I ran my knuckles across Emma's cheekbone. The softness didn't surprise me. She lay on her side facing me, one of her legs tucked snuggly between mine. I had been with only a couple women. Girls, I should say. In my teen party-football-crazy-fun days. I chuckled to myself at how stupid we were back then. Thought we were kings of our own little worlds. I didn't really date a whole lot. I had one steady girlfriend my junior year for a few months, but it wasn't the serious kind. It was just the fun kind, the kind where you went out on the weekends to movies and parties and then made out in the car afterward. We never exchanged 'I love you's. It was just fun. Insignificant. Inconsequential. When it wasn't fun anymore, we both moved on. And the couple of girls I'd been with were either stupid party hookups or crushes who saw an opportunity. My teen self was just happy to have a normal life with normal friends. We got into normal trouble and acted like normal, hormonal teenage boys.
There has never been a girl who made me want to bring her into my entire world, to live and breathe my air every day.
And then my life shattered and I never thought I would ever, ever have or want that again. You're not even the same person after guilt has eaten away at you for so long. I was so consumed with my mom and all the things that needed to be done for her that when I found Emma at that party, I literally felt a crack in my armor. And then more salty guilt was poured into the wound when I found out that she'd been hurt...because of me. Because I should have helped her, stopped her. But Emma showed me how life can heal the cracks in our armor with people put in our path.
They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and I think Emma and I both are testaments to that.
I leaned in and kissed her lips because I couldn't leave the bed without doing it. Once, twice, and again as her lips puckered and she sighed in response. I slipped my legs away and off the bed before pulling the blanket over her, tucking her in. Her blonde hair framed her face and the pillow like the angel she was.
Last night she had been no angel, however.
I couldn't stop my grin. Last night had been particularly amazing and hard to keep a rein on. She was a wildfire and I was apparently surrounded by tinder. It's kind of funny how as teenage boys we tried to see how far girls would let us get, and instead with Emma, I was constantly trying to make myself stop. The wedding was only a week away. That was nothing compared to the time she'd lost and the time I'd wasted.
Yes, technically, we hadn't had sex. But yes, technically, we were both pretty content by the time we closed our eyes for the night.
With all the things that have happened, all the firsts that Emma lost with her memory, I wanted this first to be so memorable she'd never be able to forget. I wanted that night so ingrained in her that it could never be removed. I had a cabin for us in the mountains with no one and nobody around to disturb us. I had the nurses coming to help Mom round the clock, and they all understood how to care for her special circumstances.
I was so ready to give Emma that memory.
I pulled some clean jeans on from the drawers, slipping them over my boxers. I threw on a plain white t-shirt and peeked back at her to make sure she was still asleep as I slipped out. We stayed up pretty late last night, so it was late in the morning. I needed to do some exercises with Mom before we left for Em's parents to start packing up some of her things.
I turned the corner from the hall to find Mom in her chair, finishing up some oatmeal the nurse had given her. She smiled when she saw me, but then did a double take. It's the same double take and same shocked look in her eyes that I've seen every single day. "Mason, what…"
"Mom," I knelt down and put my hands on the tops of her knees, "you were in an accident, remember?" I ask, though I know she doesn't. "You lost your memory."
"I did?" she says, her eyes turning a little glassy. I pulled a tissue from the box by her chair. She went through several a day. I checked it often to make sure it was stocked.
"Yeah, Mom." I continued to explain it until she understood, and then I told her I was going to work her legs, like I did with her every day. It takes me about ten minutes to answer all her questions and explain everything so it sinks in.
I pulled her leg out straight before her, pull and release, pull and release to stretch out the muscle.
She began her grilling, like she did every time. "So your brother doesn't live here anymore?"
"No, Mamma." I don't tell her all the gory details of Milo because in a little while, she won't remember anyway. It's not worth getting her worked up over. "I graduated and went to school to be a physical therapy assistant so I could take care of you. We have a nurse who comes while I'm at work."
"Where do you work?"
I chuckled. "Inside Out Tattoo." She looked confused. "I own the place. I don't work with other patients anymore, just you."
She smiled wryly. "So you finally did it. You finally opened your tattoo shop."
I smiled back, switching legs. "Yes, ma'am."
Her smile changed. "You went to school to become a PTA for me, didn't you?" I didn't need to answer. She knew. "My Mason," she mused, "always trying to take care of me."
"It was only fair. You always took care of me." We didn't go into the accident. I tried once before, but couldn't do it. The old me hadn't wanted to hear that I wasn't to blame, and the me now just wanted to spend as much time with her as possible before she started to forget again.
She reached out at one point and tussled my hair. "Your hair." She laughed. "You look so grown up."
"I am grown up." I looked up at her as I pressed the pressure points on her feet. "I'm getting married in a week."
Her face was getting comical. Every day for weeks when I said that, she made almost the exact same surprised face. And she clutched her chest like she could die right there of happiness. The exact same way, every time. "Oh, Mason."
"Her name's Emma. She was one of my patients before I opened the tattoo shop."
"And she's fine now? She's OK?"
