Water's End

by Jessica Deforest

  During the weeks that followed, Anne spent more and more time at his house, driving down on Friday night to spend the weekend, plus staying over on any bank holidays she had. Fortunately, she was driving in the opposite direction of the heavy weekend traffic, as thousands of cars escaped the city each weekend and headed north. She wondered where they all went and whether there were enough mountains, beaches, and resorts to accommodate them all.

  Each time she saw David, he was more fragile. She was appalled at his condition, and finally, in desperation, called his doctor. "Dr. Mitchell, this is Anne Mills, David Hawkins's friend. I've got to talk to you about him. Isn't there something you can do? He's dying before my eyes," she said. "I don't know how much more he can stand. Penelope is with him during the week, but he's got constant diarrhea, and he doesn't eat enough to keep a mouse alive."

  "It doesn't look good, Anne. The medication helps a lot of people, but it's not doing a thing for David right now. I saw him Wednesday and told him we need to get him in the hospital as soon as possible, but he refused. He's afraid if he goes to the hospital, he'll never come home again." He paused. "And you must prepare yourself for that possibility."

  "I know," she said quietly. "I'll see what I can do. Maybe I can talk him into it."

  But each time she broached the subject, David politely refused to go to the hospital and turned away, retreating into a silent place within himself, becoming more distant every day.

  Leaving him that Sunday was torture. She wondered if he would be there the next time she came to his house.

  To Anne's surprise and great relief, the following week David rallied and began to feel better. The diarrhea stopped and his appetite picked up.

  By the end of the month he was on his feet again, strolling around the pool and puttering about in the garden. Slowly, the flesh returned to his frame and he began to look like himself again. She was afraid to hope, but as each day passed, he looked healthier and grew stronger.

  Now that Penelope and her husband lived full-time in the guest cottage, there was always someone around to watch over David, so Anne was able to sleep better at night when she went home.

  Every weekend Anne continued to drive down the coast to stay with him. She didn't mind the trip because part of Highway 101 ran along a breathtaking stretch of ocean.

  As he continued to eat healthy foods and rest, David began to improve over the next six months, and by July he felt well enough to return to work. Anne was terribly upset when his agent offered him a shoot in Colorado, and David accepted without talking it over with her.

  She could hardly believe he would do such a thing. "David," she said. "I wish you would reconsider this trip. I don't want you getting run down and sick again. You might catch something."

  "Tut-tut, not to worry, my dear." He pretended to knock the ashes off an invisible cigar. "There are presently no germs left in Colorado. Last winter killed them all off, and the whole state is now sterile."

  "You wish."

  "But the truth is I can't sit around here forever, doing nothing."

  "Why would you want to work?" Anne asked. "Mark's left you richer than a sultan, not to mention all the money you had before."

  David paced the living room floor. "Would that you spoke the truth, darling. You're right; money is no real problem, but I do have to keep at it to continue to treat myself to the imperial lifestyle to which I have become addicted."

  "Hogwallow."

  He grinned. "Okay, you got me. I'm just bored. I need to be busy. That's it. Tell you what, why don't you come out to Colorado Springs with me? You've got some vacation time, haven't you?"

  "If I can't beat you, I guess I will join you, gladly. I love Colorado," she said. "In fact, my middle child was born there, at the Air Force Academy. I can show you around town. When do we go?"

  "Monday."

  "Let me see if I can take some time off. That's only two days from now." She began to sing "Springtime in the Rockies."

  "I remember this song," he said, joining in. "You and your mother used to harmonize on it." He hummed along for a moment but ended the chorus with a series of coughs.

  "Just a tickle in my throat," he said. "Probably this bloody smog. It's been thick as gravy today."

  The glass of water she brought him seemed to help a little, but he no sooner got it down than he began coughing once again. "Cough medicine, my bathroom," he said.

  She brought the bottle to him. He unscrewed the cap and took a swig directly from the bottle, then sat gasping for breath.

