“Why does there have to be a next time, Dad?” he asked in his best whiny voice.
“Sam, you know your mom and I are taking some time apart. But I still want to see you and Jack as much as I can, so you guys will have to get used to staying over here sometimes. Maybe I can get one of those blow-up beds… a really good one.”
He lowered himself into a chair at the kitchen table and flung his head back in exasperation. “So when are you coming home?”
“I don’t know. I can’t say. It’s going to be like this for a while though. At least, well, for a few months.”
He grunted so loud that I heard Jack start to stir in the next room and went to check on him. His tiny leg was hanging off the edge of the bed. I worried he was about to roll right off so I nudged him toward the middle, but he was already awake.
“Papa,” he grinned, my little morning boy.
“Want to help me make the pancakes?”
His eyes lit up and he popped up and hopped up and down for the few steps it took to get from the living room to the kitchen.
I poured the boys some orange juice to start with and asked them to wait a minute while I went to bring my mother a cup of plain yogurt.
She was awake and looked worse than the night before. She had lost so much weight and her skin was much too pale.
“Mom? I brought you some yogurt,” I said, as I set it down on a raised tray table that I then lifted up onto her bed. “Can you try to eat a little?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, Ricky, I can’t. Stomach’s no good today.”
She only called me Ricky when it was just the two of us. I secretly liked it because I felt like the little boy who adored his mom more than anyone else in the world, and who knew she felt the same. My father had never been around much, he was either working or out drinking with his friends, so we were the three musketeers—my mom, Kelly, and me.
I scooped a tiny blob of yogurt onto the spoon and lifted it up toward her mouth. She turned her head to the side.
“I can’t, Ricky. Just leave it. I’ll try in a little while. Go make breakfast for the boys. Have fun with them. Don’t worry about me. Just send them in to give me a hug before they go, okay?”
Almost six hours later, the uneaten yogurt sat in the exact same spot I left it in.
“Mom, you didn’t even try to eat any.”
“I tried. I did.”
I couldn’t call her a liar. She was lying for my sake only.
“Okay, well, it’s time to get up and get dressed for the first appointment. Can you do it yourself?”
She wheezed and her eyes locked on mine as she grabbed my hand and pulled me down on the bed.
“We’re not going anywhere today.”
“What are you talking about? We’re supposed to see the specialist in just fifteen…”
She squinted her eyes and squeezed my hand.
“I got a call while you were gone. They got the rest of the test results.” She paused.
My stomach balled up into a big knot.
“There’s nothing they can do. It’s inoperable. It’s too far gone. Any treatment options wouldn’t be worth the suffering for the possibility of adding a month or two.”
I wanted to punch my fist right through the wall of her bedroom. I stood up and wrung my hands.
“No. No. There has to be something else. A clinical trial. A new specialist. We need a second opinion, right away.”
She sucked in air and a deep, painful sounding cough escaped, shaking her frail body violently.
I sat back down and patted her shoulder.
“We’ve already gotten a second and third opinion. I can feel it. This is it for me. I’m sorry. I know you and Kelly are still so young and all the kids, I love them so much. I hate to leave them. But this is just the way it is. We have to accept it.”
“I don’t want to accept it. We all need you. You’re only fifty-nine. It’s too young. We have to keep trying.”
“There’s nothing more to try. They’re going to give me a home nurse for a while who can help keep me comfortable. I’ll go to hospice at some point, but not yet. I still have some time. I want to make the most of it.”
I considered the possibility that I was having a nightmare. The words she was speaking were too much for me to digest. I had always taken for granted that she’d be around for a long time, to see the kids graduate from high school, go to college, start careers, get married. How could Jack grow up not even knowing her? How could Sam lose his favorite checkers partner at his age?
“So you have time? How much time?”
She turned her head to the side in pity, knowing I wouldn’t like her answer.
“Six months… at the most.”
I couldn’t hold back. I put my arms around my tiny mother and bawled my eyes out. Weak as she was, she held on tight and smoothed my hair, just like when I was a boy.
When I was done being a baby, I decided I wouldn’t waste another minute of the precious little time I had left with my mother. I asked her to tell me things I didn’t know about her life, from her childhood, about our ancestors.
We talked about my father, who I had barely spoken to since the two of them divorced over a decade ago. She asked me to work to mend things with him when she was gone. I agreed.
“Ricky, I didn’t think life would be this short. But I have to make peace with God’s will.”
I looked at the rosary beads on her dresser, amazed that even this couldn’t shake her faith.
“And you know I’ve been trying not to say too much about your situation, because you have to work it out yourself.”
She scratched my chin with her bony fingers and smiled.
“You’re a smart, successful man now. And I know you’ll do the right thing. But I have to speak my mind while I still can.”
I waited.
“I could be wrong. And I don’t want you to feel guilty about whatever you decide. But I need to tell you that I believe you and Beth should be together.”
I lifted a hand and opened my mouth and then realized I had to give her this. How could I not?
