For Better, for Worse, Forever

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “Everything you’ve told me about has been about Oregon. It’s where your life is. It’s where all the people you care about live. It’s your home. And it’s where you should be.”

  Kelli stared down at the soggy tissue in her hands. “I care about you too.”

  “Then go back to school. Go do all those things I can’t do.”

  “What about these next two weeks?” Kelli switched tacks.

  “We’ll have a good time. Just like we used to have together.”

  Kelli eyed April skeptically. “Right. We’ll have a great time thinking that this is the last time we’ll ever be together.”

  “I don’t like it either,” April said sharply. “But I can’t make it go away. It’s hard enough watching my parents going crazy over it, I don’t need to see you suffering too. I—I need to have fun, Kelli. I need to concentrate on something besides what’s happening to me.”

  This was the argument that persuaded Kelli. April saw acquiescence on her friend’s face. “We’ll go into the city. We’ll spend a few days at my mother’s. Her place is small, but it’s in SoHo and there’s a million things to do, lots of places to go.”

  “We’ll be like Siamese twins,” April said. “Joined at the hip.”

  Kelli gave her a bittersweet look. “Until we’re surgically separated,” she said. “Or whatever it is doctors do with twins who share one heart.”

  Kelli’s mother welcomed them, hurrying off to her job in the mornings and letting the girls sleep in. They roused themselves by midmorning, then set out with an agenda to do only the things they felt like doing. They spent two full days browsing department stores and boutiques, trying on the choicest clothing, the most fashionable wardrobes. On another day they ate lunch in Central Park on a blanket under a tree, rode the subway from one end of one route to the other, and spent the rest of the rainy day in a giant bookstore in Times Square.

  They spent a day at a trendy beauty salon, where Kelli had her dark hair streaked with bright fuchsia and April considered cutting hers but chickened out at the last minute. She opted instead for a rainbow manicure, having every fingernail painted a different color. They pierced their ears in three more places and bought diamond studs at Tiffany’s for every new hole. They had tattoos put on their ankles. Kelli chose a dolphin and April a hibiscus. “It reminds me of the islands,” she said.

  One night Kelli’s mother brought home a gorgeous arrangement of tropical flowers—orange-hued bird-of-paradise, red and yellow hibiscus, pale pink and lavender orchids, and snow-white gardenias. April sat it on the kitchen table and stared at it all evening. The scent was heavenly, and when she closed her eyes she could almost see the turquoise ocean and smell the salt-tinged air. And she could see Brandon’s face, sun-browned, his hair bleached blond, his eyes as blue as the sky.

  April told Kelli about her love of sailing, describing the sound the wind makes as it billows out the sails, the sharp snap the nylon makes when the boat comes about. “That settles it,” Kelli said. “Whenever I get married, I’m going to demand a honeymoon in St. Croix.”

  “Lots of people do.” April told her about the wedding gazebo she’d seen with Brandon.

  “Sounds like heaven.”

  “Just like heaven.” Afterward, April grew quiet, and that night she went to bed early, choosing not to stay up and watch the video she and Kelli had rented that afternoon.

  As their two weeks together passed, April began to experience more frequent episodes of vertigo. One day she couldn’t even get out of bed. Kelli sat by her bedside, and they played cards and board games. April kept losing her concentration and had to give it up when she started having double vision. Kelli asked if she should call April’s parents, but April refused adamantly. The following day April seemed fine.

  Two days before Kelli was scheduled to return to college, they stayed at April’s for one final sleepover. “I’m going to miss you,” April told Kelli in the privacy of April’s bedroom after dinner with her parents.

  “I can cancel my ticket. Just say the word.”

  “You’ve seen how it’s going to be for me. Once I start getting worse, I won’t even know you’re in the same room. Believe me, it’s better that you remember the fun we’ve had. Not the bad stuff.”

