Rusty Lovers

by Lilah Nichols

  Emptying their safety deposit box yielded the deed to the house, the title to his car and Benny’s birth certificate. Any jewelry that had been there was long gone, though he did find an envelope with some savings bonds. He sighed and tossed those into the bag too.

  The remnants of his past life didn’t add up to much. The best things he had to show for it were his career and Benny. When he examined the rest, he wondered what he’d been doing. Or maybe it was just Eliza that made him comprehend his heart could feel so much more. Life hadn’t been bad, it had been secure, and accomplished what he needed, to provide a home and raise a child. Now, however, he wanted more, and it was finally within reach!

  The final meeting with the mediator couldn’t come soon enough for him. He dressed up in a suit and stowed his binders into his briefcase. He felt well armored, and even figured he had a way to help Abby keep the house if she wanted it so damn bad.

  The drive to the mediator’s office was a nightmare of traffic, and even so Frank still managed to walk into the waiting room early. He took a seat and tried to calm his pounding heart. It would all be over soon.

  His phone buzzed in his inside coat pocket, and he checked it, smiling when he saw Eliza’s quick text. “Good Luck this afternoon. Thinking of you.” He typed back a quick, “Thx” and tried to relax in his chair.

  At first, he thought he was the first to arrive since all the doors were closed and even the receptionist had looked annoyed when he arrived, but other professionals were arriving and being ushered into a back room. The noise of voices from the conference room grew. And he thought he heard his name. And then Abby’s voice. And then Benny’s.

  He rose and strode to the meeting room, pushing the door open and taking in the group that all stopped talking when he entered the room. None of the group had taken a seat yet. Abby and Benny were on one side with Paul Charleston, the mediator. Two others stood on the far side of the table, Abby’s lawyer, Adam Perkins, and a polished man in a sky blue linen suit that Frank assumed was Dr. Cohen.

  It was very apparent that all the occupants of the room were working together.

  This wasn’t a final ironing out of the financial details. This was an ambush. As Frank stepped into the room and set his briefcase on the table, Abby broke away from Benny and flew into his arms. “Oh my God, Frank. Thank God you’re here.” He held her, feeling her shaking. She seemed more fragile than usual. She had lost that healthy glow she had had for the first few months after she flipped him off and walked out. That was ingrained in his memory, the flush in her cheeks and the anger in her eyes as she had said, “Sionara, Frank.”

  He stood in the meeting room and wondered what the hell was going on. He met Benny’s eyes across the room, but his son looked away almost immediately.

  Something definitely was not right. Getting a hold of himself, Frank got Abby seated at the table and waited as the others arranged themselves, all except Dr. Cohen who stepped forward to shake his hand. “Sorry about the circumstances, Frank. I’m Dr. Stanley Cohen.”

  Frank nodded, feeling his anger rise. “Of Family therapy? A little late for therapy, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, no. No. Not of Family Therapy. Director of Main Line Oncology.” He paused a moment to let that sink in. “I have been treating Abby for about four months now.”

  Frank dropped down into his chair, feeling the world drop out from under his feet. “Tell me all the details,” he croaked. And between Benny and the oncologist, the full disaster was revealed. Abby had cancer. She had been dealing with the diagnosis for almost a year, but putting off treatment while she worked out her new life, and never once thought to inform him of it.

  Dammit, she’d had a tumor in her brain, and hadn’t told anyone for months. She had been driving to the center for radiation treatment by herself. That asshole Kendrick had been all supportive at the start and when treatment got difficult and it came to driving her down to the cancer center he had cut and run.

  Voices were droning on around him, discussing the prognosis, the treatment, and the changes that would need to be made once the memory loss got worse.

  Abby was patting his hand and apologizing. “I should never have taken you for granted, Frank. I want to go back to the way things were before. Back when we were happy, the three of us in the house.”

