That Birthday in Barbados Page 4

  “You didn’t need to do that.”

  “I wanted to.”

  “Thanks. Is that all?”

  “Catherine.” There’s pleading attached to my name, and I’m suddenly irate that he thinks there is anything I can do about his own need for redemption.

  “What do you want from me, Connor? Both you and Nicole will have to figure out what to do with your guilt. I can’t fix it for you.”

  “I know that. But wouldn’t it be good for all of us if we tried to get to a better place?”

  “Where exactly would that be? Sunday dinners at my place? The three of us talking about old times?”

  “Catherine-”

  “You tore my heart out, Connor. There, I said it. Thanks for the birthday reminder.”

  And on that, I hang up.

  Chapter Five

  “Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”

  ― Mineko Iwasaki

  Nicole

  SHE KNOWS THERE won’t be a reply to the birthday email.

  In three years, how many messages has she left for Catherine? How many emails has she written, knowing all the while they won’t be opened?

  Too many to count, actually.

  Nicole kicks up her pace along the boardwalk in West Palm Beach. At just after seven, she isn’t the only one out early. A woman on a bike pedals past her, going in the opposite direction. She’s wearing ear buds and doesn’t make eye contact. A dark blue Maserati rolls by on the street, its engine revving a protest against the twenty-five mile per hour speed limit.

  It’s beautiful here, but for a moment, Nicole misses Greenville, South Carolina, the town where she’d grown up, with a pang that yawns wide in the pit of her stomach. She could love it here, mainly because of the weather and the fact that blue skies make an appearance nearly every day of the year.

  But if she’s honest, she’s not sure there’s anywhere she really belongs anymore. Hoping to give Catherine space three years ago, she’d left New York, moved back to Greenville where she’d been unable to face her own family. She’d reached the point where she could no longer school her expression into sympathetic questioning when her mother had shaken her head and said, “I don’t understand what happened with Catherine and Connor. They were such a good fit and seemed to be so in love. And she’s too busy to come home anymore. I don’t know what to make of it, Nicole.”

  Whether she’d been standing in her mother’s kitchen during a visit, or listening to the pain in her voice from the veil of her cell phone, Nicole’s guilt grew with every mention of her sister’s divorce.

  There were times when she wanted to blurt the entire disastrous nightmare out loud to both her parents, lift the lid to the Pandora’s box she herself had created, let them know once and for all what a terrible person their youngest daughter turned out to be.

  It would be a relief, really, to bring it all out in the open, to feel the full force of their anger and disappointment.

  She deserves it all. And more.

  She picks her pace up yet another notch, her lungs starting to burn from the effort. It feels good though. She likes the discomfort, wishing for a way to keep it on full-time, an external source of pain to extinguish the one inside her that stays at a permanent low burn.

  She doesn’t think there’s anything capable of extinguishing her own self-loathing though. It’s something she’ll live with for the rest of her life. Sometimes, she wonders what it was inside her that set her on self-destruct? Was it because she herself had never married? Had she been jealous of Catherine?

  It’s an easy answer. But not a truthful one. Sure, she and Catherine had gone through spurts of typical sibling rivalry. There had been that time when she’d been in seventh grade and Catherine was in the eighth, and they’d liked the same boy. Mark Sanders. He’d been in Nicole’s grade, and she’d had a crush on him the entire school year.

  He’d ended up liking Catherine, and yeah, that hurt. No one wants to lose out to her big sister. But she had. Catherine and Mark hadn’t lasted past Christmas break that year, and by then, Nicole no longer wanted him either.

  As for Connor?

  That one caught her by complete surprise.

  She’d stopped by their apartment in Manhattan one night to drop off a sample for Catherine who had still been at work. Connor answered the door dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and all but dripping sweat from a run on their treadmill. She intended to leave the sample without coming in, but he’d offered to make her a drink, and the thought of returning home to her much smaller, and lonely, apartment was tempting enough to sway her. It was just a drink after all.

  But a journey starts with a single step, and that night opened a door to wanting something that was not hers.

  She’d discovered they were both lonely.

  Connor’s hours as an attorney paled compared to the late hours Catherine worked in her own business. Connor didn’t complain though. He understood that it was her dream and fully endorsed her going after it.

  It was as if before that night, neither of them had ever looked at the other with anything beyond platonic friendship. She wasn’t sure they’d really even liked one another.

  And yet. . .

  She’s reached the end of the boardwalk by now. She leans against the railing and stares out at the blue water of the intercoastal waterway. The sun sends a glint of diamonds dancing across its surface.

  West Palm Beach is without doubt a beautiful place to live. But for Nicole, it doesn’t really matter where she lives. Emptiness fills her, the weight of her own terrible decision-making a concrete block on her chest. She is the prodigal daughter. Only she can’t return home, can’t repent. Doing so would mean having to tell her parents about her role in Catherine and Connor’s divorce.

  She would have to admit that Catherine isn’t coming home anymore because of her.

  Maybe it is time for that. Time to own the consequences of what she had done.

  Her stomach lifts, then dips.

  Is she ready to see that look of disappointment on her mother’s face? Ready to hear that note of pain in her father’s voice?

