by A. E. Radley
Mel’s phone rang. “Oh — it’s Andrew’s mom,” she said. “I should probably talk to her. Hi, Regina,” she said brightly into the phone. “Yes, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving. What about you?”
Hope turned to me. “Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked. “Regina can be a talker.”
“Sure,” I said, putting my drink down. “Where should we walk to?”
“I dunno. Let’s just pick a direction and go.”
Our feet guided us out the long gravel drive that led to Melody’s and down the quiet residential street beyond. Street lamps chased away enough darkness to make a walk still possible.
The wind picked up, freezing my ears to the side of my head. I shoved my hands deep into my jeans pockets.
Neither of us said anything at first. Then we both started to speak at the same time.
“How’s it going with — ”
“Are you glad you — ”
I smiled. “You first.”
“How’s it going with… what’s her name again? Karen?”
I knew Hope remembered my girlfriend’s name. I wondered why she pretended she didn’t. Maybe it would make it seem like she didn’t care.
“Things are… fine,” I said at last. “Although… we’ve been fighting about money a lot these days.”
“Why?”
“I’m planning to open up my own gym as soon as I save enough,” I said. “It’s the only way I’m really going to get ahead and make a name for myself as a trainer. But Karen doesn’t think there’s a market for it here.”
“You’d open it here? In Calvin?”
“We live almost in Suwannee. So more like halfway between there and here,” I said.
I opened my mouth, meaning to describe the market research I’d done, the way I thought there was a growing market for personal training out here, and how closer in to Atlanta, the market was already saturated. I wanted to tell her about the business seminars I’d gone to, the ways I’d tried to educate myself and create a plan that would actually work. I wanted her to know how much my business had grown since I’d started three years ago, how I was busy all the time now.
But then I closed my mouth. It would just make me sound like I was trying to convince her of the viability of my ideas, and I spent enough time making that argument with Karen to rehash it with Hope.
“Karen wants me to go back to school,” I said, “get my master’s degree in physical therapy. Since I’m already licensed as a PTA — a physical therapist assistant, I mean — it probably wouldn’t be too hard. She thinks I’d make more money and have better job stability that way.”
“But you don’t want to do that,” said Hope. “Why not?”
I shook my head, thinking back to my years in the physical therapy field. “I’m tired of working with people who are sick or injured. I just feel like if I can get to folks before they hurt themselves — help them get in shape before they get to the point where they need surgery or they do something to their bodies they can’t fix — I could do more good in the long run. It’s so…” I let my gaze wander into the dark shadows of the pine trees that lined the road, searching for the right words. “I can’t even tell you what it feels like to help someone get their body back. It’s like giving them back a piece of their lives that they thought was lost to them. I love helping people lose weight, or get in shape for the first time, or just start to feel good again. It’s like… if you help them change that little piece of their lives, everything else starts to fall into place. They feel differently about themselves. They start to like themselves again. They get their confidence back. And I guess you get some of that with physical therapy, but mostly it’s like I see older people and the people who never managed to get in shape in the first place. You know?”
I looked over at Hope, aware that I’d just gone on something of a rant. She was watching me with a slight smile on her face.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
I glanced down, embarrassed. “I was rambling, wasn’t I?”
“You’re a good person, Jules,” Hope touched my arm lightly, and even through my jacket I could feel that ember flaring to life. “You always have been. A much better person than me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s true.” She smiled, but it was tinged with bitterness. “The whole time I’ve been out there selling records and trying to see how famous I could get, you’ve been here, just quietly helping people. It’s very… you.”
“Music helps people.”
She laughed. “I wasn’t making music for a noble purpose. I was making it because I wanted people to say ‘Hope’ the way they say ‘Madonna’ or ‘Lady Gaga.’ It was about me. I was serving me. You were busy serving everyone else.”
I hesitated a moment, worried that what I was about to say might upset her, or imply that I agreed with her self-assessment. “Have you thought about… about what you could do to make a difference, after what happened? The gun control movement could use some star power behind it.”
Hope made a face. “I thought about doing a tribute album, donating the proceeds to a victim’s fund. But I don’t know. It seems so… predictable. A star makes a tribute album or concert, donates some money, and then the world moves on without any real change taking place.” She gestured at her left leg, at the way she limped slightly as she walked. “Besides, right now I don’t feel like I’m any use to anyone.”
“Let me help you,” I said, sensing my opportunity. “Stay with Mel a while. I’ll come over every day and work with you to rehab your leg. Give me six to eight weeks, I’ll have you as good as new.”
She let out a breath and ran a hand through her hair, trying but failing to straighten the blonde curls that hung above her shoulders. She’d always fought a losing battle to control that hair.
Those thick, naturally golden-blonde spirals. How many times had I run my fingers through them, toyed with a curl? In high school, out on the lake by her aunt and uncle’s house. In college, after one of her shows at The Old Coot.
Or five and a half years ago. The last time I’d convinced her to stay in Calvin longer than she’d intended.
