by Elle Tyler
She laughed at me, snuggling herself back along my side. Her fingers trailed up and down my stomach until I captured them in mine, locking our hands.
“Topolina?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t cry if he refuses to come. Promise me.”
“That’s an easy promise to make.” She laughed.
“I mean don’t be sad.”
We fell quiet for a while, but I felt her awake, tucked into my side. I couldn’t sleep with her so close, even though most nights there wasn’t anything else I wanted other than to close my eyes with her in my arms. I slid away but kept hold of her hand.
She opened her eyes as we faced each other on our sides. “Aren’t you scared at all?”
“No. What am I, Everly Anne? What have you inspired inside of me?”
She watched me for a moment. “Hope. You’re hopeful.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. Pressed her fingers to my mouth. “Sleep well.”
“Callum,” she called, but I couldn’t open my eyes.
“Yes, topolina?”
“My initials are going to be E A T.”
My eyes flashed open. “What?”
She stared at me. “After we’re married. My initials will be E A T.”
And then I cringed as I thought about my own. “Holy shit. I’m C A T.”
We both gazed at each other in the darkness, before bursting into laughter.
GOOD FOURTH? GOOD FOURTH.
31.
WE HAD THE OCEAN UNDER our feet when we wed. The sun was sinking into horizon. And Everly Anne had the brightest eyes I had ever seen. Her dress wasn’t short, but her eyes, they were shining when she said, “I do.”
***
The air felt like heaven had merged with Earth. Warm sea salt breeze washed over me as I lay under the heat of the sun, basking in the glory of nature, so far away from the sterile and stale of the hospital.
“You’re grinning ear to ear, Callum.”
I opened my eyes, squinting from the sun as I looked at Everly. “You know that part where Red and all the boys get beer because Andy schooled that cretino guard?”
She nodded. “As you know, this pregnancy and I are well versed in all things Shawshank Redemption. Seeing as how it is always on cable, and I am always ordered to rest.”
“I was just thinking that this is how it must have felt. This sun, this beach, this view.” I eyed her full breasts purposefully. “This is free beer on a sweltering rooftop after years of being a slave to The Man.”
She laughed at me, shaded under a large umbrella. “Is it now?”
I smiled back at her and then extended my arm so I could reach her stomach. “I’m gonna be a father, Everly Anne. You’re my wife.”
It was the most I’d seen her laugh in weeks.
“Did my baby bump give it away?”
Rolling closer, I kissed her stomach. “I love your baby bump, topolina.”
She stared thoughtfully at me for a moment. “I need to tell you something. It’s kind of eating at me.”
My nerves bundled. “Let’s hear it, wife.”
“I don’t want to upset you on our wedding day, but I can’t keep pretending. I lied to you before you left New York.”
“About what?” I asked.
“I wasn’t going to leave him a letter.” She fell quiet and waited, but my mind couldn’t understand. “Timothy.”
I looked at her a bit puzzled. “In New York? The night you were on the sidewalk?”
“I’m so sorry, Callum Andrew.”
“I’m not angry, Everly Anne. But why would you have lied?”
“I was scared. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to be on my own, but I tried because I wanted to prove that I could do it—mostly to you, not him. I just wanted you to see that you were worth my trying.”
“So why did you leave?”
“Before we started the differential for your class, I had a head scan because I’d fainted two days in a row. Timothy thought at first it was only due to anemia, but then I had a seizure, and he sent me for full testing. When they scanned my brain, it revealed an aneurysm that hadn’t ruptured. The neurologist wanted to treat me, but Timothy was scared, because there wouldn’t be any way for me to feel the pain as a symptom if one ruptured or if I had bleeding because of the procedure. He thought it was smarter to leave it alone, since it wasn’t posing a risk worse than what the procedure could cause. And I was okay for a while, but when I came back from Montauk, he made me have another scan, and there was a second aneurysm. They did the procedure that time. And I was okay, but then I stayed with you and blacked out one night but didn’t say anything. And then another night, I couldn’t see out of my left eye. It was all foggy. So I tried to leave. I didn’t want you to come up to your mother’s attic and find me dead on the floor. I was scared.”
