The Milestone Tapes (17 page)

“She started recording tapes for her kids. She called them ‘milestone tapes.’ Her kids could listen to them at certain thresholds so she could still be a part of their lives.” Drawing a long sip from her cup, she gave Gabe a moment to catch up.

“So, basically like a talking journal?” Gabe beseeched.

“Similar. This was her way of guiding them, sharing with them. It was something they could to hold on to, they could hear her voice, remember her.”

“And you’re doing this for Mia?” Gabe raised his mug to lips, riveted by the idea.

“I think I am. I’ve bought all the things, and I know the tapes I want to make for her, but I haven’t started recording yet.”

“You said this was for me too … are you leaving me tapes?”

Jenna smiled and touched his face briefly. “No, just for Mia.”

“I don’t think I understand ... ”

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to help you. I can’t imagine how I would feel in your shoes, facing all of this alone, the challenges of raising a child by myself, let alone a child of the opposite sex. I can only imagine that there may be things you would have handed off to me to handle, things I can relate to as a woman—like her first love or her first broken heart or becoming a mother herself. I still want to help you, in whichever way I can, and if I can take the lead on some of the heavier issues, I figure it might make your job a bit easier.”

“Oh.” Gabe rubbed at his eyes with his free hand.

“So, yes, in a way it’s as much for Mia as it is for you. I love you both, very much.” Jenna kissed Gabe softly on the lips, tasting the strong coffee he preferred.

“Can I listen to them?” Gabe asked.

“I’d prefer not, but I’ll be giving them to you, and if you want to listen to them, I guess you will.”

Jenna hadn’t thought about Gabe listening in on her private conversations with Mia. It didn’t bother her in theory, but she wanted Mia’s privacy respected. “If Mia wanted to keep the tapes between just the two of us, then that’s how it should be.”

“So, okay.” Jenna slowly climbed from the bed. She wasn’t as sore as she had anticipated, and it was sweet relief.

“Where are you going?” Gabe asked, watching Jenna speculatively as she ambled towards the bathroom.

“I’m going to get cleaned up. Do something with myself today,” Jenna answered over her shoulder as she gathered her filthy clothes off the floor and dropped them into the hamper beside the closet.

“We still have some things to sort out, J,” Gabe reminded her.

She knew what was coming next. Did she want a live in caregiver? No. Pain medication? As needed. She also knew it wasn’t exactly fair not to give him the floor.

“What’s that?” Jenna asked innocently.

“Do you want me to hire a live in caregiver for you?” Gabe asked directly.

The left corner of Jenna’s mouth lifted in a sort of smile, so predictable. “I think between you and Ginny, I’ll be okay. When the time comes, you can bring in hospice, but right now? No.” Her voice hitched at the hospice part, but she pushed forward, not allowing herself to spiral.

“Dr. Henderson wrote you a script yesterday, I didn’t fill it. Do you want me to?”

“Do I really have a choice? But please make sure to ask the pharmacist if it’s a daily dose or something I should take on occasion. I do not want to be drugged. I will take something if I feel the need, and I won’t sugar coat it, I’ll be good about it ... but I will not, and be clear on this, walk around here stoned.” She flashed Gabe a big smile at the stoned part. Remembering all too clearly how she used to love being stoned.

The memory of that jolted her and she could see Gabe remember it as well, going back to that one room apartment. After her shift at the library ended and Gabe had come home with rolls of drafting paper in cardboard tubes under his arm, Jenna would saunter out of the back bedroom in something short and sexy, a fat joint rolled and ready to be savored. They would toke up, savoring the way the smoke burnt through their lungs, lightening their heads, making everything funny, making the music so much better. They’d lounge on the floor of their small apartment, snarfing down pizza, sipping icy beer from cans, listening to music, giggling and making love. They’d re-prioritized since then, traded all of that for all of this willingly. But what was good still lingered. That was the foundation that made their lives together possible, even sweet and more memorable.

“Noted.” Gabe smiled back, laughing lightly.

