Life and Other Near-Death Experiences (16 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

I bought two one-way tickets: one from San Juan to Chicago, where I would spend a week settling the apartment sale; another from Chicago to New York, where, if all went according to Paul’s plan, I would immediately offer my services as a human guinea pig.

“I don’t want to do this,” I told Shiloh, who was sitting next to me in a tiny café that offered Internet access.

“By ‘this,’ do you mean treatment? Or leaving Puerto Rico?”

“Both,” I said, and clicked the Purchase button for the first fare.

“What do you have to lose?”

Through the window, palm trees danced in the breeze. “Paradise,” I said. Thinking of the many things that would soon be foisted upon me—medication, attention, sympathy—I added, “Control.”

Shiloh drained the contents of his espresso cup. “Control’s an illusion. You know that.”

“Do I?” I said, staring at the Buy Now icon that would enable me to fly from one cold, overpopulated city to another. I clicked it, then turned away from the computer screen. “I mean, I’m not trying to broker world peace here, but I would like to think I have some say over what happens to my brief and newly eventful life.”

“If you say so, cutie.” He got up from his seat and stood behind me, gently running his fingers through my hair. I leaned my head back, wishing there were a way to bottle the relaxed feeling running through my body. “My offer stands. I would be happy to come with you for a few months.”

“You have a life here, wackadoo.”

“Right. My glamorous bachelor pad. My drinking buddies. My family—oh wait. My closest relative lives hours from my apartment.”

“But you just got cleared to fly again,” I protested. “You’ve been itching to get back in the air.”

“And I plan to.” He kissed me lightly. “Besides, you know I don’t operate like that. I like to do what I want, and what I want is to be with you a little longer.”

I was flattered, but it still seemed like an unviable option. “What happens if you and I don’t do so well when we’re farther from the equator, and you discover you just wasted several months of your life with the wrong woman?”

He untangled his fingers from my curls and sat down. “Are we talking about me here, or you? Personally, I don’t care very much about everything working out perfectly, but I’m not going to
not
take a chance because of all the what-ifs involved.”

I couldn’t come up with a single sarcastic response. Instead, I leaned toward him and kissed him. “I’m going to miss you terribly.”

“I’ll miss you, too. But you already know that.” He kissed me again, then said, “What about after treatment? What then?”

What
did
happen then? I stared vacantly as my brain cells fired past one another. Suddenly, I was not sitting in a coffee shop in the Caribbean with a man I was fairly certain I loved, but instead walking the cold, wet streets of New York, staring into the faces of a million strangers. I was filling out an endless string of job applications for positions I did not actually want, which would be summarily dismissed by human resources professionals or computerized screening programs that deduced I had not used the correct power verbs in combinations demonstrating my unbridled talent and ambition. I was on a string of progressively bad dates in a city where eligible men under age fifty were rarer than the ivory-billed woodpecker, and single women far younger, prettier, and less damaged than me swarmed like ants. In the future I had managed to conjure up, I was alive, which was more than I’d been able to say about my previous forecasts. Even so, I was adrift and alone.

“Aren’t I supposed to be enjoying the present moment?” I asked Shiloh.

“Touché. In this case, it seems like a good time to start at least contemplating what might make you happy.”

I gave him what I hoped was a sunny smile. “Let me think about it.”

And I did. The next few days were filled with more
cafecitos y mallorcas
, more strolls on the beach and excursions through untamed parks. A last Spanish lesson with Milagros, which began with travel-related terminology and devolved into the two of us drinking our faces off as she tried to teach me various ways to insult a drunkard. And most of the time, I tried to ponder what it was, exactly, that I might want if I did survive this disease.

It used to be that what I really wanted was a child of my own. Even more than I had yearned to be Tom Miller’s wife, I had always wanted to be a mother, preferably to a daughter named Charlotte, after my own mother (though a son would have made me equally happy, provided he didn’t mind being called Charlotte).

But it didn’t happen for Tom and me, even after years of trying and tests. When the doctor suggested in vitro fertilization—which my insurance did not cover and which cost as much as all of our fancy furniture combined—Tom hemmed and hawed about the expense, and when I said we should try to adopt, he balked, citing the gut-wrenching uncertainty of the adoption process, and said we should just let it go.

And I agreed, even though it was a lie against my soul.

It was not so much that the longing had gone away, but that in light of my marriage and health woes, having a child seemed sort of selfish, if not entirely beside the point.

But the night before I was scheduled to fly to Chicago, when Shiloh again inquired about what I really wanted, I did not pretend to be excited about a sparkling new career, or a shining outlook on life, or even the possibility of returning to Puerto Rico. Instead, I confessed that if, by some miracle I lived and was given the bonus gift of decent health, it was a safe guess that a child would again preoccupy my wishes.