  Kelli turned her head, and April knew her friend didn’t want her to see any tears. April got up from where they were sitting on the floor and went to her closet. “There’s something I want you to have,” she said. She disappeared into the walk-in closet and emerged dragging an enormous box.

  Kelli’s eyes widened. “Big box.”

  April plopped it in front of her. “Open it.”

  Kelli lifted the lid, pushed aside layers of tissue, and gasped. “It’s your wedding dress.”

  “It’s yours now.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “Yes you can. We’re the same size. At least we were until I started this stupid medication. I know it’ll fit you. Try it on.” April stood and lifted the ivory-colored gown, wrapped in tissue, from the box. “Please, Kelli.”

  Mutely Kelli stood, slipped off her nightshirt, and slid on the undergarments that April offered her one by one from her dresser drawer. When Kelli was sheathed in silk, April helped her into the magnificent dress. Seed pearls, sequins and lace, and layers of satin caught the lamp’s light and gleamed. April fluffed the skirt, pulled the train so that it flowed behind Kelli on the carpet, and stepped aside. “Look,” she said, nodding toward the full-length mirror on her wall.

  Kelli stared at her reflection. The cut of the dress made her waist look tiny. Her trembling hands smoothed the bodice. “It’s the most beautiful …” Her voice broke as words failed her.

  April watched her friend and felt a lump rise in her throat as she remembered the day she had worn it for Mark. “Till death do us part,” she had whispered to him. And death had parted them quickly.

  “I don’t even have a fiancé,” Kelli said, her gaze never leaving the mirror.

  “You will someday. It would make me very happy to know that you wore this dress on your wedding day. I’ll make sure Mom knows you’re to get it. She’ll put it into special storage until you’re ready for it.” April paused. “It’s important to me, Kelli. I want you to have it.”

  Tears slid down Kelli’s cheeks. “It will be an honor to wear this dress in your memory.”

  April stepped behind her and gazed at both their images in the glass—Kelli dark-eyed, dark-haired; April with a mane of red hair and light blue eyes. Their reflection reminded her of a superimposed pair of photographs, of two images slightly misaligned: Kelli alive and vibrant, April pale and otherworldly. Like a ghost staring over the shoulder of her friend.

  She did not go to the airport to see Kelli off, but once Kelli had flown away, April felt desolate and friendless. And she kept experiencing dizzy spells, nausea, and more slurring of her speech. A woman from hospice who’d lost a son to cancer came for a visit, and April’s parents made arrangements to convert the dining room into a sickroom. And finally one morning she sat upright in bed as her words to Kelli about sitting around in some kind of deathwatch came back to her. She had bid goodbye to everything and everyone who had meant anything to her in New York. She padded downstairs into the breakfast room, where her parents sat. They glanced up, startled by her sudden appearance.

  “Honey, are you all right?” her mother asked, springing up to take her hand.

  “I want to go back to St. Croix,” April said. “That’s where I want it to happen. Please, Daddy, please, take me back there right away.”

  15

  Brandon had taken up the habit of driving into the hills whenever he got off work. He couldn’t explain why he often took a route that caused him to pass in front of the house April and her family had once rented, but he did. The real estate agent had come and lowered the storm awnings over all the windows and arranged for a gardener to keep the bushes and hedges trimmed. The place looked deserted and forlorn, empty of life and activi
ty. Some days Brandon sat in his parked car staring at the house. And brooding.

  He never understood why April had left without a single word of goodbye. Neither, in the weeks that she’d been gone, did he understand why she’d never once attempted to call or write to him. He had misjudged her. He’d fooled himself into thinking she’d cared more about him than she really had. At first he’d been angry, but his anger had faded. Now he felt only disappointment and the keen edge of loneliness. It cut through him like a knife. Everyplace he went held some memory of her. He wished he could eradicate every trace of her from his mind and heart, but he couldn’t. He had loved her, and she’d hurt him—without reason or provocation.

