Winter Love Songs

by Eliza Andrews

  One thing at a time. First we had to convince her to stay.

  #

  Once the table had been cleared, the leftovers had been put away, and all the dishes were done, Andrew took Aunt Tina back to the assisted living facility and Mel, Hope, and I settled in on the screened-in back porch with our drinks. Inside, the three kids all settled down to watch “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving;” I could hear the familiar jazzy piano music and cartoon voices through the window that overlooked the porch.

  Melody lit a large scented candle on the glass table in the center of the porch, filling the air with a sweet, cloying smell of fake cinnamon.

  “Another Thanksgiving. Here and gone,” she said as she dropped into a chair across from us. “Next thing you know, it’ll be New Year’s.”

  Hope and I sat on opposite ends of a wicker porch sofa, about as far away from each other as we could sit while still being on the same piece of furniture. And as if the distance wasn’t enough, Hope had taken all the throw pillows from her side of the sofa and piled them in the center, like a barrier. A dam between us, holding back a potential flood of… what, exactly? Love? Lust? Or simply nostalgia — a futile reaching for something that could no longer be?

  “I still can’t get used to seeing Aunt Tina here without Uncle Billy,” Hope said wistfully.

  I nodded. Ever since the shooting, I’d found myself wishing Uncle Billy was still alive. If anyone could’ve helped Hope get out of the dark space she was in, it would have been him.

  We sipped our drinks in relaxed silence; I listened to the Charlie Brown special in the background.

  “Come on, Charlie Brown,” I heard Lucy say. “I’ll hold the ball and you kick it.”

  “Hold it? Ha!” said Charlie Brown. “You’ll pull it away and I’ll land flat on my back and kill myself.”

  “But Charlie Brown, it’s Thanksgiving,” Lucy said.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  I glanced at Hope out of the corner of my eye. I wondered if she was listening, too, or if she was lost in thought about Uncle Billy.

  Mel’s phone rang. “Oh — it’s Andrew’s mom,” she said. “I should probably talk to her. Hi, Regina,” she said brightly into the phone. “Yes, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving. What about you?”

  Hope and I sat, politely quiet, while Mel traded Thanksgiving-themed small talk with her mother-in-law.

  Hope started to fidget after a minute. She was never one to sit patiently and simply wait.

  “Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked after another minute went by. “Regina can be a talker.”

  I hesitated at first, thinking about the limp I’d been watching all night. But on the other hand, the more she moved, the better. That was a general rule of thumb all personal trainers lived by.

  I set my drink down. “Sure. Where should we walk to?”

  She shrugged. “Let’s just pick a direction and go.”

  #

  Our feet guided us out the long gravel drive that led to Melody’s and down the quiet residential street beyond. Street lamps chased away enough darkness to make a walk still possible.

  The wind picked up, freezing my ears to the side of my head. I shoved my hands deep into my jean pockets.

  Neither of us said anything at first. Then we both started to speak at the same time.

  “How’s it going with — ”

  “Are you glad you — ”

  I smiled. “You first.”

  “How’s it going with… what’s her name again? Karen?”

  I knew Hope remembered her name. I wondered why she pretended she didn’t. Maybe not knowing it would make it seem like she didn’t care.

  “Well, you know,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. “We’re like any couple. We suffer through our conflicts sometimes.”

  She gave a half-laugh. “That’s not a good sign. I ask you how things are and the first thing you bring up is money?”

  I shrugged. “We’ve been fighting about money lately. But a lot of couples do, right?”

  “What’s the fight over?”

  I sighed. Part of me didn’t want to get into it. Another part of me desperately wanted someone I could talk to about it. The two parts warred for a few seconds, then I drew in a breath and told Hope everything — the gym I wanted to open, the business model I’d calculated, the entrepreneur workshops I’d gone to, and the way Karen thought it was all a waste of time and money — she just thought I should take the money we’d saved to go back to school and become a physical therapist.

  “But you don’t want to do that,” said Hope. “Why not?”

  I shook my head, thinking back to my years in the physical therapy field. “I’m tired of working with people who are sick or injured. I just feel like if I can get to folks before they hurt themselves — help them get in shape before they get to the point where they need surgery or they do something to their bodies they can’t fix — I could do more good in the long run. It’s so…” I let my gaze wander into the dark shadows of the pine trees that lined the road, searching for the right words. “I can’t even tell you what it feels like to help someone get their body back. It’s like giving them back a piece of their lives that they thought was lost to them. I love helping people lose weight, or get in shape for the first time, or just start to feel good again. It’s like… if you help them change that little piece of their lives, everything else starts to fall into place. They feel differently about themselves. They start to like themselves again. They get their confidence back. And I guess you get some of that with physical therapy, but mostly it’s like I see older people and the people who never managed to get in shape in the first place. You know?”

  I looked over at Hope, aware that I’d just gone on something of a rant. She was watching me with a slight smile on her face.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  I glanced down, embarrassed. “I was rambling, wasn’t I?”

