Anywhere With You (9 page)

“Maybe I’m just crazy. Is that what you want to say? Go ahead, say it. Everyone else does.”

He exhaled loudly. “You’re not crazy, Amelie.”

“Are you sure about that? I take the same medication that crazy people take…”

He deadpanned. “You are not crazy. You’re just a little unbalanced.”

I threw up my hands. “Well, gee, Jack… when you put it like that, it makes me think that maybe you’re right.”

“I am right.”

“Whatever.”

“Speaking of… what’s going on with your medication? What are you on and why were you taking so much? You’ve never really answered my questions…”

“It’s complicated,” I answered, not wanting to go into it. “But I have to get back to Boston.”

I figured he was going to press me further—that he was going to demand answers. I figured that in typical Jack fashion, that he was going to try to fix it.

Only, instead, he said the most unexpected thing. He sighed and then he looked away. “I know,” he told me. “That’s why I went to Jane’s.”

Jack

Love is a gamble.

I retreated to my room, closed the door and shut Amelie out. I showered and wrapped a towel around my waist because actually getting redressed felt like too much work. Then I made my way over to the chair by the window, which overlooked downtown, facing west. I sat back in it, and I ran my fingers through my still damp hair and then over my face. It was dusk on a beautiful summer day and as I looked out over the city, I considered how many times I’d sat in this very position and thought about the very woman who is now sitting in my living room.

Suddenly, everything seemed so close and yet so very far away. I stayed that way for a long while, and I thought about Jane and what going to her house meant. I wished that I could take it back although I knew I couldn’t. Jane is kind. She is a good woman and a decent lover—but she isn’t and never would be enough. Half of me wanted to be ok with this, always. To bide my time, to not want anything more, to be glad that she didn’t ask for it—but there was the other half who wanted to settle for nothing less than exceptional. There was the part of me that understood what my father would have said had he still been here and that was you can’t live an exceptional life by settling for anything less. As I watched the daylight fade, I suddenly began to wonder what my mother would’ve said. And then I remembered the letters.

I went to the closet where I’d stashed the box I had brought over from my father’s house. I opened it carefully and pulled an envelope out. I ran it through my fingers, but something told me it wasn’t the right one so I placed it back. I did the same with another, and then another. The fourth letter I flipped over and realized that it was numbered on the back in small print. I found it odd that I hadn’t noticed this before, but this particular number was smudged, and the blotted ink caught my eye. Also, looking back, I realized the letters at least up until that point, and maybe even after, felt foreign to me. They felt like touching the ghost of a person that I wasn’t sure I was ready to remember. I never looked at them eagerly. Instead, I considered them like one might consider a scab. Picking it is never a good idea. Picking at it only leads to scars. It would be a long time before I realized that scars are also a part of the healing process and that they are ok. Necessary, even. It would take seeing someone else’s to finally hammer that home. I swallowed, returned to my chair, and opened up the letter numbered eighty-nine.

Dear Jack,

Today is your first day of kindergarten. I am up early to make your lunch and to make all of the other necessary preparations—but I thought I’d take a quick moment to write to you.

When your first and only child starts school—it is a big deal. I don’t know how other mothers feel, but for me, this will be a difficult day. Maybe other mothers have other children at home—other children yet to have their first days of kindergarten. But I never will. The moment they found the cancer when you were just eight months old, I knew that you would be my one and only. I felt it in my bones even if I hadn’t yet learned to believe it. That’s the thing about the big truths in life, Jack. If you’re paying attention, you’ll almost always feel them before you’re ready to see them.

It is hard to imagine that five years have passed since you came into our lives. In some ways, it’s hard to imagine ever having lived this life without you. Yet, in others, it seems your father and I were just exiting that hospital parking lot, looking at each other and asking ‘what now?’

Well, our ‘what now’ is that you will walk into that school and take your seat at the desk labeled with your name, and you will act as though you were never supposed to do anything else. You are ready while I am not. But this is your nature. You were born ready. No matter what challenge has ever come your way I have watched you excel at feeling out the next right thing to do. You don’t ask ‘what now.’ You’re a doer. A feeler. You always have been. And I hope you always will be.

So, with that I will let you go this morning with greater ease than I’d like. I will watch as your little hand slips out of mine, long before I am ready, and long before we get to the place where it’s time to say goodbye. You know what you are supposed to do. And if ever in life you find yourself questioning ‘what now’ or, more importantly, what the right thing is—well, that’s how you know it’s time to let go and feel your way through.

