Life and Other Near-Death Experiences (15 page)

TWENTY-SIX

“Sing to me, Libby Lou.”

“What song, Mama?”

“
Our
song, Libby,” she said, attempting to smile as she recited her well-rehearsed line. There was only one option. But Paul and I always asked, and on that day, as ever, she responded, “You Are My Sunshine.’”

She had about a week to live, but I didn’t know it at the time. She had been in and out of consciousness for days. When she was awake, she mostly warbled nonsense. But when she was lucid, I snatched up that fool’s gold like it would buy me forever, assuring myself that she was going to pull through. I put my hand over hers and sang as though time was a suggestion, and the end a choice.

You are
my
sunshine, Mama,
I thought as I watched her eyes flutter beneath pale lavender lids. As long as I could remember, she’d sung the song to Paul and me before bed. After cancer robbed her of her strength, dictating that she could no longer live at home, let alone sing at our bedroom doors at night, Paul and I sang our version to her instead. “Please don’t take my sunshine away” became “More and more every day”; the verses about waking up and finding the love gone were omitted entirely. If my mother noticed our feeble attempts to lighten the tune, she didn’t mention it. She just asked us to sing it one more time.

After she passed, I swore I would never sing that song again. It was a ruse: death and doom swaddled in a lullaby. As an adult, I once fled my cousin’s daughter’s nursery after coming upon a teddy bear playing the tune. Some toy maker had sewn the music box into the beady-eyed animal, undoubtedly aware that the child who received the bear would one day learn the song her toy played was about losing the best person you ever had.

But darn if it wasn’t the first thing that popped into my head the morning Paul was set to return to New York. I hummed a few bars before I realized what I was doing, then turned on the radio to drown my internal melody with the bright, clangy sounds of salsa.

Pointless. The song still ringing in my ears, I drove to Paul’s hotel. He was standing in the lobby, phone in one hand, luggage in the other. He immediately dropped both to embrace me.

He kept hugging me. And hugging me. “Are you already medicated?” I laughed.

“Little bit. But mostly I just don’t want to leave you. Are you sure you won’t come with me now?”

“You know I can’t,” I said, pulling back. “But we’ll be together soon.”

“We haven’t made definite plans, though,” he said as we got into the Jeep.

“Not definite, but what more is there beyond flying my butt to New York?”

“You have, what, six days to buy a plane ticket? You might want to hop on that.”

“Who says I haven’t already?”

He raised an eyebrow, and I laughed. “Okay, okay. Maybe I haven’t exactly been forward-thinking about this whole thing, but I’ll buy a ticket later today. By tomorrow at the absolute latest.”

“Be a peach and let me take care of it. My assistant can get it done in five minutes flat. And while we’re on the subject, why don’t you come to New York first, and figure the rest out once you get there?”

“Yes, I’m just dying to arrive in New York in the dead of winter.”

“Enough with the death puns already.”

“Too much?”

“Always.”

I steered the Jeep into the ferry parking lot. “I’ll take care of the ticket. Don’t worry.”

“You’d better.” He glanced at the ferry, which was just pulling into the dock, then turned to me. “As much as I’m itching to get back to Charlie and the boys, I wish I could stay here.”

“I know,” I said, opening the car door. “But you don’t want to miss the boat. There isn’t another one for five hours.”

Paul sighed. “Then let’s do this.”

We said good-bye roughly eighty-two times, each tearier than the last. After Paul boarded the boat, he leaned over the rail. “Libby!” he called. “I love you the most!”

I blew him a kiss, then waved until the ferry was a speck on the horizon. All the while, that stupid song floated through my head.

Please don’t take my sunshine away.

When I returned to the beach house, Shiloh was waiting for me on the steps. He had called the night before to see if he could stay with me for a few days, rather than at the company’s studio, and I’d happily agreed.

I eyed the large suitcase that was next to him on the cement stairs. “I had no idea you owned that much clothing.”

He winked. “I packed an extra pair of underwear.”

“Aw, you shouldn’t have.”

“Anything for you. And I brought my telescope.”

“All that just to spy on the neighbors?”

“You would catch a lot more action in San Juan. But the stargazing’s far better here, and the moon is beginning to wane again.”

