by K. L. Kreig
I stand stock-still, overcome with emotion and gratitude for something as simple as the reminder of good in people and ten gallons of free water.
“Thank you,” I croak.
“Most welcome.”
He holds out his hand, which I take. His grip is firm. His eyes are kind. But it’s his heart I can clearly see. This is a good man I am humbled to have met.
“Take care of your boy.”
“You take care of your wife.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Our best is all any of us can do, my friend.”
How strange. I don’t know this man, yet I feel his friendship. His kinship. Maybe there is something to this place after all.
“Papi, I’m hungry!” Logan yells from the other side of the RV.
Greg shrugs. “Duty calls.”
“Thank you, again.”
His nod is short and curt. “I believe in paying it forward.”
“Papi, can we go to that bread place?” Logan asks as we round the corner. “Pleeaaase?” Logan has his hands pressed into prayer position, his big blue eyes rounded and pleading. “Pretty pleeaaase? We never get to eat there and I wanna so bad.”
Greg’s shoulders, which were held high with his good deed, slump several inches. “I’m sorry, son, I—”
Shit. No.
“Hey, Greg, you dropped this back there.” I hold out a wad of bills I’d slipped surreptitiously from my front pocket. My change from the diner earlier. A fifty is on top.
He stares at it, then at me. His eyes say no, his head is even shaking, but I close the distance between us and stuff it in his limp hand, whispering, “I, too, believe in paying it forward.”
His jaw sharpens and he swallows hard.
“Thank you,” he chokes out. He gathers his wits before turning to Logan. “The bread place it is.”
Logan cheers.
Laurel wraps an arm around me and asks quietly, “What was that all about?” as Greg loads Logan into the passenger side of his old beat-up pickup truck. She knows Greg didn’t drop a roll of bills.
“Serendipity, I believe.”
We wave to Logan and Greg and I feel inexplicably sad as I watch them drive away.
“I like this place,” Laurel sighs, laying her head on my shoulder. “Is it weird that it may be my favorite stop so far?”
“No,” I confess, feeling the same way, yet not understanding why, except this ground feels hallowed in some way. “I think it may be mine too.”
Maybe miracles do happen here.
Maybe one will happen for us.
24
Don’t Forget About Me
Roth
Present
July 11, 8:44 p.m.
* * *
“How are you feeling?” I ask Laurel for about the thousandth time.
After a quick stop at Barbie Beach in Georgia and a drive through the gator park in Wildwood, Florida, we arrived earlier today at Turtle Beach, a stone’s throw from my parents in Sarasota. We’re having dinner with them tomorrow night, but all I can think about is hightailing it back to Blackville. We’ve gone through nearly half of the water already. How much is enough for cells to change? For divine intervention? One sip? One hundred? How long do we wait? One week? One month? Do we have that much time?
Laurel looks up from the crossword puzzle she’s solving in the USA Today and blinks. “I still have cancer.”
I am so taken aback with her unusually cavalier attitude; I don’t know how to respond. Normally, I would be pissed, but I am simply stunned. “Laurel, that’s not—” I stutter, not finishing through on my thin lie.
“It is, Roth.” She sets her pencil down calmly. “It is what you meant. It may be the same question you asked before the spring, but it carries a far different tenor now.”
“And what tenor would that be?” I keep my “tenor” even. It’s fucking hard.
She bites into her lower lip and shuffles her attention to the paper on the table. She folds one of the edges into a triangle, then runs her fingernail along the crease until it could easily tear off. We both know what she’s thinking, only she won’t say it.
Guess I have my answer.
Kids shriek right outside our window, and the tension between us fizzles. A group of them are running around with jars, catching fireflies. Laurel’s screwed-up face softens into a hint of a smile. Then it’s gone.
“I’m sorry.” She sinks back into the plush cushions of the Songbird’s couch. “That was mean.”
It wasn’t nice, only I keep that comment to myself because the flames are still hot and one slight waft could ignite them again.
One of the things I admire so much about Laurel is how she’s managed to stay positive throughout this whole ordeal. It’s more than I think I could do. She has a right to be snippy on occasion, and she deserves nothing but grace.
“So, am I. I thought…”
“Maybe it will happen yet,” she finishes for me. She doesn’t believe it. Neither do I.
“Maybe.”
She picks up the pencil and rolls it between her thumb and forefinger. “This trip has been absolutely amazing, Roth. A dream come true. Thank you for talking me into it.”
A change of subject. Okay by me.
“I’m sorry we didn’t take it sooner.”
“We took it at the exact right time,” she tells me reassuringly. “When we were meant to.” Then she knocks me completely from my chair when she announces flatly, “I think I need to see my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes. Do you think we could do that?”
We have had many a conversation about Laurel’s relationship with her mother over the years. There is bad blood on Laurel’s side, and I can understand why to a degree. I can’t quite figure Candice out. She loves Laurel, of that I’m sure, but I think she may be one of those people who truly don’t understand how to show it. I’ve asked Laurel several times how she wants to handle this with her mother, but she’s chosen to ignore it. I don’t even think Candice knows Laurel is terminal yet.
