Some Like It Hopeless (A Temporary Engagement) (12 page)

She said, “You have other memories of them. I’m sure you have pictures. Why aren’t they here, where you live?”

“I don’t live here. I exist here.”

“Then where do you live?”

Brady drove her to his home. The traffic as light as it ever got; the drive from Brentwood to Calabasas cutting through the last green space in Los Angeles and making her forget for a few minutes that they lived in the middle of a concrete jungle.

He parked in the drive and looked at this home that had stood empty for so long. It was long and boxy, one-story. Glass and white walls, über-modern.

His wife had loved it, but had kept telling them they needed something different. This wasn’t a home where kids were free to be wild. And she’d wanted more kids. More happy, wild kids.

The outside lights blazed, welcoming him home like they’d always done. And he knew that when he went inside, ghosts would be there to greet him.

When he’d been released from prison, he’d headed here first, but everything had been exactly the same. The cleaning crew still cleaned, the gardener still tended. They’d changed nothing, just doing what they’d done for years because no one had told them differently.

He’d taken one step inside and had died all over. He’d rarely gone back since then.

Brady walked around to the back first and when Cassandra sighed at the pool, he almost smiled.

“Charlie loved to swim. He was fearless. He was only four and he would run down the diving board and fling himself off. Samantha always said he’d give her a heart attack one day.”

Cassandra didn’t react to the first time he’d said his wife’s name, just sat down at the edge, taking off her shoes and sticking her feet in the clear blue water. “I bet he loved the slide, too.”

Brady looked at the short slide built into the rocks and nodded. He closed his eyes, hearing the shrieks, remembering the fun they’d had together.

Cassandra said gently, “It all ends, Brady. It doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t make it less or even tragic. The good times are good. The end.”

“And the bad times are bad?”

“The bad times blow. The bad times are inevitable. Celebrate the good times. Remember
them
.”

But it felt so wrong. It felt so wrong to remember the good times when he’d been the one to end them.

Brady unlocked the back door, stepping inside and leaving Cassandra by the pool.

He wandered into the great room. White and clean. Sterile. There were no toys littering the floor, no little hand prints smudging the walls.

The tears threatened again and Brady turned away. The kitchen sparkled with disuse and he sat at the counter and remembered all the times he’d sat here watching his wife clean up after a meal.

Cassandra found him there, skirting around him to open cupboards and drawers. Dishes were stacked neatly, but the fridge was empty, the pantry bare. She swiped a finger on a shelf and found no dust. Took out a bowl and held it up to the light to see it sparkle.

She said, “Creepy.”

“Cleaning service.”

“They just keep cleaning an empty house?”

He nodded. “I can’t tell them to stop.”

“I can’t believe your TV is still here.”

He laughed, and it echoed. Cassandra sat next to him at the counter. “I’d like to see some pictures.”

“That. . .will hurt.”

“I don’t know why it has to. Every end is tragic, Brady. It doesn’t, can’t, change what came before.”

He waved his hand toward the office, and she tugged at him until he stood up to come with her.

When they entered the office, she said, “And the computer is here, too? Did you hire nuns?”

He didn’t have a clue what was on the computer; wouldn’t have cared if it had been taken.

He pulled Cassandra to the bookcase where seven thick photo albums stood side by side, and Cassandra said, “Scrapbooks. I’m getting a real impression about what kind of woman your wife was.”

He chuckled again and this time it didn’t hurt so bad. “You don’t scrapbook?”

She puffed out her cheeks. “No.”

She grabbed the first, the one with swirling gold script that said, “Our Wedding,” and opened it to the first page.

“Yep. She’s beautiful; I just knew she would be. And look at you! So young.”

“I was twenty-five.”

“You both look like babies.”

He looked, and they did. They looked young and fresh. The bridal party flanked them and he realized with a jolt how young his father looked. How old he looked now. How tired.

His brothers stood next to him in the photo, his sister in her bridesmaid dress. All of them so happy, so
together
.

Brady had lost more than just his wife and son on that stretch of road.

Cassandra flipped the page, laughing and pointing. “Is that an ice swan?”

When he nodded, she said, “Oh, please tell me there were doves, too?”

“I don’t remember having doves. But I didn’t remember the ice swan, either.”

“Then I will hold out hope.”

She sat down at the desk, flipping pages, pointing to people and asking who they were, laughing at the funny things that grabbed her.

Brady stood right behind her, answering when he could. He didn’t know how he was going to make it through seven scrapbooks full of memories. One for their wedding, one for every year of their marriage, and one named Baby.

He knew before Cassandra opened it that the first picture was of the pregnancy test; he remembered how his gut had dropped when Samantha had shown it to him. Remembered laughing when she’d taken a picture of it.

And knew that must have been a time when he hadn’t been using much, precisely because he could remember it.

He did remember the first ultrasound, when they told him it was a boy. And when Cassandra twisted the album this way and that, trying to make it out, he still couldn’t see it. Could hardly see that it was a baby, let alone a boy.

There were pictures of Samantha getting bigger and bigger. Pictures of the baby shower, Samantha surrounded in little blue clothes and gifts.

He pointed at the next picture. “She yelled at me for taking that last one. Said she didn’t want to remember when she was that big and awkward.”

“She still looks beautiful.” Cassandra flicked her eyes back at Brady. “And I could call her something here, but I won’t. So, brownie points.”

She turned the page before Brady could say anything, and then he
couldn’t
say anything. The very first picture of Charlie, screaming and hugged tight to his mother’s chest. Samantha’s smile so wide, the tears flowing down her cheeks.

