[2014] Looking for Leon

by Shirley Benton

  I had visualised the Leon story ending in many different ways at very different times. When I’d gone looking for him immediately after losing him in the fire drill, I’d indulged myself in ridiculous thoughts of fate bringing us back together. I’d be going up an escalator in one of the hotels when I’d spot him coming down the corresponding one, and he would jump over the handrails and land perfectly on the step below mine, whereupon we’d be consumed with joy at our reunion and commence a bout of feverish kissing. Or I’d put my hand out to press a pedestrian light on the Strip, only for him to reach out at exactly the same time, at which point we’d fall into each other’s arms and celebrate our reunion right there and then on the Strip. That kind of Hollywood nonsense.

  After we launched the search for Leon, it was inevitable that I’d engage in idle daydreaming about what would happen after he’d been located – but, as time moved on, I’d accepted that the most likely scenario would be that he wouldn’t be found. I’d go back to my life, he’d get on with his, wherever it was. All of this would be an anecdote that would be brought up at dinner parties in years to come. Never in a million years could I have envisaged this outcome.

  I broke the silence. “I can understand now why he never made any attempt to contact me. I’d imagine the last thing on his mind was me when he has such a huge health issue to contend with.”

  Yes, I was digging. I wasn’t lying when I said that I understood why he hadn’t contacted me, but I wanted to hear more of the story. Had he thought I was a nutcase for having even tried? If he hadn’t been sick, did Bridget think he would have been interested, or would I have just been making a fool of myself one way or the other? I willed Bridget to say something – anything that would give me an indication of how Leon had felt about the whole thing. But she didn’t. She stared at the table instead.

  I exhaled slowly, feeling frustrated at the lack of information. But something more urgent was gnawing away at me too.

  “Bridget, why exactly did you come here today?”

  She raised her eyes to meet mine, then dropped them again.

  “It wasn’t for my sake. You didn’t come here to explain to me why Leon hadn’t contacted me, surely? Why would you go to all the effort to leave your dying son for the sake of someone who means nothing to you? You wouldn’t. So that only leaves one possibility. You need me for something. Am I right?”

  She didn’t look up as she nodded. When she spoke, it was to the rim of her glass.

  “I told him to forget about you. When he saw you on TV, he’d just had his latest round of treatment. It hadn’t gone well. He was in agony, and it was all for nothing – it hadn’t worked. It had been his final hope, and now, there was none. Just when he was at his lowest point, you were beamed into our living room. It didn’t take long for me to piece the story together.”

  “And you weren’t too happy about it . . .”

  “I wasn’t. The last thing he needed was a reminder of what could have been when he knew he had only weeks to live. I wanted his last few weeks to be as comfortable as possible.”

  “Bridget, I hope you’re not telling me that you stopped Leon from contacting me if that was what he wanted?”

  “No, no, no – absolutely not!” Back to the annoyed look. “The lack of contact was his decision. He said the time you spent together in Vegas was really something special, but he couldn’t bear having your memory of that tainted by seeing him as he is now. He was talking about you as if he’d met the woman he would marry in other circumstances.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He was heavily drugged at the time – he wouldn’t have told me anything otherwise, you know how lads are – but he seemed pretty adamant that in another world, you would have been the one. How you can know that after only one night, I don’t know, but it must have been one hell of a good night.” She looked at me as if she was wondering what sort of wild sex acts I had performed on her innocent son. “Before you say anything, he knew it was unfair on you. He said plenty of times that you’d be wondering why he hadn’t gotten in touch, after you’d gone to the ends of the earth trying to find ways to find him. He thought about ringing you and explaining the situation to you, but he was terrified that if the story got out, he’d have a camp of reporters and cameramen on our doorstep. He needed to be left to die in peace.” Her voice wobbled a bit as she said the world ‘die’. “But he never forgot you, and never stopped watching the coverage of you on TV.”

  “What did he think of it?” I braced myself for something I wouldn’t like.

  “He thought it was gas. He said it was typically ‘you’ stuff.”

  Phew! “He knows me well.”

  “So he says. And he was delighted for you when you became the Face of People Search. He knew that a job like that was a real coup for your profile.”

  Hmm. Lindy would have loved to have heard something like that. “But what’s changed? Has he decided he wants to see me now, after all?”

  “No. I’ve decided he wants to see you. Or rather, he needs to see you.”

  She ordered two more drinks from the hovering barman with a nod of her head and a flick of her wrist towards our glasses. He seemed very interested in our conversation, the nosy git.

  “Andie, you cannot fathom how much pain Leon is in. Once the edge wears off the painkillers, he’s howling. Our doctor said Leon should have died weeks ago. And yet, he’s still here, still fighting every day. Do you have any idea why?”

  I didn’t dare say anything.

  “He can’t let go of you. Mentally, he’s holding on for you. He doesn’t want you to see him as he is now, but he can’t let himself die either because of you. And that’s why I’m here. That’s why I’ve sacrificed precious minutes away from his bedside to come here, that’s why I’ve practically given people Chinese burns today to get them to tell me where you were, and that’s why I’m sitting here in the airport with you now with another round of alcohol on the way. You can’t take that flight home, Andie. My job now is to persuade you to stay, no matter what I have to do to get you to agree to it. I know it’s a big ask, but please stay. Just give me the chance to persuade you.”

