“I know, my love.”
♂♂
The sun beat down on my face as I lowered my feet into the water. The heat of the plastic raft nearly burned my arms as I struggled to find a comfortable position.
“It’s here,” Matt shouted, holding up a large envelope as he tugged the sliding glass door shut behind him. He lifted his bare feet one at a time into a march, avoiding the hot brick below. “From ABL!”
I immediately lurched off of the raft and made my way up the slick stairs, heading directly toward my husband. “Open it for fuck’s sake!”
He ripped at the long packet and pulled out a letter, handing it directly to me. I skimmed over the contents as he pulled another piece from the packet, nudging me wildly with his elbow.
She was wearing an oversized pink dress, her fine hair sticking up in every direction. A faint smile ghosted over her lips as her black eyes widened in surprise.
“Jing-Wei,” Matt whispered. “Fin… honey. It’s our daughter.”
♂♂
“I’m missing too much,” Matt said softly, watching as Jing tugged at the back of her leotard. “She has to show this to me two days after her recital because I wasn’t there. I need to be here more.”
“Then quit, Matt. We talked about this. Retire.”
“I’m thirty-eight, Fin. Who retires at thirty-eight?”
My father had sold the company a few years after Matt and I were married, emptying nearly half of the sale into yet another trust account. “You do,” I told him. “We do. I miss teaching, but I would miss this more. I want to go places, honey… I want to take our daughter to Disneyworld, but we can’t because you work every weekend. The off-season isn’t enough – you’re still there even when you’re here. You get all of this vacation time, but you can’t ever use it. Please, Matt. Say you’ll think about it.”
He sighed with a smile, pressing his lips to mine as Jing smacked him on the thigh.
“Daddy, pay attention. This is the best part.”
He lifted her up and pressed a kiss to her rounded cheek. “Every part is the best part.”
♂♂
“Jing,” Matt groaned. “Don’t. We’re not talking about this. You’re barely eighteen and we’re not just letting you run off for the summer to Europe with that boy.”
She crossed her thin arms over her chest and wiped at a few crocodile tears, turning to me for support.
I lifted my hands in frustration. “No,” I told her. “I’m with your father on this.”
“You’re always with him. You never let me do what I want. It’s one summer, Dad. You never traveled when you were eighteen?”
“With your grandparents, yes. By myself, never,” I returned.
“I wouldn’t be by myself,” she huffed. “Riley would be with me.”
“Jing, enough,” I barked. Matt sat down quickly at the kitchen table, his breaths heavy and uneven. I ran to him, kneeling at his side. “What’s happening, baby?”
“I’m fine. I just got dizzy for a second. I don’t know… I’m okay. I mean it.” He stroked my face and gave me a gentle smile.
Jing lowered to the opposite side, clutching his leg. “Daddy… I’m sorry. I won’t go. I won’t ask again.”
He brushed her long black hair from her face and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I’m fine. Dad and I will talk about the trip, okay? Just give us a few days. Maybe you can stay at Grandpa and Grandma’s place in Montparnasse. I don’t want you staying in some hostel. Do I make myself clear?”
“I don’t want to go anymore,” she responded softly. “I’ll stay home with you and Dad for the summer.”
“Jing.” I pressed my hand to her face. “I’ll talk to Grandpa. Will you get your father a glass of water?”
When she went to the refrigerator, I lifted Matt’s chin and studied his eyes.
“Are you cold?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“Shortness of breath?”
“No, Fin… I’m fine.”
I rubbed the wrinkles at the side of his eye. “What day is it?”
“Fin, you’re being ridiculous. It’s Tuesday.”
I eyed him wearily and took the glass from our daughter. “Drink this. Tomorrow, you go to the doctor. No arguments.”
♂♂
“Shouldn’t we go somewhere too?” Jing was only gone for one week and, already, Matt was restless. “We’ve always wanted to go on a cruise.”
“The doctor says—”
“Fin, the doctor said I’m fine. I feel great, okay?” Matt assured me. “I’m fifty, not a hundred. You can’t get rid of me that quickly.”
“I’ll call the office. If he thinks it’s okay for you to travel, we’ll go somewhere. Your pick.”
“Paris,” he said, cocking an eyebrow.
“To check up on our daughter? I don’t think so. Besides, do you really want to know what she’s doing with Riley?” His shoulders shook involuntarily in disgust. “I didn’t think so.”
“I know what we can do in the meantime.” He joined me on the sofa and lowered his lips to mine. “We’re all alone in this great big house. When’s the last time that happened?”
I kissed him feverishly, straddling his lap in a slow grind. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”
“We always do it in the bedroom these days,” he responded breathlessly. “Remember when I sucked you off in the elevator at our old apartment?”
I laughed aloud, pressing my lips to his neck. “I was so paranoid, I could barely stay hard.”
“You did though,” he mumbled. “You were always hard.”
I smacked him in the chest. “I was always hard? I’ll ask you to recount that time we were at my mom’s house when you trapped me in my childhood bedroom.”
“I fucked you against the wall while your parents waited for us in the living room.” He ground his hips into mine with a low growl.
I smiled, pulling back to capture his face with my hands. “Well, we don’t have an elevator, but we do have a kitchen table.”