I exhaled pure frustration. “You could have told me this, Everly Anne. You should have.”
“You needed to graduate, and I didn’t want you to lose focus. I swear I never would have told Timothy that I had been at your house. I would have never gotten you in trouble.”
“I wouldn’t have cared or blamed you if you had told him.”
She touched my cheek. “I know.” And then she kissed me. “Believe me, I know.”
I kissed her back tenderly. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because the same thing is happening.”
The sun no longer felt warm against my skin.
I cupped her cheek. “Talk to me this instant. Tell me everything.”
“It’s not my brain. But I am pretending like I’m fine even though I’m not,” she said. “I’m beyond scared. And I don’t understand any of this.”
“Any of this?” I asked, surprised. “What does that mean?”
“I mean why God would give us each other and then say we can’t be together. Why He’d give us a child and then allow me to know—to feel everyday—the impending doom that looms over me and my expiration date. And then the... You know I can handle being scared of the little things. Not knowing how to change a diaper or what certain cries mean. I can learn those things. But if he’s born with CIPA... If I did that to him, I can’t fix it. I can’t make it better and offer him comfort. How could something we did with such love become so selfish, Callum Andrew? I don’t understand.”
I shushed and gathered her into my arms. “You’re not selfish. I have a long list of the qualities you possess, and selfish isn’t anywhere to be found, I promise you.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to live with this. He’ll be so scared. He’ll be so different and kept from the world. You don’t know how lonely it is to carry this like a branding.”
“Are you alone?” I challenged.
“I was for such a long time.”
“Well,” I began, “I’m CIPA-free, Everly Anne, and yet I spent a good portion of my childhood feeling very alone. Teenage years were worse. It wasn’t until I found you that it all changed.” I held her tighter. “I have never, ever felt so close to anyone as I have the last year of my life. When you came back, all the lights turned on. And when you told me you were pregnant, I dreamt my life had hit the reset button. This is where it begins, Everly Anne. You’re my starting point. Always have been. Always will be.”
So softly the blunt truth slipped out. “I don’t want to die anymore. I used to be okay with saying goodbye because there’s never been anything for me here, but now, I don’t want to leave you and our son. I’ve never wanted to live more.”
I pulled back to admire her face. She shed invisible tears as I stroked the apple of her cheeks. “It’s just like going to sleep, Everly Anne. And when you wake up, I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Promise?”
I stuck out my pinkie fingers, but she only leaned for my mouth.
***
I was a mess. Tatum handed Everly Anne a bundle and stepped back. “There you go. Good practice.” She smiled and glowed. There was something so different about T
atum, that girl who had always been fire, who had always been ready to fight. She was dressed in the glow of motherhood, so soft and quiet.
“We’re getting old,” Nick said, sitting at my side as we watched the girls. “I’m married with a kid. You’re now married with a kid. We used to run this beach, remember?”
I smiled. “Yeah, but would you honestly trade any of it for those days? I sure as hell wouldn’t.”
He looked at Tatum just as she glanced his way. A smile instantly sewed itself to his face. “No, brother, I can’t say that I would. Look at that girl.”
I watched Everly Anne as she cuddled their daughter in her arms. “It’s impossible not to look.”
***
Red balloons lined the beach, the backs of lounge chairs. People dressed in red; some even had posters. Shannon had a mermaid costume this year. Jeremy wore a red shirt, but he was more interested in kicking sand than waiting for a mermaid.
“Like my tail?” Shannon swished at me.
“It’s made of pure awesome, Shannon Elizabeth Patterson.”
Everly smiled at her. “I’m sure Topolina will be mighty envious.”
“I hope she comes ashore this year,” Shannon whined. “Think she will?”
