This Is Not How It Ends

by Rochelle B. Weinstein

  His hand was cold, and I tried to warm it with my fingers. His eyes fluttered open. “You come here often?”

  I managed a smile. Josie let us know to push the call button if we needed anything throughout the night. “We’ll be returning every few hours. I’ll try to be quiet.”

  I thanked her, and Philip and I were left alone. “Can I get in?” I asked, raising the sheet to claim my spot beside him.

  I curled into him, and his weightlessness made me want to cry. I swallowed the tears and pretended we were back home in the Keys in our much more comfortable bed with the view that spanned for miles. I knew I’d never look at that ocean again without feeling his absence, and though much had changed, my love for him had not. Philip leaving, for good, was inconceivable, but I believed I could make it right. I was given a second chance. When you’re faced with losing someone, the battlefield changes. I had fallen into one of my students’ thesis papers. I wanted what I couldn’t have, and I wanted Philip to live.

  “Please agree to treatment, Philip. You owe me this much. You owe yourself. I’ve asked you for so little. You’ll have more time. We’ll have more time.” I paused. “We’ve never had enough time.”

  “My God, you’ll have lovely children, Charley. I’m sorry I couldn’t give them to you. I should’ve slowed down. We should’ve eaten a hell of a lot more ice cream.” His eyes welled up. “You know I love you. My issues were never about my love for you.” And then he couldn’t hold it in anymore, and tears streamed down his face. “I thought we had forever.”

  I’d been holding in the emotions, but Philip—lying there in that bed hooked up to machines with a devil quietly killing him—broke me. The horror of what we faced released a fresh set of tears. My entire body shook.

  “Come here, Charley,” he said, pulling me tighter.

  “I can’t, Philip. I can’t watch you die.”

  “Charley,” he said again, “I know how strong you are. It’s why I chose you.” He was crying, too, and it was one of our saddest moments. The kind that engraved itself in our souls.

  “Next time choose vanilla,” he said with a tinge of sadness. “Impulsive, successful in close relationships. Choose vanilla.”

  I wiped my nose, my eyes, and took a deep breath. I had no right to such cowardice, but seeing Philip this way hurt. I couldn’t grasp the enormity of what I was about to lose. Or I did, and it was too much to manage.

  “Perhaps we should plan that wedding,” he said. “Then I don’t have to worry about you trying to make a living at that ridiculous clinic.”

  “You’re always so romantic.”

  He smiled. It was bittersweet, a meager turn of his lips that felt wrong.

  “You’re a clever girl, Charley. Until you, I never thought about a second run at this game.”

  I forgot the ache inside and enjoyed our nearness. “You clearly have intimacy issues. It only took cancer to get you to discuss the wedding.”

  “I had the best intentions, darling.”

  We huddled close, our bodies pressed together. His phone, which had been charging nearby, started buzzing. At once, I saw it was Ben, and I handed him the phone.

  “Benjamin. I’ve gotten my knickers in a knot here.”

  I couldn’t hear Ben’s response, but I knew he was wrecked.

  “Yeah, mate. It’s my turn.”

  Philip listened, and I could tell by the way his body tensed that whatever Ben was saying hurt.

  “I appreciate that, mate. Don’t get any ideas about that ring Charley left in your house. The lady’s gotten me to agree to a wedding.”

  They laughed together, though his words had to prick Ben’s heart.

  “Ben, there is one more thing. If I must do this whole wedding bit, you’re going to have to be my best man. Think you can handle that?”

  Philip smiled, and my eyes misted with tears.

  They hung up, and Philip told me what a good friend Ben was to him. “He was crying, Charley. My dear Goose was crying.”

  CHAPTER 33

  October 2018

  Home isn’t home when the person you love is dying.

