Authors: Kristen Kehoe
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jake
Mia’s waiting for me when I finally arrive at my old Arizona apartment thirty hours after I left Blue sleeping. I don’t know if it’s the haggard scruff I carry from the almost fourteen hundred miles of driving with minimal sleep, or the fact that I hurt everywhere and it shows, but one look at me has her stepping back and reaching out a hand to bring me inside.
“I won’t blame you if you take a swing at me.”
“Ah, you’re thinking of Cora — she’s the fighter.” She must see my face because the Angel’s smile is sympathetic as she wraps her arms around my waist, resting her head on my chest for a beat. “She’s stronger than we think, Jake. You both are.” When she pulls back, she smiles up at me and I feel the tenuous bit of control I have start to tremble. “Come on, Ryan told me you were coming and, though I’m sure I’m not as appealing to hang out with as a bunch of sweaty guys, they’re on the road at Stanford until Saturday night, so I’m all you’ve got. But I did buy you beer and some tacos to make up for such a quiet homecoming.”
“Muph’s a lucky guy, Angel.”
Her grin is lightning quick and blinding when she throws it over her shoulder at me, and for what feels like the millionth time, I think of my siren and her smile, the one that was so rare in the beginning, and made me feel like a fucking king every time I got her to give me one when we were together. And then I remember her smile that last time we were together, the small curving of her lips as she told me she wouldn’t change anything about us even if she could. There’s a gaping hole in my chest, something that tells me I’ve just left the best thing behind and when I see Mia watching me from the kitchen with knowing eyes, I understand that love, however new, however short lived, changes us more than any other experience. Hefting my bag, I block out the images of Blue and follow my best friend’s girl into the kitchen.
~
“Have you talked to her?”
Mia looks up from the sink where she’s rinsing dishes and I see her eyes narrow, assessing how much I can really take. Finally, she nods.
“This morning, and yesterday after Ryan texted me and told me you were moving back in. I’m going to see her this weekend.”
Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask. Shit, just ask. “How is she?”
“About like you’d expect, I guess.”
My smile is humorless as I tip my beer bottle back. “Not gonna make this easy on me, are you, Angel?”
“Can anything really make this easy, Handsome Jake?”
It’s not the statement but the tone she delivers it in, not full of resentment and condemnation, but of understanding. That alone has me cracking enough to set my beer down and scrub my hands over my face.
“I just couldn’t stay — and I couldn’t ask her to wait. I wanted to, fuck did I want to, I just knew that asking could be a promise broken. Leaving her honestly, leaving without expectation and hope, letting her go instead of tying her to a possibility seemed more honest than anything else.” I pick up my beer and swallow half the contents as Mia comes to sit on the stool the next to me. The apartment is the same, small kitchen with a breakfast bar and two stools that leads into the small living space, which leads to the hall and two bedrooms. But it’s different — when Murph and I lived here there were beer cans on the table and baseball posters on the wall. The television was the only thing that was taken care of, and it was almost always hooked up to some kind of game console. Now, there’s some flutey-type music with a contemporary feel playing over the sound system and the screen is blank. The carpet is clean and void of any stains and debris, and the kitchen smells and looks clean.
My mind flashes back to the apartment I left almost two days ago, the windows that filtered in light and sound, the comfortable furniture that had become a place for Cora and I to love each other in the afternoon. The kitchen where we made meals together, danced while we cleaned, stood while she cried on my shoulder, and where I admitted that we were close to an end.
Mia sits patiently while I gulp more beer, erasing the images even as I erase the emotion in my throat. She’s pulled her knees to her chest on the small stool and has her chin resting on them, her eyes strong and steady as she watches me. She’s similar to Cora in ways that show me they’re more than good friends — certain expressions, her ability to sit completely still and listen. But Mia’s demeanor isn’t controlled so much as ingrained. Assessing things, figuring out the best approach and all possible outcomes is as a part of who is she is, something as natural as her eye color. Blue, she was my siren, the temptress who was controlling her body and her heart while she learned to control her choices and her life.
Until me. It isn’t arrogance, it’s plain understanding that until me, Cora was living with the hope to survive in peace, and then I came along and wouldn’t take no, and eventually, her walls began to come down and together we came alive. Even as the memory comforts me, it makes me feel like a bastard. I walked away, but I’m starting to wonder if I ever should have walked toward her that first night.
“It was braver than you think to walk away, Jake.”
Mia’s words penetrate my thoughts, as if she knew where they were headed, and I look up from the counter to meet her eyes.
“Most people would think walking is the weak choice — that fighting for her is the brave thing to do, giving it all up to be with her so I can show her she’s all that matters.”
“Is she? All that matters, I mean.”
