I don’t really know why I flew all the way there to see her. I freaked out when I heard that she was in labor and that the baby was suffering from distress. My impulse was to run to her despite knowing that she had a husband who loved her and who would do anything for her. Ailey’s reaction was expected. Hell, I’d do the same if she was my wife and her ex showed up after my son was born. I didn’t push it, I just bowed my head and left. But not before I saw him enter the nursery and gently cradle his son in his arms. He bent over to kiss his baby’s forehead and my breath caught at the sight. He has her baby. She will never leave him. And as I walked towards the elevator, away from the long hallway with glass walls, I saw her. What others may have seen as a tired and drawn new mother wearing the ugly green hospital gown, I saw as the most radiant and serene woman in the world, one who wore a big smile as she approached her husband and their new child.
“Jesse, tell me, are you in Chicago?” My mother had left me three messages which were urgently delivered to me by the front desk as soon as I returned to the Palmer House hotel.
“Ma.” I answered, evasively. I paced the room looking for the bar key to pour myself a drink.
“Don’t ‘Ma’ me, Jesse Lorenzo. Are you in Chicago?”
Oh my God. She hasn’t called me that since I was eight years old.
Found it. I opened the bar and pulled out a mini bottle of vodka. “Yes.”
“Why? Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“She was in distress during labor. I had to see her.”
“Oh, Jesse.” Her voice is tinged with sadness. “What happened when you got there?”
“Ailey was in the nursery. I saw the baby. We had some words and then I left.”
“So you didn’t see her? Isabel?”
“I saw her from afar.” Her beautiful face flashed in my mind. My heart still hurt to think of her.
“Jesse. You have to give this up. Honor the sacrament of marriage, son. She isn’t yours anymore. Show some respect for her husband.”
“HER HUSBAND?” I raised my voice. “He stole her away from me and I have to worry about him?”
“You’re upset and being unreasonable. Listen to me. Take the next flight back to LA and leave that family alone. They’re a family now, one that you’ll also have someday. Please, leave her be.”
I wasn’t about to argue with my mother. I knew that everything she said was right and most importantly, I wanted to get her off the phone.
“You’re right, Ma. I’m sorry. This was an impulsive move on my part. I’m taking the first flight out tomorrow morning. I’ll see you back at home in three days.”
***
“I’m happy in a different way. I’m content. You can never replicate the feelings of a first love, Jesse. The passion, the elation, the sorrow, the pain. When it’s the first time, everything is so much more magnified. You feel like it’s the end of the world when you’re not together. A second love is more subdued. It’s more careful, more cautious. But it’s still love and when it comes with respect and admiration and friendship, it trumps passion and elation any time.”
—Isabel to Jesse, The Light in the Wound
“So, you’re not attending the signing tomorrow, right? You’d better tell me if you are, Jesse. I’d like to be there with her if you plan to go.” Alicia’s tone was stern and unconvinced.
“I’ve got a day trip to Macau all planned out and I can’t miss it, so no, I won’t be there. Don’t worry,” I said reassuringly. Another lie I had to make in addition to ten years of false pretenses. I had to do it. We were meeting to close on a franchising agreement between her mother’s company and my chain of restaurants. It was something that I really didn’t have to attend, but I’d be damned if I didn’t take this opportunity to come face to face with her. Alone. Isabel never liked surprises and she sure as hell wouldn’t want to be alone with me. She was going to be guarded and defensive and that was last thing I wanted her to be.
A few minutes before the signing, I stared blankly at the street from the glass window of my office on the 60th floor, watching the cars and trucks go by, looking like ants on the ground. Minute and inconsequential. From high above the clouds of love, this was my reality without her. She was in the building by then—I sensed her, felt her presence. I was breathless and excited and nervous as hell. Once again, I was lost in painful thought as I remembered that last night. Her wedding. She was the most beautiful bride I had ever seen. Through the years, I took refuge in the fact that she looked beaten and sad even as she said goodbye to me. Her empty eyes gave me hope.
“Run away with me, Issy. I still love you.”
When I saw her at her mother’s funeral after ten years apart, all I thought about was my need to grab hold of her hand, to touch her dainty fingers, those fingers that were once mine. She hadn’t aged a single day in ten years. In fact, she exuded a self confidence that made her all the more desirable to me. I missed her so much. If she only knew. Ten years later and I was still broken and dead.
Lord knows how much I tried to forget. Success is a funny thing. You can’t really enjoy it when you’re empty. Your heart is a bottomless sinkhole that swallows up everything and anything that it ingests and yet nothing can fill it. There’s no sense of accomplishment; everything is meaningless. Only her love can seal the drain in my heart. She’s filled his life for almost ten years. It’s my turn now. Why should I care about what the fuck it will do to him when he stole her away from me in the first place? He didn’t even give her time to catch her breath. He didn’t even give her a chance to forgive me.
The night of her wedding, I prayed with all my might that a natural disaster would reduce everything to rubble, that the end of the world would come and devastate everything in its way. The church, the country, him. Instead, the universe destroyed me. My desperate pleas were never answered. Unimportant things were thrown at me to make up for the loss of my life. They didn’t help.