“I know I’m no expert because my marriage was a terrible failure. And I’m sorry you and Kelly had to grow up watching that failure every day. I’ll never know if I did the right thing by staying with your father, but at the time, I thought it was best for you.”
She inhaled with a raspy wheezing sound.
“So maybe I didn’t have a good marriage, but I’ve seen a few in my day. My parents, for example, they were devoted to each other for over fifty years before the Lord took my mother. And they were happy. But it wasn’t perfect. They fought sometimes. And I never thought I’d tell you this, but a long time ago, I found a journal of my mother’s. In it, she confessed to an affair with a neighbor while my father was serving time in the military. I hated her for it when I first found it. I threw it in her face and screamed and yelled. But when she explained how lonely she was and how she was all alone for months as a newlywed nineteen-year-old, and how this young man took her to dances and sung to her, I could understand, a little. And since then, I’ve seen so much that I just can’t hold on to my old rigid attitudes about right and wrong. I see the beauty of our human imperfection, the necessity of it, in fact.”
I hadn’t told her about Beth’s affair. She didn’t know why we were separated, other than that we were fighting. Had she overheard something? Or did mothers just have a way of knowing without ever being told?
“Mom, I love Beth. I love her so much it hurts. It’s killing me that we’re apart. But she has so many issues. She, she said things to me that I can’t forget. And I have my issues too. I need to figure things out for myself before I can figure out if we can make it work. It’s so complicated.”
She rubbed my forearm and smiled in a way that made me feel like I was ten again. Like I w
as mad at my best friend for some silly reason and she was trying to get me to see that it wasn’t really important.
“You know I love you, Ricky, with all my heart. But you can be too hard-headed at times. I remember when poor Kelly wouldn’t follow the schedule you set up for feeding the dog and taking out the trash. She kept missing her times and you were furious. You didn’t speak to her for a week.”
I hung my head down, remembering the many times I made my poor little sister miserable for not conforming to my attempts to control her.
“I know. I know how I am,” I conceded. “But I’ve changed. I’ve gotten a lot more relaxed about things.”
“That’s right, you have sweetie. And who would you say has helped you to do that more than anyone?”
“Beth. Definitely, Beth.”
“Exactly.”
CHAPTER 19:
THE REALITY OF
A FANTASY
IT WAS SO HARD to focus on anything Shelly said during our lunch at the sandwich shop near her house. But she understood. She knew how difficult it would be for me to focus on anything except my date with Dave that night. Being with her was comforting though.
“So you still don’t think you’ll confront him until after you have the baby?”
“Yeah, and not for a while after. I’ll need his help.”
I hadn’t had the courage to ask yet, but couldn’t hold out another minute.
“I’m kind of worried because, well, if he’s having sex with her and he’s having sex with you, you could, you know, catch something.”
She laughed, and I didn’t know why, but it was a relief nonetheless.
“Ahhh, I get why you’d be worried about that. But it’s not an issue.”
“What does that mean? How can it not be an issue?”
“Because we’re not having sex.” She said it with such a matter of fact air that I felt stupid for not having considered the possibility.
“Look at me! I’m huge, swollen, exhausted. He doesn’t try very often and when he does, I have plenty of excuses to choose from. And he knows he has to wait for at least six weeks after the baby, so that’ll buy me more time.”
I didn’t like it that there was no sign of Shelly’s situation being resolved in the near future, because I had heard of marriages going on this way for years. Her reasons made sense though, just as Jill’s reasons for ending her marriage and committing to celibacy for the first year of her recovery made sense.
“So, back to your date,” she directed.
“I thought you didn’t approve,” I asked, hoping to be wrong.
“I don’t! But I can’t stop it from happening. So I may as well hear about it. And I guess fair is fair, since Rick is going out with that awful woman, Wendy, tonight too, right?”
I felt bad for making her out to be such a villain. In truth, I knew very little about her.
“Oh, she’s probably not that bad. I actually have no good reason not to like her. She visits Lucy all the time, bringing her soup and magazines.”
Thinking of Lucy stirred a pang of guilt.
I looked at Shelly and questioned whether it was healthy for her to have gotten so big. She tried to hide it under a cute peach and white maternity sweater with black leggings and boots, but she looked to be much closer to her due date than she was. There was no way I could mention this, though it would be understandable if she were using food for comfort, given the catch-22 she was in. I wanted to think she had slain that dragon for good, but was starting to learn that nothing was ever that simple.
“You know, I have this weird feeling that Rick is hiding something from me about Lucy’s cancer. When I ask him how she’s doing or what the doctors say, his answers are evasive. It’s been over two months since her diagnosis and there’s no talk of surgery or chemo, so I’ve been assuming that means she’s stable and there’s no urgency, but sometimes I feel like I’m missing something.”
“That does seem strange. Have you seen her lately?”
“No. We’ve only talked on the phone. She doesn’t sound good. She wants me to visit and I’ve been meaning to, I just… I feel so bad about the whole situation, you know?”
