Grief is a bastard. It truly is. But it’s nothing compared to love. And in that moment, looking at Luc, feeling that tug under my breast, I admitted he isn’t only my best friend or my boyfriend or the guy I’m sleeping with.
He’s my everything.
His breathing never changed. His eyelids never fluttered. So the sudden sound of his voice in the confines of the tent startled me. “I can’t tell if you’re thinking ’bout kissing me or strangling me in my sleep.”
When his eyes opened, I wanted to fall into their dark depths and stay there.
“I’m always thinking about kissing you.” Then, when I added, “Happy Mardi Gras,” I wished I’d stopped while I was ahead.
His expression hardened. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Is it Mardi Gras already? I reckon we don’t have much to celebrate this year.”
“No.” I shook my head. “We don’t. But this morning, I woke up and saw you lying here beside me, my knight in shining armor, and I realized something.”
“I’m no knight in shining armor,” he demured.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “You’re my knight in bent and rusty armor. You’ve been to war, you’ve slayed the dragon, you’ve fought the big fights.”
“Which ones were those again?”
“You fought for me when I was fourteen, keeping me from doing something horrible. You’ve fought for me since you came back, never giving up on me even though I gave you plenty of reasons to do exactly that. And you’re fighting for Cash now. Fighting to make this as comfortable and peaceful and easy for him as it can be.”
“Neither of you has ever needed me to fight for you. You’ve both always had all the strength you’ll ever need to win your own battles.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe we’ve been strong because you’re strong.”
“What did you realize?” he asked, changing the subject. He’s never been one to bask in compliments. He’s too humble for that.
“I realized I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Luc.” I watched his chest still as he held his breath. “I realized you’re it for me. Full stop. End of story.”
“What are you saying, Maggie May?”
“I’m saying I want to marry you,” I admitted tremulously. “I want to have your babies. I want all of you, today, tomorrow, and always. I know this is probably too fast. We’ve only been dating for—”
“It’s not too fast,” he quietly interrupted. “It’s been twelve years in the making.”
And he was right. Twelve long years where I needed to grow. Grow out. Grow up. Grow into a woman who might deserve him.
My heart was wild in my chest. “Is that a yes?”
“Of course it’s a yes, Maggie May,” he said without hesitation. “Doncha know? You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”
In that moment, and just that easily, Lucien Dubois went from being my boyfriend to being my fiancé.
Taking my face in his hands, he kissed me. Kissed me and kissed me and kissed me some more. Until my arms and legs were heavy with desire, my belly soft and quivering.
“Is it wrong to be thinking of our future when Cash doesn’t have one?” I asked quietly after he let me catch my breath. “To imagine us being happy without him?”
“We won’t be without him. He’s part of us. He’ll live on in us. Our happiness is his happiness.”
I traced the arch of his eyebrow and smiled. “You always know what to say to make me feel better.”
Then he kissed me again. Kissed me, and rolled on top of me and we made love for the first time in nine days. It was slow love. Quiet love. True love. And after we finished, I clung to him and cried.
I cried for Cash. For the loss of his beautiful life. I cried for myself. For the loss of my beautiful friend. And I cried for the love that Luc and I share. For the simplicity of it, the strength of it. I cried in gratitude for all that we have, at the same time that I cried in sorrow for all that we never will.
Afterward, we got dressed and went into the house. The sight of Cash, so pale and thin, tapped a wellspring of grief deep in the heart of Luc, and something gave way. Finally. Like a levee breaking, his misery rushed over him as surely as Katrina rushed over New Orleans all those years ago.
Through the veil of my own tears, I was glad to see his. Not glad glad. More like relieved.
He’d been trying to stay so strong, so tough, but I knew from my parents’ deaths that the only way to truly deal with grief is to give in to it. Surrender to it. Let it pull you under and tumble you around and finally spit you out.
You’re bruised and cracked and changed once you’re on the other side. But you’re still whole. And in that wholeness, a healing can begin.
