One afternoon, I make a picnic with the food I have on hand, some tomatoes and a loaf of bread I’d bought at a local bakery yesterday. I add cheese and fruit to the basket.
We load chairs and towels into the back of the Defender and head out for a beach I love going to. It’s public but isn’t well known, and I’ve wanted to show it to her. It’s a twenty minute or so drive from my house, and we take the curvy roads with one of my favorite playlists from class blasting, the windows down.
The sky is so cloudless it almost looks fake as a backdrop to a bright yellow sun. I take my sunglasses off because I want to absorb all of its beauty, and then I glance at Catherine. Her head rests against the seat, and she’s staring out the window at the island passing by, a look of contentment on her face that makes me happy that I might be responsible for putting it there.
It’s tempting to let myself think past the here and now, wonder what lies beyond last night and today. But I’m not going to. I’m going to do what I’ve been doing for the past three years. Live the moment. Don’t ask for more. Don’t expect more.
As if she feels my thoughts, Catherine turns her head, looks directly at me. She places her hand over mine on the gearshift, squeezes once. And I don’t need any words. Her touch says exactly what I’m thinking, anyway.
*
WE’RE THE ONLY ones on the beach. Late morning on a weekday, we’ve lucked out. On the weekends, locals make their way here, but I’m glad we’ve found a time to have it to ourselves. The sand is white and smooth, no rocks visible anywhere. The water is clear for at least thirty feet out where it darkens as the bottom drops off.
“It’s so beautiful,” Catherine says, looking over her shoulder at me. She’s sitting at the edge of the water, her knees to her chest. Her hair is long and loose on her shoulders, and the look on her face is one of true appreciation that I have brought her here.
I sit down next to her, the gentle waves doing a lazy dance around our feet. “It’s peaceful,” I say. “The first time I came here, I felt like I’d discovered a piece of what heaven would look like.”
She rests her arms on her knees and studies me for a few moments. “You’ve shown me a life I didn’t believe was possible.”
“I didn’t think it was possible until I didn’t have a choice not to go back to the life I was living.”
“Was it hard to walk away?”
I hear the wistful note in her voice, as if it is something she is trying to imagine, wants to be able to imagine.
“No. By the time I felt like I had another chance to live, it wasn’t hard at all.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it, please just say so.”
I shake my head, wait for her to go on.
“How did you get well?”
I glance out at the ocean, set my gaze on the horizon. “I went the traditional route at first. Chemo. That’s the primary treatment for leukemia. From the beginning, I hated the idea. It never made sense to me. Using poison to kill something in my body when everything else would have to be subjected to it as well.”
“I can understand that,” she says softly, and I can feel that she wants to touch me, but she waits, letting me go on.
“But until you’ve had a cancer diagnosis, you can’t quite imagine the panic that takes you under like a riptide current when the doctor drops those words on you. You fight it, trying to get your head above water long enough to breathe, to think straight, but it’s relentless, and you quickly figure out you have to ride whatever wave you can catch to safety. That’s the one my doctor told me was my only hope to live. So I said okay. Booked the appointment. Walked into a room full of people so sick that on the first day I joined them in my designated chair, I sat with my face to the wall because if I looked at them, I couldn’t stop myself from crying.”
A sob escapes her throat, and I do look at her now, not bothering to hide the remembered anguish in my eyes. She slips her arm through mine, slides close so that we are touching, shoulder to hip. It’s as if she wants to anchor herself to me, seal our connection so that I don’t slip off into the memories I am sharing with her.
“I went there as long as I could,” I finally say, my gaze again on the ocean before us. “And then one day, I knew I wasn’t going to live if I went back even one more time. So I got up, pulled the needle out of my arm and left.”
She’s quiet for a bit, absorbing what I have said. When she speaks, her voice is raspy. “I can’t imagine how much courage that took.”
“I’m pretty sure it takes more courage to stay,” I admit.
“What did you do then?”
“Wallowed in pity for a few days. And then at some point, realizing I had nothing to lose, I got online and started searching for other options. This place in Mexico called Sanoviv popped up in my Facebook feed. I started reading about it, about the people who had posted their experiences, and I had to go. I didn’t care if I died there. At least I would know I tried.”
I see the effect my words have on her, and I regret not softening them.
“What was it like?” she asks.
“The only way I can describe it was that it felt like a place of healing. I felt it as soon as I walked through the doors. Their approach is about giving the body whatever tools they have found capable of helping the immune system mount its own attack. My treatment plan was based on giving my body the things it needed to fight the cancer. I’m embarrassed to say my diet was crap before I got diagnosed. They taught me how to eat for healing, for disease prevention.”
“That’s why you juice.”
I nod. “I’ll never stop. I actually feel guilty for all the junk I put in my body throughout my life.”
“When we know better, we do better.”
“Hopefully before it’s too late.”
