The Other Shore: Two Stories of Love and Death

coming by again until later that afternoon.

  Eventually, he found himself driving around some landmarks from his past. He drove by the university library, the public library, the ghost of what used to be the shopping mall where all the small town kids used to congregate in the winter, and then he parked in front of his old high school.

  He had so much promise then. His potential was widely viewed as pregnant with expectation. Of course, this expectation was placed upon him and never anything he was able to accept or deny. It was something that was just present, barely needing acknowledged. And he only confirmed this potential when he won a fellowship for his poetry. Everyone thought this meant big things for him—a life like his father's. But he never viewed the fellowship money as a validation of his work as much as he saw it as his ticket out of town.

  Since his father worked for the university, he was afforded the benefit of attending tuition-free, and this was what he was expected to do. But after he won the fellowship, he felt free for the first time, feeling that he could finally get away. And anywhere was better than here.

  At least it was then.

  About a month ago, Simon was up late watching a documentary about the Galapagos Islands, and someone in the movie said, 'No matter how far you go in the world searching for paradise, you always bring yourself with you.'

  In some ways, he thinks he can correlate his recent emotional breakdowns with the introduction of that idea rattling around in his head. Just like the promise he felt he was burdened with in high school, he always believed his problems came from without, not from within.

  After talking to Scott, and hearing how Maggie seemed to have taken control of her life, he feels inspired by what lies ahead of him, and he knows there are choices to be made.

  He's not running away from his job, but since his promotion, it feels like a job without further progress. He feels like he's reached his potential there, and he'd just end up spinning his wheels there if he stayed.

  And with Rachael, it's the same thing. He's not running away from her, either. He's been far away from her for some time. They've both been afraid to admit what they knew was true, afraid of what the world would look like if they were alone.

  And he's not rationalizing. He is his father's son, yes. He does have a tendency to run away from his problems, or to stick his head in the sand and pretend his problems don't exist. But some problems run away on their own, and it's important to recognize when a solution presents itself. He firmly believes that this is what he's supposed to do. He's supposed to find his dad's poetry again, let it speak to him, then send it out so that it can speak to others as well. And, even though he's spent years denying it to himself, he's supposed to come back home.

  In being here, he's realized how much of a home it still is to him.

  And then there's Laura. He can't help but smile when he thinks of her, about the hope she…

  His phone vibrates.

  'He's dead,' he thinks.

  The phone continues to vibrate in his hand as he stares at the screen. It's Rachael. And, at first, he breathes a sigh of relief that it's not his dad, and his immediate inclination is to ignore the call, let it go to voicemail. That's what he would've done a few days ago to avoid a call he didn't want to answer. But that's not who he wants to be anymore. He's tired of avoiding the inevitables of his life.

  "Hello?"

  "Hey, how are you?"

  "Fine. And you?"

  "I half-expected you would've called me by now," she says in her classic passive-aggressive tone, a tone he's grown accustomed to but certainly never grown fond of.

  "Why's that?"

  "Simon, please," she says, sounding as exasperated as she always does once they start having a conversation beyond the mundane. He can't imagine that this is the way she sounds when she speaks to the other people in her life. In fact, he's sure she doesn't. He always hears a sunnier, happier person when he overhears her speaking on the phone or out and about—just not with him.

  "You sound tired," he says.

  "How's your dad?" she asks, ignoring his comment with an ease that sets him on edge.

  "Still dying."

  "How long do you think he has?"

  "Hours—a day or two at the most."

  "Sorry to hear that," she says, and her voice has softened with sincerity.

  "I know you are."

  "How are you doing?"

  "It's an adjustment for sure, but I'm alright."

  "And how long do you think you'll end up staying?"

  "Not sure about that. Things have gotten more complicated since I got here."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Just that some things have come up over the last couple days that make it difficult for me to give you an exact date."

  "Why so opaque? Just give me an idea."

  "If I had an idea, I'd tell you. But I don't."