We dropped his bag off inside, then drove to the west side of the island to explore a small park he’d told me about. At the park, we came across a good dozen horses grazing: gangly things, all muscles and ribs, making their way from one cluster of long grass to another. After the horses broke through my panic attack on the beach, I could not help but regard them as a sign of something good—although what good this time, I couldn’t say. Afterward, we opted to have dinner at the beach house. As Shiloh grilled fish and onions for the tacos he was making, he told me about his childhood. His father had moved their family from Puerto Rico to the States again and again, always returning to the island within a year or two. It was the catalyst, he said, for his mother filing for divorce. Shiloh didn’t like constantly relocating, but he loved flying back and forth. He was hooked from his very first flight, he told me, and never considered being anything but a pilot. “Do you remember when we were in the plane, how you said you loved being away from the rest of the world?” he asked. I nodded. “When I’m in the air, I feel completely free. The average person hates takeoff. I live for those few minutes, when I hit the clouds and all my troubles are below me.”

He kept talking long after he put his spatula down, and throughout dinner I found myself staring at him, interjecting little more than the occasional question as I listened. How quickly I’d written him off at the airport; how easily I’d convinced myself that I was in it for nothing more than pure pleasure. But here before me was a good man. It struck me that I had yet to hear him say a negative word about another person. Even if he was describing a terrible action, like his father’s inability to care for his family in the way that they needed, he spoke in terms of the event, rather than blaming the person. I loved people like this, and encountered so very few.

As the sun began to set, we went outside to set up the telescope. While Shiloh positioned the tripod in the garden, he asked me about my mother. I didn’t usually like discussing her. There was the pity factor:
Poor Libby, motherless at just ten years old.
The larger issue was that there are no words to adequately describe what it is to lose the person who matters most to you. Though I’d had decades to ponder it, it still did not make sense. How can a person be with you one moment, and then one terrible moment later, just be—gone? Forever? Tom’s answer was always the same: “Your mother’s not
gone
, Libby. You’ll see her again one day.” I clung to this belief, even as I cursed its complete and utter inability to offer real comfort. I did not want to hear it, even from my own husband. Nor did I want to hear about God having a plan, or all things happening for a reason, or any other number of Hallmark sentiments that pinged against my heart like pebbles on a thin windowpane.

I told Shiloh all of this. It had been years since I last said more than a few words about her to anyone other than Paul or my father, and I spoke haltingly, unsure of how to explain my loneliness. “I’m sure this sounds all kinds of stupid,” I said when I had finished.

He kissed me lightly. “It doesn’t, not to me. Johnny, a kid I grew up with in San Juan, died when we were in our late teens. It was a freak thing—he had an undetected heart problem and collapsed in the middle of a soccer game. Believe me, I know it’s not the same as losing a parent. But even now, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I’ll never have another conversation with him. We came up together and stayed friends even after my family kept moving back and forth. He’ll never get to see the person I am as an adult. I’ll never get to find out who he would have become.”

I nodded. It’s permanence that distinguishes grief from other emotional pain. The unfixable nature of never—that’s what makes it so terrible to bear. Was Paul right? Did I owe it to him to try to delay
never
as long as I could, at any cost?

Shiloh adjusted the telescope dial, then motioned for me to look through the viewfinder.

“Can you see?”

Slowly, the cloudy clusters above us revealed themselves as countless individual beacons of light. “Wow. Yes.”

“Excellent.”

“You sound like such a dude sometimes,” I teased.

“I
am
a dude, cutie. You can’t grow up on a beach without getting sand in the cracks of your brain. So, do you recognize any constellations?”

I squinted. “Does the little dipper count?”

“Sure. But you can do better.” He took the telescope from me and redirected it. “Now look through it. Stare right in the middle, and you should be able to see Cassiopeia. Any other time of the year and you’d struggle to see her, but she burns bright all through November. Look for two
L
s, connected on the diagonal. Around her are some of the youngest stars in the galaxy. Pretty amazing, right?”

“Aha!” I said. But as soon as I spotted the constellation, a reddish twinkling light to the far left caught my attention. “Are the red-looking ones planets or something?”

“No, they’re stars, too. You probably spotted a red giant. They’re older and closer to the end of their lives, so they don’t burn as hot, which changes their color.”

“So the closer a star is to death, the more beautiful it becomes.”

He laughed. “If you like red. I guess you could argue that time makes a lot of things more attractive.”

“Not Tom.”

“Maybe it doesn’t look good yet. But look at how well you’re doing. Give yourself time, Libby.”

Time was a luxury I didn’t have,
I thought as I stuck my head under the telescope, watching a star flicker. It could have been combusting that very moment, or maybe it had blown up centuries before and the evidence had not yet reached the Earth. Eye still to the lens, I asked Shiloh if he thought there was an afterlife.

“Well, I’m culturally Catholic, so I should probably say yes. But mostly I think worrying about it is pointless.”

