick, and waited. It didn’t feel like a long time because I didn’t have any expectations. After two minutes, I saw it – two blue lines. I could never remember what that meant, so I had to double-check the package. I screamed, jumped up and down, and ran into the kitchen to call Guy.
That’s when I heard it. It was a faint garbling sound – mixed with a grunt, and then, a crash of plates. “Hello?” I screamed. I ran to the noise. Guy was on the floor under the kitchen table convulsing, a glass vase broken and lotus flowers strewn across the tiles.
I broke into survival mode. I grabbed the phone and called 911. There was no time for hysterics. I lay down on the floor with him, and rubbed his head over and over until he stopped. I couldn’t help it - one thing continually ran through my head until the ambulance arrived: I’m having a baby, and its father is dying. I’m having a baby, and my husband is dying.
I had a baby, and her father died.
On our 4-year anniversary, we found out I was pregnant. Well, I found out. He didn’t find out until the next day.
As much as I knew he had brain cancer, as many times as we went to chemo, I had never seen him so completely incapacitated as I saw him at that moment. He was my big, strong man who could battle through four years of brain cancer, hike up Mount Kilimanjaro, run marathons, and carry a woman on his shoulders through Africa for miles until he found a doctor. Never once did my brain process the fact that he would ever get weak, or lose function in certain parts of his body. But he did.
I just prayed that he would meet his child.
And he did. In his lucid moments, he was the most incredible father a girl could ever ask for. I was proud of myself for picking such a good father, in fact. He was everything I knew he would be. And Ivy couldn’t get enough of him. I think I filmed every moment they were together. I became obsessed with recording everything - well, the happy times. We had our very own reality show.
But The Cloud came.
The funeral was all wrong. It was nothing like he wanted, but we agreed to keep the event as simple as we could – to please all sides of the family. The one thing I did splurge on was the coffin. I figured that since we never wanted a coffin in the first place, why not go crazy, and adorn it in gold. I was allowed – I had made a killing on the last TV show that I booked right after PEI.
I go back to PEI in my mind.
“I guess I was afraid of being someone who just was. Didn’t think that could be enough,” I admit to Guy as we walk towards our one-bedroom schoolhouse. His great aunt and uncle converted it to a house when they first bought the campground, but leave it for visitors. They left the bell in the steeple.
My feelings all seem so silly in hindsight.
“It couldn’t be enough for what?”
“For you.”
“Someone who just was, as opposed to what?”
“An actress.”
“You seriously thought I was with you because you were an actress.”
“No, it’s more than that. I didn’t know if I would be any good in a relation…ship.” I hesitate to say it, but already know the inevitable. There’s no hiding that that’s where we’re headed – to be in a relationship. “If I
weren’t striving to be an actress – which I’ve been questioning lately. It’s all I’ve ever known, then how could I be good at this, if I no longer was who I’d always been?” A seal bellows out into the night.
“Haven’t you always been Adele Mary Cruz?”
“Well, yeah,” I say.
“That’s who I am falling for.”
“Oh, shut up.” I can’t handle his sincerity right now. The wind’s picking up and the night sky’s taking back its world until the morning when the sun will prevail once again and heat the air we breathe in.
“What are you going to do now?” My mom is standing at the door. I come back to Chelsea’s mom’s house in Baltimore. The present. I realize I’m humming to Ivy, tears soaking her little head. Ivy was born three months ago.
“Probably ask myself three questions every day until I know the answers and can start thinking rationally again, or maybe I’ll write it all down. Writing is all I know to do right now.” I wipe her head with my shirt. We both sigh. My mom rests her hand on her hip.
“Your life – my oh my, you’ve had a life.”
“You’ve had a pretty amazing life yourself, mom.” We smile, and I cry again. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.” I grab her hand. “I’m so grateful to have you here.” And I am. I promised Guy that whenever he did pass away, I would make sure to appreciate those who were there for me. How quickly I forgot.
The tumor had come back. Guy was already in the final stages of brain cancer by the time Ivy was born. It had spread to his other organs and he was becoming increasingly violent and confused. The only things that seemed to calm him down were our letters, and the questions. We both tried to write three questions everyday in a letter.
We were successful most days. But sometimes we were too tired, and couldn’t think of any more questions that hadn’t already been answered. In those cases, I would start from the beginning. We would lie together and read the letters in order (I put them in a book to have forever) right from the beginning while his hand stroked mine. I knew he was the most lucid at the moments when he grabbed my chin, and forced me to look into his eyes. Those kind eyes.
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