One True Loves (9 page)

“Tell me.”

“I'll love you forever.”

“I already knew that,” I said. “And I'll love you forever, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'll love you until we're so old we can barely walk on our own and we have to get walkers and put those cut-up yellow tennis balls on them. I'll love you past that, actually. I'll love you until the end of time.”

“You sure?” he said, smiling at me, pulling me toward him. Marie was just up ahead, grabbing the door to the reception hall. I could hear the din of large-scale small talk. I imagined a room full of my friends and family introducing themselves to one another. I imagined Olive already having made friends with half of my father's extended family.

When this was over, Jesse and I were leaving on a ten-day trip to India, courtesy of his parents. No living out of backpacks or sleeping in hostels. No deadlines or film shoots while we were there. Just two people in love with each other, in love with the world.

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “You are my one true love. I don't even think I'm capable of loving anyone else.”

The double doors opened and Jesse and I walked through,
into the reception hall, just as I heard the DJ announce, “Introducing . . . Jesse and Emma Lerner!”

Hearing my new name felt jarring to me, for a moment. It sounded like someone else. I assumed I would get over it in time, that it would grow on me, likening this moment to the first few days of a haircut.

Besides, the name didn't matter. None of that mattered when I had the man of my dreams.

It was the happiest day of my life.

Emma and Jesse. Forever.

Three hundred and sixty-four days later, he was gone.

T
he last time I saw Jesse he was wearing navy blue chinos, Vans, and a heather gray T-shirt. It was his favorite. He'd done the laundry the day before just so he could wear it.

It was the day before our anniversary. I had managed to snag a freelance assignment writing up a piece on a new hotel in the Santa Ynez Valley in Southern California. Despite the fact that a work trip isn't exactly the most romantic way to spend an anniversary, Jesse was going to join me on the trip. We would celebrate one year of marriage touring the hotel, taking notes on the food, and then squeezing in a visit to a vineyard or two.

But Jesse was asked to join an old boss of his on a quick four-day shoot in the Aleutian Islands.

And unlike me, he had not yet been to Alaska.

“I want to see glaciers,” Jesse said. “You've seen them but I haven't yet.”

I thought about how it felt to stare at something so white it looked blue, so large that you felt small, so peaceful you forgot just what an environmental threat they posed. I understood why he wanted to go. But I also knew that if I were in his position, I'd turn down the opportunity.

Some of it was travel fatigue. He and I had spent almost ten years grabbing on to every opportunity to get on a plane or a train. I was working at a travel blog and writing freelance on the side, doing my best to get placed in loftier and loftier publications.

I was a professional at navigating security checkpoints and baggage claims. I had enough frequent-flyer miles to go absolutely anywhere I dreamed of.

And I'm not saying that travel wasn't incredible, that our life wasn't incredible. Because it was.

I had been to the Great Wall of China. I'd hiked a waterfall in Costa Rica. I'd tasted pizza in Naples, strudel in Vienna, bangers and mash in London. I'd seen the
Mona Lisa
. I'd been inside the Taj Mahal.

I had some of my most incredible experiences abroad.

But I'd also had a lot of them right in my own home. Inventing cheap at-home dinners with Jesse, walking down the street late at night to split a pint of ice cream, waking up early on Saturday mornings to the sun shining through the sliding glass door.

I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I'd come to realize that extraordinary is everywhere.

And I was starting to yearn for a chance to settle in somewhere and maybe, perhaps, not need to rush to get on a plane to go somewhere else.

I had just found out that Marie was pregnant with her first child. She and Mike were buying a house a short commute from Acton. It seemed all but finalized that she would take over the store. The Booksellers' Daughter realizing her full potential.

But here is what surprised me: I had the smallest inkling that her life didn't sound quite so bad.

She wasn't always packing or unpacking. She was never jet-lagged. She never had to buy a phone charger she already had because she'd forgotten the original thousands of miles away.

I had mentioned all of this to Jesse.

“Do you ever just want to go home?” I said.

“We are home,” he'd said to me.

“No,
home
home. To Acton home.”

Jesse looked at me suspiciously and said, “You must be an impostor. Because the real Emma would never say that.”

I laughed and let it go.

But I wasn't
actually
letting it go. Case in point: If Jesse and I were going to have children, were we still going to be hopping on a quick flight to Peru? And maybe more important: Was I ready to raise children in Los Angeles?

The very moment these questions occurred to me, I started to realize that my life plans had never really extended past my twenties. I had never asked myself if I
always
wanted to be traveling, if I
always
wanted to live so far from my parents.

I began to suspect that this jet-setting Jesse and I had been living had always felt temporary to me, like something I knew I needed to do and then one day would be over.

I think that I wanted to settle down one day.

And the only thing that shocked me more than realizing it was realizing I had never realized it before.

Of course, it did not help matters that I was pretty sure Jesse hadn't been thinking any of this. I was pretty sure Jesse wasn't thinking this at all.

We had created a life of spontaneous adventure. Of seeing all the things people say one day they will see.

I couldn't very well change the entire modus operandi of our lives.

So even though I wanted him to skip Alaska and go to Southern California with me, I told him to go.

And he was right. I'd already seen a glacier. But he hadn't.

So—instead of preparing to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary—I was driving Jesse to LAX so that he could hop on a flight to Anchorage.

