Just Once

by Lori Handeland

  ‘What else?’ he asked.

  He didn’t think she’d answer, didn’t think she even knew he was there.

  ‘She thought she was a fish,’ Frankie whispered, and the chill that had tickled over Charley before returned. ‘But she wasn’t.’

  Hannah

  Washington DC. January, 1992

  Jazz played low and smooth nearly twenty-four-seven. Sometimes Hannah thought she might start screaming if she didn’t hear a little disco.

  Heath spent Christmas in the hospital. Kaposi’s sarcoma now lived in his lungs. The doctors had switched up his chemo cocktail. It didn’t seem to be helping.

  Charley stayed on. Hannah was so grateful she nearly wept every time she saw him. But she managed not to cry, unless she was in the shower. She was taking very long showers these days.

  She went into You every morning, leaving Charley and Heath together. Once he’d picked up his camera again, Charley never seemed to put it back down. The two of them spent their time talking, watching TV and recording Heath’s End of Days.

  In the afternoons, when Hannah came home, Charley would go out and do Lord knows what in and around DC. He always returned with rolls and rolls of exposed film in the pockets of his army jacket, as well as boxes and boxes of slides he’d had developed at a Mom and Pop place around the corner.

  ‘Shouldn’t you take a quick trip home?’ Heath asked near the end of January.

  ‘I’m good.’ Charley had gone into National Geographic and brought back a portable light table, set it up in the corner of the dining room, and covered it with slides. Whenever he wasn’t taking pictures – like now – he was editing them.

  He remained on leave from the magazine. Hannah wondered how long that would continue. She wondered how long a lot of stuff would continue.

  ‘You are many things, my man, but right now “good” isn’t one of them.’ Heath reclined on the hospital bed they’d rented.

  She and Charley had shoved the couch he’d previously used into her room. She tripped over it every time she checked on Heath in the night. They probably should have left it in the living room. Then she wouldn’t have had to sleep in the chair so much.

  ‘Hmm?’ Charley peered at a slide through a loop, then tossed it into the box he used for garbage.

  ‘You should go home, Charley.’ Heath’s voice was quiet.

  Charley glanced in Heath’s direction, frowning at Hannah as if he hadn’t realized she was there. He probably hadn’t. When she’d walked in, he hadn’t responded to her hello; he hadn’t even glanced up from the slides.

  ‘There isn’t … I wasn’t … She doesn’t …’ He sighed, then hung his head. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’ Heath asked.

  Hannah held her breath.

  Charley got up, grabbed his camera bag and said, ‘I’ll be back,’ before he ran away.

  ‘That went well, don’t you think?’

  Hannah didn’t answer. She crossed the room to stand in front of pile upon pile of slides.

  ‘Hannah, what are you …?’

  She flicked on the light table. Her breath whispered out. It was worse than she’d thought.

  ‘Hey, I don’t look that bad. Do I?’ Heath’s voice wavered.

  He did look that bad and he knew it. If Hannah had thought he was skeletal before, she hadn’t understood skeletal. The lesions shimmered like purple bruises on skin so pale it shone a little blue in certain lights. His lips were too red, chapped and cracked from the chemo, the throwing up from the chemo, the throwing up blood from the Kaposi’s sarcoma.

  ‘These aren’t pictures of you.’ She sat in Charley’s chair and peered at slide after slide.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Marshall Heights, Washington Highlands.’ She recognized them from their being in the news nearly every night because of a shooting, a stabbing, a rape, a drive-by.

  ‘What?’ Heath tried to sit up, coughed once, and lay back down. ‘Why?’

  She squinted at a few more slides. ‘Maybe he’s doing a story on all the murders.’

  Washington DC in 1991 had racked up nearly five hundred violent deaths. January ’92 hadn’t shown much improvement.

  ‘A story for who? He hasn’t been to National Geographic in weeks, except to pick up that light table. Doesn’t seem like something they’d publish anyway.’

  ‘I think he’s just … doing it.’

