by Amy Harmon
“It might seem romantic, Millie. Taking care of me. But it isn’t romantic. It’ll be ugly and painful. And I won’t be the man you’re in love with. I’ll be the man trying not to die and dying anyway,” I pressed. She stiffened and her hand tightened on my shirt. Good. She was listening.
“I’ll feel like shit, I’ll probably be mean as hell, and you’ll wonder what you’re doing. I’ll lose my bumps. You’re all about the bumps, remember? I’ve already lost my hair. I’ll lose my ability to be strong for you. And for Henry. And when you’ve lost all that, when you’ve been through hell, I’ll die anyway! I’ll die anyway, Millie, and you won’t have anything left. No David, no Tag. You won’t have my song. You’ll just have a belly full of sorrow,” I argued, impassioned. But she was ready for me.
“Some people are worth suffering for. I’m strong. I’ve been training for this, you know. Instead of feeling bad that I’ve had my trials, be grateful that I’m strong. I’ve got this. I’ve got you. Don’t take that away from me, David.”
“I don’t want our last days together to be with me in a vegetative state. I don’t want you to feed me and hold my hand! I don’t want to forget your name. I don’t want you to watch me suffer!”
“Ah, but I won’t. Perks of being a blind girl,” she shot back, and there was anger in her voice. “I won’t have to see you suffer at all, will I?”
I swore and stood, shaking her off. I didn’t want to argue with her. I headed for the door. I now understood Millie’s need to walk everywhere she went. Walking beat being trapped. And I was trapped.
“When are you going to start believing that you are worthy to be loved?” Her voice rang out behind me, clear and controlled, but there was a barely restrained fury that made her words wobble.
I paused and faced her once more. She was trying to follow me, and I had no doubt that if I walked out of the house, she would grab her stick, and I would be forced to play a game of Marco Polo down the streets of Levan so she wouldn’t lose me. I needed her to let me go and she obviously wasn’t going to do that.
“Millie—”
“No!” she cried. “You don’t think you are worthy of love if you aren’t Tag, if you aren’t the ‘sexy man!’” Millie did air quotes and mocked me, mocked the conversation we’d had when she’d played my chords. “You don’t think you are worthy of love if you are sick. You don’t think you are worthy of love if you can’t be the strong one all the damn time! If you can’t take care of me twenty-four seven, you must not be worthy of love.”
“That’s not it!” I protested, shaking my head, denying everything.
“That is it, dammit!” she cried, stamping her foot. She stepped toward the decorative vanity where she’d carefully placed her things and, with a rare show of temper, pushed everything to the floor. Toiletries, a blow dryer, a pile of folded laundry—all of it tumbled off the edges, and Millie kept pushing, just like she was pushing me.
“Millie, cut it out, dammit! You’re going to hurt yourself, baby!”
“NO!” she shouted. “This is not about me! If I want to throw a few things, I will. I’m not an invalid. I’m not a princess. I’m a grown woman. And I can throw a fit if I feel like it!” She threw her hand out in my direction, pointing her finger at me and wagging it fiercely. “And I don’t expect you to clean it up when I’m done!”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing as I watched her come unglued. At me.
“Do you know when I lost my sight I felt guilty for a long time? I felt guilty for the pain I put my parents through. Then my dad left. And my guilt grew tenfold. I felt guilty when my mom had to change her whole life to accommodate my blindness. Henry was just a little kid, and he had his own set of issues. And I made everything worse! I made everything fall apart. That’s what I told myself for a long, long time.”
I knew exactly how that felt. Guilt. I’d been consumed with it when Molly disappeared. Eaten alive by it. And I was racked with it now. But Millie wasn’t waiting for me to contribute to the conversation. She was shaking with anger, and I stayed silent.
“I don’t know when things started to change. Maybe it was gymnastics. Maybe it was music and dancing. Maybe it was when my mother got sick, and someone started to depend on me for once. And I handled it, David. I handled it! I was strong. And I was worthy of love. I had been worthy all along! I just didn’t see it.” Millie thumped her chest emphatically and repeated. “I am worthy to be loved. Blind eyes and all.”
