Death is Not an Option - 15. Chapter 15

Jaden has been excited all day. He has wanted so much to come and see Isaac. That boy has really made an impression on the little chap. Sometimes his father is a little too stern with him, and a little too protective. It hit him hard when Jaden fell ill and he has been even more protective since then, even though he has come through it far better than anyone had expected; anyone except me. I had always known he would be fine. Jaden is a strong boy, far stronger than anyone gives him credit for.

My son is a good man, a strong man and his wife is a sweetheart but they don’t really know what to make of Jaden. He is a bundle of joy who consists of pure energy; curious about everything, in love with the world and with life. He is my golden boy.

Realising that I was his best chance Jaden has been harassing me unmercifully. He can be very single minded when he wants to be. I was surprised by how difficult it was to persuade his father to let him come. He has been having difficulty getting past his original opinion of Isaac. He has always been like that, my son. Making snap judgements and then going through torment while he revises them.

In some ways Jaden is very like him except that he approaches things from the opposite end. Malcolm is suspicious of everyone, looking for darker motives, hidden agendas. Jaden trusts unconditionally, looking only for the good and always finding it. Malcolm frets about it, fearing that one day Jaden will be let down, taken advantage of, or worse. He is wrong. Jaden is stronger than he thinks, but he is also too unbalanced... all good is as bad as all bad... and he needs to get his heart broken a few times. He needs pain to bring balance and that is something that no one can protect him from, and no one should.

I am surprised by Malcolm’s reaction to Isaac though. Despite everything he is deeply suspicious and has asked me more than once not to encourage Jaden’s friendship with him. He feels that there is something plain wrong about an eight year old forming a friendship with a man, albeit that Isaac barely qualifies. Add to that the fact that the man has been in prison, however unjustly and it makes him very uneasy.

I have tried talking to him, tried describing Isaac, even tried to persuade him to meet the boy. There is no way that he can harbour objections once he has met him, seen what he is like, what the two of them are like together. It says so much for Isaac that, when he was at his lowest ebb he not only had time for Jaden, he allowed him to be his friend. But it has all been to no avail and Malcolm remains steadfast in his condemnation.

I have not told my son that I have brought Jaden here. He thinks that we have spent the day together at the beach. He will be furious and I will bear his fury with grace and with dignity, in fact I will smile in his face and my heart will be immune to his anger. Because it was not just Jaden who needed this visit, it was me. I had to come. I had to.

I have to force myself to walk into the room. I am suddenly nervous and that isn’t like me, not like me at all. Katie is a delight and she has agreed to watch Jaden for a couple of minutes. Somehow, now that I am here it is difficult, so difficult.

Jonathan. I would have known him anywhere. He is so like his father. So very like his father; the same eyes. They all have the same eyes. He is broad too, not slender and delicate like Isaac; that he gets from his mother. It could almost be Alex sitting there, looking at me with those eyes.

When we are alone I find that my voice has vanished and all I can do is look at him. He is so open, so trusting, so patient. I can see the marks of illness on him, the sunken cheeks, the pale complexion, the haunted eyes. And yet; and yet. The darkness has not touched him, not really. He is not expecting anything from me. I doubt he even knows me, what I have done for him, I know he doesn’t know why.

“Do you know who I am?”

He looks at me with narrowed eyes, frowning slightly. “I know you are Jaden’s grandmother.”

“Do you remember me?”

“No, I... I think...” he shakes his head with a sigh. He looks very tired, so pale he is almost translucent. I want to take him into my arms. He is a lost boy and I have been trying so hard to help him find his way. Maybe too hard... maybe he needs to find his own way. No, I came here to say this and say it I will.

“Do you remember your parents at all Isaac?” The frown deepens and a look of suspicion comes into his eyes.

“I have been asked that a lot recently, and every time something scary happens.”

“Scary?”

“Don’t you think that suddenly finding out you have a family you never knew existed is scary?”