  ‘Is he trying to get himself killed?’ Heath asked.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You gotta talk to him.’

  ‘Me?’ Hannah’s heart began to jitter and dance. ‘No. You’re it. No backsies.’

  Heath rolled his eyes. ‘Grow up.’

  Of all the things she would not have expected to hear out of her brother’s mouth, ‘grow up’ was near the top of the list. Heath had never been a big fan of growing up. Now he never would.

  Her eyes burned. ‘I need a shower.’

  ‘Suck it up and sit.’

  Maybe ‘suck it up’ was near the top of that list too.

  Heath patted the bed and she complied.

  ‘There are a few things we need to discuss.’ Heath sounded both stronger than he had in weeks and weaker than he ever had before.

  ‘No, I …’ Her gaze flicked to the bathroom door.

  ‘I know you cry in the shower.’

  Her gaze flicked back. ‘Do not.’

  ‘There are things you need to know. Things I need to ask. OK?’

  No, she thought.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve done some research on PTSD.’

  There was another jumble of words she would not have expected to hear out of Heath’s mouth.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You haven’t heard Charley shouting some nights?’

  Of course she had. He never shouted much beyond, No! and Incoming! She hadn’t been sure what to do, so she’d done nothing.

  ‘How did you do research?’

  Heath rarely left the apartment these days, and when he did it was for chemo or a doctor’s appointment. Considering how those trips exhausted him, she was going to rap some heads if Charley had been dragging him to the library too.

  ‘I can use the phone. I’ve talked to the VA, a counselor or two. And Ready Reference is damn handy.’ Heath took a breath. ‘The way he’s behaving, the way he’s always behaved – the dangerous assignments, pushing the non-dangerous ones toward dangerous by taking that extra step, going out and doing that.’ He pointed at the slides. ‘Some PTSD sufferers who were exposed to continued trauma, over and over for a long period of time, feel the need to recreate that adrenaline rush of danger to process their stress. Now he’s had another trauma.’

  Lisa.

  ‘But he didn’t take any pictures for months after she died. Didn’t go anywhere dangerous.’ Unless they counted that single trip home. Afterward his nightmares had gotten worse.

  ‘Avoidance. Another symptom. Now he’s got tunnel vision – focused on the essay about me to the exclusion of everything but …’

  They both turned their gazes to the light table.

  That.

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Ideally take him to a shrink, but I don’t think he’ll go.’

  ‘Maybe you can get him to talk to you.’

  ‘I’ll try, Hannah, but I …’ He took her hand.

  She tried to pull away. She knew where this was going.

  ‘I’m not going to make it.’

  ‘Don’t say that! Don’t even think it!’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘No! No one has to, especially you. Positive thinking, it releases …’ She couldn’t remember what it released right now.

  ‘It releases my annoyance. Enough of that yippy-skippy Pollyanna bullshit. I have cancerous lesions in my lungs that are growing not shrinking. I cough blood, spit blood, yak blood.’

  ‘Heath, please,’ Hannah said, appalled at the despair in her voice. Who wasn’t thinking positive now?

 
‘Sooner or later I’m going to either die from the sarcoma, or the treatment for the sarcoma, or pneumonia that I get from all of the above. You know it. I know it. Hell, sweetie, everyone knows it.’ He lifted one emaciated shoulder. ‘Regrets, I’ve got a few. Truly just one. I wanted so badly to be part of You becoming the number-one fashion magazine. Stupid, I know.’

  ‘It’s not stupid,’ Hannah said fiercely. ‘Not if it’s something you really want.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He took her hand, squeezed, or at least she thought he did. The movement was so weak it might only have been a twitch. ‘There’s one thing I want you to do for me.’

  ‘I’ll go and get Mom and Dad. I’ll make them come.’

  ‘God, no.’ He laughed and this time it didn’t make him cough. Maybe he was getting better.

  And what had happened to no more of the Pollyanna bullshit?

  ‘I don’t even want them at the funeral. In fact, I request no funeral. There’ve been enough of them lately.’