  “You’re a good person, Jules,” Hope touched my arm lightly, and even through my jacket I could feel that ember flaring to life. “You always have been. A much better person than me.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? It’s true.” She smiled. But something about her expression and her voice was tinged with bitterness. “The whole time I’ve been out there selling records and trying to see how famous I could get, you’ve been here, just quietly helping people. It’s very… you.”

  “You help people. Music helps people.”

  She laughed. “I wasn’t making music to help people. I was making it because I wanted people to say ‘Hope’ the way they say ‘Madonna’ or ‘Lady Gaga.’ It was about me. I was serving me. You were busy serving everyone else.”

  I hesitated a moment, worried that what I was about to say might upset her, or imply that I agreed with her harsh self-judgment. “Have you thought about… about what you could do to make a difference, after what happened? The gun control movement could use as much star power behind it as it can get.”

  Hope made a face. “I thought about doing a tribute album, donating the proceeds to a victim’s fund. But I don’t know. It seems so… predictable. A star makes a tribute album or concert, donates some money, and then the world moves on without any real change taking place.” She gestured at her left leg, at the way she limped slightly as she walked. “Besides, right now I don’t feel like I’m any use to anyone.”

  “Then let me help you,” I said, sensing an opportunity. “Stay with Mel a while. I’ll come over every day and work with you to rehab your leg. Give me six to eight weeks, I’ll have you as good as new.”

  She let out a breath and ran a hand through her hair, trying but failing to straighten the blonde curls that hung above her shoulders. She’d always fought a losing battle to control that hair.

  Those thick, naturally golden-blonde spirals. How many times had I run my fingers through them, toyed with a curl? In high school, out on the lake by her aunt and un
cle’s house. In college, after one of her shows at The Old Coot.

  Or five and a half years ago. The last time I’d convinced her to stay in Calvin longer than she’d intended.

  I shook my head, as if the gesture would dislodge the memories.

  “You, too, huh?” she said.

  “Me, too, what?” My stomach flip-flopped. Did she mean she also couldn’t get the memories of us out of her head?

  “You’re in on the conspiracy to keep me in Calvin? As if rural Georgia is going to be a better place for me to recover than Los Angeles?”

  Oh. Only that.

  “We’re not ‘rural,’” I said in mock offense. “We have a Publix now. And a Walgreens.” I paused. “And we’re your family.”

  “I’ve made my own family in L.A.”

  “Your blood is here,” I countered.

  “Blood.” Hope practically spat the word from her mouth. “I’ve seen all the blood I ever want to see. Being around family won’t stop me from seeing it, either.”

  I reached an arm out, stopping her. “Then don’t stay because it’s home,” I said. “Don’t stay because your family’s here. Stay because I’m here.” I hesitated, realizing what I’d just said. The way it sounded wasn’t how I’d meant it. “I can help you. I’m good at what I do.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Hope said. She gave me a slight smile. “I already decided.”

  I exhaled a frustrated breath. It formed an amorphous cloud between Hope and me. “Please, Hope. We’re worried about you. Even before the shooting, you were… drifting in a direction that didn’t seem good.” I took a chance saying something that I knew would upset her. “Mel told me about the assistant before Nigel. Marissa. Mel says it’s becoming a habit. That you haven’t had anything longer than a one night stand in years.”

  Anger flashed in Hope’s eyes. “And what business is that of yours, Julie?”

  “It’s just… I care about you.”

  “Really? You care so much that you stopped talking to me for five years?” Her eyes narrowed. “One day you just stopped calling, stopped answering when I called you. Was it even you? Did Karen make you stop talking to me?”

  I couldn’t think of a way to respond. There were too many ways to answer. No, Karen didn’t have anything to do with it. Mel was the one who’d finally convinced me. But I couldn’t tell Hope that. And anyway, once I met Karen, she was so instantly jealous of Hope that I couldn’t have changed my mind and started talking to my best friend and first love again even if I’d wanted to. Well, I could have, but Karen would have probably walked out on me if I had.

  “It was…”

  “It was,” Hope said definitively. “It was her. And you didn’t even have the decency to tell me you had started seeing someone.”

  “It doesn’t matter why we stopped talking, Hope,” I said at last. “We’re talking now, aren’t we? That’s what matters.”

  “Except that I had to find out about Karen from Mel,” she said.

  “I was going to tell you. I just had to think of a way to say it.”

  “I don’t care who you’re with,” Hope said. “I just don’t know why you had to hide it from me.”

  Anger masked the hurt, but I knew her too well to miss it. She would be hurt even more if she knew that it was Mel, not Karen, who’d finally convinced me to cut off communication with her. I just hadn’t intended our silence to last for five years — that part had definitely been about Karen.

  “I wasn’t ‘hiding’ Karen from you,” I finally said, even though of course I had been hiding her. “You and I just… we have a complicated history. That’s all.”

  “I’m cold,” Hope said. “Let’s go back to the house.” She turned on her heel and began limping back in the direction of Melody’s. I sighed and followed her.

  “I really wish you’d consider staying,” I said from a few steps behind her, my eyes back on her awkward gait. She was making the pain worse that way and probably didn’t even realize it. “Let me help you with your physical therapy, seriously.”