  After a week in Miami, Philip and I took our seats in the back of Pete’s Navigator. Everything was the same and everything was changed. We didn’t talk about the stage of the cancer or the amount of time remaining, numbers that numbed brains and made little sense. We simply slipped into a rhythm that meant one day at a time. A stent was put in to alleviate the obstruction and remedy the jaundice and itching. His stomach was a constant source of pain and embarrassment. He would be out of breath after a short walk, and I’d find him napping throughout the day.

  One of our first unpleasant tasks was informing the Stafford Group of Philip’s immediate resignation. I had worried about the effect this would have on him and his psyche—the grim finality narrowing in.

  “I have plenty of money, Charley. I’ve run my course. Meghan can take over.”

  The irony of all this was that I’d become used to Philip’s absences. He had trained me to live without him. Having him home 24-7 took its toll on him and us, and those first few weeks we bickered quite a bit. Liberty said it was expected. “Imagine the stress he’s under.”

  “I do.”

  “You can’t. There’s no worse feeling in the world than knowing you’re going to die.”

  For my own piece of mind, Philip agreed to visit the hospital biweekly for scans and blood tests. There were medications to combat the nausea and prescriptions to be filled. The doctors eyed him sympathetically, but it was me who reaped the real compassion. They all knew Philip was forgoing treatment. He viewed it as admirable; I saw it as an affront to me. I did my best to grin through it. I’d make excuses for Philip. I’d argue this was what we both wanted. But we both knew that was a lie.

  One course of treatment Philip did agree to was Liberty’s voodoo. In some ways, I think he complied because it got him out of the house and gave him an excuse to see me at work. Liberty performed all sorts of magic on him. Acupuncture alleviated the pain and inflammation in his belly, making it easier for him to digest certain foods. On the days he wasn’t feeling up to getting out of bed, Liberty would come to the house with her supplies and provide treatments at his bedside. She had put him on a gut-friendly diet that promised to aid in reducing the bloating, and our kitchen had become a series of Chopped episodes replete with food processors and shakes, proteins and powders, vegetables and fruits. There was constant motion and whirring, as though the sounds could bring him back to life.

  Tonight Philip and I were resting on the couch, watching a movie, something we’d been doing a lot more of lately. He was cursing Liberty and her latest concoction of papaya, mango, turmeric, and some enzyme that she swore was keeping him alive and which he swore was killing him. Cotillard and Pitt were dancing across the scene in Allied, and I was searching for the signs of an affair. There were none.

  A knock at the door sprang Sunny to life. I’d felt terrible abandoning him at Ben’s that first week while Philip was in the hospital. Ben said he’d been distraught without us. It pained Ben to pass him along to Liberty, but Liberty had insisted she had more time to devote to the large, homesick animal. When we’d returned home that first day, the only thing that felt familiar was Sunny slathering me in wet kisses. He hadn’t even growled at Philip this time. He’d sniffed him as though he knew what was coming, eyeing him with a bowed head that I swore looked like an apology.

  “It’s Ben,” Philip said.

  I didn’t question how he knew before I did. It was the first indication that our axis had changed.

  My heart raced, and it wasn’t because Pitt and Cotillard had completed a sexy back seat love scene. Ben and I hadn’t seen each other since that morning. Since Hurricane Kelsie. It was reported she took five lives with her that day, but it was really seven. Because she took Philip’s and mine. Eight, if we included Ben.

  “He has your ring,” Philip explained, gagging with every swallow of the yellow liquid. I s
tood up and made my way to the door, imagining Ben holding it in his fingers, absorbing its brilliance.

  I turned the handle expecting to feel nothing, and when the door opened, I felt everything at once. Ben was bright and virile. Large and alive. He dwarfed Philip in presence and pride. I had grown so accustomed to the grayish pallor of Philip’s face that the mere sight of Ben and his handsomeness hurt my eyes, awakened me from sleep.

  “Charlotte.” It was terse and emotionless.

  “Hi, Ben.”

  He reached inside the front pocket of his jeans and returned with my ring. Our fingers brushed when he dropped it in my outstretched palm, and I waited until we reached the living room before sliding it back on my finger. Its glint had changed over time. Once, the brilliance symbolized our falling in love and the joy our promises meant, but that was before cancer. Before Ben. Before I’d broken those promises in two.

