For Better, for Worse, Forever

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “Well, I couldn’t very well step on your toes,” he said. “I would have squished them.”

  “We’ll never dance on my wedding day.” Her smile faded. “I didn’t mean to say that. I—I don’t want you to feel bad.”

  Her mother turned her head aside. Her father rubbed his thumb across April’s knuckles, over and over, as if touching her was something he couldn’t get enough of. “If I could take your place now, baby, I would.”

  “No … that’s not right. You need to stay with Mother. It’s a horrible thing to be left alone.” April brightened. “And don’t you worry about me. Mark’s in heaven waiting for me. Before he died, he told me he’d be waiting and watching for me to come to him. So, you see, I won’t be alone. I have you and Mom on this side of life, and Mark on the other side. I’ll be fine, Daddy. Really, I’ll be fine.”

  “He’d better take good care of you. If not, he’ll answer to me when I get there.” Her father’s voice was barely a whisper.

  April’s eyelids felt heavy, and concentrating was becoming more difficult. But she felt good that she had been able to tell her parents some of the things that were in her heart. To her mother, she said, “You remember about the wedding dress, don’t you?”

  “Yes. It belongs to Kelli.”

  April closed her eyes. The conversation had exhausted her, and sleepiness was beginning to shut down her ability to think and talk. “When Brandon comes, make sure he has some new movies to watch. He’s seen the ones next to the TV set already.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” her father said.

  His voice sounded as if it were coming through a long tunnel. “I think I’ll take a little nap now,” she said. She felt her mother kiss her cheek. “Is the moon out tonight?”

  “Half a moon,” her father said.

  “Is it pretty on the water?”

  “Beautiful.”

  April remembered parasailing, the sensation of flying, of looking down and seeing the world from a bird’s-eye view. “Will you open my window? If I wake up late tonight, I want to see the moonlight. The moonbeams come into my room late at night, you know. They make a path on the water and on my carpet, and across my bed. Sometimes … I feel as if I could … get up … and walk straight up the path. Into heaven. Mommy, Daddy, I love you.”

  She felt her mother kiss her cheek as she tumbled into sleep.

  18

  The times when April was awake and aware were fewer and farther between. Every time she was asleep, Brandon would wonder if this might be the time she’d slip into a coma and not wake up. One afternoon her eyes fluttered open and she looked around the room as if she didn’t recognize it. Anxiously Brandon leaned over her. “April? You okay? It’s me.”

  Her gaze slowly locked onto his face. She blinked. “Brandon.” Her smile was crooked, as if she couldn’t control one side of her face. “How long have you been here?”

  “Not long,” he lied.

  “Did I fall asleep? Sorry … rude of me.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Is it raining?”

  “A storm moved in about ten minutes ago.” He moved aside so that she could see through the window facing the sea. Rain splattered the glass, and the sea was a froth of churning foam. “But you know how the weather is in the Caribbean. The sun will be out again in no time.”

  “That’s good. I love the sun.”

  She didn’t say anything else for such a long time that he thought she’d fallen back to sleep, but she finally said, “I want to tell you something.”

  “Tell me.”

  She held out her hand, and he took hold of it. Her skin felt cool and dry. “Did you know that I love you?”

  His heart skipped.

  “It’s true. But shhh … don’t tell Mark. It would make him sad.” She was talking as if Mark were alive in the room with them. Brandon felt a prickly sensation up his spine. Mark was waiting for her. She would cross over to him and he would have her forever. Would April meet Brandon’s mother? Was there a place in heaven for those who had shed life like a piece of clothing? “If you see my mother—”

  “I’ll tell her you love her. And that you forgive her.”

  Tears burned and brimmed and stung his eyes. “Yes … I forgive her,” Brandon said, hardly trusting his voice. “I love you, April.”

  “Aren’t I lucky? I’ve been twice loved. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t love two people with all your heart.” She turned her head so that she could see Mark’s photograph on the bedside table. “Mark, this is Brandon. And I love him.” She turned her eyes back to Brandon. “Now, you go find someone else to love too. Please.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Shhh. We don’t always get what we want.” She drifted away from him, back into her blanket of fog, to the world of semiconsciousness where he could not follow.

  Later he returned to the living room. April’s mother was sitting on the sofa, looking out at the sea and the driving rain sweeping past the plate glass window in sheets. The world looked gray and soggy; even the palm fronds battered by the whipping wind were a dull green. She turned when she heard him, and her eyes were as colorless as the rain, as dull as the leaden clouds. She asked, “Is she sleeping?”

  “Yes. She fell asleep a while ago. But I didn’t want to leave her.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  He lowered himself to the love seat that butted up against one arm of the sofa, feeling totally helpless, unable to find words to comfort either April’s mother or himself.

  “I still can’t believe she’s dying,” April’s mother said. “It makes no sense to me. Parents aren’t supposed to outlive their children.” He winced. She paled. “Oh, Brandon, I’m sorry. That was so insensitive of me.”

