Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
When Gabriel returned, hours later, I was sitting in the empty bathtub with a glass of wine, listening to “A Love Supreme.”
He set his bags on the kitchen counter and unpacked them, lining up Chinese food containers like three rows of soldiers until the entire counter was filled and the aroma of garlic and spices permeated the air.
“I wasn’t sure what you liked so I got one of everything,” he said.
A peace offering. But what really struck me was that he didn’t know what I liked.
We used to sit on the sofa eating Chinese food and watching movies, passing the boxes back and forth.
My favorites were the crispy chicken in sesame seed sauce and the shrimp fried rice.
Gabriel loved the Szechuan beef and the Lo Mein.
“What are you listening to?” he asked.
I took a sip of my wine as he filled his glass.
“Coltrane. He was a jazz saxophonist. He was addicted to heroin, but he beat it. In the liner notes for ‘A Love Supreme’...” I waved my hand toward the living room where the music soared, “that’s what we’re listening to…he said that he had a spiritual awakening that led him to a richer, fuller life.
He wanted to make people happy through his music. ”
I wasn’t trying to entice him to play music again. I was just talking, sharing something I knew about Coltrane.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
Gabriel shrugged and looked away. “What are you hungry for?” he asked, opening all the containers.
“Just pick one. I don’t really care.”
He handed me a carton of Lo Mein and a set of chopsticks. I watched him trying to use his, to get the hang of it, but he got frustrated and grabbed a fork from the drawer, abandoning the chopsticks.
Gabriel used to have so much manual dexterity.
He was a pro with chopsticks. Just one more skill he’d lost but it wasn’t the end of the world.
If he wanted to, he could relearn how to use chopsticks just like he could relearn how to play a guitar.
Or the drums. Or the church organ. Or his fancy Italian espresso machine that he hadn’t touched since he came home from the hospital.
I ate Lo Mein in the bathtub while Gabriel leaned against the counter and tried a bite from every container before deciding that the shrimp in lobster sauce was his favorite. How odd. We’d tried it before and he wasn’t a fan but now, out of all the choices on offer, that’s the one he liked most.
For the past five months, I’d been taking care of him.
Making sure he ate. Doing his laundry. Accompanying him to all his doctor’s appointments—neurologists, occupational therapists, psychologists.
Hovering and caretaking and trying to shield him from the big, bad world like he was a toddler, and I was a doting mother.
The dynamic had shifted, and while there was no manual for how to behave when the love of your life has brain surgery and subsequently loses all his memories and his sense of identity, I’d gone about it all wrong.
I wasn’t his mother. I was his former lover, his wife, the girl he used to write songs about.
I remember Mandy telling me to trust the universe and to stop holding on so tight. I’d been white-knuckling my way through life lately, too scared to loosen my grip for fear he’d slip through my fingers.
Or jump off a fucking roof.
But Mandy was right. I couldn’t keep holding on so tight.
No matter how hard I tried or how much I loved him, I couldn’t fix Gabriel. He had to want this for himself and only he could do the work. No one else could do it for him.
All I could do was love him. And sometimes not even love was enough to save someone.
Look at my father. My mother loved him beyond measure. He was her sun, her moon, and her stars, but his own struggles eclipsed her love.
“Are you done? Have you had enough?” he asked.
I nodded. After he packed everything up and put it away, there was no room for anything else in the refrigerator.
Gabriel topped up our wine glasses. The CD had changed. We were listening to Pavement now. “In the Mouth a Desert” poured from the speakers. I was obsessed with this album when it first came out, back in the spring of ’92.
The summer I met Gabriel. Another lifetime ago.
“What I said on the roof was true,” he said. “None of this is because of you. I’m not trying to punish you. I’m not trying to be an asshole. I just…” He ran his hand through his hair, much shorter than it used to be, and grabbed the back of his neck.
“I feel like I’m living in a black hole. I’m in limbo. It’s like purgatory.” His brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed. “Purgatory,” he repeated like he was trying to grapple with the meaning and couldn’t figure out why that word had come out of his mouth.
I’d become his dictionary. When words felt foreign to him, I provided the definition.
“You were raised a Catholic and Catholics believe that after you die, the pure souls go directly to heaven. The sinners, the rapists and murderers who show no remorse go to hell. The third option is purgatory.” I took a sip of my wine and shifted my weight. A twinge of pain shot through my hip.
I was battle-scarred and wounded from my near brush with death. No idea why I was still sitting in this bathtub, a ceramic holding cell with a hard, unforgiving surface.
“Like you said, purgatory is that in-between place, like you’re in limbo,” I continued.
“It’s where you’re sent when you need to purify your soul and repent before they open the pearly gates and let you in.
” Not sure how accurate that was since I wasn’t raised Catholic but I thought I’d gotten it mostly right.
“Fuck the pearly gates. Who are they to decide who gets in and who doesn’t?”