And the fact she wants to do it now, and in person, is telling. And a heavy fucking blow I admit I wasn’t prepared for.
“Of course, yes. Yes, we can do that.”
She nods slowly. Her eyes are unfocused as she adds, “The sooner, the better, I think.”
The sooner, the better.
The sooner, the better.
The sooner, the fucking better.
Whaaam. Thwack. Blow number three.
“I’m going to take a shower, okay?” Her benign words hold a weightiness that hangs heavy between us. It’s hard to focus on which way is up. Making amends is part of the dying process, I remind myself. I want to fucking punch something.
“I’ll a…” I have to clear the anguish that’s settled in the back of my throat before I can continue. “I’ll have a cup of tea waiting for you when you get out?”
“That would be amazing. Thank you.”
She rises and kisses me softly on the lips. Her movements are stiff. Slow. She holds her lower back as she lumbers to the bathroom and slides the door closed.
She’s worsening.
This, right here, is the very definition of torture. Watching your loved one suffer and deteriorate right before your eyes is cruel and unusual punishment. I’ve read every fucking book and article and tip sheet about helping your loved one die: “Don’t ask how to help.” “Don’t make them talk about it.” “Listen.” “Reassure.” “Create a peaceful atmosphere.” “Give them permission to go.”
Fuck me.
I don’t know how to do that.
I don’t know how to do this.
Any of it.
The walls I’ve built around myself for protection and leverage are cracking. In some places, they are crumbling faster than I can reinforce them. And I need reinforcements. Badly. We have far darker places to travel to yet.
So, as soon as the shower turns on, I pick up my phone.
“Roth
? Is everything okay?” my mom asks, not bothering to say hello first. She’s only miles from me. She may as well be a world away.
I open my mouth to reply, but the only noise that escapes is the sorrowful, pitiful, wounded sound of an animal in the throes of utter anguish. I can’t get anything else to come out, no matter how hard I try.
So, I stop trying, and I let self-pity bend and break me.
And my mother, she listens silently while I cry, offering the only two words she can.
“I’m here.”
It took me a solid five minutes to pull my shit together earlier. When I hung up with my mother, I felt purged enough to keep going. And when I saw Laurel appear from the steamy lavatory with a fluffy navy towel around her slim frame, my purpose was renewed.
This is about both of us, yes, but she is my focus. My reason. My priority. I’ll deal with my grief later. Alone. Without witnesses.
Now we cuddle in stillness as we’ve done countless times before, listening to the soft sounds of the night through the open windows. Bullfrogs. Crickets. Water lapping the Gulf shore. A cool breeze blows in, rustling the sheet covering us.
It’s peaceful, lying here with her, so for a while I slip back a square to the denial phase and pretend everything is normal. Maybe tomorrow we’ll talk about buying our own Songbird, or we’ll plan dinner with Carmen and Manny when we get home, or maybe we’ll start training for our next 5K together.
It’s nice, even if it is a fantasy.
“Are you still awake?” I ask her sometime later when I notice her breathing even out.
“I’m scared, Roth.”
Her soft admission violently shatters my fantasy, like a bread knife uppercut into the gut. Its blow is vicious. The pain, debilitating. I’m right back where I was before she showered.
I am the male. The protector. I’d kill anything and everything that posed a danger to Laurel. And this is anything and everything. This is total and complete warfare. But there is no implement in my arsenal to battle an enemy that is invisible and untouchable, leaving nothing but annihilation in its wake.
I am utterly helpless.
“I am too,” I confess, holding her as tightly as I dare. My whole body feels weak, like I haven’t eaten in a month, or I just finished back-to-back-to-back iron mans.
“Roth, I want you to promise me something.”
Under any other circumstances, my immediate response would be, “Anything you want, my love,” but if she asks me to move on with my life or find someone else or, God forbid, try to be happy without her, how can I promise that?
I don’t think I can. And what kind of husband would I be to deny my dying wife a single thing? I can’t do that either.
“What?” I croak, my heart pounding in my chest.
“When I’m gone—”
“Don’t say that.”
“Roth.” Laurel wriggles until I loosen my grip. With some effort, she fluffs her pillow and positions herself until she seems comfortable. By way of the wince, she’s trying to hide, she’s far from it. “I realize you don’t want to talk about this, but I need to. It’s important to me.”
My emotions get caught in a traffic jam, fighting to get through a one-lane road that has a bridge out. I want to turn around, but I am caged in on all sides with nowhere to go.
“I’m listening.” That’s all I can promise. And even that is tough.
“I know my death will be hard for you.”
“Laurel, please,” I choke out. I can’t. I don’t want to have this conversation. Not now. Not ever. It’s not denial, I decide. It’s called being selective.
“Roth.” She twines our hands together and brings them to her mouth. She kisses the tips of each finger, doing it again before saying, “I know you’ll grieve. I’d never not ask you to do that. But you have so much to offer—”
“I have no one to offer it to besides you, Laurel.”
“I’m not telling you to find someone else, though it would be okay with me if you did.”
