The Last Exhale (11 page)

“What are you doing here?” a voice I hadn't heard in a while demands.

I turn around, don't see her. A man with blond hair and a bag on his shoulder stands next to a dehydrated-looking woman with
barely any hair. I stare into her face, blink three times as if my vision has suddenly disappeared. “Rene?”

“You shouldn't be here.”

The guy comes over to my wife and touches her elbow softly. “Let's go inside.”

“And who are you?” I try hard to keep my composure because nothing feels right about this moment, and everything seems to be wrong with my wife.

She looks up at him and gestures toward the house. “Can you give us a minute?”

I don't wait for him to be out of earshot before I say, “You're taking things too far, Rene.”

She leans on the car, braces for a conversation she wasn't prepared to have tonight.

“What's going on here? How can you sell our house?”

“You don't live here anymore. Why shouldn't I?”

“You can't sell the house without my signature.”

“It's in my name. And I can do whatever I want with it.”

Now it's my turn to use the car to hold me up. She's right. She had the house transferred into her maiden name a few months before we got married after her parents died in a train crash. They were scared to fly because they didn't want to crash. Stayed on the ground and died the same way.

Rene is so strong. Endured losing both parents, then our son. Now the house. She only kept it because her parents put their hard-earned money into it and we had plans of filling it up with tons of kids. Maybe letting the house go is her way of finally letting her parents and our son go. All of our dreams. Now I'm wondering if it's her way of letting me go as well.

She's staring at me. I can feel it, so I turn to look at her. For a
moment, we just stare into each other's eyes, eyes flooding in memories. She rubs her hand over her thinning hair. I want to ask what happened to all her curls, but now's not the time. With the same hand she used to rub over her hair, she reaches for my hand. Curves her pinkie finger around mine; something she started after the first time we made love. “I never stopped loving you,” she reveals, words I've been dying inside to hear from her lips again.

I squeeze her pinkie tight. “Then what are we doing here? What's this all about?” I point to the sign posted in our front yard. “You know I love you, Rene. Whatever it is, we can work this out.”

She shakes her head. “This is how it has to be. Let's just live with the memories of how it used to be, Brandon. The love we've shared, let that be enough. This is the best thing for us. I promise you.”

We're not having another read-between-the-lines conversation tonight. “How is this the best thing for us? Obviously, it's tearing you up more than you want to admit.” I let her finger go. “Are you even eating?”

“It's too complicated.”

“I've got a degree in figuring problems out. Give me what you've got.”

Bored.

I think about Sydney and her failing marriage. Ask Rene, “Am I boring to you?”

A light in one of the bedrooms comes on. Both of us look up at it.

Neither of us say anything.

Both of us on opposite ends of the rope. I'm tugging to keep what we have, work on it, make it what it used to be. She's tugging her end to let it all go, hold on only to the memories. Start what used to be with someone new.

I ask, “Does he make you happy?”

Rene dabs at the corners of her eyes. “There used to be a lot of joy in there, a lot of life. We were so happy. I don't think we could ever get back to that place.” Her eyes reveal tears on the verge of running a marathon down her face.

“Maybe not, but we can sure try.” I leave her side to go back to my car. With the envelope in hand, I stand back by her side. I tell her, “These last few years haven't been easy, Rene. And I came to a point of calling it quits.” I pull the contents out of the envelope. Let that truth stop time. “I'll tear these into a million pieces. All you have to do is say you want to give us another shot.”

The new man in my wife's life walks out of our house, interrupts our moment. He beckons her attention, doesn't acknowledge me. She waves a hand in his direction. Then turns to me. “You're not the man you once were. I'll go to my grave knowing I'm responsible for that.”

“What does that mean?”

She fumbles through her purse, pulls out a pen. Takes the papers from my hand, sets them on the hood of the car. Flips to the pages with a “sign here” arrow pointing to defendant. She scribbles her name, shoves the papers back at me. So much guilt rides her eyes when she looks up at me. “I have cancer. I'll probably be dead before the ink dries.” She pushes herself off the car and runs as best she can toward the house.