“What else did they do for you?”
“A detox program. My blood work showed that I had a high level of toxins. From living in the city, I guess. We breathe in all sorts of fumes from vehicles and when we’re pumping gas in our cars. Airplanes going over. I had no idea. I don’t think most people have any idea. But they helped lower my levels significantly.”
“That is amazing. And terrifying. What else did they do?”
“Something called Hyperthermia which aims to raise the body’s core temperature for a period of time to mimic fever. When we get a fever, it’s the body’s way of trying to kill whatever is making us sick.”
“But I’ve always heard you should take something to lower a fever.”
“If it gets above a certain point, my understanding is yes. Lower fevers are one of our body’s weapons.”
“I had no idea.”
“Me either before I went there.”
She looks at me then, and says, “I’m so grateful you found that place.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t. I do know that much.”
She reaches for my hand, laces her fingers through mine. We sit for a while, the waves making the only sound around us until she finally says, “And I have no idea how I found you. But I’m glad I did.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
Catherine
IT’S LIKE A day out of a movie I might have written for myself featuring all of my most hoped-for fantasies. I’m on the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen with a gorgeous man who also happens to be kind and smart and looks at me as if he can only barely restrain himself from making love to me right here under a sky as blue as any I’ve ever seen.
Not that I would mind. Except for modesty and the fact that there would be no hiding the fact that I am older than he is in this light. Except for that.
We eat the amazing lunch he has prepared, sitting on towels beneath a bright yellow umbrella with our toes in the sand.
I’m so full I have to stop. “I need a one-piece after that,” I say, holding my stomac
h. “No hiding this belly now.”
He laughs. “What belly?”
“I’ll just keep it sucked in,” I say. “Don’t mind me if I can’t talk.”
He shakes his head, still smiling. “You look incredible.”
“If I did your spin class every day, I would look incredible.”
He slides onto his side, props himself up on one elbow. “So stay here, and you can do it every day.”
I sober beneath the suggestion. “I wish,” I say, failing to conceal the longing in my voice.
“You don’t have to wish. It’s your life. And we only get one.”
I consider what he has said, curbing what would have normally been an automatic response outlining my responsibilities at ActivGirl. But I stop myself because I realize for the first time in my life, they aren’t automatic at all.
*
WE SPEND THE afternoon swimming in the beach’s u-shaped cove, alternately floating in the water and lazing in the sun.
It’s almost four o’clock when I turn my face to his where he is lying on his stomach, his head on his crossed forearms. “This might be the most perfect day of my life.”
“Mine too,” he says in a low voice, as if he’s a little afraid to admit it.
I put my hand on his shoulder. It’s hot from the sun, the muscles beneath my palm defined and taut. “Can we stay here forever?”
“I will if you will.”
I smile, shrug, as if I was kidding all along. “Why is it that I came here with vacation as the temporary thing, and all of a sudden, I’m wondering how I can go back to cold and twelve hour workdays?”
“Then don’t.”
“If only it were that easy.”
“It is easy when you let yourself admit that life is actually very short. We don’t have forever to do the things that make us happy.”
“I have two more years on my contract.”
He considers this for a bit and then says, “You could buy your way out.”
The words drop between us, my immediate instinct to deny their plausibility. But I can’t make myself say it because all of a sudden, I’m wondering what if? Could I? Would I?
The questions propel me off the towel and across the sand, where I run into the water, not stopping until I am waist deep and diving straight in. I swim out as far as I can go, trying not to think about the fact that my strokes are anything but graceful. When I finally come to a stop, I am breathing hard and treading water.
“Hey.”
I jump at the touch on my shoulder, whirling to find Anders treading beside me.
“You don’t have to run away,” he says. “I didn’t really think you would say yes.”
I look at him for a stretch of silence before I finally admit, “The thing is I really want to.”
And with that, he hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me to him. I anchor my legs around his hips, my arms around his neck and kiss him with all the heat and longing welling up inside me. In a little while, he takes my hand and swims us both back to the beach where it is a really good thing there is no one else around.
Chapter Thirty-five
“You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
― David Foster Wallace
Nicole
THE LAPTOP SITS on the table in the apartment’s small kitchen. She opens the lid and clicks on the email provider, waiting while the icon circles and opens. She hits Compose and types in her mom’s email address. She clicks on the body of the message.
She picks up her phone and opens the Notes app. Inside the Passwords folder, she scrolls down to the short list of accounts that represent the financial status of her life. There aren’t many. But for the few she has, she types each one into the email. Bank name. Routing number. Account number.
She types in her login info for the bank’s website, double-checking the password.
She scans her Notes for the name of her insurance company, finds it near the bottom of the list and types that in too.
