by Julie Wright
The woman in charge of the volunteers called everyone’s attention to her as she read from her clipboard, giving us our assignments and specific directions. I tried to keep Ben’s attention on me, to continue our conversation, but he faced her and focused on her every word as if there would be a test later. We no longer had the opportunity to talk—at least not one he would take. Not then, and not for the next three hours it took to load the stuff from the warehouse into the truck.
By the time we were released from our duties, my arms were as sore and as shaky as they’d been when I’d helped Grandma unpack her house. The work had been good for me, though. If nothing else, the physical rhythm of the labor calmed me down enough to be ready for the conversation that waited for us when we were done.
Ben walked me to my car, where I pulled out the wrinkled contract and handed it to him.
He read through it, nodding as if it somehow was familiar to him. “It’s not signed,” he said, his voice flat, a muscle twitching under his eye.
I kept my eye on him, searching for signs of something beyond this cold exterior. “Should it be? What’s going on, Ben?”
His jaw flexed. “I received a similar document today.”
I closed my eyes, feeling my heart plummet to my toes. “I’m sorry, Ben. What happened? I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. Is everything okay? Did they . . . ?”
“No. They didn’t fire me. But they will if anyone sees us here together. I need to go.”
“If anyone sees us? Who’s going to care if we’re together? We’re not doing anything wrong. I didn’t sign their stupid agreement.”
He took a shuddering breath and settled his blue gaze on me, making me feel suddenly cold. “No. You didn’t. But I did.”
“I’ll stay out of your files, and you stay out of my icebox.”
—Ariane as played by Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon
I listened in stunned silence as he explained we could have no further contact, as he told me it was for the best for both of our careers, as he told me that the only reason he’d shown up tonight was because he’d already signed up to volunteer, and he never backed out where his word was concerned.
He stopped talking, likely expecting me to say something, but I had no words. I could only stare. A dull ache throbbed in the socket behind my glass eye, but I couldn’t even lift my hand to adjust anything to make the pain stop. I couldn’t do anything to make the pain stop anywhere.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asked.
“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to make you feel better for selling out our friendship? Because I’m not going to. And since you’re now in violation of your contract, you should probably leave. It wouldn’t look good for anyone to see you with me, since you’re so big on keeping your word and all.”
He flinched. His jaw worked. And he nodded grimly. He handed me back my unsigned document, told me to sign it, got in his car, and drove away.
Only then did I allow the sob to escape me.
Ben, the one who always said that he would be there for me, that this wasn’t a big deal and would all blow over quickly. How could he, at the first sign of trouble from Mid-Scene Films, sign the agreement? The very same agreement I refused to sign.
My discovery of my genuine love for Ben came because I refused to put my name on that document. I knew it was love, real love, because losing my career was far less important than losing him. That was how I knew. Ben, who insisted he’d loved me for years, was the one who’d signed a paper that kept him from me. He caved at the first test of that love.
To find your heart and have it broken in the same hour was probably the worst thing that could happen to a novice at love. I paced around my car as everything Ben had said over the last twenty minutes crashed through my memory.
I stopped pacing.
Fine.
Just fine. If he was willing to write me off in exchange for his career, he could have it. Ben wanted me to leave him alone so no one saw us together? Fine. He would be alone. Forever, for all I cared.
I didn’t need him. I jerked open my car door, got in, and slammed it closed.
I pounded on my steering wheel, making my car alarm go off. I must have accidentally pressed the panic button on the key fob in my fist. I reset the buttons and shouted, “He is so not needed!”
Except he was needed. I needed him very much. The splintered pieces of my heart cut my soul, and all the trust and security I’d placed in him bled out.
No. I’d lived my whole life without him and would be fine continuing to do so. What I needed was my grandma. I started driving.
Driving while crying is hard for anyone. Driving while crying when you only have one eye to begin with made it a miracle I arrived safely.
No one was home when I got there, which was probably better. I needed time to pull myself together before she arrived on the scene. I sat in the dark on my grandma’s living room floor and did all the breathing exercises Emma had taught me from her yoga classes at the gym.
The deep breathing only made me feel like I was hyperventilating. Since that wasn’t working, I went to Grandma’s movie collection and picked out a drama about independence and strength with no romantic subplot anywhere. But when I went to put it in her player, the movie that was already there was Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I put the drama back on the shelf. I closed the tray and hit play.
The opening music and the sight of a young Audrey Hepburn meandering around the Tiffany’s building while eating a pastry calmed me more than I would have imagined. Against all rationale, the fast-talking Holly Golightly also calmed me, enough that by the time noise from the general direction of the doorway alerted me that Grandma and Walt had returned, I felt like I could talk to another person without being a mess.
I gave them a moment in case they were kissing good night and wanted some privacy. Just because my love life had been vaporized didn’t mean hers needed to be. But the noises coming from the entryway didn’t sound like making out. It sounded like a struggle. Frowning, I went out to meet them at the door but stopped short when my eye landed on Grandma. She was slumped against Walt as he pulled the key from the doorknob. When she lurched forward, Walt hurried to hand her something that looked like a long, white paper bag. Grandma used the bag to throw up.
