The Other Side of Someday (3 page)

“I knew you’d be the one to leave the nest, Baylee.” His voice wavered, obviously torn about my impending departure. “You have your mother’s adventurous spirit. Do you know that?”

“I don’t feel that way. Hell, I’ve never lived anywhere but here.”

“Either did your mom, but that didn’t stop her from doing what she wanted.”

“I wish I could remember her.”

It was quiet for a moment as we stared at each other. He always thought of my mother whenever he saw me. I inherited her vibrant red hair, fair skin, and short and slender frame. From what I knew, my uncle and mother were nearly inseparable growing up, always getting into trouble together, always holding the other one up when they needed it. The stories he told me about their childhood made me feel as if I actually knew her.

“Listen…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve thought a lot about this, and I think you should have this.” He reached into his messenger bag and produced a small, leather-bound journal, the pages yellowing and torn.

“What is it?” I asked, examining the cover just as my eyes settled on the gold monogram etched in the corner.

“It was your mama’s journal. I gave it to her the day after she got her diagnosis, thinking it might be therapeutic for her to write down her feelings. She hated when people worried about her and had a bad habit of lying to everyone about how she was truly feeling. She always wrote in a journal as a kid, so I thought this would be a good way for her to process everything.”

“I don’t understand. How do you have this? Did Dad know about it?”

He nodded. “I felt bad keeping it, but he insisted I hold onto it. You see, when I finally went home to Charlotte after you were born and your mama died, a package was waiting for me. This journal was in it. Your mama knew her time was up, Baylee. She held on as long as she could to make sure you arrived. You became her sole purpose for living. And this journal…” He caressed the weathered cover as it lay in my lap. “This is what she did the last several months of her life. I just figured since you’re starting out on your first big adventure, you might want some inspiration from the woman whose last big adventure was having you.”

Throughout my drive across the country, I had kept the journal close to me, not wanting to let it out of my sight for a minute. I was curious about what the pages contained, but I was also apprehensive about reading her words. When I turned that final page, I knew the only piece of her I had would be gone. I wasn’t sure I was ready to say goodbye to the woman I never even met. But maybe my uncle was right. Maybe I needed to read my mother’s words. Maybe they would give me the encouragement I needed now that I was on my own for the first time in my life.

Removing the journal from my bag, I stared at the cover, inhaling the aged papers. “I love that smell,” I said softly, opening to the first page.

April 20

What am I? Fifteen? That’s how I feel…like I’m writing in a diary. So here goes…

Dear Diary,
 

I have cancer.

Fucking cancer.

I’m not quite sure it’s sunk in yet. I don’t know if it ever will. The doctor said I had a thirty percent chance of surviving if I began intensive chemotherapy immediately, but that would kill the little life growing inside of me. I love Perry with all my heart. He says we’ll try again when I beat this thing, but I only have a thirty percent chance of that happening. I am one hundred percent pregnant, due on November 25
^th
. So I choose life, but not mine. Perry will understand.
 

Now I must begin the daunting task of living my life in the little time I have left. You know how people always say “Someday, I will”? Well, I’ve hit my someday. Someday begins today, and the first thing I’m going to do is see the Pacific Ocean. You may ask why the Pacific Ocean. Well, on my first date with Perry, we went to the old drive-in, which was more like a cow pasture with a shitty screen. The feature movie was
Gidget.

I gasped.
No wonder Dad loved that movie
, I thought, then returned my eyes to my mother’s flowing script.

 
It’s a silly beach movie, but it brings back memories of the butterflies. And the butterflies never left. To this day, when I gaze at Perry, I still feel like the giddy sixteen-year-old at the annual church cookout who was asked out by a boy from another town. Now, I’m a twenty-nine-year-old wife and soon-to-be mother who has cancer.

When I got my diagnosis last week, you want to know the first thing I did? I made a list of all the things I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve had to redo the list in order of importance because I fear I won’t be able to do everything. I have to pick and choose my battles while I fight the battle that has begun raging its own war against me… Time.

 
I closed the journal and returned it to my bag. Pushing the chair back, I got up, grabbing Sport’s leash. I headed back toward my condo, staring out over the ocean that the mother I never knew yearned to see as her first step in beginning to live her life.

“Someday begins today,” I murmured with conviction, repeating my mother’s words.

C
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T
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REMAINDER
OF
MY
day passed in a blur as I did my best to put a dent in the mountain of boxes filling most of the free space in my condo. In a rush to get out of North Carolina, I had thrown everything I owned into boxes. As I unpacked them, I was faced with reminders of what I wanted to forget. I thought by packing up and moving somewhere new, I’d be able to leave my past, and Will, behind. As I unboxed my books and organized them on the built-in shelves in what would be my office, I came to the realization that was easier said than done.

Brushing the dust off the cover of my senior yearbook, I flipped through the pages, although I knew it wasn’t a good idea. Our pictures adorned nearly every page. Homecoming queen and the starting quarterback… We were the couple everyone wanted to be.

As my eyes scanned the photo collage from the homecoming dance, I stopped when I saw the expression on the face of the seventeen-year-old version of myself. Will and I were standing there, he in his crown, me in my tiara. He was beaming as he held me in his arms. I was smiling, too, but it almost seemed forced, as if I already knew our entire relationship was a farce. I wished I could remember what was going through my mind at that moment. Maybe that there was more to life than being known as someone’s girlfriend, then wife. I was never just Baylee. First, I was Perry’s daughter, the sole heir to one of the most lucrative lumber companies in the country. Then I was known as Will’s girl. I didn’t think too much of it then, but as the years passed, I wanted people to know me for me, not for whom I was dating or married to.