  Frank pulled away from her, astonished. “You can’t be serious. It’s been two years. The house is almost sold! We’ve spent thousands of dollars on lawyers. What is it you think is going to happen here? I thought we were setting the court date to sign the final paperwork.”

  Abby pushed back her chair and started to stand, covering her face to hide the tears, but Dr. Cohen held up his palm to stop her. “It’s all right, Abby, this is a lot for him to take in. Sit down.”

  Then the doctor turned to Frank and explained. “I highly recommend she stay in the house she’s most familiar with, as her short term memory has been eroded. Staying with people she’s most familiar with and places where she feels secure will keep the stress to a minimum and allow her to remain independent as long as possible. We have a plan for treatment of this tumor, and there’s medication to stem the progression of the memory loss, but she’s not going to be able to work, and in time not able to care for herself.”

  “So I am the best candidate? Good old Frank will drop everything and come home?” he bit out angrily.

  “Dad!” Benny interjected, but the mediator cut him off.

  “There are alternatives. She could continue to try to work to keep up her health insurance and probably make the disease progress much faster. Adding COBRA coverage to your divorce decree will provide her with 36 months of health insurance, but after that, it will get expensive, if she can even find coverage.”

  Adam Perkins, Esq. Was incredibly direct. “Or you could sign over care of her and make her a ward of the state. She’ll be fine for a while, but the treatment would be unreliable.”

  “Please, Frank,” Abby begged, “You swore it. You promised for better, for worse!”

  He felt blindsided. He had sensed the ambush when he walked in, but nothing could have prepared him for this. All the little things were starting to make sense now though. The confusion over what items had been divided or sold. Why she wanted the house so badly, and why she suddenly wanted to stay on his health insurance. The community college offered a damn good policy.

  He stared at Abby in disbelief. “Maybe you don’t remember hiring movers to come load up all our valuables while I was at work.” Frank bit out a laugh. “I don’t know why I was surprised. You made it clear that Kendrick was way cooler and more ambitious than I ever was.”

  “I did not!” Abby gasped.

  “You said it to my face! That I was going nowhere, and I dragged you down, being so boring.”

  “I can’t believe I ever said anything like that. You’re making that up!”

  A soft cough broke into their conversation. “I hate to say it, Mom, but you did,” Benny said guiltily. “I was there. But none of that matters, really. We need to settle on a plan to help you, mom. Laying blame and arguing is wasting time.”

  Frank ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “What, exactly are you asking of me,” he bit out. “And for how long?” He turned and looked at Abby. She looked tired, dark circles ringed her eyes. Her usual high-energy polished look was gone. She looked older. Sadder. “Are you sure you’ve been to the best cancer center? The best one for your type of tumor?”

  She looked confused for a minute, like she didn’t know, but both the lawyer and the oncologist replied in unison. “She has.”

  Frank felt like he was drowning. His future with Eliza was fast disappearing, and it made his heart start to clench. He wasn’t sure how she’d react. Would she understand if he took on this responsibility?

  Abby was crying again. “Don’t you love me anymore?” God, he could see the confusion in her eyes. How had he missed it before? “Why don’t you want to stay married to me?” she pleased. “We always ag
reed that marriage was forever. No excuses.”

  Frank grimaced. His estranged wife wanted ‘forever’ now that her plans for independence were crumbling. He sat and struggled to find a way out.

  Paul Charleston, the mediator, clasped a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “You can’t abandon her, Frank.”

  It was hours later that Frank left the building and wandered blindly to his car. He tossed the briefcase into the backseat and sank down behind the wheel. Anger burned its way through his chest. He had listened for hours to the treatment plans, the prognosis, the amount of care Abby would eventually need. Half the time she had looked at him with hope in her eyes, and the other half her eyes shot daggers, only when she noticed him looking it went back to a dull stare.

  Benny had sat beside him and listened too, agreeing with the outline and volunteering to do his best for his mom. They had torn up the divorce papers and agreed to take the house off the market. His real estate agent had been shocked and angry now that she’d gotten word of a couple offers that might be in the pipeline. However, she had agreed to remove the property from the listings.

