Текст книги "The Edge of Always"

Автор книги: J. A. Redmerski

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Camryn

38

Dear Camryn,

I know you’re scared. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared, too, but I have to believe that this time around everything will be fine. And it will be.

We’ve been through so much together. More than most people in such a short time. But no matter what, the one thing that has never changed is that we’re still together. Death couldn’t take me away from you. Weakness couldn’t make me look at you in a bad light. Drugs and the shit that comes with them couldn’t take you away from me, or turn you against me. I think it’s more than safe to say that we’re indestructible.

Maybe all of this has been a test. Yeah, I think about that a lot and I’ve convinced myself of it. A lot of people take Fate for granted. Some have everything they’ve ever wanted or needed right at their fingertips, but they abuse it. Others walk right past their only opportunity because they never open their eyes long enough to see that it’s there. But you and I, even before we met, took all the risks, made our own decisions without listening to everybody around us telling us, in so many ways, that what we’re doing is wrong. Hell no, we did it our way, no matter how reckless, or crazy or unconventional. It’s like the more we pushed and the more we fought, the harder the obstacles. Because we had to prove we were the real deal.

And I know we’ve done just that.

Camryn, I want you to read this letter to yourself once a week. It doesn’t matter what day or what time, just read it. Every time you open it, I want you to see that another week has passed and you’re still pregnant. That I’m still in good health. That we’re still together. I want you to think about the three of us, you, me and our son or daughter, traveling Europe and South America. Just picture it. Because we’re going to do it. I promise you that.

You’re everything to me, and I want you to stay strong and not let your fear of the past taint the path to our future. Everything will work out this time, Camryn, everything will, I swear to you.

Just trust me.

Until next week…

Love,

Andrew

I look up from the letter in my hand, letting it rest on the bed at my side, clasped in my fingertips. Lily is sound asleep next to me in the hospital bassinet. It took some convincing by Andrew before I finally agreed to lay her in it instead of just holding her throughout the night. But I did wake up often to check if she was still breathing. I check again now. I can’t help it; I’ll probably do that for months.

Finally, I fold Andrew’s letter again into the same worn creases. He probably thinks that I’ll stop reading it now that Lily has been born. But I won’t. I never stopped reading the first letter he ever wrote me, but he doesn’t know that. Some things I keep to myself.

“Ready to put those destinations into that hat?” Andrew asks.

I wonder how long he’s been awake. I look over at him and smile. “Let’s wait a few months.”

He nods and rises from the chair.

“How did you sleep like that?” I ask. “You should’ve gotten on the couch.” I glance at the small couch next to the window.

Andrew stretches his arms out at his sides and then pops his back and his neck. He doesn’t answer.

“I guess we can finally get all of that stuff from the first baby shower at my mom’s and bring it to the house,” I say.

Andrew smiles mischievously.

“Wait… you already did it, didn’t you?”

He stands up and stretches some more. “Technically, not me. Yesterday, Natalie, Blake, and your mom took everything over there after we left for the hospital and they’ve already set it all up.”

I never wanted to do that during the pregnancy. It was just another way of worrying about getting ahead of myself and then miscarry all over again. Same reason I refused to know the sex of the baby before she was born. I didn’t want to focus or depend on any of that stuff like I did before. I thought it might jinx it. Andrew didn’t really agree with it, but he never said anything or tried to convince me otherwise.

“And, as you can probably imagine,” he goes on, “since Michelle and my mom are in town, there’s a lot more than just the baby shower gifts waiting for you when you get home.”

*     *     *

The next day, when Andrew opens the front door of our house and I walk in with Lily in my arms, I see right away that he was right about that, too. The house is immaculate. I never could’ve cleaned it like this myself. As Andrew walks me through the living room toward the hallway, I glimpse one baby monitor on the kitchen bar as I walk by, one on the living room coffee table, one on the counter in the bathroom, and, finally, one in Lily’s room when I step inside.