The lump in my throat was so wide and hard that I groaned a little, trying to breathe around it. Millie’s sightless eyes were filled with tears that spilled over and slid down her cheeks. She brushed at them impatiently.
“Even still. I would never have asked you to love me, David. I asked for a kiss because I wanted it so badly. But I would never have asked you to love me. My pride would not allow it. My self-respect would not stand for it. But you gave it. You offered it. You fell in love with me anyway! And I am worthy of that love,” she repeated, her voice rising again.
“Yeah. I did. And you are,” My heart was in my throat and I walked toward her. She heard me coming and stepped away, her arm extended stiffly, palm toward me, warding me off.
“No. Not yet,” she told me firmly, though she was no longer yelling. “I understand guilt, David, I do. But love can’t be one-sided. One person can’t always give and the other person can’t always take. If you truly love me, you have to trust me.”
I couldn’t think of someone I trusted more, not even Moses.
“I do trust you, Millie.”
“No. You don’t. You don’t trust me. And you don’t think you are worthy of love.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t move. So I listened.
“You don’t think you are worthy of my love if you can’t be strong all the time,” she repeated firmly. “And you don’t think that I’m strong enough to be there for you when you aren’t. You don’t trust me.”
“This has nothing to do with my faith in you. I know who you are, Millie.” I stumbled over my response, trying to express myself, trying to say what I meant and mean what I said. “I know you would see me through. You say give miracles a chance, but I feel like I already got mine. You’re my miracle! The fact that you and I came together, that we met, that I found the love of my life. That’s a miracle, Millie! I’m so grateful for that. So many people don’t get that. We did. It’s a miracle I was awake enough not to miss it. And it’s a miracle you loved me back.”
Her face crumpled and she reached for me. At last she reached for me. Entreating me. I went to her immediately, but she pressed both hands against my chest, framing my heart, keeping me from pulling her into me. Then she ran her hands down my arms and found my hands. She cradled one of my hands in both of hers and brought my palm to her lips. She kissed it softly, sweetly, pressing her lips to the center as if she could ease my pain and her own by kissing it all away. Then she moved my palm from her lips and let me cup her cheek. She leaned into it briefly, holding it there, as if she drew strength from me, despite what she’d said. Then she slid my hand down her neck, past the fine bones at her collar, and pressed my palm against her breast, covering her completely.
“Most people think the most intimate thing in the world is sex,” she said softly.
I shuddered at the sense of belonging I felt, touching her like that, where no one else touched her, but I didn’t curl my fingers against her, didn’t caress the crest of her breast with my thumb or reach up and cradle her other breast in the hand that still hung at my side. I just waited, feeling the pounding of her heart against the tips of my fingers, and she rewarded me by continuing.
“I thought when I made love with you, when I let you see all of me and when you let me know all of you, every private inch, when we made that promise with our bodies and our lips, I thought that would be the most intimate thing we would ever do.”
“Millie?” I whispered. I didn’t know where she was going with this,
but there was sorrow in her words, and finality, like she’d reached a conclusion about me, about us.
“But it wasn’t. Sex is not the most intimate thing two lovers can do. Even when the sex is beautiful. Even when it’s perfect.” Millie drew a deep breath as if she remembered how perfect it had truly been. “The most intimate thing we can do is to allow the people we love most to see us at our worst. At our lowest. At our weakest. True intimacy happens when nothing is perfect. And I don’t think you’re ready to be intimate with me, David.”
She stopped talking, letting her words ring in the air, and my hand curled against her breast, kneading her and needing her, and not knowing how to give her what she wanted. Her breath caught and her head fell into my chest as if the pleasure warred with the pain.
“I don’t know how,” I confessed, and I pulled my hand away so I wouldn’t hurt her in my frustration.
She grabbed my hand and brought it back, this time pressing it to her heart.
“I’m telling you how. You hold onto me. You trust me. You use me. You lean on me. You rely on me. You let me shelter you. You let me love you. All of you. Cancer. Fear. Sickness. Health. Better. Worse. All of you. And you’ll have all of me.”