  "Gotta tell you something, Anne," he said, a grave look on his face. For once, his eyes wouldn't meet hers. Looking down, he patted the sofa next to him. "Come sit here by me."

  Hesitantly, she walked over to him and sat down, afraid of what he might say.

  "I'm going to do this last shoot just for fun, while I still look pretty decent. It'll be my legacy to you and my friends." He looked away.

  "Don't even talk like that."

  David looked her straight in the eye. "Hush, Miss Bigmouth," he said. "We've got to have this conversation. I probably have some time left, but I don't know how much. The cancer is back, and with the AIDS, my body has no resources to fight it."

  At that moment, Anne believed that God wasn't dead; there had never been a God. If there was, he wouldn't take good people like David and Mark and leave filth like Leon Fogle alive. She had been so certain David would beat the AIDS, it had never occurred to her that cancer would take him from her.

  "Anne," he asked, "do you love me? I mean really love me?"

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  "Will you marry me?"

  Chapter 27

  "Marry you?" Anne said. She stared at him in disbelief.

  He took both her hands and held them to his chest. "First of all, I love you. I can't be the husband you need, but what is important here is love."

  Anne stared at him, at first unable to comprehend.

  "If you love me, I'm asking you to show me by marrying me, for my sake. I'm being totally selfish. I don't have any family, and I'm terminally ill. I need someone in control who can see that I am not plugged into a bunch of machines and turned into some sort of vegetable kept from spoilage by the miracle of science. There's a living will, but I know sometimes it's not enough. Please be there to make decisions when I can't."

  She didn't even need to think about it. "Yes. Of course I'll marry you. And I'll be there for you as long as you need me."

  That afternoon, she drove back to her house, where she went to a trunk in her attic and took out the ivory silk suit she had sealed away so long ago. It was the one she would have worn the first time she and David planned a wedding, when she thought she was carrying his child. Now it finally would be her wedding dress.

  Amazingly, it still fit, as lovely as it was the afternoon she modeled it at the Wendy West show. Her hands trembled as she steamed it, tears streaming down her face, and she thought how perversely wishes are answered sometimes, as if the Universe reveled in irony, adding a spin or twist, so you might get something similar to what you wanted, or the complete opposite.

  The next day they chartered a jet to Las Vegas, bringing along Charlie Holiday and his girlfriend of the moment, a short brunette named Phyllis, as witnesses. Anne and David were married in a quiet ceremony at their hotel with no fanfare. She carried a wedding bouquet of Tropicana roses, and David wore a matching rosebud in his lapel.

  After they said their vows, they dined on pheasant with Charlie and Phyllis in a private room at the hotel, and as a surprise, the hotel owner showed up with a magnum of champagne and a three-tier wedding cake. A photographer friend of David's was on hand to record the moment and take a photo for his agent to send along with a press release to the media.

  None of it seemed real, and Anne wandered through the day in a sort of trance, dazzled by the whole thing.

  That evening, when they finally went up to their room, Anne stared in amazement at the ring David had placed on her fi
nger, a fabulous wide platinum band paved with diamonds, surmounted with a large center stone.

  "Darling," she said, "I didn't expect such a ring."

  "It's Grandma Carla's diamond," he said. "She always wanted it to go to you. In fact, you're the only person she ever wanted to have it, and now that you finally do, I know she's very happy somewhere in heaven. I designed the mounting, so you have something old and something new, all tied up in one."

  He held out his hand to display the new platinum wedding band. "See? We match, only I didn't want diamonds."

  Marrying David was bittersweet, the culmination of Anne's dreams, but not at all what she had hoped or imagined it would be. Nothing but pain could come from this arrangement, and though she knew it was necessary to protect David, she couldn't help reflecting on the way things might have been.

  This marriage was not what she had dreamed of, but no matter what happened, she loved this man, and she would take him on any grounds she could.

