In This Life Page 15

  I paused for a few seconds, fixed upon articulating this to her as best as I could. I wanted her to know the truth that was in my heart.

  “I lost myself,” I started out. “I lost myself in the laughter of the little children. In the grateful eyes of teenagers who were angry and alone and who contemplated the worse end to their lives. In the cries of the homeless. In the absolution of the dying. At night, I would lose myself to you under the sheets in an endless cycle of guilt and remorse. That’s how I survived, Blue. I survived by losing myself.”

  She inched closer to me and laid her head on my shoulder. My arm shot up to pull her in a little bit too quickly. “I lost myself in Dante, I lost myself in his unconditional love,” she whispered.

  She lost herself in him and he would have had her forever. But he wasn’t here now, and I was. “Listen to us,” I said sadly. “We’re both lost. How can we be found? How can we both find purpose?” I buried my nose in her hair and took a whiff. It was our primal instinct at work, using our sense of smell to feel each other out.

  “We immerse ourselves in the future,” she said. “No looking back. We move on.” Her shaking voice was in complete contradiction with the evident portrayal of confidence in her tone.

  “No. I want to be found with you. I want to spend the next fifty-eight days finding myself, getting myself back with you.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we go back to what we were before we met. I take my vows and ask to be assigned somewhere far away.”

  There was no reaction from her end. She knew that it was all a lie. I didn’t think she was going to go for it. Not because she wanted me, but because she had become too cynical to even believe that this could happen. The firewood crackled, the flames catching on some old newspaper at the bottom of the rack. They flared up in a rage then slowly petered out. I felt her relax against me.

  “This sounds so selfish. We’re going to hurt so many people in the process.”

  “We’ve hurt ourselves enough,” I stressed. “Isn’t it time, Anna? Isn’t it time we stopped living for everybody else?”

  “Why? Why should we do this? Go through the trouble?”

  “Because we’ve both spent years imagining what could have been. What’s the harm in playing it out?” I asked.

  “I’m married, Jude. I may be separated now, but I’m going to stay married.”

  “He’s given you time to think this through; he deserves better too.”

  “That’s a lot to ask of someone. Putting your life on hold for something that won’t amount to anything,” she said.

  “I know,” I answered. “But what’s the alternative? How will we know?”

  She remained pensive for a while, cocking her head to the side, scrunching her eyebrows and biting the inside of her cheek. She pulled away, lifting herself up, and then dropped back down to the floor a few feet away from me. “Okay,” she agreed. “A few conditions.”

  “Name them.” I smiled. Progress.

  “We make a deal. When you walk away from me this time, you say a proper goodbye. You don’t make any promises. Is that too much to ask?”

  “No. What else?”

  “I get to speak to Dante whenever I want to. You don’t interfere in anything that has to do with him. You don’t hurt him, you don’t tell him anything. We’re both clear on the fact that he is my person.”

  “Okay.”

  “Wait! There’s more!” she added.

  “Shoot,” I ordered. I knew that no matter what they were, I would wholeheartedly agree to them.

  “I make no apologies for loving Dante these past few years. You weren’t coming back. I loved him.”

  This one. This one twisted my gut. I would never get over it. But she had me wrapped around her little finger, and she knew it. “Awesome,” I muttered, with pure sarcasm written all over my face.

  “Last one,” she interjected. I could see from the look on her face that she was determined to protect him. To protect what she had with him. There was a thin line between selflessness and self-preservation.

  “Geez, Blue! You should have been a lawyer!”

  “No sex.”

  “Wait. What?” I asked playfully. I wanted her heart, the rest would follow later. Or not. She stared at me, waiting for an answer, her eyes fixed and unblinking. “Okay, so you’re serious.”

  She rolled her eyes at me.

  “Fine, okay. That’s fine.”

  “Good. We have a deal then.”

  She stood up, dropped the blanket on the couch, and walked towards the kitchen. The pajamas she had on did nothing to curb my desire for her. I looked away for a moment to compose myself. The tension in the room had eased somehow. Slowly, the clouds started to lift and her tone grew light. “I think we should switch to wine now, don’t you?”

  “HI, HAPPY NEW Year!” she greeted me as I stood outside the door. She had light blue scrubs on and her hair was bundled up in a ponytail. Despite the absence of makeup, her lips were red and glossy. I bet they tasted like cherry.

  “Happy New Year,” I said. “Sorry, you didn’t call so I thought I’d stop by.” New Year’s Eve came and went; she was on duty at the hospital, and I was at the homeless shelter counseling families through two suicides.

  “Stalker,” she teased.

  “Your very own.” I answered with pride. During the last week we had seen each other every single day, talking about everything and nothing and getting to know more about the adults we had each become. She was even more amazing than I had imagined, loving and caring, a woman with character and talent. An outstanding doctor and a beautiful human being. She made me feel happy and complete. I was devastated for all the time I lost, for all that could have been mine and wasn’t.

  “Mikey’s home. I wanted to spend some time with him tonight.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I can come back tomorrow,” I said, peeking past her to find her brother in front of the television. I really had to see her tonight. Those deaths, the families, the wives whose husbands left for war and disappeared forever. I sought comfort in her presence, to assure myself that there could be a life filled with love and overwhelming joy. That was how I felt that night at my place, and I was desperate to feel that way once again.