Walt smoothed back her hair, which was basically pasted against her head as if she had slept on it for several days in a row.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
They both looked up, so preoccupied by what they’d been doing that my sudden presence startled them. Grandma looked like she might say my name. Instead, she threw up again.
I rushed to help get her inside.
“Thanks, Silvia.” Walt gave me a relieved smile.
“It’s not a problem. I’m glad I was here.” I guided Grandma to the couch and barely got the bag under her before she threw up a third time.
Walt went to dispose of the bag and to fetch a container that would be better able to handle the vomit, while I propped up Grandma’s feet, took off her shoes, and tucked a throw blanket over her. She shivered with cold even though her face was shiny with sweat.
“There’s no need to fuss,” Grandma said. “I’m fine.” But her eyes closed as soon as her head touched the pillow.
“You’re not fine,” I said.
Walt returned with an ice bucket—rather fancy but certainly functional. He also brought back a warm, wet dishcloth and used it to wipe at her mouth.
She lifted her hand as if to shoo us both away, but apparently decided she didn’t have the energy and dropped it to her side again.
“Should we call her doctor?” I asked.
Walt shook his head. “No. He knows she’s having problems and says that it’s normal enough, considering her age and predispositions.”
“Problems? What p
roblems is she having? Did she eat something that didn’t agree with her?”
Grandma’s eyes fluttered like she might answer, but Walt shook his head again. “I doubt a chemo cocktail agrees with anyone. The anti-nausea medication doesn’t seem to help. Her doctor said it’s probably because she has such big problems with motion sickness. She’s just predisposed to the acute sickness.”
I barely heard him over the roaring in my ears after his first sentence. “Chemo?” I knew that word. A girl with a cancer phobia knew all the words associated with it.
It was then that I noticed what she wore. She had on loose, baggy clothing: drawstring pajama bottoms, a blousy shirt, an old pair of slip-on Toms. This was definitely not something she’d worn on a date. This was the outfit a person wore when they were going to the hospital to spend a day in treatment.
The hole in my heart that had seemed cavernous before now felt like the vacuum of space.
“Grandma? You have cancer?”
The way Walt’s eyebrows shot up over his eyes proved he was ignorant of my ignorance. “You said you were going to tell her.”
“I was,” Grandma said between raspy breaths. “Waiting for the right time.”
Now was not the right time, not with my heart broken and my career destroyed, but would there ever be a right time? No. I could have just won the lottery, and it still would not have been the right time. Which meant she should have told me immediately—the very moment she found out.
“How long?” I asked, surprised at the high-pitched keen of my voice. “How long have you known?”
She passed a hand over her eyes. “I don’t know. I just finished my fifteenth week of chemo. I probably knew a few weeks before that. They wanted to shrink the tumor before they removed it.”
I did some quick math. At least four months. Maybe five. She’d known all that time and didn’t tell me. I stepped forward. I stepped back.
Walt finally took me by the elbow and said, “Why don’t you sit down, Silvia?”
I didn’t want to sit. I wanted to run away from that old enemy that had stolen my eye all those years ago. The enemy was back and working on stealing my grandmother. Walt edged me to the love seat, where my legs buckled involuntarily. The day had been awful, and they were tired of trying to hold me up. Walt sat across from me on the armchair and filled me in on all the details I had missed because I’d been too blinded by my career and love life to see them.
Walt shared the details, not her. She had fallen asleep, exhausted by the treatment and the sickness that came with it. After he’d answered all the questions that spilled out of me, Walt finally stood. “I’ll go, since she has you here tonight.”
“Do you usually stay?” I asked.
“Only when she’s sick. I’d never leave her if it was my choice, but once she found out about the cancer, she wouldn’t talk about getting married. She said she didn’t want to burden me with a broken old woman.” He smoothed back her hair as he’d done in the doorway when I’d first seen them tonight. “She’s not broken, though. Most days, she’s the only thing holding me together.” He looked up at me. “Don’t be afraid, Silvia. She didn’t want you to know because she said that, with your fear of cancer, the news would be the end of you. But she’ll survive this. And so will you. A lump in the breast is not enough to take down someone as strong as your grandmother. She’ll survive, so you don’t need to be afraid.”
He bent low and kissed Grandma’s forehead, said good night, and showed himself out the door.
I readjusted a pillow under her head so she was more comfortable. I wanted to walk her to her bed, but her skin looked so gray, and her breathing seemed so shallow, it made me nervous to think of moving her.
How fragile was she really?
How had I missed the signs of her illness?
A lot made sense now: selling her house, moving to this downgraded villa, spending so much money on causes that mattered to her. Her new habit of worrying over my love life. A pattern outlining the problem had been there; I just hadn’t seen it. I’d been blind. Or half-blind, since I’d seen, just not understood. I laughed. Half-blind.
Funny.
The bad thing about losing Ben on the same day I found out my grandmother had cancer was that I couldn’t tell Ben about Grandma, and I couldn’t tell Grandma about Ben.
