Life and Other Near-Death Experiences (18 page)

We both laughed as we recalled how shocked my father had been to answer the front door and discover me standing there barefoot in the middle of a February snowstorm, clutching the bruised arm I’d landed on. “As I was
going
to say,” Paul said, kicking me under the covers, “remember how you hated sleeping alone, so I convinced Dad to get me bunk beds? I think you were sixteen before you slept in your own room again.”

I grunted. “I was fourteen.”

“Sure you were. Hey, Libs?”

“Yeah?”

He paused. “I should have told you this in Vieques, but Mom said the same thing to me that she said to you. She asked me to take care of you.”

I blinked. “Really?”

“Yes. Right around the same time, too.”

“Do you think she knew she was going to die?”

“Yes.”

“Think she was afraid to leave us?”

“Since I can’t think of anything worse than leaving Toby and Max, I have to believe she was terrified. She knew we had each other, though.” He flipped onto his stomach. After a minute, he added, “I hope she knew we would be okay.”

I did, too. But as I lay next to my brother, it occurred to me that even more than that, I wished that my mother, like so many stars in the sky, were still in transit. That some part of her, somewhere, was able to see that Paul and I were still here, making our way.

THIRTY-TWO

Paul and I had stopped to get coffee on our way to the airport when Jess called. “Tom won’t do it, Libby,” she said, all panicky. “I tried everything. Michael even found him a cheap sublet so he would feel like he had a place to call his own. But he refuses.” She sucked in, then exhaled loudly; she was probably smoking on her back porch. “Let me tell him about you being sick. I won’t even say ‘cancer’; I swear.”

“Not a chance, Jess,” I said, recalling Tom’s concern over the cancer center’s calls; he would figure it out immediately. “I really appreciate you trying for me, but this isn’t yours to fix. I’ll figure something out. Just, please—do not tell Tom. Don’t even
hint
that anything is wrong with me.”

I hung up and turned to Paul, who was still watching me from his seat near the window. “Sorry,
hermano
,” I said with a grimace. “Looks like I’m heading back to Chicago today.”

“If this is about the apartment, I will buy the damn thing from you, okay?”

“Wow, baller. Who knew you had that kind of cash?”

He flicked a coffee stirrer at me. It hit my chest and bounced back onto the table. “Who knew
you
had the kind of cash to change your plane ticket at the last minute yet again? Seriously, Libs. I don’t work this hard just to stick change in the bank. I’ll get you your own little hamlet in the Jersey ’burbs if you don’t want to be in Manhattan. Just come with me, okay? Toby and Max are itching to see you. Come home with me.”

“I will. I promise,” I said in what I hoped was my most convincing tone of voice. “I have to do one thing first.”

“Blah blah blah,” Paul said, opening and closing his hand like a puppet. “All I hear is one excuse after another. I understand going to see Mom, but anything else that needs to be done can wait until after the doctor.”

I shrugged apologetically. “You and I are going to have to agree to disagree on that one.”

“Guess so,” he said, standing up. He grabbed his coffee. “Let’s go. One of us has a plane to catch.”

Shiloh called while I was waiting to board yet another flight to Chicago. Which meant Paul had contacted him. But Shiloh’s voice lacked the anger Paul’s still contained when he said good-bye to me at the gate a few hours earlier. “Hey, you,” he said softly. “How are you?”

“Hey, yourself,” I said, feeling as if I were going to cry. “Okay, I guess.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” I was leaning against a column near a terminal, and people were rushing past me to the various flights that would let them get on with their various lives. Not a single person gave me a second glance. “I went to visit my mom’s grave.”

“I heard that. How did it go?”

“Okay, I guess. It was hard to be there. But I’m glad I did it.”

A bird twittered in the background, and I wondered whether Shiloh was sitting on his balcony, or maybe even on the beach. “Why haven’t you been to see the doctor yet, Libby?” he asked. “You promised you would go.”

“I was going to. Really, I was. But then I got to the train stop and . . . I don’t know. I just couldn’t make myself get off the train.”

“Libby.”

“Shiloh,” I deadpanned.

“Libby,” he said again, “I’m being serious. If you’d taken someone with you, that wouldn’t have happened. You would have gone to the doctor’s office and learned more about your options, and signed up for testing and treatment. Quit trying to go this alone.”

“You did,” I protested. “Carla left you before you were even done with treatment.”

“Yeah, she did. But my mom and sister were there to support me.”

I almost said, “How lovely for you.” Instead, I said, “Having my mom help me isn’t an option.”

