by C D Cain
Sam walked around the chair and sat down hard in it. She put her head in her hands and whispered. “I need to tell you goodbye.”
“Why? Why does it have to be this way? Why do you have to give up your fellowship? It’s not as if I saw you anyway. Ever since…since that night, I haven’t seen or talked to you at all.”
“Like I could see you? Like it would be possible for me to see you and not break down into a blubbering mess?” She again wiped harshly across her cheeks as if she hated the tears falling from her eyes. “You broke my fucking heart! Hell, up until you, the only commitment I ever made was to a night of sex. I was the one who never falls for anyone. Then I meet you and look at me now. I’m a crying idiot while you stand there perfectly fine.”
Shocked at her words, I pushed the chair backward against the low-lying windowsill. The squeak of the ungreased wheels echoed. “You’re not an idiot.” I massaged my temples. “And I’m hardly fine, Sam.”
“Oh, aren’t you? Look behind you. Your engagement party is on the other side of that window.”
“You think that makes me fine?”
“I sure as shit do. I’m not the one about to get married and spend the rest of my life with someone.”
“No, you’re about to take off to who knows where to live your life the way you want it. No excuses. No sacrifices. And with absolutely no consequences to your choices. That’s what you’re about to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
I scooted the chair back up to the desk and leaned across it. “Now, who doesn’t get it? Look at you. You come in here telling me how I don’t get it. As if I don’t have a clue to anything you feel. As if I wasn’t a wreck…still a wreck. If you think for one damn minute I’m fine or that any of what is going on behind me is my heart’s wish, then you don’t have a fucking clue about me.”
Sam sat back in her chair. She opened her mouth as if to speak but quickly closed it again.
“It’s not so easy being on the other side of those kinds of words, is it?”
“If you were a wreck, if anything about what happened between us changed you or hurt you at all…then why did she send me an invitation? Her sending me an invitation showed me she didn’t have a clue that anything had happened between us. You swept it neatly under the rug without anyone catching on to your dirty, little secret.”
“Again, who doesn’t get it?” I sat back in my chair and turned it side to side. “Did you hear anything I ever said about Charlie Grace? Did you listen to me at all? As if she would consider either of our feelings for one second with this engagement. Don’t you think her knowing about my heartbreak would’ve encouraged her even more to send you an invitation? To gloat over her victory. To let you know she won.”
“When is the wedding?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Yes, I don’t know. I only agreed to the engagement to have a little quiet in my life. After that night, everything was like noise in my head. You had left. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and shut the world out. When I couldn’t do that, all I wanted to do was throw myself into school. But Grant and Charlie Grace were insistent to have an answer from me. The quickest way to feel some normalcy in my life again was to say yes.” I turned the chair to look out onto the lawn. “And here I am.” Instantly, I felt the weight of my words. Here I am. Exactly where they want me.
“Have you ever once thought about the timing of Grant’s proposal?” Sam asked quietly.
It was the first time today her tone resembled how she had once spoken to me. I turned my chair back to look into her eyes.
She pushed one of the unwrapped presents to the side of the desk and leaned across it on her elbows. “Hadn’t you both decided you were waiting until after medical school to get married? What happened? Why the sudden rush? Hasn’t it even crossed your mind this is his way of holding onto you…of controlling you? Don’t you think he saw the writing on the wall and took the most desperate time of your life as a way of sealing the deal?”
“I have.”
“And?”
“You’re probably right.”
“So, it’s okay for you to be manipulated your whole life? Whatever, Rayne. If you can’t see the truth in front of you, then go get married. Ruin your life.” She rubbed her temples with her fingers. “It’s your life.”
“As if you gave me the chance for anything else,” I mumbled under my breath.
“What? What did you just say?”
I looked up into her eyes. The blueness of them sent a wave through my stomach that raced up my throat to form a knot of swallowed tears. “As if you gave me another option, Sam. I asked you to tell me how it would be between us—what we would have.”
“No, you told me your well-thought-out plan of how it couldn’t be. You had us all figured out before we even started. Where you wanted to live. Where I wanted to live. How we couldn’t live.”
“And you didn’t argue. You didn’t tell me differently. You walked away and cut me off. You wouldn’t even speak to me after that night. I called. I left voicemails. Texts. Not once did you respond.” I held up my finger. “Not once.”
“I listened to them.”
“But you never answered.”
“You never said what I needed to hear.”
“Which was what exactly?”
“That I was enough. That I was enough to try.” She laid her palm flat against her chest. “Rayne, you wanted the guarantee. Your whole life has been about planning everything out to the letter. You asked me to tell you how our future would be before you even invested the time into us to give that future a chance. You wanted me to check off all of your perfectly squared boxes so you would have some type of reassurance before I was your choice.”
“That’s not how it was and you know that.”
“Maybe not but that is how it felt. Your voicemails didn’t say anything different. I’d save them to listen to at the end of the day. I hoped I would hear you tell me you wanted me—to choose me. That I was enough to risk the chance of an unknown future.”
