The following is a slightly edited version of a story I first wrote in 1999.

They say there’s one for everyone. And not just anyone, but the one. The only. And there’s one for everyone….

 

The soft sounds of the piano fill the house. The melody is in a minor key, sad and heartfelt. The sound waves mix, complimenting each other in crystalline harmony, and travel through the ears to the soul where they will massage the deepened wounds. The sounds vary in volume, swelling to a releasing point, then cascading away through a moment–a hesitation between notes. Then, back again, swirling through the brain, releasing the mind.

Floating. That’s what I am doing. I am floating in my mind, trying to forget the holocaust, the tragedy. Living it through the music at the tips of my fingers as they tap away on the ivory. I cannot stop the tears from the corner of my eye any more than I could have stopped—

No! Don’t think about it! Don’t let it back in. Concentrate on the music. Concentrate to make your mind free.

I concentrate. The music becomes mechanical. I can’t feel it anymore, so my hands pause. I exhale, shivering as I do so. Then, breathing in again, I hear the moan, not quite my own voice…but there is no one else in the room.

Fists on the ivory, I collapse. “Oh, Becca!” The name echoes off the walls, pounding into my ears. “Oh, Becca.”

The tears….

 

I had first met Rebecca Jackson three and a half years earlier. It was a kegger at Phi-Gamma-Nu, and she sat there alone on the couch. I noticed right off that she was beautiful–so beautiful that she must already have a boyfriend. Or even possibly be married!

I sipped on my mug and felt the music pound into my body from the small but powerful stereo in the corner of the living room. It played some European underground techno music. The songs were all sung in German, but they were still cool despite being incomprehensible. The music had a nice beat that made you want to get up and dance right where you were standing. It was better loud, and this stereo could go no louder than it was–it was perfect for dancing.

I took another sip and looked back at the girl on the couch. She had shoulder-length light brown hair. She had a perfect body–the figure of a Hollywood heroine. Maybe Helen Hunt with a more dignified nose. But as my mind searched for the right Hollywood match, she looked up at me–and my heart froze.

Her eyes were a deep, dark blue. They shone in the dim light of the Phi-Gamma-Nu frat house. They were haunting, and brilliant, and soothing all at the same time. As if by magic, the rest of the room faded, and her eyes became the only reality. There was nothing but the void and her eyes.

I swallowed the rest of my beer and tried to wet my throat that had so suddenly gone so dry. The liquid moved in my stomach, and I suddenly felt slightly ill. But even so it was a good feeling. Because it wasn’t the sickness of drinking too much, and it wasn’t the flu. It was something deeper than that.

But it couldn’t be. Not yet. It was impossible.

I cleared my throat and moved over to the couch. “Hey,” I said, used the conversation to look down at her, take in even more of her beauty. She looked at me–my words froze. Excuses vanished.

“What?” she asked, her voice silk sliding across on bare skin.

“I was…I was….” My mouth opened and closed. Suddenly, I realized how ugly I was. Oh, I’m not terribly ugly, but I’m nothing that anyone would look twice at either. And in the light of her beauty, I felt so strangely hideous that I couldn’t speak.Why even talk to her? She’s not going to like you. She can get better men than you.

I swallowed. “You like this music?”

“It’s okay,” she said. And looked down. Now that I could no longer see them, I ached for my eyes to feast on hers again. But even without her haunting eyes, her profile was enough. It was the pure Greek rational definition of pristine beauty.

I sat next to her. “Well, I was just wondering…. You were here all alone, and all, and I was just wondering if you’d like to dance or something.” I looked back where other couples jumped around like maniacs, having a blast bumping into each other and “accidentally” feeling up their partner’s body.

“I don’t know,” she said. Her eyes moved back to me and I felt that uncomfortable, but heavenly, sensation in my intestines again. “I don’t dance.”

I laughed. “It’s not like you have to have skills,” I said as I pointed at the others. She laughed.

She had a wonderful laugh. Was there anything wrong with her at all? I wondered, even as I knew the answer. There was nothing wrong at all. She was perfect.

I sat still for a moment and wondered what to say. I wanted to keep her talking just to hear her voice. But I couldn’t think of a subject. Then she turned back to me.

“I’ll dance if you want to,” she said.

“Really? I don’t want to force you to–”

She shrugged. “I might as well do something to make coming here worthwhile,” she said as she stood. She held out her hand and I took it in mine. We walked to the stereo and began to move to the beat. It wasn’t hard–you shake your head, wiggle your body, and jump. As long as it was anywhere near the beat of the song, you did fine. No one else cared what you looked like.

But Rebecca Jackson didn’t do that. Instead, she was something else completely. She moved to the techno beat in such a way that made her seem like liquid ice, flowing and wrapping around the musical notes. I was astonished, and again realized how ugly I was.

I swallowed my heart and moved, uncoordinated and awkwardly, as I tried to find the rhythm.

She smiled at me. “My name’s Rebecca. What’s yours?”

“My name?” I kicked myself. What was wrong with me? “I’m Todd.”

“Nice to meet you, Todd,” she said, moved in close and then jumped back again. She smiled, her hair whipping around her face in a picture frame. Sweat poured from her forehead, but it only made her seem more beautiful to me. She was like the mythical goddess that glistened in the sun.

The goddess with the deep blue eyes….

 

I sit up, looking at the puddle in front of my nose. I just put those tears there. They had been a floodgate, waiting to burst. And did they ever.

I stand, looking at the big black piano with its black and white keys. I shiver as the empty ache inside rips me apart.

