Eight Goodbyes

by Christine Brae

  In the living room is a massive stone shelf filled with books, trophies and awards. The walls are plastered with movie posters and paintings. Her heart on display, a story all too familiar to her. She smiles as she turns her head toward the family room. What she observes pleases her, makes her heart ache with love. Dolls in pink dresses, a shopping cart filled with plastic groceries and actual packages of food from her pantry.

  Work, career, motherhood.

  A man’s black leather jacket is slung across the armchair in the family room.

  Because love. She has that too. It’s beginning to take the form of a tall, dark and handsome man. One she’d met the year before. He hadn’t stolen her heart. Someone else had and run the hell away with it. And although she’ll never get that heart back, she thinks this new guy might give her a new one.

  Who would have thought she would settle down? Find a home, stay grounded? In a forgotten time and in a place far away, she left that life and started over.

  Through the tall bay windows, she sees the sun. It’s trying with all its might to break through the clouds. There’s snow everywhere, ten feet of it, and all signs of summer—the grill, the deck chairs, the potted plants—are buried underneath massive lumps of ice.

  The shrill ringing of the phone startles her. No one ever calls her landline. She hops down from the staircase and runs into the living room. What is it about phones? You can never find them if your life depends on it.

  Ah, here it is. She fishes the cordless phone from under the fluffy couch cushions in the family room, but she’s too late. The call goes to voicemail. It’s a 617 area code.

  Boston.

  She has no business thinking about Boston. Or who used to be there. Or what that meant to her at a time in her life when all she wants is to move forward.

  The subsequent ringing annoys her.

  “Hello?” she answers, glancing at the clock on the mantel. She has thirty minutes before she has to be out the door.

  “Tessa?”

  It’s a man’s voice. The accent is unmistakable. But it’s the way he says her name that sinks her. It was the way he called her name when she saw him last. Full of sadness, of longing. She doesn’t remember much, but she remembers the way he called out to her before she looked away.

  Impossible. He left me. Walked away and left me.

  “Who is this?” she says.

  “Tessa. It’s me.”

  She’s reluctant to say his name. It took two years to cast that name out, eradicate the feelings brought about by those two calamitous syllables.

  “Simon?” Her voice echoes, resounding against the high vaulted ceilings before settling in her heart.

  “Yes. It’s so nice to hear your voice. Can you talk?”

  “I… Where are you calling from?” She begins to move helplessly around the room. Back and forth, in a circle, to and fro.

  “Doesn’t matter now, does it? How have you been?”

  “Fine. I’ve been fine. Is everything okay?”

  Stop it. Sit down and stop.

  “Yes. I’m sorry for worrying you. I just wanted to hear your voice. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  She collapses onto the couch. “This is… this is unexpected. What is it?”

  “Three years. I’ve been visiting our places, trying to remember your face. Been trying to remember everything about us. I guess I just called to say thank you.”

  “For what? What’s wrong?” she asks, her heart sinking. She cradles the phone, afraid to let it go. And then she closes her eyes tightly, praying for a vision, a memory, anything that will help her remember why they both had to leave.

  “What we had… It was the stuff of romance novels. I wanted to thank you for that. No one else, Tessa. There was no one else that I would have wanted to experience true love like that with but you.”

  She’s stunned. And filled to the brim with so much regret, she doesn’t know where to start.

  “It was love at first sight, wasn’t it?” he’s saying. “We were just too selfish to admit it.”

  I have to tell him. But something else comes out of her lips. “Yes. Yes. It was.”

  “Will you write about us? Write our story?”

  His request stuns her. “Simon, I—”

  “That’s all. I hope everything is going well with you. I wish you the best.”

  A dial tone bursts through the dam, and the rushing flood drowns her in the past.

  “Mama?”

  Her daughter’s voice rings through the hallway, six hours after the phone call from Simon. Tessa remains shaken, understandably so. Hearing his voice, remembering who he had been to her, those memories had been locked away for a while now. They were relegated to the same place where she had stored her life’s most precious moments. She just couldn’t think of him without thinking of Jacob. To her, they were one and the same.

  “Coming!” she yells back, running down the stairs.

  Will and Ciela stand by the front door, unbuttoning their coats and kicking off their boots. Tessa wonders if it’s just her or if they’re beginning to look more and more like each other. Will’s got a crew cut, his hair shaved close to his head. But the tiny spikes of blond hair are difficult to miss. His eyes are the greenest of fields. Refreshing.

  Next to him, Ciela looks like a little peanut, barely up to Will’s knees. Her curly hair the color of wheat and her eyes as transparent as the sky. Their similarity. Could it be because she no longer remembers what Ciela’s father looks like?

  Will lines up their boots neatly on the splash pad. He reaches out for Tessa and skims his nose along her neck. “Mmm. Hi. How was your day?”

  She pulls away. “Good.” She touches his face with one hand and leans down to kiss her daughter.

  She knows he doesn’t notice her apprehension. He leaves her with Ciela and ambles into the living room, picking up the remote control by the coffee table.

