GLIMMER
A Short Story
by
Melodie Ramone
It seems like all my life I watched her. I was her friend, but always more than a little in love with her, too. I think every boy who met her was, at least a little. She was a feather of a girl, smaller than most, and slight. Her favorite party dress was made of white lace. It hung off her shoulders and tastefully swooped down at the neckline, showing just a hint of cleavage, then gathered at her waist and fell in cascades to the middle of her slender calf. She wore it with black shoes, the old fashioned kind you’d expect to see on an actress in a silent film, but she made them modern, somehow made them work with the dress. She’d polished them to a glow and put them in a box to keep them safe. In her heart, she kept everything that she loved safe like that, wrapped up and tucked away in her care.
She had no idea she was beautiful. None at all. But I did.
We’d walk together. She liked to do that, I’d noticed, as I peered out the window of my parents’ house. She’d just walk with no particular direction in mind. My family had moved onto her street the summer I was seventeen, after my father’s job had transferred us to a new town. She fascinated me with the obvious way she enjoyed the air, the way she adored the sky. I knew she did because I’d see her always lift her chin to the sun and pull deep breaths into her chest, releasing them slowly the way a mother breathes in and out the scent of a child. She loved the rain, too, and she’d leave her umbrella at home on purpose. I knew this, too, because I’d seen her leave of her mother’s door, take a quick look at the front window to make sure she wasn’t being observed, and stash the thing in the hedge.
This gave me the opportunity one day to rush out with mine and offer it. I was brave then, so I did.
“Oh,” She giggled, pressing her pale hand to her throat, “Thank you! Will you walk with me?”
I did. We walked together, down the lane and around the bend, past the gate to our community and out into the park at the edge of the village. It was raining buckets that afternoon and she was drenched from being in it before I’d arrived, but she kept beneath the umbrella anyway, holding her hand just outside so the droplets of rain landed in her palm. She smelled like vanilla and lilacs with a faint hint of chocolate chip cookies. I tried to keep my eyes off of her any more than just enough to ensure she knew I was paying attention to what she said. I didn’t want her to think I was strange, but my heart ached because I wanted more than anything to see her up close. I wanted to study the gentle features of her pearl shaped face and stare into her dark, hazel-green eyes. But I didn’t. I didn’t because I knew if I did, I’d want to touch her. The thought of that alone made me feel like I would die. But, I thought, what a glorious death that would be, too, if I did go that way. It would be like being taken into an angel’s wings, soft, sweet and intoxicating.
Still, I didn’t stare. I turned my eyes toward her when it was appropriate, I nodded and smiled, and was perfectly polite. As she chattered about this and that, she did the same to me. Both of us were quite proper.
It stopped raining just as we got to the park and found the big white gazebo that had just been built beside the lake. We had no need of the shelter now that the rain had passed, but the seats were dry there, unlike any in the park itself. She sat, crossed her legs at the ankle, and smoothed away something that was on the bench beside her. “Dandelion fuzz,” She murmured as she blew it from her fingertips. Then she looked up at me and smiled. “I’m glad that you came with me,” She said.
The sun broke through the clouds and spilled through the open gazebo. It landed on her, turning her hair, which I’d thought to be brown before, exactly the shade of a brand new penny. The light set her aflame and yet she stayed so small, so pale, inside of it. She was so beautiful she took my breath away.
I felt clumsy and stupid as I took a spot beside her, but not so close to make either of us uncomfortable. The sun continued to pour over her, carried on a light breeze, and I thought to myself that she was part of it. That is to say, I thought that she was part of the sun itself, that she’d somehow come down to Earth the same way it had, like a brilliant ray that pierced all darkness and now was sitting on a bench before me. Her smile beamed the truth of it.
I had never known what it felt like to be blessed until that instant. Few are the moments when life snaps into perfect focus and we can see with absolute clarity that heaven has set a gift before us. The moment I saw her in the sun, I recognized that I had been granted a great favor. I knew if even all I had of her was that moment there, in the light, I’d have been given a treasure to hold in my heart forever. Silently, I said thank you, and I promised I’d always remember that kindness. I have never forgotten since.
I knew her two years before she fell stepping off a boat and hit her head on a dock. After a routine cat scan to rule out a concussion, the doctors told her that she had masses on her brain. They might be cancerous tumors, they said, and required further testing. Later, they told her the awful name of her disease. She was nineteen. I remember the day because it was sunny in the morning, but in the afternoon, we had a terrible storm that made her dog hide under the sofa. And I remember it because she cried in my arms, but only for a moment, before she pulled away and swore, “I won’t die.”
Later, we went to see a movie together. It was odd, not at all fun or natural. I remember everything else about that day, but I don’t remember the movie we sat through. I just remember that we went together and she wore a red jacket over a faded blue dress.
She started the chemotherapy sooner than she thought that she would. “The tumors are small,” The doctor told her, “And I’m confident that you will have a positive outcome.”