“That’s a sucky reality, Libby, and you know I feel terrible about it,” he said. “But you have Paul, and his partner, and your nephews. You have your dad, who would probably jump at the opportunity to be a bigger part of your life. Your friend Jess? She’d be there for you in a heartbeat. You know that. And you have me.”

A lump formed in my throat. When he put it like that, I had to admit how stupid I was, trying to be a cowgirl about the whole thing.

“You owe it to yourself to at least make an effort,” Shiloh said. “And if you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your mom. You know it’s what she would have wanted.”

Don’t go it alone
, I told myself as I marched down West Wacker, the wind whipping at my face and making my eyes tear. I tucked my head closer to my body and pressed on another block, until I came upon the building where I had once spent more time than my own home.

“You’ll need to sign in, ma’am,” said the security guard as I walked up to the reception desk. She did a double take. “Libby, is that you?”

“Hey, Georgie,” I said, smiling at the woman who had greeted me most mornings for the better part of a decade.

“Girl, I barely recognized you! Tell me those are not jeans,” she said, giving my legs a long, skeptical look.

Now I laughed. “No need to dress up when I’m not punching a clock these days. I am here to see Jackie, though. Did she come in this morning?”

“Like a hurricane,” Georgie snorted. “You sure you want to see that bag of angry on a day like today?”

“No, but I need to.”

“Want me to call up for you?”

I shook my head. “I’ll explain it to her assistant when I get up there.”

“Oh, my. If you think Jackie has an assistant, you’ve lost your damn mind. She’s been through at least four, not a one lasting more than a few days.” Georgie looked at me questioningly. “You here to try to get your job back?”

“Not quite.”

She put her hand on her forehead. “Praise the Lord. I miss seeing your mug, Libby, but you don’t need that in your life.”

The click-clack of a keyboard was audible from the other side of Jackie’s door, but when I knocked, she didn’t answer. I knocked again; still no response. So I let myself in. “I’m in the middle of something,” she yelled without turning her head away from her oversize computer monitor.

“Jackie?” I said quietly.

“I’m in—” She stopped abruptly. “Libby, is that your sorry ass? If you’re here to ask for your job back, you’re out of luck. At best, I’ll hire you back as a low-level secretary, but there’s no way in hell you’re getting your title back after the mess you left behind.”

“I don’t need a job,” I said. “Well, maybe I do, but not right now. I’m sick, Jackie.”

“In the head!” she barked. “Why else would you leave a ridiculously high-paying job you were completely underqualified for? And don’t tell me you got a better offer, because a hobo wouldn’t work with you looking like that.”

I looked down. My black down jacket did make me look a bit like a charred marshmallow, and my wrinkled jeans were only half covered by the leather boots Jess had coaxed me to buy. It was entirely possible that after battling the lake-effect snow, my makeup was now sliding down my face. “You don’t like my makeover?” I said, tilting my head. “I thought it was a lot cuter than the chains and shackles you had me wearing every day.”

“Good God, woman! It’s like your personality got a makeover. What happened to the not-so-little woman I hired, who couldn’t even say boo to the sandwich delivery guy?”

“Focus, Jackie,” I said. “I’m here because I need health insurance, and I need it yesterday.”

“You’re pregnant!” she said, her voice dripping with accusation. Jackie was childless by choice, and because I had never shared my fertility struggles with her, she assumed I was as well. Other than my unflagging competence, it was perhaps the only thing she’d ever liked about me.

I crossed my arms. “No, sadly, I am not pregnant. I have this unfortunate chronic condition called cancer. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

“Right, and a Ugandan prince is waiting to sweep me off my feet after I wire you each twenty thousand dollars.”

“Jackie.”

She stood up and walked around the desk to where I was standing. Then she slowly looked me up and down, and apparently decided I wasn’t trying to run a scam on her. “Christ, that was not the news I needed today. Is that why you flipped out on me?”

“I flipped out on you because I asked you for a tiny bit of time off, and you flipped out on
me
,” I said. “Now, stay on point. I didn’t sign up for COBRA on time, and the other insurance policies I’ve looked into have deductibles that, frankly, I’d have to sell a kidney to afford. For all I know, my kidneys are cancer corroded, too, so that’s probably not even an option.”

“So what do you want me to do about it?”

“I don’t want you to do anything. I
need
you to tell HR that there was an error in the date of my termination so I can still sign up for COBRA coverage. I need to be officially working for you five days longer than I actually was,” I said.

She stared at me for a minute. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Did I stutter?”

“No, it’s just—” It was just that I hadn’t expected that response, at least not right away. “Thank you.”