  Philip hid under a blanket on the couch. He looked tired and small, and Ben took the seat beside him. I could tell Ben was shocked by Philip’s appearance, but he was good at pretending. He was sitting there pretending a lot of things.

  I left the two of them alone to talk. It was tough to watch while our indiscretion—let’s call it what it was, our betrayal—wove through the fringes of their conversation. Ben’s remorse was plastered across his face. I had lured him in. And then I made a promise I couldn’t keep. The guilt was overwhelming at times, a bruise, tender and raw. If you believed in karmic boomerangs, I was stabbed square in the back by mine.

  October was upon us, and the weather turned mild. The cancer left Philip with an aversion to air-conditioning, and we opened all the windows for the temperate breezes to fill the house. I tried to block out their conversation, but their sounds carried through the walls, hitched to the wind. Even if I couldn’t make out their exact phrases, I knew what the murmurs meant. The interminable silence. At one point, I watched them hold hands. Two men on the precipice, with no pretense, only love. Their vulnerabilities stung, and I had to turn away.

  I remembered how I’d felt after reading Ann Packer’s novel The Dive from Clausen’s Pier. The main character, on the verge of breaking off her engagement, was suddenly faced with her fiancé’s paralysis. In a gut-wrenching dilemma, a show of strength or weakness, Carrie Bell must decide to stay or go. Truthfully, I didn’t finish the book. I’d stopped reading right there, the quandary so awful to me I couldn’t go on.

  Maybe my own decision was partly born of similar guilt and the need for redemption, but once I made it, I couldn’t go back. In fact, I didn’t want to go back. That’s the thing about betrayal. It’s convoluted and malleable, changing to fit an individual story. It doesn’t always mean you love one person more than another. For some, it means your heart is cracked in two. Falling for Ben didn’t mean I stopped loving Philip. It just meant I was selfish and confused. I loved Philip, I did. A special love that snuck into the corners of my soul and burrowed. The cancer didn’t make me love him any less, but it handed me an opportunity to repent for my sin, to make it up to him. To be there at the very end like I wasn’t for my mother. And even that wasn’t a reason to stay with someone, but I did. Because our love was real.

  That afternoon, I walked Ben to the door, with Sunny scratching at my legs. “I’m taking Sunny out,” I hollered to Philip.

  It was our first time alone, and even with the cooler temperature, the air felt thick between us. If I thought Ben was going to hop in his truck and drive off, I was wrong. He stayed by my side and followed me to the street.

  “He looks awful.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that’s what cancer does to you.”

  A pair of butterflies flitted around Sunny’s head, and he chased after them. And when a FedEx truck drove by, he lost interest, tugged on the leash, and barked incessantly. “What are you going to do when you catch the truck, huh, big shot?”

  Ben hovered nearby, and his silence was worse than anything. We used to take this walk daily, never running out of things to say.

  “How much time?” he finally asked.

  “Not enough.”

  “I’m here for you, whatever you need.”

  But he was wrong, and I froze, everything I was feeling clamoring to come out—the guilt, the shame, the grief. I was venomous and hot. “That night meant nothing to me, Ben. You need to know that. Nothing. You mean nothing to me. Do you understand?”

  He let me break down, waiting patiently for the outburst to pass. Good old Ben. The essence of calm and composed. Always reasonable in a crisis. But now his sensibility agitated me. I decided in that precise moment to punish Ben as I was being punished. It would absolve the guilt, and Philip could die in peace.

  “No matter what happens with Philip, we’re done. I’ll never be with you. Ever. People like us are cursed. We would’ve never been happy. It was foolish to think otherwise.”

  His face turned pale from my battering. It was cruel and mean, but I didn’t care. I thought he’d finally break down. It was not what he said, it was what he didn’t. Hurt passed through his eyes, the unrecognizable film which meant there was no going back. I couldn’t erase my words, the pain was plastered to his cheeks.

