Sweet Forty-Two (23 page)

I nodded in understanding, and she continued.

“While I’ll never practice psychiatry again, I need to be able to live as stable a life as possible. I want to enjoy life. You know me—I’m not going to sit in a rocking chair at Breezy Pointe until the day I die. The ECT can help my brain get out of the cycle it seems to have been in since your dad died.”

“But, what about the side effects? What are they?” I hadn’t done in-depth research on the subject myself. My mother had made clear with me where my position was: a firm
no.

“Varied. There are some physical side effects that I’m not at high risk for. The main thing that’s kept me away from it all of these years is the high possibility of memory loss.” She bit her pinky fingernail and looked out the window.

I took a deep breath. “What kind of memory loss? Like, how much?”

“Usually it’s only trouble remembering things in the weeks leading up to treatment, and trouble with memory during the three to four weeks it takes to complete a treatment cycle.”

“So ... like this conversation?” My chin quivered.

She nodded. “Maybe.”

Couldn’t it just mess with the bad and leave the good? Why did everything have to go ...
potentially?

“The benefit, sweetie, is that I might never need it again after this. It could completely reroute whatever’s gone haywire and set me straight again. For a long time, if not forever.”

For a few minutes more I listened to my mother, not an ounce of waver in her voice, discuss with me that treatment was to start in a week. She’d need my help to drive her to and from the hospital, and while the treatment itself only lasted a few minutes, they’d keep her in observation for a few hours afterward before releasing her. Two times a week for three weeks was the plan, evaluating progress halfway through.

“I’m getting a coffee, do you want one?” My mom stood and I nodded.

A moment later, she returned with two hot cups of coffee. We both drank it black, which allowed us to get drinking as soon as humanly possible in the morning.

“What happens if you get lost there?” I asked, staring into the steam swirling off my cup.

“Where?”

“In the ... haywire. What if it doesn’t work? What if you’re stuck in that faraway place forever?” The end of my sentence was cut off by a rogue sob breaking through my restraint.

My mom left her seat and slid in next to me, bringing my forehead to her shoulder as she squeezed me closer and I continued crying.

“Then,” she sighed and sniffed away some of her own tears, “we’ll always have this moment. Right here.”

She squeezed harder, and I cried harder. Until the sun went down in my little slice of the Mad Hatter’s tea party, I cried in my mother’s arms, certain these moments were on borrowed time.

It twisted my stomach watching Georgia’s car drive away with Rae’s letter inside, but I knew it was safest that way. I wasn’t always levelheaded in the emotional department. I knocked on the doorframe to Bo’s room, where he was sitting and strumming his guitar.

“Hey, bro, come in.” Bo set his guitar down and smiled, waving me in.

I sat on the edge of the bed. “Your fingers have to be getting raw. This recording schedule is brutal.”

He laughed. “It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but isn’t it great to be creating on a regular basis?” He stretched his arms overhead and leaned back in his chair, cracking his back.

“It is. I’m happy we have today off, though. I’m exhausted.” I knew better than to think it was from the schedule. It was from that damn letter, keeping me up at night with its endless possibilities. I wasn’t telling him yet, though.

“Well you’ve been rock solid in rehearsals, dude. I’m psyched you agreed to come.”

I nodded and he leaned forward in his chair. After some heavy silence, I took a deep breath.

“What’s up?” Bo asked, scrupulously studying my face.

“I miss her, Bo.”

Bo was understandably taken back by my admission. It was obvious, and expected, sure. But, I never talked about it. Not since shortly after returning from Ireland three months after burying Rae.

He reached out and put his hand on my knee, smile still on his face, but eyes clouding over. “I do, too.”

“Of course you do,” I stood, pacing the length of the room, “you’re her brother. I shouldn’t even be dumping this on you.”

“Dude,” Bo stood, crossing his arms and shrugging, “I don’t own the rights to grief. Nor do I want to. We all lost someone when she died. The whole goddamn world did.” He sniffed and cleared his throat.

I sat back down. “I know, man, but ... damn. I go along thinking everything is fine, then I’ll have a flash of pain, like real pain, like someone is stabbing me, or punching me, or kicking me, or all three at once...”

Bo sat next to me, his arms still crossed. “Yeah. Sometimes, for me, it’s like someone’s holding my head under water. When I finally fight my way up and catch some air, I look around and realize I’m alone in the middle of the ocean.”

“You’ve got Ember.”

“I do. She rows by in her boat every time. But, I’ve learned to swim, too, Regan.”

I cracked a smile. “Did your therapist give you all of this water imagery?”

He punched my arm. “No, smartass, but it’s true. You know she’d want more for you than for you to wade around just keeping your head above water.”

I nodded. “You’re right. I feel like I do okay with that most of the time.”

“How’s the place in La Jolla?” Bo was as stealthy about changing the subject as I was.

“It’s great. But, you know how it is with our schedule lately ... all I really do is sleep there.”

“How’s Georgia? I saw her here earlier. Everything okay?”

Not particularly.

“Everything’s fine. We just had a misunderstanding, but it’s all good now.”

“Well, I think I’m going to catch some sleep now, but maybe we should all go down to E’s tonight. I’d like to see her again—she seemed really fun. Maybe check with her to see if they have any sets available tonight?”

I shook my head. “You’re a machine, dude.”

“I’ve never been able to, like,
do this
for a living. I want to soak it all in while it lasts, you know?”

I don’t know if he was aware of the double meaning of his statement as he said it, but he seemed to be about a second later. Time is not something to be wasted. Not a second. Rae lived her life with a precious urgency. I realized that in the time I’d spent replaying our relationship. It was injected in her soul to take each day and own it. I needed to get on with owning some.

