For Better, for Worse, Forever (16 page)

One evening, when her parents were with her in the sickroom, she said, “I don’t know how much longer I can stay awake.”

“Don’t try,” her father said, easing onto the bed and touching her cheek. “You just sleep. Your mom and I’ll be right here.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Her mother and father glanced at each other questioningly. April tried again to express what she wanted to say. “I know I won’t be waking up one of these times.”

Her father’s hand tightened on hers, and her mother shook her head. “Don’t say such things. You’ve got plenty of time.”

“No,” April said. “No, I don’t.”

Neither one of them contradicted her.

“I want you to know,” April said, every word a struggle, “that you’re the best parents in the world. And I’m lucky to have had you for mine.”

“And you’re the best daughter,” her father said, smoothing her thick red hair.

“We’ve been the lucky ones,” her mother added.

“Would you rather have had a son?”

Her father drew back, a look of disdain on his face. “Are you joking? I always wanted a girl. From the time your mother and I were first married, I told her I wanted to be surrounded by beautiful women.” He glanced at his wife. “Isn’t that right, Janice? Didn’t I always tell you I wanted a girl?”

“It’s the truth,” April’s mother said. “Scout’s honor.”

“That’s nice.” April didn’t know why she’d asked such a dumb question, but she appreciated their answer. “I wanted a boy,” she said. “Even though Mark couldn’t have children, I still would have wanted a son.”

“You’ve given us all we ever wanted,” her mother said. “Just not for long enough.”

It was breaking April’s heart to see her parents so sad. She asked, “Do you know, some of the best times I ever had were when I was growing up and we’d all go out to eat at those fancy restaurants. I felt so grown up
sitting at the table with you both. I had my own wineglass filled with ginger ale. And you let me order peanut butter and jelly. It wasn’t ever on the menu, but you made them fix it for me.”

“The first time we took you out to dinner, you were two years old.” Her father smiled, remembering. “You knocked over a water glass, then crawled beneath the table and played in the puddle.”

Her mother shook her head in dismay. “I was embarrassed, but then I got the giggles and couldn’t stop laughing. The maître d’ looked as if he would have a heart attack. The very idea of our bringing a child into such a fancy place almost made him faint.”

Seeing them smile over the shared memory made April feel good. They’d been sad for so long on her account. She didn’t want them sad. “I guess we didn’t go back there to eat again.”

Her father snorted. “They acted as if a child were a parasite instead of a pleasure. No, I would never have taken you back to such a place.”

Her mother patted April’s arm. “We
waited until you were a bit more mature before we ventured into four-star dining again with you, however.”

“I remember my birthday party when I was six. You took me to some restaurant that had a dance floor and one of those balls that spun overhead and sparkled all over us.” She looked at her father. “You danced with me.” She’d stood on his shoes and he’d twirled her around the dance floor while a band played a song she could still hear inside her head and speckles of light spilled across them.

“Well, I couldn’t very well step on your toes,” he said. “I would have squished them.”

“We’ll never dance on my wedding day.” Her smile faded. “I didn’t mean to say that. I—I don’t want you to feel bad.”

Her mother turned her head aside. Her father rubbed his thumb across April’s knuckles, over and over, as if touching her was something he couldn’t get enough of. “If I could take your place now, baby, I would.”

“No … that’s not right. You need to stay with Mother. It’s a horrible thing to be left alone.” April brightened. “And don’t you worry about me. Mark’s in heaven waiting
for me. Before he died, he told me he’d be waiting and watching for me to come to him. So, you see, I won’t be alone. I have you and Mom on this side of life, and Mark on the other side. I’ll be fine, Daddy. Really, I’ll be fine.”

“He’d better take good care of you. If not, he’ll answer to me when I get there.” Her father’s voice was barely a whisper.

April’s eyelids felt heavy, and concentrating was becoming more difficult. But she felt good that she had been able to tell her parents some of the things that were in her heart. To her mother, she said, “You remember about the wedding dress, don’t you?”

“Yes. It belongs to Kelli.”

April closed her eyes. The conversation had exhausted her, and sleepiness was beginning to shut down her ability to think and talk. “When Brandon comes, make sure he has some new movies to watch. He’s seen the ones next to the TV set already.”

“I’ll take care of it,” her father said.

His voice sounded as if it were coming through a long tunnel. “I think I’ll take a little nap now,” she said. She felt her mother kiss her cheek. “Is the moon out tonight?”

“Half a moon,” her father said.

“Is it pretty on the water?”

“Beautiful.”

April remembered parasailing, the sensation of flying, of looking down and seeing the world from a bird’s-eye view. “Will you open my window? If I wake up late tonight, I want to see the moonlight. The moonbeams come into my room late at night, you know. They make a path on the water and on my carpet, and across my bed. Sometimes … I feel as if I could … get up … and walk straight up the path. Into heaven. Mommy, Daddy, I love you.”

She felt her mother kiss her cheek as she tumbled into sleep.

T
he times when April was awake and aware were fewer and farther between. Every time she was asleep, Brandon would wonder if this might be the time she’d slip into a coma and not wake up. One afternoon her eyes fluttered open and she looked around the room as if she didn’t recognize it. Anxiously Brandon leaned over her. “April? You okay? It’s me.”