We all agreed. Especially her, that it was true, because we knew it in our hearts, but mostly because we needed it to be true. Her mother took her to the hospital where nurses put needles into her veins and pumped drugs into her body. They did this to destroy her tumors, to cure her, but it wasn’t long before she was deathly ill. Oddly, the cancer that was killing her was not what made her sick at all. She’d been fine with the cancer inside her brain. She’d even felt so well that she had moments where she doubted it was there at all. To me, the cancer seemed to be the least dangers as the treatments continued. It was the chemotherapy that I was certain would kill her. It ripped through her veins and came out every place in her little body it could find. She retched until the blood vessels in her face, neck, chest and arms were broken. Tears poured from her doe-like eyes, water ran from her nose. She ate nothing and she slept less than that. And one day, when I arrived, my perfect girl was a grey skeleton with bruised circles beneath her eyes, lying on her bed in a green nightgown with her blankets and sheet on the floor.
“I know you mean well,” She whispered without opening her eyes, “But don’t touch me. Please, don’t touch me.”
I wanted to. I wanted to gather her in my arms and hold her close. I wanted to hold her so close that I absorbed her cancer, so that it entered me and left her. I’d have taken that pain from her. I wanted it. All of it. I asked the angels to let me suffer instead. I wanted to suck the poison out of her veins and ingest it into myself. I wanted to comfort her, to make her whole. I wanted to fix her, to make right everything that was happening to her. I wanted to make her better.
But I couldn’t. Helpless, I sat on a chair beside her bed and didn’t say a word. I did what I’d always done and I watched her, but this time without looking away. This time I did stare. This time, I did study the features on her beautiful face. Even as ill as she was, as off color as her normally soft, smooth skin was, she was magnificent. She was still my girl. My perfect girl.
Over the days that followed, her thick, copper colored hair fell out in clumps. Sometimes it would stick to her p
illow and blanket, reminding me of the cotton from the cattails my brothers and I would gather and rend on camping trips. It was hard to remove the hair and would upset her when anybody tried, so her mother hid pillowcases in the closet for quick changes when she wasn’t in the room. And then one morning, all her pretty hair was just gone. The day it happened, I wasn’t allowed to see her, but I could hear her weeping as I made my way across the lawn. I could hear her crying all the way to the street and even once I got home, the sound was playing in my mind like a horrible song I’d heard on the radio that got stuck and wouldn’t leave me alone.
The next day, she seemed better. She’d worn a hat and gone out shopping with her mother, who bought her two wigs. One was long and golden brown, styled to mimic an actress on a popular television show, and the other was cut into a bob, not unlike the hair she’d had, but was a less natural shade of red. Both looked lovely on her and I told her so. She smiled at me and the sunlight was back in her eyes.
The wigs made some people uncomfortable. I can’t be sure why, but I think it was because it reminded them. Not of an illness that could be cured, but, instead, of death. It didn’t me. I didn’t care that her hair had come out. I didn’t care that she wore wigs. I only cared about her survival.
She’d wear the wigs when we went walking, on the days when she was strong and well enough to do that. She wore them with me to the movies and the few times I took her out to dinner, when she was well enough to eat. She wore them to a Christmas party where she explained to people, who didn’t know yet, that yes, she had cancer, but had no intention of dying. I watched her, as I always did, and I knew I was the only one who saw the pain in her eyes as, one by one, people she knew pitied her. I was the only one who noticed the veiled cringe from her as they offered their support, which she perceived as pity, and it I was the only one who understood that what they thought was kindness had broken her heart. She had hoped, after all, that going to the party would help her escape the cancer for a little while, not set her apart from her friends and only remind her of it.
She was wearing the golden brown wig that evening. On the way home, she pulled it off and dangled it out the window of the car from her hand. After a moment, she let it go. It swooped into the air and was lost to the night. And then she buried her face in her hands and she sobbed, but she refused to let me stop and go back to look for it.
After that, she didn’t want to leave the house anymore.
After a few months, her mother brought her back to the hospital and stayed with her as she had her last round of chemotherapy. She was so weak, nearly disintegrated, almost destroyed. Shortly after, when the nausea had mostly passed and her head no longer pounded, the doctor told her that her scans were clear and the cancer was gone. She said nothing, not a word. Not when he told her and not when she came back home with her mother. She went to her room, she closed the door, and she didn’t come out for a week.
I waited from my own room across the street and two houses down. I waited and I prayed.
When she did return to me, she had roses in her cheeks and her sparkle back in her eyes. She smiled brightly and she asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. I did. Of course I did. With her, I’d go anywhere. I wanted nothing more than to walk with her and talk with her. I wanted to be with her the way we used to be, when it was easy and fun and we were free, when it was just her and me with a million things to say, both of us, under my umbrella, making our way to the gazebo in the park.
She didn’t wear a wig, nor did she have on a scarf, but she let her smooth scalp take in the warm rays of sunlight as we strolled. “I’m alive,” She told me, grinning and drawing her legs up under her on the gazebo bench after she’d sat. “This,” She ran her precious hand over the top of her head, “Is to remind them that bald isn’t dead ,” She motioned to two of the girls who had been at the Christmas party. They were supposed to be tending a bar-b-cue, but, instead, were staring at her. She only smiled and waved.