As Jenna turned on the shower she realized, sometimes if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry. It was okay to laugh. That was another lesson she’d have to remember to pass on.

~ * * * ~

The orange snap of a lighter caught Jenna’s attention out the window. The smell of sulfur and thick cigarette smoke snuck through the open window of her office. Looking out, she saw Sophia, settled on a rocking chair looking out towards the bay.

Jenna cinched her robe around her waist and hustled out the door. It was nearly three in the morning. Sophia was leaving in only a few hours, homebound to South Carolina. Jenna thought she’d be asleep.

“Sophia?” Jenna hissed crossing the damp lawn quickly, her bare feet slipping on the neatly trimmed grass. “Are you smoking?”

Sophia turned, startled by the quick approach, and attempted to tuck the cigarette behind her arm.

“No!” Sophia guiltily protested, faux resentment of the accusation leaking from her voice.

“Don’t you lie to me! I can smell it! I can see it” Jenna’s hands balled into fists rested on her hips, challenging her sister, thrusting her head in the direction of the faint whirl of bluish smoke drifting upwards.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, stop being such a hall monitor! Yes, I’m smoking and I’m also an adult and I also consent to this,” Sophia produced the cigarette, taking a long drag, causing the butt to erupt in fiery red, burning away the paper releasing the pungent scent of tobacco into the early morning air.

“Well, at least you’re honest,” Jenna relented, sitting down beside her sister in the matching chair. “What are you doing out here?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” Sophia pulled on the end of the cigarette, blowing skillful smoke rings into the crisp air.

“Well, that’s obvious. Is everything okay?” Jenna searched.

Sophia had been nothing short of wonderful to Jenna, Gabe and most of all, Mia. The rocks of their relationship seemed to have smoothed considerably over the expanse of the summer.

“I can’t turn my mind off,” Sophia dismissed.

“Alex?”

“Yes and no, but primarily yes,” Sophia allowed.

Alex was nearly a forbidden topic of conversation, unwritten, but set in stone nonetheless. After Sophia had allowed for the candid honestly, she locked the door. She claimed she only wanted to focus on Jenna, and that nothing was as important as that. But it was just below the surface that Jenna could tell Sophia was reeling from the dissolving of her marriage, and sending her back into it broke Jenna’s heart.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jenna asked, reaching for the pack of cigarettes and small lighter on the center table. She tapped one from the pack and lit it smoothly.

“You really shouldn’t be smoking, Jenna.” Sophia glanced over at her, tsking her quietly.

“I don’t think one will kill me,” Jenna retorted easily, dragging the menthol smoke into her lungs with a long pull.

“That’s not even remotely funny!” Sophia glared at Jenna.

“No, it’s not,” Jenna replied evenly, pulling in another shorter, drag. “But all the same, do you want to talk about it or are we going to just sit here?”

“Okay, fine. I’ll talk.” Sophia smashed the wasted butt into the grass and kept her eyes on the blackened water of the sound. “The reason Alex and I separated wasn’t as simple as I made it sound.”

Jenna looked out at the ocean, silently letting Sophia continue.

“He has a girlfriend.” She spat the words like poison.

“No!” Jenna gasped in horror, turning to her sister. Sophia’s face remained impassive, clinically removed.

“Yes. For some time now, actually. Years, maybe. I don’t really know.” She lit another cigarette, and continued. “I’ve allowed it to go on because I didn’t want to hurt the boys; boys need their father. I figured that if I pretended it wasn’t the case, we’d all just be okay. If I didn’t make it hard on him, he’d never feel the need to choose between us and her, but Alex has decided he wants to start a life with this woman, so naturally, he needs a divorce.” She snorted out a bitter laugh.

It made sense on some dysfunctional level. It explained his ongoing absence over the summer, not so much as a phone call, even to speak to his sons. He was off, playing house with another woman while Sophia and the boys fell into the out of sight, out of mind category. Her temper flared wickedly.