  It is selfish, but no, she isn’t.

  All her life, she’s been the one to disappoint their parents. The one who had to write two hundred sentences in detention after school for talking back to the teacher. The one who failed out of college and took a pity job from her sister with her then fledgling business.

  Face it, she tells herself. Failure is the only word that applies. She iis thirty-eight years old, soon to be thirty-nine, working as a waitress, no man in her life, no children.

  Maybe it is wrong to even try to get Catherine to forgive her. Maybe she is nothing but a rock around her sister’s neck, always trying to pull her down to her level.

  Is it true?

  Had she spent her life afraid to even try to compete with Catherine? Had it been easier to ride on her coattails, take what wasn’t hers?

  The questions stab at her heart with a knife point of something undeniable.

  She pushes away from the railing, running back the way she had come. She picks up her pace, her feet pounding the concrete until her breathing is harsh in her chest. One thing she knows. She will never run fast enough to leave behind the reality of who she has become.

  Chapter Six

  “It’s easier to bleed than sweat, Mr. Motes.”

  ― Flannery O’Connor

  Anders

  SHE SNAGS MY attention as soon as she walks in the room.

  But then it would be hard not to notice her.

  The travel clothes from yesterday are gone, and in their place, black shorts, fitted and high cut. The tank top is a light blue, cut low above a black sports bra. She looks uncertain, as if she suspects she’s out of her element. Something in that strikes in me a desire to put her at ease, and so I walk over, welcome her with a smile.

  “Glad you decided to come. You could’ve slept in, first day of vacation and all.”


  She’s surprised to find me standing right in front of her, her smile wavering as she glances around the room at the other people chatting and adjusting their seat height. “Ah, thanks. I hope I haven’t forgotten how to do this. It’s been a while.”

  “It’ll come right back,” I say. “We have two bikes left. One up front and one on the back row.”

  “Back row, please,” she says.

  “I can still see you,” I tease. “Don’t be thinking I won’t notice you slacking off.”

  She laughs, surprising me as much as herself, I think. “I’m a bit out of shape. And wondering if I should be in here at all.”

  “Absolutely,” I say, waving a hand at the full class. “When you’re done, you can go enjoy that English buffet with a clear conscience.”

  She smiles at me, her gaze direct now, as if she’s trying to decide just how much credibility to give me. It hits me that I care what she thinks. “So,” I say. “Let’s get your seat adjusted to the right height. Towels in the corner, and bottled water in the fridge. Help yourself.”

  We head for the bike in the back corner. “Stand next to the seat,” I say. “You want your hip to line up with the top.”

  She does as I ask, and I bring the seat up two levels. “Long legs,” I say.

  She glances up at me, then drops her gaze, and I swear there’s color in her cheeks. Am I flirting with her? She’s wondering. Am I? I don’t know. Maybe. I like that I’ve made her blush.

  “I think I’ll grab a water,” she says and heads for the refrigerator.

  I walk up front and ask if anyone else needs help with their bike.

  “I do, Anders.”

  I follow the voice to the second row where Gracie Mathers is looking at me with a big smile on her face. She’s a resident of one of the resort properties and a regular in my class. At seventy-three, she likes to play the helpless card, indulging in a little harmless flirting which I can’t deny is flattering. She stands next to her bike, and I make the necessary adjustments.

  In a voice meant to carry, she says, “You could be an advertisement for your own line of workout clothing, Anders, dear. What man wouldn’t want muscles like yours? And what woman-”

  “There you go, Gracie,” I interrupt her, laughing. “You’re all set. And we better get started, or you’re going to miss that buffet.”

  The entire class is laughing now. I tap the iPad screen next to my bike and turn up the music. I climb on, clip in to the pedals and clap my hands once. “Good morning, everyone. I’m Anders Walker, reformed New Yorker transplant, living one day at a time here in paradise. Approximately 5300 miles from the North Pole, 7100 miles from the South Pole and a scant 900 miles from the Equator. Are you ready to bring it this morning?”

  Cheers follow the question. I crank the music louder, glance at the back to see Catherine Camilleri already pumping to the beat. Competitive. I would have guessed as much.

  “All right, people. You’ve got a couple of numbers on your screen that matter in our efforts here. The first is resistance. Ideally, you’ll be in the range of the number I’m asking you for. Cadence is how fast you’re pedaling. I’ll be giving you a number to hit, but remember to listen to your own body. Everybody good with that?”

  Another roar of approval goes up, and I top it with, “Let’s leave some sweat on the floor, people!”

  For the next forty-five minutes, I prod, cajole and sweet-talk up the effort level in the room. My goal is the same as always, get the class to give as much as they’ve got so that when they’re done, they feel like they got what they came for and can’t wait to do it again.

  By the time we reach the cool-down, there’s not a single person who isn’t sweating proof I’ve accomplished my goal. The music slows, and I guide them through a series of stretches, finally climbing off the bikes and finishing out with toe touches.

  As the last song winds down, everyone claps and I thank them for coming. A few people wipe off their bikes and head out the door, while others linger and chat.

