Tell Me Something Real (14 page)

Before Marie was born, my parents took us on epic road trips up the coast, stopping at lodges in Big Sur and Mendocino, beaches where forests met water. Adrienne and I loved our old station wagon, especially when Dad let us sleep in the back, curled up in sleeping bags, snuggled together as they drove in the dark.

Adrienne grabs my blanket and we share her bed, exhausted, twins again.

“You know what this means, don't you?” she asks.

We'd set an extra seat at the table for death. We know he is coming, about to blow us apart. Grenades and smithereens. Blitzed. Obliterated. Flattened. Our lives reduced to combat metaphors.

“Yeah,” I say. “But I don't want to talk about it.” I want to ask Adrienne to get me one of Mom's pills, it doesn't matter which.

She sits up in bed. “Someone's home.”

I follow her down the hall, careful of my sore ankle. Caleb drops the skateboard. “Come on,” he says as he takes me to his room—my room—and shuts the door, breaking Barb's rule.

I hear Barb's voice in the background. “Caleb, we don't have a lot of time. I know this is hard, but you need to be quick.”

“Are you okay?” he asks, and when I nod, he kisses me, not just my mouth, but the side of my neck, and then my collarbone. A little rough. A little urgent.

“What?” I reach for his hand, pulling him to the bed. “What's the matter?” We sit side by side. I keep his hand in mine, holding it in my lap. I swear I can feel every nerve twitch in his body.

“I didn't know what to do when my mom told me you fell. You were gone by the time I was done with the infusion.”

“It all happened so fast. I'm just glad you're here.”

Just as I lean to rest my head on his shoulder, he pulls away. I stare at my empty hands and then at his face, at his watery eyes, puffy and swollen.

“What's going on?”

He curls and uncurls his fingers. He looks at the floor, not at me.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “Nothing's wrong with you, right? Your tests are normal?”

“Yeah, all of that's good. My mom is letting me stop Laetrile. I only have to go back for one last test.”

He still won't meet my eyes. I touch my collarbone, the exact spot of his kiss, and then I reach for his face. “Why don't you sound happy, then? What's wrong?”

He won't let me touch him. He stands and takes a step back.

Can the body be crushed from the inside out? An unbearable weight fills my chest, like my lungs are turning into concrete. Layers and layers of panic wash over me. My mind jumps to dozens of worst-case scenarios. He isn't dying or kidnapped by drug smugglers or detained at the border. He is here, in front of me, but completely out of reach.

I try to steady my breathing, exhaling the last twelve hours: the pain and the shot and Mom. If I empty myself of some of that fear, maybe I can create room for courage.

Tears pool in his eyes. “My mom just told me to get my stuff together. We're leaving now. She found a hotel near the beach. I have to pack.”

“What are you talking about?”

My heart beats hummingbird fast. I didn't hear him correctly. Mom and Caleb. One loss is staggering; two are unimaginable. How can this be happening?

“I don't understand,” I say. “Why would you leave?”

“I don't have a choice. I don't want to leave. I want to be with you, but my mom said that with how things are with your mom, we can't stay any longer.”

“But we need you,” I say. “You can't leave. Not now. What about my mom?”

I've known Caleb for almost two months and I've lived with him for six weeks. I can't imagine him gone.

His eyes remain on the carpet, like he is counting the fibers one by one, like they are stars.

“Caleb, look at me. Please.”

With his hair growing back, he looks younger, more his own age, and more helpless then I've ever seen him—even after an infusion, even after he'd collapsed on the beach. “My mom thinks something's up.”

“Yeah, she's dying—
that's
what's up.” I never expected I'd have to state the obvious to him.

“There's something else going on. My mom talked to that doctor. The one who took your mom's blood. She and your dad . . . things aren't adding up . . .”

“What?” I say. “Just stop. She's sick. Sicker than you. I don't know what the hell you think is going on, but you're wrong and Barb doesn't know what she's talking about.”

“It's not just my mom.”

“If things are
wrong
, if something's going on, why would you leave?”

I barely hear him when he speaks. “I don't have a choice.”

He takes a deep breath, exhaling through his nose, just like they teach you when they give you a shot. Things are supposed to hurt less when you push air from your body.

“I don't want to leave you,” he says, finally meeting my eyes, searching my face.

“Then don't leave,” I say. “Stay.”

It's what Adrienne would do. She wouldn't lose someone so important to her—not without a fight. “Let's go tell your mom. Just don't go.”

“I can't stay, Vanessa.” He turns away from me. “I need to pack.” He drags a box over to the dresser.

Ignoring the pain in my ankle, I shove the box aside.

I can barely hear him when he speaks. “My mom said this is a toxic environment. We have to get out of here.”

He might as well have kicked my legs out from under me. I stumble back to the bed, resisting the urge to burrow, to bury myself in anything dark and quiet.

I feel his body curl around my back like a shell on a snail, his arm sliding beneath my waist so he can hold me as tight as possible, so there isn't any space between us. His legs next to mine, his mouth on the back of my neck, his tears in my hair. “I'm sorry,” he breathes.

I barely choke out the words. “I can't believe you're saying these things.”

“I don't know what's happening, but it scares me. I've never seen my mom like this. Not even when my dad left.”

“So you want to go? You want to leave?” I hide my face
and will my body still, but I can't stop shaking. Pain pulsates from my ankle. I don't want to cry, but my chest fills with tightness. Tears slip down my cheeks and I slap them away.

His voice fills my ear. “I don't want you to be alone.”

“I have Adrienne. My dad. I'm not alone.” A lie.

He pulls me closer. “I meant I wish I could bring you with me.”