I nodded. "She is. She lost her memory, like you. But where as you can remember your life and only forget past a certain point, she lost everything." Sympathy swept over her features. "She could remember the world we live in, but not anything from her own life."
"Oh, my…"
"Yeah," I agreed.
"And now you're getting married. What if she remembers everything one day?"
"I really doubt she will. Not that I wouldn't want her to," I rushed on. "It's just not a probability. But even if she did remember everything, she would still remember what's happened since she woke up from the coma. I would hope she would still want me if that were to happen," I joked. "I am awfully hard to forget."
Mamma smiled and shook her head. "That's truer than blue."
"That will never happen," I heard from behind me. I looked over my shoulder at a well-rested, but slightly tousled Emma. Her head was tilted, her smile genuine and adoring. She was tugging at the hem of her shirt, waiting for what I was about to say. Mamma beat me to it.
"Mariah," she said, but it was almost a question. Like she didn't quite know.
"This is Emma, Mamma." I stood and went to Emma's side, picking up her hand and kissing her palm. I looked at her as I explained to my mother. "This is the girl I told you I was going to marry."
Emma had heard this speech several times already, but every time I said that I was going to marry her, her eyes leapt with life. It made me a very smug man to know that she wanted it as much as I did.
When we looked back to Mom, she had a strange look on her face. I knew she was probably forgetting, her mind digressing back to the safe zone it kept. But then she never changed, her face turned sad, mournful. "Mom?"
She was looking at Emma. "I've met you before, haven't I?"
Emma looked at me and then back at Mom. "Yes, ma'am."
"Tons of times, I bet. And every time, y'all have to explain to me who you are and I realize then that it's you. You're the reason my Mason looks so happy."
Emma laughed a lit
tle. "I hope so. He's doing an awful good job at doing that for me."
"I bet he is. He was always so good at taking care of things around here when his father left."
"You did an amazing job. He's…amazing." Emma smiled at me before going to the kitchen and yelling over her shoulder, "I'll get you some hot tea, OK?"
Mom looked at me. "She knows that I like my tea hot?"
"You and Emma get along great. She reads to you and y'all watch TV and talk."
"That's right," she said in surprise. "I was reading Mansfield Park, wasn't I?" She looked up into my eyes. "She reads that to me?"
"Every day," I said proudly.
Emma came back in and put the cup on the coaster for Mom. "There you go." Then she took the blanket from the chair and placed it across Mom's lap gently. "Are you both done with therapy? We can watch something for a little while before we go to my house. Ooh!" She turned in excitement and pointed the remote at the TV. "It's a Wonderful Life is on all day."
"Thank you, Mariah…Emma. Sorry."
Emma giggled. "Don’t worry about it. I kind of like it now."
She was so good with my mom.
I stared at her and looked at the clock. Usually, Mom had digressed by now. And she never went too far into the things that have happened since. It was as if her brain knew that she would be forgetting it soon and kept a barrier there to keep her safe. But her barrier was down today and I didn't understand why or what that meant.
When Momma didn't say anything, we both looked at her. She looked up at Emma and then at me, her eyes no longer just glassy, they were full of tears that spilled over as soon as I recognized them.
"Mamma, what—"
"Come here, honey." She beckoned Emma to her. "Come here and hug me while I can still remember who you are."
Emma's face immediately crumpled into this strange combination of relief and sadness. She practically sprinted over to her, kneeling and falling into the cage my mother made with her arms. I watched as my mom let her hands travel the length of Emma's hair and then her cheek, memorizing her. Then she switched her gaze up at me. "I feel like I'm barely hanging on and could fall at any minute." A sob escaped. "I don't want to go."
I felt my heart slam inside my chest. She beckoned me to her. I couldn't move until she told me to. I caused this, and though I had let the guilt go, it still hurt when it came up like this and punched me right in the gut.
I knelt by Emma and Mom hooked her arm around my neck, almost to the point of pain, as she clung to us, clung to the present. She repeated, "I don't want to go. I want to stay here."
I barely held in my own sob and looked up at her, knowing she was going to be taken back into the past of her mind at any moment.
Emma leaned back and looked over at me, hopefulness climbing its way to the surface. I could see it in her eyes. I shook my head. It wasn't that I didn't want it. It wasn't that I didn't hope for it, but I had researched statistics and medical studies and miracle recoveries. She had been like this too long. I'd gotten my hopes up a couple times before with her, but I just knew…in my guts and heart and bones that whatever this was, it was a gift. Simply that. It wasn't here to stay.
I took Emma's fingers in mine as we sat at my mother's feet and rubbed my thumb over her knuckles. I looked up at Mamma and smiled in allowance as she rubbed my hair like she used to do when I was a boy.
"You call Emma 'Mariah' all the time," I started. "Do you know why you do that?"
She looked at Emma, but her eyes were far away. "I was in a sorority with a girl named Mariah. She looked an awful lot like you. But she's my age now, so she wouldn't look the same." She touched Emma's hair. "Her hair was the exact color of yours. Not quite wheat, not quite daffodil."Emma's smile showed she enjoyed that. "She was my roommate for two years, but a little bit too brazen for my taste."