“Despite what you may think, I’m not a bad person, Libby. I know you put in a lot of good years for me. You shouldn’t have quit like you did, but I’m not going to let you rot of cancer.”

“Thanks . . . I think.”

“You’re welcome.” She uncrossed her arms and went back to her desk. “I’ll e-mail human resources now, before I forget.” She peered over her monitors. “Please wipe that worried look off your face. If anyone can beat cancer, it’s you.”

Normally this sentiment would have sent me into an internal rage, but I felt I should take it as Jackie had intended it. “I hope you’re right.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Repeat after me, Libby: ‘I plan to.’”

I didn’t like where this conversation was heading. “If you think I can
will
my way into beating cancer—”

“Let me finish, you deaf dairy queen. Do you think I, as a not particularly attractive woman in a male-dominated field, managed to make it to the top of a publicly traded company by
hoping
I was right?” She preempted my response. “No! No, I did not! I operated as though I would succeed; obstacles be damned. There’s always a reason why things might not work out. Millions of them
.
The more you focus on those reasons, the easier it will be to get in your own damn way. So do yourself a favor, mm-kay? Put your rose-colored glasses back on, and leave them on. Because while I applaud your newfound attitude, you’re going to need a lot more than that to get you through whatever’s coming your way next.”

I was almost too stunned to speak. “Thanks, Jackie.”

She waved me away. “Go on. I’ve got work to do, and from the sound of it, you’ve got stacks of paperwork to file.”

“Right. Well, thanks again,” I said, and turned to walk away.

“Door’s open if you ever want to come back to work for the best boss you’ll ever have,” she called after me.

I stopped and looked over my shoulder. To my surprise, Jackie was smiling. I smiled back. “See you around, Jackie.”

THIRTY-THREE

Sleeping pills were no longer of interest to me. I needed some of Paul’s old uppers and an IV drip of coffee, as the only thing my body seemed capable of was rest. As such, I almost slept through the apartment closing.

“Didn’t you get my message?” Raj said as I dashed through the front door of the office where I had been instructed to meet him.

“Message? What message?” I wiped what was either saliva or melting snow from the corner of my mouth, then hiked up my pants, which were threatening to reveal the set of pancakes my butt had become.

He looked at me with concern. “Don’t worry about it. You’re here now. Though I should probably tell you—”

“Tom’s here,” I said as the door in front of me swung open, offering a glimpse of my husband sitting at a long wooden table. A rush of emotion came over me, but it wasn’t exactly anger. Thankfully, it wasn’t affection, either. It was more like . . . disappointment. I would not be able to avoid seeing him again, after all.

“. . . Tom’s here,” Raj said. He clasped his hands together. “I trust this won’t change your intentions about today’s sale.”

I ignored Raj and charged into the conference room. “Jeebus, Tom,” I said, like God wouldn’t notice his only begotten son’s name if I fudged a few letters. “All that hollering and you show up anyway? I could have been sleeping right now.” I narrowed my eyes at him, as another distinct possibility surfaced in my mind. “Please don’t tell me you showed up so you could try to block the sale.”

Not waiting for his response, I turned and extended my hand to the petite woman sitting a few seats down from Tom, who was watching me with interest. “Hi, I’m Libby Ross Miller. Don’t worry; I still plan to sell my apartment to you, even if it requires hurting my soon-to-be ex-husband in order to do so.”

The woman laughed nervously and slowly offered me her hand. “Great.”

Tom cleared his throat. “Libby, I’m not here to block the sale.”

“So what then, Tom? You thought it would be fun to remind me you still exist?” I plopped into the chair that was directly across from where he was sitting. “I almost managed to forget, but it’s nothing a little electric shock therapy can’t fix.”
Or chemo,
I thought, recalling how at the end of her life, my mother had struggled to remember even major details, like how old Paul and I were.

“Libs, come on,” Tom said. “I thought we were doing better.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Doing better would have been you agreeing to come here, rather than pulling this surprise crap.”

Raj rapped his knuckles on the table. “Listen, you’re both here now, so let’s get this over with. I’m going to go grab the title agent and the other Realtor. I’ll be right back.”

As Raj rushed out the door, I stared at Tom, who stared at the table, while the woman—who now knew she was buying a home haunted by the ghosts of two people who may or may not have once loved each other—was furiously texting on her phone, probably asking her friends and family whether she should back out.

Raj returned with two polished, professional-looking women, and the three of them sat down at the table like ducks in a row. They began shuffling and passing papers, instructing us to sign here, then there, and over there, again and again until I thought my hand would fall off. The fluorescent lights gave everything a halo effect, and as I was staring at the white light around Raj’s head, I began to wobble in my chair.