Now the two of us are sitting beside Cash’s bed, listening to his labored breathing.
“The coldness is moving up his arms,” I say to the hospice nurse on duty. This one’s name is Pam.
The chill was only in Cash’s hands and feet this morning, but it’s spreading and making the skin of his arms and legs look blotchy and mottled.
“It’s normal,” Pam assures me, gently checking Cash’s IV before rubbing some ointment on his chapped lips. “This is simply part of the process.”
You never think of dying as a process. Mostly you think of life as a light switch. One minute, it’s on. The next, it’s off. But it doesn’t work that way for everyone. For some, it’s more like a campfire that slowly extinguishes itself. A little more of the light and the heat slipping away every day, every hour, every minute.
“Should we get some gloves to put on his hands?” I ask. “Maybe add another pair of socks?”
“No.” Pam shakes her head. “He’s not feeling the cold, or else he’d be shivering. This is just his body shutting down, inch by inch.”
“How much longer d’ya think?” Luc asks, both of his hands wrapped around one of Cash’s.
Compared to the sickly pallor of Cash’s skin, Luc’s glows with a healthy tan. Where once they were of a kind, both brawny and strong, now Luc seems a mammoth of a man, dwarfing Cash.
“Not much longer now.” Pam’s expression is kind. “I doubt he’ll last the day.”
Luc closes his eyes, and the pain in his face matches the pain in my chest. Oh, Cash… My beautiful, brave boy. My first love. My friend…
Laying my head on the bed, I place my hand over Cash’s heart. That strong, courageous heart that lived a life without excuses. That big, bold heart that taught me how to stand up and be brave, how to take risks, give my all and screw the fear.
It’s amazing how much can change in the span of a few weeks. A month ago, Cash was sick but not dying. Luc was my friend but not my lover. And I didn’t know my own mind, much less my heart.
I think of that as I listen to Cash breathe. Of how life seems to come in fits and starts. For years, it can go on much the same, and then something happens and everything changes. You change.
Hours slip by like minutes as I try to will the breath into Cash’s lungs. As I try to will the blood to pump through his veins. But by the time the sun sinks low, shining its dappled light through the cypress trees outside, his breathing has gone from labored but steady to noisy and irregular. The strong beat of his heart beneath my palm has turned thready and light. And then, silence…
I lift my head, staring at his sunken cheeks and bruised eyes, trying to see the life in him. When I’m about to admit the unimaginable, that Cassius Armstrong has actually died, his chest muscles expand, and he takes a huge, rattling breath.
“It’s called Cheyne-Stokes breathing,” Pam explains gently. “It means he’s nearing the end. Help me prop him up on some pillows. It can make things easier for him.”
Luc and I both rush to do as she instructs, and once Cash is situated, she pulls a syringe from her bag. “I’m going to give him a small dose of morphine,” she tells us.
My heart feels like it’s caught in a merciless iron fist. I’m not surprised my voice comes out as a bare whisper. “Is he in pain?”<
br />
“I doubt it. The morphine is to help make his breathing easier.”
“Do it,” Luc says, and we watch her administer the medication.
After she’s finished, she softly touches Cash’s cheek and whispers soothing words to him. “Talk to him,” she tells us. “Touch him. Help him along.”
Luc holds his hand, while I squeeze his shoulder and smooth his hair back from his face. We speak words of love and laughter and life, and listen in agony as his breathing stops and starts like a rusty motor winding down.
“Where are you going?” I ask Luc when he gets up.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he reassures me, pulling down the copy of Leaves of Grass that I gave him for Christmas. Taking a seat, he opens the book and quietly begins to recite “I Sing the Body Electric.”
The melodious sound of his voice is a counterpoint to Cash’s struggle, and the times when Cash stops breathing entirely become more and more frequent. But Luc doesn’t miss a beat. He keeps reading. Keeps reciting those soft, velvety words.
