The Jewel Box (16 page)

“No.” I shrieked, bolting upright in bed. “No, God, no!” I kept screaming. “It can’t be.” I jumped out of bed and knelt on the floor, loudly praying for someone to wake me from this horrible dream. My stomach felt like it was being violently kicked while a female in our bedroom moaned, “Not Sean, not my Sean,” over and over. Then I realized the eerie cry was coming from me. Too weak to stand, I prayed for strength to climb back under my sheets until the nightmare ended.

Through faint lava lamp lighting, I saw Gabriel laboriously swallow while keeping his eyes firmly focused on the ceiling. “He just ate a telephone pole,” he responded in the same horribly cold timbre.

“No God, please no!” I yelled at the top of my lungs as my hands flew to my head and yanked my hair in frantic motion.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
Without realizing where my hands went until they started stinging, I found myself hitting Gabriel. “Say it isn’t true. Say it isn’t true.”

He continued staring at the ceiling in total silence. I cried hysterically. Shushing me, he reached over to hold me. “Don’t shush me, I have to know what happened to Sean.”

Gabriel remained silent. Tears cascaded down my face as my sobs grew louder. Minutes ticked by. “God punished me by taking Sean’s life in exchange for the life I aborted,” I screamed.

Gabriel pulled me closer in a tight grip, never saying a word. I couldn’t stop calling Sean’s name and asking forgiveness. Nikki slept soundly as always in her room, while Gabriel and I stayed wide awake. He internalized, I ululated. His tacit pain juxtaposing my vocal sorrow.

The next day as Gabriel prepared to leave for Massachusetts, he explained Sean had been at a party and taken a ride home with two friends, one who was stumbling drunk. As his friend raced down the highway Sean pleaded for him to stop and let him drive. According to the boy who survived, Sean’s concern was for his friends to get home safely. Before he could convince the driver to swap places, they crashed into a telephone pole, killing Sean instantly. The driver died hours later.

Devastated by losing someone I dearly loved, my grief intensified when I realized I would not be attending Sean’s funeral. Nothing was said. I simply understood. How do you bring the dishonorable, other woman to a sacred family event?

After Gabriel left I kept tears inside and held Nikki against me as I clutched the copy of
Rabbit Redux
Sean mailed weeks earlier. For Nikki’s sake, I blamed my pain on a tummy ache as I functioned in a lifeless fog waiting for Gabriel to return. When Nikki slept, I reread Updike’s words that meant so much to Sean—and sobbed uncontrollably.

“I’ll be over after I put away some of Sean’s belongings I brought from Boston.” Gabriel called from his apartment. An hour later he tapped lightly at the door instead of using his key. I felt uneasy. I opened the door slowly and looked at his red rimmed eyes welled with tears. He pulled me to him, hugging me tightly as he kissed my forehead. We stood by the doorway in an embrace, holding each other in total silence. He knew and I knew. Still,
I felt faint when I heard the anticipated words. “You know I have to do the right thing and go back home to my wife and children, don’t you?” His voice was so tender and so tinged with sadness, I trembled, choking back tears. I would not break down and seem weak. Gabriel’s guilt over abandoning his young daughters had grown before my eyes, and it was obvious Sean’s death deepened his remorse.

After slowly gathering his few belongings, Gabriel placed his key on my dining table just as
Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday
, by Stevie Wonder came on the radio. The floodgates opened. Hitting the radio OFF button as tears trickled down my cheeks, I tried to brush them away, not wanting him to see me this way. Tears rolled down his face, but he just ignored them while trying to hold and comfort me. I had never known a man who would openly cry before, and it made him even more special. I ached for him, but pulled away. “Please leave. I understand why you have to do this—so just go. Right this minute. The longer you stay, the more I’ll hurt.”

He reached out and took my hand up to his mouth, his blue eyes filled with pain as he allowed his tears to drop onto my skin. “Cherie, I’m so sorry. I’ve hurt enough people already and God knows I don’t want you to hurt.”

Once again I pulled away. This time he rushed out the door. When I heard his engine start, his horn honk twice to send me his “I love you,” signal, I broke down and sobbed. A gut wrenching, lung-heaving sobbing that left me limp.

I hated work, but went in knowing Beau would soothe my pain. “Here, baby.” He sent me home one night with McMurtry’s novel
Movin On.
“You don’t cry at the drop of a pin, but there are similarities between you and restless, sharp tongued Patsy Carpenter.”

“Yeah?”

“Her charisma keeps her adrift in affairs of the heart. And she’s gutsy despite frequently bawling over minor issues.”

“I am adrift.” I reached up and kissed his cheek. “Thanks for everything.”

I never stopped crying long enough to read the thick book.

Kent’s calls about taking Nikki for visits never came to fruition, so Ellen insisted she stay with them instead of watching me come unglued. After
Nikki left, I felt worse without her to hold. I suppressed my sobbing and phoned Gloria. Incredibly consoling, she seemed to understand my pain. “Not only have you lost Sean, you’ve also lost Gabriel.” Gloria attempted to comfort. “Come to Boston. Bring Nikki if you’d like, just get away.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best thing for me to do.”

“Cherie, get on a plane, come and stay with us as long as you’d like. Distance from Gabriel might help.”