I gasp with wide eyes. “Oh wow, Andrew, look what they did!”

Lily stirs in my arms, probably from the excitement in my voice, but quickly she becomes still again.

The baby bed is set against one wall with a cute Winnie the Pooh musical mobile hovering over the top. A matching chest of drawers and changing table sits against the wall by the window. Andrew opens the drawers to reveal that each one is full of clothes and receiving blankets and burp cloths and little socks and other various things. He opens the closet and I see dozens of little dresses and outfits. So many packages of diapers are stacked against the wall near the changing table that I feel like we’ll never have to buy diapers ourselves. Of course, I know that’s just wishful thinking.

Andrew takes me back out into the hall and opens the closet next to the bathroom to show me the brand-new walker and baby swing and some strange play-gym thing, all still in the boxes they came in.

“I’ll have to put them together when she’s ready for them,” he says. “But that’ll be a little while.”

“Think you can manage that all by yourself?” I joke.

He raises his chin and says, “Without even reading the directions.”

I just laugh inside.

Then he takes me into our room. There’s a white bassinet next to the bed on my side.

“I bought that for you,” he says, smiling proudly. “I know you won’t be ready to put her in the room by herself for a long time, so I figured you’d need it.”

He’s blushing. I step right up to him and kiss the side of his mouth. “You were right,” I say. “Thank you.”

Lily starts to stir again, and this time she wakes up. Andrew takes her from me. “I’ll change her,” he says.

I pass her over and lie down across our bed and watch him. He lays her down on our bed, too, and unwraps her from the receiving blankets. The cutest yet loudest cries come from her tiny lungs. Her little arms and legs move stiffly back and forth. Her whole head turns beet red. But Andrew doesn’t flinch. And when he opens her diaper he doesn’t gross out at the surprise she left him. I admit I’m surprised at how easily he’s already taken to being a daddy.

*     *     *

I started back at Bath and Body Works after my maternity leave was over, but now I’m only on a part-time shift. My boss, Janelle, is awesome, and she likes me so much that she gave me a one-dollar raise when I told her I was expecting. Only me and Natalie work there now; Natalie is full-time and she picks up a lot of my slack since I’ve been off the past six weeks. But she doesn’t mind. Says she’s saving for a place of her own. She and Blake seem to be really be into each other every time I see them together. Truthfully, I’ve never seen Natalie this happy before. I thought she was happy when she was with Damon, but I’m realizing all that must’ve been was tolerance and low self-esteem. Blake is different. I think they just might make it.

Andrew has been working for an auto body and mechanic shop since about three weeks after we moved into our house. His knowledge of cars really earned him a great spot on the payroll. He’s definitely making way more money than me, but he tries to make me feel better about that by saying: “This ain’t shit compared to you pushing my baby girl through your—” I stop him right there each time.

Not necessary, Andrew. But thanks!

Child care is pretty much only for rich people, in my opinion. Honestly, I don’t see how anyone working a minimum-wage job can afford child care. They’d be working just to pay it, which makes no sense. But aside from that, Andrew and I both agreed that we don’t want to leave our daughter in the care of strangers, anyway. So, I worked it out with Janelle that I work only part-time shifts in the evenings when Andrew is home and every other weekend.

We’ve been living well and pulling everything off as though we’ve been doing it this way our whole lives. We may have six figures in savings, but we are no strangers to putting back as much as we can from our earnings and spending as little as possible. Other than our day jobs, Andrew and I have been playing gigs pretty consistently, every other Saturday night when I’m not working, at a bar that Blake’s brother Rob opened up in town. Something happened with the Underground and Rob had to shut it down. Rumor is that Rob narrowly avoided a jail sentence. I’m guessing it had to do with him not having a bar license, I don’t know. But Blake is manager of the new bar now, and on the nights that Andrew and I perform there we get half of the cover charge, which is more than we’ve ever made playing at any bar other than Aidan’s. Last Saturday, we raked in eight hundred bucks.