It’s his version of a benediction, I realize. A closing prayer.
I don’t know I’m crying until I feel a teardrop land on my forearm at the precise moment Cash drags in another rattling breath. He’s done this all afternoon, but somehow this feels different.
Luc can sense it too. He closes the book, lifts Cash’s hand, and presses the back of it to his cheek. Squeezing his eyes shut, he doesn’t try to hide the tears that streak down his face.
Pam stands from the chair on the other side of the bed and gently presses her stethoscope to Cash’s chest. She smoothes a hand over his brow and listens for his heartbeat. Then, with a serene nod, she hooks the stethoscope around her neck and turns to us.
“He’s gone,” she says quietly. Simply.
A sob lodges in my throat as I think how appropriate it is that the last lines of the poem Luc read were…
In this head, the all-baffling brain
In it and below it the makings of heroes.
Cash was a hero. Our hero.
Luc grabs my hand, his gaze searing into my own. But he doesn’t say anything.
Some heartache transcends language.
Chapter Ninety
______________________________________
Luc
Mourning a loved one is like living two lives.
In one life, you act like things are all right. You eat. You work. You sleep. In the other life, your heart is broken, and every minute of every hour your soul is silently screaming.
It’s been two days since Cash died.
Cash died.
Even as I think the words, they don’t seem real.
Yet I know they are. That night, a black hearse came and took his body away. The hospice nurses removed all the medical devices and doodads and left the swamp house, but the smell of their medicines and powders and ointments remain. And each night, I’ve held Maggie in my arms, letting her tears mix with my own.
You’d think there would be comfort in sharing our grief, in knowing we’re both feeling the same way. But it only makes things worse.
She hates that I’m hurting.
I hate that she’s hurting.
It’s an added burden on top of the already impossible burden of our new reality. Cassius Clay Armstrong is dead. Our friend is dead. My brother in every way that counts is dead.
It’s inconceivable.
“Did you know he hired a lawyer?” Maggie asks as we stand in front of a large shotgun house on St. Charles Avenue. It’s an impressive place with marble stairs and iron handrails. The front yard boasts boxwoods and topiaries pruned to perfection and a live oak with heavy, gnarled limbs that nearly touch the ground. Behind us, the streetcar rumbles by on its rickety old tracks.
As one of the most iconic (and most prestigious) streets in the city, the house and its environs would look damn near intimidating if not for the Mardi Gras beads dripping from the trees and the bushes. St. Charles Avenue happens to be one of the main parade routes, and two weeks of rolling krewes have festooned the entire thoroughfare (and everything around it) in cheap, plastic colors.
It’ll take city workers a month to clean up the worst of it. Even then, homeowners will continue to find beads in their gutters and gardens until next Carnival season. Rinse and repeat. Year after year. New Orleans and her traditions abide.
“Not a clue,” I admit as we climb the stairs and stop in front of a door with the name Gregory Allen Toussaint, Esq painted on the opaque glass. “The first I heard of it was when I got the call yesterday from the man himself.” I point to the name on the door.
“Cash was good at keeping secrets,” she whispers, a hitch in her voice.
“But that doesn’t mean he didn’t love us, Maggie May,” I assure her. “It only means he was prideful up until the end.”
She’s having trouble coming to terms with Cash choosing to keep his tumor a secret from us. But I understand why he did it.
If he’d told us, he would have become his tumor. Even if Maggie and I had tried not to, we couldn’t have helped treating him like a cancer patient. Like a dying man instead of our pain-in-the-ass friend. And that would’ve wrecked what little time he had left.
Plus, I’m sure he didn’t want to listen to us begging him to seek treatment. We would have done that. Even now, I find myself wishing he’d tried. Wishing he’d given us all a little more time.
Grabbing Maggie’s hand, I press the doorbell. A traditional ding-dong sounds from inside, and a shadow moves behind the frosted glass. Then a small woman of indeterminate age with a neat bun and thick glasses greets us with a smile.