♂♂
“You’re too young,” I told her.
“Dad, how old were you when you and Daddy got married?” Jing asked.
“Older than you.”
“No… younger than me, actually. Grandma said that you were twenty-two.”
I smiled at my daughter. “Grandma’s a liar.”
“I love him.”
Daniel loved Jing, I knew, but still I wasn’t sure. I wondered if there was real passion there or if he was just a stepping stone along her life path.
“Madly?” I asked. “I still love your father madly... I have since the day we met.”
“Ew,” she responded. “I know. You’re disgusting.”
“It’s not disgusting. It’s amazing. Do you know how difficult that is to find?”
“Lucky me, I have too.”
♂♂
Pam passed away just one month before the day Jing would be married. She wrote Jing a letter – even going so far as to mail it – knowing that her days were numbered.
My dearest Little Bird,
It’s your time to fly away. To leave the comforts of home and into the arms of your love. Your fathers are both so proud of you, watching you become the strongest woman in our little family. A musician, a writer, a poet, a traveler. You’re everything I wished I was at your age. Now, Daniel is lucky enough to spend his life getting to know you like we have.
I wish you love and happiness. I’ll watch you grow from Heaven, my sweet girl.
Kisses infinity,
Nana
Matt died with her a bit that day, asking me to sleep alone for the first time in our married lives. He said he needed “time to think” – I obliged him for a few hours, making it until almost two in the morning before slipping back into our bed to wrap my arms around him. He wept as I held him close, feeling her loss in a way that he’d never felt for his father. Our daughter, her only granddaughter, would never see her grandmother a
gain.
She would never see Jing walk down that aisle, arm in arm with Matt and me. She would never hear the toast that Matt made in her honor as Jing pressed her tear-stained cheeks to the front of Daniel’s lapels. She would miss the way Jing tossed the bouquet over her head, only to land on the two-thousand dollar wedding cake.
Pam would have liked that. She would have liked all of it.
♂♂
We attended more services over the next two years. My father first, followed by my mother six months later. We had sold the house on the Mississippi and moved her into a smaller one, hiring a full-time staff to care for her. Even after his death, she refused to move to Indiana with us.
She couldn’t bear to leave my father. He was buried in Arnold and she wanted to be near him. She visited his grave every day, sometimes talking for hours. We saw her often over the course of those six months, but she was fading fast – lost without him.
The only solace she had was visiting that plot, staring day-in and day-out at her own tombstone. All that was missing was the date.
She got her wish, being laid to rest beside him at a (very young) seventy-seven years old.
♂♂
Matt was too young.
I was too selfish to let him go.
So that morning, when he clutched his chest in pain, I prayed. I dialed emergency services and prayed for the first time in my life. He grabbed aimlessly for me as they wheeled him out of sight.
“Sir, you can’t go any farther.”
Sir, you can’t go any farther.
I waited for three hours during that surgery, only to be dumped into a room with a man I didn’t recognize. He had aged ten years in those three hours, looking frail and worse for wear.
“I don’t want to go, Fin… not yet,” Matt whispered, clutching my sweater and lifting it to his nose. He breathed in slowly, closing his tired eyes in defeat.
“I know, my love.”
I lowered my head onto his chest, turning to stare into those blue eyes. They were the same; the only remnant of him that I had left.
He lived three days in that hospital, but then his (weak) heart just gave out, leaving me alone at fifty-two with a frantic daughter and an irreparable broken heart.
“What are we supposed to do without him?” Jing asked as her face twisted in grief. “What, Dad?”
I gave her the only answer I knew. “I don’t know.”
♂
I sat on the grass, leaning my back against the cold stone. I could feel his hand on mine as I closed my eyes.
“The baby’s finally here… can you believe it?” I spoke aloud. “They named him Matthew.”
A group of women walked past as I chatted to my late husband, giving sympathetic smiles as I wiped errant tears from my eyes.
“He’s beautiful and perfect, just like our Jing. You remember when we brought her home? She clutched to your chest the entire time, petrified to let go. Even when I tried to take her, she clung tighter. She always loved you more,” I said with a short laugh.
“I’ve thought about volunteering lately, maybe. It’s just a thought, but there are things I’d like to do, I guess. Jing wants me to go on a date. She thinks I’m too lonely… she knows I’ll never go, but it makes her feel better to tell me what I need.
“I’m thinking about selling the house. It’s too much for me… besides, it was our house and everything in there just reminds me of you. I… I’m afraid to change anything.” I sniffled into a fresh tissue. “What am I supposed to do, Matt? When is it supposed to stop hurting so goddamned much?”
I thought of the night before. Curled up on Matt’s side of the bed, blankly staring at the bottle of sleeping pills.
I could take one.
I could take five.
Instead, I took none, staring at the photograph of my new grandson that Jing had sent.
“I had that dream again. The one where you wake up in the hospital and, instead of you being sick, you look so fucking beautiful that my heart hurts. You get out of bed and press me against the wall, kissing me until I can’t breathe.” I placed my fingers across my lips as if I could feel him. “I could almost taste your tongue.”
I laughed quietly, blowing my nose one final time before standing and brushing off the back of my trousers. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” I pressed my fingers to my lips before touching the top of the stone. “I love you, Matt… forever.”
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