  “But it’s true. Even if a parent chooses to die. It’s more natural than for the child to die first.” He stared out at the driving rain, at the whitecaps skidding across the surface of the sea in the distance. “Did you know that if you dive down deep under the ocean, you can’t even tell if there’s a storm on the top side? It’s quiet in the deep. And cold. When I saw my mother in the casket, I touched her. She was ice-cold. All the warmth had leaked out of her, the way sand oozes through your fingers underwater. I can’t stand to think of April that way.” His voice grew softer and faded.

  “I can’t stand it either. When she was five, when they first discovered her tumor, I used to stand beside her hospital bed and hold on to her even while she slept. I guess I thought that as long as I held on, death couldn’t come for her. Or that if it did, it would have to bump me out of the way and I could grab it, throttle it, throw it out of her room. But death isn’t something that comes from the outside. I think it lives in all of us and it lies in wait, like a lion crouching near its prey. Then, when our guard is down, our body defenseless because of disease or trauma or inconsolable bad feelings like your mother’s, death comes out and stakes its claim.”

  Brandon told himself that if she was correct, nothing could drive death out. It had to leave on its own accord. And when it did leave, it took life with it and left behind body shells, just as sea creatures vacated outgrown shells, leaving the old ones abandoned on the ocean floor. “Do you know that I think April is the prettiest girl I ever saw? I’ll never forget the color of her hair. Where’d she get it from? Neither you nor her father has red hair.”

  Janice smiled. “My great-grandmother came over from England and married a New Yorker. She was renowned for her beauty. And her hair of red gold.” Her smile faded. “Corrine—that was her name—lost three babies. One to diphtheria. One to pneumonia. One to measles. Diseases that we banish now with injections and antibiotics. I wonder if they’ll ever have an inoculation against cancer? Against death?”

  Or against a person wanting to die? he wondered. “It must have been hard to bury so many babies,” he said, thinking of April’s great-great-grandmother.

  “Nothing can be harder than burying your children,” Janice said.<
br />
  “Burying a mother is pretty hard too.”

  “That’s true. My mother died when I was thirty-five, my father when I was forty, and it was difficult to lose them. I’m so sorry you had to go through that so young.”

  He stood and walked over to the glass door. The storm had stopped, but the sun had not yet emerged and the world looked flat and dull. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts and rocked back on his heels. “I still wonder why,” he said, barely aware that he’d even spoken. “Her note said life hurt too much … as if that’s a reason. I see April and I know how much she wants to live. It makes no sense to me that someone like my mother wouldn’t want to live. You know?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense to me either,” Janice told him.

  He looked down and blinked against moisture that had filled his eyes, embarrassed at having said so much to April’s mother concerning his most private feelings. “Sorry. I don’t mean to talk so much.”

  “It’s okay, Brandon. Really. I only wish I could answer your questions. The truth is, no one knows how another person truly feels because we can’t walk around in each other’s skins.” She got up from the sofa and stood beside him, gazing out the glass door with him. “But I do know one thing. I know that she had one fine son.”

  He glanced at Janice, saw that her expression was kind and sincere. He felt his cheeks redden. “That’s nice of you to say.”

  “It’s the truth. I would have been proud to have called you my son.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it.”

  “You should have had lots of children. Tons of them.”

  She laughed. “I always thought so too.”

  The sun suddenly broke through the bank of billowing gray clouds, hurling breathtaking shafts of light into the sea. The water turned from gray to green where the light penetrated, as if some alien’s spaceship were anchored beneath the surface. With the sight came a feeling of hope to Brandon. Here, in this house, standing beside the mother of the girl he loved, he felt a sense of peace and belonging. He couldn’t stop time. He couldn’t turn it back. All he had was this precious slice of it, and it felt good to be alive.

  Early the next morning, as Brandon drove up to the house, he saw an ambulance sitting in the driveway, its red light swirling and casting eerie reflections on the surrounding trees and brush. It punctuated the gray morning light with urgency. All was silent. Brandon cut off his engine, flung open the car door, and raced up to the house. The front door was ajar, and he hurried inside. April’s father stood in the living room in his bathrobe and bare feet. He looked up, and his face was haggard and creased by grief. He said, “She’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “She died in her sleep. The paramedics are with her, but there’s nothing they can do. My little girl is gone. Gone.”

  Brandon’s back stiffened and, without comment, he edged out the front door and walked quickly into the surrounding woods, heedless of the wet foliage slapping against his arms and legs as he plowed deeper into the jungle. When he came to a small clearing he stopped, turned his face skyward, and screamed.

  19

  April Lancaster was going home.

  Brandon stood on the tarmac along with his father and April’s parents at the St. Croix airport, next to the jet plane that was to take April and her family away. A long black hearse drove through the security gates toward them. The baggage handlers, who’d been busy tossing luggage onto the conveyor belt, ceased their activity as the hearse stopped beside the plane. Pallbearers from the local funeral home got out of the vehicle, opened the back, and slid out a rolling cart that held a long pink casket trimmed in silver and with silver handles. Flecks of metallic paint caught the morning sun and glittered like jewels.

