“I’ve got to go.” Jess twisted in her seat, and patted down her hair. She wriggled so her skirt would cover her thighs, and she reached for the door handle.
“Just give it a minute, Jess. You just got here.”
Her face brightened then, as she turned to face him. “Jake, come with me.”
“Oh.” He shook his head, slowly back and forth and Jess felt like he was moving in slow motion, as if time had slowed, as if she had entered a new dimension where nothing made sense and where she couldn’t breathe. “No,” he said.
“No?”
She was silent a while, and so was he, and then she said, very softly, “So you love me, but you can’t come with me, to support me? To help me?”
“I would like to, Jess. Truly, I would. But I can’t. I can’t go with you. Please try to understand.”
“I think I understand. I understand completely.”
“Good.” Jake sat up straighter in his seat and Jess looked down now at her breasts, which were still bare, and she covered them with her palms, and then folded her arms around her chest. Never had she felt so naked, so alone. She grabbed for her top.
“I just… I can’t leave just now,” he explained.
“I see.”
“And I’m no good at death. I just…can’t deal with it. Not now.”
“You’re no good at death?”
“That came out wrong—“
“I see.” Her voice was tight and she felt heat and tingling in her face. “I see. You only do life. And lies. And secrets. And sex. You live fast and free, but everything else is off the table.”
“Jess, you don’t know. You don’t know what’s… what’s happening to me.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
It was as though the car spewed her out then, ejected her. She couldn’t stay seated another moment. She wriggled up and out, struggling to push her skirt down as she popped open the door, and this is how she spilled out of Jake’s Ferrari, nearly tripping over her own suitcase as she bent, doubled over, to finish buttoning her blouse. She was braless and supposed she would stay that way. She wondered if the men in the security room, monitoring the parking lot, were having a good time with this one. She wondered whether some paparazzi would catch this. Maybe there would be something juicy now for the next tart who tried to research Jake on the internet; the next floozy who tried to figure out what exactly he was hiding. Then her parents could be really proud. Now their daughter was a dropout and a Hollywood whore, and because she had been a coward and ran away from them, her grandmother was dead.
She booked the next flight home and charged her credit card once more.
***
Grandma’s crocheted slippers.
Her basement bedroom.
The new heart medication.
Grandma had been dizzy. She’d been all alone. She’d slipped. Jess knew each of these things to be her fault, and everyone who told Jess not to blame herself secretly did blame her. Otherwise, the thought wouldn’t have even crossed their minds.
And now her neck was broken, and Monica would forever have the memory of pounding down the basement stairs to see Jess, to help her once again, and of seeing Grandma there, at the base, broken.
Jess had gone off to be someone she wasn’t. She had gone off, looking for the fast life and the free life and now someone was dead. Now she had a secret she would never be able to share. Something for which she’d never forgive herself.
If she had been stronger, if she had stayed in medical school, where she belonged, Grandma would still be alive. She would be coming out to the graduation in a few weeks’ time. She would make that coconut cake she was famous for, and she would press a fifty-dollar bill into Jess’s palm and she would tell her she loved her and she was proud of her.
But now she was dead.
The plane dipped and Jess thought she might vomit. She closed her eyes.
She was done with this. She would return to medical school. Who cared if she hated it? At least then she was helping people, not hurting them. Now she had something to atone for.
Dad was picking her up at the airport. They had all been shocked to learn that she had flown away that morning. How she wished the flight would last forever.
A Persian man was watching her from across the aisle. His eyes were yellow where they should be white. Another man whispered tenderly to his young daughter, who was clutching a stuffed rabbit. The child’s mother sat on the other side. She was heavyset, with permed brunette hair and seashell earrings and Jess imagined the woman’s prosaic, contented life. The playdates for the darling child and photos shared over email with grandparents; wine and cheese parties with neighbors and potluck dinners where she would try the new recipe from Family Circle, something that involved wrapping bacon around a vegetable. The parents probably had good jobs and commuted to them each day and made love deep in the night and they lived well, without needing to have torrid sex with playboys in parking lots. They were never in danger of washing downstream during raging desert storms. They didn’t kill their grandparents.
Grandma. Was she really gone?
How could that be true, when just this morning…?
Jess had made her peace with death. She had taken her classes in grief counseling. She had seen things happen in dimly lit rooms where families gathered. She had been present when the veil was lifted, when women described seeing their husbands or their mothers or their fathers or their tiny children, beckoning to them from a silvery light. She had seen peace overtake people as they slipped into someplace beyond, maybe a hand outstretched to reach toward a love that surpassed anything they had known in this skin.
But they weren’t all this way. There were passings marked by panic and desperation, as well. There were those who clutched at the bedrails. Who struggled to sit up and to leave; who cried, “Help me!” until Jess wanted to cover her ears.
Had Grandma suffered? Jess winced. She couldn’t bear the idea that she had suffered.
Forgive me, Grandma. Forgive me.