I take a minute to think about it, remembering what it felt like to go home each night knowing she would be there, waking up in her bed in the morning, moving with her, inside her, loving her.
“She matters more than anything or anyone else ever has. More than I thought anything or anyone could,” I admit, and Mia nods like she gets it. “But I can’t say she’s the only thing that matters because I want others things too. I guess that’s why I left. I want to be a ball player, and I don’t know how to do that and be with Cora, not the way she deserves.”
Mia stays quiet, even after I stop and drink down the last of my beer. When I stand to drop the bottle in the recycling bin, she waits for me to come back before speaking.
“Did Ryan ever tell you about my family?”
I nod. “Some, but it was enough to understand that loving a guy like the Murph was probably scary as fuck for you at first.”
“And then some,” she adds with a smile that draws one of my own. “My parents don’t know how to think of each other and of themselves at the same time, if that makes sense. Like both of them lost their identity when they got married and started a family, so they adopted roles that can only be defined as a member of that family. My father runs the family business, and his family when they need order and guidance, and my mother does everything she can to keep my father happy and our appearance perfect. It’s not a hard way to grow up,” she says when my eyes narrow, “just different. I have three brothers and a sister and we’ve all dealt with our own understanding of love differently. My older brother gave up his life for a girl, just as you said people think we should. He dropped his dreams, his family, his future, and followed her around because he thought this was the only way to show her he loved her, to think only of her.”
“But…”
“But in the end, he realized he couldn’t forget about himself and his life, not even for her. When Ryan and I started dating, I always held back because I figured if I thought of him too much I’d become my mother, never looking forward for my own life, only thinking about his. Even when I realized Ryan would never let me forget about myself and my dreams, I had to walk away from him and make sure I was ready and willing to fight for him
and
for me. I had to be ready to fight for us.”
I sit and let the Angel’s words sink in, filling in the gaps to her story with the tidbits I’ve learned from Ryan over the years.
“It’s okay to walk away if you aren’t sure how to stay, Jake.”
And there it is, the one thing I needed to hear. Closing my eyes, I scrub my hands over them again. “Christ, Mia, what do I do? I pushed myself into her life, made her feel something for me, and then broke my own heart and possibly her hard earned stability when I walked out. Who does that?”
Mia reaches over and puts her hand on mine. “Sometimes, you have to understand what each of you need before you can be together. You need to do this, Jake, and Cora needed to let you. Both of you know that.”
I think of the quote I left her, of Scarlett and Rhett and the love story they tried to make, the one they may still have had a shot at, who knows. And then I think of what Mia’s said, of what Cora said all those weeks ago on the couch when she told me I wasn’t done, just taking a break, and I know Mia’s right. Walking away was necessary, for both of us, I just wish it didn’t have to hurt quite this fucking much.
I tell the Angel this and she smiles, standing to wrap her arms around me one last time before stepping back. “You’re a good person, Handsome Jake, or you wouldn’t have been too scared to stay.”
As Mia walks down the hall and closes her door, I wonder if she’s right, or if the real reason I walked was because I loved Cora more than I’ve ever loved anything else, and if there’s one pattern I’ve known in my life, it’s that everything you love eventually goes away and leaves you with nothing.
Chapter Thirty
Cora
My mother’s having a bad day. A really bad fucking day, and as a result, my head is about to pop off my shoulders. I take deep breaths as I continue breaking her hair into sections, silently reminding myself that she’s dealing with a lot, and the fact that’s she’s talking to me at all should be enough. But when she criticizes the way I’m doing her hair for what feels like the millionth time, the same hair I’ve done every week for almost seven months now, I have to stop what I’m doing and step back in order to avoid throttling her and ruining the progress we’ve made.
In the past two months, the time since Jake left, we’ve really turned a corner, come to a type of truce I guess you could say. She isn’t always talkative, but she listens when I talk, and in the last little bit, she’s actually asked me a question or two throughout our few hours together. I’ve told her about Mia’s college graduation that Ryan texted me a million pictures from since I couldn’t make it with my busy work schedule — which is partly true. The other part is that I didn’t try to make it as I know Jake is still there and seeing him now might just make me confess how much I need him and miss him. Since that’s not what he needs, and since Mia knows that and came to see me two weeks before her graduation so we could celebrate her achievements together, I stayed home to spend more time with my mother and build a more solid client base at the salon, and Ryan sent me a thousand pictures of his beautiful wife as she crossed the stage with her undergraduate degree in sports and exercise science. I tell my mother all of this and show her the pictures, only omitting the part about Jake, though a part of me really wants to tell her, which is strange.
Even stranger is the urge I regularly feel to tell her what’s going on in my life.