“I think,” I glanced to Everly, “Topolina likes hope. So always keep that in your heart, and it won’t matter if she ever comes ashore. She’ll be happy that someone was hopeful enough to wait for her.”
As the fireworks bloomed above us, I held Everly in my arms, sitting on the sand just like our first year in Montauk.
“I have a question for you, Everly Anne.”
“Ask away, Callum Andrew.”
“Do I still give you butterflies?”
She leaned closer. I leaned closer. “You give me everything.”
I kissed her softly. “Good Fourth, Topolina?”
She kissed me harder. “Good Fourth, Callum Andrew.”
TWO TANGLED RHYTHMS
32.
FATE HAD A PLAN to meet me in room 708 of Atlanta Memorial. While I had been studying, years before in New York, fate had been courting a man who had a sincere crush on a woman who grew the finest tomatoes. By the time fate would infinitely connect us, charm and hope and love reshaped my spirit and expanded my hearing. It brightened my eyes and slowed me down, despite the constant, required, and expected need to rush.
Days still existed where I wished I was a slave to the blurring pace of medicine, but I had moments of clarity with a certain patient, too. Scout Everdeen became such a patient, and luckily for both of us, I had yet to spend all the coins of my inheritance.
The same couldn’t be said for Truscott Zoe.
It was a rainy night in Red Pine when I returned home from my visit with Truscott in New York. I found Everly taping squares of powder blue, cotton candy pink, and lemon to the nursery wall, oblivious of what I had carried home with me. “Which one? Pick a color,” she said, prideful.
Our house had become a stage production bearing none of the props that doomed Everly’s childhood. Black and white sonogram pictures were strewn across our fridge, waiting for the finger-tap-kiss they received each morning as she reached for orange juice. Green soft blades of grass massaged her bare feet as she debated whether the swing set would go “right here under the oak tree for shade, Callum? Or should we put it in the sunshine and just slather sunscreen in the summer? A pool would be nice, too. We’ll have to look into that. One with a waterfall.” And of course the nursery was her main focus. She stared at me so full of unbridled bliss, I couldn’t bear to break her heart with the news of that evening. But we didn’t keep secrets.
“Yellow is pretty neutral,” I answered. “I don’t think our child will be dispassionate. Let’s just hold off until I get a free day to help you out with this, all right?”
“But that’ll never happen.” She sighed. “I want to be ready.”
My mind couldn’t form a charming response to distract her from worrying because it was too hung up on the truth I had yet to reveal. Instincts running rampant, she faced me fully and wanted to know what my sourpuss face was all about.
“I need to tell you something,” I said slowly, “but you have to promise me that you’ll stay calm.” I inched toward her and slid her hands from her hips to the bump. “The baby needs you to stay calm, all right?”
“What happened?” she demanded.
“Promise me.”
“Fine. I promise.” She hooked her fingers with mine. “Now what is it?”
I steadied my breathing. “Truscott.”
She stared at me for a moment and then understood all that needed to be explained. Her eyes squeezed shut, shuddering away from my words. I took Everly into my arms and hoped that somewhere within her spirit she could find the truth: her life wasn’t meant to inspire his—not in the way she had thought anyhow—but to comfort. And she had been brilliant.
“I promise we did everything we could for him, Everly.”
Her voice squeaked, “How?”
“He went to sleep. That peacefully. That easily.”
Truth was Truscott had slipped into a coma and been put on life support for ten weeks before Wanda decided her son had suffered enough. Her decision to remove life support wasn’t swift or rash, but rather a tender gift of mercy to her child. I envied and watched in awe as she bravely bathed his pale, gaunt face in kisses she could never again offer, crossed his hands one over the other, and smiled at him for the last time as if looking at her newborn baby, not the ghost of the boy she watched wither into bones. Her bravery spurred a new sense of hope under my ribs. Goodbye could be peaceful. Goodbye could be quite beautiful.
