A Lover's Secret (19 page)

Her phone jangled then, from where she had dropped it on the
console. Vibrating, ringing. Monica. Of course. The saboteur. But Jess was done
with that part of her life.
This
was where she belonged, and she no
longer cared about anything else. He was so hard inside her. The way he moved
below her brought to mind the ocean she had seen from the plane, they were part
of nature, moving in that way, in rhythm with the rotation of the earth and the
sun and the tide and the moon and the stars. All part of this brilliant
creation. Her throbbing bosom was in his mouth now and he lashed at the pearled
tip with his tongue. The ringing stopped, and she had never felt so sure and so
right, so complete and so fulfilled.

Then the ringing again, sharper, but she went on and on,
taking Jake deeper and deeper inside. Then a text. Through her tears and her
elation, she saw it.

“Where are you? Grandma fell. Come quick.”

Jess

Jess slid off his lap and over the center console. Her hands
were shaking and Jake was watching her, his mouth open. She stared straight
ahead, and she punched the word “call” under Monica’s name. She smelled leather
and exhaust. She tasted her soapy, bitter lipstick, and she sank into her seat,
into the deep, deep den of it, as she spoke with Monica.

After she ended the call, for a time, her throat remained
closed, refusing to allow any words through, and then, at last, she managed,
“My grandmother. She fell down the basement stairs this morning after I left.”
She gulped. “She broke her neck.”  

The words hung in the car, bloated and distended.

“Oh. Jess. I’m so sorry.”

“She died, Jake.” She turned to him, quickly, then snapped
her gaze back to straight ahead. “I’ve got to go back. I… I never should have
come here. It’s my fault. This is all my fault.”

“No, Jess. Of course it isn’t. Come on.”

“I’ve got to go.” Jess twisted in her seat, and patted down
her hair. She wriggled so her skirt would cover her thighs, and she reached for
the door handle.

“Just give it a minute, Jess. You just got here.”

Her face brightened then, as she turned to face him. “Jake,
come with me.”

“Oh.” He shook his head, slowly back and forth and Jess felt
like he was moving in slow motion, as if time had slowed, as if she had entered
a new dimension where nothing made sense and where she couldn’t breathe. “No,”
he said.

“No?”

She was silent a while, and so was he, and then she said,
very softly, “So you love me, but you can’t come with me, to support me? To
help me?”

“I would like to, Jess. Truly, I would. But I can’t. I can’t
go with you. Please try to understand.”

“I think I understand. I understand completely.”

“Good.” Jake sat up straighter in his seat and Jess looked
down now at her breasts, which were still bare, and she covered them with her
palms, and then folded her arms around her chest. Never had she felt so naked,
so alone. She grabbed for her top.

“I just… I can’t leave just now,” he explained.

“I see.”

“And I’m no good at death. I just…can’t deal with it. Not
now.”

“You’re
no good
at death?”

“That came out wrong—“

“I see.” Her voice was tight and she felt heat and tingling
in her face. “I see. You only do life. And lies. And secrets. And sex. You live
fast and free, but everything else is off the table.”

“Jess, you don’t know. You don’t know what’s… what’s
happening to me.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

It was as though the car spewed her out then, ejected her.
She couldn’t stay seated another moment. She wriggled up and out, struggling to
push her skirt down as she popped open the door, and this is how she spilled
out of Jake’s Ferrari, nearly tripping over her own suitcase as she bent,
doubled over, to finish buttoning her blouse. She was braless and supposed she
would stay that way. She wondered if the men in the security room, monitoring
the parking lot, were having a good time with this one. She wondered whether
some paparazzi would catch this. Maybe there would be something juicy now for
the next tart who tried to research Jake on the internet; the next floozy who
tried to figure out what exactly he was hiding. Then her parents could be
really proud. Now their daughter was a dropout
and
a Hollywood whore,
and because she had been a coward and ran away from them, her grandmother was
dead.

She booked the next flight home and charged her credit card
once more.

***

Grandma’s crocheted slippers.

Her basement bedroom.

The new heart medication.

Grandma had been dizzy. She’d been all alone. She’d slipped.
Jess knew each of these things to be her fault, and everyone who told Jess not
to blame herself secretly
did
blame her. Otherwise, the thought wouldn’t
have even crossed their minds.

And now her neck was broken, and Monica would forever have
the memory of pounding down the basement stairs to see Jess, to help her once
again, and of seeing Grandma there, at the base, broken.

