The shock of this grief was what she couldn’t process. Her mother’s heart had simply given out. Lena placed her hand over her own heart. She wondered how many more beats it had in store for her.
It wasn’t that night that she left for good. She stayed on tour with the band for at least another month. At first, Julian even harbored some hope that the death of Lena’s mother was going to bring them closer together. Lena started coming out to more of the after-parties. Her desire to not be alone seemed to be the strongest effect of her grief.
But then one afternoon, completely unexpectedly, Lena marched into their hotel room and said, “I’m leaving.” And then added, “For good.”
“What?” Julian had said. He was waking up from an afternoon nap in the hotel bed. His eyes were still groggy with sleep.
She sat on the love seat in the corner. When he sat up in bed and really looked at her, he saw that she was different. He didn’t know how. But she was. She felt so far away even though he could’ve reached out and touched her. Later, he would think it had been like looking at a hologram version of a person.
“I’m going back to school to become a doctor. I know I won’t be earning a degree as a medical doctor, but it will still be a doctorate. It will still be something instead of nothing,” she said flatly. “My mother is dead and I betrayed her while she was alive by lying to her about my new life in the States. But now, I’m going to make things right. I’m going to make things right for her memory.”
Julian shook his head. “Lena, isn’t this what you always lectured me about? You have to live your life for you. You can’t apologize or feel guilty for having your own dreams. Your mother would be so proud of you. I know she would.”
Lena tilted her head down to stare at the hotel carpet. It was cream-colored and plush. “That’s a luxury only afforded to you, Oliver,” she said, and stood up from the love seat. “I’ve already told Mikey I’m leaving. He’s booked my flight for this afternoon.”
“Lena,” he said, jumping out of the bed. “Wait. Please.”
But she didn’t wait. She left.
And she never came back.
III.
I gaped at Julian. We were sitting in the very back booth of the small diner he’d steered me into.
When we’d come in, he’d introduced me to the man who’d greeted us at the door.
“This is Joe, my manager Mikey’s little brother,” he said. And then once we’d taken a seat at the booth he’d added, “Good people. The whole family.”
An untouched plate of French fries sat in front of us. And two similarly untouched vanilla milk shakes. The whipped cream had begun to melt, and the maraschino cherry was dangerously close to nose-diving into the ice cream.
“She just left?”
Julian shrugged and stretched out his hands, drumming his fingers against the table. I stared at the fries, which were starting to look particularly greasy under the fluorescent lights of the diner.
“Yeah, kid. She just left.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Tell me about it.”
I gave him a you-know-what-I-mean glare. “Didn’t you call her?”
“I called her over and over again. I flew to try and visit her. She rebuffed me, Taliah. She wanted nothing to do with me.”
“And you just gave up?”
He hung his head. “I had to respect what she wanted. I didn’t let go, but I let her let go. That’s all there was left to do.”
A rosy-tinted love song came on over the diner’s speakers. Julian flinched a little.
“Not your jam?” I asked.
“Not particularly,” he admitted, smiling sheepishly.
“Was your way of not letting go to write songs about Mom?”
He nodded. “That’s kind of my brand, isn’t it? A certain type of unrequited melancholy.” He tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “You know the pause in ‘That Night’?”
I nodded. Of course I did. It was one of S.I.T.A.’s biggest hits, if not their most famous song, and was well known for a part where the music cuts out completely. You think the song is over, and then all of a sudden, the music starts again at full blast. It takes the listener by surprise, and the first time you hear it, you’re truly thrilled to realize the song isn’t actually over yet.
“That pause was always sort of a metaphor for my inability to let go.” He shrugged in a way that made him seem younger. Helpless, almost. “I’ve never been good at endings.”
My insides swelled with several different conflicting emotions. I couldn’t believe that Mom in some ways was directly responsible for one of the most famous stylistic choices in a modern rock song. That was pretty freaking cool. But it was also devastatingly sad. As I looked at Julian, I could see that even after all these years, he still wasn’t sure how to let it go.
“I think most of your songs end in a pretty satisfactory way,” I offered.
He gave me a little nod.
I thought about it some more. “I still don’t understand why she just left. Why then?” I narrowed my eyes. “Are you sure you’re telling me everything?”
Julian fidgeted. Something crossed his face, but it was gone quickly.
“What?” I said.
Julian kept folding and unfolding his sunglasses. Putting them on the edge of the table and picking them back up.
“What is it?” I pressed.
He let out a deep sigh. “I mean, your mom and I weren’t in the best place then.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know,” he hedged.
“No. I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”
He tilted his head back and ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Taliah. We were fighting a lot. She thought I was partying too much. She thought I was cheating on her.” He held up his hands. “Which I wasn’t. I maybe was too flirtatious with fans at times, but I never cheated on her.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, unsure that I fully believed him.
“And I thought she resented my success. So you see, we fought over normal, petty things and suspicions. I just didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until it was over.”
I wasn’t sure what he was describing fell firmly into the category of normal, given that most people weren’t famous musicians, but I understood what he was trying to say. “You think her mother’s death just changed her?”
He slumped down in a defeatist way. “I think that was probably the catalyst for it. But she gave up on me, on us. She left.”
I felt like I should defend Mom, but I didn’t know how to. A knot formed in my throat. “Do you think she knew about me? You know, she always told me that my father was someone from back home in Jordan. She says they reconnected during her mother’s funeral, and she didn’t realize she was pregnant until she was back in the States.”
Julian pinched his lips together. “I don’t know if she knew she was pregnant at the time she left, but I’ve been wondering that too. And I can’t decide if that makes it better or worse.”
I nodded a little. “It just doesn’t seem like Mom. She’s never struck me as a rash person.”
Julian made a noncommittal sound.