I needed that kind of resilient hope in the midst of cases such as Scout Everdeen. While bruises and injury were common in my world with Everly, his bruises were not easily kissed away. He had a long journey of scars ahead of him—like Truscott—if he managed to hang on long enough. As my life became painted powder blue, his stretched on as a crimson-filled nightmare while Earth spun its dutiful course, neither of us the wiser for what fate had in the works.
I naïvely reached into the plot of my life and dug out reserved coins I needed to find a home. A wish was granted as I employed Peter Everdeen to restore a memory of the summer Everly had been absent in my life. He came by to work secretly every Sunday at our house, never revealing to Everly what he was doing out in the woods behind our house. As I admired the train, it became harder to hate a man like Timothy Brighton, because he had unknowingly saved a part of his daughter’s happiness before she had even spent her first cry.
The sun was high, the birds were on cue as they sang high-pitched cheer, and she was absolute perfection in a lavender dress as she followed me into the wildflowers that had overtaken our yard. She held a glass of cold lemonade in her free hand and sipped as we found the west side of our property.
“Okay, close your eyes and just follow where I lead.”
“Kinda my signature move.” She laughed.
Her eyes closed, I led her deeper into the woods and then kissed her hand. “All right. Open.”
Peter sounded the whistle. At first, Everly dropped her lemonade and closed her hands over her ears. But then she lit up like the Fourth of July as she took in the brilliant boxcar gleaming jubilant red.
“Ho-lee-buckets.”
Even a stiff like Peter Everdeen laughed.
“I think our son will prefer the color red,” I said nonchalantly. “It’s fiery, bold, and undeniably seen..., just like his mother.”
She was too shocked to move or speak. She stood wide-eyed, beaming at the boxcar.
And then...
“Oh, God Bless America!”
And Then...
“Grandpa Wiley,” she whispered. “This was the train!” Her hand clapped to her chest as if she was trying to keep every memory of him locked inside. Everly’s eyes turned to me and asked why how where how long until I pulled her into my arms and told her I couldn’t possibly think of a more deserved gift f
or the mother of my child. This was a thank you. This was the most outrageous I love you. This was—unbeknownst to me, Everly, and absolutely Peter Everdeen—the most profound discovery of prophetic fate locked inside of a memory.
Our house was nearly forgotten as the boxcar became our preferred place for life-building. As our feet danced between the aisles to night-song crickets and our eyes spoke of hunger that wasn’t easily satisfied, we began to unearth the prophecy one love-stirred moment at a time. The heat of my kiss on her mouth encouraged fate to carry out its mission, and the content hum in the ever after of love making solidified the choice: there was a heart that thumped so bravely—there was a heart that thumped so purely full of love—and there were two boys in the dutiful spinning world who greatly needed both.
HER INFLUENCE
BLED SLOWLY
33.
WHEN EVERLY ANNE ENTERED classroom 221 at New York Presbyterian Hospital, a shift occurred in the paradigm of many lives. But what hid from our view was the composition of Everly’s life. We could have fired every question in our arsenal and never begun to unravel her story. And truthfully, the same could be said about each of us.
The Unknowns of Life are as fragile and misleading as a snow globe. Left alone, it’s nice to look at but really quite boring. Shake it up and you chance the glass slipping from your hands—but oh, what a different world it holds, even if just for ten simple seconds.
I’d like to believe that we’d all choose to shake the globe of our lives, but as I sat in Brighton’s classroom trying to solve a differential during third year, I learned how fearful most people were when it came to crossing a line. Out of a hundred other students, it was only one lonely, mysterious girl and I who crossed over with the hope and desire to seek something beyond the black and white.
And at first her influence only affected minor parts of my life such as second-guessing my choices, debating hope and faith, and most importantly, learning how to listen. But when you shake up the contents of your life, searching for purpose, mysteries, and wonder, there’s no telling what you’ll find until it is right before your eyes. The influence of her life eventually bled through every facet of mine until we were infinitely synched with the bond of one precious, teeny heartbeat.