Jesus. Didn’t I tell her not to transfer any calls to me? I walked over to my desk to pick up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me, Victoria.”
“Hey.” It sucked that this woman’s intuition was right on. All the time.
“Just calling to make sure you’re okay, Jesse. I know you’re seeing her today.”
“In a few minutes, as a matter of fact. I’m just going over the last minute details to make sure I don’t have any concerns—”
“No, you’re not.” There was a long pause on the phone. Silence. From her and from me.
“No, I’m not. You’re right.”
“Jesse, I hope you’re okay. Just remember what the doctor said. You’re really just getting better from the accident and your heart—”
“I know about my heart, Vic,” I snapped. “I’ll be fine. I don’t want to be late for this meeting, so let me call you later.” I hung up the phone, slightly irritated. I wondered whether this was how Alex Ailey was with my Issy—patient, kind, and understanding, knowing full well that her heart once fully belonged to someone else. There was no way I could’ve loved Victoria if all I could dream about was being with her.
But all that didn’t matter in the scheme of things. I planned to beg her to save me. I needed her to redeem me. That sneaky bastard has had his time with her.
I was ready to walk into the meeting and tell her everything. I wanted to look for my soul in her eyes. I yearned to touch her and hold her and tell her that nothing had changed. I planned to tell her what the past ten years had been like, that she was still the light of my life, my only hope for happiness. That I would walk away from everything I had that day if it meant having her in my life again.
We all know it didn’t turn out that way. I let her go for the second time the day we signed the deal.
***
“A thousand half loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.”
—Rumi
“I gave you five years of my life, Jesse!” Victoria squawked while simultan
eously throwing a glass of water at me. “How could you?”
I was surprised to see this much reaction out of this woman. She was normally so calm and cool; nothing ever fazed her. The glass tumbled on the wood floor. It didn’t shatter, it just disappointedly rolled around in a puddle of water.
“I’m so sorry, Vic. I don’t know what to say. It just happened.”
“Is she the only one you’ve cheated on me with?”
“Vic, we weren’t exclusively dating. So, no.”
She sobbed uncontrollably. I was at a loss for words. I moved closer to her and took her hands in mine.
“Listen, I would never do anything like this to hurt you intentionally,” I said quietly. “You, of all people, know that this happened to me, so I know how devastating it is. I spent ten years of my life running away from the pain. So please believe me, I never meant to hurt you.”
She nodded her head, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hands. “But I loved you.”
“I loved you too, as a friend. I’m still looking for something and I haven’t found it yet. I’m a mess, I know. But I never lied to you. You always knew.”
“So, this Rose girl. Is she it? Is she the one?”
“I don’t know. I want her to be. I feel different with her, like she’s worth the time I need to spend figuring things out. Is Isabel completely out of my heart? No. She will never be.”
“So everyone is second to Isabel? I was. Will she be, too?”
“Absolutely not. I’ll know that the right time has come when the woman I marry comes second to no one.”
What I told Victoria about the right woman was the truth—I know what went wrong with Isabel, and I’m not going to make the same mistakes twice. I won’t let the one get away again because I know that an empty soul can never be fulfilled. After Isabel’s wedding, life went on and I lived it. I traveled to the opposite ends of the earth and tried to find myself. Even if I already knew that I could always be found in the place I never left. I never left her. She was always a part of me.
I went back to business school after she was married. Night classes filled up the rest of my days. When I wasn’t working, I was studying. And when I wasn’t studying, I was fucking. Sometimes I would greet the new day forgetting whether or not I was alone in my apartment. You’d be surprised how quickly a day can turn into a week and into a month and eventually into a year. There were many women, some with me for months, one of them for years. Victoria wasn’t really my girlfriend, but she was the best friend I could ask for at a time in my life when commitment was out of the question. We were together so often that I don’t really blame her for coming to this conclusion. She wasn’t the only one. There were other women. Fillers mostly, just getting me through the days, the weeks, and the months.
Until Rose.
“You never told me how you met her,” Victoria commented, her eyes dry and with a hint of acceptance in her voice.
“It was quite funny, actually. She was sitting on the bench outside our classroom one afternoon, reading a book. A romance, of all things, with one of those obnoxious muscle man covers. She caught my eye and so I sat right next to her and we talked. Do you know that she loves visiting haunted houses? That was the first thing she told me and I thought it was hilarious.” I found myself smiling from ear to ear. The thought of her does this to me. “She has a five-year teaching contract with the International School here. And in case you didn’t know, she’s much younger than I am. Five years to be exact.”
“I’m still so pissed at you, but as a friend, I can see how your eyes light up when you talk about her. So I guess I’m going to have to force myself to be happy for you,” she teased.
I knew she was all right because our conversation had turned into our usual bantering. “Yeah, right. Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve been seeing that guy you met a month ago. What’s his name? Dickhead or something?”
“Richard,” she laughed.
“Like I said, Dick.” We smiled warmly at each other.
“Jesse. The control thing. I hope you don’t revert to that with Rose.” She leaned back on the couch and crossed her hands on her lap. Good old dependable Vic. My constant voice of reason.