She logs in into her bank account, waiting for the password to register. Once inside, she clicks on checking – there’s nothing in savings – and frowns at the abysmal balance. Enough to pay her bills, anyway. She makes an electronic payment for the past month’s electricity. She pays the rent on her apartment with a check – it’s five days late – tucks it inside an envelope, seals it and puts a stamp in the right-hand corner. The cable bill is also due. She pays that online with her checking account, and by the time she’s done, the balance is $9.97.
Sad to think that’s what’s left of a lifetime of work through age thirty-eight, but that is the reality of it and further proof that her decision is the right one.
A Facebook notification pops up on the screen. She clicks and makes it go away. Facebook is for people with things to show the world they are proud of, grateful for. Nicole has nothing to be proud of, and for the things she was once grateful for, she has destroyed any hope of ever having them again.
She closes the laptop, and if she had expected to feel sad, she doesn’t. Finally, she knows she is making a choice that will be for the good of everyone in her life. She has not made it lightly, but she knows it is the right one.
Secure in this truth, she turns off the lights in the kitchen, flicks off the lamps in the small living room, walks into her bedroom and closes the door with a quiet but final click.
Chapter Thirty-six
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Catherine
THE PHONE WAKES me.
My ringtone is Church Bells, and the dong, dong, dong, rouses me with the thought that I am in Florence, Italy. I chose the sound because it is a good memory, a time in my twenties when Nicole and I did a rail pass across Italy and France. We had both loved coming awake to the chorus of church bells audible through a cracked window.
I turn over, force my eyes open. Is it morning?
But as I raise up on one elbow, feeling the warmth of Anders sleeping next to me, I come back to where I am. I have the horrible realization that something is wrong. I fumble for the phone, trying to focus on the lit screen. The time says 1:55 AM above my mom’s cell number.
Suddenly anxious, I tap the answer icon. “Mom? Are you okay? Is Dad―”
But my mother cuts me off before I can finish. “Catherine.” She cannot go on beyond this, her sobs robbing her of words.
“What is it, Mom? You’re scaring me.”
By now, Anders is awake too. He is sitting up, his hand on my shoulder.
My mother’s crying is unlike anything I have ever heard from her. It is the gut-wrenching sound of a broken heart. Tears stream down my face. “Mom, what is it?”
“I’m in the airport on the way to West Palm Beach. Your sister is in the hospital there.” An awful, long silence follows the words. And then, “Oh, Cat. Dear God. She tried to kill herself tonight.”
“What?”
The word falls out of me. My mind goes blank. I cannot process what she has said. Anders’ arm slips around my shoulders. He pulls me into the circle of his embrace. And he’s holding me tight, as if he knows I am going to fall apart.
“Is she. . .is she going to be all right?”
“The only doctor I’ve spoken to said it is too soon to know.” She stops there, breathes in an audible intake of air. Silence beats through the phone before she finally adds, “They’ve pumped her stomach. She took an overdose of antidepressant. He said it will be days before we can know the long-term effects.”
Again, she cannot go on, her crying the only sound coming through the phone.
“Mom.” My voice breaks across the utterance, as if I am reaching out to latch onto her. “Is Dad with you?”
“Y-yes. Of course.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can get a flight.” I have no idea if Mom knows where I am. I did
n’t tell her about this trip. Guilt attacks me like a knife in the back. I draw in a sharp breath, try to focus on what matters right now. “Will you text me the name of the hospital?”
“Yes. Be safe, Cat.” And with that, she is gone.
In the instant silence that surrounds us, I cannot bring myself to look at Anders. Questions fly through my mind at a thousand miles an hour.
“Don’t,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
I know exactly what he means, but how can I not? I shake my head, whisper, “What if it’s too late?”
He hugs me tighter, but doesn’t answer. Despite our age difference, both of us have reached a point in life where we understand the futility of denying truth. And the truth is I may not ever have the opportunity to forgive my sister. If that is true, how will I ever forgive myself?
Chapter Thirty-seven
“If you are not too long I will wait here for you all my life.”
― Oscar Wilde
Anders
I SIT IN the Defender, watching her walk into the airport, pulling her suitcase behind her. She’d asked me not to come inside. Even though I’d wanted to, wanted those extra minutes standing next to her, I did as she asked.
The sun is barely up. There was one first-class seat left on the 7 AM flight to Miami. As soon as she’d hung up with her mother, I’d gotten out of bed and started looking for a flight. I have to believe there was serious intervention taking place on her part. The unlikelihood of getting a flight that would allow her to rent a car in Miami and get to West Palm by early afternoon was enough to make me sure of it. I’m thankful for that, even though I know as she disappears into the airport that she will not return.
She never said the words, but I read it in her face, in the way she couldn’t meet my eyes. More than anything, I wanted to tell her how much I want her to come back. But somehow I know that her memory of me will be tangled with this news of her sister and her own guilt about their relationship. I don’t want that. The only choice I have is to let her go.
That Birthday in Barbados Page 16