Jess had gone off to be someone she wasn’t. She had gone
off, looking for the fast life and the free life and now someone was dead. Now
she
had a secret she would never be able to share. Something for which she’d
never forgive herself.

If she had been stronger, if she had stayed in medical
school, where she belonged, Grandma would still be alive. She would be coming
out to the graduation in a few weeks’ time. She would make that coconut cake
she was famous for, and she would press a fifty-dollar bill into Jess’s palm
and she would tell her she loved her and she was proud of her.

But now she was dead.

The plane dipped and Jess thought she might vomit. She
closed her eyes.

She was done with this. She would return to medical school.
Who cared if she hated it? At least then she was helping people, not hurting
them. Now she had something to atone for.

Dad was picking her up at the airport. They had all been
shocked to learn that she had flown away that morning. How she wished the
flight would last forever.

A Persian man was watching her from across the aisle. His
eyes were yellow where they should be white. Another man whispered tenderly to
his young daughter, who was clutching a stuffed rabbit. The child’s mother sat
on the other side. She was heavyset, with permed brunette hair and seashell
earrings and Jess imagined the woman’s prosaic, contented life. The playdates
for the darling child and photos shared over email with grandparents; wine and
cheese parties with neighbors and potluck dinners where she would try the new
recipe from
Family Circle
, something that involved wrapping bacon around
a vegetable. The parents probably had good jobs and commuted to them each day
and made love deep in the night and they lived well, without needing to have
torrid sex with playboys in parking lots. They were never in danger of washing
downstream during raging desert storms. They didn’t kill their grandparents.

Grandma. Was she really gone?

How could that be true, when just this morning…?

Jess had made her peace with death. She had taken her
classes in grief counseling. She had seen things happen in dimly lit rooms
where families gathered. She had been present when the veil was lifted, when
women described seeing their husbands or their mothers or their fathers or
their tiny children, beckoning to them from a silvery light. She had seen peace
overtake people as they slipped into someplace beyond, maybe a hand
outstretched to reach toward a love that surpassed anything they had known in
this skin.

But they weren’t all this way. There were passings marked by
panic and desperation, as well. There were those who clutched at the bedrails.
Who struggled to sit up and to leave; who cried, “Help me!” until Jess wanted
to cover her ears.

Had Grandma suffered? Jess winced. She couldn’t bear the
idea that she had suffered.

Forgive me, Grandma. Forgive me.

Too soon, Jess had landed, and she checked her phone. No
call from Jake, but one from Evan. His voice was kind; his tone was soft and
practiced. “Jess. I just heard. Call me if you want to talk. I’d like to help
if I can. In the meantime, know that I’m praying for you.”

Prayer.

What did that mean to her? She tried then, to pray, and she
found she didn’t know what to say. Just “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She shivered,
and she felt alone.

The airport was too much. Too many sights and smells and
emotions. A hunched group of elderly people clutched one another’s hands. They
wore matching souvenir T-shirts from Reno, Nevada. Their mouths hung open. A middle-aged
couple, the woman’s mouth pinched, told her husband he’d packed too many
things, that he needed to get out his boarding pass. She rolled her eyes at the
Styrofoam container in his hand and told him he couldn’t bring his chicken
salad sandwich on board the plane. “No one wants to smell your pickle, Harold,”
she said, and this statement instantly struck Jess as funny and yet she
couldn’t bring herself to change her expression. There was no laughter or
amusement. Just herself, observing, from somewhere above.

Her grandfather, he had died while she was in medical school,
and she’d been sad, but she hadn’t gone to the funeral. She hadn’t had the
time. The service was scheduled during finals week, and Grandma had said she
understood. Grandma had said that Jess would be a doctor someday, and that
meant all of her time and her sacrifices would pay off.

Jess’s chin quivered. How could Grandma be gone? And how
could she have left her, just that morning, all alone, without even checking on
her. Without walking up the stairs and saying goodbye. What if Grandma had been
coming down the stairs to wake her, to greet her, to see her, thinking she was
still lying in bed? What if she had been coming for Jess when she slipped? When
she fell?

And then she saw her father. His eyebrows knit in, his mouth
set in a tight line. Slowly and softly, he told her the details. How mom had
shrunk to her knees. How no one had known Jess was going to California that
day. How she mustn’t blame herself.

“Your mother is worried about you,” he said then.

“I’m home now, so nothing more to worry about.”