“We'll celebrate our anniversary when I get home,” he said. “I'm gonna go all out. Candles, wine, flowers. I'll even serenade you. And I'll call you tomorrow.”

He was meeting the rest of the crew in Anchorage and then getting on a private plane, landing in Akun Island. Most of the time after that, he'd be filming aerial shots from a helicopter.

“Don't stress out about it,” I said. “If you can't call, I totally get it.”

“Thank you,” he said as he gathered his bags and looked at me. “I love you more than anyone has ever loved anyone in the history of the world. Do you know that? Do you know that Antony didn't love Cleopatra as much as I love you? Do you know that Romeo didn't love Juliet as much as I love you?”

I laughed. “I love you, too,” I said. “More than Liz Taylor loved Richard Burton.”

Jesse came around the side of the car and stood at my window.

“Wow,” he said, smiling. “That's a lot.”

“All right. Get out of here, would you? I have errands to run.”

Jesse laughed and kissed me good-bye. And then I watched him walk in front of our car through the automatic doors, into the belly of Los Angeles International Airport.

Just then, my favorite song came on the radio. I turned up the volume, sang at the top of my lungs, and pulled the car away from the curb.

As I navigated the streets back home, Jesse texted me.

I love you. I'll miss you.

He must have sent it just before he went through airport security, maybe right after. But I didn't see it until an hour or so later.

I texted him back.

I'll miss you every second of every day. Xoxo

I knew that he might not see it for a while, that I might not hear from him for a few days.

I pictured him riding in a small plane, landing on the island, hopping into a helicopter, and soon seeing a glacier so big it left him breathless.

I woke up the morning of our anniversary, sick to my stomach. I rushed to the bathroom and vomited.

I had no idea why. To this day, I don't know if I ate something bad or if, on some level, I could just sense the looming tragedy in my bones, the way that some dogs can tell a hurricane is coming.

Jesse didn't call to wish me a happy anniversary.

T
he commercial flight made it to Anchorage.

The Cessna made it to Akun Island.

But the first time they took the helicopter out, it never came back.

The best anyone could conclude was it went down somewhere over the North Pacific.

The four people on board were lost.

My husband, my one true love . . .

Gone.

F
rancine and Joe flew into LA and moved into my apartment. My own parents came and rented a hotel a few minutes' walk away but spent every waking minute with me.

Francine kept saying that she didn't understand why this wasn't a national news story, why there wasn't a nationwide search party.

Joe kept telling her that helicopters crash all the time. He said it as if it were good news, as if that meant there was a plan in place for moments like these.

“They will find him,” he would say to her over and over. “If anyone can swim to safety, it's our son.”

I held it together for as long as I could. I held Francine as she sobbed in my arms. I told her, just as Joe did, that it was only a matter of time until we got a call saying he was safe.

My mom made casseroles and I would cut them up and put them on plates for Francine and Joe and say things like, “We need to eat.” But I never did.

I cried when no one was around and I found it hard to look in the mirror, but I kept telling everyone that we would find Jesse soon.

And then they found a propeller of the helicopter on the shore of Adak Island. With Jesse's backpack. And the body of the pilot.

The call we had been waiting for came.

But it went nothing like we expected.

Jesse had not yet been found.

He was believed to be dead.

After I hung up the phone, Francine broke down. Joe was frozen still. My parents stared at me, stunned.

I said, “That's crazy. Jesse didn't die. He wouldn't do that.”

Francine developed such strong panic attacks that Joe flew her home and checked her into a hospital.

My mom and dad stayed on an air mattress at the foot of my bed, watching my every move. I told them I had a handle on it. I thought, for certain, that I did.

I spent three days walking around in a daze, waiting for the telephone to ring, waiting for someone
else
to call and say the first call had been wrong.

That second call never came. Instead, my phone was tied up with people checking in to see if I was OK.

And then, one day, Marie called and said she'd left Mike in charge of the store. She was flying in to be here for me.

I was far too numb to decide whether I wanted her around.

The day Marie arrived, I woke up late in the afternoon to find that my mom had gone to the store and my dad had left to pick Marie up from the airport. My first time alone in what felt like forever.

It was a clear day. I decided I didn't want to be in my house anymore. But I didn't want to leave it, either. I got dressed and asked the neighbors if I could borrow their ladder so that I could clean the gutters.

I had no intention of cleaning anything. I just wanted to stand, high up on the earth, unencumbered by the safety of
walls, floors, and ceilings. I wanted to stand high enough that if I fell, it'd kill me. This is not the same thing as wanting to die.

I climbed up to the roof and stood there, with glassy bloodshot eyes. I stared straight ahead, looking at treetops and into the windows of high-rises. It didn't make me feel any better than being in the house. But it didn't make me feel any worse, either. So I stayed there. Just standing and looking. Looking at anything that didn't make me want to crawl into a ball and fade away.

And then I saw, in the sliver of a view between two buildings, so far in the distance you almost couldn't make it out . . .

The ocean.

I thought,
Maybe Jesse is out there in the water. Maybe he's swimming. Maybe he's building a raft to get home.

The hope that I clung to in that moment didn't feel good or freeing. It felt cruel. As if the world were giving me just enough rope to hang myself.