The Best Friend (32 page)

A male voice called out from behind Audrey. She glanced inside and said quickly, “It’s an old friend.”

Tony shifted around on his feet. “I should have called first, I’m sorry. Uh, maybe you don’t want to hear what I have to say. I can leave if you’re not comfortable with me being here.”

She smiled softly, “I would like to talk to you. That’s my boyfriend; just let me go explain where I’m going. Do you want me to drive?”

“Yes, sure.”

She stopped from closing the door to finally take a look at Gretchen. “You’re Gretchen Hendricks?”

“Uh, yes. How did you know?”

“Will’s and your picture hung in my house for two years. I would recognize you anywhere. What are you doing here? What is this anyway?”

Tony stepped closer to Gretchen and put his hand on the small of her back. Audrey’s gaze zeroed in on his hand, and Gretchen’s back, before resting on his amputation. “I had hoped to apologize to you. Gretchen just brought me here.”

She nodded. “I see. Yes, okay.”

“I’ll wait in the car,” Gretchen said hurriedly. Tony frowned and seemed about to protest, but she shook her head and tilted it toward the girl standing behind them. She deserved his undivided attention. Even if it made her a little, tiny bit jealous because the girl was so young, so fresh, and so pretty. And Tony was engaged to her. Gretchen really wasn’t as saintly as people tried to make her out to be.

****

Audrey toyed with her coffee cup, which Tony ordered, remembering exactly how she liked it. It was something they did on Saturday mornings together whenever he was home on leave. “So, how are you, Tony? Y-you look good. Better than…”

She shifted around, obviously uncomfortable with what she started to say.

“Better than the last time you saw me? Yes, I am.”

She smiled softly, “Because of her? Gretchen? I always suspected you liked her as more than just your best friend’s wife.”

He picked at the napkin. “I’ve been getting some counseling lately.”

“With her? Isn’t she a psychiatrist?”

“Not with her. Anyway, the thing I owe you is an apology. I’ve owed you one for years. I was wrong with what I did to you after I came home. Maybe this isn’t something you want to hear. You obviously have moved on, and have your own life… I just felt… bad about what I did to you. You were right. Not me. You handled it all well. I didn’t. And for that, I’m sorry.”

She blew air into her cheeks to push them out before slowly releasing it. She leaned back in the chair. “Wow, you can’t imagine how long I stressed over leaving you. I mean, I know what people thought. I know what your parents thought: the bitch left him after he lost his arm. How could she be so awful? So selfish. I just…”

He leaned forward and touched her hand gently. “You just were right. I was awful. I shut you out. I realize now what I did to you. With my actions. No one could have put up with that. It wasn’t because I lost an arm that you left me, it was about how I treated you. I know that now.”

Tears filled her eyes and fell over her cheeks. She brushed them away. “I really didn’t think you’d ever… be better. Or do this. Apologize. It was never in your personality before.”

His heart twisted with bitterness. He realized how much destruction he created in the wake of what befell him. The thing was, at the time, he never noticed it. Not even a little bit. He was so focused on himself, and what he suffered, he allowed it to ruin the better parts of his life. And this young girl who once loved him.

“No. It wasn’t. Not so much now, but I am trying.”

She smiled. “That’s all anyone could ask of you after what happened. I just, wanted you to
try
. And you couldn’t yet. I wanted to be stronger than I was to deal with it.”

“I should have been stronger to deal with it, not you.”

She shut her eyes for a long moment. “Thank you for coming here to say this. I never expected it. And it helps. I had a lot of guilt over what happened. It fucked with my head pretty bad, and you saying this now kind of vindicates me.”

“It fucked with my mind pretty bad too. Only, I shouldn’t be vindicated because of it. I’ve been realizing lately that losing an arm doesn’t give me a free pass to be how horrible I’ve been to those around me.”

A small smile tilted her lips up. “Somehow, I think it’s the stunning blond waiting in the car who gave you that revelation and not your counselor.”

A small smile tilted his lips too. “Maybe. Yeah. Tell me, the new boyfriend, is he any good? You’re happy?”

She smiled. “I am. We just moved in together.”

Tony let her smile release some of the guilt that constricted his chest. He couldn’t undo anything, not his treatment of Audrey, or his parents or Donny. Nor could he change what he failed to do over the last few years.