Too soon, Jess had landed, and she checked her phone. No call from Jake, but one from Evan. His voice was kind; his tone was soft and practiced. “Jess. I just heard. Call me if you want to talk. I’d like to help if I can. In the meantime, know that I’m praying for you.”
Prayer.
What did that mean to her? She tried then, to pray, and she found she didn’t know what to say. Just “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She shivered, and she felt alone.
The airport was too much. Too many sights and smells and emotions. A hunched group of elderly people clutched one another’s hands. They wore matching souvenir T-shirts from Reno, Nevada. Their mouths hung open. A middle-aged couple, the woman’s mouth pinched, told her husband he’d packed too many things, that he needed to get out his boarding pass. She rolled her eyes at the Styrofoam container in his hand and told him he couldn’t bring his chicken salad sandwich on board the plane. “No one wants to smell your pickle, Harold,” she said, and this statement instantly struck Jess as funny and yet she couldn’t bring herself to change her expression. There was no laughter or amusement. Just herself, observing, from somewhere above.
Her grandfather, he had died while she was in medical school, and she’d been sad, but she hadn’t gone to the funeral. She hadn’t had the time. The service was scheduled during finals week, and Grandma had said she understood. Grandma had said that Jess would be a doctor someday, and that meant all of her time and her sacrifices would pay off.
Jess’s chin quivered. How could Grandma be gone? And how could she have left her, just that morning, all alone, without even checking on her. Without walking up the stairs and saying goodbye. What if Grandma had been coming down the stairs to wake her, to greet her, to see her, thinking she was still lying in bed? What if she had been coming for Jess when she slipped? When she fell?
And then she saw her father. His eyebrows knit in, his mouth set in a tight line. Slowly and softly, he told her the details. How mom had shrunk to
her knees. How no one had known Jess was going to California that day. How she mustn’t blame herself.
“Your mother is worried about you,” he said then.
“I’m home now, so nothing more to worry about.”
“You’re coming home to stay?”
She nodded.
“Or at least until you go back to school, I suppose,” He looked at her then, too steadily, and when he returned his eyes to the road, he had to swerve back into his lane. “Have you given any more thought to that?”
“Can we not talk about it just now, Dad? Can we just focus on Grandma and on Mom?”
He leaned forward then and snapped on the radio; something he never, ever did.
If she had died in that river, tumbling amid the rocks; if she had succumbed to the force of the current, of the flood, then Grandma would still be alive. Grandma would not have been there alone. She would have been with family, mourning Jess. What difference did a life make? What difference did it make whether it was she who had died or Grandma?
Dad plunked his hand on her shoulder then, still staring straight ahead at the road.
“It might be a good time to think these things through, Jess. These times—sad as they are—can remind us of what’s important in our lives. They can remind us what we are put on this earth to do, and you were put on earth to be a doctor.”
Jess placed her hand on his in lieu of a response.
“Thanks for coming home right away, Jess. We all need you. We need you more than you know.”
She swallowed hard and wished she could tell him that she wasn’t the hero, the healer, or the savior he thought she was. And she never had been.
***
Jake
How long had Jake’s head laid against the steering wheel? How long had his body slumped forward, no breath for his lungs? A late model Subaru was honking. It needed one of the parking spaces he was straddling. How long ago had she tumbled from the car, half dressed? Her bra was still there, beside him. Cold now to the touch.
He had let her go.
But he couldn’t leave just now. He was in a fight for his own life. Once she understood that, she would come back to him. She would forgive him. He would need to find a way to tell her the truth, and when he did, he would call. He would tell her everything, and she would come back to him. And they would have some time together. At least a little time.
Fifteen
Jess
Days passed in obscurity, an itchy dimness in which she thought the same thoughts, again and again. Felt the same sensations and emotions. It was all a gray smattering of blandness tempered only by stabs of grief and guilt.
Her mother’s eyes were glassy, her hair disarranged. She told Jess it had been an accident. She told Jess that she mustn’t blame herself. She said it over and over, too many times to count.
Evan had reached out to her, and, eventually, Jess spoke with him, mostly just to stop him from calling, and one day he asked her to get some coffee and she said okay. His eyes brightened when he smiled at her, and he’d put his hand on hers, across the table, and this was rather nice.
Jake had called, too. So many calls from Jake. And, yet, what was there to say? Each time she saw his name on her phone, she felt a bitter taste in her mouth, a stinging sensation in the back of her throat.
He would have to come here. This is what she’d decided. And he hadn’t.
If he really wanted her, he would leave his home and he would come here and he would put his hand on hers, across the table. He would share in the sometimes ugly realities of day-to-day existence. He would leave his shining, open-air penthouse views where every solution to every problem could be bought and packaged, wrapped and presented. But he hadn’t.
The week passed, and then another, and the thickness in her throat and the exhaustion and the sleeplessness, they were all here to stay, as was the reality that she was all alone. She would be going back to school soon. She would finish what she started. She would choose a path and she would continue on, even if she had fallen out of love with the idea of it, at present. Evan told her he would help. He had given her all kinds of encouragement already in that kind, even, flat voice of his.