  ‘But what …?’

  ‘I want to be cremated and spread on the runway at Fashion Week.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘Ask Carol. She …’ He choked, tried to swallow. Couldn’t.

  His eyes widened. He tried to breathe. Couldn’t.

  For the first time ever, Hannah wished he’d cough. Apparently, he couldn’t.

  If possible, Heath became paler. The veins in his head bulged.

  She picked up the phone, dialed 911.

  ‘Heath! Stay with me!’

  The operator came on the line, but by the time Hannah had finished giving the particulars, Heath was unconscious.

  Charley found them at the hospital that night. He had a black eye.

  She didn’t even ask.

  Heath was still unconscious. They were giving him morphine.

  ‘You OK?’ Charley asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘How about him?’

  ‘He’s dying,’ she said for the very first time.

  Charley took the chair next to her. ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘A lot of big words.’

  ‘Which add up to?’

  ‘He’s dying.’

  Huh, the more she said it, the easier it did not get.

  ‘Did he really say that?’

  She shook her head. ‘The chemo isn’t working. The drugs aren’t working. Everything they do only makes him weaker. We can keep trying, watch him puke blood for a few more weeks, maybe months, or we can …’ Her voice broke.

  Charley laid his hand on her arm. ‘Let him go.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Did you ask Heath what he wanted?’

  ‘He hasn’t …’ Her breath hitched. ‘He hasn’t woken up.’

  ‘Have you called your parents?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘They’ll be here tomorrow.’

  ‘Isn’t that what they said the last time you called?’

  ‘Every time I called.’ And, wonder of wonders, tomorrow never came.

  ‘Your parents are almost as bad at parenting as I was.’

  ‘Oh, Charley, you weren’t—’

  ‘Do they have the right to make his medical decisions?’

  ‘No. Heath left that to me.’ She stroked her brother’s too pale, too still hand. ‘Asshole.’

  ‘What will happen if you do nothing but keep him comfortable?’

  ‘Respiratory failure. Blue lips and skin.’ She traced a vein in his blue-tinged arm. ‘Rapid breathing. Racing heart.’ The latter were symptoms she’d noticed in her brother on and off for the past few days.

  The end had already begun and they hadn’t even known it.

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be breathing too fast now and his heart …’ Charley pointed at the monitor that emitted a steady and not too fast beep-beep.

  ‘The morphine helps.’ She didn’t mention that the morphine would also increase the confusion and altered consciousness associated with respiratory failure.

  ‘Hannah?’

  Heath’s eyes were closed, but his lips moved again, forming Hannah without sound.

  ‘I’m right here.’

  ‘I’ll just …’ Charley inched for the door.

  ‘Stay,’ Hannah and Heath said at the same time.

  Charley hesitated, then remained near the door.

  Heath opened his eyes, which appeared impossibly blue in his ice-pale face. He took a short, gaspy breath.

  ‘I have a request.’

  Hannah felt a shiver of déjà vu. Hadn’t they been having this conversation right before he’d passed out?

  ‘No funeral. I remember.’

  ‘No.’ He kicked his feet so hard he kicked off the sheet. The sight of his too-thin legs – the golden hair that had once covered them gone, the lesions that had made him cry stark and ugly – made her yank it back up. ‘I want you to promise me …’ He started to wheeze.

  ‘You shouldn’t talk. I’ve already promised.’

  ‘No.’ He fought to get air.

  She considered calling for the doctor, but when she reached for the call button, he grabbed her hand. ‘Promise …’

  The last word came out on another wheeze and then …

  Heath stopped breathing.

  Frankie

  ‘What the hell, Frankie?’

  Why had she called Irene again? Oh, yeah, because she had no one else.

  ‘Calm down.’ Frankie glanced out the window of the cottage.

  Charley stared into the water. So far, that water was the best babysitter she had.

  They’d been here two days. She’d gotten Dr Lanier’s OK to do radiation and chemo at the Sturgeon Bay outreach clinic and made an appointment to see him there next week. Once that was done, she’d cajoled, threatened and begged Charley into agreeing to attend the appointment and continue his treatments.