At Kari’s insistence, I finally told my mother about my time in rehab, the counseling, and now my recurrence at AA meetings. As if Kari knew it would, this caused her to open up to me a bit more, rather than criticize me, like the admission that I had my own demons allowed her to let her guard down so I could see some of hers. I’ve started coming over twice a week, now, once to do her normal treatments, and another evening during the week to say hello and have dinner with her and my father.
It’s surreal, those nights, sitting at the table in the dining room and having a meal with both of my parents, no one shouting, no one sitting in icy silence, no one walking out. I had to go for a run after the first time, the emotions swirling through me too large to name or comprehend. Even after several months and multiple dinners, along with a Fourth of July picnic in the backyard, I still feel the emotions swarm through me when we manage to sit and talk and eat like a family; it’s even weirder to think that, and to finally understand the term. Family. Before, I had parents, people who had raised me and paid for my life, but we weren’t a family, not like we are now. Now, we talk, we care, we even manage to laugh.
Which is probably why today, I’m done taking my mother’s shit. She’s sick, she’s fragile, but she always has been. Just like she’s always used criticism as a defense mechanism, and I’ve always taken her bait, exploding and then storming off, leaving her alone to stew and feel sorry for herself. Well, this time I’m not leaving, and I’m not taking any more of her complaints, either.
“Mom, enough.”
“I just don’t think you need to use so much—”
“Enough,” I cut her off and turn her chair so she looks into my eyes. Hers are dark, not yet hollow, but I can see the blue transforming, the black overtaking, and for the first time in a while I’m reminded that my mother isn’t just sad, but that she’s ill. “What’s going on? You’ve been mad all day. Are you feeling all right?”
“That’s a stupid question. Why would I feel all right? I’m losing my mind, every day. Soon, I’m going to be shitting my pants and getting my food from a tube.”
Her hands are clenching and unclenching at the throat of her robe again, and I can hear her uneven breathing. I’m shaking a little as I try to go backwards and think about what Sassy told me when I asked how to deal with an upcoming episode. I wanted to be prepared in case it ever happened again, but now I can’t remember anything she told me as I stare at my mother while she grows more and more agitated.
“Mom, did something happen?”
“The same thing that happens every day. I lost my mind. Why can’t he understand that? I can’t go out, can’t go somewhere. What will people think when I can’t remember them? When I can’t remember where I am let alone who I am?”
I stand watching her, my heart rate spiking as her hands continue to clench and unclench on the neck of her robe, her breath wheezing, her eyes wide with fatigue and anger and sadness.
“Are you talking about Dad?”
“How can he expect me to go anywhere? To dinner, he said, as if it’s just that easy. Nothing’s easy, and it never will be again. Why can’t he see that? Why does he refuse to see that?”
I crouch down so our eyes are level and though I want to hug her as much as I want to yell at her, I do neither, I simply wait until her eyes meet mine. My voice is low and steady when I speak, nothing like the nerves swimming inside of me. “He loves you, more than any woman could ever hope or dream of. Dad loves you, Mom, and he wants to take you to dinner to remind you and everyone else that it doesn’t matter what you remember and what you don’t, he’ll never forget you. Ever.”
Her eyes fill with tears and fear, and I wonder if I misspoke.
“He should put me in a home and let me rot,” she whimpers.
“No, he shouldn’t and, goddammit, you should think of what it does to him when you say things like that.”
She shakes her head, her motions weak and spastic, her breath still wheezing. Her eyes are a little darker now, her face odd and suddenly I’m afraid that there’s something more than panic running through my mother.
“Mom, are you all right? Do you need me to call Sassy?”
“I don’t need you to do anything, Cora, how many times do I have to tell you that?” I squint to hear her, my concern rocketing to panic. Her speech is slurring and she’s now rubbing her right hand, but I can hardly focus on it because her eyes are blinking and there’s a flutter on one side of her mouth, a side that barely moved when she spoke. Alarm bells are going off in my head, and when she goes to stand and stumbles, I start screaming, cradling her against me as we hit the floor, rocking her as I yell for help over and over.
Her body’s shaking, but other than that she’s still. When Sassy comes barreling into the room, she takes one look and starts barking out instructions and orders. Her phone is to her ear when she crouches down in front of us.
“What happened?” I shake my head, my eyes wide. She snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Cora, I need you to tell me, so I can help her. Pull it together.”
I breathe, nod, and breathe again. “She was cranky, all morning just grumpy and complaining. I thought she was having an episode but when I turned her to face me, her speech got slurred and her face… it stopped moving.”
“Stroke,” Sassy says and then she’s cupping my mother’s face in her hands, speaking loud and slow. “Suzie, Suzie, I need you to look at me. Can you smile at me?” I can’t see my mother’s face but Sassy’s talking into her phone and I hear her say no. “Did she fall?” It takes me a second to realize Sassy’s talking to me, and when she asks again, I nod.