I tried to smile. That was such a Gabriel thing to say. “You’d probably appreciate Eastern philosophy. Maybe you’re not in purgatory at all. Maybe you’ve been reincarnated and now you just have to figure out how to live in your new form.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I believe in. I don’t know what I stand for or what’s meaningful to me. How do you live according to what you believe in if you don’t even know what that is?”
That had always been so important to Gabriel. Such a fundamental part of who he was—to live by his own beliefs, to be true to himself and his art, and to always follow his heart. He was so emotional and so passionate in everything he did.
Now he had no sense of purpose.
“I know you don’t want to hear this, but I need to say it,” I said. At this point, I had nothing left to lose. I knew he was leaving. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. “Find your way back to music, Gabriel, and then you’ll find yourself. Music will save you.”
He was quiet for a minute. “I’m sorry, Cleo. I’m sorry for everything.”
I wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for what happened on the roof earlier. Or for leaving.
Either way, he walked out of the kitchen and left me in the bathtub getting drunk on my own tears.
A little while later, I stood in our bedroom doorway and watched him pack.
“Where will you go?” I asked, wrapping my arms around myself, trying to hold all the broken pieces together. My heart physically ached and I had a pit in my stomach that made it difficult to breathe.
Gabriel looked over and for a brief moment, I thought he would change his mind, but he went back to stuffing clothes into his duffel bag and that feeling of dread returned. “It doesn’t really matter to me. I’m just going to hop on a bus and see where it takes me.”
Like a beat poet crisscrossing the country in search of enlightenment and the true meaning of life. Only this time he was searching for himself, and I didn’t know if he would ever come back.
There were a million things I wanted to tell him. Like how much I loved him and how much he meant to me and how he wasn’t only my lover but my best friend too.
What am I going to do without you?
I wanted to beg him to stay. I wanted to throw myself at him and wrap my arms around his legs so he’d have to drag me with him when he walked out the door.
I wanted to tell him that we could start fresh and fall in love all over again. But it took two people to fall in love and only one of us had a vested interest.
To him, I was just a stranger. So I said nothing.
Instead, I grabbed an empty notebook from the shelf and copied everyone’s phone numbers from my address book. Then I chose some of the books he used to love from the shelves and handed them to him, mostly to buy some extra time.
He dutifully packed the books and the notebook in his bag then zipped it up and slung it over his shoulder, ready to go.
“Just…” I blinked away my tears. “Be safe, okay? Take care of yourself and…” My throat closed up and the words died on my lips.
Before I could stop myself, I wrapped my arms around him and held him tight.
Eventually, his arms came around me and we held on to each other. Twin flames that had burned out.
My eyes drifted shut and I breathed him in. I never wanted to let him go.
Please don’t leave me. Stay. Forever.
When he released me, all too quickly, he took a step back and I hated that he’d put distance between us.
I hated that he couldn’t even wait until morning, that he had to leave tonight, without giving me any time to prepare.
I could have stayed up all night and watched him sleeping. One last time.
I could have served him coffee in bed.
If I had more time, I could have come up with a million reasons for him to stay. Or a million reasons for taking me with him.
I would go anywhere with him. To the ends of the earth, if he asked me to.
But he hadn’t given me any of those options. He’d just packed his bag, fully prepared to leave me behind, like I meant nothing to him.
“What are your dreams, Cleo?”
“My dreams?” I asked like I hadn’t understood the question.
“You keep telling me that I used to be a musician. You told me it was my dream. It was all I ever wanted. Well, I don’t remember any of that.
” He swept his hand toward the guitars propped against the wall.
“I don’t know how to play a guitar. I have no attachment to it.
And yet you’re telling me that music will save me.
” He jerked his chin at me. “So what’s going to save you? ”
“I don’t need to be saved. I’m just fine.”
Gabriel nodded slowly. “Fine, huh? I might have lost my memories. I might not have any idea who the hell I am or who anyone else is, but my eyes are working just fine. And what I see is someone who gave up.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I snapped.
“I heard you were an artist. Where’s your art?” He made a big show of looking around the apartment. “I don’t see any art. I haven’t seen you paint or draw or design anything since the day I came home from the hospital.”
The audacity of this man. I glared at him. “I was looking after you. I needed to take care of you?—”
“Well, now you don’t have to do that anymore.”
He made it sound like he was doing me a big favor.
And long before I was ready, he strode right out the door without looking back.
When he was gone and the door closed behind him, I slid down against the wall and listened to his boots pounding the stairs like he couldn’t get away fast enough.
I sat there for hours, huddled in the corner, vigilant, my ears pricking up every time I heard a door opening or shutting or the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
My foolish heart kept expecting him to return, to say this was all a mistake, that we could start over from square one. That he could never leave me.
But Gabriel never returned.
Once again, I’d been abandoned by a man whose music would play on long after he’d been gone.
It was so beautiful to have been loved by Gabriel but so gut-wrenching that it was in the past tense.
He loved me. Not : He loves me. He will always love me.
“Fuck you, Gabriel,” I whispered into the empty apartment. “Fuck. You.”