***
Jake
Elizabeth and Miranda were calling it a “significant backslide,” as though discussing something that had occurred to an object.
He knew they wanted to blame it on his week away. His drinking and running and paragliding and horseback riding. They wanted to blame it on the fact that he hadn’t stayed flat on his back. But they all knew. He’d felt wonderful after that week. Better than ever. He was in love, at last, with a woman how made him feel whole—not broken or alone, but complete. Unstoppable.
Still, Elizabeth and Miranda had wanted to give him all the lectures that they had given in the past: Didn’t he know he was killing himself by refusing to rest? Didn’t he understand he was supposed to take care of himself, to rest and sleep when he was undergoing treatment? Why didn’t he want to give himself the best chance he could? Didn’t he want to beat this thing? Didn’t he understand that he actually had a shadow of a chance to do it? That this is what they had all been working toward? Didn’t he know how much everyone wanted him to live? Didn’t he want to live for her, for Jess?
Why hadn’t he told Jess? From the beginning? He scoffed. Because he was stupid. He was an immature little boy who didn’t ever want to show his weakness, especially not to the woman he had spent his life adoring and fantasizing about. When he was finally with her, he longed to live in that place for as long as he could. He wanted to be that Jake Lassiter for as long as possible. The adventurer, bestselling author, amazing lover, superhero man of action.
He despised the idea that he was a weak and sick man, and he would never let a bunch of entertainment reporters photograph his gradual deterioration. He would never allow them to see him decaying, slowly wasting away in a hospital bed. It would make his book and his message into a joke: The man who lives fast and free dies slowly. With pain and weakness. All alone.
He’d been so careful to create this environment where he could hide his condition from the world, for as long as possible. He had even gone so far as to create a private treatment room on his estate. A place for him to receive the injections. A place for Elizabeth to live, to watch over him, to collect her data. To modify his dosages. To see what exactly they were dealing with here.
It wasn’t too late. Jake breathed in deeply. He watched his chest rise and fall, and he thought about her. About how she made him feel. With Jess, he felt more alive than ever. With her, he could run, and could demonstrate the depth of his love. Together they could soar to dizzying heights. With her, he could forget everything. He could actually believe Miranda when she said he had a chance, however slim, of beating this thing.
And that meant he had to tell her. He had to tell her everything, and then she would come and she would be by his side. He would tell her now. He knew just how he would do it.
If only she would answer her phone.
That day, he called dozens of times. Eventually, he even considered explaining himself in a text message. Something she couldn’t fail to see. But what was he to say?
Wish I could be there, but I’m on crazy experimental medication that requires hospitalization. Terrible fatal disease. Losing battle without you. I need you. You could save my life. Come back to me when you are ready.
He very nearly pressed ‘send.’ But, then he shook his head and gripped his phone. He didn’t feel right saying that kind of thing over a text, so he truncated it:
“Jess, I need you. Without you, I’ll die. Call me.”
That said it all, and that would do it. It would at least grant him a phone call. Wouldn’t it?
***
Jess
“Jess, I need you. Without you, I’ll die. Call me.”
She’d read the message twice before deleting it.
It reminded her of the opening lines of his book. The ones he said had been writt
en not by himself but by some money-grubbing editor.
There was an arrogance to it. An entitlement that made her shudder. If he needed her so bad, he would have come with her. If he loved her, he would have been there.
A few days later, Jake sent this one: “I need your bank information so I can pay your student loans. Call me.”
At first, the message had sent a jolt through her body; a familiar tingle through her limbs, but then she thought again of what that made her. Accepting money in exchange for what they shared. Because that’s all it was. It was sex. There was no intimacy or depth to their relationship. He had proven that when he let her roll out of his car, alone and grieving. So she would never take his money. She would go back to school and she would finish her degree. It was all arranged now, and, eventually, she would find something in her profession that she could love. Eventually she would find something in her life that she could love.
Jake Lassiter thought he knew about love—about how to live—but he didn’t. To love someone meant to care for her, every day. It meant letting her inside. Confiding in her. Allowing her to confide in him. She winced as she thought of the fool she had been with him. The risks she had taken. She could have gotten herself killed. Living fast and free and not caring about the consequences of leaving your normal life and your family. That wasn’t her. That wasn’t how she had chosen to live.
Jake had promised her an adventure so profound that it would change the way she thought about herself. And it had. Here she was. A person who abandoned her family. Who abandoned what she knew to be true and right and good, whether med school, or her poor grandmother, in order to go and… what? Have crazy, wild sex with someone who didn’t care enough about her to hold her hand at a funeral?
At the end of that path was only herself. Alone. Jake hadn’t even tried to call in days. He had moved on, evidently. And so would she.
***
Jake
Jake could feel it now, taking him over, a serpent coiling through his bloodstream, its black tongue lashing at his bones, his joints, his tendons; the venom radiating torment from the inside out.
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