  Catherine Camilleri is gathering up her things to leave, but somehow, I’m not ready to let her go yet. I walk over and say in a low voice, “You’re lucky I didn’t out you.”

  Her face is flushed from the effort, sweat beading on the skin above the neckline of her shirt. She raises a brow. “How’s that?”

  “If I’d let everyone know you own a fitness clothing company, you would have owed them a little more effort.”

  Owned,” she corrects. “And are you saying I didn’t make enough effort?”

  “To the contrary. Proof is in the sweat.”

  She smiles a half-smile and shrugs. “Turning forty is motivation enough.”

  “You? Forty?”

  “Today as a matter of fact.”

  “You don’t look a day over-”

  “Thirty-nine and a half?”

  We both laugh then, and I say, “I was going for considerably under that.”

  “Well, thanks,” she says, “but it is what it is, you know.”

  “Are you celebrating with family today?”

  I keep my tone light, as if I’m not fishing for info on who she’s vacationing with, but I can see by the way she drops her gaze that I’m not that slick.

  “No,” she says. “I’m flying solo for this one.”

  “I have it on good authority that it isn’t healthy to spend birthdays alone.”

  “Ah. Makes you age quicker?”

  “Exactly.”

  Everyone else has left the room by now, and I’m suddenly aware of this in a way that makes me take a step back. There’s a current of something between us I recognize as physical attraction. But then I work for the hotel, and she is a guest. I put the necessary line back in place between us, and say, “Well, I hope the rest of your day is everything a birthday should be.”

  “Thanks,” she says, reaching down to pick up the bag she’d brought to class with her. “And thank you for the workout. It was much needed. And really great.”

  “You did your label proud,” I say. “Come back tomorrow.”

  “If I’m not too sore to walk,” she says, turning then and heading for the door.

  I watch her leave, something inside me wanting to call her back. But what would be the point? The two of us live in different worlds. Mine is here, for however long I’m around to live it. And hers is in New York City, a place where I can no longer live the life I need to lead.

  *

  Four years ago

  I SIT IN the chair at the far corner of the crowded room. I’m one of twenty or so people laying claim for the day to an off-white lounger backed up to one of the room’s only two windows. If I turn my head, I can see the very large Bradford pear loaded with white blooms at the corner of the building. The petals remind me that it’s spring. Which reminds me that this is the time of year when I would be running in Central Park. Getting in shape for a marathon. Or riding my bike for a 50-miler.

  Thinking of myself as the person who had done those things seems as if I must be dreaming. That person isn’t me. Did I ever do that?

  I turn my head away from the window and catch a glimpse of the mirror hanging on the wall across from my chair. I see the skeleton of a man reflected there. His face is thin, and it has a grayish tint. He has no eyebrows and no eyelashes.

  With a jolt, I realize that man is me.

  Next to me in the mirror is a silver stand from which hangs a plastic bag. It drips its slow poison through a skinny plastic tube that connects to a needle that connects to a tortured vein in my right arm. I watch the bag empty its contents drop by drop by drop, aware that I am being filled with a chemical weaponry smart enough to kill the dividing cells in my body. Apparently, cancer cells divide more often than normal cells, the theory being that chemotherapy is much more likely to kill them.

  Some part of me knows that the reason I look the way I do is because normal cells are dying too.

  After all, I do look like I’m dying. Which, in reality, I guess I
am.

  I wonder if the medicine – I loathe using that term for it – is winning the battle or losing it. My guess is losing. Who could declare the way I feel a win?

  I’ve been at this for six weeks, and with every passing day, I know the life is seeping from me. Something outside the window catches my eye. I look. It’s a bike in the parking lot. A cyclist in a helmet and skinny pants and a racing shirt. He aims a key at a nearby car, locks it and climbs on the bike. He pedals off, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, and I am hit with such envy it feels like acid eating a hole in the center of my heart.

  What is it they say about health? You don’t appreciate it until you don’t have it. It couldn’t be any more true.

  Even after I’d been told I have leukemia, the words wouldn’t sink in. I didn’t feel sick. Maybe I had been a little more tired than usual, but I worked all the time. Everyone in my office was tired.

  The doctor recommended I come in the following day to map out a treatment plan. I couldn’t imagine what that would be. Pills? Shots? It never occurred to me that I would become a patient who spent his days in a room with other patients just like him. That I would lose my hair, my eyebrows, my eyelashes. That I would drop forty pounds and that people would fail to recognize me in places I frequented and was known, like the grocery store and a bookstore on my street.

  It was as if once I was told I was sick, I was.

  In the chair closest to me, I hear a woman sigh, a long, pain-filled sigh that ties my heart in a knot. I don’t want to look at her, but I do, and tears spring to my eyes, blurring my vision. I blink them away and ask her if she is all right. She lets her gaze meet mine, and I see in her eyes what she already knows. She will not survive this. If I look like I’m losing the battle, she looks as if the other side has already won.

  Our gazes lock, and there is nothing but truth between us. I let her see I know what she knows. I want to cry for her, but she does not want me to. All around us are other patients in various stages of fight and defeat. I want to cry for us all, for the fact that the only hope that can be given to us is something that does its best to destroy us.