As I let her words soak in, I pictured her sitting in her apartment exhausted from the fatigue of the day as she sat slumped on her couch with her phone held up against her ear. I pictured a beam of moonlight flowing into her renovated, warehouse loft. The reality of the heartbreak and pain we had both experienced played out in my vision as a trail of tears which flowed down her cheek were illuminated by the light of the phone. No, she was right. I never did say those things. Hadn’t I planned my life out to the very last detail? Hadn’t I let all of what I feared loving her would mean to my life’s plan keep me from saying what she needed to hear or what I truly felt. Even in the times of begging to hear her voice, I didn’t tell her the depth of my feelings for her.
“I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I didn’t say what I truly felt. I was…I am broken without you. I didn’t know how to put that into words.”
Sam looked out the window behind me. I watched as she silently took in the scene. A single tear fell from her eye. She didn’t wipe it away. “We are here now. None of that matters anymore.”
“Everything about you matters.”
“Don’t say stuff like that to me. Especially now when it’s too late.”
“Why?” The weight of her once again walking out of my life caused a crushing pain in my chest. It began to smother me as it had over the last months. I tried to control my breath. “Why can’t I tell you how I truly feel? Why does it have to be this way?”
“Because of that.” She pointed out the window. “Because that is where you are. That is what you can handle.”
“No. I can’t handle you walking out that door.” I pointed and shook my finger at it. “It’ll break me again. I can’t tell you goodbye.” I didn’t stop the tears. I never liked crying in front of anyone. It always see
med to be a private thing for me. Maybe it’s because when I did cry, the tears came from my soul. But this time, I didn’t stop them.
Sam’s chin quivered when she held me in her eyes. She shook her head. “I can’t. You’ll break my heart again because you aren’t ready. You’ll want to be ready. You’ll want to make me yours but you’re not ready to stand up to all of that behind you. I’ll be this little secret again. Each time you’re confronted, you’ll fold and tell me you’ll be stronger the next time. I couldn’t breathe after that night. I was shattered. Now, it’s me who has a plan for where my life needs to go. I have to do it while I have the strength to go.”
“Who’s the one who has it all figured out now?” My crying had become forceful. It caused me to struggle through gasps of air to speak in broken words.
Sam stood up, walked around the desk, and knelt in front of me. “Oh Stormy.” She reached up and lightly wiped away my tears with her thumb. “I’ll always love you.” She stood up and leaned over to place her lips against my forehead. “Always.” She quickly walked to the door but stopped right before stepping through. “Goodbye,” she said softly over her shoulder.
I laid my head on the desk and let my soul cry until it hadn’t the strength to produce more tears. Any barriers I pretended to have were broken. I had cursed the numbness I felt after Sam left but now, I prayed for it. I couldn’t feel all of this pain I was feeling. I wouldn’t be able to breathe if I carried it with me. I yearned for numbness to overtake me. It would be my only freedom from the black hole that had started as a blemish on my soul when Memaw passed in my arms. Watching Sam walk away from me again, I knew it would grow to become the nothingness I had in my life.
I looked down at the sparkle in the cicada’s eyes. The rubies reminded me of a life I had once dreamt to be mine. I unclasped the chain from my neck and ran it through the loop found at the back of the locust’s neck. I watched it fall against the gold cross before I put it back around my neck. The two women who have the most meaning in my life were now side by side. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t say goodbye. She said it to me, but I didn’t say it back. Hope is both a curse and a blessing.
The sky was filled with a purplish hue from an early setting sun of a season where winter was slowly cascading into spring. Its light was held hostage to the hours that had not yet found daylight savings time. In the South, this was our season for outdoor events. The warmness of the day evolved into a crispness of night which made the temperature comfortably cool for an outside gathering. I strolled through the groups of guests as they mingled and stopped briefly at each to give my cordial greetings. Aw yes, Charlie Grace had trained me well.
Mother had planned the event down to the letter with the most picturesque part of the lawn designated as the primary party area. Large banquet tables adorned with white linen cloths and Aster pattern blue-and-white porcelain dishes sat under the majestic moss-covered branches of the oak trees that had lived on the plantation much longer than any of us. The centerpieces were my favorite of the decorations. They were made from wide-bottom matching porcelain bowls filled with artificial hydrangeas and Granny Smith apples. The contrast of green from the dark foliage of the hydrangeas and the brightness of the freshly plucked apples sat against gray moss as it spilled from the branches overhead. I say artificial. Surely, they had to be as the large flower had not yet bloomed here in the South. Knowing Charlie Grace, she could have very easily had the white and light green blooms shipped in for the event—easily, but expensive. I mean, what was a few thousand dollars when you were hoping the photographers would capture a shot worthy enough to submit for the cover of Southern Living Magazine?
I reached out to touch the petals of the arrangement. “I don’t even want to know,” I mumbled as I pulled back my hand.