  “No.” I stood up.

  “Ah, Andie!” She suddenly sounded a lot more Irish-mammy-esque. “Will you at least think about –”

  “If Leon needs me, the last thing I’m doing is spending another minute here drinking. Quick, let’s go. Take me to him.”

  Bridget instantly charged from her seat, grabbed my arm and led me away, as if she was terrified that I’d change my mind. I suddenly saw a glimpse of the woman who went mad with the hose pipe – she definitely had a manic edge to her.

  I tried to force all thoughts of Colm (and my already checked-in baggage no doubt winging its way to Ireland) out of my head as I booked a flight from Vegas to Phoenix.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The flight seemed to pass on fast forward, and Bridget drove like a rally driver from Phoenix Airport to her home, with me praying that all the whiskey had left her system. Along the way, she explained that Leon had lived in New York for the past ten years, but had moved home when he discovered he had cancer and had put his New York home up for sale. As we pulled up to Bridget’s house, I couldn’t help but admire it, inappropriate and all as house-spotting was at this time. When I thought about houses in Arizona (which wasn’t very often, or ever, before I met Leon), crumbling brickwork and arid gardens came to mind, surrounded by thirsty land that stretched into infinity, and looking progressively more parched the further away it was from the only house in a ten-mile stretch. In contrast, Leon’s parents lived in a gigantic, sprawling detached house relatively close to Phoenix, surrounded by other houses dotted on the landscape in a haphazard fashion.

  As we got out, I fought between the urge to throw myself in the front door and get this over with and the much more pressing need to find something, anything, else to do rather than go inside. I spotted some flowers. They’d do.

  “Are they . . . b
egonias?”

  Bridget looked in the direction of what was evidently a much-loved and tended-to flowerbed, even in these difficult times, then looked back at me with the appropriate level of contempt that my comment deserved.

  “Those are roses, Andie.”

  “Ah. Yeah. They are, aren’t they?”

  Her face softened as she sussed my game. “You’ve made it this far. You can go the rest of the way, surely?”

  I hoped I could. But the fact was, the man I’d spent so long obsessing about had been dying behind the walls of this house, while I’d been falling in love with the cameraman who’d been dispatched to capture our reunion. The whole thing had been a complete sham, and I felt like I’d been making a mockery of a dying man.

  I took a deep breath, and braced myself for the worst. I hadn’t seen a dying person in a very long time. I’d seen a dead person, of course, but . . . No, now wasn’t the time to think about that.

  I tried to imagine what lay ahead. The Leon that I knew was so full of vitality that it hurt to even dilute his presence in my head. I dreaded seeing the ravages of the disease on him in reality as Bridget led me through the front door into a wide, gleaming hall. I shook my head at the sight of it – somehow, I had known that Bridget’s house would be immaculate, regardless of the awful situation she found herself in – but I shook it in a good way. I almost felt affectionate towards her, even though she had such obvious potential to be a total cow – but our shared troubles were bonding us together, however briefly, and she suddenly felt like an old friend as she guided me on my wobbling legs down the hall. Although, I wasn’t sure if an old friend would manhandle me as if they were steering a rickety old wheelbarrow, but now wasn’t the time or the place to bring that up.

  I’d expected Leon to be in bed somewhere off the hall, and was building myself up to entering a dark musty room when he just suddenly appeared in front of me. A man who could only have been Leon’s father had pushed him out of what must have been the sitting room into the corridor. Yes, pushed him. It came as a shock, although I should have expected it. But any surprise I was feeling was nothing compared to what registered on Leon’s face as he looked up at me from his wheelchair.

  “Andie! Jesus Christ!” He looked at Bridget.

  She was smiling confidently, not a hint of worry on her face about her decision to bring me here.

  “You should know Andie well enough by now to know she won’t let you away with that Jesus Christ comment,” Bridget laughed, as if me turning up in Leon’s hall in his last days on earth was the most normal thing in the world. “It won’t have escaped her notice that it’s a very Irish thing to say.”

  “You might let me away with my Plastic Paddy ways just this once, Andie. I’m a bit under the weather at the moment . . .”

  “Just this once, so. And besides, it’s nice to hear your Irish streak coming out. All you need now is a big thick accent, and you’re there.” I was surprised at how casual I sounded.

  “I’ve been trying to help him out with that for years,” said his dad in an accent so thick he needed to hang cards around his neck to communicate effectively. I knew his name was Liam, but it didn’t seem like a great time to introduce myself. Besides, it wasn’t as if he didn’t know who I was, after the past few weeks.

  “Any idea what he just said there?” Leon asked me. “You might let me know if you do.” He threw back his head and laughed uproariously.

  I could only manage a screechy, nervous giggle in response. This was going far too well.