As he couldn’t change the fact that his arm was gone. Sometimes he remembered the moments leading up to the bomb going off. He was the furthest from it, and consequently, sustained the least injury. Not so for his comrades. His anger was not only at the injury he sustained, but because he wasn’t more grateful to be alive when comparing his loss to the death of his friends, and the worse injuries of two others. One got so addled by the bomb, his brain could barely function normally anymore. Tony escaped that.

He often visualized those moments right before the blast that tore through everything. He wished he sensed something, anything, that could have foreshadowed what was to come.

He hadn’t given much thought to how he acted since returning home. Not until recently, when Dr. Hart pointed out a few things, things that Tony himself said without realizing what he was saying. He wasn’t big on apologizing and closure and all of that, but maybe that was the least he could do to atone for his past actions.

When he got into Gretchen’s car, she smiled and asked how it went.

“It might be the first decent thing I’ve done in awhile, other than being with you. So it went pretty good.”

Chapter Twenty

Helen was soon bedridden, and Gretchen hired twenty-four/seven nursing care for her. She didn’t mind the cost, since it allowed Helen to stay home with Olivia, thereby retaining some semblance of her former routine. Gretchen figured Olivia needed as much stability as could be provided to survive this. It was the least Gretchen could do for the lonely woman who tried so hard to stay strong for Olivia. Gretchen didn’t know which was more heartbreaking: witnessing Helen’s slowly declining strength, or the confused, hurt, little girl who kept trying not to upset her sick grandmother. Gretchen took Olivia home to Helen every evening, and brought dinner with her, although Helen rarely ate now. Gretchen ate with Olivia, and helped her get her homework and reading done before settling down for bed. Gretchen left their apartment most evenings at close to eight o’clock.

It was a grueling schedule, not just for the long hours, but the daily trauma of watching someone die. It was horrific and something Gretchen had never experienced before, not long-term, every day, and with all the arduous details. The incessant pain. The end of one person’s existence. She was observing the final days of a woman’s life, a woman who wasn’t even sixty, and looked ninety, but should not have been dying.

Tony met Gretchen at Helen’s on some of the days when he had Olivia. It was a little odd with Leila now involved, for she drove Tony and Olivia to Helen’s apartment. Leila slowly started coming inside, and eventually became another caretaker for both Olivia and Helen. She and Helen, who were the same age, struck up a quick rapport. Of course, Leila was a mother and genuinely kind, helpful, and decent to everyone she ever met, except Gretchen.

The fun was seeping out of Gretchen’s life. There was no recapturing it, not when faced with the daily encounters of death, misery, pain, and a little girl’s heartache. There were countless tears, and Gretchen held Olivia, soothing her through the frequent bouts. Some were provoked by Helen having a bad day, while others were unprovoked and came out of nowhere. Gretchen was called to the school more than once to collect a very distraught Olivia.

Her family helped a lot. Tracy took Olivia sometimes and her parents took her on others. They all started treating Olivia like one of their own. If this experience managed to do anything positive, it was by solidifying them as an emerging family. Gretchen had now taken over all the real care and mothering for Olivia, as Helen could no longer provide any of it.

****

Tony often sat with Helen, and the strange part was: it didn’t bother him. Her face was haggard and drawn, the wrinkles deeply etched on what was left of her flesh. It sagged off her once robust frame. The only thing Tony learned from suffering through the awkward sympathy of people who saw him was how to withhold awkward sympathy. He could sit beside Helen quietly for two hours and just allow her to simply stare mutely at the wall in front of her. He usually asked if she wanted him to leave, but always, she said no. Sometimes, she tried to hold his hand. She was lonely, scared, and in very serious pain. Far beyond the pain he ever had to endure.

“What are you going to do?”

Tony turned when Helen’s whispered voice interrupted the somber mood. A radio played softly in the background, and the shades were pulled, so it was even gloomier in the soft lighting. He leaned forward. “Do? About what, Helen?”

“Gretchen? You know what’s coming.”

His heart sank into his stomach. “Yes, I know.”

She smiled with a faint stretch of her thin lips. “I like that you simply know and let it stand thusly.”