  “No, it’s okay. Come on in.” She moved over to allow me to step inside, but I waited for her to lead me through the hallway. “Mike, Jude’s here,” she called out to her brother. He pushed his headphones to the side.

  “Hi,” I said as I made my way inside. “I’m Jude, it’s nice to meet you.” I extended my arm out to him.

  “Hey,” he said with a wary look on his face.

  “What are you playing?” I asked, trying to make conversation. “Is that Minecraft?” I was trying to sound cool. It didn’t look like Minecraft. There were guys in army gear and blood was splattered across the screen.

  “Nope. Battlefront,” he said, brushing me off. “Minecraft is for little kids.” He repositioned the headphones over his ears.

  I looked at Anna and shrugged my shoulders.

  She responded by doing the same thing. “Don’t try too hard,” she whispered. “Dante.”

  I nodded my head in agreement.

  I stood there awkwardly while Anna took her place back at the kitchen table. There was something different about her, she seemed jittery and edgy. Her brows were furrowed as if she was trying to suppress something, keep it inside her head. I fished through the pile of books that were scattered on the table.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Research,” she answered. “Went to the library to—” She glanced down at the screen of her ringing cellphone. “Speaking of,” she said.

  “Hi!” she greeted him happily as she stood up and walked towards her bedroom. I could make out his voice but not his words. “Nothing much. What are you doing up in the middle of the night?” She shut the door behind her.

  I was filled with a seething jealousy that I couldn’t explain. The change in her disposition when
she heard that voice on the other end of the phone cut through me like a knife.

  I leafed through the pages of the books that lay in front of me: Fidelity, Remaining Faithful in Today’s World, Questions Catholics are Asked, The Holy Orders: A Life of Devotion.

  I didn’t hear her come back. “Oh, I see you found my research material,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

  “You could have just asked me,” I said sternly. I was pissed off at that phone call, although I knew full well that I had no right to be. “How is he?”

  “He’s good, just working hard. He sounded so close, so clear, as if he were right here. The lines in Germany must be really high tech.”

  I could tell she was trying to stay away from me; she sat down at the opposite end of the table.

  I took a deep breath and pulled my chair next to her. Something was definitely wrong. “When does he come back?”

  “He didn’t say. Soon, I hope.” She smiled as she opened up one of the heavy binders filled with many tabs and pages. “So, anyway, want to hear what I learned today?”

  “Hit me,” I answered, trying hard to cast away my deep, dark thoughts. I glanced towards the sliding door that led to the balcony. Night was falling, and the dusk was a pretty orange swirl of colors against the clouds. This alone should seal one’s belief in a higher power who planned every single detail, including the colors of the sky.

  “So you’re a deacon, right? It says that you’re a transitional deacon, a seminarian in the last phase of training to become a priest. It also says that you will be ordained by a bishop. Deacons assist the priests and bishops in the ministerial aspects of the faith. Deep words there,” she said. “It also says that the priesthood is a calling. When did you get yours, Jude?”

  I couldn’t decide whether or not to condone this conversation. It was personal to me, and I wasn’t comfortable discussing the misgivings I had in my mind. I certainly didn’t think that this was the right time and place to remind her that if I had my way and if she loved me, I would give it all up.

  “Do you really want to get technical about it?” I cautioned.

  “Yes.”

  “There are two levels of calling. One is the calling that you experience when you decide that you want to enter the priesthood. It’s the pull you have on a personal level. The phase that I’m in, however, is also called discernment. I am now deciding once and for all whether or not I still have the calling. It’s the final decision stage in becoming a priest. If you want to know when I first wanted to become one, it was sometime in the middle of my undergrad when I felt the inexplicable draw towards Christ’s teachings and the sacraments of the church.”

  “Master of Divinity. Sounds so compelling. Is that what you have?”

  She was goading me, trying to get me to lose my patience. Ordinarily, I would have thrived in discussions such as these, but not this night. In this instance, I was ashamed of my vocation. I just wanted to be an ordinary man. Because if I was an ordinary man, I would have locked her in my arms and told her exactly what I wanted to do to her right then and there.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, and here,” she said flippantly as she turned more pages. “The most important topic. Celibacy. Hmm,” she continued as she skimmed her finger across the words of the book. “This says that deacons are required to lead a celibate life, even before they take their vows.” She shut the book and drilled her eyes into my soul. “Uh oh, Gray, you screwed up.”

  Now we’d arrived at the root of all this. “That’s it!” I scowled as I grabbed the book from her hand and threw it on the table. “Do you really want to go there, Blue? Huh? Do you?” I whisked sideways and started towards the door. Mikey had long since left his game and gone to his room with a bag of chips and a Coke.

  “Jude!” She ran after me. “Why are you being so defensive? I was just teasing you! Come on, don’t be mad!”

  I ignored her plea. My hand was on the doorknob, ready to pull it open and get away from the confines of her cruelty. She grabbed my hand and forcibly wrapped my arm around her waist. “Jude!”