Brady walked away from that picture. He walked over to the window and stared out at the brightly lit pool.

Cassandra’s arms slid around him and she laid her head against his back, and Brady didn’t like it. Not here, not in his home. His wife’s home.

He pushed her arms off. “How can the end not change what came before, Cassandra? How can I not look at that picture and not remember what happened to him?”

“Just look at the picture and remember him on that day. Remember holding him in your arms, remember how he smelled, remember how he cried. On that day.”

“You know what I remember about that day? You know what I remember about all those important days? I remember that little baggie sitting in my pocket. I remember the feel of the bottle in my hand.”

He didn’t know when he’d started using, just knew it was sometime in college. Couldn’t remember why, it was just the thing to do.

He couldn’t know how many of the pictures he’d just looked at had been of him high. He would guess most of them were because that was how he usually celebrated back then.

And he wouldn’t have called himself a user or a drunk until he’d been chained to a hospital bed, dying because he couldn’t get a hit. Screaming and sweating and unable to remember what had happened, what he’d done, because of the drugs he’d been on and the alcohol he’d washed them down with.

Her arms came back around his waist and she hugged him tight, squeezed her hands together so he couldn’t push her off.

“You don’t remember holding him at all?”

“You don’t want me to remember that other part? The reason for my misery?”

“You live in misery, Brady. Tonight’s for the good memories.”

The good memories hurt just as bad. And it was so long ago, so clouded, but he closed his eyes and tried to remember.

“. . .I remember them wiping him down. He was. . .blue and purple and covered in gunk, and they were so rough. And Samantha just held him and cried. She’d been screaming and in pain, and then she was laughing and crying.”

“Sounds horrible.”

It had been. Horrible, and he didn’t know how his wife could have even imagined doing it again.

But he remembered it had been wonderful, too.

Horrible and wonderful. And wasn’t that the very definition of life?

For a moment, he could almost understand it. Could almost hear what Cassandra had been telling him over and over again. The horrible parts couldn’t undo what was wonderful. You just had to get through it.

Life’s a bitch. What’s next?

Brady hadn’t wanted a next; he didn’t know why he’d been given one. He didn’t know why he’d been given another one when he’d refused to do anything with the first one.

But he looked down at Cassandra’s arms wrapped tight around his waist and knew she was his next.

He said, “There’s a pen holder on the desk where I used to hide drugs.”

He turned in her arms, forcing her to let him loose. She looked where he was pointing and he pushed her toward the desk softly.

When she picked it up, Brady could feel it in his hand. Remembered what it felt like, how heavy it was.

Cassandra took out the pens, looked inside, flipped it upside down. Brady stayed by the window and watched her.

“Smack it a few times.”

She did, harder and harder until the false bottom fell out. No little baggies fell with it and Brady started breathing again.

Cassandra picked up the false bottom. “Creative.”

“Users are.”

She looked at him and he said, “I still want it. Every once in a while, it’ll just hit me. I’ll visit a place, or see an old friend. I’ll watch an old movie that reminds me of college, and I’ll remember how
good
it felt. And I’ll
want
it, want it so bad that
want
just doesn’t describe it, and the only reason I don’t is because I tell myself I can still feel her blood. I can still hear his screams.

“I can’t forgive myself. If I forgive myself, I will go back to that.” He closed his eyes. “I will do it again. To someone else’s child, someone else’s wife. I can’t forget; I can’t forgive.”

He waited. Waited for her arms to slide around him again. To tell him that he wouldn’t. That she believed in him. That she loved him.

That’s what his wife had always told him. And he’d believed her.

But when he opened his eyes, Cassandra was still by the desk, watching him.

And Brady knew why he could relax around her. Why he could sleep, why he didn’t need his nightmares when she was with him.

Cassandra had already given her no-matter-what love away.

She looked down at the false bottom still in her hand and Brady said, “You won’t forgive me, right? I come home a little drunk, a little high, and you won’t forgive me. There won’t be any second chances. You won’t love me no matter what, because you already love Shane like that.”

Cassandra dropped the false bottom in the trash and came toward him. She stopped a foot away and said, “I won’t forgive you. No matter what.”

He whispered, “My wife would have. She would have forgiven me even that.”

Cassandra nodded. “You said she was an angel.”

He nodded back to the woman in front of him. No angel, just a woman who knew how to do no matter what.

Brady closed his eyes, relaxing into his peace. Finally sure he could remember the good memories; not afraid to lose the bad memories.

He could find out what was next for him. He could sleep lying down in bed and not need his nightmares.

He had Cassandra. She would never forgive him, no matter what.

Her arms slid around him, her chin rested on his chest.

He opened his eyes slowly, carefully.

She said, “Your cleaning service is going to freak when they see those pens littering your desk.”

And Brady laughed.

Shane liked to think of himself as a glass half-full kind of guy.

He liked to think he looked for the good in people. . .while making fun of the bad, because well, life was short.

And when he’d looked into Christian’s eyes and decided that this was it, he’d known there would be bad with the good.

He just hadn’t been prepared for a siege. Hadn’t been prepared for the bad to be NEVER ENDING.

He said, “Please, God. Make it stop.”

Christian turned, looking over his shoulder into the full-length mirror in the oh-so-cute boutique they’d passed and then turned right back around to enter.

Because a man never had too many clothes. In his closet. On his body was a different matter.

And that just wasn’t something he could say to Christian yet. Where was Cassandra when he needed her?