Looking Back.... JT.17, the end.
“You can ask me,” he says into the quiet. He’s pushed the mute button on the TV, so it’s just us, no distractions. “I know you want to.”
“Do you wanna tell me?” I ease myself onto the foot of his bed, careful not to jostle him much. My heart is racing. It’s been eleven years. I know he’s been faithful to me since then; I know he loves me. Whatever he tells me is old and dead now, but I’m still afraid of it.
“Not really, but you deserve to know. Probably shoulda told you long time ago, but I didn’t want to get into it. Let it all go when I went back home to you.”
I lay my hand on his leg, feel his shin bone hard under the thin, rough blanket. Feel an ache start up in my belly, knowing he’s fixin to tell me stuff that’s gonna hurt me some, even if it did happen a long time ago. I take a deep breath. It’s now or maybe never. “I wanna know.”
“Remember the guy in the barn, that day you came out to the house in Atlanta?”
I nod.
“His name was Adam. He and his sister were leasing the place, thinking about buying it if they could make a go of the B&B.”
“His sister? I thought you said it was his wife.” He’d told me about it back when he’d leased it out to them, but there wasn’t anything interestin about it to me, I’d just signed whatever papers he told me to sign and mostly forgot about it after that.
“I thought it was, at first. I figured out later that they were brother and sister. You didn’t care about it anyway, so no reason to mention it.”
“So it was him? You went to Africa with him?” I’m having a hard time figuring out how that happened so fast, till a thought occurs to me. “Did you already have something goin on with him before we broke up?”
If it’s possible for Ennis to look any smaller and more miserable, he suddenly does. “I don’t know. Not really. Not what you mean. I wasn’t sleepin with him or nothing like that, but I liked him.” He stops to breathe, takes a sip from the cup of water on his table. I wait, try not to let my jealousy show on my face, but I know I’m failing.
“When I started travelin a lot, those last couple of years, I went to Atlanta a lot, and when I was there, I stayed in the B&B. Figured why not, you know? I got to ride the horses some, check on the place, eat home-cooked meals.” He smiles a little at the memory, which stirs my jealousy more but mostly I feel sad, ‘cause he doesn’t get to enjoy any of those things anymore.
“He was real nice, kinda nervous at first with me being the owner and all. But he finally got used to me being around and we started being friends. He figured out pretty easy what was going on between you and me, once I told him I was with somebody. Swore he’d never say a word, and I guess he didn’t.”
I unclench my jaw enough to agree. “Guess not.”
“We ignored it best we could for a while. I shoulda stopped staying there, told myself that a bunch the last six months or so, but every time I ended up back there anyway, making excuses but knowing it was ‘cause I wanted to see him.”
“Jesus, Ennis…”
He twists his lips sadly, keeps talking. “I wasn’t happy anymore, hated my life, hated how dangerous I was for you, hated how I couldn’t be a part of so much of what went on with you. And I hated my job and just about everything, really. And all that was making me hate you too.” He shrugs, doesn’t dwell on it. “So I met him, and he was out and he had room for me and time for me and he wanted me. And after a while I decided that I wanted him too.”
I get up and take a lap around the room when he tells me this, because this is more than what I was expecting to hear. This isn't just about what happened after we broke up, this is about him falling for some other guy while he was still with me. This is not a story I can listen to sittin down.
When I get some calmness back, I prop myself up against the wall closest to his bed and say, “Keep talkin.”
“I was gonna break up with you. That’s why I came to L.A. in the first place. I wanted to end it out there, some impersonal place, then go home and pack my shit and get out while you were still out there. Figured it’d be easier on both of us.”
All I can say to that is, “Then how come I walked around with a black eye for week?”
“’Cause when I saw you with that guy, I realized I really wasn’t leaving ‘cause I wanted to, I was leaving ‘cause I didn’t have you anymore. And seeing you with him, it was just more than I could stand. So I clocked you.”
“And then you fucking went right ahead with your plan and left my ass high and dry and fucking freaked as shit for almost three fucking months, Ennis!”
He lays his head back against the pillow and watches me as I pace some more, totally wound up. It’s so fucked up - he’s practically on his death bed and I want desperately to grab him and shake him and maybe even hit him. My fists are clenched and I’m about to bite through my bottom lip to keep from yelling more. I don’t want to get kicked out before I hear the rest of the story.
When I finally get still, he starts talkin again. “Basically, yeah. I told myself it was best for both of us - you obviously wanted to be with other people, I’d found somebody I liked, it was time. So I got my shit, went back to Atlanta, told him I was ready to give it a shot.”
“You just moved in with him? In our house?”
“Yeah.”
He closes his eyes for a minute. I’m not sure if it’s so he don’t have to look at me bein pissed off, or ‘cause he’s thinking back on that time and doesn’t want to mix me in with his old memories of him. That thought doesn’t help at all and I’m really eager to get done with this conversation.
“So how’d you end up in Africa?”
“He was going, had been talking about this trip for months. They still had openings, I had my passport, I wanted to see some lions and tigers too, so I went.” He looks really tired now and although part of me wants to kill him, part of me is terrified he’s gonna check out at any minute. I keep quiet, don’t bitch anymore. “We’d only been back a couple of weeks when you showed up. I’d just started talking to a lawyer about getting my name off everything, Adam and me were talking about buildin a cabin on the back side of the property, and then you showed up, and that was it. It was over pretty much as soon as you walked in the barn.”