Hearing his name caused my suppressed sobs to surface with a vengeance.

“Cherie, Sean would want you and me to be together. And being with someone who was so special to him would help me.”

“Thank you.” Tears garbled my words. “I’ll let you know.”

Gloria had lost a son, yet showed incredible compassion for my feelings of loss. Hoping distance would help, I decided to visit Massachusetts. Ellen said Jimmy missed his surrogate sister and agreed to keep Nikki. Beau was predictably sympathetic, assuring me the club would get along without me and welcome me back. He insisted on paying my airfare as his way of expressing condolence to the family, but I rejected the four hundred dollars he tried to shove in my fist for spending money.

Bawling as I boarded the plane, vanity had taken a leave of absence as black clumps of mascara rolled off my cheeks and onto my blouse. I didn’t care what anyone thought. I just hoped being with the mother of my favorite men would make my pain disappear. Looking like I’d been in the back of a turnip truck for three months instead of an airplane for three hours, I arrived in Boston an emotional wreck sporting red, puffy eyes.

“My darling, Cherie,” Gloria greeted me in the airport. Absolutely stunning, she could have passed for Liz Taylor had her eyes been violet. Gloria’s hair was almost black with a plum cast and her deep olive skin and ebony eyes were a surprising contrast to fair haired Gabriel and Sean. Gabriel swore her affair with their blond postman had produced him and Hope. Gloria hugged me tightly. “Sean said nothing but wonderful things about you.”

“That’s true,” said Hope who was just as Sean described. At fifteen, she was the epitome of beauty and gentleness with the classic looks of Princess Grace; long flaxen blonde hair, ivory skin, and a delicate smile that revealed perfect teeth.

Younger son Conner politely shook my hand. “Call me Conn. It sounds more like Sean.” An abbreviated name seemed his only resemblance to siblings. Conn had his mom’s olive skin, dark hair and eyes, but the boy didn’t know how to shut up or sit down. Gloria scolded him several times when he got carried away entertaining me with arm farts on the drive home.

“Ben’s gone back to the Air Force, so dinner will be quiet,” Gloria said, watching Hope put food on the table. All had impeccable table manners, and the meal ended with Conner clearing the table to help Hope wash dishes. Easy to see where Gabriel picked up his considerate kitchen traits. Lord knows who influenced his foul mouth, but hearing “I’d do just about anything for a piece of ass” would have been music to my ears right then. “C’mon,” Gloria insisted. “Let’s sit on the sofa.”

The four of us talked for hours about Sean’s kindness and loving ways. When Gloria reached over and held me in her arms, saying she loved me because Sean loved me, we both began crying. My waterworks continued long after my head hit the pillow for a few minutes of sleep.

“Thankfully Hope took on ‘mothering’ duties the minute I started working outside the home,” Gloria said the following morning as Hope fussed over Conn. The two did breakfast dishes while Gloria and I stayed in her bedroom talking about everything—including sex. She was trying her best to cheer me up, but I grieved for Sean and felt heartsick without Gabriel.

Later in the evening Gabriel called Gloria. She allowed me to overhear her side of the conversation. “I know, son,” she comforted him. “Yes, I’ll take good care of Cherie.” She hung up. “Gabriel is worried sick about you. I’ve never heard him so depressed.” A sympathetic look crossed her face. “He kept telling me how much he loves you, but he’s trying to do right by Lauren and Skylar.”

Again, I cried myself to sleep.

Two days later Gabriel called again. Gloria spoke briefly with him. “Here, darling.” She handed me the phone, kissed my trembling cheek, and walked into another room.

“How are you, Cherie?” Gabriel asked.

“Fine.” I tried to hold back tears.

“Well, I haven’t slept or eaten in days. And I might just go mad without you.”

We both started crying and in a loud, tear filled voice, Gabriel said, “I can’t function without you, Cherie. I’m taking a five o’clock flight to Boston. I’ll see you in a few hours. I love you more than you could possibly know.”

“I love you too, Gabriel.”

“Yeaaah,” he whispered. “Now I know how Zhivago felt without his Lara. Promise me you won’t go runnin’ off to Russia before I get there, Blondie.”

“I promise. Besides I don’t own a fur coat, and the only Russian word I know is
ostranenie.
”

“Must mean something naughty, if you memorized it.”

“It’s an artistic technique of swaying an audience to see common things in an unfamiliar way. You know, like poetry.”

“Blondie, why the hell does your knowing that not surprise me? Just hang tight till I get there . . . promise?”

“I’m not good at hanging tight, but Gloria just walked in with some rope and duct tape.”

“Love you, crazy girl. See ya soon.”

Gabriel arrived late. “I missed hearing you say pleeease, and watching you walk around on your tiptoes.” He hugged me tightly.

I couldn’t speak as my tears fell onto his shoulder. We barely touched each other while chatting with his family, but the only thought crossing my mind as words casually flowed from him, was how I wanted to leave lip prints on parts of his body currently covered by clothing. Gloria must have read my mind. She suggested Gabriel and I retire to her bedroom.

“We gunned the engine and peeled away from Sean’s gravesite,” Gabriel told me as we walked out to his rental car the following morning.