“She really wants the two of you to get back together, huh?”
“I know she talks to Rick about it a lot. He tries to tell her we’re working on things. She doesn’t know we’re both going on dates with other people tonight, thank God.”
“How are things between you and Rick?”
I looked away and stuffed down the giddy feeling that rose up but I didn’t hide it well. Shelly looked at me as if I were crazy. I thought I might be too.
“The only way I can put it is that I have a huge crush on him right now.” It sounded even more ridiculous when it came out than it did in my head.
Shelly popped another mouthful of my leftover fries into her mouth, having finished her own some time ago.
“Okay, friend. Sometimes I think you must be an alien from another planet,” she said with exasperation.
“I know, I know. But since we separated, it’s like we can talk about everything in a new way. We’re so much more open about how we feel, what we think, what we’re learning about ourselves. There’s so much less pressure. He’s not all critical and controlling anymore. So yeah, I have a crush on him. It’s pretty cool, actually.”
“Okay, let me get this straight… you have a crush on your husband, the father of your children, the guy who forgave you for having an affair, but you’re still going on a date with the guy you had that affair with?”
“Ouch.” Pregnancy bought a little extra allowance for crankiness, but this felt too harsh.
“Sorry,” Shelly said. “Can I use the cheating husband card to get out of that one?”
“Yeah, okay. But try to understand,” I said. “We’ve been separated for over two months now. Rick wants me to go. He says if I don’t I’ll always wonder.”
She rested her chin on her fist and sighed, “Life sure didn’t turn out the way we expected when we were little girls parading around pretending a white towel was a wedding veil, did it?”
“No, it most definitely did not. I’m not sure it does for anyone.”
* * *
It was the ultimate romantic date. Dave and I sat sipping champagne as we took in the view of waves crashing on the beach below. It was my first taste of alcohol in over two months.
Dave wore black dress pants and a green collared shirt that matched his eyes. His face was clean-shaven and his hair was slicked back, which made him look like he could be in his mid-twenties. I hoped the new wrinkle-fighting serum I was using might help me pass for late twenties. My hair was straightened with big flowing curls at the ends. I went for a smoky look on my eyes, which took a long time to perfect. The simple black halter dress that fell just above the knee with strappy, open-toed high heels made me feel glamorous for the first time ever.
Conversation flowed easily. We stuck to safe topics at first, talking about how different my life growing up in New York was from his experiences in California. He told me he was almost assured of an entry-level management position upon graduation, thanks to his skillful networking with fraternity alumni. The transparency of his attempt to present his qualifications as a legitimate suitor, should I find myself single again, charmed me.
We were just short of being rude to the server every time he interrupted us. I didn’t care about appetizers or specials. I didn’t care about food at all. This wasn’t that kind of date.
With the bottle of champagne half empty, Dave insisted we order something to eat.
“Get anything you want. I’m not even hungry. I’ll just share a little of whatever you get.”
When the annoyance of dealing with a third person was over, I reminded myself that this night with Dave would either be a beginning or an ending. There could be nothing in between. In either case,
I couldn’t afford to fritter away another moment. I grabbed his hand from across the table, pulling it toward me. He noticed that I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring and started to massage the small space where it used to rest. We watched our fingers dance in the light of the flickering white candle. Each of mine needed to touch each of his. We took our time, fingertips meeting palms, thumbs intertwining, circling one another, and I felt myself melting. The rolling ocean simmered down to the gentle evening tide as the setting sun inched below the horizon, compelling quieted diners to take in the final glimpses of spectacular pinks, purples, oranges, golds, and fiery reds.
The sun was gone but the light radiating from it remained as I turned to look into Dave’s eyes.
“I’ve dreamed of a night like this for so long. It doesn’t seem real,” I said, feeling no need to hold back anymore.
He leaned across the table, almost knocking over a champagne glass, but catching it just in time. I moved toward him and he kissed me, right there in front of all the strangers, people who had no way of knowing our star-crossed love story. People who may have thought I looked a bit old for him, but otherwise saw us as just another lovestruck couple out for dinner.
My head swirled with the champagne and Dave. I stood up and pressed my forearms into the table as my mouth reached for his again. This time, we held our kiss for too long, moving away to look into each other’s eyes and then back quickly to satiate our demanding lips, so ravenous for each other.
The waiter arrived with several plates and I swallowed hard, unable to stand another minute of the torture. My eyes pleaded with Dave. We could eat the next day and every day after that. What was happening now was a once in a lifetime moment and food was meaningless.
Dave pulled away from me, heaving, and said, “just pack it all up, we’ll take it to go. Bring the bill now, please.”
I reached across the table and grabbed the collar of his shirt, pressing my face into his. I could hear an elderly woman exclaim, “Really!” nearby, and I knew she meant us.
I stood up and pressed my dress against my thighs to smooth it. Then I jabbed the cork back into the bottle of champagne and tucked it under my arm.
Is This What I Want? Page 17