Chasing Charlie

by C. M. Newman

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: VINCE’S WILL

  “You’re sure you’re okay with Jenna coming to dinner with us tonight?” Vince asked a few nights later.

  “Of course,” Angela said. “We haven’t spent much time with her lately.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. Listen, I was hoping that after we get back from dinner and put Charlie to bed, the three of us could talk.”

  “What about?”

  “About him,” Vince said under his breath, though Charlie was far too occupied putting his shoes on for a trip to the park to be paying attention to a conversation happening on the other side of the apartment. “I’ve been a little concerned lately. Jenna hasn’t really said anything about you living with us now and being home fulltime, but I just have this nagging feeling that she sees it as a threat. I think she feels like it’s a competition, and I don’t want it to be.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Angela asked, digging out a fresh pair of socks.

  “I want to—if it’s okay with you, that is—come to some sort of custody agreement. I want you to have legal visitation rights. Given the current emotional climate, I can understand why it’s hard for Jenna to warm up to you, no matter how supportive she was of me forming a relationship with you in the beginning. I hope that’ll change once I’m gone, that you two can become friends, but…I just want to take precautions in case that doesn’t happen. Charlie needs both of you, and without something legal, there’s nothing stopping Jenna from keeping him from you.”

  Angela’s heart slipped down into her stomach. “You think she dislikes me that much?”

  “It’s not about whether she likes you. It’s about how she feels you fit into Charlie’s life. You’re open-minded about him having two mother figures, and so am I. But I don’t think she is, at least not yet. Like I said, this is just a precaution. And if I’m springing this on you too suddenly and you need more time to think about it, it can wait. Besides, we don’t need to make a decision tonight. It can just be…bringing the topic up.”

  “It’s not too soon. I’ll be happy to work with what she wants. Is there a specific arrangement you had in mind?”

  “Would you want to have him on weekends, maybe? Every other weekend? Or is that too much? Not enough?” Vince wondered.

  “Weekends definitely wouldn’t be too much. I would love that. But I have to be honest, that’s going to be a big change. I know he’s better off spending most of the time with her. She can give him that. I just…it’s hard to know that I won’t be able to waltz in any time I want and see him. Making this legal is probably going to create that environment, where I’m never really welcome to see him, only allowed. But then again, it’s better than risking her keeping me from seeing him at all. And it’s something that’s definitely up to you, so if it makes you feel better, then I’d be happy to do it.” She tried not to sound heartbroken, but a bit of her discomfort came through in her inflection.

  “I’m sorry,” Vince said, sitting next to Angela at the foot of the bed. “Let’s save this for another night so you have time to think.”

  “No, no, no.” Angela grasped Vince’s hand and offered him a reconciliatory smile. “This is important to me. The sooner we take care of it, the better. My mind’s made up.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure. And just so you know, if I come off as…accusatory tonight, it’s not aimed toward you. I just want Jenna to realize that the way she’s acting about Charlie is making me uncomfortable, but I don’t want to single her out. That won’t help matters. So don’t take anything personally tonight.”

  “Got it.”

  —

  At dinner, Angela sat at a restaurant table between Vince and Charlie, with Jenna across from her.

  “I miss you, Auntie Jen,” Charlie said as he colored in a coloring book Angela had brought along for him.

  “I miss you, too, sweetie,” she said, combing a hand through his hair.

  “Can I go to Auntie Jen’s sometimes when you’re tired?” Charlie asked Vince. “Like I did before?”

  Vince tried to keep from letting his son’s comments cut too deep. “Sure, if that’s what you want. That okay with you?” he asked Jenna.

  She smiled warmly down at Charlie. “Of course it is. How are things going at home?”

  “Not too bad,” Vince replied.

  “Hey Daddy, who’s taking me to baseball practice tomorrow?”

  “I can,” Jenna volunteered. “I’ll bring snacks, too.”

  “Thanks, Jen,” Vince said a bit warily. “Do you think you know what you want to eat, buddy?”

  “Pizza,” Charlie answered, surprising absolutely no one.

  Vince tried to appreciate Jenna’s willingness to help, but couldn’t block from his mind the mental image of her, after his death, not being subtle in letting Angela know she wasn’t welcome in Charlie’s life anymore. He felt his fears were probably unfounded, but as he had thought more and more about the subject, he’d realized that arranging his son’s future was his prerogative.