“Some people would use different words, but scary? Yes, I suppose it is scary. Especially when you have never known what it is to have a family.”

“The community was my family, all the family I ever knew, ever needed. You may find it strange but I have never thought about my parents. They were gone before I had a chance to know them, to love them. I never missed them, although sometimes I wondered what it would have been like to know them.”

“And I suppose you have never been encouraged to remember.”

“No.” Again there is that suspicion, something flickering behind his eyes.

“Was that just because of the way your community viewed children as the responsibility of everyone rather than of just their parents?”

He gives me the most calculating look I have ever seen. It is shocking, especially in the eyes of one so young. “No. It was Caleb. He... I didn’t know it until... until...” He winces and swallows hard, he memory too vivid, too fresh. “He was in love with my mother. He hated my father and he hated me. He tried to kill me... not just now, many times. I never knew.”

His eyes have taken a faraway expression, misty with pain. He does not see the shock that must be written all over my face. Oh the poor boy, the poor boy. It is a struggle to keep my voice steady but I owe him that much at least.

“Did he tell you that? When he came here?”

Without looking at me Isaac nods “Yes. He told me he has been trying to kill me for years, arranging ‘accidents’ which I have somehow managed to escape. He told me that it was because he had loved my mother, but she left him for my father and that made him bitter and angry. My mother loved me, refused to surrender me to the community, held me close because of my father; and because of that, because of him and because of me she was forever beyond his reach. He was insane I think, at least at the end, maybe always.”

“Yes Isaac, I think he was, always. He has been very cruel to you hasn’t he? All your life, in a thousand small ways.”

At last he looks at me, his eyes sparkling with unshed tears and... something else. “Yes, he has. I didn’t realise it, ever. I thought that it was something in me, something bad in me. He always made me feel as though I was being judged and found wanting. I didn’t care... well, I thought I didn’t... but I think I did. I think that for the longest time I believed that there was something not quite right about me and I... I... played into it.

“I was deliberately difficult. I pushed him, all the time. In the end I didn’t even do it to get a reaction, I did it because it was expected of me, because I was... bad... not the same as everyone else, because there is something wrong with me, that makes me not fit in, not anywhere.”

He stops, his eyes dazed as if he is only half there, the other half being so very, very far away. “I don’t know what I’m saying, where it’s coming from. I... it’s not something I have thought about, ever. At least not until now. But...” He shakes his head gazing up at me with his distant smile. “What was the question?”

“Don’t worry sweetheart. It doesn’t matter. You answered it. You do realise, don’t you, that this has all come from him? That it was never about you? There is nothing wrong with you Isaac, nothing bad.” The look on his face is so... hurt I have to reach out to him. I have to touch him. I take his hand and he winces. I can't take my hand away, whether it hurts him or not because of how much it is hurting me. I stroke the long, pale fingers, so like others I have known, lost in memory.

Lifting my eyes with an effort I see that his gaze is now turning puzzled. He is expressive and intuitive. He knows something is coming. I would be cruel to him if I don’t... I smile but am aware that it is a strained one, and also aware that he knows it. His fingers are trembling in mine.

“It’s alright honey. It’s alright. I’m just a foolish old woman getting misty eyed about the past, about things that might have been.” Seeing the confusion deepen I pull myself together and smile a more genuine, less strained smile and I try to explain. “I think that things rarely happen by accident, Isaac. It was providence that brought you to this place at this time and the same that brought me here to you. You see... I didn’t know it when I last spoke to you, although I sensed something in you, something so very familiar but... I knew your father.”

His eyes fly wide, his lips parting and forming a silent ‘O’. I smile and this time it is a genuine one. “I was very young. You know that your father was a lawyer?” He shakes his head and it makes me sigh inside... not even that. “Well, he was, a very good one. We went to Law School together, a long time ago now. He was very clever, he helped me a lot.”