I shook my head, as if the movement would dislodge the memories.
“You, too, huh?” she said.
“Me, too, what?”
“You’re in on the conspiracy to keep me in Calvin? As if rural Georgia is going to be a better place for me to recover than Los Angeles?”
“We’re not ‘rural,’” I said in mock offense. “We have a Publix now. And a Walgreens.” I paused. “And we’re your family.”
“I’ve made my own family in L.A.”
“Your blood is here,” I countered.
“Blood.” Hope practically spat the word from her mouth. “I’ve seen all the blood I ever want to see. Being around family won’t stop me from seeing it, either.”
I reached an arm out, stopping her. “Then don’t stay because it’s home,” I said. “Don’t stay because your family’s here. Stay because I’m here.” I hesitated, realizing what I’d just said. What it might imply. “Stay because I can help you.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Hope said. She gave me a slight smile. “I already decided.”
I exhaled a frustrated breath. It formed an amorphous cloud between Hope and me. “Please, Hope. We’re worried about you. Even before the shooting, you were… drifting in a direction that didn’t seem good.” I took a chance saying something that I knew would upset her. “Mel told me about the assistant before Nigel. Marissa. Mel said it’s becoming a habit. That you haven’t had anything longer than a one night stand in years.”
Anger flashed in Hope’s eyes. “And what business is that of yours, Julie?”
“It’s… I care about you.”
“Really? You care so much that you stopped talking to me?” Her eyes narrowed. “Was it you who decided we should have some ‘space’ for a while, or was it Karen?”
“It was…”<
br />
It had been Karen, of course. It had been Karen’s ultimatum when we had first gotten serious about our relationship.
“You’re asking me to compete with a world-famous musician who just happens to be your first love?” she’d yelled in the middle of our first really bad argument.
“My first love — not my current love,” I’d argued back.
“You told me yourself you slept with her on and off for years after you two broke up,” she pointed out.
I shook my head. “The last time was — ” I stopped short. The last time had actually only been six or seven months earlier, mere weeks before I’d met Karen. I couldn’t tell her that. I needed her to know that things between Hope and I were over. Really and truly over. “The last time was a long time ago,” I finished. At the time it felt emotionally true, even if it wasn’t objectively true.
The argument only ended when I agreed that I should give Hope some “space” for a while. So the next few times Hope came to Calvin to see her family, I’d made excuses for why I couldn’t get together. I hadn’t told her about Karen. I couldn’t say exactly why I didn’t. Phone calls from her that had been once per week slowed to once per month, then every other month, then they just… trickled away to nothing.
“It doesn’t matter why we stopped talking, Hope,” I said. “We’re talking now, aren’t we? That’s what matters.”
“Except that I had to find out about Karen from Mel,” she said.
“I was going to tell you. I just had to think of a way to say it.”
“I don’t care who you date,” Hope said. “I just don’t know why you had to hide it from me.”
“I wasn’t hiding it. You and I just… we have a complicated history. That’s all.”
“I’m cold,” Hope said. “Let’s go back to the house.” She turned on her heel and began limping back in the direction of Melody’s. I sighed and followed her.
“I really wish you’d consider staying. Letting me help you with your physical therapy,” I said from a few steps behind her.
“I told you,” Hope said without turning around. “I already decided.”
“Alright,” I said. I let my other arguments about why I didn’t think Los Angeles was any good for her die on my tongue. Once Hope Caldwell made up her mind about something, there was no dissuading her.
I put my head down and marched along the empty road, glad that we were heading home now that the damp, late-November chill had settled in for the night. I didn’t realize Hope had stopped walking ahead of me until I ran into her back.
“Oh — sorry.”
“You didn’t ask what I decided,” she said.
“What?”
“I told you I already decided about staying in Calvin versus going back to L.A. But you didn’t ask what I decided.”
I straightened, hopefulness sparking in my chest. “What did you decide?” I asked carefully.
“Despite the fact that Andrew is obnoxious and I hate his mustache,” Hope said, “and the fact that Aunt Tina has gotten remarkably cranky in her old age, and the fact that my best friend hid the fact that she’s been in a relationship for the past five years and conspired with my cousin to keep me trapped in this podunk town, last night I decided to stay.”
My face split into a grin. “Really? You still think of me as your best friend? And you’re staying?”
“Yes. And yes.” She poked me in the ribs. “But I’m paying you the same thing I would pay my physical therapist back home.”
“Hope, no, I can’t take — ”
“You can and you will take my money. Or I’m retracting my promise to stay.”
I smiled. “We can talk about it.”
“No, you stubborn woman,” she said forcefully. “There is nothing to talk about.”
“You’re calling me stubborn? Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
We bantered all the way back to Melody’s house. It was the happiest I’d been during an argument in a very long time.
EARLY DECEMBER, PART 1: “SCAR TISSUE,” RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
“Three more,” I told Hope after I adjusted the resistance band around her ankle.