  Jenna agreed, although without enthusiasm, to follow Vince and Angela home and stay past Charlie’s bedtime to talk. “What’s going on?” she asked when they all gathered in the living room once Charlie was asleep.

  Vince avoided Angela’s eyes and focused on Jenna’s as they all took a seat. “I was hoping the three of us could come to some sort of agreement when it comes to Charlie,” he said quietly but confidently. His resolve had strengthened throughout the evening, seeing Jenna and Angela interacting with Charlie and with each other. The longer he observed those strained, awkward interactions, the more fearful he had become.

  “What do you mean?” Jenna asked.

  He held up a finger to ask for a minute before an itchy throat provoked a few coughs. He ignored Angela’s worried look. “As I hope you’re both aware, Charlie is my number one concern. Ever since I was diagnosed, my biggest worry has been how this would affect him. Things have obviously changed since that time. Now instead of him having one caregiver after I die, I like to think that he has two. Let me rephrase that. I know he has two. I guess my aim for this conversation is to figure out some sort of…schedule. I’ve been getting the feeling lately that things between you two aren’t as I would’ve hoped. And to be honest, I shouldn’t be surprised or disappointed. Just because you both love Charlie doesn’t mean you should automatically be best friends, and it doesn’t mean that this should be easy.”

  Vince paused and split his gaze between the women, both of whom paid silent attention, Jenna with her jaw set.

  He went on. “I wish I didn’t feel the need to make this a legal issue. Trust me when I say I would prefer to be able to trust that things will work out in Charlie’s best interests. But just in case my fears are proven…to have some sort of basis in truth…just in case the two of you don’t see eye-to-eye, I have to make sure this is spelled out in my will. I apologize if that’s insulting to either one of you, but I hope that you can chalk it up to a desperate father stopping at nothing to make sure his son is happy and healthy. I firmly believe that he needs both of you.”

  He looked only at Jenna this time, as did Angela. “So you want to…arrange joint custody?” Jenna asked, her voice wavering.

  “Angela and I already talked about this a little bit, and she seems pretty flexible. It doesn’t have to be joint custody. You could maintain sole custody if you agreed for Angela to have visitation rights.”

  “How often?” Jenna asked.

  Vince looked to Angela to let her speak. “Umm, how about weekends?” Angela proposed.

  “Every weekend?”

  “Every weekend that she’s in town,” he said firmly.

  “Jenna,” Angela said nervously, “I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to take him away from you. I know you love him like he’s your own. I don’t think Vince and I ever really expected things to change so much, but…I love Charlie, too. But even disregarding my feelings, I can’t imagine just…disappearing from his life after all of this. That
would be such a bad idea.”

  “Do you really think this is what’s best for Charlie?” Jenna asked Vince directly. “Living between two households when he could finally settle down in one? Not that I’m glad you’re dying—ugh, you know what I mean…”

  “I do know what you mean. And it’s not ideal. But it’s far better than taking him away from somebody he loves,” Vince said matter-of-factly. “In a perfect world, there wouldn’t even be a need for any of this. But it’s not a perfect world. I’m dying and leaving my son without either of his parents. The world sucks. And the thought of him losing someone else on top of that is unbearable to me. I think that if you two can agree on this schedule, then yes, this is what’s best for him.”

  “Have you asked him?” Jenna inquired.

  Vince’s lips thinned into a straight line and his brow furrowed before he spoke. “Jen, I know that you love Charlie and you understand how his heart works. So I know that you know that asking him isn’t necessary. He’s attached to Angela, and this is the most he can reasonably see her without forcing you two to become roommates. It seems like the fairest solution for everyone, and one that’ll make Charlie happy. All three of us need to remember that this is about his happiness, not ours. He’s defenseless. He needs the adults in his life to keep his well-being in mind, not their own.”

  “I get it,” Jenna snipped. Vince shared a short glance with Angela, whose highly arched eyebrow told him he’d taken things a bit too far with his last sentence. “I’m not going to lie, you guys, I feel kind of like you ganged up on me. This is a lot to take in.”

