“We didn’t sleep all night and negotiated the terms for our marriage like the juvenile lawyers that we were. That night, through lots of tears and pain, she told me everything. I finally fully understood that she was never pushing me away or rejecting me for all those years, like my ego had once chosen to believe. She loved me and had honestly thought she was safeguarding me in her own fucked-up way.
“Jacqueline said that she was the one with cancer and it was her burden to deal with it alone. She didn’t want it to be everybody’s problem. ‘I didn’t want to be the sick girl who’s dying,’ she explained. She was sick and she just wanted to feel like a regular college girl who recklessly got to be promiscuous with a boy, and not the girl who was battling to live. She pretended from the first day we met that she was healthy, normal, just another student, even though she was dying inside. She wasn’t just lying to me—she even kept the cancer from her freaking parents for all those years. The only person who knew the truth all along was her friend, Michelle. I think Jacky was going crazy trying to cope on her own for all those years and finally needed someone else to share the burden she was forced to live with and help her be strong. She even made Michelle sign a confidentiality agreement.”
“Wow, I can’t believe she was dealing with something as serious as cancer on her own. She sounds like a tough woman.” Kali correctly appraises Jacky.
“She tried to be strong and optimistic; however, everything changed and became critical when she got her last results. Her type of cancer hadn’t responded to the treatment she was undergoing, and with the horrible prognosis that accompanied her last visit to the oncologist, I think it ultimately hit her that her time was running out. And that’s when she finally allowed her family and me to help her and be by her side for the rest of her battle.
“Jacqueline swore that she always loved me and wanted me to be hers in every possible way, but she thought it was unfair to inconvenience me with her disease. That night, she described in great detail what it was like to have a terminal disease and what kind of life we’d have before reluctantly accepting my ring. She warned me about the chemo, the radiation, the surgeries, the hospitals, and eventually her death. She presented every disclaimer and warning you could think of, but I didn’t care. I made a vow that I would make whatever was left of her life the best for her.
“Eddie, Michelle, and all our other friends were happy and sad for us, knowing what kind of shitty hand Jacky and I were dealt. Knowing that our happiness had an expiration date. Nevertheless, we promised to try and have a normal life and enjoy every day together, however long that would be, and fight the cancer together as husband and wife.”
Kali listens to every word of mine, swallowing whatever information I choose to feed her in whatever order I choose to present it. I’m thankful to be the one telling her my fucked-up story. I know if someone else narrated my life, she probably wouldn’t be on the phone with me, looking at my picture and thinking that I’m a good guy. Tick-tock, tick-tock … she’ll know the whole truth soon enough.
“All Through the Night” by Cyndi Lauper
My heart slowly breaks as I hold my breath and listen to every word that comes out of Jeff’s mouth. It’s one thing to lose a person you love in an accident, but to know that they’re dying and agree to watch them fade away is a whole level of love and devotion that I’ve never experienced. He keeps dropping hints that he did something wrong by the way he tries to defend his life choices, but his actions seem noble and pure. Perhaps I’m missing something in his story telling?
The way he described Jacqueline, I can’t help but like her. His wife sounded like an amazing woman. She kept the pain to herself for all those years in an attempt to unburden her family and the man she loved. I’m not sure I’d be that strong if something as horrible as cancer were to plague me. From everything he’s told me, she sounded like a selfless saint. I bet that when people looked at her, they assumed she had it made—attractive, smart, rich, with a gorgeous husband … yet the truth was that she was dying.
My grand-mère evidently played an important role in his life, yet my imagination does nothing to help me predict what she could’ve possibly said to him to have the negative impact he keeps implying. Obviously, he lost his wife, but I still don’t know exactly when or how anything that Joella once said to him could’ve had such a harmful bearing on his life?
“What are you thinking about?” His sexy, tired voice comes in softly. We’ve been on the phone for over an hour and I could easily get addicted to his voice.
I have no desire to pretend with him. I want honesty, and that’s what I give him. “I’m getting impatient. I want to know everything the second the questions pop into my head.” I draw imaginary question marks on my covers, knowing it won’t help ease the plethora of questions that keep adding up with every piece of information he provides me. However, I can’t help but wonder.
He sounds sleepy as he assures me that more answers are coming. “Believe me, I want you to know everything there is to know about me, but I can’t lie and tell you that I don’t care what you’ll think of me once you know. It’s different now. You’re not just a pretty girl I met at some bar. You’re you, and I’ve had a taste of you. I care what you think and I don’t just want for you to know my past—I want to make you understand it. Only then you can judge me, after allowing me to present all the facts on the table.”
“I won’t judge you. Why would I judge you?” I don’t like the assumptions he keeps making about my opinion of him.
“You will judge me; it’s inevitable. Trust me … I may be described by some as an asshole, but I’m not ignorant. I just want you to know all the circumstances that my actions were based on before you come to a verdict.” He lowers his voice, sounding closer. “You may not let me call you and talk to you after all is said and done, so I better get my fill of you now,” he whispers, probably on the verge of sleep.