“I don’t know if I can beat it, Millie.” I choked on the words and suddenly I was crying. My first instinct was to be grateful she couldn’t see me, and then I felt her hands on my cheeks, feeling the tears, and I braced myself. But I didn’t pull away. She stood on tiptoe and pulled my face to hers, pressing her trembling lips to mine, comforting, quieting, and acknowledging my fear. And it wasn’t just fear, it was my deepest fear. If I fought, I didn’t know if I could win. In fact, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t. I tasted Millie’s tears, and I knew she tasted mine. And then she spoke against my lips.
“You don’t have to beat it, David. You don’t have to beat it. You just have to let us fight with you.”
I wrapped my arms around her and held on for a moment, unable to speak. When I found my voice I still didn’t let her go.
“No tap outs,” I whispered.
“No guilt,” Millie said gently.
“Amelie means work.” I don’t know why that came to my mind, but it did. As she held me up, I thought of her strength.
“That’s right.” She smiled tremulously. “So are you going to work for me or not?”
Moses
I HEARD A crash downstairs, and I paused, concerned and a little irritated. Kathleen was asleep, and I really didn’t want her waking up. She had a couple new teeth coming in, and she was ornery and more than a little miserable. Then I heard Millie’s voice, raised, angry even, and I froze, listening. I heard the rumble of Tag’s voice too, and Millie came right back at him, even angrier. I walked to the top of the stairs and caught bits and pieces of what Millie was saying. She wasn’t taking a breath, and she was laying it all out. And then the door to the bedroom was closed, and the voices were obscured. I started down the stairs, more hopeful than I’d been all week. I don’t know how she’d done it, but Tag was in Millie’s room, and things were finally coming to a head.
Henry came bursting into the house, Millie’s name on his lips, and I raced down the remaining stairs, intercepting him.
“Henry, wait!”
Henry jumped and turned, startled at the vehemence in my voice. There was no way I was letting anything interrupt what was going on behind that door.
“Don’t go in there. Millie’s with Tag. And we need to leave them alone for a while.”
Henry looked at the closed door and looked back at me. He nodded his head slowly. I got us both a cold can of Coke from the fridge and handing one to him, put my arm around his shoulders and steered him back out of the house. We sat out on the deck, putting our feet up on the railing so we could watch Georgia work while we downed our drinks. I loved watching Georgia work.
“Axel has never ridden a horse,” Henry remarked, clearly thinking about the evening before, when Axel and Mikey had delivered Tag’s truck, uncertain of where to stow it in Salt Lake, with everything up in the air like it was.
“Nope. Did you show him how it’s done?” I knew Henry had shown off a little, but I wanted to give him a chance to talk about it. Tag hadn’t come down when the guys arrived. It was a miracle he was talking to Millie now.
“Yep. I show him things, he shows me things,” Henry said, nodding. “I’m part of the team.”
It was my turn to nod. Tag had assembled an amazing group of guys. And the coolest thing about them was how they all treated Henry.
“There is no ‘i’ in team,” Henry said suddenly, seriously, as if repeating something he’d heard at a school pep rally. Or maybe he’d heard it in the gym.
“Nope.”
“There is no ‘i’ in Tag Team either,” he added.
“Nope. There isn’t,” I agreed.
“Are we Tag’s team?” he asked.
I started to explain what Tag Team was, the label, the fighters, the gym. And then I stopped myself. “Yeah. We are. We’re Tag’s team.”
“Because we love him?”
“Yeah,” I said, getting choked up all over again. I was so tired of being overcome with emotion. But Henry had a way of sneaking up on me and saying the obvious, and saying it in such a way that it seemed profound. In Vegas, Millie had explained Tag’s condition to him the best she could, and he had come to me asking to go to a barber so he could get his hair cut like Tag’s. I hadn’t really known why he’d wanted to. I’d just thought it was just a case of hero worship. But Millie had been stunned by Henry’s desire to cut his hair. Apparently it wasn’t something that came easily to him. I realized now that it was his way of lending moral support, of being part of Tag Team. I watched as Georgia climbed over the fence and started toward us, grateful that I’d have her moral support momentarily.