“So you don’t believe in heaven.”

“I didn’t say that. I mean, sure, it sounds cozy, but who knows? Most people don’t really care about heaven. I think they worry about being relevant to other living people, even after they’re dead. But one day there won’t be anyone left who fits that bill. One day this planet will combust, and we’ll all turn into star stuff. Cleopatra? Abe Lincoln? Adam and Eve? Relevant to no one.”

“Well,
that’s
optimistic.”

“It is, kind of. It takes guts to stop fretting about the unknown and concentrate on the present moment. That’s what matters, anyway.”

“And what if your present moment sucks? And you can’t even imagine what the future looks like, let alone fix your hope on that?”

His breath was hot on my neck. “But does it? You’re dealing with some ugly stuff, Libby. But does right now, this very moment, suck?”

I leaned in, my skin tight with anticipation as his lips grazed my flesh. “No,” I whispered.

“Then enjoy it,” he whispered back.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The apartment. I’d nearly forgotten all about it. With several thousand dollars’ worth of commission hanging in the balance, Raj, bless his heart, had not.

“Time to make it official, Libby. You still planning on coming back to Chicago?”

I was sitting in the side garden. Not far from my feet, a couple of inky black birds were fighting over a few crumbs that had crumbled from the baguette I was gnawing on. “That is a very good question, Raj,” I said, my mouth still full. Despite my promises to Paul, I hadn’t purchased a ticket to New York. But with just days left in Vieques, it was time to do so. I finished chewing. “For the time being, let’s go with no.”

“Can you change your plans?” he asked. “The way your mortgage agreement is worded, either you or Tom needs to show up to the closing.”

There went my New York flight. I stood up from the bench, sending the birds flying in opposite directions. “Fabulous.”

“And unless he dies between now and then, I’m going to need his signature on everything. You guys
are
legal co-owners. Let me know where I can find him, and I’ll send him the papers myself.”

I sighed. This wasn’t going to go over well with Tom. “Won’t be a problem, Raj.”

On the one hand, I could make what was left of my life a whole lot easier by faking Tom’s signature, which I could practically do in my sleep. On the other . . . I didn’t really want to make my karmic load any heavier by deceiving Tom about the sale. I decided to consult Milagros.

“Do you believe in revenge?” I asked her.

We were walking down the side of road. Given my run-in with the yellow truck, I wasn’t thrilled to be on foot on a skinny stretch of grass alongside an almost equally narrow swath of asphalt, but Milagros said she had exhausted her beach vocabulary and it was time to teach me something different before I left.

“La venganza?”
she said. “
Como
un
payback?”

I replied with my new favorite phrase:
“Mas o menos.”
More or less. “Like, when your husband cheated on you, didn’t you want to stick it to him?”

She looked at me through narrowed eyes. “How could I stick him when he was sticking someone else?”

I giggled.

“Listen,” she said, “the universe takes care of that. Look at my husband—poor bastard drowned.”

I thought it was her one true love who had drowned, but perhaps he and the cheater were one and the same. Anyway, I’d come to see that Milagros’s past was a parable; taking any of her stories as a literal interpretation meant you would miss the point.

“Don’t bunch your panties up about
la venganza
. Especially if we’re talking about your husband.”

“Ex.”

“That’s what I said.” She laughed.

I told her about the apartment—how I was concerned that Tom wouldn’t sign the papers, and I was considering forging his signature.

“Y?”
she said. “There’s something else.”

I had to tell her; I should have weeks before. “I have cancer,” I said quietly, bracing myself for a slew of questions.

But Milagros just nodded. “Your ex doesn’t know.”

“No.”

“Ay.”
She bit her bottom lip and kept walking. “I’m sorry to hear about your health,
mija
,” she said after a while. “But give him a chance to make the right choice about the apartment.”

I thought about house hunting with Tom all those years ago. I had wanted to buy a split-level apartment in a limestone building in Logan Square. Tom argued that its turn-of-the-last-century quirks—a small kitchen, bedroom closets constructed in corners, the narrow staircase connecting the first floor to the garden level—would make it hard to resell; and besides, it was too far from downtown. This was all probably true, but it felt like a
home
to me, and I had loved it. Then we went to see the apartment we ultimately bought, which was located on the border of Bucktown and Wicker Park. Though I couldn’t deny that it had lovely light and a layout ideal for entertaining, it seemed sterile. Tom argued that it was simply because the building was new construction. What’s more, it was mere blocks from Jess and O’Reilly’s place, and in a rapidly appreciating, if overgentrifying, neighborhood that was close to almost everything. I did not relent because of these points, but because Tom was in love with it and I was in love with him, and I wanted him to be happy. It was quite possible that he would not willingly part with that happiness.

