by K. L. Kreig
Laurel never lost her positivity, even on the worst days when she could hardly get out of bed, or when the sores in her mouth became so painful she couldn’t eat for two weeks. She endured countless blood and platelet transfusions, four days in the ICU from sepsis, and blood clot after blood clot. She has every right to be angry and hopeless, yet she has been my strength on the days when I didn’t know how I could watch her suffer a second longer.
Three months ago, after the last round of chemo, Laurel’s blood tests showed she’d gone into remission, which was completely unexpected given the gravity of her cancer. I bawled on the spot. I had my wife back. I had my life back. A bone marrow transplant was the next step and Laurel was added to a match registry. Though we weren’t out of the woods, not by a long shot, we could see the path out.
Except we foolishly let our guard down, and we have been burned. Badly.
The elation we were basking in has spanned the length of one long exhale and now we are squarely back in the white-hot grips of perdition.
“I don’t know what to say, man. I’m sorry just doesn’t cut it.”
Of course, it’s doesn’t. Sorry is appropriate when the Tennessee Titans lose, or your aunt fucks up your bowl cut the night before junior prom. In this scenario, sorry is an offering rooted in one’s attempt to provide you comfort. It’s futile. They know it. You know it. You appreciate the gesture anyway, though sometimes you simply can’t tell them so.
“I mean, she’s too damn young. It’s not fair.”
Taking another swig of my Red Bull, I let Manny continue his one-sided conversation. What I’d give for a fifth of vodka about now. Wouldn’t even have to be the good stuff. A ten-dollar shit-store brand would do. But if I start, I won’t stop until I’m passed out, and that won’t do Laurel any good. Or me. I can’t waste a single blink of our time together in a haze of denial, as much as I would like to.
Rubbing the middle of my chest where it burns, I gaze through the window into the kitchen, wanting to be inside with Laurel right now. She is sitting at the table with Carmen, her best friend and Manny’s wife. Their mouths are turned up with smiles at the moment, Carmen undoubtedly trying to make light of this grave situation, which is her way to muddle through, but they’ve been crying. The giant wad of used tissues on the table between them isn’t the only dead giveaway.
Even with a tear-streaked face and dark circles under her eyes from little sleep, she has this indescribable light that surrounds her. She has a way about her that I’ve never quite been able to articulate. She is the most ethereal woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.
What am I going to be without her?
“Isn’t there all kinds of experimental shit you can do? Like in Germany or Sweden or hey, Mexico?”
How many times will I have to answer this same fucking question over the next several months? Too many, to be sure.
“There is nothing, Manny.”
Or maybe there is. But we’re not going to pursue it. We agreed no extraordinary measures if it returned or the bone marrow transplant failed. Cancer ravages the body, but from my perspective the treatment itself is just as bad. The fact we gained an additional few months is a miracle in and of itself. I know this. It’s one I should be grateful for, I suppose, though it’s hard to feel anything but anger and bitterness right now.
Laurel laughs at something Carmen says. How she still has the ability to do that is a testament to her character. And her smile…it’s always been contagious, so I find myself smiling too. It feels foreign. Wrong. Like a middle finger to the nightmare we are now special guest stars in. Holding my proverbial middle finger higher, I force the smile wider, but Manny’s next attempt to make me feel better flattens it out in an instant.
“Maybe something will come up. They have new treatments all the time.”
“They do,” I agree half-heartedly, never taking my eyes from my wife. And in truth, though I am a realist, this is the only thing that keeps me from breaking down into a blubbering ball of despair on our bedroom floor. The maybes. Try as you might, they are impossible to let go of.
Then I wonder…is acceptance synonymous with giving up? Or is acceptance just your ability to move on to the next phase of managing through a crisis? Can you still hold on to hope, to the maybes, while planning for worst case scenarios? Or are these two separate worlds entirely?