“She tried to stand, but couldn’t. Her legs gave out or she lost her balance or something. I caught her before she hit the ground.”
Sassy nods and speaks into the phone again. I can hear sirens now, but I don’t move. I just sit there, holding my mother, my hand stroking over her hair as I wait. Although it feels like hours, it’s maybe ten minutes from the time I cried out to the time that there are EMTs walking through with a stretcher and bags, taking her from me and asking all of the same questions that Sassy did. I answer them, never taking my eyes from my mother as they strap her to a stretcher and place a hand held breathing bag to her face.
I follow blindly as they take her down the stairs, grateful that Sassy is talking with them now. When we get to the back of the ambulance, I stop, foolishly scared. Sassy looks at me and I motion for her to go. “She needs you,” I say, swallowing hard when I realize how true those words are. She needs Sassy, not me. “I’ll call my dad and be right behind you.”
She nods and squeezes my hand once before stepping into the ambulance with my mother. I watch as they drive out of the estate and down the lane, pulling my cell phone out and turning toward my car once they’re out of sight. Clicking on my dad’s name, I wonder how to tell him his wife just had a stroke.
~
I’m sitting with my mother in the hospital, rubbing hand cream on her palms, massaging them gently as I navigate the I.V. and attached tubes. There’s a breathing mechanism in her nose and she has her eyes closed. I’ve been here since she fell yesterday, since Sassy called 911 and the ambulance took her away. I’ve been here since my father walked in like a ghost after speaking with the doctor, sinking into the chair with his head in his hands as his shoulders shook and silent tears trekked down his face.
And I’ve been here since my mother woke up and was sedated again when she panicked because she couldn’t remember the fall, or the stroke, or anything that came next.
I put away the cream and take out my cuticle scissors and brush, completing my weekly routine in the silence of the hospital, Elton John crooning on my iPod speaker in the background (
Candle in the Wind
is her favorite, a true tribute to Diana, the most elegant of ladies my mother used to say). The doctors told me I could talk to her, that it might help to hear a familiar voice when she starts to wake, but I don’t because I’m not sure what to say, or if she’ll want to hear it, so I do what we’ve done for the past seven months and I manicure her nails, filing, smoothing, polishing until her fingers are beautiful and elegant again, tipped in the rose-colored pink she chose yesterday before we began. I had walked in, ready to start the day, ready to see if our slowly progressing relationship would allow for another small conversation and the polish was out and waiting, a nice blend between the dark colors I normally wear and the pale pink she always stays with.
Like me, it seemed she was trying to grow, to blend the best parts of who she once was with the person she wanted to be now, however limited her time — or I’m so desperate to believe we’ve moved forward that I’m reading into nail polish color like it’s a fucking symbol, when it’s nothing more than decoration.
“Look at you, still working. Suzie will have to pay your some overtime.”
I smile at Sassy as she walks in and hands me a cup of tea, but only because I know she needs the reassurance as much as I do. She was amazing when she was barking out orders, saving my mother during all of those minutes that both the paramedics and doctors assured us were precious and imperative for healthy recovery. Now, though, she looks a little shaken under her usually calm appearance, and rather than rested and playful, her eyes are tired and worried.
“You were amazing, Sassy. All I could do was stare and shake and ask her what was wrong, but one look and you moved. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s my job,
Cara
. Strokes are common, and still, we can’t stop them from coming. We can only hope to move fast enough to prevent too much permanent damage.”
Permanent damage. The words want to slam into me, but I nod and sip the tea I don’t really want. Words from one of my meetings only days ago play back in my head and I hold onto them, gathering strength from their memory and their meaning.
God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.
I want to be able to control this — to take the blame, to somehow make this my fault rather than believe that someone’s life can simply fall down around them for no reason other than bad luck or genetics. But I can’t take the blame and I can’t fix her, I can only be here and hope for more time with her when she wakes up, and so I sit with her, drinking tea with Sassy and I pray that we’re all strong enough for whatever comes next.
Sassy and I stay silent for a minute, staring at my mom, at her monitors, at her form that appears frailer by the minute. When I hear Sassy’s breath catch the tiniest bit, I stand and wrap my arm around her shoulder. “You did all you could, Sassy. Even the doctor said your fast diagnosis and call saved her.”
She shakes her head and hooks her arm around my waist. “I take care of her because I love her too. But I didn’t save her, not today and not any other day. You did,” she says and I look down at her. “You saved her when you came back and gave her yourself every week, even when she tried to push you away. It’s love that saves us,
Cara
, because it gives us something even medicine can’t.”