In This Life (21 page)

“Yes, Uncle Ralph,” I answered. I walked side by side with him until we reached the door.

He placed his arms around me before letting go and hobbling gingerly towards the elevator bank.

“ANNA?” I CALLED
out as I pushed open the front door of her apartment. It was five in the afternoon by the time I’d made it to her place. Even if I had her phone number, I wasn’t stupid enough to think she would take my call.

I got it. She was angry, maybe even a bit confused. That made the two us.

I took the chance and stopped over directly after completing my shift at the homeless shelter. The door to her apartment was unlocked, and its slight creaking was the only sound that I heard as I stepped into her place and was met with total darkness. I stretched out my arm, sliding it against the wall until I hit the light switch. She was fast asleep on the couch, bundled up in a blue and white blanket, facing away from me. All I could see were her hair and her feet. I set the paper bag in my hand on the floor and laid my coat on top of it.

“Anna?” I whispered quietly as I tiptoed over to where she rested. I knelt down in the tiny space between the couch and coffee table. A cup of something on the table was surrounded by scattered pieces of Kleenex.

“Go away,” she said with her head still buried inside the blanket.

I leaned back and sat on my heels without saying a word. I could stay here forever if it meant having her this close to me all the time.

“Why are you still here? I said, go away,” she repeated.

“I’m not going anywhere.” I leaned my back on the couch and stretched out my legs on the floor. I figured it was safe to turn around once I felt her move behind me. She sat up reluctantly. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail, her face resplendent with not a single trace of make up on it. Her skin was the pale golden sand and the freckles on her nose were the little tiny shells that lined up along the shore. She reminded me of Grace Kelly, regal with fine features, milky white skin, and beautiful wide eyes.

“He left today,” she said sadly. “He said goodbye and left.”

“What about your brother?” I asked. “Is he here?”

She shook her head. “No, he went back to the dorm for a couple of days. He’ll be back next week,” she answered. Her face was sad, despondent, almost.

I looked around and scrutinized the telling little bits of her life sprinkled around the room. Among the mismatched furniture, there were picture frames filled with smiling faces. Her father and brother. A spotted English bulldog. She and Dante in their graduation gowns. Another picture of her and a blond girl her age holding champagne glasses and wearing skimpy black dresses. And then a picture of the woman in my dream. There was a stethoscope on the kitchen table alongside a pile of large, heavy textbooks. Like all other rentals, there was nothing unique about this place. It was a far cry from the digs she shared with Dante.

She remained cloaked in the blanket draped like a shawl over her shoulders. I got up and sat next to her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You know what’s wrong,” she grumbled under her breath. “He’s gone. I still can’t believe how easy it was for him to leave!” Her voice broke, and I knew she was on the verge of tears again.

“Blue. It wasn’t easy for him. And he’ll be back.”

“Well, I’m not going to wait for him,” she said as she crossed her legs underneath the blanket.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m going to fly to Germany to be with him once I can get time off from work,” she said decisively. She settled her legs back on the floor and stood up, still wrapped in the blanket. I could see that she was wearing a red long-sleeved t-shirt and red and black checkered pajama pants. My mind started to wander before going into cruise control. I was getting excited just being in the same room as her.

“Okay,” I acceded. I wasn’t about to argue with her.

“What do you want, Gray?” She sounded exhausted. She moved along the kitchen lazily, pouring a cup of hot water over a tea bag in a mug.

“I’d like a cup of tea too, please,” I answered.

“No! What do you want? Why are you here?” she barked testily. “We just made things a thousand times more complicated.”

“You. I want you.” I followed her into the kitchen and took my place close behind her. She stepped backwards and bumped right into me before huffing crossly and walking away.

“Ugh. You’re driving me crazy right now. Why can’t you just leave me alone?” Apparently she found it aggravating to have me lapping around her like a lovesick puppy. “And get your own tea. The tea bags are right there, and there are cups in the cupboard.”

An uncomfortable hush fell over us while I made myself a cup of tea and she poked around some logs and lit up the fireplace. She parked herself directly in front of it and I settled myself beside her.

“Not quite Thailand, huh?” I joked.

Her disposition changed as she gave me a half-hearted smile. “I guess not.”

“I want to talk about last night. Why you left. What happened between us,” I said.

She dipped her head downward and settled her chin on her knees. “Not tonight. I’m not ready. This is all too much for me right now.”

“You know, Blue, there’s really nothing complicated about all of this,” I said, tilting my body towards her. Our elbows touched.

“Oh yeah? Why do you say that?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.

“You love two men and two men love you.”

She closed her eyes as if accepting her reality. No quick comeback from her usual self, she didn’t deny it. There was a chance that she loved me and I wanted to hear her say it.

“Have you left?” she asked. “The priesthood.”

“Not yet. I’m on leave, and on a mission to spend all the time I can with you. All in.”

Her eyes lit up with a sudden realization and she turned to face me. “I’m still angry, you know.”

“I know.”

She returned her aim in the direction of the fire. “How much time do we have?”

“Exactly fifty-eight days.” She looked beautiful in the glow of the light. The warmth of the fire brought color to her cheeks.

“And then what?” Still talking to the fire.

“Whatever I decide, I have to go back and let them know.”

