I don’t have the energy, the emotional capacity, to work through this. Taking a break would be the same as breaking up. The break would last as long as my dad is sick, which could be a short time or a very long time. He knows this, I’m sure of it, because his eyes light up with sudden understanding.
“I’m so tired,” I say for the second time. “I can’t keep up. I’m weighing you down.”
“That’s bullshit. Who said that to you?”
I blink slowly. I’m not going to answer that question because he’ll only be angry with my answer. “Who do you want me to be for you, Levi?” I ask quietly.
He pushes the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows, looking like he’s ready to fight me for this. “Whoever you are, I want you to be her. You know, the girl who wrinkles her nose at Bon Iver and still listens to him for my sake, the one who plans weddings and sits by my side while I go over applications. The one who laughs too loudly and sometimes doesn’t know her glasses are crooked.” He shakes his head. “She’s not that far off, Bee. Who said you aren’t allowed to be lost every once in a while? I love you, lost or found.”
He’s making this hard, too hard. “I know you do.”
“So why can’t I have you?”
“Because I’m not ready!” I shout. Then I immediately put my hands over my mouth. That is not what I wanted to say, not how I wanted to say it—despite how true it is. “Maybe it’s a good thing I never told you my name,” I whisper, beneath my shaking fingers.
His jaw locks.
I know, immediately, that I’ve dealt the fatal blow. (And how I hate myself for it.)
“You were never planning to, were you?” he asks, his voice tinged with disgust.
(He looks so hurt, and I am so broken.) “I’m sorry.”
“You gave yourself a way out, just in case things got hard.”
He’s right again. Blow after blow after blow. “Levi—” I begin.
“I wanted that with you, you know? Hard. I wanted fast and awful and perfect and hard and wonderful and slow and terrible with you.”
I try to catch the whimper that is coming up my throat and out of my mouth, but it’s bigger and stronger than my willpower. I cry silently, my tears mingling with leftover rain on my cheeks. “I know it’s not fair for me to say I love you,” I cry, “but I do. I love you so much, but it’s not enough because I don’t love you as much as you love me. That right there is the biggest reason why I’m not going to drag you through hell.”
“That’s not—”
I interrupt him. “We haven’t talked through a single thing, because every time we’re together, something is overshadowing me. We haven’t even worked out that first fight—Levi, that was weeks ago. We should have been over that for a long time now, but we’re not.”
This time, he’s quiet. Stunned.
“Please don’t make this harder than it has to be,” I beg, even though he already has. I wipe the backs of my hands across my eyes.
“Bee,” he grinds out, holding out his hand like he’s going to grab my shoulder, but because the movement is uncertain, I only have to take a step back. He drops his arm to his side again.
“Don’t wait for me,” I say. And because it hurts too much to look at him, I turn around and leave him there, alone, on the middle of the porch in front of the house we found, trapped by my words and the rain.
Chapter 45
This weekend, I make a new playlist: every Bon Iver album I can find. I listen to them all on shuffle, headphones in my ears every chance I get. The songs go around and around in my head (some surprise me into liking them; others do not), and I can’t stop listening because I hope someday, somehow, they will help me heal.
On Saturday I sit and watch movies on my laptop with Papa and Tom while my sisters are at the beach. I offered to take them, but my mom insisted I stay in, claiming I looked a little under-the-weather. I didn’t argue with this because, yes, Mother, I’m under-the-weather and no, I won’t tell you why. I don’t know how to tell them what happened without disappointing them or bringing them grief, so I leave it alone for now. When they find out is not important, not with everything looming. I’ll tell them when the storm has passed.
The stomach ache I had yesterday hasn’t gone away, not really. I don’t eat much, either because I’m not hungry or I feel like I’m going to puke again. I’d hoped it would all disappear when I said goodbye to Levi, but in reality, I think I just have a small case of the stomach flu. Otherwise, I was dead wrong.
I wasn’t dead wrong.
I cannot be dead wrong.
I shuffle Bon Iver again. (I’ve started calling this playlist The Incredibly Painful Recovery Playlist.) I go into denial, about a lot of things. That I will never kiss Levi again, that he won’t look at me with happy, hungry eyes, that I won’t go back to TCP when all this is over. Reality hasn’t dawned yet.
Like everything else in my life, I’d like to keep it that way. (At least for a little while longer.)
My father’s surgery comes on Sunday morning, and I sit impatiently with Tom and my sisters in a waiting room full of equally impatient strangers. My mother paces in front of us, her body taut with stress and fear. But after six hours of waiting, we find out she has no reason to be afraid—none of us do—because the surgery went exactly according to plan. The tumors were removed, the flesh was sewn back together, the body was set to heal.
After another couple of hours, when he is once more awake and cognizant, we’re allowed to visit him. He smiles as much as he can, then sleeps until the nurse gives him more pain meds, and then he smiles some more.
After one of his many short naps, he calls me to his bedside with a quiet, “Hey, Baby Bee.” He holds out a hand for me, very slowly and carefully, and I take it as gently as I can.
“Daddy.” I kiss his forehead.
“Miss you, kiddo.”
“I’m right here.” It’s my turn to whisper, and only because I’m about to start sobbing. With relief, fear, exhaustion—whatever it is, it’s taking hold of my sensibilities (if I have any left).
“I know you are.” His face twists in pain for a moment, then untwists into ease again. “Ready for me to come home?”
I nod, smiling and teary. “Yeah.”
“Good. Me, too.”
We set Papa up in the coolest room in our house—the back TV room. It’s spacious enough for his hospice bed, with all the amenities: a bathroom close enough to rush to, a kitchen around the corner and a water dispenser close by. We put him close to the couch, which becomes Mama’s temporary bed.
It isn’t until after a few nights later that I decide I want to sleep there as well. So my mom and I trade off whenever we feel like it, and the nurse who comes daily to check on Papa puts up with all of our belongings trapped inside this makeshift hospital room. (I have to have a few books at the ready to keep me company.) I don’t sleep much when I’m out there (the couch is short and my legs get awkwardly propped up or tucked under), but I don’t mind. I can hear Dad breathing a few feet away, and that’s all that matters.