She glared at me as if I’d said something to offend her.
“Come on,” I said. “Just three more and you’re done.”
“I hate you.”
I laughed. Laughter had come easily to me over the past week or so. “No, you don’t hate me. Now let’s see those three reps.”
She grunted and did a single rep, hanging onto the porch pillar for dear life while she abducted her left leg outward.
“Breathe out,” I reminded her.
She clenched her teeth together. “No, I really do hate you,” she said, but she breathed out anyway.
“One to go.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“I know you can,” I said.
“You know shit.”
“Okay, fine. I know shit. But do one more anyway.”
Hope rolled her eyes at me like a teenager. “Fine.” She completed the final rep.
I bent down, undid the resistance band. “That’s it. Let’s stretch you out.”
Hope hobbled inside, her limp more pronounced than I’d seen it in a few days. The gunshot wound itself had healed fairly well, but she’d been left with complex regional pain syndrome, or CRPS, a chronic pain issue due to nerve damage from the bullet. Even if she regained all the strength in her leg, she wouldn’t be able to perform as she once had until the pain diminished.
She laid down on Mel’s couch.
“How’s the pain been?” I asked.
“Bad.”
“Bad like what? On a scale of one to ten?”
“Somewhere between eleven and thirteen,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, trying not to let my concern show through. If I stopped believing in her rehabilitation process, she would give up on herself. And that was the last thing she needed to do.
We’d been working together every day since Thanksgiving, and I had already resigned myself to the idea that some of the pain Hope had was going to be permanent. I could help her strengthen her leg, reeducate her nervous system, get her to regain the muscle that had atrophied from disuse after the immediate aftermath of the gunshot, but the more I researched what happened when a bullet from a high-velocity rifle struck a body part, the more I doubted that she would ever feel one hundred percent again.
I hadn’t told her that yet, but I suspected she already knew.
I knelt down beside the couch, reached for the bad leg. It was swollen again, I noted, which didn’t surprise me. My first instinct was to ice it, but CRPS often came with temperature sensitivity, and the ice might only make it worse.
As gently as I could, I started to massage her thigh, starting high, just below her hip, and working my way down. She sucked in a sharp breath when I got close to the place she’d been shot.
“I’m sorry,” I said, easing up. That was another problem with CRPS — even light touch could trigger pain.
“Not your fault,” she replied through clenched teeth.
Hope had on a loose dress with spandex shorts underneath. As I lifted her leg a little higher, the dress fell back, revealing two thick white scars on either side of her leg. One entrance wound. One exit wound. Given the size of the scars on the outside, I could only imagine what the bullet had done to the inside of her leg.
I’d read everything I could find about what high velocity bullets did to a person’s body. I read about the overlarge cavity such a bullet made inside the flesh, the way the force of impact rippled outward to affect all the nearby tissues, the way the fresh absence of tissue created a vacuum effect that sucked in everything from debris to blood vessels. The more I read, the more I realized that it was a miracle Hope’s femur hadn’t shattered, or that none of the major arteries in the thigh had been nicked by the passing bullet.
And what the bullet did to Hope’s leg was likely nothing compared to what it had done to her
heart.
My sweet friend. All she had ever wanted was to belong somewhere, an abandoned child who needed to know she was loved. And it took a brush with death to figure out that there wasn’t a stage or an audience big enough to erase the scars inside her heart.
The thought choked me up. I sniffed.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
I glanced over, realized she’d been watching me.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head, working the muscles of my jaw to keep the tears at bay.
“Jules.” Her tone was part amusement, part concern. “I’ve known you since the fourth grade. I can tell when you’re upset about something.”
I forced a smile. “I guess that’s true.”
“So tell me what you’re upset about.”
I lowered her leg back to the couch, putting a pillow beneath her knee. I ran the tip of my index finger lightly across the scar on her thigh. “I guess I just got to thinking about…”
But I didn’t want to tell her the truth, that I was crying for her. For her loss of Charles, of twelve of her fans, possibly of her career. And most of all, I didn’t want her to know I was crying for the loss of the dream that had sustained her since middle school.
I couldn’t meet her eyes.
“I just got to thinking about how close I came to losing you,” I said at last.
“Aww, Jules,” she said. She sat up with a wince, put her hand on mine, trapping my fingers against the scar halfway up the side of her thigh.
Still I couldn’t look at her, for fear that I would begin to cry in earnest. So I looked down at her hand on my hand, my hand on her thigh.
“Why did you forgive me?” she said after a moment.
I chuckled. “Which time?”
“All the times, really,” she said wryly. “But I meant in college. After we broke up for good. I didn’t think you’d ever forgive me after how I hurt you, but you did.”
I thought back, remembering Hope’s tearful confession that she’d been cheating on me with a boy she’d met in one of her music classes. I remembered how we both cried, how I’d screamed, how I’d wanted to break something, how she’d begged me not to leave her, and how I agreed I wouldn’t.