  “Okay, time to address the elephant in the room and all that,” Bridget announced importantly in what could only be described as a state-of-the-nation tone. “Leon, I know you didn’t want Andie to see you like this, but we’ve all had to accept that you’re dying, and you’ve accepted it yourself. Now, we need to give Andie the opportunity to accept it too. I didn’t bring up any son of mine to be the type who doesn’t finish what he starts . . .”

  “You only have one son,” Leon interjected. “Or are you about to spring someone else on me now? Or even wheel me onto the set of This Is Your Life? And yes, Andie, I was forced to watch that shit too growing up!”

  “And if you’d let her go back home without saying goodbye to her, you would have regretted it. It’s only fair and right that you swallow your pride and let this woman see you before you pop your clogs.”

  “Bridget! Good God!” I couldn’t help it – the words flew out, as my words are prone to do.

  “Why are you both so taken with profanities?” Bridget shook her head. “Well met,” she said to her husband.

  “Mom doesn’t do sugarcoating,” Leon said to me. “You’ll get used to it sometime around the time she’ll pass you the brochure for the best coffins over dessert. I’m toast, and I know it. Apparently, you had to know it too.”

  I took a nervous breath. “I hope you’re not angry at us – at me – for coming here and –”

  He waved away the rest of my sentence. “No. It’s . . . pretty damn amazing to see you again. In the flesh, I mean. I’ve seen plenty of you on TV.”

  “In every sense,” Bridget said. I hoped she was referring to the horrible knickers pictures that had surfaced on some awful entertainment show, and not something else that I wasn’t aware of . . .

  “Hey, quit it, Mom. And when I said I wasn’t mad, that was addressed to Andie. You are a whole different story. I’ll deal with you later.”

  “I did the right thing, and we both know it. You, my darling, don’t have time left to be faffing about when it comes to making decisions.”

  I threw Bridget another horrified look, but Leon just smiled at me. “The terrible thing is, she’s right. And I don’t have much energy for arguments these days, so I’m not exactly a formidable adversary.”

  I smiled politely, trying to get my head around the dynamics of this family. Liam just stood there, periodically staring up at the ceiling and frowning at it when he spotted cracks or cobwebs (or possibly nothing – since he was looking over my head, this was pure speculation on my part). Leon and Bridget seemed to have decided that the best coping strategy was to make light of it all, while I . . . well, I was tempted to make enquiries about where they’d bought their rather elaborate coat-stand, just to keep the conversation flowing.

  Thankfully, Leon stopped me from saying anything too stupid about coat-stands, or the various other silence-fillers I’d spotted and was about to pounce on.

  “So, are you shocked?”

  “Not as much as I thought I would be. You look – fairly okay, actually!”

  “And you lie quite well.”

  “No, you look much better than I’d expected, if I’m being honest.”

  “Would I make a good poster boy for the sick and dying?”

  “You’d be about as good as they’d get, I’d say.”

  “Again, I can see why you two got on so well,” Bridget said wryly.

  “Do you want to come into my room, before these two relics drive you mad?” said Leon. He raised an eyebrow over his shoulder at his father who grinned back at him.

  “Yes, go ahead,” said Bridget. “I’ll leave out some drinks and sandwiches on the kitchen table – Andie, pop out in about ten minutes, and they’ll be ready.”

  Liam wheeled him off to his room. I followed obediently. What lay ahead was the last thing I expected. I’m ashamed to admit to yet another clichéd expectation related to the sick and dying – this time, the Bedroom of the Dying Person – but I honestly had expected drawn, heavy curtains, dank air, a musty smell, and a low bed with a bedpan and bucket beside it. Leon’s room was a sunburst of almost blinding light, with one wall entirely made of glass. The nearest curtain to this room was back at home with Isolde, and so it should have been. The wall of glass opened onto a glorious garden, full of cherry-blossom trees with petals dancing in the air, sturdy ash trees, and the obligatory palm trees. The entire garden was framed by rows of uniformly planted foliage that I suspected were orange trees, and was d
otted at its corner points with silk-floss plants.

  “This is why I never bring women in here,” Leon said to his dad. “They just ignore me, and zone in on the garden instead.”

  “Back home, we call this a football pitch. Wow.” It was a suitable garden for this abode, though. Everything about the house screamed luxury.

  I looked around the room. Leon’s bed was a huge mass of white pillows and a pristine duvet cover – wholly unlike any of my hospital-bed scenarios. I felt like whipping my sunglasses out of my bag as I took it all in.

  My eyes fell on his overflowing bookshelves. “Oh, you’re a fan of Daniel Larch too!” I walked over to his extensive collection of Daniel Larch books. It looked like he even had copies in different languages. I guess Leon also spoke Spanish, German and French, then. Wow.

  “I’m a big reader. Care to go outside?”

  I nodded. Liam slid a pane of glass back, and wheeled Leon onto grass that had evidently been freshly cut only that morning.

  Liam muttered something completely incomprehensible, then went back inside. “Gone to help Mom,” Leon said by way of explanation. “Aka, giving us some space.”

  I pulled out a seat from a set of patio furniture, and brought it over beside Leon’s wheelchair. “Probably not a bad idea. We should really talk about this whole thing.”

  “Probably. You first.”

  “Why me?”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t make me pull out my ‘I’m dying’ card!”