Love you always,

Mom

Several letters later, I climbed into bed. I’d wanted to go and speak to Amelie and make things right again—but I didn’t have the energy to actually force myself to do it. More importantly, I wasn’t sure what to say—or if anything good would come from a conversation between us at this point. In part, it killed me that I was being such a coward. It wasn’t my style, and yet here I was. Now, I just wanted sleep. It would take me a long time to understand that sometimes the best way to win a fight is not to fight at all. This was just the first time of many that I’d try this theory on for size.

Sometime between falling asleep and dawn, I heard the creak of my bedroom door, the sound it made only when it was being opened slowly and cautiously. I listened as the familiar footsteps made their way to my bed. A part of me expected that she’d come, which was in large part what made me ok with not going to her. She pulled back the covers and climbed into bed. I felt the coolness of her body as she scooted closer to mine, all but forcing me to spoon her.

“What time is it?” I asked. She tensed and I realized she hadn’t known I was awake.

“After three,” she whispered into the dark.

She reached for my hand and pulled it over her body. Then, as she attempted to scoot backward into my chest as though there’d been any room left between us, she said softly, “Jack? There’s something I need to ask you….”

Amelie hadn’t given me time to brace for impact. In fact, she’d hardly paused at all. The words spilled out as though she’d been holding them in and just couldn’t contain the question any longer.

“Do you think I should marry him?” she asked. The question hung between us, in the darkness, quickly filling the room, and breaking my heart.

“I don’t know,” I eventually told her. It was the best I could do.

“”No,” she said quietly, “I hadn’t figured you would.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“I’d hoped you might.”

I squeezed her just a little and sighed. “Can we talk about it the morning? I’m really tired.”

She squeezed back. “My flight leaves at ten.”

I wrapped my arms around her tighter. And I left it at that. There would be plenty of time for letting go later.

The morning light poured in although I had already been awake for hours. My arm had fallen asleep underneath the weight of Amelie, but she looked so peaceful, I hadn’t wanted to wake her by moving it. I laid that way for a while watching her expression as she slept. At some point, she stirred awake. I bit her earlobe. “What time is it?” she asked, breathing heavily.

“Early.”

“Did I miss my flight?”

“No,” I assured her.

“That’s too bad,” she said and she flipped over, buried her head in my chest, and fell back asleep.

“If you don’t want to go, then why are you going?” I asked as we pulled into the airport parking lot. I’d purposely waited as long as possible to ask in order to see if she might bring it up. I wasn’t going to push her to stay. It took forever for me to find an open spot and about as long for her to answer. As I turned off the ignition, she finally did. She looked at me incredulously. “I have a job.”

“I have one, too,” I assured her.

“You don’t have a boss, Jack.”

“Sure I do. They’re called investors.”

She shot me a look that conveyed annoyance and then she shook her head. “It’s not the same.”

“You can take pictures from anywhere. Why not here?”

“Well, for starters, the magazine I’m employed by is based out of Boston. I have a home there—and a life—”

“I’m not asking for forever. Just a little longer...” And there it was. Even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do it. She’d forced my hand. I asked her to stay.

Amelie exhaled and focused her attention out the passenger window. “I’m just not in a place where I can walk away from it all.”

“I’m not asking for you to walk away.”

She turned then. “What are you asking for?”

I swallowed. “I don’t know. Just a little more time.”

“I do love him, Jack.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Her face fell. “Then why are you asking me to stay? Especially, when I’m the one who stands to lose the most?”

“If you want to get on that plane, then by all means go. But—if you’re doing it because you think you have to—then I think you’re making a mistake.”

She sighed then, and I knew the sound. It was a sigh of defeat, mixed with annoyance at my being right.

Amelie stared out the window and neither of us spoke for several minutes until suddenly, I had a brilliant idea.

“What if I drove you back?”

She glared at me, her mouth hanging open, and I recognized it instantly. She liked my idea. Although she wasn’t ready to admit it.

“We can take the long route—a detour.”

“I have to be in Hawaii in fifteen days,” she exclaimed as she pursed her lips.

“So we’ll take fourteen. Or thirteen. Whatever you need.”

“But—”

“Ah, come on. A road trip… Think about it. It’ll be like old times…”

She cocked her head. “Where will we go?”

“Anywhere. Who cares?”

“Well, for one, my boss will.”

“Make it about work.” I could see her thinking, her mind working hard at fitting the pieces together. But Amelie was too pure to ever be as good a liar as I was. So I decided to just hand it to her. “Tell him we’re going to spread my dad’s ashes and that you’re going to do a piece on the best places across the US to do that sort of thing.”

She frowned. “Your dad was buried. In the ground.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But what’s-his-name doesn’t know that.”

She slapped my arm. “You’re crazy, Jack Harrison.”

“There are conditions, though…” I told her as I raised a brow. I said this only after I knew she was in.