I don’t know. I truly don’t. What I do know is that we can either spend our precious time chasing an impossibility or we can live what time we have left together to the fullest. Is it possible to do both? It’s something I’ve given a lot of thought to since we first found out Laurel has cancer.
“Do you remember what I said the night I met Laurel?” I ask Manny. I dig my thumbnail into the flesh of my palm to quell this razor-sharp ache in my soul.
Manny’s gaze follows mine into the house. To the one woman he’s devoted his entire life to and to the one he loves like a sister. “Who the hell is that hottie?” he replies, laughing.
I did say that, but “No, I told you the fact she thought herself so unremarkable was incomprehensible to me.”
She tried not to be seen or noticed. She thought she could shrink and that others outshone her. Instead, she was like a smudge of red lipstick on white satin, its indelible mark noticeable from a mile away. She’s the only one I saw. How she didn’t recognize that in herself was beyond me. It still is now.
“Yeah, I remember. That was an interesting night.”
It was that and more.
“She is everything good about me. Earning her love is my greatest accomplishment in life.” Without taking my eyes from Laurel, I add, “Thank you, Manny. Without you…” I’d never have met this incredible, fascinating, quirky woman who has given me the greatest life a man has the right to ask for.
“Don’t give up, man.” He clasps a hand to my shoulder and gives a quick squeeze.
I have to clear my throat a time or two before I answer, “Yah.” I still sound like I’m choking on a frog.
Laurel catches me staring. I don’t even bother pretending I’m not. Her eyes soften and even from this distance, I watch tears gather at the edges, surface tension working hard to keep them trapped. She reaches up to tuck hair behind her ear, something she used to do frequently. Flushing pink, she realizes her mistake. There is no hair, only the decorative scarf covering her nearly bald head. Her finger snags on the inside of the large hoop earrings she sometimes wears, and her cheeks burn brighter.
“Stop,” she mouths. Her gaze keeps darting away, then back to me again, the shading on her face deepening each time.
“Why?” I mouth back. Grinning, I spread my legs farther and set my elbows to knees, letting my hands clasp loose between them. Then I say quietly, “I love you.”
“I love you more.”
No, you don’t, I want to tell her back. No one could love another the way I love you, Laurel.
I’m not sure what she says next, exactly. I understood pick and later. I wonder if she’s speaking out loud or silently like I am. I hope it’s the latter. It’s juvenile, but I want our private conversations of devotion to remain private. They are for me and me alone.
If Manny notices what we’re doing, he doesn’t let on, but Carmen sees our flirty, teenage exchange and I expect her to do something obscene, as is her usual MO, but she leans back and hangs her head. She snatches a clean tissue from the box and surreptitiously dabs the corner of one eye. She is suffering too. Just as I am.
I blow out a long, long breath of despair.
“What’s next?” Manny asks. He crumples his empty beer can and lets it fall to his feet, reaching for the extra in his cup holder.
What’s next? It’s the question I’ve been tossing around since we left Dr. Nuess’s office. Life cannot go on as normal, because it is not normal. I can’t wake up and go into work on Monday and walk through the door at five thirty, wondering what’s for dinner, anxious to watch the next episode of Dexter with Laurel while eating popcorn. Absolutely noth
ing that was important to me before is important to me now…except Laurel and making each moment we have left count.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” I start. “It may be a little crazy, but—”
I don’t get a chance to finish, because a car pulls into the driveway and the engine shuts off. I’m irritated at the unwelcome visitor. I simply cannot deal with a barrage of questions or blatant airs of sympathy.
I just can’t. Not today.
“Hey, isn’t that your—” I follow Manny’s gaze to the person rounding the house and bolt out of my chair when I realize who it is.
“Mom?”
My parents live in Sarasota, Florida, which is a good fifteen-hour drive for a man who won’t go a tick above the posted speed limit or refuses to let his wife drive because he’s old-school and believes “driving is a man’s job.” I talked to my mom yesterday afternoon on the way home and broke the bad news. My parents, who are like parents to Laurel, were distraught. They wanted to come, and I told them no. We needed time to process and figure out our next step. I told them I’d let them know when they could make the trip.