“A child?” Shiloh said with surprise.

When I held Toby and Max, the heft of their chunky bodies and the silky down of their skin triggered a visceral, even greedy reaction: I wanted to gobble them up, somehow consume all that goodness. To live long enough to have my own child, to experience her first day of kindergarten, her high school graduation, maybe even the birth of
her
child—well, short of my mother’s resurrection, I could not think of a single thing that would be better. “I get it if that freaks you out,” I told Shiloh.

A hint of moonlight shone on his face. “Who said I don’t want kids, Libby? Just because I don’t have them doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to be a father.”

We’d been lying on a blanket on the beach, looking up at the stars. I sat up and shook the sand out of my hair. “I’m not trying to start a fight.”

“This isn’t a fight; it’s a tough thing to talk about. There’s a difference.”

I sighed and lay back again. “Sorry, it’s a touchy subject for me.”

“It’s okay. It’s touchy for me, too. If you had asked, I would have told you that I would love to have at least one child. A girl, if I had my choice.”

“I always wanted a girl, too,” I admitted. “I’d call her Charlotte.”

He nodded. “For your mother. What about Charlotte Patrícia? That’s a nice name.”

“I love it,” I confessed.

“And I love you.”

I stared at him, half expecting him to say he was joking. When I saw that he was smiling, my chest flooded with warmth. “Wow.”

“I get it if that freaks you out,” he teased. Then he grew serious. “Really, Libby. I know it’s early, but that’s what I’m feeling, and I don’t really believe in holding good stuff back.”

“I’m not freaked out,” I said, and it was true. “That was lovely. Thank you.”

Yet it was impossible to not think of the first time Tom said he loved me. It had been early for him, too—just months after we began dating. “You’re wonderful, Libby,” he whispered to me, just after he had leaned over the gearshift of his old hooptie and kissed me goodnight. “I’m in love with you. No—it’s not just that.” He touched my cheek. “I love you.” I was so astounded that I couldn’t respond, but in my head I was thinking:
I love you, too, Tom Miller. I have loved you since the day I laid eyes on you, and I will love you forever and beyond.

What I felt for Shiloh was different from that, and maybe that’s why I continued to let myself indulge in it. Because in spite of the whirlwind way we’d come together, and the instant attraction I had toward him, I didn’t have the same crazy, intense feeling that I’d had for Tom. Instead, my affection felt calm and right and . . . like something that just was.

After we made love that night, I lay in Shiloh’s arms, bereft yet content. Through the open window, lapping waves competed with nothing but the sound of his heartbeat in my ear. The breeze was cool against my cheek, but the heat of our skin warmed us beneath the thin duvet. His leg still slung over mine, Shiloh began to snore. After a minute or so, he roused and turned toward me. “Night, cutie. Love you.”

“I love you, too,” I whispered back.

TWENTY-NINE

I rose just as the sun began to peek over the horizon. Shiloh was facedown on the bed, fast asleep. The sight of his bare back was still a minor shock. I knew Tom’s every freckle and facial expression, exactly where to touch him—just below his left shoulder blade—to make him dissolve into laughter. I had no idea whether Shiloh was ticklish, and while he had freckles, I couldn’t say with certainty where a single spot was located.

I would never learn.

I tried to push this idea into a cobwebbed corner of my mind as I quietly opened the back door. Still in the T-shirt and underwear I’d slept in, I walked out to the empty beach and went directly into the sea. It was cold—far colder already than when I’d arrived—but it was my last chance to feel the Caribbean on my skin, so I waded in anyway. The waves rose past my knees to my waist, enveloping the incision that throbbed but no longer stung, and finally covering my chest, so that my T-shirt bubbled and floated around me like a jellyfish. As I bobbed in place, staring out at the beach and the house from the sea, I considered how easy it would be to let myself be carried off by the tide.

The thought no longer tempted me. Not even a little.

The fear had not subsided. I did not feel like a brave woman warrior ready to take on the literal fight of my life. But I no longer welcomed the idea of being in command of my own death.

When I returned, Shiloh was making coffee. “You ready for today?” he called from the espresso machine.

I finished toweling off, then walked into the kitchen and kissed him. “Not even a little.”

“As much as I want you to stay . . .”

“Yeah.” I accepted the coffee cup he handed me and took a sip. “I know.”

“Libby. Don’t—” He stopped abruptly.

“Don’t what?”

He shook his head:
nothing
.

“Don’t what?” I pressed.

“Please don’t change your mind about treatment,” he said quietly.