“How come you went with me to Montana if you was so set on havin a life with him? Sounds like you’d got it all figured out already.” I can hear the bitter in my voice, know he can too, but I can’t help it, don’t see any reason to try. He deserves to know how much this hurts me, even now.
“I guess ‘cause I could tell you really wanted me to. And you told me you loved me that day, first time ever. I’d been waitin for fuckin years to hear that, Jack. I couldn’t turn my back on it once it was out there, said like that. I just couldn’t.”
“So you broke his heart, huh?”
He looks so sad, so regretful. “Yeah, a little. I mean, he wasn’t stupid, he knew how I felt about you, knew the chances of me really leaving you weren’t so good, but after L.A., he got his hopes up.”
“Did you do shit with him before L.A.?”
We stare at each other. He nods real slow. “Once. That’s what made me decide it was time to end it. I hated it, knew as soon as we started that I wasn’t cut out for cheatin.”
“You went back to Atlanta three or four times after we got back together.”
“I saw him once, when I went back for my stuff at the house. No more after that.”
“Did he try to talk you into staying?” I’m not sure why I’m askin these questions. It doesn’t really matter and Ennis is so tired, but somehow fighting about it makes me feel normal about us in a way that I haven’t in a long time, like we’re just a regular couple clearing the air about some bad thing that happened long ago, not two people on the verge of being one.
“Yeah, Jack, he did. And it was hard, walkin away from him, ‘cause I wanted that life pretty bad, but I wanted to be with you more. Always loved you more than anything else, Jack. Still do.”
And suddenly I’m not mad anymore, I’m sad, heartbroken, and I sit down on his bed and wrap my arms around him, draw him against my body and press my face into the warmth of his neck and breathe him in, dampen his skin with my tears. “I love you too, Ennis, so goddamned much,” I whisper, and for a minute or two we sit like that, hugged up together, giving comfort to each other in the only way we have left.
*****
That was six months ago. Doctor came in a little bit after that to give us the news - we’d got our shit together by then, was just sitting there peaceful, talking quiet about how our life got so much better after we hit that wall, how almost losing what mattered most had primed us to make the hard changes we needed to make to get our life good again.
When Dr. Zanone told us that, according to his tests, Ennis was facing a hard battle, but that he was pretty sure they’d caught it in time and we ought to be able to get him well again, well, I cried some more. Don’t think the good doctor knew what to do with that, one of his favorite football heros with tears of thankfulness running down his face, but I didn’t care. I was over caring what folks thought about me and Ennis. Still am.
It’s late fall now, and we’re up at our place in Montana, closing it down for the winter. I’m doing it mostly, Ennis still being too weak and all, but he’s gettin’ there. Dr. Zanone thinks he’ll be pretty much good as new by spring. It was that African bug made him sick, just like he thought, and getting him well from that’s been a full-time job for me. We moved down to Florida for the first few months, rented a house close to Dr. Zanone’s hospital so Ennis could get the best possible care. I had to skip out on calling games for ESPN this year, not sure if I’ll get back into it next year or not. I didn’t miss it like I thought I would - don’t really miss football much at all. Guess I’ve gotten my fill of it over the last twenty-five or so years. My life’s different now and I don’t need it anymore.
While Ennis has been convalescing, we’ve watched some games, but we’ve watched other shows too, and done other stuff. We’ve both gotten to be pretty expert at Xbox, and he’s read a lot on his Kindle. Tonight’s a TV night though and we’re sacked out on the couch watching some show about a coupla brothers chasing after ghosts and demons. Ennis brought a whole season of it on DVD, told me he thinks one of the guys is hot. Jesus!
Truth is, though, I don’t care. I’m sure not gonna be jealous of some dude on TV when I’ve got Ennis here, warm and alive and almost healthy again, just one couch cushion away and wearing some sweatpants that are real easy to get into. He’s still a little too fragile for fuckin but he’s plenty well enough for suckin, and as the guys on TV start arguing about who’s turn it is to drive their stupid ol’ car (which I secretly think is cool but I’m not telling Ennis), I slip my fingers into the elastic waistband of his pants and tug. It takes him a minute to catch on - he don’t watch a lot of TV, even being sick, but when he does, he’s gone, slipped into the story and outta this world - but once he realizes what’s about to happen, he clicks it off and turns his attention on me.
I run my hands over his not-so-skinny-anymore body, the yellow gone from his skin, replaced by the tan he got from sitting in the sun in the backyard of our place in Miami. His eyes are clear and his hair’s short again, just barely long enough to curl, some grey mixing in at his temples, barely noticeable. I move up to where we’re even on the couch, put our faces together and kiss him for a long while, gotta take my time and enjoy every minute that I’d been so scared was never gonna happen again. He kisses me back, touches me everywhere he can reach, lets me know in his wordless way that he’s just as thankful as me to have this back.
I know that in time, as he keeps gettin better, other things’ll come along - we won’t stay this bore-sighted on each other forever, and even though it’s hard to think of now, I know when the time comes, it’ll be right. We’ll get some space between us, go back to jobs and hobbies and life. But for now, being with him is all I care about. There’s nothing else I want to think about, nothing else I want to do. Brushing up so close against death put a whole new slant on living for me, made me determined that if, on some far off day in the future, I find myself again looking back across the hills and valleys of my life, when I focus on the parts with Ennis, I see nothing in my rear view but good.
~~~the end~~~