Before I knew what was happening, Tom was at my side. “Libby,” he whispered. “Are you okay? You don’t look so hot.”

“Too close, Tom,” I mumbled, wondering if this was a slow-motion panic attack or if I was simply going to faint again.

Tom looked up at Raj and the two other women. “Can we take five?” he asked, not waiting for them to respond. “Come on, let’s get some water,” he said, holding me by the arm and leading me back into the building’s lobby. He sat me on a bench, then walked over to a watercooler. He returned with a Dixie cup full of water, which he handed me. “Did you eat breakfast?” I accepted the cup.

“Not really,” I said. Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten dinner, either; the cancer diet had pretty much sapped my interest in any sustenance that wasn’t forty proof or higher.

Tom jogged over to the receptionist and quickly returned with a granola bar, which I ate in less than a minute, washing it down with another cup of water that Tom provided.

“Feel better?” he asked, almost eagerly, after I’d finished.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Good. I know this has been really hard on you, and I hate to see you showing up here, all . . .” His eyes washed over me. “You look frail, Libby, and so tired. Even though I know you don’t want me to, I’m worried about you.”

How could I not soften, when he was being so kind and attentive? But his tenderness hurt, too, because it was just one more reminder of what we’d lost.

“Yeah, you’re not alone there,” I told him. “But let’s get through the rest of the rigmarole. Then we’ll talk. All right?”

He looked so elated that I instantly regretted making the offer. “I’d love that.”

Half an hour later, I was homeless. I had six hours to remove my remaining items from the apartment, though Natalie, the woman I sold the place to, agreed to let me leave the bed behind.

“I have the car. Do you want to head to the neighborhood?” Tom asked after we’d said good-bye to Raj. “We could go to De Luca or something.”

I shook my head; hanging out at a place we once frequented as a couple sounded about as smart as setting up camp at a nuclear plant. “There’s a diner around the corner. Why don’t we just go there?”

“Sure,” he said agreeably. He seemed so cheerful that I almost missed the combative Tom who had tried to stop me on the way to the airport a month ago.

The diner smelled of day-old coffee and bacon grease. I knew Tom was thinking of how the odor would permeate his pressed button-down and that he would change the minute he got home.

“So,” he said nervously.

“So,” I said. I looked at him—
really
looked at him for the first time that day. His skin was as unblemished and unlined as it had always been; not a hair on his head was out of place. Yet his eyes were dull, ringed with purple, and his clothes seemed to hang from his frame.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as the waitress tried to hand us menus. I waved them away, and asked for coffee, toast, and a side order of bacon for good measure. Tom ordered tea and a bagel.

“Oh, you know. Fabulous.” In fact, I was deflated, like my body had sprung an oxygen leak. But my stomach wasn’t hurting, and I no longer felt as though I were going to fall in a heap on the floor, which was about as good as I could hope for. “I fell in love with someone,” I blurted.

Tom blinked, attempting to process what I’d just said. “What? Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“When? Was it that guy you used to work with?”

I let out a strange little laugh. “Ty? Oh, no. It’s someone you’ve never met. His name is Shiloh. I met him in Puerto Rico.”

“Wow. That’s . . . that’s wonderful.”

“Really.”

“I mean it. You deserve to be happy.”

“Sounds like you’ve been talking to your therapist.”

“O’Reilly, actually. He and Jess said it’s not right. Me trying to hold on to you.”

“They’re not stupid.”

“No, they’re not. I mean it, Libby. I am sorry. Really, really sorry.”

Here was where I told him it was okay. Where I asked myself,
What would Charlotte Ross do?
and promptly forgave him. Except I couldn’t.

“I didn’t know, Tom,” I said.

“What—what do you mean?”

“When I came home that day, I was upset about something else. I had no idea about you being gay. Would you even have told me if you hadn’t thought I already knew?”

He looked down at his hands. “Um. I don’t know.” He lifted his head and met my eye. “I hope so. That’s why I went into therapy. But no, I wouldn’t have told you that day. What were you going to tell me, when you came home upset?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” I said, fighting the urge to run out of the diner, possibly into oncoming traffic. Yet I did not want to have to speak about this with him ever again. “Were you—are you—in love with O’Reilly?” I asked.

God help me, Tom actually laughed. “
O’Reilly?
I mean, I love the guy, but no. No and no.”

“Who, then?”

The waitress came back with our food. I thanked her without looking away from Tom.

“I had a few crushes here and there. But that’s not what this is about. I just . . . couldn’t keep lying to you. You know?”