  He felt shell shocked and taken advantage of. Angry that his whole life seemed planned for him, just when he had found out how to really live. And holy crap, what was Eliza going to say? She’d kick him to the curb and never forgive him. He pulled out his phone and sent her a text. “On my way to your house. We need to talk. Things got BAD.”

  He could barely concentrate on the road, his inner monologue trying to work out how he was going to explain all this to Eliza. He realized how much he hated the words they’d been throwing at him all afternoon, words like Can’t and Must. “You can’t abandon her, Frank. You must do what’s right and take care of her!”

  Eliza knew something had to be very wrong. Frank sounded upset in his last text, and he hadn’t answered any of the messages she had sent since. She told Shelly she was leaving for the day and headed home, only to end up pacing in her front hallway as she waited for Frank. Today was the day they were finally supposed to know when they were getting their freedom. But Frank hadn’t exactly sounded free.

  She met him in the doorway after she watched him sprint down the walkway and leap up the steps. He stepped inside and the look on his face… he looked devastated.

  “Come in, Frank. What is it?” Eliza let him pull her over to the sofa and they sat down together. He reached out and held her hands, unable to look up at her. Eliza started to get a very bad feeling. She squeezed his hands. “Whatever it is… tell me. I can’t help if I don’t know.”

  Frank sank down onto the floor in front of her, going onto his knees and burying his face in her lap. His arms wrapped around her legs and held her close. She could barely hear his voice, it was so muffled at first.

  Her hand moved to his hair, stroking softly, and his shoulders started to shake.

  “It was all of them, five on one,” he began. “Her, Benny, the doctor, the mediator, and the lawyer.”

  “Wait, the doctor? The therapist?”

  He shook his head against her thighs. “A real doctor. An oncologist. She’s got some kind of tumor in her brain, slowly eating away at her memories and language ability. She wants the house because any major change would be difficult. The doctors are saying she needs the familiarity.”

  “Ok. I am sure we can come up with some way to afford to keep it. Get your name off it and set up some kind of trust.”

  Frank let out a small moan of anguish and held her tighter. “She needs expensive treatment. It’s going to be too much for her to handle, especially if she can’t work. The options… and poor Benny. I can’t dump this on him. He can’t make enough to handle all this.”

  “What is it you are trying to tell me? That you don’t think the two of us can oversee all this?” Eliza’s heart was starting to pound. The whole situation was crazy. “And take a step back, Frank. Think about it. Exactly who is it that set up this mediation appointment? Who was it who led you into that ambush? Was is her, Abby? Giving you no escape and no backup?”

  “It doesn’t matter if it was Benny or Abby.” He sounded defeated. “They are my family, and they need me.”

  She could feel her insides shriveling up, praying he wasn’t going to say what she didn’t think any man in his right mind would be thinking.

  “She wants to stay married. She begged me not to divorce her. She can’t remember all that’s gone on for the last twelve months. She’s devastated that I would abandon her, leave her as a ward of the state.”

  Eliza wanted to shake him. He had to know Abby was using him. “You are her best option, Frank. She needs a nursemaid. She needs health insurance. She needs your old house. You are forgetting she was moving on to greener pastures long before she got sick. She wanted some hot shot stock trader, and she dumped you, good old dependable Frank. But now that she’s got nothing else, who does she turn to? Dependable Frank.”

  “But you knew how I felt about marriage. How I never wanted to divorce.”

  It was then she actually got it. He was going to stay in the marriage. He was going to move back into the house and provide what that stupid bitch wanted and needed, because she had gotten to him first. A woman who would never love him or desire him again, who hadn’t loved or desired him in years. And now Eliza was going to lose him. He was choosing another over her.

  Eliza squeezed her eyes shut as the hot burn of tears flooded them. The sting of them burned through her nasal passages and took her breath away. She tried to swallow, but it felt like someone had taken a knife and slashed it across her throat. It had closed up so tight that she couldn’t breathe. She remembered the feeling well.