  When he spoke, I barely recognized his voice. “He’s my friend, too. You forget that, Charlotte. You think you’re the only one hurting. I’m hurting, too. But you’re right. This . . . whatever this is . . . was . . . it’s over.”

  He turned around and headed for his truck.

  It didn’t even hurt. Ben was no longer inside me.

  CHAPTER 34

  October 2018

  Philip was waiting at the top of the stairs when we returned.

  “Ben tore out of here like a bat out of hell.”

  Our eyes met. “He’s upset.”

  “You’re all melodramatic.”

  Philip’s cynicism scratched at my skin. It spread wider later that night when we were lying in bed. He was shivering, and I was covering him with warm blankets, and my hands. “We all die, Charley.”

  I understood that, but I didn’t like how cavalier he was about it. “If you don’t have some semblance of fear, it’s as though there’s nothing worth living for. Fear makes you fight, and fighting means you care.”

  “No, Charley, fighting is futile.”

  “It doesn’t feel good,” I said, dropping my head on his shoulder. “You giving up.”

  “I haven’t been given much of a choice, darling. Besides, I haven’t entirely given up. I’m taking all the fancy vitamins and supplements from Liberty.”

  He was, but we both knew it was only to appease me.

  Tired of talking about cancer, I broached another subject. “I spoke to my father, Philip.” The conversation felt like ages ago, and the anger at Philip for finding him had subsided.

  “I’m glad, Charley. People surprise us.”

  “It’s sad he felt that leaving was his only option.”

  “Decisions show us who we truly are, my dear. I believe your father had to leave to find himself.”

  If what he was saying was correct, then I was an evil person. I could have waited those extra hours until morning, but I didn’t. I chose someone else. And conveniently, I blocked it out. “He was my father. He had a responsibility to us.”

  “Mortality’s an interesting thing, Charley. When faced with it, our decisions hold far more weight.”

  Everywhere I looked there were repercussions from our collective decisions.

  “Give your father a chance. It won’t change what happened, but it might change what’s ahead.”

  The conversation moved to Philip parenting me, which was one of the reasons I’d fallen in love with him in the first place. “You should be out enjoying your life. The righteousness is admirable . . .”

  “Stop.” I placed my fingers on his lips and told him as kindly as I could to shut up. “Don’t tell me how to live my life, Philip. You’re my fiancée, I love you, and I’m going to take care of you.”

  “You’re not get
ting any younger, Charley. You should be popping out kids.”

  I slapped him playfully. “You’re not even funny anymore.”

  “But you’re laughing.”

  And the laughs turned to tears. And the memories of our brief life together came at me like the forgotten words to a favorite love song—bittersweet and broken. “Don’t cry, Charley.” He turned to face me and held on to my eyes.

  “I can’t imagine a world without you.”

  He lowered his head, the scar from his stitches marring the thin line of hair along his scalp. One of his hands came around my waist and tickled my stomach. “I don’t have any regrets,” he finally said. “Not one. Other than not meeting you ten years earlier.”

  He slid on top of me, and his knees wedged my legs apart. I didn’t know what was more shocking, his weightlessness or desire. His hands ran up and down my back, and soon he was inside of me. “I’ve missed you, Charley.” I closed my eyes and tried to shake the image of the last time I had sex.

  Have you ever loved somebody? Really loved somebody? You know their curves and their scent and the way they move their lips across your skin. You know what each breath means and the accompanying sounds. This new Philip was barely reminiscent of the man I used to know. Kansas City Philip came to me in waves. Strong, vibrant Philip, who could drop me to my knees with a glance in my direction. This Philip smelled nothing like him. He tasted different, too. He was so fragile, I was afraid he might break in two. I could barely hold on to his body. There was skin and a collection of bones.

  He grappled, and I tried to give him what he wanted. I spread my legs to let him in, to let him know how much he meant to me.

  But he stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He slid off me, upset. “This isn’t working.”