I responded with silence.

“I’m sorry, Libby,” he said. “I tried to tell you, but . . .”

I took a sip of my coffee, scorching my tongue on the too-hot liquid. I swallowed anyway. “Oh yeah? And when did you try to tell me, Tom?”

This time he didn’t hesitate. “After you brought up adoption, and I said I didn’t want to do it. I told you I had something else I wanted to talk to you about. And you kept saying you couldn’t handle one more thing. That if I wasn’t going to give you good news, you didn’t want to hear it.”

I gasped.

He looked at me sadly. “You honestly don’t remember.”

I told him I didn’t remember it like
that
. But as I stood there digging small holes into my palm with my nails, it came back to me. He
had
tried to sit me down. He said there were other things we needed to sort through before trying—again—to have a child. I had become angry—belligerent even, because I thought he was trying to divert my attention from the real issue. When, really, I’d been the one doing the diverting.

I took another sip of coffee, then asked Tom if there were other times when he’d tried to tell me.

He coughed awkwardly. “I pried a little. Remember in college, I told you my friend Luke was bisexual? You told me you could never be with someone who liked men, even a little.”

My face grew hot. While I didn’t remember Luke, I could imagine myself saying something like that.

“I told myself I would work harder to be the man you wanted me to be,” Tom said. “I read all those psychology books, and I looked for information online about, um, staying straight, and I tried to focus on studying and getting a good job. I’ve always been crazy about you, Libby, and I wanted to make you happy. You’re the most fun, wonderful person I’ve ever met. It just . . .”

“Isn’t enough,” I said.

Tom had known me most of my life; it was little surprise he understood what I was not saying as well. “It’s not your fault, Libby. It wasn’t up to you to give me permission to tell you. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I was lazy, too. Life was so good for us. It was so easy being half of the couple that looked like they had it all together.”

“We had that in common,” I admitted. In many ways, our so-called ideal marriage had been the foundation of my adult life. I would never admit this to my father, but after my mother died, our three-person family never felt whole again. What I’d seen in Tom was not just a person whom I was deeply attracted to, but also a steady man with whom I could build a new family. Even after our two-person team did not expand as I’d hoped it would, we were nonetheless a unit: Libby-and-Tom, happily married, content in our shared existence. And I had been so intent on maintaining that foundation that I was unwilling to see the cracks forming beneath my very feet.

“My therapist says that part of my need to have things seem perfect stems from having a childhood where everything was pretty much the exact opposite,” said Tom.

I bit into my bacon, considering Tom’s father’s drunken tantrums and flying fists; his mother’s disheveled appearance and nonexistent housecleaning skills, which were her own silent form of retaliation.

“I understand now why you—” I knew he was about to say “stabbed me,” but he stopped short. “Why you were so upset, and why you left Chicago. Though I’m sure it’s little comfort to you, I hate myself.”

I sighed and met his eyes, which were full of pain. Tom’s battle to forgive himself—to learn to love himself again, if he ever had at all—was going to be far more difficult than any struggle I would endure as a result of our separation. I had my own issues to work through. But as far as our relationship was concerned, I was already rolling downhill, while Tom was at the bottom, trying to figure out how to begin his climb.

“Please don’t hate yourself,” I said. “
I
don’t hate you.” It was hard to, with him sitting in front of me, reminding me that he was a real live human being whom I’d loved for so long it was hard to remember a time when that had not been the case. I wanted to tell him that we might be friends again one day. But I had a very strong feeling we wouldn’t be seeing much of each other in the future. So I simply said, “Just give yourself time, and some grace, okay? It’ll work out.”

He dabbed at his eyes with a stiff paper napkin. Then he exhaled. “I feel like you just gave me a gift.”

“You’re welcome.”

His plate was untouched, his teacup still full. “Are you going to be okay, Tom?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t I be asking that about you?” he said, and for a moment, I wondered if he suspected the truth about me. But then he said, “What about you, Libby? The apartment’s gone now, and you’re not working for Jackie anymore. What will you do next?”

“I’m going to start a foundation for children who’ve lost a parent to cancer,” I said. My lie to Ty and Shea aside, I had not truly considered this until it came tumbling out of my trap, but the moment I heard myself say it, I knew there was no going back. However long I still had to live would have to be long enough to get the charity started.

Tom smiled. “That’s wonderful. That’s exactly what your mother would have wanted for you.”

“Yeah. It is,” I said quietly. Then I stood. “Would you mind getting the bill? It’s time for me to go.”

“Of course,” he said. “Libby?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like it if we could stay in touch.”