“You’re coming home to stay?”

She nodded.

“Or at least until you go back to school, I suppose,” He
looked at her then, too steadily, and when he returned his eyes to the road, he
had to swerve back into his lane. “Have you given any more thought to that?”

“Can we not talk about it just now, Dad? Can we just focus
on Grandma and on Mom?”

He leaned forward then and snapped on the radio; something
he never, ever did.

If she had died in that river, tumbling amid the rocks; if
she had succumbed to the force of the current, of the flood, then Grandma would
still be alive. Grandma would not have been there alone. She would have been
with family, mourning Jess. What difference did a life make? What difference
did it make whether it was she who had died or Grandma?

Dad plunked his hand on her shoulder then, still staring
straight ahead at the road.

“It might be a good time to think these things through,
Jess. These times—sad as they are—can remind us of what’s important in our
lives. They can remind us what we are put on this earth to do, and you were put
on earth to be a doctor.”

Jess placed her hand on his in lieu of a response.

“Thanks for coming home right away, Jess. We all need you.
We need you more than you know.”

She swallowed hard and wished she could tell him that she
wasn’t the hero, the healer, or the savior he thought she was. And she never
had been.

***

Jake

How long had Jake’s head laid against the steering wheel?
How long had his body slumped forward, no breath for his lungs? A late model
Subaru was honking. It needed one of the parking spaces he was straddling. How
long ago had she tumbled from the car, half dressed? Her bra was still there,
beside him. Cold now to the touch.

He had let her go.

But he couldn’t leave just now. He was in a fight for his
own life. Once she understood that, she would come back to him. She would
forgive him. He would need to find a way to tell her the truth, and when he
did, he would call. He would tell her everything, and she would come back to
him. And they would have some time together. At least a little time.

Jess

Days passed in obscurity, an itchy dimness in which she
thought the same thoughts, again and again. Felt the same sensations and
emotions. It was all a gray smattering of blandness tempered only by stabs of
grief and guilt.

Her mother’s eyes were glassy, her hair disarranged. She
told Jess it had been an accident. She told Jess that she mustn’t blame
herself. She said it over and over, too many times to count.

Evan had reached out to her, and, eventually, Jess spoke
with him, mostly just to stop him from calling, and one day he asked her to get
some coffee and she said okay. His eyes brightened when he smiled at her, and
he’d put his hand on hers, across the table, and this was rather nice.

Jake had called, too. So many calls from Jake. And, yet,
what was there to say? Each time she saw his name on her phone, she felt a
bitter taste in her mouth, a stinging sensation in the back of her throat.

He would have to come here. This is what she’d decided. And
he hadn’t.

If he really wanted her, he would leave his home and he
would come here and he would put his hand on hers, across the table. He would
share in the sometimes ugly realities of day-to-day existence. He would leave
his shining, open-air penthouse views where every solution to every problem
could be bought and packaged, wrapped and presented. But he hadn’t.

The week passed, and then another, and the thickness in her
throat and the exhaustion and the sleeplessness, they were all here to stay, as
was the reality that she was all alone. She would be going back to school soon.
She would finish what she started. She would choose a path and she would
continue on, even if she had fallen out of love with the idea of it, at
present. Evan told her he would help. He had given her all kinds of
encouragement already in that kind, even, flat voice of his.

***

Jake

Elizabeth and Miranda were calling it a “significant
backslide,” as though discussing something that had occurred to an object.

He knew they wanted to blame it on his week away. His
drinking and running and paragliding and horseback riding. They wanted to blame
it on the fact that he hadn’t stayed flat on his back. But they all knew. He’d
felt wonderful after that week. Better than ever. He was in love, at last, with
a woman how made him feel whole—not broken or alone, but complete. Unstoppable.

Still, Elizabeth and Miranda had wanted to give him all the
lectures that they had given in the past: Didn’t he know he was killing himself
by refusing to rest? Didn’t he understand he was supposed to take care of
himself, to rest and sleep when he was undergoing treatment? Why didn’t he want
to give himself the best chance he could? Didn’t he want to beat this thing?
Didn’t he understand that he actually had a shadow of a chance to do it? That
this is what they had all been working toward? Didn’t he know how much everyone
wanted him to live? Didn’t he want to live for
her,
for Jess?