  “Wook!” Tessa unrolls a piece of paper that announces Ciela as Super Kid the following week. Tessa can’t help but smile at the thought. Super Kid chosen to be Super Kid. Ciela had started the Advanced Preschool program as a result of her high aptitude test results. The test placed her at a first-grade level! Who would have known she would take after her father?

  “You are? That’s great! We have to start making your poster, okay?”

  Tessa sits on the floor and folds Ciela into her lap. “We’ll take some of your baby pictures and add some of the puzzles you put together. How about that?”

  Slowly, her world stitches itself up together again. She has mastered the art of living in the moment. It’s been her survival instinct for the past three years. Focus on right now, her therapist teaches her. When you find your mind wandering, rein your thoughts in. Look down at your hands, your gloves, the dishes. Feel the soap through your fingers as you’re performing life’s daily chores. See, hear, touch, smell. Here and now. Not the past. Not the future.

  But it’s really Ciela who brings her back to the present, no matter how far into the past she might regress.

  “You have a few minutes to play with your babies before I come up to start your bath.”

  Ciela gallops upstairs to her bedroom as Tessa sets her backpack on the floor and makes her way into the kitchen.

  Will is pouring himself a glass of red wine. “What’s for dinner?” he asks. He pulls the oven door open, expecting to find something cooking.

  “Sorry, my meeting ran late,” she replies. “I figure we could just order in tonight.”

  “Sounds good.” Will smiles. “I’ll call Rosatti’s.”

  Tessa nods absentmindedly. “Sorry.”

  “By the way, the plumber called me. He said he stopped by to drop off the bathroom tiles, but no one answered the door.”

  “Hmm. I wonder if that was when I ran out to the cleaners?”

  The truth is, she’d sat in the same place on the floor for hours after that phone call. She h
eard the mailman. And the delivery guy. And even the plumber who rang the doorbell as if there was no tomorrow. But she’d been paralyzed, immobilized by so much emotion, she couldn’t lift herself from her misery to save her life.

  He had called her after almost three years apart—why not sooner? Up to then, the details are murky. How she let him go, how he let her go. How she even got this far after losing her brother.

  “I’m going upstairs to—”

  “How about I give her a bath tonight?” he offers, touching her shoulder.

  She nods and gives him a grateful smile before he turns away. Will knows her so well, well enough to sense when something is wrong. It’s not like he’d have to have ESP. She tried to freshen up before they arrived, splashing water on her face, but her eyes are swollen and red and she’s still in her pajamas.

  Of course, Will has seen her like this before. It happens every year, right around the time of Jacob’s death anniversary.

  That’s months away.

  Ciela is finally in bed, and Will sits on the couch flipping between the Travel Channel and ESPN. Tessa clears up the dinner table, stacks up some papers in her office, cleans out the pantry before returning to her desk to review the screenplay for her latest book.

  She can’t get past the first sentence.

  In place of the words, she hears Simon’s voice. “When we get back from Paris, I’m going to ask to be assigned to the States. Girl in 7C, we’re going to stay put in one place and have the most gloriously boring life together,” he had said.

  When had he said that? Was it before or after Ciela had been conceived? Did he even know about her? Will he hate Tessa for keeping this secret from him? Where had he been all these years?

  She’s been working on herself, trying to remember. For now, she knows nothing about what happened after Jacob… After Jacob.

  Why now? Why now, damn him!

  Will clears his throat, and she jumps. He wraps his arms around her shoulders. “Something happened today.”

  She swivels her chair around to face him. “Will.” Her eyes begin to sting. “I love you.”

  “I know,” he answers.

  An uncanny calm fills the room. She knows he’s been waiting for the right moment. He’s been trying to get her to this, to talk about what happened, how she felt, but in the past two years, he hasn’t really been able to skim the surface. Like everyone else left to speculate on her life, he knows the details as they were published in the news articles. She’d never really talked about it with him.

  She stands up and makes as if to tie her robe together. “I must be getting sick. I think I’m just going to go to bed. See you tomorrow?”

  He opens his mouth to say something but doesn’t. For a few seconds, he just stands there, dislocated, an intruder in the wrong house. She can see it’s not what he wants to hear, especially when she’s so clearly upset—she fell in love with him partly because of how well he takes care of her. But she also loves him because he’s so good about respecting her boundaries.

  “Sure.” He kisses the top of her head and she responds by encircling her arms around his waist. “Do you need help with Ciela tomorrow?”

  “No. Thank you. I’ve got her for the rest of the week. It was just today, with that meeting.”

  The meeting she had missed. The biggest meeting of her career. Isn’t this reminiscent of the way she was years ago, the impulsiveness, the lack of a plan? There’s no time to analyze at that moment. All she wants to do is to once again get lost in her memories. In the peace and quiet of the fortress she had built for her and her daughter.

  She listens intently for Will’s footsteps, replaced by the ding of the keys as he picks them up from the antique tray sitting by the foyer. She even hears him zipping his coat before his footsteps start up again. A sigh of relief passes her lips as she hears the closing of the door. And then she covers her face with her hands and releases her very soul through her tears.

  “What’s so important that you had to drive all the way to the suburbs to see me?” Riley asks, unfolding a napkin and placing it on her lap. The lunch regulars at the high-end mall have just begun to fill up the empty tables around them.