She sighed. “What is it with you and deadlines, Gray? Ten days, fifty-eight days, I’m always running against the clock, always in a time crunch. With Dante, there are no constraints. He promises me forever.”

“I’m sorry.”

Silence filled the room. And then finally, she turned to me.

“What did you do, Gray? What did you do for five years? If you felt the same way about us, how did you get through it?”

I paused for a few seconds, fixed upon articulating this to her as best as I could. I wanted her to know the truth that was in my heart.

“I lost myself,” I started out. “I lost myself in the laughter of the little children. In the grateful eyes of teenagers who were angry and alone and who contemplated the worse end to their lives. In the cries of the homeless. In the absolution of the dying. At night, I would lose myself to you under the sheets in an endless cycle of guilt and remorse. That’s how I survived, Blue. I survived by losing myself.”

She inched closer to me and laid her head on my shoulder. My arm shot up to pull her in a little bit too quickly. “I lost myself in Dante, I lost myself in his unconditional love,” she whispered.

She lost herself in him and he would have had her forever. But he wasn’t here now, and I was. “Listen to us,” I said sadly. “We’re both lost. How can we be found? How can we both find purpose?” I buried my nose in her hair and took a whiff. It was our primal instinct at work, using our sense of smell to feel each other out.

“We immerse ourselves in the future,” she said. “No looking back. We move on.” Her shaking voice was in complete contradiction with the evident portrayal of confidence in her tone.

“No. I want to be found with you. I want to spend the next fifty-eight days finding myself, getting myself back with you.”

“And then?”

“And then we go back to what we were before we met. I take my vows and ask to be assigned somewhere far away.”

There was no reaction from her end. She knew that it was all a lie. I didn’t think she was going to go for it. Not because she wanted me, but because she had become too cynical to even believe that this could happen. The firewood crackled, the flames catching on some old newspaper at the bottom of the rack. They flared up in a rage then slowly petered out. I felt her relax against me.

“This sounds so selfish. We’re going to hurt so many people in the process.”

“We’ve hurt ourselves enough,” I stressed. “Isn’t it time, Anna? Isn’t it time we stopped living for everybody else?”

“Why? Why should we do this? Go through the trouble?”

“Because we’ve both spent years imagining what could have been. What’s the harm in playing it out?” I asked.

“I’m married, Jude. I may be separated now, but I’m going to stay married.”

“He’s given you time to think this through; he deserves better too.”

“That’s a lot to ask of someone. Putting your life on hold for something that won’t amount to anything,” she said.

“I know,” I answered. “But what’s the alternative? How will we know?”

She remained pensive for a while, cocking her head to the side, scrunching her eyebrows and biting the inside of her cheek. She pulled away, lifting herself up, and then dropped back down to the floor a few feet away from me. “Okay,” she agreed. “A few conditions.”

“Name them.” I smiled.
Progress.

“We make a deal. When you walk away from me this time, you say a proper goodbye. You don’t make any promises. Is that too much to ask?”

“No. What else?”

“I get to speak to Dante whenever I want to. You don’t interfere in anything that has to do with him. You don’t hurt him, you don’t tell him anything. We’re both clear on the fact that he is my person.”

“Okay.”

“Wait! There’s more!” she added.

“Shoot,” I ordered. I knew that no matter what they were, I would wholeheartedly agree to them.

“I make no apologies for loving Dante these past few years. You weren’t coming back. I loved him.”

This one. This one twisted my gut. I would never get over it. But she had me wrapped around her little finger, and she knew it. “Awesome,” I muttered, with pure sarcasm written all over my face.

“Last one,” she interjected. I could see from the look on her face that she was determined to protect him. To protect what she had with him. There was a thin line between selflessness and self-preservation.

“Geez, Blue! You should have been a lawyer!”

“No sex.”

“Wait. What?” I asked playfully. I wanted her heart, the rest would follow later. Or not. She stared at me, waiting for an answer, her eyes fixed and unblinking. “Okay, so you’re serious.”

She rolled her eyes at me.

“Fine, okay. That’s fine.”

“Good. We have a deal then.”

She stood up, dropped the blanket on the couch, and walked towards the kitchen. The pajamas she had on did nothing to curb my desire for her. I looked away for a moment to compose myself. The tension in the room had eased somehow. Slowly, the clouds started to lift and her tone grew light. “I think we should switch to wine now, don’t you?”

“HI, HAPPY NEW
Year!” she greeted me as I stood outside the door. She had light blue scrubs on and her hair was bundled up in a ponytail. Despite the absence of makeup, her lips were red and glossy. I bet they tasted like cherry.

“Happy New Year,” I said. “Sorry, you didn’t call so I thought I’d stop by.” New Year’s Eve came and went; she was on duty at the hospital, and I was at the homeless shelter counseling families through two suicides.

“Stalker,” she teased.

“Your very own.” I answered with pride. During the last week we had seen each other every single day, talking about everything and nothing and getting to know more about the adults we had each become. She was even more amazing than I had imagined, loving and caring, a woman with character and talent. An outstanding doctor and a beautiful human being. She made me feel happy and complete. I was devastated for all the time I lost, for all that could have been mine and wasn’t.