  After a quiet weekend in Las Vegas, they boarded a plane to Colorado Springs. It was not the sort of honeymoon she had imagined, but she wanted, needed, to be with him. She was loathe to let him go for even a second.

  The first morning they shot at the Shrine of the Sun on Cheyenne Mountain, and she tagged along to watch him pose for the camera.

  "Bob, I want you to meet my bride," David told the photographer. "We just got married Friday, but I've loved her all my life. She's the one I've been waiting for." He put his arm around Anne. "Darling, this is Bob Helmuth."

  Bob took her hand in his. "It's a pleasure to meet you." He punched David's arm. "I've known this pretty thing for a long time. Always had him figured for a confirmed bachelor, so you're a surprise." He looked at the mountains around them, then down at the city spread out in a blue haze below. "What a wonderful place for newlyweds," he said.

  How ironic that she should finally be spending a honeymoon with David in such a beautiful spot, but under such sad circumstances. Yet she rejoiced at being his wife.

  Part of the shoot was at Cripple Creek, a ghost town in the mountains near Colorado Springs. The long ride out one-lane Gold Camp Road was frightening, with steep drops on either side, but they had to admit the scenery was spectacular. That night they stayed to watch the show at the High Camp Saloon, complete with can-can girls, and stayed overnight in a bed-and-breakfast down the street.

  They continued the shoot the next morning. David posed against weathered buildings, in the doorway of the saloon, and next to an old church, anywhere that looked rustic.

  Anne's favorite shot was of David on horseback, astride a palomino mare, bareback, wearing blue jeans, shirt off, feet bare. He had his face turned up to the sun, which erased any signs of age. His expression reminded her of the way he looked when they made love in the moonlight so long ago. It was a photo she would treasure.

  That afternoon, they packed up and went back down to the flatlands to take some pictures at the Garden of the Gods.

  On their last day they went out to the Air Force Academy. "That's where Scott was born," she said, pointing to the hospital. "I'll never forget the deer outside my window that morning, just as dawn was breaking. I was too excited to sleep, so I watched the sun come up. A doe and her fawn came to the salt lick right there," she said.

  David and a couple of other models posed in front of the chapel, and then they drove up into the hills above the Academy, where they took a few more shots. The shoot was over almost before they knew it, and Anne was relieved that David didn't seem too tired. The high, dry climate must have been good for him, because his cough disappeared.

  When they got back to California, Anne gave two weeks' notice at work, and David stayed over while she packed. Everyone at the office was excited to learn she had married David. "You're a celebrity now," said a young teller. "I never knew a famous person before." Anne informed her she was the same old person, only her name had changed.

  Anne Hawkins. Finally, she thought.

  Her co-workers threw a big potluck luncheon for her the day she left, complete with gag gifts and lengthy, somewhat bawdy speeches. She would miss them.

  The following Monday, after the movers left, Anne turned over the keys to the young couple from the bank who eagerly had rented her little cottage. Although it was difficult to leave the home in which she had invested so much emotionally, she wanted to be with the man she loved.

  That afternoon, she moved into David's house in Laurel Canyon and an uncertain future.

  Things didn't change much. Most of the time she slept in Mark's old room, which now contained her grandmother's canopy bed and the other antiques she had brought from her house. David's room was across the hall.

  When he had nightmares about Mark, Anne sat up with him or slept next to him, her arms about him for as long as he would tolerate it. Mostly he pulled away. She was never quite certain when he would allow her to hold him. If he needed comfort, he sought her arms, but that was seldom.

  Sick at heart, she yearned for him. Even though she knew David could never make love to her in a conventional way, nor did he want to make love to her in some other fashion, her body constantly betrayed her. She desired him as much as in her youth, perhaps more so, and she found herself living in torture, occasionally able to hold and touch the man she loved, but unsatisfied.

  The lovemaking of their youth haunted her memory. It seemed as if only a day or two had passed since he had caressed her with long, feather-light strokes that set her on fire. No one else had ever touched her like that. In her fantasies she replayed the sensation over and over until she could almost feel his fingers on her body.

