How To Save A Life

by P. Dangelico

“You don’t have to thank me. You’re family, and we take care of each other.”

  “It’s time for your sponge bath Mr. Marsden.” A middle-aged chubby nurse comes in holding a cloth and pan.

  “Best part of my day, Delores,” is his snappy comeback.

  You’re okay, right? I recall Tommy’s words all those years ago.

  He’s going to be okay. We’re going to okay.

  Jordan

  It took me two phone calls and a personal visit to her house to get Mrs. James to tell me where to find her.

  Needless to say, I’m not one of her favorite people right now but I assured her I’m going to fix it––what I’ve broken. That I would do my best to repair the damage I’ve done.

  I’ve been sitting in the Bentley for the last twenty minutes outside the hospital waiting for a chance to start over…to do it right this time. All I need is for her to give me a chance to show her that I do trust her. And that she can trust me too.

  Riley exits the door braced against the cold wind. She’s wearing a thin denim jacket and her shoulders are rounded, a knitted red scarf wrapped around her neck hiding everything but those big blue eyes. She could get sick dressed like that in this weather.

  I jump out of the car and run after her. “Riley!” I yell, crossing the street.

  She turns, startled to hear her name. The shock on her beautiful face quickly turns to indifference, a frosty reserve that’s completely unlike her. I did that. I’m responsible for the pain visible under the mask. The shame it comes with hits me hard.

  “Hi,” I say, walking up slowly, scared that if I come on too strong she’ll run.

  “Hi,” she says quietly.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  She shakes her head, looks away. “Now is not a good time, Jordan.”

  I start to panic. I can’t shake the sentiment. She’s slipping away. I can feel it. “I just need a minute of your time. Can we get a coffee? There’s a Starbuck’s––”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Your mother…I harassed her until she told me your friend…that Tommy guy, is here.” She nods and we’re back to awkward silence. “What happened to him?”

  “He got hit by a car.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He will be…” She exhales tiredly. She looks tired in fact. An overwhelming urge to carry her away and take care of her comes over me. To hold her and kiss her until that sad look on her face is gone.

  “Right now he’s got a skull fracture and he lost his spleen.”

  She’s very upset, but I don’t get why. Unless…unless he’s an ex-boyfriend––or a new one.

  “Did they catch the person who did it?”

  “No.”

  She’s not being very forthcoming and it’s frustrating me. She won’t even look at me, evading eye contact. A pit opens up in my stomach. What if I’m too late? What if this guy saw his opening and took it? What if my being a complete dick to her pushed her into a relationship with him?

  “Are you two…are you dating him?”

  Her head snaps up and her eyes flash with anger. I’ll take it over indifference.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  And the panic grows. I don’t know what to do with it. “Are you?”

  She looks shocked. “How can you even ask me that? You show up here weeks after you throw me out of the house in the middle of night––”

  “And I’m sorry for that,” I cut in.

  “You accuse me of horrible things––”

  “I didn’t mean that either. This is why I’m here, what I came to tell you.”

  Tears fill her eyes and my chest cracks open. I can’t handle the tears. Not hers.

  “I don’t care what you came to tell me. You hurt me. I’m barely holding it together right now and my friend is in the hospital and he needs me. I can’t…I–I don’t have the energy to make you feel better about what happened, Jordan.”

  I step closer and she steps away form me. “Let me explain––”

  “If you’re looking for forgiveness, then I forgive you. The little energy I have left I need to save for Tommy.”

  Something snaps inside of me, a jealousy so dark and ugly I don’t even recognize it. It’s like the day I lost Lainey. Same feeling. Same sense of loss. Always runner-up. Never the winner.

  “What the hell is it with that guy? Who is he to you?”

  She flinches and steps back, a sheet of tears falling down her face. I immediately regret what I said and how it came out. I go to take her hand, but she rips it away and backs up again, wiping her tears away with her palms.