“Yeah,” I nodded, “I know. Give me a call later. I might be up for kicking back and watching you glorify yourself on stage,” I teased.

“Get the hell out of my house.” He laughed and gave me a side man-hug. “Let’s talk more, okay?”

Sigh.

“Okay.” He was right. We needed to talk more. “By the way ... Ember told me about Willow ... and the dad thing. I think you’re right, she does need to talk to her parents.”

Bo let out a long exhale. “I’m glad she told someone else. She’s been carrying that shit around for weeks and it’s pulling her down big time.”

“I thought hippies were supposed to be drama free,” I joked.

Bo yawned. “Looks like those girls are Hippie 2.0, the
Gossip Girl
edition.”

I laughed. “I hate that I know exactly what you’re talking about. Later.”

“See ya tonight.”

Walking back through the house, I found Ember sleeping on the couch. Clearly the taxing recording schedule was starting to wear on all of us. Just a few more weeks and we’d be able to take a break while Willow produced a chunk of the tracks. We could take a listen and decide how we wanted to continue.

During my drive back to my apartment I played a mental game of “open it” or “toss it” in regards to the letter. There was always secret option number three, I suppose, which was to save it and open it when I was ready, but I felt like a definitive decision was the only way to handle this.

It was just a letter.

Just a letter.

Just words.

Not just words. They were from Rae.

Shit.

Open the damn thing.

Back in La Jolla, I found Georgia wiping down tables in the bakery. I knocked on the door so she’d let me in. She did it with a smile, though she looked tired.

“Did you, uh, have people in here?” I asked as she locked the door behind me.

“No, it was just me and my mom.”

“Oh, sorry I missed her. How is she?”

“She’s good.”

“Hey,” I put my hands in my pockets and walked through the seating area, “how long has this place been
open
?” I put air quotes around the last word, given it wasn’t open, as such, but just functional.

She chuckled. “About six months. I renovated this space at the same time I did the apartments upstairs.”

“What was down here before?”

“Oh,” she sighed and put her hands on her hips, “over the years it was a lot of things. My dad leased the space to a bunch of retailers. Clothing stores, a bait and tackle shop—that one was gross—and last year there was a coffee shop here.”

“I know you’re not, like, officially open for walk-in customers but ... you should name it. Be proud of it.”

“If I name it then people will have all kinds of expectations.” She walked back into the kitchen and started washing dishes.

I followed her, digging a clean towel out of the drawer and drying as she talked. “What’s wrong with expectations?”

“More ways for me to disappoint people in the end.” She didn’t make eye contact. She was good at that.

“More ways? What end?” I was pushing her a little, I realized, but I was taking slight advantage of my emotional upper hand given all the guilt she said she had. I wasn’t doing it with cruel intentions, but this girl had some tightly woven layers.

“Regan...”

“All right, all right, sorry. Hey, those cupcakes are gorgeous. Did you make those?” I pointed to the counter, immediately realizing the idiocy to my question. “I mean...”

“Ha! Yeah. Well, my mom actually made the cupcakes. I made the frosting and decorated them after she left.”

“She bakes, too?”

“That’s where I learned. It was like therapy for both of us when I was little and things got tense. You have to concentrate to bake. Your mind can’t wander. By the time you’re finished you’ve spent lots of time thinking about something other than your problems
and
you get to eat something delicious. It really is the ultimate win.” She smiled and carefully plucked two from the cake stand and put them on a plate.

“These are gluten-free, too?”

“Everything in here is. We’ve been over this.”

“Huh. I didn’t realize gluten-free stuff could look so ... good. Smells good, too. I totally trust how it will taste.”

She smiled. “Who said you’re going to have any?”

“I did.”

“The brilliance about gluten-free baking is it’s even more complicated than regular baking. You have all different kinds of flours in varying amounts, and weirder ingredients like xanthan gum to contend with. In the end, though, the complicated equation gives the same beautiful product.” She held one of the cupcakes in front of her, admiring it.

The back of my neck heated. “Just like you.”

Her face flushed as she looked at me. “Complicated. Yes.”

“And beautiful.” My voice shook.

I had no idea why I just blurted that out. She
was
beautiful, more so with each minute I spent with her. Her gloves-off, unapologetic personality was laced around this hollow space she refused to let be filled with vulnerability, though it trickled in anyway.

“
You
think I’m beautiful?” She sounded put off.

I nodded. “You are.”

“I’m a lot of things, Regan. Beauty is for the soft spirited girls, not the soft-bottomed ones.”

“Take a compliment, will you? It won’t hurt, trust me.”

“It might. Let’s go.” She stuck a toothpick in the center of the two cupcakes she’d placed on a plate and pulled out plastic wrap.

“What are you doing?”

She wrapped the cupcakes in the plastic wrap. “You put the toothpicks in so the plastic doesn’t ruin the frosting. It’s not as fun to lick frosting from plastic as you might think. Kind of kills the mood.”

“Where are you taking those?”

“With us.”

“Us?”

“Yes. To the pier by the playground. You’ve got a letter to open.”

My stomach dropped and writhed and dropped some more.

“
Now?
”

She sighed a playfully irritated sigh. “This is the moment we’re standing in, isn’t it? Follow me.”

Georgia picked up the cupcake plate and walked to the interior door.

“I thought you said the playground?”

“I have to get the letter from my car.”

My heart did jumping jacks. “Oh ... I’ll ... head down to the pier, if you don’t mind.”

She turned around and put her hand on mine. “Go,” she whispered.

I walked through the garage and across the street, standing on the rock wall for a moment, the way I’d seen Georgia do a few weeks ago. I stood with my chin lifted high, eyes closed, palms open.