“I’m so sorry, James.”
“It’s been a long process of grief,” he said quietly. “Watching Emily decline, day by agonising day. Losing all her abilities… talking, walking, maybe even thinking. It’s hard to know how much she’s taking in, how much she’s aware of us now. She communicates, but…” He shrugged. “It’s just so hard to know. But Rachel doesn’t see it that way. She refuses to grieve, to let go. She feels like doing that would be a failure, some sort of betrayal of Emily. And then it started to be a competition for her—who cared the most, who did the most. One I was never allowed to win.” He looked up at me then, a vulnerability in the cast of his features that moved me. “I know that doesn’t make me sound…” He blew out a breath. “Whatever. I don’t even know. I don’t come out looking great in this, but I honestly felt—I still feel—that leaving was the best thing for both of us. We were bringing each other down. We couldn’t help each other.”
I nodded, signalling my acceptance of his narrative even though my thoughts were tangled, a knotted mess of compassion, wariness, suspicion, and affection for this man who had been so honest with me, who was trying so hard to do the right thing, in so many ways.
“So do you have partial custody of Emily?” I asked.
“Yes, in terms of medical decision making. We both need to agree on any treatment she has. But no, in terms of her living with me. When she’s not in the hospital she’s with Rachel, because she’s set up for it… Emily has a lot of physical needs.” He swallowed, his gaze downcast again. “I see Emily three times a week… Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and all day Saturday, either in the hospital or at Rachel’s, if she’s there, although more and more it’s been at the hospital, because of her seizures, infections…” He drew a quick breath. “One day it will always be at the hospital, I think.”
“Okay,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. It was too much to take in; I couldn’t even begin to absorb all the implications.
James grimaced. “I know it’s not a lot of time.”
The guilt in his voice, in the hunch of his shoulders, made me want to comfort him. It was actually a lot more than most divorced dads spent with their kids, as far as I could tell. There was a guy at my old job, back in finance, who saw his son once a month, if that. When I’d overheard someone asking him about it, he’d just shrugged and said, “What can you do?” as if it was entirely out of his control. Perhaps it had been.
James took his hands off the table, pu
t them in his lap. He looked up at me, resolute now. “I’d understand if you wanted to walk, or even run, away now. This is complicated, I know. Emily is a big part of my life. And as for her prognosis… we just don’t know. How long, or how much, or…” He stopped, not wanting to say the words, and then stayed silent, waiting for what felt like a verdict.
He’d made me a judge, with the power to condemn or forgive. It was a terrifying feeling, and yet I already knew what I’d say. How much I was willing to accept, for a man like James—a man I was already falling in love with, who made me laugh, but also was one who cared about his family, who had shown what he was made of when it mattered. How many people could say they’d done the same?
“Everything is complicated,” I told him, which was as close as I ever got to telling him about my own emotional baggage, those battered bags trailing behind me that just like everyone else I pretended didn’t exist. And James smiled, and nodded, and the relief that flashed in his eyes was like waves breaking on the shore. He’d told me the truth, and I’d accepted it. We could move on, together. We could start building something new, just for us.
And we did move on, but it was in such a way that it felt impossible to revisit that conversation, to take it down avenues I hadn’t dared to consider when I’d barely known him. Once James had explained about Rachel and Emily, it was as if a door had closed, a door to a room whose dimensions I could not conceive of. And while all too often I was happy to have that door shut, and not to think about that room at all, at other times I felt its presence in our lives, as well as my ignorance, like a physical thing.
I’m not sure exactly when I realized just how much of a no-go area Rachel and Emily were. Early on, before we were married, I asked James something about Rachel and Emily, I don’t recall what, and he gave me a look, a cross between hurt and annoyance and said, “I’ve already told you about that.”
I remember the that—not them. It sounded strangely, disconcertingly impersonal, even though I knew he couldn’t have meant it like that. I knew he would have appalled if I’d thought that he did. And yet that was when I began to realize, dimly at first, and then later with painful clarity, that James neither expected nor wanted to talk about Rachel or Emily with me, because he’d already told me, and it had nothing more to do with me; it was finished, and we never needed to discuss it—them—again.
And so, without me agreeing or even realizing, Emily and Rachel had become a blocked-off area for my marriage, despite the three days a week James spent with his daughter. And for the most part, I’ve told myself that that’s okay. I don’t want to talk endlessly about Rachel and Emily; I don’t even want to think about that much. I might feel I have to ask, yet it’s a relief not to press. Not, even, to know.
And yet at times like this, when something big is happening, when I feel like James is closing himself off to me, and the tectonic plates of our relationship are subtly shifting, the ground beneath my feet run through with fault lines, the lack of communication, of openness and honesty, scares me and I realize how alone I feel, even when James is right next to me.
Yet maybe all that will be in the past now. In just two days’ time, Emily will go into palliative care. Will that be the beginning of the end, as both James and Rachel seem to think, in their different ways? No more treatment, no more possibility of that wished-for miracle diagnosis and cure? My heart aches for Rachel, and yet…
Is it wrong, I wonder as I sip the beer I don’t want and James stays silent beside me, to feel the tiniest bit relieved by it all? Is it terrible?
“Oh, Tiffany!” my mother squeals from the kitchen, and, jolted out of my thoughts, I turn to see her throwing her arms around my sister-in-law, who smiles and gives her soft tummy—three kids will do that to you—a self-conscious pat.
I freeze, my inquiring smile turning into a rictus grin. Cody, her youngest, is only eight months old. Surely not…
“Can you believe it?” my mother calls out as she links arms with Tiffany and parades her out to the deck as if she is her personal trophy. Patrick is smiling in a self-satisfied way, clearly the cock of the walk, and James’ expression is blandly curious, his gaze still distant. I feel sick.
Steve bounds up from the yard, where he’s been playing tee-ball with the kids.
“I’m going to be a grandma again,” my mother trills, beaming, and then, as I knew she would, she looks pointedly at me. I can’t even smile. I can’t believe Tiffany is pregnant again. Four kids under five? All I want is one.
Patrick nudges me. “Better get a move on, Diva,” he says, the nickname from my childhood that I actually kind of hate. It wasn’t even true, anyway, at least not much. “What do you think, James? Time to start trying?”
My family are nosy to the point of utter obnoxiousness, although they don’t realize it. They mean well; at least I think they do. James ignores Patrick’s question and kisses Tiffany’s cheek. “Congratulations, Tiffany. That’s great news.”
Tiffany gives me an apologetic look. “I was putting my maternity clothes aside for you, Eva, but I guess I’ll need them now.”
“I guess you will,” I say, trying to sound jokey but I can’t. I glug my beer. What am I supposed to say to any of this?
Later, in the kitchen, while we’re dishing out the salads, my mother says in a low voice, “There’s nothing… wrong, is there, Eva?”
“Wrong?” I am thinking of how quiet James has been about Emily, how it is making me feel so uncertain, on top of my own disappointment.