It’s just more cash flow for our savings and our future plans to go wherever that hat tells us to go.

And although Andrew will always put his heart and soul into every performance, like he always has, I can tell now that when we’re up on that stage together that he just can’t wait to be finished so we can pick Lily up from my mom, or whoever is lucky enough to have her for those few hours at night.

Andrew is so great with Lily. He never ceases to amaze me. He gets up in the middle of the night about as much as I do to change her diapers, and sometimes he even stays awake with me when I feed her. He has his guy moments, too, so he’s not entirely Mr. Perfect. Apparently, he’s not fully immune to crappy diapers, and just this morning I caught him gagging while trying to change her. I laughed, but I felt so bad for him that I couldn’t help but take over. He left the room with the neck of his shirt pulled over his mouth and nose.

And… well, I don’t really want to get too ahead of myself with the assumption, but I think Lily may have softened Andrew so much that he might actually like Natalie now. Maybe just a little. I don’t know, but whenever Nat is over, holding Lily and making Lily smile by talking to her with that animated personality of hers, Andrew seems OK with it. By the time Lily is three months old, I honestly can’t remember the last time Andrew called Natalie a hyena behind her back, or gave me that exasperated look when he knew she wasn’t looking.

He still cringes when she refers to herself as Lily’s godmother, but… baby steps. He’ll come around.

Andrew

39

February 9—Lily’s first birthday

“Aidan and Michelle are here!” I hear Camryn say from the living room.

I fasten the last button on the back of Lily’s dress and then take her by the hand. But she doesn’t like it when I hold her hand and always wiggles it away and grasps my index finger instead.

“Let’s go, baby girl,” I say looking down at her. “Uncle Aidan and Aunt Michelle are here to see the birthday girl.”

I swear she knows what I’m saying.

She squeezes my finger as tight as she can, giggles, and takes one big step forward, as if I’m not fast enough to keep up. With my back arched over, I take fast half steps as we shuffle down the hallway, letting her run on her chunky little baby legs out ahead of me. When she starts to fall as she rounds the corner, I grip her hand, lift her slightly off her feet, and let her get her balance again. She started walking at ten months old. Her first word was “Mama” at six months. At seven months she said “Dada,” and I melted when I heard her call me that the first time.

And Camryn was right—she’s got my green eyes.

“Lily!” Michelle says all dramatic-like, squatting down to Lily’s level and wrapping her up in her wide arms. “Oh my goodness, you’re so big!” She kisses her cheeks and her forehead and her nose, and Lily cackles uncontrollably. “Nom nom nom!” Michelle adds, pretending to eat her cheeks.

I look over at Aidan, who has my nephew, Avery, attached to his hip. I reach out for him, but he’s shy and recoils toward Aidan’s chest. I back off, hoping he doesn’t start crying. Aidan tries to coax him.

“Is he walking yet?” Camryn asks, standing next to me.

Michelle follows Lily into the living room where a plethora of pink and purple helium balloons are pressed against the ceiling. When Lily realizes she can’t reach the balloons, she gives up and goes straight over to her stack of presents on the floor.

Aidan hands two wrapped gifts to Camryn, and we all join Michelle and Lily in the living room. Camryn sets the gifts next to the others.

“He’s been trying,” Aidan answers about Avery’s walking progress. “He holds on to the couch and walks alongside it, but he hasn’t quite got the urge to let go yet.”

“God, he looks just like you, bro,” I say. “Poor kid.”

Aidan would punch me in the gut if his arms were free.

“He’s adorable,” Camryn says as she reaches out to take him.

Of course he is, but I have to mess with my brother.

Avery looks at her like she’s crazy at first, but then gets me back for talking crap about his daddy by going straight to Camryn with no problem.

Aidan laughs.