  “We hardly talked about it,” Angela reassured her. “He brought it up with me so I’d know why you were coming over, and ran the weekends thing by me. We didn’t decide on anything ahead of time. Listen, Jenna, I don’t want us to be enemies. And we—we don’t have to agree on anything right now. We could take a few days, right, Vince?”

  “Of course. The sooner this is taken care of, I think the better we can all sleep at night, but I don’t want anyone to take this lightly. So if you need some time to think about it, Jen, that’s absolutely fine. Maybe if you want to take time to think up a better alternative…” Vince said, trailing off.

  Jenna clasped her hands submissively between her knees and glared down at the floor. “If…you think this is what’s best for Charlie, then okay.”

  “Thank you,” Vince said from the bottom of his heart. He hurried to seal the deal somehow. “You have no idea how much of a relief it is to me. I’ll talk to my lawyer this week and get it all squared away. Oh, and one more thing. Mitch of course wants to see him as well. Since he couldn’t be here to talk with us, I did run an idea by him. Again, it’s just an idea. But we were thinking maybe he could take Charlie for one full week out of the year, and then maybe three or four weekends…however many Angela’s willing to give up. But you don’t have to worry about that. Does one week a year sound reasonable to you?”

  “I’m surprised it’s not more,” Jenna said frankly, her eyes reddening.

  Vince sighed and reached out a hand, holding one of Jenna’s. He hated that he had to baby her, but on the other hand, he couldn’t imagine feeling any differently were he in her shoes. “Jen, look at me.”

  She tipped her chin up, nearly swallowing her lip.

  “I know it’s not perfect, and I know it’s not easy. And I know that you love him and you wish that you could be all he needed, but…even when it was just you and me, I always wished there could be someone more in his life. I always felt like there was something missing for him, no matter how much you and I loved him. And in a way, he did find that extra person—two people, actually—in the process of losing me. Forgive me if this sounds like emotional blackmail—I’m just saying it because I know you understand but I think you’re just not seeing it right now because you feel ambushed, and rightfully so—but you know how much it would break Charlie’s heart to lose anybody else. He is a tough little kid, we all know that. But there’s only so much he can take. If you want to be angry with me, for whatever reason, then go ahead. Just promise me you’ll try to keep in mind that Mitch and Angela aren’t trying to invade your territory somehow. You’ve practically been his mother a couple of years now, and they’re both fully aware of that. So just look at this in terms of what Charlie needs. This is about him.”

  Jenna swallowed back any tears she may have wanted to cry and nodded, giving Vince’s hand a squeeze. “This works,” she said after a long, deafening silence. “You’re right, this arrangement does sound the most sensible.”

  “And you’re okay with Mitch—”

  “Yeah,” Jenna whispered, cutting Vince off. “I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m making this about me. I guess I have been to some extent. But I have to trust your judgment. No matter what I might think or want, you’re his dad,” she said with a shrug. “And you’re a great dad, especially considering everything you have to deal with. But I, umm…I think I should go now, though. I just need to be by myself.” She rose carefully from the couch.

  “Of course, that’s fine,” Vince said, following Jenna toward the door.

  “Goodnight,” Angela said peaceably with a tiny wave.

  “Goodnight,” Jenna replied with a shaky smile. She didn’t say a thing to Vince before leaving.

  “Wow,” Angela said.

  Vince was about to answer when he was caught off guard by a loud sneeze.

  “Bless you. Are you feeling all right? Do you have allergies or do you think you have a cold coming on?”

  “Never had allergies before,” Vince said.

  “Did that zinc supplement make you any hungrier? I just read that’s a side effect,” Angela said, fishing around the junk on the end table for the bottle and noting that the living room needed tidying.

  “Not really,” Vince said, but he took a pill from Angela anyway in hopes of avoiding a cold.

  “Well, I’m tired. I think I’m gonna go to bed. You?”

  “Actually tired?” Vince checked.

  Angela chuckled. “Yes, actually tired,” she said, holding on to a smile though her insides churned at the knowledge that she’d already passed the most fertile point in her cycle. Any intimacy from here on out would not be for the sake of making a baby, which wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but heartbreaking all the same. Things certainly weren’t getting any easier for Vince, who grew weaker by the day, so Angela figured their last real attempts had already passed. Soon enough, she would know for sure.