Why
hadn’t
he told Jess? From the beginning? He
scoffed. Because he was stupid. He was an immature little boy who didn’t ever
want to show his weakness, especially not to the woman he had spent his life
adoring and fantasizing about. When he was finally with her, he longed to live
in that place for as long as he could. He wanted to be
that
Jake Lassiter
for as long as possible. The adventurer, bestselling author, amazing lover,
superhero man of action.

He despised the idea that he was a weak and sick man, and he
would never let a bunch of entertainment reporters photograph his gradual
deterioration. He would never allow them to see him decaying, slowly wasting
away in a hospital bed. It would make his book and his message into a joke:
The
man who lives fast and free dies slowly. With pain and weakness. All alone.

He’d been so careful to create this environment where he
could hide his condition from the world, for as long as possible. He had even
gone so far as to create a private treatment room on his estate. A place for
him to receive the injections. A place for Elizabeth to live, to watch over him,
to collect her data. To modify his dosages. To see what exactly they were
dealing with here.

It wasn’t too late. Jake breathed in deeply. He watched his
chest rise and fall, and he thought about her. About how she made him feel.
With Jess, he felt more alive than ever. With her, he could run, and could
demonstrate the depth of his love. Together they could soar to dizzying
heights. With her, he could forget everything. He could actually believe
Miranda when she said he had a chance, however slim, of beating this thing.

And that meant he had to tell her. He had to tell her
everything, and then she would come and she would be by his side. He would tell
her now. He knew just how he would do it.

If only she would answer her phone.

That day, he called dozens of times. Eventually, he even
considered explaining himself in a text message. Something she couldn’t fail to
see. But what was he to say?

Wish I could be there, but I’m on crazy experimental
medication that requires hospitalization. Terrible fatal disease. Losing battle
without you. I need you. You could save my life. Come back to me when you are
ready.

He very nearly pressed ‘send.’ But, then he shook his head
and gripped his phone. He didn’t feel right saying that kind of thing over a
text, so he truncated it:

“Jess, I need you. Without you, I’ll die. Call me.”

That said it all, and that would do it. It would at least
grant him a phone call. Wouldn’t it?

***

Jess

“Jess, I need you. Without you, I’ll die. Call me.”

She’d read the message twice before deleting it.

It reminded her of the opening lines of his book. The ones
he said had been written not by himself but by some money-grubbing editor.

There was an arrogance to it. An entitlement that made her
shudder. If he needed her so bad, he would have come with her. If he loved her,
he would have been there.

A few days later, Jake sent this one: “
I need your bank
information so I can pay your student loans. Call me.”

At first, the message had sent a jolt through her body; a
familiar tingle through her limbs, but then she thought again of what that made
her. Accepting money in exchange for what they shared. Because that’s all it
was. It was sex. There was no intimacy or depth to their relationship. He had
proven that when he let her roll out of his car, alone and grieving. So she
would never take his money. She would go back to school and she would finish
her degree. It was all arranged now, and, eventually, she would find something
in her profession that she could love. Eventually she would find something in
her life that she could love.

Jake Lassiter thought he knew about love—about how to
live—but he didn’t. To love someone meant to care for her, every day. It meant
letting her inside. Confiding in her. Allowing her to confide in him. She winced
as she thought of the fool she had been with him. The risks she had taken. She
could have gotten herself killed. Living fast and free and not caring about the
consequences of leaving your normal life and your family. That wasn’t her. That
wasn’t how she had chosen to live.

Jake had promised her an adventure so profound that it would
change the way she thought about herself. And it had. Here she was. A person
who abandoned her family. Who abandoned what she knew to be true and right and
good, whether med school, or her poor grandmother, in order to go and… what?
Have crazy, wild sex with someone who didn’t care enough about her to hold her
hand at a funeral?

At the end of that path was only herself. Alone. Jake hadn’t
even tried to call in days. He had moved on, evidently. And so would she.

***

Jake

Jake could feel it now, taking him over, a serpent coiling
through his bloodstream, its black tongue lashing at his bones, his joints, his
tendons; the venom radiating torment from the inside out.

Some days, he would ask Elizabeth for more. For more of
whatever she could give him. But he was no longer sure if that meant medication
to treat his condition or medication for his pain or medication to numb out
that which he knew was coming. It was like having thousands of tiny spiders,
living inside him, haunting the walls of his skin, of his soul, dying to steal
from him—his life, his abilities, his courage.

For now, he still had his strength. Hardly anything had
changed physically, and there was a time when this made him hopeful. But now,
these very abilities felt like a mocking. A way for the spiders to build him up
before scuttling through and robbing him of everything that made him who he
was.