Nancy and Roger, Natalie and Blake, Sarah and her boyfriend, who already has a kid from an ex-girlfriend, all show up practically at the same time. Afterward, our next door neighbors, Mason and Lori, a young married couple with a two-year-old, show up with gifts. Lily, being the little show-off she is, bends over with her hands and head on the carpet, sticking her diaper-covered butt in the air. Then she pretends to fall down and says “Uh-oh,” to everyone’s laughter.

“Look at that curly blonde hair,” Michelle says. “Was Camryn’s hair that white when she was a baby?” she asks Camryn’s mom, who is sitting next to her.

Nancy nods. “Yeah, it definitely was.”

Later, after everyone has arrived, Lily gets to open her presents and, just like her mama, she sings and dances and puts on a show for everybody. And then when she gets to blow out her candle (really, I kind of blew it out for her) she practically bathes herself in cake and purple icing. It’s in her hair and hanging off her eyelashes and shoved up both nostrils. Camryn tries, futilely, to keep her from making too big of a mess, but she gives up and lets Lily have her fun.

Lily’s passed out cold from all of the excitement long before the last of her guests leave.

“I think the bath did it,” Camryn whispers to me as we stand over her bed.

I take Camryn by the hand and pull her along with me, shutting Lily’s door but leaving it open just a crack.

We lie on the couch together watching a movie for the next two hours, then Camryn kisses my lips and leaves to take a shower.

I turn off the TV and lift up from the couch and look around the room. I hear the water running in the shower and the cars driving by on the street outside. I think about the conversation I had with my boss yesterday, about how since I’ve been at my job for nearly two years now, that I have two weeks of vacation time coming up. But I know that two weeks just aren’t enough when it comes to Camryn and me doing the things we want to do. The whole job situation is the only thing that we never quite worked out when it comes to what we’ll do when we want to leave Raleigh for a month or more. Neither one of us wants to lose our jobs, but we ultimately came to one conclusion at least: it’s a sacrifice that we’re willing to make and will have to make if we’re going to fulfill our dreams to travel the world and to avoid being victims of that everyday, monotonous life that scares us shitless.

We know we won’t be at these jobs forever. And, well, that’s kind of the point.

But I told my boss that, yes, I would need to take those vacation days in the next couple of months. I decided not to give him any kind of notice about leaving, until after I talk to Camryn tonight first.

I get up from the couch and grab a notepad from the drawer at the computer desk and sit down at the kitchen table with it. And I start to write down the various places that Camryn and I have already talked about wanting to see: France, Ireland, Scotland, Brazil, Jamaica… I write until I have a pile of strips of paper in the center of the table. While I’m folding them one by one and dropping them into Camryn’s cowgirl hat, I hear the water shut off in the bathroom.

She comes into the kitchen with wet hair plastered against her back.

“What are you doing?” she asks, but realizes it before I have the chance to answer. She sits down next to me. And she smiles. That’s a great sign.

“Maybe we should leave in May or June,” I suggest.

She drags a comb through her wet hair a few times and seems to be thinking about it. Then she places the comb on the table. “You think Lily is ready for that?” she asks.

I nod. “Yeah, I think she is. She’s walking. We said we’d wait at least until she started walking.”

Camryn nods, too, still thinking about it, but she never looks unsure. “Have to get her started early,” she says.

We definitely aren’t like other families. A lot of parents would completely reject the idea of traveling out of the country with a small child just to be traveling. But not us. I admit that it’s not for everybody, but for us it’s the only way. Of course, our “travels beyond” won’t be like the times Camryn and I spent on the road in the United States. Driving around aimlessly for hours and days and weeks on end with a baby in the car isn’t entirely feasible—Lily would hate that. No, these travels will be more staying put in cities we want to explore than going from one city to another without much rest in between. And unfortunately, we won’t be taking the Chevelle.

Camryn pulls the cowgirl hat over to her and shuffles her hand around inside. “Did you add all the ones we put on the list?” she asks.

“Of course,” I say.