  —

  By the end of May, with another round of chemotherapy behind him, Vince didn’t even want to be seen anymore. At his last session, a nurse had informed him that he’d lost another four pounds over the last week. It explained why his few recently purchased shirts and pants already looked and felt too big, why the chemotherapy took so much out of him, and why the additional drugs meant to ward off the side effects robbed him of even more energy and clarity and hardly did their job anymore. It explained why he fell asleep in the car on the way home after his scans, why Charlie didn’t even ask him this time if he was coming to his baseball game. He simply sat by the door with his cleats and waited for his aunt to go to the bathroom before they left.

  “Good luck today, buddy,” Vince said with an itchy throat. A cold or something worse had taunted him for a week now; he felt like tonight it would finally take a real grip on him, even with antibiotics.

  Charlie nodded vaguely, staring down at his feet.

  Not without a struggle, Vince crouched down in front of his son and placed an almost frail hand on top of his head. “Listen, buddy. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to make it to your games lately. I really am.”

  Charlie looked up, his bottom lip pushed out a bit. Vince noticed Angela leave the room and figured she was giving them a moment alone. He had no idea she was fleeing the scene because she simply couldn’t watch it unfold.

  “Can you please come to this one? We’re playing the Tigers and they’re a lot better than us.
All the other parents are coming and we’re going out for pizza after even if we lose.”

  Vince felt ice-cold shame as he nodded. Why had Charlie needed to ask? Why couldn’t Vince simply try harder on his own? Why was he giving in so easily to the demands of his body? “You know what? I will come. I might not be up on my feet the whole time, but I’ll come. I just need to make some coffee.”

  “Really, you’ll come?” Charlie asked, standing up much more easily than his dad.

  “You bet. As long as you promise to play your hardest.”

  “I promise,” Charlie said, beaming.

  Vince found Angela in the bedroom, about to call her mother for some dry small talk meant to rescue her from the breakdown she so desperately wanted to let happen right now. Things had gotten better with her parents. Gradually so. She was sure that if she showed up at their house again and asked for a shoulder to cry on, she would have the support she needed, that her mistakes would be forgiven, but she feared that somebody else needed her much more than she needed her parents. Most days, she did a good job keeping her composure around Vince, barring any extenuating circumstances. But with every day that passed, that wasn’t much of an accomplishment, given that she could easily curl up on the couch and release her pent up rage and confusion there once Vince and Charlie were in bed.

  “Hey,” Vince said quietly, jerking Angela from her dissociative state. “I’m going to Charlie’s game. Wanna come?”

  For the time being, at least, Angela knew better than to question Vince’s awareness of his own abilities. Even when she was right—which she usually was—it didn’t help matters to point it out. She smiled. “Yeah. That sounds like fun. I’ll go bag up a couple sandwiches. Game’s kind of at a weird time,” she said, checking her wrist for a watch she’d been too scatterbrained to remember to put on that morning.

  “I’m not really hungry,” Vince said.

  “Marinol?”

  “I don’t like taking it right before we go out somewhere. We both know it doesn’t work all that great for my appetite anymore, anyway. Maybe it was all psychological.”

  Angela didn’t push the matter any further, following Vince back out to the door. Without a word, he made a few sandwiches anyway, forcing himself to eat half of one. Angela understood the battle he fought with his unwelcoming stomach. The less he was hungry, the less she was hungry, but at least one of them had to eat for Charlie’s sake. Much more often than not, that person ended up being Angela. Before now, she might have found it silly to be so bothered by eating when she wasn’t hungry, but watching Vince chew and swallow food that his body didn’t want made her sick to her own stomach and suddenly aware of how she could probably move in a belt notch herself.

  It took almost everything Vince had not to fall asleep during the game. It wasn’t a tiredness that caffeine could fix; he knew he’d been a fool to think so. It was with sad eyes that Charlie accepted the fact that his dad wouldn’t be joining him and his team for celebratory pizza after beating their opponents, three runs to two.

  And it took even more out of him to keep from telling Angela he was ready to give up the second they got in the car and headed home. He held himself together, gave her a goodnight kiss, and went to bed, asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He heard and felt her come to bed a couple of hours later once Charlie was tucked in. He rolled over and draped an arm over her side.

  “Sorry, tried not to wake you up,” she whispered, burrowing into what little was left of his chest.