“I won’t,” I tell her almost angrily. I think of Pat’s story about his dead wife and how seemingly happy he is now with his new one. But I am not Pat. I won’t go on to remarry and have four kids. Won’t happen.
“If you say so.” She runs two fingers over the length of my jaw, trying to calm me.
“I do say so.” And I mean it, dammit. I clamp my teeth so tightly together my jaw aches.
No one could ever compare to her. How does she not understand that? And even if I did “find someone else,” which won’t happen, I would never be able to give that person 100 percent of me, because Laurel will take half of me with her. No woman would settle for that. No woman should.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not…” I let go of a breath I’ve been holding for weeks. I am upset. I won’t disrespect her by lying. “I have to face a life without you in it, Laurel. Yes, I am upset.”
She doesn’t say anything for the longest time and, of course, I fill that silence with self-loathing. I am a selfish piece of shit. She is the one who is dying.
“Do you remember when we took that road trip to Moab?” she asks.
“Of course, I do.”
It was spur of the moment. We talked about it one night and the next day we hopped in the car and drove fifteen hundred miles straight through. It took us almost twenty-four hours. We stayed for forty-eight. It was an insanely, stupidly spontaneous idea that was the best one we ever had.
We camped under the night sky.
We stargazed, in awe of how brilliant the Milky Way is away from city lights.
We got drunk on a case of Corona.
That trip was probably one of my best memories of us, outside of the day we married.
“Do you remember when you got lost hiking?”
“I didn’t get lost, Laurel.”
She always says that. It’s not true. Mostly.
“You did, Roth,” she insists.
It was the morning of day two. Laurel was sleeping off the Corona and I woke early, wanting to get in a quick hike. I planned to be back before she even knew I was gone but may have gotten myself turned around a bit. It’s not a big deal. She always makes it a big deal.
“A park ranger had to guide you back,” she adds, her voice rising with each word spoken.
“And your point is?” I sigh.
She giggles and tucks both hands under the cheek she’s lying on, knowing she’s got me.
“My point is I was terrified that I’d lost you.”
“Laurel—”
“Stop. Hear me out.”
I clamp my mouth shut, trapping my feeble protests behind enamel bars. Laurel was actually quite upset when I returned with the diminutive park ranger, Carrie, who scolded me in front of her for relying on GPS versus a park map. Carrie went on to tell me, also in front of Laurel, that they’d just found a hiker who had been lost for twenty days. He was found a mere two hundred yards from a path that would have led him to safety. He didn’t make it. I think Carrie was being a tad melodramatic if you ask me, but she got her point across. And served to terrify Laurel more in the process.
“For those four hours that I didn’t know where you were or how to get ahold of you or if you were going to make it back to me, do you know what I thought of?”
“How you were going to rip me a new one?” Because that happened. I admit I may have deserved it. Maybe.
The edges of her lips curl up like ribbons. “No. After they found your lifeless body picked apart by vultures and we had to ID you by your dental records and then I had to bury what was left, I envisioned what my new future without the person who made me me would look like.”
Well, that deflates me flat.
“And do you know what I saw, Roth?”
I do, Laurel. Because that’s exactly what I see.
Nothing except utter, total darkness.
But I shake my head, unable to squeak out a simple no.
“Cats.”
> I snort, turning that over once or twice. Is she serious? She saw cats? I see nothing and she sees cats?
“Cats?” I draw out my question, letting her hear my disbelief.
“Yes, cats,” she replies matter-of-factly. I wait for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.
“So…” She didn’t see eternal solitude while drowning in a river of tears? She saw… “Cats?”
Her laugh is bright and melodic. She’s enjoying my confusion. Then she sobers and drops her chin so I can’t see through the windows that lead to her heart. I don’t like that. I won’t get to look through them much longer.
“Do you know what Esther used to tell me?” She plucks at the sheet, so serious now.
“No.”
And what does this have to do with cats?
“She truly believed cats were spirits reincarnated. She was convinced our meema was a scraggly rescue she found wandering down our street a month after Meema passed away. She named her Lena because that was our meema’s first name.” I listen in fascination. She’s never told me this. “So, this cat, Lena, she had a limp. Our meema had a limp. Meema loved to cuddle, and Lena loved to cuddle. Meema always wore her nails long and sharp and Lena hated getting her nails clipped so they always scratched the heck out of us. And that was all it took. Esther was sure Meema had found her way back to us and no one could tell her otherwise.”
She lifts her eyes to capture mine, and I am captivated by her. Not unlike the first time she caught me staring in Rudy’s.
“So, yeah…cats. I thought maybe if I got enough, one of them would eventually be you, because I was sure you would find your way back to me. And when everyone called me the crazy cat lady, I wouldn’t care in the least. I would have you however I could take you.”
Oh hell. That is powerful stuff.
I cup her cheek, stroking her soft skin. I would definitely come back as a cat. I’d never leave her lap. And I could go so many places with this one, but I don’t.
“You never told me that.”
“You already thought I was being overly dramatic.”
“You’re kind of known for your theatrics.”