Goodbye Earl(101)
“I don’t like your jokes,” Esme said.
“I know you don’t, and I like that you don’t like them. It’s how we work,” Rosemarie said.
“Please go pick up the pills, and let everyone take care of you while you’re in the hospital. Let me know if they need anything else. Your doctor out there is the best. Are you comfortable right now?” Ambrose asked with extra tenderness.
“I am. I am happy to be looking into your sister’s big brown eyes, and the curtains are open. The room is filled with sunlight. My friends left to let me get some sleep when Esme showed up, and I’m going to take a nap on her. I love sleeping on people,” Rosemarie said.
“Good. Sleep on her a lot, okay?” Ambrose said.
“Talk soon,” Rosemarie said, handing the phone back to Esme.
When Esme was off the phone with her brother, she got into the bed carefully with Rosemarie, and Rosemarie put her ear on her chest, listening to her heartbeat. Esme put her hand on Rosemarie’s head.
“I finally get to meet Leo today?”
“Yes. He’ll be back up here soon. He slept in that chair all night,” Rosemarie said, moving her head a little.
“How are you feeling right at this moment?”
“Like I’m dying,” Rosemarie said. She’d been inching that way for a while, but the stress of the past week or so had definitely fast-forwarded her pain and feelings. She accepted the fact that cancer would kill her as soon as Ambrose said the word metastatic right after Christmas. She responded, Happy New Year, and sat there looking at him across the desk. Esme was next to her, holding her hand. Rosemarie told Esme she’d never speak to her again if she pressed Pause to come to Goldie with her and not finish her film. She’d worked so hard, and Rosemarie was more than well taken care of when she was near her parents and Leo, with the added bonus of being back in town with Ada and Caroline, and now even Kasey too. She never had to worry about a thing with her real and chosen family so close, besides dying of the cancer that stalked the women in her family.
Rosemarie couldn’t say exactly what dying felt like for her, but it didn’t feel the way she’d thought it’d feel. Her bones ached and sometimes she couldn’t eat for days. She was overly thirsty, and occasionally her heart would flutter like a small bird taking flight. She’d slowly become more photosensitive than she’d ever been in her life, so much so that sometimes she had to wear sunglasses inside, but she loved the sun anyway and refused to give it up. The hospital room was a tad too bright, but Rosemarie relished the discomfort. She was cold sometimes, even in the hell-hot Goldie summer, but she’d taught herself to be thankful for that, because soon she wouldn’t be there to feel it.
Soon her soul would escape her human body like smoke.
This whole slowly dying thing was more useful than she’d thought it’d be. The bare fact of it had eclipsed the fear that at any second, the cops could show up and handcuff her skinny wrists to the hospital bed for killing Trey, now that they’d opened a murder investigation.
How could that scare her?
The only thing that scared her was the people she loved not knowing how much she loved them.
The only thing that would’ve scared her would have been not being brave enough to do what they had to do to protect Caroline.
*
Rosemarie woke up and squinted as the sunset poured into the room like water. So close to full gloaming. Rosemarie loved the gloaming. Leo and Esme were talking softly to each other in the chairs next to her. When she’d met and fallen in love with Esme three years ago, she imagined that it’d be a long time until she wanted Esme and Leo to meet. Like always, Rosemarie wanted Leo all to herself—which, admittedly, got a bit thorny when he was married to Annie for six years—and she liked having Esme all to herself too. She liked the two of them living in separate worlds, and although she never intentionally or actively tried to keep them from meeting, she didn’t mind that, serendipitously, it hadn’t happened before this.
Now, Leo and Esme were chatting like old friends, and they’d been doing it for how long? They both looked at her, loving her. She could feel the love in that hospital room. It spilled across the floor like the gloaming, splashed up on the walls and ceiling. She could sense that Ada, Caro, and Kasey had recently been in the room too or were somewhere near. Her terminal cancer diagnosis kicked in some extra Spidey-Senses for recognizing good things, and when she’d mentioned it to Ambrose once, he couldn’t give her any scientific reasoning to prove she was wrong.
“The rest of RACK was here, but they didn’t want to disturb you, so they went down to the cafeteria. Your parents are right outside. Rune left to go to the Burrito Barn. My sisters brought books, if you want books,” Leo said, holding up two matte paperbacks Rosemarie had seen in the bookshop window the last time she walked past. “And Esme…well, I’m in love with Esme and I told her that already, so don’t worry—it’s not weird,” he said.
“I already love you too,” Esme said, holding her hand out at Leo. He took it, kissed it.
“This is a wish I didn’t even know I had until it came true,” Rosemarie said softly. Although it was almost too painful to bear, she imagined Esme and Leo left in this world without her but connected forever through her. She was crying now. She’d cried a lot when her mom had insisted on bringing her to the hospital too, because Rosemarie’s headache was so bad, because her mouth was so dry, and because Rosemarie finally told her mom what her mom suspected all along.