How Do I Love Thee (7 page)

“I'll ask her,” Brett said. “Shayla's special, Mom. She doesn't deserve to have XP.”

“Just like you didn't deserve to have leukemia,” his mother said. “Believe me, I know, Brett—life isn't fair.”

The night Shayla came to dinner, Brett worked feverishly to make the cabin safe for her. Because the summer sun didn't set until after nine o'clock, lie didn't want her to risk exposure to damaging light. He hung sheets across windows, turned off lamps, and lit candles, His mother set the table with her finest dishes and placed candles in silver holders. Shayla drove her own car over because the windows were specially tinted. By the time she arrived, the savory smells of roast beef and potatoes filled a cabin turned into a safe haven for its guest.

“Brett tells me you're taking courses at Boston College,” his mother said as the three of them ate together, “Do you have a major in mind?”

“Night work,” Shayla said, then smiled, which invited Brett and his mother to smile too. “Maybe computer programming,” she added. “I can work from my home that way.”

Listening to them gave Brett a massive case of nerves, but as the evening progressed, he saw that Shayla and his mother were getting on well, and he relaxed. His mother even surprised him when she told them she'd clean up
and they could leave. Outside, Shayla said, “Your mother's nice.”

“I guess so.”

“I told my parents about you and they want to meet you.”

Brett got nervous all over again. He'd liked it better when it had been just him and Shayla. “All right,” he said. “How about when I pick you up for the clambake?”

On the day of the clambake, it was decided that Dooley and his friends would go early to swim and play on die beach, and that Brett and Shayla would show up after the sun went down. Brett arrived at Shayla's house to face her mother and father. Her father was a baseball fan, so Brett discovered they had plenty to talk about, but despite the ease of the visit, Brett saw their apprehension when it came time to leave. He wanted to assure them he'd take good care of Shayla but didn't know how.

“First-date jitters,” Shayla sighed when she and Brett were driving away. “I don't think they ever expected me to have a boyfriend from the daylight world.”

“They'll just have to get used to me hanging around, because I plan to make a habit of it.”
He reached over, took her hand, and held it for the long drive to the Cape.

Just as twilight descended, Brett and Shayla found their friends sitting around a small campfire on the beach. “Just in time,” Dooley said, using tongs to dig through piles of seaweed for clams, lobsters, and corn on the cob from the heated pit. “Let the feast begin!”

Brett watched Shayla, shy at first, slowly warm to the others and them to her. Brett wanted to protect her, put his arms around her, ward off any hurt that might come her way, and he would have challenged anyone who treated her badly.

The night turned chilly. Dooley rebuilt the fire. Soon couples began to pair off and wander farther down the beach. Those who didn't sat around telling ghost stories.

“Come on,” Brett said, taking Shayla's hand and leading her to a spot away from the others. He spread their blanket and stretched out beside her. Together they studied the stars. She pointed out the constellations, named them, and made him wonder why he'd never spent the time to learn about the night sky. He vowed
he would learn all he could because night was her home in the universe, and he wanted to be where she was, live wherever she did.

“Are you having a good time?” He rose up on his elbows and gazed down at her moonlit face.

“I'm having a very good time. I never expected to be here, with them, doing this.”

“You mean having a clambake?”

“No … belonging,” she said.

His heart banged hard in his chest. The scent of her hair made him light-headed. “It's just the first of a hundred things I want to do with you.”

“Beginning with—?” Her eyes seemed clear as glass, and he imagined that he could see into her very soul.

“Beginning with this.” He leaned down, touched his lips to hers. She welcomed his kiss and allowed it to deepen. Suddenly it was as if a thousand fireworks had gone off in his head. Colors exploded and ricocheted in his mind; his body felt as if it were on fire. She was moonlight and starlight to him, a night vision he wanted to hold on to forever.

“I love you,” he whispered into her ear.

Shayla's arms slid around his neck. “And I love you,” she whispered back.

Two days later, Brett was still flying from his night on the beach with Shayla. So this was what love felt like—a rocket ride, with his heart so full of joy that he thought it would spill out of him or seep through his pores. He was humming as he prepared to go to work, when the phone rang. He picked it up and heard a woman's teary voice ask, “Is this Brett?”

“It is.”

A pause. “This is Cynthia Brighton, Shayla's mother. I got your number from the information operator, thank God.”

Brett felt his stomach tighten. Why would Shayla's mother be calling him?
Unless—?
“What's wrong? Is it Shayla?”

“She's in die hospital,” came the answer. “It seems she went out in her boat late last night. She must have experienced engine trouble because she was stranded out in the sea for hours.”