F
or two days, I've been in the same spot on my couch with signed divorce papers in my lap. Haven't gone to work. Haven't brushed my teeth or taken a shower. Don't know when I last ate. None of that matters now anyway.

Boomboomboomboomboom.

Cancer.

My wife's ending our marriage because she has cancer.

Boomboomboomboomboom.

My head throbs. Feels like whoever is knocking on my front door is in my head knocking my thoughts around like a game of cricket. I don't want to answer it. Not in the mood for company, but the knocker is relentless.

When I get up from the couch, I almost hit the ground. Weakness is in my knees. Head feels loaded and light at the same time. Maybe I
should
eat.

“Took you long enough,” my brother says when I let him in.

“Your mouth is the last thing I need right now, Drew.”

He sticks his nose in the air, takes rapid inhales. “What. Is. That. Smell?”

“Your gums.” I plop back down on the couch. Spot so warm you'd think it was on fire.

“Funny.” He lifts the lid to the pizza box sitting on the coffee table. “Man, this thing looks like it was made by Fred Flintstone.”

The pizza went untouched. Sausage so dried and hard you'd think they were pebbles stuck in sheetrock. An unopened Budweiser sits next to it.

Andrew closes the pizza box and picks up my cell phone. “No wonder you've been missing calls.”

I grab my phone from him, stuff it between the seat cushion. “You got me now. What's up?”

He looks at me for the first time since walking through the door. “I should be asking you. Everything all right?”

I nod.

He shakes his head. “Now you know I'm the last person you can lie to.”

If only he knew. I slide the papers over to the edge of the table.

My brother picks them up, flips through the pages, sees Rene's signature. He sits on the couch with a hard thud, makes me bounce. “Wasn't expecting that.”

I take them from his hand, rip the pages in half. “Wasn't expecting that either.”

He looks at the ripped pages. “So, what are you going to do? Keep fighting? Is it even worth it anymore?”

I tell him what she told me. Tell him, “Man, don't know what I'm going to do at this point. Cancer changes everything.”

Both of us lean back on the couch, press our heads into the cushion. Stare up at the ceiling.

First I lost my son, then I lost my wife. Now I'm really losing my wife. All this time, I've been walking around like I was the victim. Had my head held low because my wife wasn't giving me the attention a husband deserves. I've been selfish. My wife's been dying in front of me, but my ego blinded me from the truth. What kind of husband have I been?

The vibration from Andrew's pocket steals the silence away from this room.

“Negative.”

“What's that?”

He stuffs the phone back in his pocket. “Mel's not pregnant.”

“Sorry to hear that, man. I know how much you wanted to be a father by now.”

“Yeah. But I'm beginning to think it's just not in the cards for us. I mean, it's been the same story every month now for ten, eleven years. It's draining.”

“Literally,” I add.

That gets us both to smile.

Twins. Born minutes apart, both of our marriages falling apart.

“That too, but emotionally, I can't take anymore. Don't know how she keeps wanting to try.”

“How could she not want to? That's the first expectation you put on her.”

He sighs. “And that's why I keep giving in. Feel like I'm responsible for making her obsessed with making me a daddy.”

I dig my phone out from the cushion. Plug it up to the wall charger by the TV. It's so dead it won't even cut on after being attached to its life source. I'm in the room with my life source, but both of us are zapped of energy.

In the kitchen, I open all the cabinets in search of something edible. Come up short. Nothing but a jar of peanut butter. That makes me think of Sydney. I can see her cheeks all sunken in trying to sip on a smoothie thicker than the thickest contestant on
The Biggest Loser
's thighs. I grab two cold bottles of beer from the fridge. Toss one to my brother back in the living room.

Andrew uses one of the napkins next to the pizza box to wrap
around the bottle cap. Pops it, takes a long gulp. “If you could change anything about your life, what would it be?”