Emma cracked up at that and resumed her rightful place—right up against me, her arm through mine.
We talked back and forth for a while and I made hot chocolate for everyone before ordering some delivery for lunch because Mamma was still with us and I was afraid to leave and lose it.
Then it happened. The thing Mamma and I had never talked about before. She asked me what happened with the accident. Emma gripped my hand tightly, silently telling me that it was OK and she wasn't going anywhere.
I didn't want to, but as I looked up at Mamma, I knew she deserved to know, even if she didn't remember it later. I told her what happened with the party and how Rick and I both were so drunk. I explained how he tried to leave in his car and I tried to stop him. When she got where the story was going and clutched her chest in an attempt to hold in the sob, I kept going. It all was spewing from the inside and once it started, there was no stopping it. It had to be said. It had to.
When I got to the part where I walked home and came upon the accident, how I grieved for my best friend for a full five minutes before I even recognized the mangled car as my mother's. How it hit me all at that moment that yes, I had let my friend die by not trying harder to stop him from leaving, and yes, I had pushed the domino over to cause the effect—the fact that she was also harmed by my actions. And then Milo left because of those same actions and it was all my fault. All of it.
Then I told her how that same domino effect had led me to Emma, and then I confessed something to them both that I'd never uttered out loud. That I felt even more guilty that my happiness in Emma had been found through all the actions before it. If I had not pushed that very first domino, Emma wouldn't be mine, would she? And then I went further and wondered what kind of life Emma would have had after she woke up and had to go back to living the life of the old her. She'd be with Andy and though she wasn't happy with him, he wouldn’t have felt the need to kill himself. So, chalk that one up to me as well. The list of transgressions was a mile long, and I felt every inch of that mile right then.
With my mother's eyes on me, I felt raw. With my love's eyes on me that I could feel on the side of my face, I felt the stitches of the wound that Emma had closed with her love and understanding and acceptance begin to tug and pull.
Would she keep coming to my rescue when the past kept coming to find me? Even when I thought that I was fine and the past had been laid to rest? How many times would Emma have to come fetch me from the depths before she no longer could? Or worse…no longer wanted to?
Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.
Mason
My mother snapped to bring me into the present. Her face was fierce, reminding me of the motherly, protective woman who used to take care of me. "Oh, Mason," she said harshly. "Do you honestly think that I was coming to get you because I thought you would drive drunk?" She shook her head and looked so disappointed in me. I deserved it. "Of course I wasn't. I knew you wouldn't drive drunk." I looked at her face and knew that she was about to rip my whole theory wide open. I braced myself for impact. "I trusted you. I knew you were being stupid kids and getting into trouble, but you were still a good kid. I knew you would never do anything to make me worry."
I shook my head. "No, Mamma. You got in the car and were coming to get me, to stop me from driving—"
"No, I wasn't," she argued, her eyes hard and fierce. "I knew you wouldn't drive. I was coming to get you because I didn't want you to have to walk, because I knew you wouldn't drive. I knew you'd be walking home because your idiot friends would all be drunk, too. You couldn't reach me on the phone to come get you and I knew you wouldn't drive, Mason. Do you hear me?"
The ache in my chest hurt like an open wound. It was like tunnel vision. All I could focus on and hear was the echo of my mother's words. I wasn't coming to stop you from driving, I was coming so you didn't have to walk home. Mason…. Mason. Mason!
I snapped out of it to find Emma sideways in my lap, her hands on both sides of my face. I blinked. She looked like she didn't know what to do with me. I just wanted to feel her. I just wanted her to hug me to her-
She wrapped her arms around my neck and
pressed herself to me, her lips in my hair. Without even thinking, my arms wound themselves around her. She knew what this was doing to me. For my mother to tell me that everything—entire years of hatred—was for nothing?
I leaned back a little and spoke to Emma's chest because I didn't want to face my mother. "Still, Mom. You still got in the car and were coming for me because you were worried about me. You—"
"I'm your mother, of course I was worried about you. That is my job." I finally peeked at her over Emma's shoulder. She looked like she wanted to take a switch to my behind. I gulped, not from fright from the woman who chased me with a switch on more than one occasion, but because even though I hated my guilt, it was almost like I was clinging to it. "For you to take the blame and say it was your fault because I was doing my God given duty and right?" She shook her head angrily. "You don't get to take that away from me, Mason."
"I'm sorry, Mamma." Emma moved from my lap and went around to my back. Her hands on my back urged me forward with light pressure. I followed her lead and let my mother wrap her arms around me the way she hadn't in years. She smoothed my hair like I was a little boy and I told her again that I was sorry. For now, I was sorry I hurt her. Soon, I hoped to be able to let it all go for good and be sorry that I had given her something for me to apologize for in the first place.
Emma took our mugs to the kitchen, I was sure, to give us a minute alone more than to keep things tidy. She stayed gone for longer than I liked, and I remembered what I'd said. About feeling guilty that the only way I had Emma was through all the things that had happened. That us finding each other was only a product of the crappy things I'd done.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Sometimes I was such an idiot. Emma and I weren't the product of guilt and transgressions. Emma and I were the light that peeks through all the blackness after the dust settles.