Yet here they are, not listening to a word I said. They must have driven all night. They watch my reaction, and while I am feeling a plethora of emotions race through me at top speed, anger is not one of them. In fact, I am so overcome with the events of the last twenty-four hours, I am so overwrought trying be strength enough for two that I completely lose my shit and break down in sobs.
My mom can’t get to me fast enough.
My dad is right behind her.
And as both sets of their loving arms surround me and their whispers of empathy envelop me, I am helpless to keep this shitstorm bottled inside any longer. All of it gushes out in unmanly hysteria. The anguish, the fear, the uncertainty. The love of my life is being unfairly ripped from me and I can do nothing to stop it or change it. I mourn like an inconsolable child out in the open for all the world to see and judge.
I weep while they hold me up, literally and figuratively. They are my armor, my bones, my momentary refuge in the eye of an EF5 tornado that will swallow me whole again and leave me with nothing after it passes. They refuel me with the courage and fortitude I will so desperately need to carry Laurel and me through this.
I have never been more grateful to see anyone in my life.
“How did you know?” I don’t add I needed you, in an attempt to regain a shred of the dignity that I’ve publicly lost. I don’t know that my parents have ever seen me cry as an adult.
My mom takes my face in her hands. They’re weathered and spotted from the sun, but they’re soft and tender and smell of the lavender lotion she’s so fond of. She looks up at me, eyes wide and glistening, wearing her own pain without shame. And when she answers, “Mother’s intuition,” it breaks my heart fresh in two again, because it’s a moniker my Laurel has desperately wanted yet will never get the chance to have.
5
Just A Kiss
Laurel
Ten Years Earlier
March 22, 6:22 p.m.
* * *
“Are you sure this goes together?” I ask Carmen.
Balancing my phone on the dresser so she can see me, I grab the pair of new canvas Mary Janes from their box and hold them up next to my brand-new dress. Tonight, is my first official “date, date” with Roth. Well, what feels like a real date, that is. The coffeehouse was just…coffee.
I am nervous as all get out.
“Si,” she tells me while fetching a sparkling water from her fridge.
“Carmen, you didn’t even look.”
“Laurel, we picked them out together.” She twists the cap off of her water and takes a swallow.
“But the dress is red, and the shoes…are also kinda red. Are you sure it’s not too much…red?” It’s too much red. Why did I pick red? Red is a “power” color. Red draws so much attention. “I should have gone with blue. Or camouflage.”
Carmen’s eyes roll straight into the back of her head. “Laurel, the dress is burgundy. The shoes are mauveish, not red. The palette goes perfectly together, and it’s a fabulous shade against your fair skin.”
I study the shoes again, unsure. “Maybe plain white shoes would be best.”
“No. That would definitely clash.”
“I don’t know.”
“Laurel, don’t you trust me?”
“I…yes?” I don’t. I am so out of my comfort zone, I’m getting hives. I don’t even like dresses. I hate them, actually. Yoga pants and baggy sweatshirts are more my style. Staying in is more my style. “I am so bad at this.”
“Bad at what, chica?”
“Fashion. Dating. Dressing myself. All of it.”
How I managed to get myself together for our last date must have been divine intervention. I toss the shoes to the floor and drape the dress over the end of my bed before flopping down on it in frustration.
“Where’d you disappear to?”
“Heeere,” I lament, sounding incredibly pitiful.
“Hey, don’t leave a girl hanging.”
I sigh and pop up to snag the phone. I lay back down, propping myself on an elbow. “I should just cancel.”
Carmen walks from the kitchen to my favorite piece of furniture in her apartment. A large, multicolored wingback chair that she has stuffed into the corner between two full-length windows. It’s loud and boisterous, just like her. Dead opposite of me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks. Sitting in the chair, she draws her knees up to her chin.
