Page 93 of Wished

Max isn’t here. There isn’t any reason for him to be here, and there isn’t any reason for me to think of him.

Sometimes I check my phone, expecting a call or a text from him, but then I feel like a fool becauseit wasn’t real.

Even so, I look down at my phone. There’s a text from my mom:Black or with cream?

Cream and triple sugar please, I send back.

Dorene shifts on the narrow hospital bed and glances at my phone. I drop it into my purse and stretch out my legs, leaning back in the hard plastic chair.

“Have you made a decision?” I ask, keeping my voice quiet so I won’t wake Emme.

The poor kid hasn’t been sleeping well. Not since Dorene was admitted.

I guess none of us have.

Dorene looks better than she did a few days ago, but she’s still pale and worn-out, faded like an old black-and-white movie, tired around the edges. It could be the hospital gown. Even the healthiest person looks sickly in a hospital gown. Or it might be the rumpled bed, the taped IV line on the back of her hand—or maybe it’s just the fact that we’re all confronting—again—the frailty of life.

The last time I was in a hospital—fourteen years ago—I was scared of everything. This time around I was scared, at first, of losing Dorene. Then, when I realized she was going to be okay, I was only scared of not being there for her.

She only has me, my mom, and Emme. We’re her family.

“I have,” Dorene says, staring at the old portable television my mom brought from her apartment. It’s the ancient TV/VCR combo Dorene has always watched her husband’s movies on while sitting out in the courtyard, chain-smoking and quoting the rapid-fire dialogue.

For the past week she’s been playing his movies nonstop, from early morning through the long night. The flickering static of the screen wavers in streams of light. At dawn and at dusk, when the golden in-between bathes the room, that flickering light takes on a ghostly feel, as if her husband exists in that movie light, comforting her from afar.

“What did you decide?” I ask, wondering what the future holds.

“You’re still fired,” she says, taking her gaze off the screen long enough to give me a smile. It’s not as vibrant as it was in the past, but there’s more strength there than there was a few days ago.

I smile back and impulsively reach out to grab her hand. Her skin is cold and dry, but her grip is strong.

“And?” I ask, scooting my chair closer.

She clicks her tongue, turning back to the screen. On it, her husband’s most famous film, an angsty arthouse movie about a tragic love affair in the French Riviera, is at its climax. The hero is on the beach, frothing waves crashing behind him. He clutches his dead lover to his chest and shouts in torment and anguish at the heavens. Apparently, the week this film was released people were sobbing in the streets all across France.

“I told Julien he shouldn’t have killed her,” Dorene says, pursing her lips. “It’s a terrible idea, doomed love. But he was adamant. ‘Oh no, Dorene. Love is only potent if it is bittersweet. We only want love if it is pain. It is a sickness!’” She scoffs and rolls her eyes as if she had this argument only yesterday. But then she turns and grins at me and I see the woman who stole a Bugatti and drove through Paris naked. The daring, independent woman who lived all sixty-three years of her life with relish. “The fool won his argument by dying on me. Would I have loved him this long if instead he’d run off with one of his actresses? Or if he’d fallen on hard times and turned to drink and bitterness? I don’t think I would have. Although I can’t be sure.”

She shrugs and then scoffs again when the hero enters a bereaved soliloquy, berating the capriciousness of love.

“That isn’t love,” she says, pointing to the screen. “If Julien were here, I’d tell him that. Thirty years later, I understand. Perhaps if he’d made it this far he’d understand too. But it takes time ...” She shrugs. “When you’re young, it’s easy to think you know what love is. You feel it so strongly. But . . .” She lifts her shoulders again and then leans back against the gray headboard.

“What is it then?” I ask, watching the dark-haired man weep over his lover.

“That?” Dorene points to the screen. “Possession. They wanted to possess each other. Own the other. What else? Need. An endless hunger needing to be filled. Lust, of course. There’s nothing like a good swallow of some straight-up lust. Passion?—”

I look at her quickly and she cuts herself off.

At her raised eyebrow, I shift in the hard plastic chair and rub at my arms, chilled by the cold hospital air.

“What?” Dorene asks, her expression probing.

She knows me too well. Seven years of talking every day, working together, has left her able to read me like a book.

I glance over at Emme, making sure she’s still asleep. She’s tucked Bijou under her chin and her mouth is parted, her eyes closed, eyelids fluttering with dreams.

“I’m only surprised,” I say slowly, “that you’d say passion isn’t love.”

Dorene pats my hand. “Someday you’ll see.”

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