She playfully narrows her eyes at me. “You’re lying.”

“What? No, really I did.”

She nudges me in the shin with her bare foot underneath the table. “You’re full of shit, Andrew.”

Then she starts pulling out the strips of paper and unfolds them and reads them off.

“Jamaica.” She sets it down. “France.” She sets it on top of the other one. “Ireland. Brazil. Bahamas. Virgin Islands. Mexico.” One by one she stacks them on top of each other.

After several more she pulls out the last one, holds it up folded loosely in her fingertips, and she snarls at me. “Something tells me that this doesn’t say ‘Italy.’ ” She’s trying so hard not to smile.

I really don’t know why I thought I could actually pull this off.

While I’m trying not to laugh and keep a straight face, she unfolds the paper and reads its contents: “Australia.” She drops the paper on the top of the pile. “I should penalize you for trying to cheat,” she says, rounding her chin and crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest.

“Oh come on,” I say, unable to keep a straight face after all. “At least I didn’t add a few more that say ‘Brazil.’ ” I laugh.

“You thought about it, though, didn’t you?!”

I wince at her loud voice, and we both glance toward the hall where Lily is sleeping in her bedroom.

Camryn leans over the table some and hisses through her teeth, “I’m penalizing you. No sex for a week.” She leans away again, pressing her back against the chair and smirks at me.

OK, this isn’t funny anymore.

I swallow down my pride, hesitate, and then say, “Come on, you can’t be serious. You like it as much as I do.”

“Of course I do,” she says. “But haven’t you ever heard anywhere that women have this magical ability to be able to live without it longer? I’ll get myself off.”

“You’re bluffing,” I say, not convinced.

She nods subtly with that hell-no-I’m-not gleam in her eye, and it’s making me nervous. “What are you going to do to make up for it, then?”

One side of my mouth lifts into a grin. “Whatever you want.” I pause, holding up my finger and add before it’s too late, “Well, as long as it’s not degrading, disgusting, or unfair.”

Her grin getting bigger, Camryn stands from the chair slowly. I watch every move she makes with the utmost attention, a part of me worried I’m going to miss something. She fits her thumbs behind the elastic of her panties and taunts me with the idea of sliding them off.

Oh my fucking God… seriously? You call this a punishment?

I try to retain my composure, pretending as though the few gestures she’s made haven’t affected me in any way whatsoever when, in truth, it takes practically nothing to make me crazy for her.

She walks away from me.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“To get myself off.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me.”

OK, so I did, but… that’s not how this was supposed to go down.

“But… what’s my punishment?”

She stops just long enough to turn and look back. “You’re going to watch.”

“Wait…what?”

I start to follow. Evil witch.

She goes into the living room and lies down on the couch, her head resting upon the arm, one leg propped over the back.

Evil, evil witch!

She looks up at me seductively and that’s all it takes; the second her eyes meet mine I move over and on top of her, crushing my mouth over hers. “No fucking way, babe,” I whisper hotly onto her mouth, and I kiss her even harder.

Her hands grasp the front of my shirt, her tongue tangled passionately with mine.

And then Lily starts to cry.

I stop. Camryn stops. We look at each other for a moment, both of us frustrated, but we can’t help but smile. Lily is a deep sleeper and hardly ever wakes up at night anymore, but somehow her timing tonight doesn’t surprise me.

“I’ll do it this time,” she says, lifting herself from the couch.

I stand up, running my hand over the top of my head.

After she disappears down the hallway, I head back into the kitchen and sit back down at the table to scrawl “Italy” on another strip of paper. I drop it into the hat and refold all of the others and drop them in it, too.

Minutes later, the house is quiet after Camryn gets Lily back to sleep. She sits down in the chair next to me again, pulling her bare legs onto the seat and crossing them. Propping one elbow upon the table, she rests her chin in her hand and looks at me with a warm smile, like something’s on her mind.