“I…” I pause, biting my lip. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t you like him?”
Very, very much. That’s the problem.
“I do.”
“Then what is it, Laurel?”
“That’s the same question I keep asking myself, Carmen. What is it? What does he see in me?” I haven’t seen Roth since we spent the day together at the café, but we’ve talked and texted every day for the past three weeks. The conversations are light, and the texts are flirty. My playlist is mounting by the day. And my feelings for him grow exponentially with every passing minute.
But I don’t get it. I am not the prom queen or the high school cheerleader. I was on the yearbook committee and in book club. I played in the shadows, comfortable on the periphery. I was a nerd. I still am. And he is…well, he is everything I am not.
“I am geeky and insecure and—”
“Unique and warmhearted and selfless and—”
“Clumsy and comic bookish and—”
“Excessively hard on yourself,” she interrupts again before I can spit out more character flaws. “Laurel, you have this draw that is irresistible. Your wholesomeness and authenticity are arresting, really. I remember thinking that when I first met you in Mr. Hannifer’s drama class. You were this beacon in the dark of night or a soothing serenade floating on a soft breeze. You, my friend, are everything I strive to be when I grow up someday.”
My eyes prickle as tears spring to life. “Carmen,” I whisper, all choked up.
“That is what he sees in you because that is what is there to see. You are beautifully perfect inside and out. Now, wipe your face, blow your snot, and get out of your head. And put the dress on. Let me see it.”
“What? Now?” I rub my cheeks until they’re dry, still feeling a bit sticky on the inside from all the unexpectedly wonderful things she said.
“No, tomorrow.” Carmen scrunches up her face. “Yes, now. Isn’t he picking you up in, like, forty-five minutes?”
I glance at the clock. Shoot. How did it get so late?
“Yes.”
“Jesucristo. Darse prisa. No time to waste.”
“Okay, okay.” Feeling like I’m coming out the other end of a time hop, losing hours I can’t account for, I shuck my sweats and tank and throw the dress on over my head.
It’s a swing dress, per Carmen. The fabric is a soft, silky chiffon. I wouldn’t know. A dress is a dress is a dress to me. It lies neatly
over my breasts and hangs loosely over my torso, ending a couple of inches above my knees. The neckline is demure, which makes me feel less on display.
I spin one way and then the other. While it is girlie, it’s also prettier than I remember in Nordstrom when Carmen bullied me into buying it. And she may be on point about the color.
“What do you think?” I ask her, continuing to twist in opposite directions, mesmerized by the flow of the forgiving material.
“Shoes, shoes,” she commands. I snatch them from beneath my feet and quickly slip them on. I set Carmen back on the dresser and walk far enough back from the phone so she can see the full length of me. “Sleek and stylish yet relaxed at the same time. Perfecto.”
She’s right, once again.
“Do you know where he’s taking you yet?”
I received very specific instructions from Roth for this date: Wear comfortable shoes, similar to what you had on the night we met. When I asked him why, he asked me if I was always this difficult. When I replied yes, his response was, “My mother always says I am a glutton for punishment.” It made me laugh.
“No. He just said we’d be outdoors and to wear comfortable shoes.”
“And what about the panty situation?”
Flames lick at my cheeks. I found a lacy pair of black panties in the far back of my “lingerie” drawer, a term I use loosely. I don’t even remember buying these. Probably another gift from my mother. Weird, I admit, but for once I am grateful for her boorish attempts to turn me into something resembling a girl.
“They’re clean,” I reply.
Carmen laughs. “That’s not what I meant, but okay. We’ll make that our next shopping trip.”
“Hmmm. Sounds fun.” Truthfully, it sounds painfully…painful.
“I know this amazing lingerie boutique in an 1800s train station on Houston Street.”
Of course, you do. Carmen has the most exquisite sets of undergarments I have ever seen. Makes sense she’d get them at some posh boutique that’s unaffordable for regular people.