Suddenly I am back there, in the days when I was convinced that I was going to change the world, when anything was possible and everything was exciting. I remember the first time I saw him. It was during a lecture in the great hall. He was late and I was annoyed by the interruption. He came bursting through the door without the slightest hint of embarrassment, smiled his devastating smile at the lecturer who, rather dazedly, returned it and quite forgot to make the usual sarcastic comment she fired at anyone who interrupted her flow, and made a B line for me.

I hardly noticed at that time how good looking he was, I was too annoyed with him and resolved not to look at him at all. But he had barely sat down before he started to annoy me again, telling me that his name was Alex and that he had only just got there because he had been held up with his wife and kids.

I think I told him to shut up, or I might even have said that he should think about them then and stop chatting up strange women. He had laughed his soft laugh and said that he wasn’t chatting me up and if he had been I would have been a lot less interested in the lecture and in his wife and kids. I believe at that point I hit him... probably just an elbow in the ribs but it made him grunt and drew the attention of the lecturer who, very unfairly I thought, took out her ire on me.

After that I bumped into him everywhere and he even managed to inveigle his way into the study group I had carefully constructed from the brightest minds, and safest personalities, I could find. We were hardworking, bright and... boring. Alex wasn’t safe; anything but, and he certainly wasn’t boring. He had definitely livened up our little group. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, as well as being dangerously attractive, exciting and... well dangerous, he was also brilliant and so we had no reason to expel him. In fact he ended up leading the group, especially in discussions. His logic was flawless and unshakable... both in relation to law and... life.

“We studied together. There was a group of us but, more and more we drew away from them. He was brilliant, the brightest in our entire year. He won prizes for it. And I was no slouch myself. We grew to be friends.”

“Friends? My father was your friend? You knew him?” The calculation and puzzlement has gone now and he looks strangely hungry. I smile a wistful smile and stroke his hair. It is fine and soft, like is mother’s; Alex’s was more wiry, tending to curl.

“Yes, he was my friend...at first. Afterwards he became... more. About three months into the course he separated from his wife and she went home to her family. He was devastated. He was fond of her but he idolised his children. Jonathan and Shannon were beautiful kids... they were tiny then, Shannon only a baby and he missed them terribly.

“Being his best friend and confidante he turned to me more and more for comfort and... one thing led to another. We had a wonderful time together and I think a piece of me died when we separated. I was so in love with him. He was such a wonderful person, very much like you... oh, not to look at, you are much more like your mother to look at, although your eyes.... But in the way you are, the way you speak, the way that your eyes show everything you are thinking...”

He looks stunned, completely stunned. The pain in his hand forgotten he is squeezing my fingers so hard I feel the bones grind. I don’t think he is aware.

“Why did you...?”

“Why did we separate? It was because Alex loved his family so much. I wanted to save the world and in order to do that I had to go to London, at least that’s what I thought at the time. I had been offered Articles with a large firm in the City and so had he, but he turned it down. He moved back to be close to Jonathan and Shannon. His family... your family live close by and he just wanted to go home.”

Isaac is hanging on my every word, his eyes enormous, so dark, so familiar. It is easy to forget what he has been through because he is so strong but I am beginning to wonder if I have done the right thing. He is tiring rapidly. The emotional stress is exhausting him. But it is too late now, I can’t stop, it would be too cruel.

“I moved on, met Jaden’s grandfather, got married and settled down. I forgot all about Alex, for a while, for years.” Actually, I had never forgotten him, not for a moment. There has not been one single day since I first laid eyes on him that I have not thought of him. But Isaac does not need to know that. It would only complicate matters. “And then we met again. It was at a Law Society Ball. We were all in our finery. I was there with my husband and he was there with his new wife. She was so beautiful, like a fairy queen. She was dressed in a silver gossamer dress sewn with pearls and had pearls in her hair and around her throat and they glowed, but not as much as she did. He was so in love with her. She was Irish with the softest voice and the cutest accent. He was besotted with her and she with him.