The evening had lost its beauty to me long before Sam’s visit but after seeing her, not even the setting sun could brighten my spirits. A gentle breeze swayed the flickering tea lights that hung over my head. Hundreds of them dangled from the trees. I watched their flames dance within the tiny bell bottom-shaped glass.
I began to think about Sam’s question. Had I? Had I truly sat down and wondered about the change in the timing of Grant’s proposal? She was right. Grant and I meshed well because we both had the same visions of our future. In fact, wasn’t that the reason I had agreed to date him in the first place?
Grant was easy, never threatening or demanding. I could get lost in myself and not have to explain one thing to him. Yes, we had decided years earlier our goals were the same. Well, nearly the same, as I could’ve done without the necessities of marriage. Although I knew his and Charlie Grace’s desires would have had to come to fruition at some point in my life. I always thought it would be much later after graduation.
Marriage to me was a stepping stone. One footstep of life that would eventually find its way into my future. I had never questioned this beyond those few thoughts until I met Sam. Sam had changed everything in me. It was as if she was a sky full of brilliant stars illuminating the footpath of life—a trail of roots and dirt in between a canopy of blooming trees. There was a time, before Memaw’s passing, where my daydreams took me to that path and each time Sam walked along beside me. The darkness that filled me after Memaw’s death took every star from me, took the blooms from the trees, and left a bare skeleton of what once was without the companion by my side. Memaw.
“Oh, how I miss you, Meems,” I whispered as I looked up through the branches. So much of Charlie Grace’s Southern Baptist teachings didn’t sit well with me. Yet the thought of Memaw’s soul somewhere in the skies above watching me throughout my day was a comfort. It was a comfort to feel her still with me in some way. Without it, I would be lost without the hope of recovery. Days were a passage of time after she left me. It was as if I could no longer feel anything without her in my world. Of course, I missed seeing her while I was away at school but there was this satisfying feeling of strength and security in the knowledge she was only a few hours or phone call away. Not feeling her presence, hearing her voice or laughter had left the blackest of holes in my soul.
“Have you ever once thought about the timing of Grant’s proposal?”
No, actually. I don’t think I have, not until now anyway. Had I been so numb with Memaw’s death that I had not even thought of the meaning behind his untimely…or rather timely proposal?
“I didn’t think you were ever going to get here,” Grant said as he ducked under a low-lying branch. “Where ya’ been?”
He rested his arm across my shoulder as he leaned in to kiss my cheek. His newly grown beard scratched against my face. It was worse when he kissed my lips. It matched the nauseous rumblings of my stomach as my thoughts traveled to the next step he wanted to follow our kisses. Before meeting Sam, I could turn my body off and let my brain take me somewhere else when our kisses flowed into the act of making love. Act. A good word for what I considered our love making to be. It was a necessity to our relationship. A necessity that had not found its way back into our relationship over the last several months. I knew this too shall pass as all things do.
“Sorry,” I said and shrugged off his arm. “You know me.”
He stepped back to look at me fully. “You okay, babe?”
Ugh! Babe! I couldn’t stop the roll of my eyes. Not that I would’ve even if I could’ve stopped them. I hated when he called me a pet name, especially babe. Did an engagement ring really necessitate us starting silly habits such as pet names?
He chuckled as if he knew calling me that would get me riled up. “Okay…okay, I give.” He waved his hands in surrender. “Are you okay, Rayne?”
“I’m fine.” I waved my hand at the crowd around us. “Do you like all of this?”
Grant chuckled. I swear his voice continued to deepen over the years or maybe it was the beard aging his boyish looks that created the illusion of an older man in front of me. He br
ought the fluted glass to his lips and wiped away the trail of champagne from his whiskers. “It’s not so bad.”
“Isn’t it though?”
“No, not really. These are our friends and family, Rayne. They want to celebrate with us. Besides, when we move back home and set up our practices, these types of events will be common for us.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me right now.”
“Come here.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me behind one of the oak’s massive trunks. He gently leaned my back against it. “Okay, now tell me. What’s wrong?” He gave me a half-hearted smile. “You know this is really supposed to be a happy occasion. I mean, some would even say this is an event they look forward to. Don’t girls usually live for this stuff?”
Live for this stuff? What the hell? I’m not some little sorority chick he picked up freshman year. I knew he was joking but I was too keyed up to let myself leave it there. I heard Sam’s voice in my head again. Have you ever once thought about the timing of Grant’s proposal? His joking and her question combined together pissed me off to high heaven. “Grant, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” Nothing like the present.
“There you two are,” Charlie Grace said as she walked around the tree. Jacques followed in step behind her. She wrapped her arms around our waists. “The caterers are ready to begin serving the dishes. We should try to get everyone to take a seat.” She brushed back the hair that had fallen onto her face. She looked radiant. The green of her dress lightened her gray eyes in such a way that they appeared to have a bluish hue. For a brief moment, they reminded me of Memaw’s. I watched her eyes fall to my chest as the edge of her lips turned downward. “Must you? Must you always defy me in every single request I have?” She lifted the locust pendant off of my chest and then quickly dropped it to let it fall back against my skin.