Another foolish assumption on his part—I can’t imagine not wanting to talk to him. I want to do more than talk to him, I want to touch him and be touched by him. His presence has been a godsend, and talking to him is the only thing I look forward to.
“You have no idea how thankful I am for you. I don’t deserve your company but I can’t get enough of you. I think that’s what I’ll hate losing the most, knowing that once upon a time I was able to call and reach you on the other line. You know something? If I stop my story here, right now, I’ll always be able to recall how this stunning girl looked at me without contempt. I don’t want to tarnish this memory of us. If I keep talking, my words will only strip you of your good opinion of me, and you’ll hate me. I think it may be better if you don’t know the whole truth and what your grandmother once said. I promise you, her words will mean nothing to you. They are only meaningful to me. She’s human, she made a mistake, and that should be the end of it. People make mistakes. I need to grow up and come to terms with her words and accept that her prophecy will never be, and that, ultimately, my choices were entirely my fault. I shouldn’t have listened; no one forced me—it was all in my head.”
When he finishes his cryptic speech, I’m ready to drive over to New York, find him, and make him tell me everything. If he thinks I’m going to let him stop his story without me knowing it all, he clearly underestimates my curiosity. I don’t do well with rejection; the words “no,” “can’t,” “impossible,” or knowing that something as simple as the truth is being withheld from me is not acceptable in my world.
“Do you want to hear a story?” I know it’s incredibly late, but I have no doubt that he will. The more we talk, it becomes clear to me that this should be a give and take kind of exchange. I can’t expect to just take information without giving him something in return, and in this case, I need to tell him more about Joella Gitanos. He should appreciate and value their interaction as much as I do, and I suspect that once he hears who she really was, he may want to share her prophecy with me in spite of his unease regarding my opinion. My opinion abo
ut him should be irrelevant. I am nothing in his life; we’re miles away from each other, but I am hoping that our exchange of information will bring him—and maybe me—answers to questions and some much-needed closure.
“Go on.” This seems to pique his curiosity. I can imagine his gorgeous eyes twinkling with excitement at my new shiny offer. “I’m going to pretend I’m with you in bed and you’re spread naked on top of me while telling me a bedtime story.” His voice is causing a familiar rousing reaction.
“That sounds amazing.” I wonder if he could hear the arousal in my voice? “I also wish you were here and I could look at the real you and not at your picture as I tell things not too many know.”
“I miss you very much, Kali. Now tell me a story before I go crazy and come after you.” I smile as I think that I would like nothing more than to have Jeffery Rossi go crazy and come back to me. But business is business, it’s now my turn to tell stories.
“When I came to America five years ago, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew very little about the mother of my mother, la mère de ma mère. I had no idea she was a descendent from the Romani people, or that she was a fortuneteller, which is not how she would ever describe herself. I had no knowledge that she owned this bar or that my maman grew up here. I never even knew my parents met downstairs at BlackGod while my maman worked at this bar. Imagine finding a whole life—la vie—that you knew nothing about, yet that life is part of your roots, your history.” I take a deep breath to recall exactly how it all began to unravel and make sense to me back then.
“Joella couldn’t look at me at first. She said it was like looking at the ghost of her daughter. I do look a lot like my maman, which used to affect my papa quite a bit, too. He never said anything, but you could tell that whenever he looked at me, he thought about his wife—growing old without her, missing her silently. That was one of the reasons I left Cassis. I wanted him to move on with his life, he was still young when she died, maybe if I left he would stop feeling guilty because as long as I was there, I was a constant reminder of the woman he once loved and lost. I rationalized that coming here would give me a new start, my own identity, but when I got here, everybody who once knew my maman in her youth thought I was her, too. I can’t tell you how many times Joella called me by her name.” I hear a rustling sound as I picture him getting comfortable under the covers. I can’t deny that I wish I really were in bed and in his warm arms like he described right this minute.
“It must be hard to always be reminded of something so painful. Every time I look into my children’s eyes, I see my sins, and it makes me want to love them even harder in the hopes to exonerate myself.”
I unconsciously cling on to my pillow for dear life, only to realize that my arms are clenched around a pillow rather than him when the pillow doesn’t reciprocate.
“Go on, I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” he offers.
“Every day after my classes and before I would begin my shift at the bar, Joella would tell me a little story. If she were too ill, she would make me read a passage out loud from one of her many diaries. I got to hear her life of hardships as a single mère. How much she loved her only daughter and attempted to safeguard her from all foreseeable evil. She was never married. She said her heart only belonged to one man, which fate had denied her. The love of her life couldn’t marry a poor gypsy runaway without any family, and instead, was forced to marry his equal: a nice Irish girl who came with a respectable last name and money.”
I hear Jeff snicker. “I know a thing or two about how it feels to love someone in a different league than your own. I’m sure it must’ve been awful for her being on her own, falling in love with someone way out of her reach.”