  “You look like shit,” she adds. “Are you up all night writing?”

  Tessa smiles weakly. A day has passed since the call. Nothing makes sense anymore. She just has to speak to someone, anyone. The years have given her more than she can ever imagine, and yet nothing has ever felt right. All she wants is a reprieve. Had she been fooling herself? Until yesterday, she truly thought she was finally starting to move on with her life.

  “Ciela’s at a playdate. I figured it would be easier to drive out here than to have you meet me downtown.”

  She glances around the room and smiles to herself. Three years ago, she wouldn’t have been able to sit alone in a public place for very long. These days, people don’t even know who she is. Some washed up author with one movie to her credit. Paris had taken away everything from her. Her inspiration, her career, her sense of self.

  You’re only as good as your latest book, her agent always reminds her. It had taken her quite a long time to finish Lionel and Carissa’s story. And now they were just about to make it into a movie.

  Due to her publishing delay, she’d lost her notoriety. In the past few years, her fans have moved on to the greatest and latest book, to the latest author whose words have touched them. She was rebuilding her fan base, trying to organize some local book tours that wouldn’t take her away from Ciel.

  Don’t worry, your time will come again. Once you get your words back, they will be there waiting.

  “Did you want to go shopping? We can walk over to Neiman after lunch. I have some time.” Riley reaches out to touch her shoulder. Tessa notices the pain in her friend’s eyes every single day. If you didn’t know Riley until that very moment, you’d see a beautiful woman with a quiet reserve. Little would you know this woman was once vivacious, gregarious and full of life. The years have changed her friend. Her tone is somber, monotonous. She has no spark for life.

  Tessa gets lost in her thoughts once again, carelessly turning her water glass repeatedly. Exhaustion begins to take over, her mind is empty. She can’t string together a thought for very long.

  Although Riley has told her what happened, she draws a blank each time she tries to remember what happened after she was rolled into a ball in Jacob’s arms.

  Look at us, she thinks. We are two friends who commiserate in agony. That’s what holds them together.

  And now, Tessa is worried she may upset Riley. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so impulsive to run to Riley for comfort. Riley has no comfort to give her. At least Simon is alive. Jacob is gone forever.

  “How ‘bout this snowstorm?” Tessa says. “We thought we were over it and then, boom! Ciela has cabin fever. We all need spring to come soon.” She forces a laugh while nervously brushing her hair back.

  Riley shakes her head. “You didn’t come all the way here to discuss the weather with me.”

  Tessa runs her fingers down the edge of the tablecloth. “No. It’s about yesterday,” she starts out. She looks at her friend. “Yesterday.” She chokes back tears. A fork slides off the table, and when she reaches down to grab it, her wine glass crashes to the ground. A server runs over, dustpan and broom in hand.

  “Tessa!” Riley exclaims. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” Quickly, she runs to Tessa’s side, gently taking her elbow and lifting her off the seat. “Let’s go outside.”

  They stand right outside the revolving doors, not far from the valet station. “Yesterday, what?” Riley asks.

  “Simon called the house. I heard his voice and…” She takes a deep breath. “And I missed him so much, I thought I would die all over again. He sounded off, I think something’s wrong. Oh, Rye, he might be in trouble or something.”

  Riley leans forward, interested in hearing more.

  “I haven’t stopped think
ing about him, I can’t. I won’t. I won’t stop thinking about him. I have to find him. I want to know what I said, what I did to make him leave. You told me all about it, but I still can’t remember!”

  “Oh, Tessa!” Riley cries. “You didn’t do anything! The doctors felt it was best!”

  Tessa begins to sob. “I’m sorry, Rye. I know this brings back so much for you.”

  It isn’t fair that Jake had to give up his life to save her. Jake was their hero, and yet Tessa would’ve rather had a coward who was alive than a brave man who’d lost his life. She’d lost her brother, and Riley had lost a future with the only man she loved.

  Tessa has something of Simon, a daughter, a reason to live. But Riley? A year after Jake’s death, she’d married his friend, Liam. Liam who was there for her through the tears and the breakdowns, the anger and the acceptance. The same Liam who was in love with her from the very first day they’d met.

  Riley has a husband, a career and a home, but Tessa knows it’s surrounded by a thick, heavy fog that hasn’t lifted since the terrible evening in Paris.

  “How do we find him?” Riley asks. They sit on the sidewalk, outside the restaurant in the arctic air, everything dead around them. Gray clouds have swallowed what’s left of the afternoon sun. Nature gives no sign of life. The trees are barren, their branches brittle from the suffocating weight of the ice. Spring is way beyond their reach.

  “It was a Boston number,” Tessa answers.

  “Do you think he’s working there?”

  “I don’t know!” Tessa lifts both hands up in frustration. She has no answers.

  “Okay, what about Will? What did you tell him?”

  Tessa clenches her teeth, the cold beginning to seep into her bones.

  “Nothing. He probably assumes it was just a bad day for me yesterday. He’s been really careful about pushing too much.”

  Tessa digs her numb hands into her pockets.

  “What do you want, Tess? What do you want to do with that phone call?”