  “He’s only the guy who saved me from being raped when I was twelve. He’s family––that’s who he is to me. And my loyalty runs deep, Jordan. Down to the bone. You should know that about me by now…I would never abandon him the way you did me.”

  She turns and marches away, down the sidewalk, while I stay in place for another ten minutes processing how badly I fucked up again.

  Raped. She was almost raped…

  I keep hurting the one person I love most. I’m my own worst enemy. Eli was right. Smart doesn’t mean shit when you go through life a blind fool.

  19

  Chapter Nineteen

  Riley

  “You’re not wearing the turkey tail feathers…” Julie, the floor manager of the cosmetics department, says to me. Julie is one of those annoying people who always has a smile on her face, even when she’s stabbing you in the back, and thinks holidays are a celebration of life and expects everyone around her to act accordingly. Julie blows.

  “I’m trying to spread a little holiday cheer and I want everyone to wear them.”

  Taking the headband out of my bag behind the counter, I slip it on my head. She smiles like a crazed Disney character and saunters away.

  “I’m not wearing this,” I tell my best friend in a fit of pique.

  I have a turkey tail on my head. This is what my life has come to, a once promising life I was proud of has been reduced to this.

  Plucky White Girl Makes Good After Bad Start!

  That should’ve been the byline of my story had the story not been totally wrecked by the two men I love. Instead, I’m wearing feathers, ugly brown feathers to make end’s meet.

  Veronica stops sifting through the drawer of eye shadows behind the counter and looks up. She’s wearing one too. The difference is that she makes it look like sexy while I just make it look stupid.

  “I’m going to the stock room. We’re low on black mascara,” I announce petulantly.

  Veronica hooked me up with a part-time job at the store through the holiday season. I’m employed until after New Year’s Eve. After that I’m on my own again.

  Thanksgiving is in two days. I can’t even bear to think about it. Maisie’s gone. Tommy’s gone, caught a bus to California as promised. I begged him to stay and get in a program. He insisted he needed a clean start somewhere new and I wasn’t going to force him to stay and face Ivan again. He made me promise to come visit him when I got back on my feet financially which will probably be never.

  Veronica invited me and Bonnie over to celebrate with her family, but I think I’m going to spend it in bed with two dudes. Ben & Jerry. At least they’ll make me feel good and they won’t accuse me of stealing their money.

  Then there’s the packing that needs to get done. I’m selling the two-family. Bonnie and I have to move into a studio apartment. This is just the reality of life right now. There’s no use in crying over what was lost.

  “Don’t ever give up on your hopes and dreams, a stór,” my Dad used to tell me.

  I can’t. I refuse to go down without a fight. It’s just that I’m so tired of fighting for every little scrap.

  I try not to think about Jordan much these days. Doesn’t mean I’m very good at it––I’m just saying I try. Which is a pretty big deal considering I spent the first week in bed crying until I’d wrung every grain of salt out of my body.
>
  It was a shock to learn I’m more like my mother than I want to be. Watching her suffer used to baffle me. Why didn’t she just get over it? Now I know why––she didn’t have a choice. Love doesn’t give you a choice. It dictates how it’s going to be.

  The truth about love is that it’s painful. That’s how you know it’s real. The people we love are sometimes not good or kind, and often make mistakes. Some die. Some leave. Some will betray you. But you’ll continue to love them anyway.

  I guess this is what it means to be human, that despite the cost to oneself, despite the pain, we continue to love. No matter how many times you tell yourself to get over it. No matter now many times you tell yourself to move on.

  That goes for me too. Because despite everything, I do love him. I still love him. And I probably always will.

  “Veronica Vega…that’s right, two Vs…” I hear Vern say. I glance up from my crouched place behind the cosmetics counter and watch her smile at a man, handsome, late forties, dressed to kill.

  He doesn’t stand a chance. She’ll have him crying and threatening self-harm by Christmas.

  “…as in victory. Or, if you put them together, W for winner.”