Brett felt sick. “And what happened?”
Maybe her boat had overturned. Maybe she had gotten caught in a storm.

“She was alt right… for a while. And then…”

He could hear that Mrs. Brighton was having trouble controlling her voice. “And then
what?”

“And then the sun came up.”

hayla had been found unconscious, drifting out to sea in the open boat, in the hot summer afternoon. Three fishermen from a passing cabin cruiser had captured the dinghy, taken Shayla onboard, and radioed for an ambulance. Back onshore, an emergency medical team had pumped her dehydrated body full of fluids and rushed her to the area's community hospital, where she was flown to Boston Children's by a Life Force helicopter. She lay in the intensive care area of the burn unit with third-degree burns over eighty percent of her body. Brett drove like a madman through rush-hour traffic to get there. Her parents were pacing
the waiting room, distraught but subdued. Shayla's mother surprised Brett by hugging him, holding on as if for dear life. “She's asked to see you,” Cynthia Brighton said.

“Is she—? Will she—?” He couldn't say the words.

“Her doctors hold no hope,” Shayla's father said. “She had no defense against the sun.”

Refusing to believe what he'd been told, Brett followed her parents to the bed that held Shayla. He didn't recognize her. She was swathed in wet compresses and lying on an air mattress that lifted her burned body off the surface of the bed. Thick pads covered her eyes. She was blind.

He bent down and smelled the sharp aroma of medication. “Hi, baby,” he whispered into her ear.

“Brett?”

“I'm here.” He wanted to touch her but knew he couldn't.

“They've given me morphine,” she said. “I feel like I'm floating. It doesn't hurt now.”

Emotion clogged his throat. He'd had morphine a few times during his cancer treatments, so he knew the sensation of painless
weightlessness. “Why'd you go out there without me? You know I would have gone with you.”

“I got an e-mail. Kimberly died. I only went out because I hurt so bad.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as the pain of her loss overcame her. He knew that morphine couldn't touch that kind of pain.

“You went to the place with the rocks, didn't you?”

“I cried myself to sleep. When I woke, the tide had gone out. I was scared, Brett.”

He couldn't speak, imagining her agony as the sun crawled over the horizon and began to sear her skin. She ‘d been helpless.

“Will you stay with me?”

“I'll stay,” he managed to say.

“You rest now, honey,” her mother said over Brett's shoulder. “We'll all stay.”

Brett's mother rented a car to drive into Boston. As soon as she appeared in the family waiting room at the hospital, he remembered that he'd left her stranded. “Mom, I'm sorry” was all he said.

Her eyes were red-rimmed from exhaustion, but she didn't upbraid him. “I rented the car for a week,” she said. “After that—”

“After that I may still be here,” Brett said.

“You should think about coming home, at least to shower and change.”

“There's a sleeping room and a shower here for patients’ families. Shayla's parents said I could use it whenever I wanted.”

His mother -tried again. “The pressure of waiting can be crushing, Brett. You should take breaks.”

He saw the pain in her eyes and knew she was telling him how it had been for her all the times she'd waited through his long hospitalizations and treatments. She had waited alone, miles from home, with no one by her side. At least the Brightons had each other. Brett put his arms around her. “Real men don't leave, Mom. No matter how bad it is, real men stay.”

She started to cry but eventually pulled away and picked up her purse. “I'll be home if you need me,” she said. She slipped a fifty-dollar bill into his hand. “For whatever you need.”

He watched her walk away, seeing her life's
pattern for the first time. He was now the watcher, not the victim. Regardless, he wanted neither role.

Dooley came, and so did the others. They saw Shayla, one by one, to say goodbye.

“I had no idea they cared about me,” she told Brett.

“I told you they did.”

“They never would have if it hadn't have been for you.”

“I love you, Shayla.”

The night she died, he was beside her bed. Across the room, moonlight trickled through slats in the blinds. He watched the light shift, saw a shadow pass, heard her take a breath, stop, take another breath, then no more. He tangled his fingers in her hair, kissed her forehead, and walked out of the room, leaving her parents to mourn without him.

The drive home was quick because there was no traffic. He followed the coastal highway under the light of a full August moon. He slowed as he passed her house, stopping just long enough to stare out the car window at the brightly lit widow's walk far above the bluff.
Then he saw something move. In the pale bisque-colored light, there were two figures, a woman in a long dress and a girl with long hair. They hovered at the rail like pale white smoke, forms without substance, gazing out at the sea. Brett rubbed his eyes, looked again. The apparitions were gone. He was alone in the moonlight.