  He reviewed their days together a hundred times in his thoughts, but he could think of nothing he might have said or done to make her shun him so completely. He’d saved her note, expecting some explanation of her “family problems,” but when none came, the cold truth dawned on him. She didn’t care about him. She never really had.

  He felt that his life was unraveling, just as it had when his mother killed herself. Losing a girl was not the same as losing his mother, but the end result was the same. He was alone with no explanations, no understanding. His inner turmoil made him decide to wait until the winter term before heading off to college. He knew he couldn’t handle the pressure right now. For once, his father was in agreement with him. After Brandon’s announcement, his father told him, “You’re only eighteen. Hang around. Work. Go away in January.”

  One afternoon in the middle of September, Brandon drove past the house and saw a workman on a ladder raising the awnings. He stopped his car and got out. “What’s up?” he called.

  “The place is rented,” the man answered in his lilting island dialect.

  “Do you know who’s taking it?”

  “No, man. The office did not tell me. They just sent to have the house opened and aired.”

  It pained Brandon that someone besides April would live there. In his mind it would always be her place.

  Days later, unable to stem his curiosity, he again drove past the house. This time it looked occupied, although he couldn’t see any of the occupants. After work on Saturday, he went hiking up in the hills near the house. By the time he’d reached a hill’s summit, clouds had cluttered the sky and hidden the sun. He looked down at the house and saw into the cove, saw the wooden stairs leading to the beach, saw someone lying on a beach chair. He’d brought binoculars and aimed them at the person in the chair. The sun peeked out from behind a cloud bank, and light caught and glinted off a girl’s red hair. His heart leaped into his throat.

  It was April. She had returned and not told him. Sudden, blinding anger welled up inside him. She wasn’t going to get away with it! She wasn’t going to sneak in and out of his island, his life, at will, with no regard for his feelings. Determined to confront her, he half-jogged, half-slid down the long trail, through the underbrush, to the top of the stairs, and down the stairs to the sandy beach.

  April must have heard him coming because she sat up and watched him approach along the final few yards between the stairs and her chair. Her hair was tied back and held with a scrunchie; her eyes were calm and clear, not at all surprised by his appearance. His heart thudded as he stood over her chair, panting with the exertion of the run, his shirt sticking to his back, sweat running down his face.

  “Hello, Brandon,” she said quietly. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Her greeting startled and silenced him. He regained his composure quickly and, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, said, “Well, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I know you’re mad at me.”

  “No joke.”

  “You’re mad because I left without ever telling you goodbye. I know it wasn’t very nice of me, but I had good reasons for leaving.”

  “Such as?”

  “I was sick.”

  “And now you’re all better?” He kept the sarcasm in his tone. She didn’t look sick.

  April stood, somewhat unsteadily. “Can we walk down the beach while we talk?”

  He studied her more closely and saw that she looked puffy and a little dazed. For the first time, his anger wavered. “After you.”

  “Could I hold on to your arm?”

  He let her take hold of him and was surprised by how clumsily she moved. Yet her hand felt warm and familiar. The scent of her skin and hair reminded him of their summer afternoons together, filling him with the old longing to hold her in his arms. “All right, so I believe you. You’ve been sick.” He remembered the day they’d gone on the picnic. “Has it got something to do with that day we went sailing?”

  “Yes.”

  By now his anger had evaporated. Dread arrived to take its place. “So what was wrong?”

  “The same thing that was wrong when I first came to St. Croix.” Her gait was awkward, but still she walked along the edge of the water, her delicate painted toes washed by small lapping waves.

  “You never said anything to me about your being sick,” he said suspiciously. “We were together plenty, so it’s not like you couldn’t have said something before now.”

  “No, I never told you.”

  He stopped walking and looked down at the top of her bowed head. Except for that one day they’d gone snorkeling, she had seemed happy and healthy to him all the time they’d been together. “And so that’s why you left? Because you got sick? St. Croix has doctors, you know.”

  “I went back to New York to see my doctor.