“I have to admit that at first I had a pang of jealousy.” It surprises me that, even now, even after so many years that pang comes again, fresh and sharp as if it were only yesterday. At the time it had been an arrow through my heart. “He had been my first real love and for the time we were together he was everything to me. But once I had met her and spoken to her I couldn’t possibly hold on to the jealousy. She was such a sweet person, so pure, so... innocent but in such a... blindingly insightful way. Something, I think that you have inherited from her.”

He looks confused and it makes me smile. Like Jaden, part of his charm is the fact that he is so utterly unaware of it, of how beautiful he truly is. I smile and pat his arm as I continue with my story.

“I was surprised that he had told her about me. He was completely unselfconscious in his greeting. When he kissed me there was still... an intensity, a passion there but it wasn’t me who kindled it any longer. It was such a bitter sweet moment.

“We were inseparable for the rest of the evening. It was as if we had never been apart. Except for the... um... relationship, nothing had changed between us. We still had the easy companionship, the same sense of humour, the same views. We talked all night, not just the two of us, all four of us and it was the best night of my life, apart from my wedding night and when my children were born.”

“The... woman... was she... was she...?” His lips are trembling so much he can barely speak, the tears that he had held so firmly in check, overflowing.

“Yes Isaac, that woman was your mother, Eileen. It was the only time I ever met her but I will never forget her, not ever. That night was magical and we parted, swearing that we would meet again. We all meant it, we were all on fire with the meeting and we truly meant to keep in touch but life got in the way and then, only six months later, I heard the news that Alex was dead.”

I have to stop as a pang of pain, sharp as a knife stabs into my heart. Blinking away tears I smile and squeeze his hand, reaching out with my other hand to wipe away his tears, but there is nothing I can do to stop them.

“I have never forgotten him Isaac. There has always been a part of my heart, my soul, that belongs to him.” I have to take a deep breath, to steady myself, my voice before I can go on. “When I first saw you there was something about you that disturbed me, something that was familiar, strangely so. I couldn’t believe it when I started looking into things and his name came up. I was shocked but, at the same time I wasn’t because then I realised what it had been about you that had disturbed me so much.”

“Because I look like my mother?”

“No... because you reminded me so much of your father. You have his beautiful eyes, his... intensity. It was that, and the fact that when I looked into your eyes I sensed how... sweet and beautiful you are, and how much Jaden had taken to you, that drove me to dig deeper and deeper. I knew that Alex had had a family before he met your mother. I knew that you had a brother and sister out there somewhere and I had to find them... and I did.”

“It was you?” I didn’t think it was possible for his eyes to widen further, and yet they do. They are enormous in that pale, pale face, wide and shining and so much like his father’s it almost breaks my heart to look at him. This is for you Alex. I did this all for you.

Not trusting my voice I nod and Isaac goes completely still, his eyes locked with mine, overflowing. “Thank you.” It is just a whisper, all he can manage.

“There is nothing to thank me for, nothing. It was my pleasure, all my pleasure.” I stroke his hair and he closes his eyes with a sigh. I think he is having trouble taking it in. Again I doubt whether I should have spoken to him at all, at this time. There has been so much thrown at him in the last few days, so much for him to process, to understand, and he has done so well. He is strong, like his father.

Gradually, very gradually he begins to relax, his trembling easing. His lips are compressed and slowly they slip into a smile. When he opens his eyes they are calm, although he still looks very tired, his eyes heavy and drugged looking.

“I...” His voice is very weak and he has to pause, to gather himself. “There have been a lot of surprises.”

“Yes, there have. Do you think you can stand one more?”

He looks alarmed, half sitting up before pain and weakness forces him back with a groan. “Easy now. This is not such a big surprise, not like the others. This is a gift, from me to you.”

“You’ve given me so much...”

“Nonsense. You have given me a great gift Isaac, you have brought Alex to life for me again, and with him the part of my heart that died with him. Besides, this is such a small thing. Do you remember I told you about the ball, the one where I met your parents?”

“Yes.”