Her gaze slowly locked onto his face. She blinked. “Brandon.” Her smile was crooked, as if she couldn’t control one side of her face. “How long have you been here?”

“Not long,” he lied.

“Did I fall asleep? Sorry … rude of me.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Is it raining?”

“A storm moved in about ten minutes ago.” He moved aside so that she could see through the window facing the sea. Rain splattered the glass, and the sea was a froth of churning foam. “But you know how the weather is in the Caribbean. The sun will be out again in no time.”

“That’s good. I love the sun.”

She didn’t say anything else for such a long time that he thought she’d fallen back to sleep, but she finally said, “I want to tell you something.”

“Tell me.”

She held out her hand, and he took hold of it. Her skin felt cool and dry. “Did you know that I love you?”

His heart skipped.

“It’s true. But
shhh
 … don’t tell Mark. It would make him sad.” She was talking as if Mark were alive in the room with them. Brandon felt a prickly sensation up his spine. Mark was waiting for her. She would cross over to him and he would have her forever. Would April meet Brandon’s mother? Was there a place in heaven for those who had
shed life like a piece of clothing? “If you see my mother—”

“I’ll tell her you love her. And that you forgive her.”

Tears burned and brimmed and stung his eyes. “Yes … I forgive her,” Brandon said, hardly trusting his voice. “I love you, April.”

“Aren’t I lucky? I’ve been twice loved. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t love two people with all your heart.” She turned her head so that she could see Mark’s photograph on the bedside table. “Mark, this is Brandon. And I love him.” She turned her eyes back to Brandon. “Now, you go find someone else to love too. Please.”

“I don’t want—”

“
Shhh
. We don’t always get what we want.” She drifted away from him, back into her blanket of fog, to the world of semiconsciousness where he could not follow.

Later he returned to the living room. April’s mother was sitting on the sofa, looking out at the sea and the driving rain sweeping past the plate glass window in sheets. The world looked gray and soggy; even the palm fronds battered by the whipping wind were a dull green. She turned when she heard him,
and her eyes were as colorless as the rain, as dull as the leaden clouds. She asked, “Is she sleeping?”

“Yes. She fell asleep a while ago. But I didn’t want to leave her.”

“I know what you mean.”

He lowered himself to the love seat that butted up against one arm of the sofa, feeling totally helpless, unable to find words to comfort either April’s mother or himself.

“I still can’t believe she’s dying,” April’s mother said. “It makes no sense to me. Parents aren’t supposed to outlive their children.” He winced. She paled. “Oh, Brandon, I’m sorry. That was so insensitive of me.”

“But it’s true. Even if a parent chooses to die. It’s more natural than for the child to die first.” He stared out at the driving rain, at the whitecaps skidding across the surface of the sea in the distance. “Did you know that if you dive down deep under the ocean, you can’t even tell if there’s a storm on the top side? It’s quiet in the deep. And cold. When I saw my mother in the casket, I touched her. She was ice-cold. All the warmth had leaked out of her, the way sand oozes through your
fingers underwater. I can’t stand to think of April that way.” His voice grew softer and faded.

“I can’t stand it either. When she was five, when they first discovered her tumor, I used to stand beside her hospital bed and hold on to her even while she slept. I guess I thought that as long as I held on, death couldn’t come for her. Or that if it did, it would have to bump me out of the way and I could grab it, throttle it, throw it out of her room. But death isn’t something that comes from the outside. I think it lives in all of us and it lies in wait, like a lion crouching near its prey. Then, when our guard is down, our body defenseless because of disease or trauma or inconsolable bad feelings like your mother’s, death comes out and stakes its claim.”

Brandon told himself that if she was correct, nothing could drive death out. It had to leave on its own accord. And when it did leave, it took life with it and left behind body shells, just as sea creatures vacated outgrown shells, leaving the old ones abandoned on the ocean floor. “Do you know that I think April is the prettiest girl I ever saw? I’ll never forget
the color of her hair. Where’d she get it from? Neither you nor her father has red hair.”

Janice smiled. “My great-grandmother came over from England and married a New Yorker. She was renowned for her beauty. And her hair of red gold.” Her smile faded. “Corrine—that was her name—lost three babies. One to diphtheria. One to pneumonia. One to measles. Diseases that we banish now with injections and antibiotics. I wonder if they’ll ever have an inoculation against cancer? Against death?”

Or against a person wanting to die?
he wondered. “It must have been hard to bury so many babies,” he said, thinking of April’s great-great-grandmother.

“Nothing can be harder than burying your children,” Janice said.

“Burying a mother is pretty hard too.”

“That’s true. My mother died when I was thirty-five, my father when I was forty, and it was difficult to lose them. I’m so sorry you had to go through that so young.”

He stood and walked over to the glass door. The storm had stopped, but the sun
had not yet emerged and the world looked flat and dull. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts and rocked back on his heels. “I still wonder why,” he said, barely aware that he’d even spoken. “Her note said life hurt too much … as if that’s a reason. I see April and I know how much she wants to live. It makes no sense to me that someone like my mother wouldn’t want to live. You know?”

“It doesn’t make any sense to me either,” Janice told him.

He looked down and blinked against moisture that had filled his eyes, embarrassed at having said so much to April’s mother concerning his most private feelings. “Sorry. I don’t mean to talk so much.”