I cocked my head, thinking of how I’d been unable to channel my inner Ophelia in the sea not ten minutes before. “Now why would I do that?”

“I don’t know, actually. But I just worry . . . you haven’t talked about it once since Paul left.”

“I’m going to deal with it when I get to Chicago.”
Or New York,
I thought; at this point, it wouldn’t much matter either way.

Shiloh put his arms around my waist and pulled me close to him, burying his face in my hair. “You promise?”

The word sat heavy on my tongue. I swallowed hard, then let it roll out. “Promise.”

After the sheets had been stripped and the surfaces had been wiped clean and I’d made one last walk around the beach house, Shiloh and I locked the door behind us.

Milagros was waiting in the courtyard.
“Mija,”
she said, her arms outstretched.

I hugged her tight, even though it made my stomach hurt a little.

“Old Milly will be here when you’re ready to come back to Vieques,” she told me.

I attempted a laugh, knowing that if I did see her again, it would likely be at a location several light-years north of Puerto Rico.

She misunderstood my halfhearted response.
“Verdad,”
she insisted. “I may be wrinkled, but I’m healthy as an old thoroughbred.”

“Oh, I know you are,” I assured her. “Believe me, I know.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Where do you go from here, Libby?”

“First Chicago, then to New York, to be with my brother.”

“And what will you do after you’re done with the doctors?”

“I’m going to put one foot in front of the next, take each day as it comes, and try not to focus on Tom or my diagnosis. Beyond that, I have no idea.”

She stared past me for a second, then met my eyes again. “Smart girl. Don’t look back too much, you know? You’re not going that way.”

My voice caught. “
Gracias
, Milagros.”

She took my hand and squeezed it. “I’ll miss you. But”—she released my hand and flipped it over, then stuck her index finger in the center—“something here tells me we’ll meet again in a happy place.”

I peered down at my palm. “Really?”

Her eyes twinkled. “You tell me,
mija
.”

We returned the Jeep and took a shuttle to the ferry. Fingers entwined, we said little on the boat ride over, and even less on the drive to the airport. When we got there, Shiloh was able to use his pilot’s badge to go through security with me. I was collected—stoic, even—until we reached the gate. The agent had begun the boarding process, and I took one look at the line of passengers lined up for the jet bridge and fell into Shiloh’s arms.

“I can’t believe this is it.”

“Neither can I. Libby . . .” He was laughing and crying; we were both on the verge of crumpling. “You made me feel something that I didn’t even know it was possible to feel.”

Me, too,
I thought.
Me, too.

It took everything in me not to suggest we reunite when he visited his mother in New York, or propose that I return to Puerto Rico after treatment. Unkeepable pledges and pacts would cheapen what we had shared.

Instead, I put my hands around his neck and kissed him long and hard. Then I told him I would love him as long as I lived, because it was the truth.

“I meant what I said,” he told me, reaching into his pocket.

My stomach made a beeline for my bladder as I watched him pull out a small, unwrapped box.

He took one look at me and began to crack up. “Don’t freak! It’s not a ring.”

I managed a small laugh. “Thanks, I think.”

He put the box in my hand and told me not to open it until I was in the air. I said I wouldn’t.

The agent called for all passengers to board. Shiloh and I looked at each other: this was it. I kissed him one last time, trying to memorize what it was to have this with another person.

“Good-bye, Libby,” he said into my ear.

“Good-bye, Shiloh.”

I boarded the plane just before the doors to the jetway closed. Averting my eyes from the curious gazes of the people seated near me, I hunkered down in my seat, wiped my tears, and stared out the window. As the plane lifted into the sky, I shook the box lightly. The clunk-clunk-clunk of metal on cardboard confirmed it contained jewelry.

There’s something uniquely unnerving about accepting a gift from a person you love. Tom’s gifts were unfailingly practical: a fitness-tracking bracelet for my birthday, a planner and pen for Christmas. He knew exactly what I needed, to the point where it was almost like having my own personal shopper. Every once in a while, though, I would peek under the lid of a gift box and wish that instead of a pair of fleece gloves, I would find, say, a sexy bra set.

So as the plane lifted into the clouds, it was with no small amount of trepidation that I peeked beneath the lid of the box Shiloh had given me.

Nestled on a cotton pillow was a thumbprint-size star charm made of rose gold, dangling from a delicate chain. Shiloh had tucked a small slip of paper beneath the cotton.

Libby,

Thank you for the past month. It was one of the brightest of my life.

Shiloh

The charm, which I rubbed between my fingers like a worry stone, was perfect. Shiloh’s note: perfect. Our affair and my vacation were, in the most roundabout way, absolutely perfect.

And now it was all over.