“There is an ‘i’ in David, though,” Henry said simply, as if that negated the whole “I in team,” argument.
I laughed—a loud bark of relief that had him tipping his head toward me in curiosity. “You were doing so well, kid. I thought you were going to inspire me,” I snorted, still laughing, and relieved to be doing so.
“There isn’t an ‘i’ in Henry,” he said blandly.
“Or Moses,” I added, unable to stop chuckling. “We’re the selfless ones,” I explained.
“There’s an ‘i’ in Georgia,” Henry said, as Georgia joined us on the deck.
“Yep. And don’t I know it. Me, me, me. All the time,” I said, pulling on Georgia’s hand and bringing her in close to me. She wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed my lips gently.
“Where’s Millie?” she asked, not taking my bait.
“She’s with Tag,” Henry volunteered. “And we’re leaving them alone.”
Georgia’s eyes shot to mine and her eyebrows rose.
“Oh yeah?” There was hope in her voice.
“Yeah. And Millie wasn’t being gentle,” I added softly. But Henry still heard.
“There’s no such thing as a timid fighter,” Henry parroted. “That’s what Tag says. And he says Amelie fights every damn day.”
“Hallelujah and praise the Lord for that,” Georgia said, sounding just like my great-grandma Kathleen. They were both small-town Levan girls who had spent a good deal of their lives as neighbors. So I guess it wasn’t surprising.
“Amen,” I agreed.
“Muhammad Amelie,” Georgia joked. “Floats like a butterfly . . .”
“Stings like a bee,” Henry and I finished.
“I’m going to go check on Kathleen,” Georgia said, easing away from us. I knew she was going to eavesdrop at the guest bedroom door on her way to Kathleen, but I didn’t call her on it, hoping she’d report back. Henry stood too and wandered back out to the corral to commune with Sackett, who walked to the fence to greet him.
From the corner of my eye I saw a pulse, a shimmer, like the air above the black top on a sweltering day. My neck got hot, and instead of resisting, I opened myself up to the
summoning flicker, curious instead of afraid. It wasn’t Molly this time.
I recognized her, though I’d only seen her once before. She showed me lace. Just lace. A billowing swath, and then she was gone. But I understood, and for the first time since Tag disappeared, the vise around my heart eased slightly.
I TRADED ONE room for another, holing up in different parts of my best friend’s house. But this time, I wasn’t hiding. I was healing. Or hoping. Maybe that was it. Maybe I was allowing myself to hope.
No one came knocking. No one brought food or slid notes under the door. Even Henry. He was taken care of, and Millie and I both knew it. So we stayed locked away, together.
Darkness descended outside, and the stars came out. Millie couldn’t see them, but I told her they were there, fat and bright in the sky outside the big bay window in the guest room. I told her how I’d lain beneath those stars as a boy, sleeping out on the trampoline in my backyard in Dallas. I told her how, ten years later, Moses and I had stretched out on the deck of a boat going down the Nile River in Africa. I’d looked up at that never-ending expanse, and I’d recognized that old feeling. The very same feeling I’d had as a kid. I didn’t feel insignificant under the stars. I felt huge, like the heavens revolved around me. I was bigger than the stars. I was bigger and brighter, and the world was mine. I was so enormous I could hold up my thumb and completely blot one out, hold up my hand and obliterate a whole section of the sky. Such power. Such size. I wasn’t David, I was Goliath.
As I laid in that bed with Millie, the drapes pushed aside, staring out at the winking stars over a tiny town I’d never called home, that feeling surged inside me once again. I was relevant. I was significant. I had wanted to disappear, if only so the cancer could disappear with me. But the stars whispered that there was no such thing. You don’t ever disappear. You just change. You leave. You move on. But you never disappear. Even when you think you want to.
Millie didn’t laugh. She didn’t tease me about feeling God-like. She just listened to me talk, my fingers climbing up and down the smooth skin of her back, tracing the curve of her hip and the length of her leg that was thrown across mine. And then I pulled her into me, my hand at the base of her spine, and she caught her breath and said my name, and I felt God-like all over again.