  I’ve been under his care for a time, and he knew my case very well.”

  “So what did he tell you?”

  “He repeated some tests.”

  “He did?” Brandon knew he wasn’t asking the most obvious question of all—“What’s wrong with you?”—because he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. He knew in his gut something bad was wrong, and he really didn’t want to hear it. It had been easier when he’d thought she’d gone away without a word because she hadn’t truly cared about him. Then he could be angry at her, dislike her, think of her as inconsiderate and selfish. But now he was discovering she wasn’t any of those things. Now she was telling him that she’d had a terrible reason for going.

  “Yes. After the tests, he told me … us, my parents and me … that I still had an inoperable brain tumor. That the tumor was growing once again. That I probably only had about two to three months to live.” Her voice never quavered. She said the words quietly and without emotion.

  For Brandon, time stood still. The world stopped spinning, the waves stopped rolling, the sun stopped shining. Only once before in his life had such a phenomenon happened to him.

  Brandon rushed into the kitchen, books in hand, ready to seize an apple and head out again. He skidded to a stop because his father was standing at the counter, his face pale as paste. “What’s wrong?” Brandon asked.

  “Your mother took the boat out this morning.”

  Brandon’s heart froze. “Has something happened to her?”

  “She killed herself, son.”

  “Liar!” He lunged at his father.

  His father held up a piece of paper. “It’s true. She left us a note.”

  Brandon grabbed the paper. He felt the world stop turning as he read her words of farewell.

  Now, to April, he said, “You have a brain tumor? I thought Mark was the one who was sick.”

  Her gaze found his. Her eyes were incredibly clear, their expression absolutely serious. “Mark and I met in the hospital. We were both patients. He saw me through my radiation treatments. My doctors had hoped that the tumor would shrink, that they could do gamma knife surgery on it. It didn’t. They couldn’t. But at that time it had stopped growing. And so Mark and I planned to be married, to get on with our lives. Except he had the car crash and died.”

  Although she had told Brandon about Mark already, hearing it in the context of her own illness made it especially heart-wrenching. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? You should have said s
omething before now.”

  She gazed out at the sea. He watched her face and realized she was having trouble concentrating. He knew he shouldn’t press her, but he couldn’t help it. He had to know. With effort, she said, “I didn’t know how to tell you. You were so hurt about your mother, I didn’t want to hurt you any more.” She paused, then turned back to face him. “But it was for selfish reasons too. I wanted so much to be all right. You were so nice to me. I wanted you to remember me as someone you had fun with … someone you passed one very special summer with. I didn’t want to be sick. I didn’t want to be pitied. I wanted exactly what you gave me—a wonderful time. Thank you.”

  “Why did you come back now to St. Croix?” His heart pounded and his stomach tightened because he already knew the answer.

  “It’s a beautiful place to die. It’s where I want to die.”

  Her speech had slowed, slurred. Emotion clogged his throat, tightening around it like a noose. His arms shot around her, and he held her close against his chest. He stroked her hair, pulling off the band, letting the red-gold mass fall and catch the breeze. He kissed the crown of her head and lifted her, carrying her to the stairs. He heard footsteps and looked up to see her mother clattering down toward them, anxiously asking, “Is she all right?”

  April wound her arms around Brandon’s neck and lifted her head so that she could see her mother. “I’m … all right,” she managed.

  But Brandon knew it was a lie. She wasn’t all right. And she never would be again.

  Once April was settled in her room, Brandon sat on the sofa with Janice. A storm had come up, and rain pelted the French doors, smashing leaves and flower petals into the glass. He thought back to that first night when he’d stopped by to see April … the girl from the hilltop, spinning in the sunlight, sending a balloon skyward to celebrate the memory of a dead love.

  “I’m glad you understand why she left without a word,” Janice was telling him. “She never meant to hurt you.”

  “I know that now,” Brandon answered. “What’s going to happen to her?”