  Although Anne was afraid to hope, David had so much energy and looked so well that she began to believe he would recover. But after a few weeks, his health began to slip. He started having night sweats again and more trouble with his stomach. The weight he had gained disappeared, and the gray pallor once again crept into his cheeks. The cough came back.

  She knew he was in constant pain by the way he dug his hands into his knees when he sat in his easy chair, in the way his jaws clenched and unclenched. And it was evident in his use of painkillers. The bottle of pills that once lasted him a month now lay empty in a week. Worse yet were the groans he let out involuntarily and the sounds he made in his sleep, what little he got.

  "The cancer is in his bowel, is inoperable, and has metastasized to his liver and bones," Dr. Mitchell said, "which means fractures can occur, and if that happens, he will be bedridden. Just pray the end comes before then."

  Anne remembered when her friend June's cancer spread to her spine. The poor dear broke ribs just turning over, and then her vertebra began to crumble, leaving her in constant agony. Anne prayed for miracles.

  "It's going to be a rough ride, darling," David said to her one morning. "Are you sure you want to come along?"

  She couldn't speak but merely put her head on his chest and let the tears come.

  That afternoon he sat on the patio brooding, chin in hand, watching the birds that splashed in the fountain. Nothing she could say or do seemed to penetrate the shell around him.

  "So you're in the cave, eh?" she said.

  "Hmmmm?"

  "I just read that when men are grappling with a problem, they go in the cave. You know, internalize things."

  "Um-hm," he said, shutting her out once again. For the rest of the day he was silent. To her relief, his mood broke at dinnertime. Suddenly, he was his old jovial self, the way he had been before he got sick, laughing and joking over the dinner table.

  That night was a good one, and Anne was surprised when he invited her to his bed. "Come cuddle with me," he said. Anne was astonished and overjoyed, glad he was feeling so much better.

  Not only did he sleep, but he pulled her close and spooned with her, pressing her back to his stomach. During the night, she awoke to find him kissing her neck, caressing her breasts and moving his hands lower. At first she thought it was another one of her dreams, but this reality
was as good as a dream. "I love you, my darling," he said. Anne writhed and moved against his hands, so excited that it shook her to her very center. At last, when he sensed she could stand no more, he kissed her ear and stroked between her legs until she climaxed.

  She turned to face him, and he kissed her deeply, but refused her advances."I love you, but it won't do any good," he said. "I want you so much. This drives me crazy because I can't feel anything down there, and yet I'm hot with desire."

  The next day he seemed stronger. "Look at this," he said after breakfast, "a typical southern Cal day. What say we go to the beach? Better yet, let's drive up to Water's End. "

  "Have you discovered some miracle cure?" she asked.

  "Yeah. Sunshine. "

  "The doctor said you're supposed to stay out of the sun."

  "What will a couple of hours hurt?"

  "Are you sure you're up to it?" she asked. His mood was better, and the beach might do him good.

  "I'm not only up to it, I'm desperate for it. Penelope will pack us a picnic lunch, I'll take my no-sweat pills, and off we'll go. "

  By eleven, once the morning haze burned off, they started up the Pacific Coast Highway. The sun was strong, and Anne blinked through her sunglasses at the seagulls swooping above the surf as whitecaps dashed against the rocks and cliffs along the way.

  She loved driving the BMW, especially with the sunroof open. Although the breeze played havoc with her hair, she craved fresh air and sunshine the way David did. They had been cooped up too long.

  David pushed a lock of hair out of his face. "Can you believe this weather? I'll bet it's eighty degrees—in mid-October," he said. "Would you ever want to live anyplace else?"

  "Now I know why you were so eager to leave Kansas when you got out of the army." She touched his arm. "You certainly don't have to convince me. When you brought me out here to meet your folks, I knew this was where I wanted to be."

  Turning off the highway, she said, "And here we are, once again, at Water's End."