  I snort and she lands a kick to my hip with the point of her Manolo Blahnik four inch heels. I’m torn between laughing and howling.

  “I bet,” replies the good-looking soon-to-be-crier.

  I’m back to restocking the black mascara in the bottom drawer when I hear a chillingly familiar voice say, “Where is she?”

  It’s a gut punch that sends my pulse racing and my hands shaking. I’m having so many conflicting emotions they’re running into each other. Last time I saw him was an unmitigated disaster. But I guess it’s all out in the open now. There’s no running from the truth anymore.

  “Veronica, where is she?” he repeats.

  That’s when anger begins to rise above the rest. At him, at life in general who seems hell bent on humiliating me at every turn. I’ve played out this scenario in my head a thousand times and never once did it involve him finding me on all fours, hiding behind the cosmetics counter of a department store while wearing a headband of turkey feathers. I’m not doing this now. Not here. Not when I need this job more than I need opposable thumbs.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll be right with you,” Veronica forces out between a fixed smile.

  “I really need to speak to you now,” says the man I both hate and love to death. But it’s the panic in his voice that gets my attention. It reminds me of how he reacted the day I had to rush Maisie to the hospital when she had the allergic reaction to the hazelnut ice cream. At his broken expression the other day when he cornered me outside the hospital in a jealous fit.

  “Go ahead and help him,” I hear the customer say to Veronica. “I can come back later.”

  “No, no, no. I can help you,” Vern pleads to her unwitting victim. “He’s nothing––a nobody.”

  “Yeah, thanks, man. It’s urgent,” Jordan breaks in, ignoring Veronica’s attempt to get rid of him.

  “It’s not urgent! I don’t even know who you are.”

  A moment of silence follows in which I’m fairly certain the guy walks away.

  “I tried to call her, but I think she blocked me.”

  You bet I did. It was also pretty much an empty threat. I didn’t expect him to call. It’s not like I’m brave or anything. In fact, if this experience has taught me anything, it’s that I’m not nearly as brave as I thought I was. That was a hard pill to swallow.

  “Have you lost your mind!” Veronica fires back. “You just cost me a sale.”

  “Here. Put it all on my card. I’ll buy it all. Just tell me where she is. I drove by the house and no one answered, not even her mother. Her neighbor won’t tell me anything.”

  I make a mental note to give Mrs. Argento a break on her last month of rent.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be smart or something? She doesn’t want to see you, asshole. She doesn’t want to hear from you. You blew it. God gave you a gift and you threw it back in her face. Get the hint.”

  A lump forms in my throat. Love may be painful but it’s also brutally beautiful when it shines, when you get back tenfold what you give. I can’t imagine my life without Vern and I’m grateful I never have to.

  “I know,” Jordan quietly admits, one of a handful of times I’ve heard him humbled. Nice to know he’s capable of it. “I know…I just…I just want a chance to apologize.”

  “You should’ve thought of that before you accused her of being a thief.”

  “Technically, I didn’t accuse her of that.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “No, I didn’t. She didn’t explain why she took the money and I assumed the worst. That was wrong of me––”

  “Yeah, you did, Jordan. You accused her of stealing.”

  “Just tell me where she is!” booms across the busy cosmetics floor.

  Holy hell…

  The room goes dead quiet. Veronica gets that look on her face, the one that tells me she’s plotting a murder, making a list and checking it twice: stun gun, electrical tape, garbage bags, bleach.

  I saw it once, the same look, when her sister Selma borrowed her Louis Vuitton bag without permission and ruined it with nail polish. The following day Selma had no eyebrows and no one asked questions. We all just knew.

  “You did not just yell at me.” The words come out pulverized between her back teeth. “Riley––come get your mans before I cut him.”