I turned the page, my eyes falling on a collage of baby photos of the graduating class. Right in the center was one of Will and me together as infants. We had known each other practically our entire lives. Hell, our first kiss was the result of a game of Spin the Bottle gone horribly wrong during the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. I had never thought of him in a romantic sense before. I actually cringed when the bottle fell on me. I couldn’t remember finding any of the boys I went to high school with attractive. All that mattered was graduating at the top of my class and having my choice of colleges to choose from.

It’s amazing how one moment can change everything.

I often wondered what my life would have been like had that bottle landed on Julie Williams sitting beside me. I still remembered the look of excitement on her face when the bottle began to slow and nearly landed on her before moving just a little bit more, pointing at me. If it had landed on her, maybe I wouldn’t have wasted the past decade of my life. Hell, Will was screwing Julie the duration of our relationship anyway.

Instead, that one moment changed the trajectory my life had been on. The following week, my father died of a heart attack. Will came to the funeral and Camille, my lovely step-monster… I’m sorry… step-mother commented about what a nice young man he was before insinuating she had heard we swapped spit. And that was what kissing Will was. Simply an exchange of bodily fluids. I assumed that was all it was supposed to be, considering he was the first and only boy I had ever kissed. But I knew there had to be more to it. I had always imagined a kiss should feel electric, exhilarating, breathtaking, magical. Will’s kisses were, for lack of a better word, mechanical, like he was reading an instruction manual and simply followed the steps. There was no spark. There was no breathlessness. There was no magic.

Will was calculated. He knew enough that if he charmed Camille, she would do her best to convince me to give him a chance. He came to see me nearly every day that summer, plastering a fake compassionate expression on his face, asking how I was coping with the loss of my father. I should have known he was only interested in my father’s multi-million dollar lumber company I had inherited.

Our first date was like anyone would expect their first date to be when sixteen…going to see a movie with a bunch of friends. He slung his arm around my shoulders and kept it there the duration of whatever crappy action movie he selected. He had bathed in aftershave, and I thought I was suffering from an allergic reaction from the constant sneezing. He simply asked, and I quote, “What the hell is wrong with you? You don’t have some sort of contagious disease, do you?” Just when I didn’t think things could get any worse, he leaned over and whispered, “I’ll be Burger King and you be McDonalds. I’ll have it my way and you’ll be loving it.”

I had stared at him, questioning whether he really did just say that or if my ears were playing tricks on me. I expected to see a smile crack his lips, but I was met with a smug expression instead, as if he considered himself to be Einstein’s protégé for coming up with that little gem.

I didn’t know why I continued to date him. I kept telling myself it wouldn’t last, that it was just a fun way to spend my last few years of high school. Somehow, it all spiraled into marriage when the ink on our diplomas had barely dried. Hell, his proposal had even made the local news when he got down on one knee after the football team won the division championship and asked me to marry him. I must have said “yes”, but couldn’t remember doing it.

We became the town’s own fairytale. I was thrilled for a minute. I was so busy planning a wedding it hadn’t really set in that I was about to make a lifelong commitment to Will. The closer it got to our wedding date, the more I began to second-guess my decision. Every time I considered backing out, Camille insisted, in her condescending voice, that it was just nerves. Part of me kept telling myself it would get better once we were married, that we were just in a strange transition phase between high school and starting the rest of our lives. I even agreed to put my dreams on hold. Instead of going to NYU as I had planned, I enrolled in a local college and stayed in the same town where I had grown up.

When I walked in on Will banging Julie, it felt like a burden had been lifted off my shoulders, despite how hurt I was. I had always been suspicious regarding his fidelity. In my mind, our marriage fell apart the second he refused to support my dreams. Camille blamed his infidelity on my refusal to have a child with him. Children never solved marital problems. They only added to it.

A glow filtered into the room, tearing my attention from the yearbook, and I glanced out the window to see the sun beginning its descent beyond the horizon, casting a beautiful combination of pink and orange hue on the ocean. Soaking in the magnificent view of my first West Coast sunset, I realized I’d never get the fresh start I needed surrounded by the reminders of my former life.

Everything had to go.

C
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T
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SUN
STREAMED
INTO
my bedroom what seemed like just minutes after I had finally crawled under the covers. After hours of swearing at my possessions, as well as drinking several tumblers of whiskey, I was satisfied with my decision to start from scratch and rid my life of all memories of Will. The only one that remained was Sport, but with each passing minute, the less I thought of Will when I looked at the dog. Instead, I saw my cross-country partner. I saw my foul-breathed bed companion.

As if on cue, Sport jumped on me, tail wagging, and licked my face. “Enough, buddy. Mama was up late so let’s calm down on the tongue action for a minute.” A cheesy grin crossed my face when a pair of blue-gray eyes flashed before me. “Now
that’s
some tongue action I wouldn’t mind,” I commented.

A rush of adrenaline coursing through my tired body, I pulled the duvet closer to me, giddy from the memory of my chance encounter the previous day with Mr. Blue Eyes. Moondoggie. Nosebleeder. I knew the likelihood of running into him again in a city the size of LA was slim to none, but that didn’t matter. The encounter stood for more than a random meeting in the park. It gave me hope.

Sport yipped, bringing me back down to earth, his wagging tail becoming a weapon. It was useless to try to go back to sleep. I reluctantly got out of my comfortable bed and shuffled down the stairs, the dog on my heels. He ran around in circles at my feet before darting for the foyer, pulling his collar off the entryway hook.

“Okay. Let’s go for a walk. Please don’t hump any strange dogs today. Okay, buddy?”

He yipped once more, and I couldn’t be sure if he was saying “Okay, Mom”, or “This thing has a mind of its own”.

Taking the leash from Sport, who was reluctant to relinquish control to me, I locked the door behind me and proceeded toward the elevator. When I came out in the lobby and walked to the door, I smiled a warm greeting at the same doorman I had met the previous morning.