  “No, Anna. This approach and retreat tactic of yours is killing me! Leave all that to me! It’s my decision, my consequence. Don’t you ever, don’t you ever tell me what I should do, or how I should think.” I removed myself from her hold. “I’ll see you around.”

  “Fine!” She stepped back. “Go! Leave! Leave like you did five years ago. Don’t come back. Once you step out of this place, don’t you dare come back!”

  I stopped dead in my tracks “Is this a game to you? Is this all a game to you, Anna?”

  “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know! I’m angry. I’m jealous. I’m envious of God. How sick is that? How can I compete?” She started to cry. “Do you think that I don’t count the days in my head? Forty-eight more days. Forty-eight days and then you’ll be gone.” Her tears flowed, her body went limp, and she dropped to the ground.

  The fear of losing her forever was more eminent than the pride in my heart. She had cried enough. I didn’t want to be the reason for her pain. I picked her up in my arms and carried her back inside. Afraid to cause a scene, I took her straight to the bedroom and sat at the edge of the bed as I laid her crosswise on my lap with her legs dangling over my thighs. Her arms remained twisted around my neck and her head rested on my chest.

  “I want to walk away,” she cried. “I want to miss Dante. And I can’t do that because you’re here.”

  I scooted us upwards until I was inches away from the nightstand and grabbed a tissue to hand to her.

  “That makes two of us, Blue. I’m jealous, too.” She looked up at me with understanding in her eyes. “I seem to keep making you cry,” I said sadly.

  “I know.” She laughed through her tears. “I don’t know where this is coming from. I’m normally not this much of a sap.”

  I smiled weakly before taking her face in my hands. “Do you want me to leave you, Anna? I would do that for you. I don’t want to be the source of your sappiness.”

  She snickered as she kept her arms wrapped around my neck. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “That’s okay. How about we figure it out together? But from now on, if you have misgivings about my vocation, my future, or even about anything, just come right out and say it. You’ve got a complicated mind, Blue. You’ll drive yourself crazy just keeping it all inside of you. I’m here, okay?” I kissed the top of her head.

  “Okay,” she said in a weak, childlike voice.

  “Blue, we need to talk about that night. Is this what all your anxiety is about?”

  Her eyes seemed to change color like the mood rings we played with when we were growing up. They were a different hue every single time. I wanted to spend my life living in her eyes, discovering the colors of the rainbow.

  “I feel like Eve in the Garden of Eden. I’ve ruined you. You’ve broken your ties with God.”

  I shook my head in a frenzy. “No.”

  She looked genuinely surprised at my answer. “Don’t you feel guilty about what happened?”

  “I used to live in guilt. There was a time a few years ago when I went to confession every single day. Every time I thought of you, I’d cry about the feelings of betrayal that I had for my vocation. But I no longer feel that way. Blue, this is the main reason why I took this leave. I have to decide what I want in my life. And I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that you don’t make up a large part of that process. Lord knows how much you mean to me, but nothing in my life will ever make me break my ties with God. The love of God is rooted in our fallibility. He’s there more than ever, in the face of confusion.”

  Her head moved up and down and rubbed itself against my chin. “So you went to the same priest and confessed the same thing over and over again?” she asked, her voice lilted to a slight degree.

  I laughed out loud. “Well, I also confessed to cussing a lot. That’s one thing that I couldn’t stop once I started doing it in Thailand.”

  There were
no more words to say at that point. The stillness in the dark room and the concept of secrecy felt utterly exciting to me. As I held her in my arms, I thought of nothing else but the chance to reacquaint myself with her body once again. And so, instinctively, I lowered myself on the bed until I was lying flat on the mattress and she was facing sideways directly on top of me. Slowly, I rolled her on her back until my face was above hers. She reached out her hand and traced a path down my nose with her finger.

  “Blue?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can we make out?”

  “Define make out.”

  “Can I kiss you?”

  “Yes, you can. Kiss me.”

  “YUM,” ANNA SAID as she contentedly munched on her sandwich. “You know how I love sausage.”

  We hid behind one of the large gray columns that marked the emergency entrance of the hospital on a cold January afternoon. Side by side, we sat with our legs stretched out in front of us, our heads bundled up in hats and scarves. For the past two weeks, I’d been dropping by to bring her lunch and spend a few precious minutes with her. She’d been working long shifts, and this was the only way that I could get to see her.

  “I got it right this time, I think. No mayo, no tomatoes.”

  “Yes, it’s delish.” She took a napkin from the bag and wiped the corners of her mouth. “Thank you.”

  I leaned over to kiss her. Since that night at her apartment, that seemed to be all that we wanted to do. I couldn’t get enough of her lips and kissed her whenever I got the chance. Things changed between us after that night, and we were back to the comfortable banter that we’d always enjoyed when we were together.

  “So, how’s your week going?” I asked her.

  “It’s fine. I heard from Dante today; he sounds good. I think he’s moved on,” she said with a chuckle. “There was noise in the background, and it was obvious that he was out with a group of people. Some woman actually answered his phone. It was kind of awkward, but then we also laughed a lot—he was poking fun about many things.”

  “Are you okay with that? The fact that he’s actually enjoying himself?”