  Her mind raced back to the night six years prior when she had gotten a stumbling phone call from one of the local cops, telling her there had been some kind of accident, and she needed to get down to the emergency room at St. Mary’s. She would never forget that night. The bright lights of the emergency room, the nurses behind the desk who didn’t seem able to tell her anything, just directing her to a crowded waiting area.

  At first she had sat patiently, wondering how it was her husband could have been in an accident so far from home. Jim had been out golfing all day, but as evening fell, she had gotten a worried feeling in the pit of her stomach. No messages from him, no offers to pick up milk on the way home had appeared on her cell. And then that phone call had come.

  She made it to the hospital in record time, only to be shown a seat on the fringe of the busy ER. Staff was hurrying everywhere, but after half an hour she couldn’t take not knowing anymore, and she had waited in line to speak to the nurse at the desk again. “He’s still in surgery, Mrs. Hamilton. He’s in good hands. I will let you know when we hear something.”

  It had become a revolving scene, Eliza fretting in her seat in the corner, watching the activity of the busy ER. Ambulances arriving, and patients being wheeled in on gurneys.

  As the evening wore on, volunteers had stopped by occasionally, offering to fetch her water or fruit, but she hadn’t been able to eat. She tried to read the out of date magazines on the side table, but eventually, she had gotten up to inquire again, only the nurse had been less happy at her interruption. “I know it’s hard to wait, but we are doing everything we can.”

  “Could I maybe know what room he will be headed to, so I could wait there, out of everyone’s way?”

  The nurse had at least checked the computer and her clipboard before responding, “I don’t have any information about that yet, either. We haven’t assigned a room number yet.”

  Eliza had turned to go back to her seat, resigned to more waiting when she’d noticed the emergency doors slide open and realized it was her mom and Jenny hurrying through the double doors. The pair had their arms wrapped around each other, which was odd. They hesitated in the vestibule, scanning, and then zeroed in on Eliza. The look on Jenny’s face said it all, and Eliza stood frozen while realization dawned.

  The nurse’s words were code. “We’re doing
everything we can” really meant “We are doing everything we can to find your next of kin to get them down here.”

  “He’s in good hands” really meant “He’s in God’s hands.” And “We haven’t assigned a room number yet” meant “We haven’t assigned a room number yet because he isn’t going to a room, he’s going to the morgue.”

  The tears had started burning their way out of her eyes and they hadn’t stopped flowing, just run harder as Jenny ran to her mother and held her when her legs would have given out. Eliza’s throat felt closed off, like an icy hand held it in an unrelenting grip. And then her mind had blanked. Jenny had somehow stood strong when her mother and grandmother had fallen apart.

  The three of them huddled there in the bright lights. Jane had tears streaming down her face and her arms wrapped around her daughter, patting her head like she was a toddler and saying “Aw, honey” over and over.

  Eliza knew that pain well, her heart constricting, making it painful to breathe. Her throat muscles clamped down so hard she couldn’t swallow or speak. She felt it, her world closing in on herself as she felt Frank get ripped from her life. Wait, as he elected to walk out of her life in favor of an ex who would have thrown him in the trash if he didn’t come with health benefits and couldn’t act as a home health aide.

  Her fingers clenched and unclenched in his hair as she repeated the line in her head, “He’s all right. He’s ok. He’s not dead…”

  She tried to blink away the tears, but that only seemed to blur her vision more. The searing sting in her sinuses eased and she found her voice.

  “You know she is using you.”

  Frank moaned and rubbed his face against her leg. “I know.” Eliza could feel the dampness of his tears on her slacks. It burned her ego that he would knowingly allow himself to be taken advantage of in this manner. But then he wouldn’t be Frank if he would toss aside a woman he had devoted himself to so easily. She had picked him for that quality. She had even pointed it out to him, “You have the potential for that kind of fidelity.” Those were her exact words.