I reach into my bag and my fingers close around a piece of paper, my thumb caressing the smoothness on one side of it. Drawing it out my eyes are dazzled by the smiles, the colours, the memories.

“This photograph was taken on that night. The man on the far left is your father and the woman next to him your mother. The other two are my husband and I.”

Isaac takes the photograph with unsteady fingers and stares at it. He is trembling all over, tears flowing freely down his face. He looks very young, very tired and I feel a twinge of disquiet. Why did I have to keep pushing? He is not Alex. He is not a grown man and he is not well. He is clearly exhausted. I am about to tell him to rest now, to get up and leave but I am not quite in time.

“Grandma, you’ve made Isaac cry. Why did you make him cry? That wasn’t very nice of you. I thought you were going to give him a nice surprise, not a nasty one.”

The tone of accusation in his voice makes me smile and I turn and take him into my arms. He is such a sweet boy, very like his father, my baby.

“It was a nice surprise Jaden. It was a wonderful surprise.” Isaac is smiling at him, wan thorough the tears.

“Then why are you crying?”

“Because... because...” Isaac takes a deep breath and forces the smile to steady. “My mother died when I was a very little boy, much littler than you are now. I don’t have any memories of her. My father I never knew at all. I have never seen a photograph and I didn’t even know what they looked like. That’s what your grandmother gave me Jaden. She gave me my parents back. Look.”

He holds out the photograph and Jaden pulls out of my arms and jumps up onto the bed. My arms are out to pull him back, terrified he is going to disturb some of the medical equipment but before I can move he has settled himself, snuggling into Isaac’s side, somehow avoiding the tubes and wires, oblivious. Isaac has a stunned expression on his face but it fades into a gentle smile and he settles his arm around Jaden with a sigh, dropping his head to breathe in the little boy freshness. It feels good. I know, I have done it myself so many times.

“Which one is your dad?”

“That one.”

“Wow. He’s really handsome. Is that your mother next to him?”

“Yes.”

“She looks like a queen, or a fairy princess. She is very pretty. He raises his head, nearly knocking Isaac senseless. “She looks like you.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“She does. You’re very pretty too.”

“Thank you... I think.”

“Who is that?” He stabs his finger at the photograph.

“Does it look familiar to you?”

“Yes. It looks a bit like my Grandma...except that she...” he points at the photograph. “Is young and pretty.”

“And I’m not?” I have to laugh... the innocence of youth.

“Of course not. You’re old.” He looks at me with his head on one side. “But... I suppose you are quite pretty, for an old lady.”

“Thank you Jaden.” Isaac and I share an amused look over his head and suddenly the atmosphere changes and is easy. “Actually it is me. And that dashingly handsome man is your Grandad.”

“No way. But he’s young.”

“We were all young once sweetheart. And one day you will be old.”

“I know but that is in forever and ever.”

“Not as long as you think. Time passes so fast, my sweet, too fast.”

I remember that night, so vividly. Even without looking at the photograph I can picture it, the first moment I saw him, the way my heart leaped in my chest. Those dark eyes flashing, the full mouth curving into that devastating smile. For a moment... for just a moment I forgot all about my poor Bill and I was back again in the days when the smile was all for me. I had almost, very nearly, threw myself into his arms and then he had looked down at the pearl trimmed raven head nestled protectively in the crook of his arm, and I had known by the look on his face, even before he so much as mentioned who she was, that this was the love of his life... he had never looked at me like that.

Isaac is wilting. The emotional stress of the last day is catching up with him. I can see it in his eyes. He is losing focus.

“Are you alright Isaac? I think you need to rest now. Shall I take Jaden? We can come back another time.”

“Grandma... I just got here.”

Isaac smiles and shakes his head, tightening his arm around Jaden who snuggled into his side beaming. Seriously he hands the photograph back to Isaac and nestles his head on his shoulder. Isaac lowers his cheek onto the shining golden hair and closes his eyes with a sigh. I watch them for a while, with tears in my eyes, as they both fall asleep.