“Andrew,” she says. “Do you really think we can do this?”

“Do what, exactly?”

She rests both arms across the table out in front of her, tangling her fingers.

“Travel with Lily.”

I pause and then lean my back against the chair. “Yeah, I do think we can pull it off. Don’t you?”

Her smile weakens.

“Camryn, do you not want to travel anymore?”

She shakes her head. “No, that’s not it at all. I’m just really scared. I’ve never known anyone personally who has tried anything like that. It’s just scary. What if we’re just being delusional? Maybe normal people don’t do this sort of thing for a reason.”

At first, I was worried. I had this gut feeling that maybe she had changed her mind, and while I’d be OK with whatever she wanted to do, a part of me would’ve been disappointed for a while.

I lean back up and rest both arms across the table in front of me just like Camryn. My eyes soften as I look at her. “I know we can do this. As long as it’s what we both want equally, that neither one of us are only doing it because we think it’s what the other wants, then yes, Camryn, I know we can pull it off. We have the savings. It’ll be a few years before Lily starts school. There’s nothing stopping us.”

“Is it what you really want?” she asks. “You promise there’s not some part of you that’s only going through with it because of me?”

I shake my head. “No. Even though if I didn’t want it as much as you, I would do it anyway because it’s what you want—but no, I truly want it.”

That weak smile of hers strengthens again.

“And you’re right,” I go on, “it’s scary, I admit. It wouldn’t be so much if it were just you and me, but—think about this for a second. If we didn’t do this, what else would we do?”

Camryn looks away in thought. She shrugs and says, “Work and raise a family here, I guess.”

“Exactly,” I say. “That fear is the fine line between us and them.” I gesture outward to indicate “them,” the kind of people in the world we want to avoid becoming. Camryn understands; I can see it in her face. And I’m not saying that people who choose to stay in one place all their life and raise a family are wrong. It’s the people who don’t want to live like that, who dream about being something more, doing something more, but never pull it off because they let fear stop them before they get started.

“But what will we do?” she asks.

“Whatever we want,” I say. “You know that.”

“Yeah, but I mean later on. Five, ten years from now, what will we be doing with our lives, with Lily’s life? As much as I love the thought of doing it forever, I really can’t imagine it being realistic. We’ll run out of money eventually. Lily will have to start school. Then, we’ll end up right back here and become one of them anyway.”

I shake my head and smile. “Make that fear and excuses that make up that fine line. Babe, we’ll be OK. Lily will be OK. We will do whatever we want, go wherever we want to go and we’ll enjoy our lives, not settle for a life that neither of us really want. Whatever happens, whether we start to run out of money, can’t find work to replace it, Lily needs school and we have to make the decision to stay put in one place for a long time, even if that place is back here in this house, then we’ll do what we have to do. But right now—” I point sternly at the table “—right now those aren’t things we have to worry about.”

She smiles. “OK. I just wanted to make sure.”

I nod and reach across the table, nudging the hat over toward her with my finger.

“You get first pick,” I say.

She starts to reach inside, but stops and narrows her gaze on me. “Did you put Italy in there?”

“Yes, I did. I promise.”

Knowing I’m telling the truth this time, Camryn reaches the rest of the way into the hat and shuffles the pieces of paper around with her fingers. She pulls one out and holds it in her crushed fist.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” I ask.

She places her hand into mine and says, “I want you to read it.”

I nod and take the paper from her and carefully unfold it. I read it to myself first, letting my imagination run wild with visions of the three of us here. I was so fixated on winning that bet with Brazil that I never thought much about any of the other countries, but now that I’ve lost, it’s easy to imagine.

“Well?” She’s getting impatient.

I smile and toss the strip of paper onto the table, faceup. “Jamaica,” I announce. “Looks like we both lost the bet.”

Camryn smiles widely. That tiny strip of paper lying on the table in front of us is something so much more than paper and ink. It has officially set in motion the rest of our lives together.