I pop the top on my beer, down a mouthful of carbs. “Probably would've pursued a career in photography.”

He falls back into the couch. “Man, I thought you'd say something totally different. Why a career change, and photography at that?”

“And all these years I thought you knew me, Bro.”

“Obviously, I don't know everything.”

“You remember I took that photography class back in high school?”

He says, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. We'd eat dinner late sometimes because Dad would have to go searching the neighborhood for you and that doggone camera. You'd be out there taking pictures all night if Mama and Daddy would've let you.”

I toss the memory back and forth in my mind. That camera was the first time I felt needed and appreciated. It was like the camera needed me to fulfill its purpose. Without me, it was pretty useless. I'd take that thing with me everywhere, using it to capture anything the lens found interesting. The camera was my security until I discovered love. Until I discovered Rene. “I
was
serious about it,” I say.

“That you were. I remember you went days without talking when Daddy hid your camera after the semester ended.”

“Yep. He told me I needed to focus on math. Said pictures wouldn't make a woman happy.”

“That's exactly what he'd say.
‘Keeping food on the table makes a happy wife.'
He used to kill me with that,” Andrew says.

“And look where that got us.” I gulp back more beer. “What about you? What would you change?”

He rolls the bottle back and forth between his hands. Thinks about his answer to the question he asked of me. “Check this out. I'd actually change my career as well.”

“No, not you.”

My brother looks at me as if he's looking at himself in the mirror. “No lie. Being around kids forty hours a week is the main reason why I wanted to be a father. Kids make life worth living.”

I raise my beer in the air. “Don't I know it.”

“I know you do, brother. I know you do.”

I ask him what he asked me a little while ago. “So, what are you going to do?”

“I put a lot of pressure on Mel up front. I pretty much made her a mother before I even took her out on our first date. That wasn't fair. Now she's putting pressure on me to fulfill my requirements of her. We've both grown lost in the midst of all of this. It's time for us to have a heart-to-heart about it. We'll see where it leads. One thing's for sure, it'll either make us or break us.”

“That's life. Always something to make or break you.”

And I've just about reached my breaking point.

What is it about men?

They put the bait on the hook, stick it in the water, wait for you to bite, reel you in only to take you off the line and toss you back in the water.

That's how Brandon's made me feel.

I've been to Pick Your Fit plus Riverpoint with no running partner in sight. He's the one who asked me to train him, and now he doesn't even want to show up. He's got me sacrificing sleep in the mornings and time with the kids in the evenings to be stood up. Not that I'm really complaining there, but still, it's inconsiderate. Ever since the day at his place, when he kissed my temples, things haven't been the same. Maybe my confession scared him away.

Eric was the same way when we first started dating. A mutual friend introduced us. Took a few phone calls, texts, and emails before we could get our schedules together. He had been on the police force for a few years and was in the process of trying to get in with a special unit's division. I was just getting started in real estate. Neither of us had much free time to play around with. He was charming in our communication. Had me interested. Told me he wasn't dating anyone else, he was a one-woman kind of guy. I was rather smitten before meeting him. It was one of those moments where you just fall for someone's words. When we met,
though, the chemistry was lacking. I found myself more interested in him behind the scene than face to face. But I kept dating him. Really wanted to give him a shot since he was different from the men I was used to dating. I got used to him, overlooked his quirks. The moment I started to feel a little something, he told me he was interested in another woman and that he wanted to date us both.

I was taken aback by his honesty. I dodged his bait for months. When I finally decided to go for it, he reeled the hook in to cast back out in another direction. I should've stayed right where I was instead of swimming to the other end of the pond in search of another chance at what he had to offer. Every time I tried to get more involved with him, it was like his line was pulled more from another direction. I began to doubt myself, felt insecurity creeping in. Made me feel like I had to find ways to prove to him I was worth dating exclusively. I needed to make him know I was a good catch.