  "Well, I didn't want to do this now, but maybe we should talk about the house."

  "What about it?"

  "The way we left things… I said I was going to move out."

  "That's what you said."

  "And you still want me to go?"

  "Wait, you were the one who said—"

  "I know. I just… I don't know."

  "It's time, Rachael. There's nothing left for us, and we both know it," he says, ripping the band-aid off, tired of playing rhetorical games with her.

  "God, Simon."

  "What? I thought this was already decided. You said you'd be out by the time I got back."

  "I know, but I thought… We were angry. I'm sure we both said things that we didn't mean."

  "Listen, Rachael. Can I be honest with you?"

  "Of course."

  "No, I mean it. Can I really be honest?"

  "Yes, but don't be cruel," she says, and he can hear from her voice that they're both looking over the edge of truth, into a place they've rarely looked together.

  "I have no intention of being cruel."

  "Then say what you want to say."

  "It's over," Simon says, plainly and without menace or hostility, "And it's been over for longer than either of us would care to admit."

  "I thought you weren't going to be cruel."

  "I'm not trying to be."

  "It feels like you are."

  "You don't agree?"

  "I think it's easy to say that we've known something for months when we can look back in retrospect and say we weren't happy. It's completely different when you're living in the moment."

  "So, you admit you haven't been happy?"

  "No, not happy necessarily, but still hopeful."

  "Hopeful for what?"

  "That you might love me again."

  "No, Rachael. I did love you. I do love you," he says, though not quite believing it himself.

  "I thought you were going to be honest with me."

  "I am," he says. "Though I must admit that my love is not what you've wanted. But I do care about you. I want you to be happy."

  "Have you met someone else?"

  "What? It's not that simple."

  "So, you have met someone."

  "When I left you on Monday," he says, being deliberately legal with his words, "I had no space to think, let alone give myself to anyone else emotionally."

  "You've certainly not been giving yourself to me emotionally."

  "No, I haven't been, but you've never been a particularly giving type, either."

  "Maybe not recently, but after awhile you have to decide whether or not it's worth your time to continue giving to someone who's not willing to take what you're offering."

  "I could've tried harder, I know. I could've made myself more available to you, but it wouldn't have mattered. We still end up in the same place."

  "That seems unnecessarily fatalistic."

  "It's the truth, though."

  "It just seems so sad to walk away after all these years, to forget what we've built together, to start all over again."

  "I know, but that
's not reason enough for us to stay together."

  "I didn't say that it was."

  "But isn't that exactly why you stayed as long as you did, simple inertia?"

  "No. I think you keep filling me with thoughts you've had. I was trying to make this work. I waited and waited, still believing that you'd propose, that we'd start a family, long after my friends and family gave up on you."

  He realizes now that they haven't been stringing each other along at all. He's been the one stringing her along all this time, even if he didn't know it. And he feels terrible about it. He's not been healthy or emotionally available to her, and he wonders if he was ever truly emotionally connected to her at all.

  He always believed they had fallen into a misery-loves-company situation, a relationship built on a mutually assured destruction, which is what—in the back of his mind—he'd always imagined was the core of all relationships. For the first time, he realizes how much he's the perfect illustration of the emotionally unavailable. He always saw adult relationships as a thing you slowly give up on, but that, since you do it together, it's a silent agreement of degradation. From a certain point, he always thought relationships were about simple endurance.

  That is why she'd asked if he'd met someone. It was so much better than the alternative, that he just never really loved her.

  "I always had the best of intentions," he says. "I never knowingly misled you."

  "But you say you knew it was over," she says. "How long have you known?"

  "No, I was saying that I know now that I knew it was over. I think I've known things weren't as they should be for the last couple years."

  "Christ, Simon. I don't want to hear that."

  "I'm sorry. Really, I am."

  "So, that's it then?" she asks.

  "How do you mean?"

  "We just say goodbye and move on."

  "I don't know. I've never done this before. I've never been in a relationship as serious as ours."