I stop my story to consider his comment. Maybe Joella, Jeff, and I were all alike; I, too, am alone and have almost no family left. Maybe that’s part of my attraction to this man, his loneliness. I don’t dwell on my thoughts and continue recalling the little I know about my family. “I asked her once if the man she loved, the one she bore a child from, if he knew about his daughter? But she admitted to me that he never knew. Joella didn’t understand or recognize that she possessed the vision until she accidentally thought she saw a picture in her mind of what looked like his future. The only thing she could clearly see was that he had a child with her eyes and his smile. Upon realizing she was in his future, when he came to her to say goodbye, she professed her unconditional love, promised him to never love another man, and gave him her body. She said he already owned her soul, so her body was only meant to ensure and lay the foundation to the future she already knew from her vision they would have.
“At that point, she explained her foresight to me and that she couldn’t see herself or her own involvement in the future, but could only see the lives of those souls that matter around her; the ones that held pieces of her heart in their hands. She was very young and misunderstood her gift. It took her years to recognize that she couldn’t create a future with someone if there was no future in the first place.
“When Joella made love to Kenny—the young man she described as the blood running through her veins—he was a month away from marrying the girl he hardly knew, or loved—a girl his family had chosen for him. But a few weeks later, he was drafted to the Vietnam War and was never heard from again. Joella had a baby girl eight months later, but the love of her life was taken away. When my maman was three years old, Joella finally introduced her to the boy’s parents; the same parents who wouldn’t allow their son to be seen with a poor uneducated gypsy. They didn’t believe Joella at first, but my maman had a sharp resemblance to her handsome father. She also had the same odd-shaped birthmark on her leg that was almost identical to his.
“Joella explained that in times of war, even the very proud become humble. They stopped feeling superior once they lost their only son, and accepted that a piece of him lived on in his daughter. Although they wouldn’t have selected Joella to be the mother of their grandchild, they were still thankful she chose to keep the baby, not have an abortion, and raise her without any help, and that she had the heart to bring and share the child with them. I asked Joella if she knew she was going to get pregnant? And she explained that when he came to say goodbye to her, he told her that he couldn’t make his parents understand and accept her, and that while they both held onto each other crying, that’s when she had the vision of the child they created together, which she assumed was their joint future. She couldn’t clearly see his future, but when she touched him, she saw his descendant. She desperately wanted a life with him and she believed that her way of guaranteeing a life with the man she loved was to have his baby. But the reason she didn’t see his future was because he didn’t have one. She assured me that the universe wanted his soul to live on through his little girl and she was just a messenger. She didn’t see him have a future, but she saw the future that was paved by his existence.”
I smile and imagine Jeff as he listens to my tale. “I know what you’re thinking,” I say. “Why would this old fortuneteller give me a reading? Right?” I don’t need to be with him or be a psychic to read his thoughts. He makes an ‘a-ha’ sound. Good. Maybe now he can begin to appreciate why I need to know everything my grand-mère said to him on the night he claims their paths crossed.
“So your grandmother had a relationship with his parents?” he questions, mumbling the last word through a yawn.
He must be exhausted, but I’m glad he’s still talking to me, listening. I was worried he’d fall asleep on me.
I nod a silent yes. “The boy’s family owned a very big distillery and almost every bar in Rhode Island. They were a well-known Irish family with deep roots spanning over three generations in New England, and thanks to prohibition years ago, they were extremely wealthy. Not many people know this, but Rhode Island was the only American state that didn’t consent to the 18th Amendment of Prohibition. This building I’m in and all their other buildings in Rhode Island were eventually assigned to a trust to their only bene
ficiary—their son’s daughter, their only granddaughter, my maman.”
I assume by the sounds coming from the other end of the line, this information has caused Jeff to wake up and perk up a bit. “Go on, I’m intrigued,” he expels, sounding less tired, confirming my assessment.
I continue, “They gave Joella a free, warm, clean place to raise their granddaughter. She never asked for a penny, but she couldn’t afford quality food and a place to live while working as a waitress in some small bar. And she refused to work as a fortuneteller. She said her sight was only limited to family, and she wasn’t a fraud, a charlatan, or a performer who just took people’s money. With their help, she opened her own bar downstairs and called it BlackGod. She claimed that all the profits were set-aside for her daughter. She was a simple woman, she didn’t need much, and she never married or loved anyone else.” I mentally count down until he starts his line of questioning, as only an attorney would.
He clears his throat and begins. “So what you’re telling me is that your mom basically owns half of Rhode Island?” It’s a statement more so than a question, and I can see I’ve just impressed him a little bit with my story.
“Yes, she once did,” I reply with a melancholy smile. I have no desire to offer him any more information tonight. It’s late, we both need to rest, and it’s now his turn to talk. After all, this is a game of give and take. “Goodnight, Jeffery.”
Lost In Rewind (Audio Fools #3) Page 14