  “I told you,” Hope said without turning around. “I already decided.”

  “Alright,” I said. I let my other arguments about why I didn’t think Los Angeles was any good for her die on my tongue. Once Hope Caldwell made up her mind about something, there was no dissuading her.

  I put my head down and marched along the empty road, glad that we were heading back now that the damp, late-November chill had settled in for the night. I didn’t realize Hope had stopped walking ahead of me until I ran into her back.

  “Oh — sorry.”

  “You didn’t ask what I decided,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I told you I already decided about staying in Calvin versus going back to L.A. But you didn’t ask what I decided.”

  I straightened. “So… what did you decide?” I asked carefully.

  “Despite the fact that Andrew is obnoxious and I hate his mustache,” Hope said, “and the fact that Aunt Tina has gotten remarkably cranky in her old age, and the fact that my best friend hid the fact that she’s been in a relationship for the past five years and conspired with my cousin to keep me trapped in this podunk town, last night I decided to stay.”

  My face split into a grin. “Really? You still think of me as your best friend? And you’re staying?”

  “Yes. And yes.” She poked me in the ribs. “But I’m paying you the same thing I would pay my physical therapist back home.”

  “Hope, no, I can’t take — ”

  “You can and you will take my money. Or I’m retracting my promise to stay.”

  I smiled. “We can talk about it.”

  “No, you stubborn woman,” she said forcefully. “There is nothing to talk about.”

  “You’re calling me stubborn? Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”

  “You didn’t talk to me for five years and you hid your relationship from me. I’ll call you any damn thing I want.”

  We bantered all the way back to Melody’s house. It was the happiest I’d been during an argument in a very long time.

  14

  Early December, Part 1: “Scar Tissue,” Red Hot Chili Peppers

  “Three more,” I told Hope after I adjusted the resistance band around her ankle.

  She glared at me as if I’d said something to offend her.

  “Come on,” I said. “Just three more and you’re done.”

  “I hate you.”

  I laughed. Laughter had come easily to me over the past couple weeks. “No, you don’t hate me. Now let’s see those three reps.”

  She grunted and did a single rep, hanging onto the porch pillar for dear life while she abducted her left leg outward.

  “Breathe out,” I reminded her.

  She clenched her teeth together. “No, I really do hate you,” she said, but she breathed out anyway.

  “One to go.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “I know you can,” I said.

  “You know shit.”

  “Okay, fine. I know shit. But do one more anyway.”

  Hope rolled her eyes at me like a teenager. “Fine.” She completed the final rep.

  I bent down, undid the resistance band. “That’s it. Let’s stretch you out.”

  Hope hobbled inside, her limp more pronounced than I’d seen it in a few days. The gunshot wound itself had healed fairly well, but she’d been left with complex regional pain syndrome, or CRPS, a chronic pain issue due to nerve damage from the bullet. Even if she regained all the strength in her leg, she wouldn’t be able to go on tour or perform on stage again until the pain diminished.

  She laid down on Mel’s couch.

  “How’s the pain been?” I asked.

  “Bad.”

  “Bad like what? On a scale of one to ten?”

  “Somewhere between eleven and thirteen,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, trying not to let my concern show through. If I stopped believing i
n her rehabilitation process, she would stop believing, too. And that was the last thing she needed.

  We’d been working together every day since Thanksgiving, and I had already resigned myself to the idea that some of the pain Hope had might be permanent. I could help her strengthen her leg, reeducate her nervous system, get her to regain the muscle that had atrophied from disuse after the immediate aftermath of the gunshot, but the more I researched what happened when a bullet from a high-velocity rifle struck a body part, the more I doubted that she would ever feel one hundred percent again.

  I hadn’t told her that yet, but I suspected she already knew.

  I knelt down beside the couch, reached for the bad leg. It was swollen again, I noted, which didn’t surprise me. My first instinct was to ice it, but CRPS often came with temperature sensitivity, and the ice might only make the pain worse.

  As gently as I could, I started to massage her thigh, starting high, just below her hip, and working my way down. She sucked in a sharp breath when I got close to the place she’d been shot.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, easing up. That was another problem with CRPS — even light touch could trigger pain.

  “Not your fault,” she replied through clenched teeth.

  Hope had on a loose dress with spandex shorts underneath. As I lifted her leg a little higher, the dress fell back, revealing two thick white scars on either side of her leg. One entrance wound. One exit wound. Given the size of the scars on the outside of her leg, I could only imagine what the bullet had done inside it.

  I’d read everything I could find about what high velocity bullets did to a person’s body. I read about the overlarge cavity such a bullet made inside the flesh, the way the force of impact rippled outward to affect all the nearby tissues, the way the sudden absence of tissue created a vacuum effect that sucked in everything from debris to blood vessels. The more I read, the more I realized that it was a miracle Hope’s femur hadn’t shattered, or that none of the major arteries in the thigh had been nicked by the passing bullet.

  And what the bullet did to Hope’s leg was likely nothing compared to what it had done to her heart.