“Even if giving him the choice may leave me in a bad situation?” I asked Milagros.

“
Si.
Otherwise, you are just as bad as him. Now where were we?”

“You were teaching me the word for—” A four-wheeler whizzed by and I jumped back, pulling Milagros with me. She stumbled, then leaned into me, sending us both tumbling to the ground.

“—cars,” I said as a searing pain shot through my stomach.

Milagros rolled off me and pushed herself up. “New phrase:
cuidao con el carro
. Be careful of the car!”

“I’m sorry, Milagros. Better careful than crippled?” I said sheepishly, and stood up.

“Tell that to my hip,” she said, accepting my outstretched hand. “Now come on. We’re not done with your lesson.”

I called Tom shortly after we returned. “I’m giving you the chance to make the right choice.”

“Um, hi,” he said. “Surprised to hear from you.”

“Don’t be. I’m calling because I’ve accepted an offer on the apartment. I need you to sign the paperwork.”

“You don’t mean that.”

I hopped off the counter and opened the fridge. Unless I wanted to attempt to survive on eggs and guava juice, it was time to restock. “I assure you that I do, Tom. I really do.”

“Libby, don’t take this the wrong way, but I really do think you should see someone. My therapist said this would be as hard for you as it is for me. Maybe harder.”

“Did he? How interesting,” I said, shutting the fridge.

“She,” he corrected.

“Well,
she
is right. This is hard for me. There’s a lot of stuff going on, and I’m in no mood to explain it to you.”

“Like you losing your job?” he asked. “I’m guessing Jackie didn’t sign off on a monthlong vacation.”

I moved on to the cupboard, whose contents were as dismal as the fridge’s. “I did not
lose
my job, Tom. I quit.”

“Come on.”

“I’m serious.”

He was silent for a moment. “So you’re selling the apartment because you need cash?”

“Actually, I was planning on donating the money from the sale to charity.” If I really did go through with treatment, I would soon require my own charitable fund. But now wasn’t the time to divulge this.

“What?” He sounded panicked. “All of it?”

I would have to go out for food, I realized, and slipped on my sandals. “The down payment was never yours. It was never mine, either. It belonged to my mother. And you know I paid for the bulk of the mortgage myself.”

“I suppose that’s true, but sheesh, Libby, don’t you think you should have run your plans past me, given that it’s my home, too? I know I hurt you, and I wish to God I hadn’t. But you can’t just act like we haven’t spent the past eighteen years together.”

I didn’t respond.

“I wish you would have at least let me stay at the apartment while you went off gallivanting in the Caribbean,” he added.

Gallivanting.
How very droll were the workings of his mind. “Tom, I’m sure you don’t believe me, but I
am
sorry. Getting out of Chicago seemed like my only option. But you’re an intelligent person. You’re gainfully employed. I’m sure you can figure it out from here,” I said as I grabbed my keys from the hook near the door.

“Can I?” He was not being sarcastic. “We’ve always done everything together. I miss you.”

Maybe that was why Tom had been making preposterous comments about wanting our marriage to work. We really had done everything together, and he didn’t know how to figure out what to do without me. I sort of wanted to help him, if only out of habit.

“Tom, I miss the ‘you’ who didn’t break my heart,” I said as I locked the front door behind me. “I’ll have the papers sent to O’Reilly’s. Please keep an eye out for them.”

“I’m not signing. I think you’re making a rash decision, and it’s because of me. I can’t let you do this while you’re in a state of shock.”

If only he knew, I thought as I climbed into the Jeep. “There is no ‘letting me,’ Tom. Let go,” I told him. “Tell Jess that I said hello, and that I’m doing fine.”

He didn’t hang up, and neither did I. “Will I ever see you again?” he asked after a while.

“I don’t know.” Unlike the apartment sale, a legal divorce would probably require face time with Tom. The sting of his betrayal was wearing off, though, and it was not unfeasible that I would find it in myself to fully forgive him before we were in the same room again.

“I’m sorry, Libby,” he said. “I didn’t mean to ruin your life.”

The Jeep faced the sea; through the windshield, I watched white-topped waves crest over a thin strip of sand. “Tom, I’m sure you probably won’t believe me, or even understand what I mean by this, but you didn’t ruin my life.” I started the engine. “The truth is, you gave it back to me.”