  “You’re fine,” Vince said with a kiss to the forehead. He shut his eyes again, but for the first time in weeks, sleep evaded him. He wondered if that was a sign—if maybe he was granted a wakeful mind because he and Angela had an important discussion they could no longer ignore. “You awake, honey?” he breathed a while later.

  “Yeah,” she mumbled.

  “I can’t sleep,” he confessed.

  “Me neither.” Angela sighed and sat up, rubbing her weary face with her hands.

  “Appointment on Monday to go over my scans,” Vince led in as he hoisted himself up, too. When Angela said nothing, he reached to his side and turned on his lamp, warning her first to shield her eyes. “It’s been a long few weeks.”

  “Yeah.” Angela’s voice registered just above a whisper as she hugged her knees to her chest.

  Vince wasn’t quite sure where to go from there. “I love you,” he said, his hand gliding up and down her back.

  “I know,” Angela said shakily, knowing. “I love you, too.”

  As much as Vince wasn’t ready to make their bed such a sad place to be, he couldn’t move in order to take the conversation elsewhere. Angela was rooted to her spot, and if she was stuck here, so was he. “I think that…I think that this past month, this last round of chemo, was a mistake. Maybe I bought myself a little extra time, but in turn it took away from my time with both of you because I was sick or asleep the whole time. I—” Vince gasped, the tears catching him by surprise. “I think it’s time.”

  He had thought those four words would be the hardest ones of his life so far, but in reality, they were easy. The way Angela tensed beneath his hand, willing to cry in front of him for the first time in too long, told him how right he was. If she thought he was crazy, she would have said so. Instead she fell into his side, finally sucking in deep, ugly breaths that told him he probably needn’t have spoken at all. She’d probably been thinking the very same thing every time she’d taken him to chemotherapy for the last three weeks.

  “I just need to know that—that you’re okay with it,” Vince stammered. He wrapped his feeble arms around her and hid his face in her hair. “What do you think?”

  “You can’t ask me that,” Angela said, speaking with more crispness than he. She shook her head almost violently, trying to pull away, no longer stuck to the bed, but Vince reeled her back in.

  “Angie, I know I usually push you away when you try to help, but right now…” Vince licked the tears that had torn down his cheeks and to his lips. “Right now I really need you. I need somebody to tell me it’s okay. You’re the only person who can tell me that. You’re the only person who can give me that blessing.”

  “No, I can’t,” Angela said, her words all rolling into one. “You can’t ask me to do that, Vince.”

  “I’m not asking you to decide for me. I just…need you to tell me it’s okay,” he said again, sobbing shamelessly now. “Just tell me it’s not selfish of me. Tell me it’s okay.”

  Angela righted herself and circled her arms securely around her mess of a husband, littering his neck with her tears. “I love you too much to tell you either way, I really do. I can’t—I can’t—I can’t ask you to keep dragging this out, but I can’t pretend I’m okay with you giving—” She couldn’t finish her sentence on the first try, so she did what she couldn’t even say.

  She gave up.

  “I know this has been so hard for you, sweetheart,” Vince said miserably. “I know. And I try not to ask too much of you beyond what you insist on doing. But I’m—” He kissed her crown before gently drawing her face away from his shoulder. “I’m begging you.” Touching his crinkled forehead to hers, he finished. “Please, just tell me it’s okay. I don’t want to hear it from a doctor, from a stranger. I want to hear it from you. Please.”

  “I can’t…”

  “I need you right now, Angie. Please. Please—just tell me it’s okay.”

  Angela couldn’t take the pleading anymore. She couldn’t bear to hear Vince so desperately in need of something she should have been able to give him with relative ease. She finally let go of her dream of God only knew what—of a way for the drugs to keep him around forever, of a way to justify his constant exhaustion, his suffering, his dwindling self-worth. She laid a clammy hand against his cheek and nodded minutely against him. Her swimming eyes squeezed shut at a couple of involuntary gasps. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay,” she croaked.

  The relief Vince felt from those words w
as bittersweet. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to move forward without them, but he hated himself for having to drag them out of her, for pulling her into the final stages with him when she wasn’t ready, would never be ready. He could only think of one thing to say, and even though he knew it wouldn’t seal the cracks in her heart, he said it anyway.

  “Thank you.”