When he couldn’t sleep at night, they would hiss to him and
scratch at him and he knew that once he unleashed them, once he let them out,
it wouldn’t be long and he would be quivering mass of weakness. Lying there,
dependent. Cameras flashing. His fans’ pitying sighs and sobs.

He couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t. He would ask
Elizabeth for more. And he would begin to formulate a plan.

From time to time, he would try to call Jess, but there was
never an answer—never a return text—and so he decided, eventually, that this
was just as well. He couldn’t bear for her to watch him crumble and fall. She
who was so vibrant and so alive. Such a perfect pocket of humanity. Her
kindness and her generosity and her intelligence. The lilt in her voice.

His stomach twisted as he recalled the tender curves of her
form. Her perfect breasts. Her long neck. The way she shuddered when he sucked
at her earlobe. The way her back arched toward him as he moved inside her. The
perfect rhythm of their union.

He smiled now and folded his hands across his chest. He had
been her first—her first lover—and that was something no one could ever take
away. She would remember him always, the way he once was.

Jake’s eyes fluttered closed. He was done grieving the life
that was. He was done being angry. He was done.

***

Jess

Evan Everhart couldn’t have been more kind or more
thoughtful. He had gone with Jess to speak to the administrators at her school
and had helped her to find a temporary living arrangement. He had even, from
time to time, helped her feel as though this could actually be the right course
of action for her.

But he hadn’t been invited to spread Grandma’s ashes. This
was just for family. They all rose early one morning. Andrew borrowed a
friend’s boat and they took it out on the lake, just after daybreak, the time
of day that Grandma loved best, and they each said a few words and then they
lowered the urn toward the water. With trembling fingers, Mom let go. Jess had
been expecting it to bob for a moment, to float out near the boat where they
could all watch it, but of course, it didn’t. As soon as Mom released it, the
urn disappeared from site. With an unsettling
blurp
, it vanished beneath
the murky water and that was that. Jess imagined it plummeting to the lake
bottom and she felt breathless and thirsty.  

And now they were home, all gathered in Mom and Dad’s living
room. Jess couldn’t shake that quivery feeling in the center of her. Her legs
felt weak, as though she might fall, as though her knees might give way and
send her tumbling to the ground.

Jess wanted nothing more than to be alone, yet she couldn’t
bring herself to descend into the basement, to her bed. It smelled of Grandma
there. Even after she’d been gone longer than a month, and so she was forced to
sit in the room with her mother and her father and her sister and her brother
and to listen to the bloated silence between their words. “Grandma would have
enjoyed the sunrise this morning,” Andrew said, and mom nodded and dad nodded.
“The temperature sure was nice. So warm for so early in the day.”

The house phone rang then and Jess startled. It was like a
call from the grave, for Grandma was the only person without a cell phone, and
so she was the only one who ever used the land line. This was the number in the
white pages and in the list at the senior center, and this was the way
Grandma’s friends could get in touch with her. The volume was cranked as loud
as it would go. It rang again and they all looked at one another, yet no one
made a move. Finally, Monica stood and went to the kitchen, but she was back
before she’d said a word and no one asked. The clock on the mantle ticked. Mom
uncrossed, then crossed her legs. Her pantyhose rustled.

Jess’s mother hadn’t been talking much to her, and Jess
understood. She’d failed her parents in so many ways. But she would pick up the
pieces now. She would do what they asked of her. She would get on with reality
and with the business of living her life—the real one. The one that required
commitment and responsibility and finishing what she started and choosing a
path and sticking with it, and… what had Evan said? Of serving and ministering
to people who were hurting, who needed help even on those days when she may
have fallen out of love with the idea of it all.

She would do her penance. If she thought about it this way,
it wasn’t so hard. How much penance would one need to do for causing the death
of her grandmother?

The phone jangled again, and Monica slapped at her thighs
this time as she stood to answer it. In a moment, she was back, shaking her
head.

And then it rang again, and Jess rose to her feet this time.
“It’s okay, Monica. You sit.”

“Yeah, clean up your own messes for once,” Monica snarled.

“What does that mean?” Jess whispered, but everyone had
turned toward them. Everyone was watching.

Monica waved her hand in the air. “Someone says she needs to
talk to you about Jake Lassiter, so I was trying to save you the trouble. I was
trying to hang up for you.”