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“No, you don’t. You always look beautiful,” Matty calls in a monotone that smacks more of obligation than sincerity. She’s waiting in the small sitting area of my suite waiting while I put on a little make up.
I can’t see her in the reflection, but I know that from her perch in the bedroom, she can see me. So, I look directly in the mirror. “Well, you don’t always look beautiful. In fact, right you now, you look as terrible as I feel,” I say with a smile that’s as sincere as her tone was.
A few seconds later she’s standing beside me at the small vanity in my bathroom, scowling at me.
She rolls her eyes and lets out a long, exasperated sigh.“I was trying to be nice, Regan,” she repeats.
I mimic her eye roll. “You don’t have to be nice. It’s okay to be honest with your friends.”
“Here we go.” I mutter and turn my attention back to my makeup.
She glares at me, hands on her hips and fierce frown on her face. “What does that mean?”
“It means that without Jack as a buffer, we were bound to argue.” I keep my expression neutral, but I stop trying to make my trembling hands work and put my mascara away and meet her eyes in the mirror.
I regret my quip about her appearance. She does look worn out. It’s more than fatigue and emotional toll of this trip. What had the last ten years been like for her? I didn’t even know where she lived until Jack told me she was in Maryland. She’s never met my children. Evangeline’s middle name is Matilda.
“I’m going out the balcony to smoke. When you’re done, come join me.” She turns and walks away before I have a chance to respond.
I watch her retreating back. She’s ranged from barely civil to hostile since we met in the lobby to ride out to the boat Jack hired for the ceremony.
When I tried to talk to her, she said, “I’m just here for Jack.” And nothing else.
She brought a bottle of wine on board and drank half of it, straight from the bottle. When the captain of our little boat asked us about Jack, Matty said, “We used to be friends, but now, we hate her.”
Matty and I…we’ve always butted heads. I used to love that about us. It felt like our relationship flexing its muscles when we fought and made up.
I counted myself lucky to have such an authentic, honest friend.
We’re worse than strangers now and I can see clearly, the role I played in that.
What they did was wrong. But, no one forced me to help them. It’s wrong of me to punish them for my choices. It took Jack’s call asking me to come visit her in hospice to see that.
I spent ten years thinking she was angry with me and she spent ten years thinking I was angry with her. But when she called to tell me she was dying, all I felt was grief. I caught a flight the very next day and went to her home Sacramento.
Jack was barely a shadow of the woman she’d been last time I saw her.
Her husband told me that she was having a good day and it broke my heart to think what the bad days must be like. But I only smiled and sat in the seat they offered me.
I began with my regrets. “I was going to call… Six months went by and I didn’t know what I would say. So, I just…never did. I’m so sorry.” It was such a pathetic recitation of excuses
She’d just smiled and patted my hand. “I love you. I’m so glad you came.” That was all.
The rest of the time, we reminisced, I read her passages from her favorite book, Love in the Time of Cholera and we cried together when Florentino left
after Fermina spurned him.
When I finished the book, she’d grabbed my hand with more strength than I’d felt from her since I arrived. d. Her eyes were clear and grave. “Don’t waste any more time wondering what if. You’ll regret it. And it will make the end of your life, whether you see it coming or if it happens in an instant, feel like a death sentence instead of a transition. You were my last regret. Make up with Matty, don’t let her be yours.”
She died that evening and I cried bitterly. Thinking back to it, I feel ashamed that her husband had to find space in his own grief to comfort me.
Shakespeare said that love is an ever-fixed mark that looks upon a tempest and isn’t moved. And it’s proven true. After all this time and all the muddy water that’s passed under our bridge, I still love Matty.
Even if she doesn’t feel the same, I want her to know that I didn’t just come here for Jack.
She’s leaning over the rails, staring out at the majestic panorama of beach, ocean and sky. I watch her for a moment. In so many ways, she’s unchanged. High, sculpted cheekbones, full lips, a regal nose and braids piled high on her head like a crown make a striking profile. Her dark brown skin gleams in the moonlight. Her yellow sundress is too big, and even though she’s the same size as she was in college, she looks frailer.
I feel sick at the thought she might be sick, with something that will kill her, like it killed Jack. I shake off the melodrama and shake myself. I know what’s wrong. It’s the same thing that’s eating me alive. She just doesn’t have the budget for make-up and facials that stave off the signs of the internal rot that comes with making your soul a vessel corrosive secret.