  "I wonder why," she says, and her tone suggests that she's being intentionally mean-spirited. He can't blame her.

  "Do what you want. You know how to reach me," he says, suddenly wanting to be done with the conversation.

  "I'll move my stuff out of the house, but what should I do about the stuff we bought together?"

  "Use your discretion. I trust you," he says.

  "Okay, then, I guess this is goodbye?"

  "Guess so," he says. "Take care of yourself."

  "You, too," she says, and there's a distance in her voice that descends into utter silence. She's ended the call.

  He looks at the phone. There's a sadness that he wears as he stares at the black, blank screen. He can see his face in its dark reflection, but it doesn't reflect how he feels. The face looking back at him is slightly smiling. And in that instant, he realizes that the weight of a bad relationship, a relationship that he already thought was over, is now officially done. And he's relieved to be officially free of it.

  He tosses the phone back on the passenger seat and thinks about what it means to say goodbye to someone after six years together. It's a strange thing to suddenly color all those years with a different brush. Changing the trajectory of their relationship changes how he views their past together, and it seems to happen immediately. Every moment he spent with her will look different to him now.

  But does letting her go mean that all those years were wasted years? He doesn't think so. He thinks of that time as time he spent learning about himself, years where he can honestly say he was able to place all his ills on the relationship, on her, until he couldn't anymore, until he realized that all his ills were his own. And now, he is emotionally capable of possessing that knowledge and understanding that every unhappiness, every insecurity is his to claim but not necessarily to own like a yoke around his neck.

  He thinks of his dad, and how, when his phone rang, he immediately thought it was Susannah or Maggie telling him that he was gone. He thinks of goodbyes and how the six years he spent with Rachael were the same six years he was estranged from his dad. He thinks of all that lost time he spent carrying such meaningless anger. And to what end? Unlike the time he spent with Rachael, the time he missed with his dad was wasted—time spent trying to burn a fuel that had long since burned away.

  And there's not much time left, and he knows he needs to spend those last hours with his dad. It won't make up for all the lost time, but it will give both of them something to take with them wherever they go from here.

  The front door of Sy and Susannah's house is open, but he still knocks on the screen door, lightly at first. He's still not comfortable just walking in.

  Susannah's car is parked in the driveway. This surprised him. He assumed she wasn't going to be here this time of day, but it makes sense that she would be taking time off from work. It just hadn't occurred to him to expect her. In some ways, she's still an afterthought.

  A nurse—one he hadn't seen before—moves into his view from the kitchen side of the living room and waves him in.

  "Are you Sy's son?"

  "That's me," he says, moving inside, careful not to let the old, wooden screen door slam behind him.

  "I'm the day nurse, Wendy," she says, wiping her hand on a towel before she presents it to him. "Nice to meet you."

  "Nice to meet you," he says, taking her hand.

  "He's back in his room if you want to go on in. Let me know if he needs anything," she says, and then disappears into the kitchen as quickly as she appeared.

  Simon stands in the living room by the front door and marvels at the darkness of the room. And it's not just the darkness, the quiet in the house surprises him. He takes a cautious step toward the hallway, careful not to disturb the quiet. He moves toward the flood of light that pours from the slightly opened door of his father's room, and he begins to hear the softest hiss of a song. There's jazz piano swimming along with the dust that dances in the light from the doorway. He pushes his hand against the door and opens the brightness further.

  Susannah is in the room, lying in bed with Sy. Her body is turned on its side leaning into his body. Her face is resting close to his face. Her arm is clumsily draped over his chest. It's a strangely intimate picture, and he immediately regrets arriving earlier than he was expected.

  He tries to pull the door back to its original position in hopes that he can fade back into the darkness of the living room unnoticed, but the door creaks just enough to cause Susannah to open her eyes.

  "Simon," she whispers, a nap still wrapped around her voice. "I wasn't expecting you until later this afternoon. What time is it?"