“In retrospect, I no longer have the slightest inclination towards that. I can’t even imagine how it got that bad before. When I think about it, I finally see that I treated being with Isa as one of my goals. School, Career, Isa.” I looked at my feet for a second and took a deep breath, finally humbled enough to admit some things out loud. “Controlling every aspect of those goals was my way of ensuring that everything on the checklist of my life plan would be accomplished. Isa, unfortunately, became part of that list. My insecurities also played a major role in the way I handled our relationship, you know?” I flopped onto the couch and sat beside her. “You should have seen how her family lived, Vic. Isa never wanted for anything material—shopping trips abroad, tours around the world, anything she needed. I wanted to make sure that I would be able to give her all that. She pampered me, dressed me up, and built my image. I didn’t want to disappoint her.”
“Do you now realize—what you just said—that it was all about you?”
“I do. But it isn’t anymore.”
***
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
—Buddha
I open my eyes to find Rose kneeling on the floor, holding my face in her hands. My eyelids are heavy and laden with sleep, yet she kisses each one of them as she moves the tilted glass off the couch. I fell asleep still holding it and must have let it go after I passed out.
“I was looking for you this morning,” she whispers gently, taking my hand in hers. “Are you okay?”
I nod my head. “I’m fine. Just really tired. I’m sorry I fell asleep out here.”
“That’s okay. I have to leave for work soon.”
“Me too. I want you to know that I’ve decided to stop by the hospital to see if there’s anything I can do to help.” I wonder whether I should be asking for her permission.
“Don’t you have to be there anyway to see Dr. Camden?”
Dr. Camden is my cardiologist. Two years ago, I had an auto accident after suffering from a mild heart attack while driving to the office. I have a block in one of my valves, but it’s being monitored regularly. Sports and an active lifestyle are still a part of my life, but I’m on more medication now than I’d like to be. The doctors think most of it was stress related, hence the minor slowdown in my hectic work schedule. Running a multi-million dollar company will do that to a guy. Although I see how other multi-millionaires (specifically the one whose career I follow closely) have managed to find the work/life balance that they need.
“No, that’s not until Thursday,” I reply.
Rose nods and stands up, moving to the kitchen to get us some coffee. Her movements are forced and cursory, almost disjointed. I know that she’s trying to figure out what my going to the hospital means. She won’t look up at me; she’s scrutinizing the floor.
“I only want to help,” I say, giving her the only answer I have. “I’ve known their family for so long.”
“Sure,” she responds as she continues to pour coffee into a mug. She leaves the cup on the table and ambles back into the bedroom.
I know I should follow her there, but the pain in my head and in my heart forces me to remain seated on the couch, wishing she hadn’t left the coffee so far away.
I pull up to Forbes Memorial Hospital and turn the car over to the valet. The entrance to the emergency room is a circus. There are ambulances and doctors and nurses filing in and out in some sort of organized chaos—just a normal day at the office in that aspect, I guess. There are also reporters and photographers lined up on the grassy area that separates the driveway from the street. This is the life that we live these days, the social fishbowl that allows everyone a glimpse into our private suffering. I grab my sunglasses from my pocket even though
they’ll know full well who I am. This proves my point about why I have shied away from social media. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter or Vine or Instagram, and it’s not because I don’t know how or that I’m computer illiterate. My businesses thrive on these gigantic mammoths of engagement and communication, but my life in the public eye poses many risks to the persona I have created in my world of big business. One recorded conversation, one misguided smile, one accidental touch; everything can be misconstrued and my reputation ruined.
My thoughts are interrupted by a barrage of flashbulbs going off in every direction. “Jesse Cain! He’s here!” someone yells amidst the commotion in progress.
I catch a glimpse of her walking out of the lobby doors with arms around her son. Like me, she’s hiding behind a pair of sunglasses. Her son is wearing his school uniform and she has him enclosed in her arms, shielding him, as they wait for the car to pull up. He’s growing up to look more and more like his father. His blond hair is light and wavy and he has the piercing blue eyes that his mother fell in love with. Isabel looks lost and stricken, but the vision of her standing right in front of me overwhelms all my other thoughts. She reluctantly lets her son go as he slips into the seat of the car. I watch her lean over to strap him in the backseat, my eyes on her as she kisses him and mouths something that resembles an “I love you.” I see her inhale deeply before turning around to face the reporters as the car drives away. A few of them have come up to her and she is shaking their hands. She looks understandably preoccupied and disengaged, and for some unknown reason, I notice that her fingers remain splayed out protectively against her stomach as if holding it in place.
I can’t stand around much longer. I rush to her side and wrap my arms around her as I slowly lead her back into the lobby. I hold her tight as she breaks down and cries inconsolably in my arms. I’m so caught up in worrying about her that I don’t have time to enjoy this closeness. At first, I don’t even know if she realizes that it’s me. She squints her eyes as she lifts her head from my chest and I can see her processing it all in her mind. I know that the photographers will be in here any minute, so I don’t resist her pulling away from me when she does.
His Wounded Light Page 11