“You must be Luc and Maggie,” she says. “Cash told me all about you.” Her smile falters. “Such a tragedy for one so young and full of life. I’m sorry for your loss.”
I’ve always hated that phrase. Sorry for your loss. What the hell are you supposed to say in return? Thank you? Thank you for being sorry for my loss? It seems ridiculous, so I don’t say anything at all. Neither does Maggie.
“Yes, well…” The woman clears her throat. “Come on through, then. Greg’s ready for you.”
She leads us down a wide hall past a parlor and a well-appointed dining room. Here in the South, it’s not unusual for folks to still conduct business out of their homes. More personal that way.
We reach a large cherrywood door with an impressive crystal knob. She opens the door to reveal a small anteroom with a desk, filing cabinets, and a large leather sofa. Another door to a more impressive room stands wide. I can see bookshelves filled with leather-bound law volumes and a mahogany desk as big as the living room in the swamp house. The entire place smells of furniture polish.
“Go on in,” she tells us, motioning toward the open door.
Maggie and I exchange a glance before pushing our way inside Gregory Allen Toussaint’s office. He’s on the phone. When he sees us, he lifts a finger to indicate gimme a moment and gestures to the two upholstered wingback chairs in front of his desk.
I study him as he winds down his call. He’s middle-aged but still slim and fit. He has all his hair, but its oddly uniform color makes me think the dark hue comes from a bottle. And he has the kind of deep tan that only yachtsmen and golfers ever achieve.
“Sorry about that.” He skirts his desk to shake our hands. Only after the introductions are over does he resume his seat. Leaning his elbows on his desk, he makes a steeple of his fingers. “From the pensive looks on your faces, I take it you didn’t know Mr. Armstrong had a will drawn up.”
“No, sir.” I shake my head. “In fact, I’m a little confused how and when he coulda had the opportunity, seeing as how I’ve been working with him morning, noon, and well into most nights ever since we came back to this city.”
“Mr. Armstrong first came to see me the evening after he purchased the house on Orleans Avenue,” Toussaint says, absently adjusting the angle of his red tie.
My mind drifts back to that day. I recall how Cash told me to h
e had some legal stuff to take care of, but he made it sound like it had to do with the house. Not that he was seeing someone about a will.
“We did a preliminary will then,” Toussaint goes on. “Then we finalized the document a few weeks ago.” His voice drops a decibel or two, and sadness darkens his eyes when he adds, “When I read the obituary in The Times-Picayune yesterday, I called you first thing. Mr. Armstrong was adamant I ‘get my ass in gear and get the will read’—his words, not mine—as soon as he was gone. He didn’t want to drag things out. He wanted it all ticked and tied up so you two could move on with your lives as quickly as possible.”
“Lord, that sounds just like him.” Maggie grabs my hand. She’s smiling, but there are tears in her eyes.
Toussaint’s mouth twists. “There was just something about Mr. Armstrong, wasn’t there? Even in the little time I knew him, that much was obvious. It’s a shame what happened. I hope he didn’t suffer. In the end, I mean.”
Maggie’s grip tightens. Death, especially one like Cash’s, is a strange thing. You don’t know if it’s peaceful or painful. No one ever comes back to tell you about it. You simply have to hope there wasn’t any suffering involved.
“Right.” Toussaint nods. “So let’s honor Mr. Armstrong’s wishes and get on with it.” He opens a drawer and pulls out a manila envelope. From inside it, he removes a sheaf of papers. “Not sure if y’all are going to need these”—he slides a box of tissues our way—“but just in case. And if you want me to stop at any point in the reading, tell me. We can get through this as quickly or as slowly as you like.”
Maggie glances at me, apprehension in her eyes. I scoot my chair close to hers so I can put an arm around her shoulders.
“All right,” I tell the lawyer, my heart fluttering inside my chest. “We’re ready.”
Volume Three: In Moonlight and Memories, #3 Page 22