  "Not sure. After one, I suppose. I'm early," he says, standing at the door, feeling as though he's violated some private space, even though his dad still hasn't opened his eyes and doesn't appear to be awake. "I just thought… I didn't have anything else to do, and I wanted to see him."

  "No, I understand," she says, sitting on the edge of the bed now.

  Simon can tell by the look on her face that she feels embarrassed. He hates that he's caused her any discomfort for having an intimate moment with her dying husband. It could be that she's embarrassed at being caught so vulnerable, which is sad but understandable. And even he feels uncomfortable in a way that surprises him. He's known his father was with this woman, but he'd never seen them together, never seen their familiarity on exhibit. In fact, he doesn't ever remember seeing his dad be that familiar with his mother.

  "I can come back later, honestly. I feel terrible for waking you."

  "No, don't be silly. You're welcome any time," she says, slipping her shoes on, which had been resting on the floor by the piano playing radio.

  "The music's nice. Who is that?" he asks, looking at the radio, trying to move the mood of the room back to a semblance of normalcy.

  She looks at the radio as if she just now remembers it's there. "Not sure. It's the university radio station. They play jazz during the days. Your dad has it on all the time," she says, standing up. "Might b
e Bill Evans. Does that sound right?"

  "I think it could be," he says, impressed with her knowledge of jazz.

  "You pick up a lot living with your father," she says, sensing his surprise. "Like I said, he has it on all day long when he's home."

  She's facing Sy now, her arms crossed over her chest, still a little guarded after being caught unawares by Simon.

  "How is he?"

  "Not good," she says, standing up. "His breathing is labored, and he's not really been himself since late last night, and even that only lasted a couple minutes."

  "Is he usually awake this time of day?"

  "Not recently, no. But I do usually have some time with him in the morning, but not today," she says, and he can see a sadness fall over her face. "It's close now."

  Simon was struck by the starkness of her tone, the matter-of-factness of her declaration. He half-expected her to say something else, but she didn't. She just stands there with her sad face echoing what she's said: 'It's close now.' There's a soft resignation to her expression, a certainty that he respects. She has the look of a person who's come to accept the inevitable, but he could tell by the depth of her eyes that the acceptance of death is not the same as the acceptance of loss. And he suddenly understood this seeming contradiction.

  She knew Sy was going to die—and soon. She had accepted the end of it. But his life—in the abstract—is not all she has of him. Life seems like a physical thing, but there are things only vaguely physical that she can't accept losing. There's his nearness, the weight of his spirit in the house and the force of his personality. There's the memories. She'll be able to hold the memories, and those will give her a pale impression of his closeness, his force of personality, but these never go away the same way the light of life goes out. They just dim and dim over time until all you're left with is impressions, blurry ghost memories like photographs you flip through from time to time.

  "I'm going to get some tea. Would you like anything?" she asks, turning toward him.

  "No, I'm fine, thanks."

  As she moves by him, she wraps her hand around his arm, and there's a remarkable tenderness in her touch. It seems like an acknowledgement that they're sharing what will be a demarcation point in both their lives. And even though they've only just met and know almost nothing about one another, this event they're sharing will forever tie them inextricably together. Everyone needs volunteers to help steer them through the perils and pains of life, and she's letting him know, in this tender moment, that she's in the same boat he's in.

  "Doesn't he look peaceful?" she asks as she moves toward the door.

  "He does," he says, looking at Sy's body bathing in the sunlight. But all he could really think was how sick and tired he looked, like a man fading from sleep into pure light.

  Susannah leaves the room. Simon leans down and raises the volume a little on the radio, turns the speakers more toward his dad.

  He takes a seat in the room's solitary chair and faces him. The Bill Evans song is quieting and a new piece starts up.

  "Is this Paul Desmond?" he asks, though not expecting an answer. He just wants to silence the quiet. The music feels as though it needs the accompaniment of conversation. "I think it is. Not sure though if it's from his solo work or his Brubeck days."

  He starts to hum along to this song that he didn't know he knew. Jazz is something that he inexorably attaches to his father.