  ‘Why are you letting him become your problem? He left you, remember? When you needed him the most, poof, he was off boinking the bimbo.’

  Once it had felt good to say those things herself – which was where Irene had gotten them. Now, hearing her own words parroted back only made Frankie feel small and mean.

  ‘He doesn’t remember boinking the bimbo. He doesn’t even remember the bimbo.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it never happened. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist.’

  Frankie had already participated in variations of this conversation several times. She still wasn’t sure of the answers, so she asked the newest eternal question.

  ‘Doesn’t it?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Frankie.’

  ‘Are you allowed to take a Lord’s name in vain when you don’t consider him a Lord?’

  ‘Bite me.’

  Frankie sighed. ‘I promised I’d take care of him while he was in treatment.’

  ‘He promised to love you forever and keep himself only for you.’

  ‘He thinks he has.’

  A growl of frustration traveled nearly a thousand miles in an instant. ‘What on earth possessed you to promise her that?’

  Frankie nearly told Irene about the pictures, but blackmail – or was it bribery? Definitely something illegal with a ‘b’ – would only make Irene crazier and Irene was crazy enough.

  ‘Common decency?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘She should be the one rearranging her life.’

  Irene was right. So why did agreeing with her feel so wrong?

  ‘I don’t have any assignments right now. I could use a break.’

  ‘You could have an assignment if you wanted to.’ Irene let out her breath on a huff. ‘The only way any of this would make sense is if it’s about revenge.’

  ‘Revenge?’ Frankie repeated.

  Charley still stared into the water as if hypnotized. Pretty soon she was going to have to put a stop to it. He was freaking her out.

  ‘He left you when you needed him the most. You’re planning to do the same thing.’

  ‘
I … what?’

  ‘At the end, when he’s dying and he still thinks the two of you are the loves of each other’s lives, you leave. Bam. Slam-dunk. Perfect revenge. Isn’t it what every left-behind woman dreams of?’

  Frankie had dreamed of it once. Probably more than once.

  She peered out the window again, her gaze resting on Charley’s back. Right now it sounded like more of a nightmare.

  ‘He said he’s never loved anyone the way he loves me,’ Frankie murmured.

  Now a long, sad sigh traveled the miles. ‘Oh, Frankie. That’s what they all say.’

  Frankie pled an appointment that was closer than it was to end the conversation. For the first time she could recall, she felt worse after talking to Irene instead of better.

  She’d been happy, or at least content. Happy had disappeared with Lisa, and it wasn’t coming back. But she enjoyed her work, her house, her garden. Until today, she’d enjoyed Irene. She enjoyed men and occasional sex. Nothing too serious. She didn’t do serious. She liked good food, great wine. Life was, if not fabulous, livable.

  But shouldn’t it be more? Could it be more with Charley?

  Stupid questions. Charley might be Her Charley now, but she was working on making him Hannah’s Charley again. Then he would go back to his life, and her life would go back to what it had been.

  Bland. Unexciting.

  Lonely.

  And when had she started to think that about her life?

  When Charley had waltzed back into it.

  Another option was that he never became Hannah’s Charley again and died just the way Irene had said – needing Frankie, missing her, loving her, confused as to why she had left him.

  Sounded so familiar.

  There were other possibilities, of course. Charley beat the cancer but never remembered all he’d forgotten. They lived out their golden years, together, Frankie inventing new and creative lies every day about the whereabouts of Lisa.

  Or, Charley didn’t get better and died with Frankie holding his hand.

  Now that she thought about it, pretty much every option sucked.

  Charley came into the kitchen and started making scrambled eggs for lunch. He poured the beaten eggs into the heated skillet and they sizzled. Their buttery scent, that crackling sound, the sight of the lemon yellow liquid slowly solidifying into a fluffy scramble the shade of chick down – a vaguely disturbing thought – made her wonder. How many times had they made scrambled eggs together?