“I worry how it will affect the boys. I’m going to be fine, but they’re just children.” Sophia shook her head in disbelief.

“Children are resilient.” Jenna couldn’t think of something more to stay, a way to comfort her sister. Her words sounded false and brittle, even to her. But, she had nothing else to offer, her sister’s fears were her own. How did children rebound after the loss of a parent? This was something that had haunted her for years now, and she still had no wisdom on the matter.

“That’s what they say, anyway.” Sophia lifted her cigarette to her lips, as a small smirk tugged at the corners in humorless mockery.

The comment was loaded. Jenna could feel its sharp edges. Sophia wasn’t just talking about her boys anymore, she was talking about herself, too.

She lowered her cigarette, turning her face in shock. “Oh Jesus, oh Jenna ... I’m sorry. I didn’t think, I didn’t mean that, shit! I’m sorry—Mia will be fine—this is different, not the same,” Sophia chastised herself, as if the conversation were playing on loop in her head, the words about a parentless child sinking in.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Jenna pacified her sister. Jenna knew her sister didn’t mean anything malicious about it. Those were her fears, which were, of course, every bit as valid and real as Jenna’s own.

“I’m sorry, that was so thoughtless,” said Sophia, grimacing in the dark. “What I should have said, was ... when a parent chooses to leave.” She stretched the word chooses out, placing emphasis on it.

“I think it’s all sort of the same,” Jenna challenged. “It’s varying degrees of being left, by choice or by force, what does it really matter to a child?”

“Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s all different degrees of feeling alone,” Sophia allowed.

“And to be honest, I have no clue how kids deal with it. But I look at us, with Mom. Sure, we were older, but it was still hard. But, I like to think we did okay, we managed.” Jenna took her sister’s hand, squeezing it.

“I resented you,” Sophia admitted, the words hanging in the air, thick like smoke.

“I know that,” Jenna murmured.

“Not because I didn’t love you, but because I did. You were out there in the world, making your way with things, off at college with your friends, living your life, and I was stuck at home in that house with her, taking care of her, Dad was a wreck. I just didn’t know where to put that sort of anger.”

All summer they’d tipped toed around the irony of it. Patching a hole with putty but not addressing the reason the hole existed in the first place.

“I’m so sorry Sophia.” Jenna wished she could say more, but she couldn’t.

The truth was, Jenna had stayed away. She’d known what was going on back home in their little suburban bungalow nestled just outside Chicago. She could have transferred to a local college, or taken time off, but she didn’t. She had chosen to stay her course. Even now she wasn’t sure that she would do things a different way, given the chance. Her life’s path had brought her here. Her apology wasn’t for what she could have done different, but for what her choices cost her sister.

“I know that.” Sophia sighed, a tone of acceptance in her voice. “I stopped being angry about that a while ago, honestly. Once I got out and was on my own, I it understood better.”

“I just want you to know Soph, that I love you very, very much. That I’m sorry if I’ve ever hurt you or made you feel alone. And I am so grateful you came out here for the summer, really, I am.” Jenna brushed away a few stray tears, trying not to think that in a few hours Sophia and her boys would be on a flight home, and she may never see her sister again. At least not in this way, not when they could talk and laugh. This would be their last real conversation of worth.

~ * * * ~

“Jenna ... are you scared?” Sophia shook a cigarette from the pack, pursing it between her lips and holding the small flame from the lighter up to the end.

“Every day. I look at Mia and my blood just runs cold. What’s going to happen to her? Who is she going to be when this over? I worry that she will never be able to find peace with this and that it will change her, not for the better. I look at Gabe and my heart just breaks. We were supposed to do this together, and I feel like this is so unfair to him, like he’s been cheated of an entire life, and that hurts me. But I am not scared for me. I was in the beginning, naturally, but this is so much bigger than me. Where I’m going, it’s peaceful, but what I’m leaving behind? That scares the hell out of me. So, I need you to promise me something, Soph, and I know it’s a lot, but it would everything to me … ”