He shrugged. “I used to think I had the corner on pain and reality before I met you and Olivia. After I saw how an eight-year-old could deal with it better than I did, I realized the time had arrived for me to at least become a functioning person again.”

“My Olivia, she’s a strong girl. She’s just like her father. I miss him. That was the real pain of my life. This… my own death now, is hard, and sad. But I can accept it more easily because I believe at the end of it, I’ll see him again.”

Tony leaned forward. Her voice was so low and whisper-like, he almost couldn’t hear her. “Your son, you mean?”

“Yes. Losing him was more than anyone should ever have to bear in a lifetime. My death means nothing now. His, however, ruined me. Even Olivia couldn’t make up for it. I’m at peace, Tony. With this. Help them find it, so Gretchen and Olivia can be there too. Okay?”

He shook his head as she continued, “Losing your arm wasn’t like dying. When I first met you, you thought it pretty much was. I wanted to take you aside and explain to you that it really wasn’t. But I feel like you finally see that now.”

He dropped his head down as tears filled his eyes. “Yes, I see that.”

“You wonder why your mother and I became so close? So fast? Because she lives with the fear of losing her son. I know the reality. She also understands what it’s like, but most people can’t. So forgive her behavior with Gretchen. She’s just worried about you, and because she can’t
stand
the thought of anything bad happening to you again.”

His head jerked up. “Gretchen? Why should I forgive her behavior with Gretchen?”

Helen licked her thin, cracked, dry lips. “You don’t know? Gretchen really is a damn saint. Leila’s pretty awful to her. I used to hate Leila for being like that. Gretchen told me about it when I was feeling better. She doesn’t anymore though, probably not to bother me as I’m so sick. You’re the only one knows that I don’t want to think about dying every moment that I have left. The things from real life are what I want to enjoy still. Anyway, after I got to know Leila, I realized why she was acting that way. You can’t fathom a mother’s fear or pain for her child. You just can’t.”

He glanced out of the open bedroom door. Gretchen was moving around the living room, helping Olivia pack up her things for school tomorrow. She leaned down, tucking her hair behind an ear as she flipped through Olivia’s folder of work. She smiled at something Olivia said before tucking the folder into the purple backpack. He had no idea his mother was acting so mean to Gretchen. She never said a word to him. Nothing. Not in the four months of being together did Gretchen mention his mother was anything less than how he saw her. Why? Why didn’t she tell him?

His heart pinged in something close to… what? Respect? Compassion? Love?
Christ,
love for her? He brushed his hand over his face. Yeah, as if he didn’t already know he was in love with Gretchen. Only for the past twenty years. As if any idiot wouldn’t guess that after being with her once, she’d either spark out, making the fantasy way better than the reality; or the reality would be far better than he could have ever imagined. And of course, it was the latter. So, duh, yeah, he was in love with her. He loved her in ways he never loved Audrey. He clearly and starkly felt that now. He felt her continued presence, and her essence somewhere deep in his guts. In his heart. In his head. He loved her as much as he loved breathing air.

But… she wasn’t really looking for that. She was trying to survive the death of a woman who was giving her an eight-year-old daughter to raise. It was the oddest set of circumstances he could imagine. Well, maybe not as odd as adjusting to having only one arm, but a close second.

And yet, Gretchen couldn’t even bitch to him about his mother’s behavior. He knew why. The amputation. It still added a different dimension to how he was treated. People still behaved cautiously with him. Kinder. Gentler. And it was something Gretchen did not need to start worrying over with everything else she had to take on. He was just another burden.

“Tony?” Helen said softly. He dipped his ear towards her so she knew he was listening.

“You and I both know you aren’t ready for this: a woman like her, and a kid as traumatized as Olivia will soon be. You’re a good man; but there is no shame in admitting you’re not ready for this.”

He jerked back in shock. How could sweet, subdued Helen say such a thing to him? She gently lifted a finger to touch his, but barely had the strength to do so now. “I wish you well. But my first concern is Olivia, and therefore, Gretchen. They will need much more from you than you’re willing to give them. You have your own stuff to deal with. I’m not convinced that you want to take on anything extra. If you can’t, Tony, please let them go now. Before it all gets even harder. Do the right thing, Tony.”