Her hair grew back in time. Weight returned to her bones. Over the next years, she finished University and began her career as a kindergarten teacher in a neighboring town. She moved from her parent’s home into her own apartment. She lived alone. She lived as she chose, completely free and uninterested in what anybody thought or said. She’d seen death up close and had chosen life. She saw no reason to revert to darkness. She was busy and happy and still so incredibly beautiful. She reminded me of the butterflies I’d always see in my mother’s garden. Flitting and fluttering, always filled with joy. I loved her so much.
I lived alone, too, in a different town, but not far away. Often, she’d call me.
“Ryan, are you busy?”
“No.”
“Then come and walk with me.”
So I would. At least three times a week, I’d meet her in her town we’d walk like we always had together. Aimlessly, pointlessly, chattering about whatever entered our thoughts. Her arm was wrapped in mine and we’d laugh so hard sometimes it would echo off buildings. And when it would rain, I’d bring my umbrella, the same one I’d had for years, and she’d hold her hand outside of it.
We celebrated her thirtieth birthday together in a restaurant she chose because they had sombreros and free corn chips. She didn’t tell me that the cancer had come back. She didn’t say a word at all about it, but she laughed and told me about her students and a series of very bad dates.
“I should just marry you!” She blurted, knocking back a shot of tequila. She then hissed and bit down on a lime.
“You really should!” I agreed, but I knew we never would. Our love wasn’t that kind. Our love was the kind that happens when two souls bump into each other on their way through life and attach without condition, when two people relate to each other so deeply that the idea of becoming physical is somehow oddly repulsive. Our kind of love was the kind that went deeper than skin and on to a place where marital vows would have been meaningless. Even though we lived apart, we were always together, always connected. We were already married in a sense, combined at the soul, and wished for no more than that. What we had is the truest definition of best friend that can be.
It was because of that connection that somehow deep inside, I knew she was sick before she told me. I forced the awareness to the back of my mind, too frozen and terrified to acknowledge it. I ignored the nagging sense until she stopped calling to ask me to come and walk with her. It was unavoidable after she took days to return my calls, and when she did, her voice was shallow, distant, and all too familiar of memories I didn’t want to relive.
It was a Friday night when I showed up unannounced at her apartment. Her sister was there, keeping an eye on her, and she didn’t want to let me in. When it became obvious that I was never going to leave, she relented and I found my perfect girl curled in a tight ball on the tile in her bathroom. She opened her beautiful eyes, now clouded with pain and poison, and she tried to smile. “You caught me at a bad time,” She mumbled.
I kneeled beside her, gingerly putting my hand against her hot shoulder, feeling the beads of sweat under my skin. She was shivering. Burning up and shivering all at once. I swear, I could actually feel her pain through the palm of my hand, only I am certain I felt not even a fraction of it. I am sure, if I could have fully felt it, it would have killed me on the spot, right there. I even wanted to die, if it meant she didn’t have to do this again, if it meant she didn’t have to hurt.
She patted the back of my hand, comforting me. She was so much stronger than me. She was always so much stronger than me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered, wanting to caress her, needing to comfort her, but stationary, unsure of how to do it, or if she’d want me to.
“Because I didn’t want to put you through this again,” She said simply. She stopped patting, she took my hand instead, and I held hers as the strength drained from her wrist. “Don’t go,” She murmured, her head still pressed to the tile.
“I won’t if you don’t,” I promised.
&nb
sp; I stayed with her. I stayed with her through her chemotherapy and I stayed with her through the nightmares she’d have. I stayed with her when she laughed at her own jokes and when she cried because it was so much worse this time. I stayed with her as she faded and I was there when she finally admitted that she was afraid to die.
And I was there when she decided that she was too tired to fight anymore and was no longer scared. She never said it, but she had surrendered. She was starting to trust her situation and was going to allow what would be to become what it would.
“It’s weird,” She pulled the blanket up to just under her chin and looked up at me. Her face was gaunt and the gesture made her look like an odd, stunning child with huge, glowing eyes. Angelic, really, but haunting. Something a great artist would try to paint, but fail, because no one could ever capture how incredible she was. No one would ever know that, I realized as she continued to speak. No one would ever know how amazing she was, except for me. “It’s not so bad now that it’s happening,” She never used the word death, “It’s easy, really, and I know it’s not going to hurt.”
“I love you,” I told her. It came out before I thought about it. I’d never said it because I knew she had known it forever, but I felt like if I didn’t, those words would be lost and I wanted her to hear them from me before she left. I wanted her to hear them and know that I meant them.
“I love the whole world,” She told me gently, “But I love you most.”
“Well, I love only you.”
“I know.”
I stayed with her still over the weeks that followed, as she sorted through her belongings and decided who would get what when she was gone. I was there, always there, and I was with her when doctor after doctor told her there was nothing left to do for her. But she already knew that, she’d known it for longer than I had. I was there, too, when she told her family that she accepted her fate. They refused to do the same, even though she needed them to. I never left her side. I was even with her when she picked out her own headstone.