  That’s my cue to stand. Slowly, as gracefully as possible, I get up and straighten my clothes, cast a brief look around. Every single woman in the busy cosmetics department is now watching us with a level of engrossed attention usually reserved for a Housewives episode. I calmly remove the goofy headband because I won’t be having this conversation with a crown of turkey feathers on my head and finally meet Jordan’s gaze.

  He looks so wrecked my resolve to immediately send him away stumbles. It’s not his appearance that tells me he’s having a hard time. By that standard, he’s the perfect man––on the outside, that is. Haircut fresh and styled perfectly. Black button-down shirt under an expensive cashmere coat. No one else would notice the flat, bottomless look in his dark green eyes. It’s the same look he gets when he’s hurting, overwhelmed with emotion he doesn’t know how to process.

  “What do you want?” I manage to get out, sounding bored and unaffected––more and more like him every day. And yet, I’m far from either of those two things right now. My hands are shaking and my heart––the one I’ve been carefully piecing back together––shatters again.

  Jordan’s face softens, relief coming over him. The tightness around his mouth and jaw clear instantly. “Riley…”

  “I’m working.”

  He walks around the counter and crams his big body between the boxes of products I need to restock. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  “I can’t. I’m working.”

  His green gaze sharpens and goes directly to Veronica who I now notice is holding his black Amex, staring at it with almost diabolical glee in her big brown eyes.

  “Charge everything at this counter on my card. I’ll buy it all,” he commands her.

  “Done,” is her quick reply. Can’t fault her; she works on commission.

  “Veronica, don’t––” My time is worth more than a couple of wands of mascara and a few lipsticks. “I can’t do this, Jordan. You need to leave.”

  Seeing him again triggers a wave of memories. Like the look on his face that shitty day a month ago when he told me to leave. The way he made me feel like the lowest form of trash.

  I’ve pretty much kept to the same circle of friends I’ve had my entire life. I don’t have many, but they’re real. Maybe it’s because something has always told me not to wander where I don’t belong. After everything I’ve done to build an honest life, a thriving business, to be accused of stealing by the man I thought cared about me––the one person I wanted to be pro
ud of me––was the deepest cut of all.

  “Just give me a few minutes and––”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” I blurt out, frustration boiling over.

  “Yes, there is.” He brushes a strand of hair away from my face.

  “You’re going to get me fired, and then I’ll be broke and jobless all over again.” Doing my best not to cry, I push him aside and walk away, heading for the nearest exit with Jordan in hot pursuit.

  Outside on the sidewalk, the near freezing temperature takes my breath away, the wind chill cutting straight through me. I’m wearing my mother’s old blouse and skirt I had altered. I’m not exactly dressed for the weather.

  “Riley, wait.”

  “I’m not doing this anymore, Jordan!” I shout as I walk towards the Paris Theater on 58th Street, out of earshot of the store, or God forbid, my manager.

  Grabbing my arm, he wheels me around and hugs me tightly. Then he takes the flaps of his coat wraps them around me. I’m engulfed by his body heat, the familiar smell of his skin, the soap he likes, the feel of his muscles beneath his shirt.

  He feels so good I’m in no rush to push him away and I should. I really should. One minute, just one minute, I tell myself, and I’ll send him away.

  But instead I burrow deeper, closer. I missed this so much. I missed him. How can you love and hate someone so deeply at the same time? It seems impossible and yet here I am.

  “I miss you,” he murmurs next to my ear.

  Shivering, I automatically wrap my arms around his waist and rest my face against the side of his neck. He smells like mine. He feels like mine. But he’s not mine. He was on loan for a little while. Long enough for me to play make-believe, and now it’s time to return to reality. I’m not the little girl who believed dragons live under the streets of New York City anymore. I stopped believing in dragons the day my father died. I stopped believing in princes and happily-ever-afters for people like me the day Jordan kicked me out.

  “Let’s go inside. You’re going to catch a cold.”

  It’s his biggest fear. And it probably always will be. I don’t know if he’ll ever get over the belief that everyone he cares about will get sick and die.