His hand moves up from my waist, stopping at the edge of my bra, feeling for the opening in my dress, the thin straps on my shoulder, tugging them off. I close my eyes when I feel his teeth on my bare skin, his hand under my bra. He holds me in that position, not moving a muscle, until the rhythm of our breath matches, a duet, violin and piano, alto and tenor.

“This isn't going to change anything,” he says. “We can still be together.”

“You don't know that,” I whisper.

He pulls away, an abandonment I can't bear. I look around the room, at his books on my nightstand and his discarded clothes on my floor. This isn't my room anymore. It's his now. Ours. “This changes everything,” I say. “I don't even know when I'm going to see you again.
If
I'm going to see you again.”

I shoot him a look, daring him to make a promise he can't keep. I'm crying and furious, and everything is happening all at once and way too fast. Ignoring the pain in my ankle, I stand with shaking legs and clenched fists.

He steps toward me and wipes the tears from my cheeks. “I'm not letting you go. I swear, Vanessa.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Do you even know the name of the hotel?”

His shaky breath warms my neck. “The Sandpiper Inn.”

I feel young and foolish next to him, like suddenly I am the sick one. He leans down to kiss me, but I turn my head away. He doesn't withdraw. Instead, he puts his arms around me until my face meets his.

A knock at the door. Barb. “Hurry up, Caleb.”

Four boxes. That's all it takes to erase him from my room.

I turn to Caleb, but his back is to me. He is changing his shirt, removing the one with a drawing of the Space Needle. I stare at his spine, visible through his pale skin, the perfect shape of each bone. I take a few painful steps and run my palm down the perfect line of vertebrae. He smells like the clinic, the lingering scent of rubbing alcohol, sterile and sick at the same time.

He hands me the shirt. “Here,” he says. “I was wearing this when I heard you play for the first time.”

He grabs a new shirt from a crate and moves to slip it over his head. I step forward to stop his hands and pull it down myself, running my hands over his skin, his belly, that line of muscle just below his hip.

He closes his eyes and lets me touch him. When he opens them, I see the tears stockpiled behind his lashes. We take a
step back from each other. I pull his Space Needle shirt over my dress.

“I need to do something,” I say.

When we come out into the dining room, I sweep the blankets from the top of the piano and expose the keys. Caleb puts his hands on my shoulders when I sit on the bench, pressing a little too hard, and I lean against him. This is what I want to remember, him standing with me while I play. I choose the one piece that makes me feel like I might survive all of this, the one that runs through my mind whenever I need to push the hurt away. Chopin's Nocturne No. 1 in F, “Andante Cantabile.” I consider the piece a beginning, not an ending. I focus on the sound of my fingers on the keys and Caleb's breathing.

When I reach the final note, I want to keep going, seamlessly transition to Nocturne No. 2 in E-flat, but I haven't mastered that one. Mrs. Albright had me move onto Schumann.

He pulls me up. My body tenses. “I'll call you every day,” he says.

I see him, truly see him, inside his heart and mind and very being. Everything that is Caleb, every quirk and passion and vulnerability.
Him.
I can survive with him. Without him, there is only doubt. No one and nothing, not even the piano, can cushion this loss.

He stares into my face, holds both of my hands, and leans close. “I have a post-chemo life because of you.”

Limping, I lead him down the hall, through the front door
to his car, clinging to him as he climbs into the passenger seat.

Barb looks right at me and I see that she, too, is crying.

Anger swells in my chest. I borrow Adrienne's profanity. “I don't know how the hell you can do this to us.”

Despite my fury, I want to hurl myself into the Suburban. I can't imagine living without them. In that moment, I despise Barb, loathe her very existence, but would donate a kidney, would swallow nails, for her to unpack the car and stay.

“Oh, dear one.” She blows her nose. She cries that hard. “I would stay if it was possible. Truly.” Her eyes hold mine and I know she means it. She looks like she has something else to say. She opens her mouth but changes her mind and rubs her temples like I've seen her do when she waits for Caleb's test results. “I'm so sorry, Vanessa. If you don't have anyone, call me,” Barb says. “I'll do what I can.”

“I need you now,” I say.

“I wish things could be different. I've come to love you like my own. Please remember that.”

Caleb grabs my hand, clutching tightly, only letting go when Barb turns the ignition. I watch as she reverses down the driveway. I endure the pain in my ankle and stand in the same spot long after their taillights disappear.

“Come inside,” Adrienne says.

Caleb's skateboard rests on my bed. I pick it up and notice he wrote a note on the underside. Directly on the wood with a thick marker, he tells me to practice riding it. Then it will be just him, the board, and me.

I hold it to my chest until the wheels form creases in my skin. I squeeze tighter, absorbing the physical pain, hoping for bruises, a lasting mark, more than the memory of his touch.

Even when I fall asleep, I don't let go.

I wake bruised: purple and blue and a hint of green darkening my chest, ankle, and foot. Such minor pain, a nuisance, compared to the cannonball that blew right through my middle.

When I open my eyes, I don't mistake it for a cruel dream.

He is gone.

His skateboard fell to the floor, resting on its side as though sleeping, as though Caleb somehow inhabited it, napping beside me. My hand flies to my bra, to the spot he touched just hours ago.

The streetlight illuminates the window. It could be dinnertime, midnight, or four o'clock in the morning.

The phone rings.

He promised to call every day. I imagine him sitting on the edge of a bed covered with an ocean-blue comforter and cheesy hotel beach art on the walls.

I jump off the mattress, completely forgetting about my injury, cringing in pain.
Ring ring
. As fast as possible, I hobble into the living room, only pausing to pick up a piece of paper covered in Adrienne's handwriting. Something about getting pizza.
Ring ring
.