The TV screen made a slight electric fizz sound before turning itself off. I’d forgotten I’d left the movie on pause, and the TV must have decided it had been abandoned.
After fetching myself a blanket and a pillow, I snuggled up on the love seat and turned the movie back on to keep me company while I kept vigil over my grandmother.
And, like that night so many years ago when I was a little girl in a hospital, I thought of Audrey. In my mind, I pictured her, but instead of picturing a woman in long, white, glowing robes like I had as a child, I imagined her as she was in the movie playing on Grandma’s TV.
Audrey wasn’t the fancy, black-dress-wearing Holly Golightly. She was the casual Holly Golightly wearing a sweatshirt and pants, sitting at her window, and staring out over a city. Instead of a sword and a shield, I gave her a guitar and imagined her at the foot of the couch, keeping watch over my grandmother while singing “Moon River.” The ghost of Audrey conjured by my imagination battled the cancer lurking in my grandmother’s chest with the hope found in a song. She’d fought death back for me once, and I trusted her to win that fight again.
Only then, with this picture of this woman guarding my grandmother firmly fixed in my mind, did I finally go to sleep.
I woke up on the floor, probably having rolled off the love seat in the night because my legs needed to stretch out. The TV was off again. Grandma still slept, but her rest seemed more peaceful now than it had before.
I’d obviously slept badly because Audrey-the-eye felt gummy enough to aggravate the back of my eyelid. I took her out and stuffed her in my pocket.
I hated how much I wanted to call Ben, to tell him everything, to have him hold me and whisper in my ear that everything was going to be all right.
Because everything wasn’t going to be all right. How could anything be considered all right when I couldn’t talk to him to tell him my grandma had cancer? Cancer! On top of that, my career was over. Maybe I could meet up with Alison. Making film advertisements for pet clothes couldn’t be all bad, could it? She and I could start an ex-girlfriends-of-Ben club. I sat up, tucking my legs into my chest, and leaned against the love seat.
Ben.
Faithful, loyal, untrustworthy, betrayer Ben. My heart rolled through all the things Ben was, but couldn’t see the part of him he showed me last night. I’d known Ben for years. Last night, he was a stranger.
I didn’t want to call the stranger. I wanted to call the friend. But even if Friend Ben still existed, he couldn’t be contacted because he signed the agreement.
He chose his career over me. He chose Hollywood.
There had been a time I might have made that same choice, but not now. Grandma’s reel-to-reel movies in antique tins showed a glittering Hollywood that no longer existed—if it ever had. My career had been important, but not so important that I would allow it to turn me into someone like Dean or Adam.
What sort of person would Ben become after making the choice he did? Would he be a Dean in another decade? I wrapped my arms around my legs and squeezed hard, as if I could squeeze out all the ache, and looked at Grandma. She had survived losing my grandfather. She would know what to do for me. But even with her in the same room, she was unreachable in her current state.
I might be losing her, too. That ache was unbearable.
Being left alone with all my emotions would kill me. I needed someone. I needed Emma. The ghost and the cyclops. One thing this cyclops knew was that she could always count on the ghost.
“I don’t know how to say goodbye.
I can’t
think of any words.”
—Princess Ann, played by Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday
Emma texted me to let me know she was outside Grandma’s door. She didn’t want to ring the doorbell in case it would wake up my grandma. Grandma was sleeping so soundly, I wasn’t sure anything would wake her.
When I opened the door, Emma wrapped me up in the tightest, most supportive embrace I’d ever received. When she pulled away, her eyes echoed the depths of worry within my own heart. The question in them needed answering, so I led her to the kitchen where we could talk without bothering Grandma.
I gave her the quick details. Breast cancer, chemo to shrink the tumor, surgery soon, and, according to Walt, she was stable and holding her own. Every time I used the word cancer, I felt myself flinching as if it hurt me physically, like a burn across my tongue.
I made us both a cup of hot chocolate. It was a cool morning, and a cup of comfort was definitely in order. I made enough so Grandma could have one, too, but was hot chocolate good for her? Would it make her sicker?
“Walt said nearly ninety percent of all breast cancer patients survive at least five years,” I told Emma. I hated how repeating such a statistic reminded me of Ben.
“And your grandma is a fighter. She’ll double that at least,” Emma said. “In the meantime, we should be thinking of her diet and exercise. I have a few experts at Kinetics who can recommend a menu of foods that create apoptosis.”
“Apop-whatsis?”
“It’s programmed cell death. In this case, it’s cancer-cell death. It’s basically the same thing the chemo is doing, only this way it’s by eating whole foods.”
“How do you even know that?”
“It’s my job to know. I’ve heard curcumin is a great, natural way to stimulate apoptosis in cancer cells, but I’ll find out more. While a good meal plan doesn’t replace good medical care, working together, they can often result in a healthy patient.”
I nodded, numbly agreeing, desperate to try anything.
“Walt’s the name of Grandma’s new guy, huh? That’s so adorable, I don’t have words to describe how cute I think that is. Do you and Hottie Ben double-date with them?”