  Brandon was grateful that his father had pulled strings to allow the four of them to stand out on the loading area, so close to the casket. As the men rolled the casket toward the conveyor belt, April’s mother stepped forward. She touched the hard shell that held her daughter’s body, leaned forward, and kissed it. Brandon’s throat constricted, and he forced his gaze away. The sadness was as heavy as the humid tropical air that surrounded them.

  Because the St. Croix airport was so small, he could hear taxi horns and the voices and laughter of tourists as they prepared to board the flight and return to the States. At the end of the single runway the sea sparkled, and in the other direction hills rose, lush and green. He returned his gaze to the casket and saw the pallbearers lift it onto the conveyor belt. The belt moved forward, and the glittering pink casket slid upward into the dark belly of the plane.

  He knew this was April’s wish—to return to New York and be buried beside Mark Gianni, the man she had chosen in life to be with forever. At least in death, she could have her final wish. Moisture filled his eyes, and the casket became blurred. He felt April’s mother take his hand.

  “I guess that’s it. I guess it’s our turn to get on board now.”

  He couldn’t see her eyes hidden behind the dark glasses but saw the tracks of tears along her cheeks. “I guess so.”

  April’s father put his arm around her shoulders, as if to hold her up, and put out his hand to Brandon’s father. “Bill, thanks for everything. You made a lot of things go more smoothly for us and I’m grateful for that. If you’re ever in New York …”

  “Sure. I’ll call.”

  Hugh turned to Brandon and extended his hand. “You’re a fine young man, Brandon. I’m glad we had the opportunity to know you. In spite of the circumstances.”

  Brandon nodded, not trusting his voice.

  April’s mother hugged him, and he hugged her hard in return. Everything was slipping away from him. He couldn’t hold on to anything he loved. “You take care of yourself,” she said. “You have a great time in college, and send us an invitation to your graduation, because we’ll come. It’s a promise.”

  “Sure,” he managed.

  The four of them walked back inside the airport, and when the boarding call came, Brandon waved April’s parents into the plane. All around them, tourists chattered and dragged bags loaded with souvenirs of the islands. All Brandon wanted to do was get away from them. Didn’t they know what was going on? Didn’t they realize that April was dead and that he hurt so badly that he could hardly breathe?

  Outside, in the bright September sun, he fumbled for his sunglasses. He stood beside his father, and together they watched the large jet back away from the gate, taxi down the runway, rev its engines, and gather speed. The air was split by the roar of jets, saturated by the smell of hot fuel. Slowly the plane lifted, a silver bird headed to another time and place. Brandon watched until it disappeared behind a bank of snow-white cumulus clouds. And out of his life. He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Son,” he heard his father say.

  “What?” Brandon felt desolate.

  “I, um, was wondering if maybe we could have lunch together.”

  “I’m not hungry. And it’s only ten-thirty.”

  “Well, I was wondering something else too.”

  Brandon removed his sunglasses and stared straight into his father’s face. His father looked nervous, anxious. “What else?”

  “A couple of weeks ago—when I knew this day was coming for you—I had the boat taken out of dry dock.”

  Brandon felt a flush radiate through his body. “You did?”

  “It’s down at the marina in its regular slip, and I was thinking that if you would like to, we could take it out this afternoon. Just the two of us. It’s been a while, but I thought it was something we could do. I mean, that is, if you want.”

  The boat. Their boat. His mother’s boat. Longing filled him. He wanted to feel the wind in his face. He wanted to taste the salt air. He wanted to touch the decks, the galley, the chairs where his mother had last been. In his father’s eyes, he saw uncertainty. A tremor flickered along his rigidly held jaw as he waited for Brandon’s answer.

  His father
added, “I was also thinking it might be good for us to take some time together … take the boat around to some of the cays and islands. You don’t head off for school until January, and I’d like to take about a month off from work and spend it sailing. You don’t have to decide right now, but would you think about it?”

  Brandon understood that his father was reaching out to him, wanted to make things right between them. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, but he did know he was tired of feeling angry and resentful. “I’d like to go sailing today,” he said. “I’ll think about the other.”

  His father grinned and nodded profusely. “Good! Very, very good, son. So let’s go home, change, and head to the marina.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” Brandon said. “In a couple of hours. There’s something I have to do first.”

  “All right.” His father looked at his watch. “See you at, say … one o’clock?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  An hour later, Brandon drove his car to the now vacant house where April had once lived. He parked, got out, and started up the hill behind the house. At the crest of the hill he stood, catching his breath and gazing out at the bright blue Caribbean sea. A breeze lifted his hair off his brow. Good, he thought. He’d hoped for a good stiff breeze.

  He reached into his back pocket, pulled out a red balloon, and filled it with air. He tied it off, reached back into his pocket, pulled out a yellow ribbon, and tied it onto the balloon. Then he raised his hands over his head and let go. The ribbon trailed against his arm, and he resisted the urge to grab hold and not release it. By letting it go, he was letting April go too. He was telling her goodbye. He was giving her to Mark. Forever.

  He shielded his eyes and watched as the balloon drifted higher and higher against the vast blue sky.

  To find out more about April Lancaster

  and Mark Gianni, turn the page

  for a sneak preview of

  Lurlene McDaniel’s companion

  to this book,