A sudden noise comes from the living room and slowly I walk into that room. Kate-Lyn is up. She yawns, her eyes bleary and red. She has been crying too, but she’s too young to understand all that was happening.

“Where’s mommy?” she asks, and it hits me again….

 

Was it love at first sight for both of us? I could never say, but after we finished, Rebecca Jackson, who insisted on being called Becca, took my hand in hers and we walked out of the frat house. “You know what I love most about winter?” she said as we crunched the snow beneath our feet.

“What?”

“The fog when you breathe out. It lets you know you’re alive, you know. You exhale and the vapors just hang there, saying, ‘Hey, you breathed me. You’re still living!’”

She laughed. I couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful she was, in every way imaginable. It felt so good just to keep her hand in mine.

“So, what’s a pretty girl like you doing alone tonight?” I asked, as my eyes looked over to her.

Her face darkened. Then, she smiled as if nothing had happened. “I’m not alone. I’m with you.”

But I couldn’t lose the image of her darkened face. Something wasn’t right. Something was amiss and it wasn’t something normal.

I shook it off. “Well, if I was your boyfriend, I’d never leave you side!”

“Is that an offer?” she said, and smiled back at me.

“What?” My heart froze. “No! I didn’t mean that! I mean, I meant it, but it meant something else. I mean. I don’t…I’m not trying to be presumpt–I…no.” I spit it out in about two seconds. Becca stared at me for a second, and burst out laughing so hard that she doubled over, slipping on the frozen cement.

“You’re so funny,” she gasped, her hands on her ribs. Then, she coughed.

It was a horrible cough. One of those smoker’s-lungs coughs. She winced, turned away from me. She hacked for a couple of seconds and spat into the snow.

I looked away. I didn’t want to embarrass her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Dumb cold.” I nodded and we walked on through the winter.

“There’s nothing like cold air to bring out the lung butter,” I said, trying to make a joke of the situation. It fell flat.

Becca didn’t say another word until she suddenly stopped. “Here’s my car.”

I said good-bye to her, and started off. Then, I turned back. My heart leapt, but I couldn’t stop it now. “Hey, Becca? Can I…you know, may I have your phone number?”

She laughed, shook her head at me. “It’s better if you don’t,” she said.

“Why? Are you going out with someone already?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“It’s something…. Todd, I just don’t want–”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I can be cool with that.”

Becca bit her lip. My world turned in joy at the sight. She didn’t know how pretty she was. She looked back at me.

And told me her number.

 

Kate-Lyn sits on the carpeted floor playing with her Legos. They are huge blocks of plastic, just for small kids. Kate-Lyn really isn’t that small anymore. She is going to be starting school next year. But I don’t want to take anything from her childhood. Especially right now. Not ever now.

How I wish I could return to my childhood.

 

I met Kate-Lyn two days after I met Becca Jackson. I had nervously called Becca and we scheduled a date. She had laughed when I called–and I unconsciously braced myself, but she didn’t cough again. It must have been the cold weather, I told myself.

When I went to pick her up the next day, I stopped outside her apartment and gathered myself. I needed courage to get to her door. When I had prepared myself enough, I stepped out of my car and almost ran to the wooden door.

Rebecca opened the door and smiled. She threw her arms wide and hugged me. I smiled and looked down at her.

And heard the baby cry.

Becca cringed and looked back at me. “I thought the baby sitter would be here by now,” she said, looking guiltily away.

“Baby sitter?”

Becca nodded, bit her lip. My stomach did its loops again. “I want you to meet my daughter, Kate-Lyn,” she said, pointing toward the stroller with the one-year-old little girl.

I bent and looked down at Kate-Lyn. She had her mother’s looks. Especially her eyes–they were the same shade of blue. I smiled at her, and Kate-Lyn’s eyes grew big in wonder. I waved my fingers, and she stared at them, mesmerized. Becca chuckled and stood back a ways from me. I rose and turned away from the infant, my head spinning now. No one’s ever perfect, I thought. Before, I could think of nothing wrong with her–now I found that she had a child. That meant that she had been with a guy before.

I tried to shake it off, and found that I couldn’t. It wasn’t much of a shock–a girl as beautiful as her would have had many opportunities. And it wasn’t like I was the handsomest guy in the world. There was a reason that I had not yet had a real girlfriend in my life.

The sitter never came. We spent the day in the living room, played with Kate-Lyn, talked when she was asleep. It was an unusual day for me, to say the least. But for some reason, I felt more attracted to Rebecca Jackson than ever before. It was odd when I considered all the points. She had a child, and I had never even kissed a girl. She was Olympic beauty, I was a Spartan beast. She was an athlete, I was a composer of music. And yet, for some reason, none of that mattered when we talked that day. There was nothing but the void and Rebecca Jackson.

 

I see Becca’s eyes in Kate-Lyn again. I bite my lip and remember the way she bit hers. I move back to the piano still a composer of music.

A minor. I hit an A minor chord, and let it resonate. I sit down, close my eyes….

 

“That’s wonderful!” Becca said as she sat next to me on the bench. “I’ve…wow! You wrote that for me?”

“Of course,” I said. I leaned over and kissed her cheek. She smiled back at me. I wished so badly that I could kiss her beautiful red lips. But I couldn’t. She wouldn’t let me.

She had told me about the disease after we had been going out for six months. Becca had had complications giving birth to Kate-Lyn, and had needed blood to save her life. It ended up killing her–it was tainted with HIV that had somehow had slipped through the cracks at the blood bank.

Becca cried when she told me. She sobbed, but would not let me comfort her. I told her I couldn’t catch it by kissing her, but she said she would take no chances at all. How did I know I was right, she asked me. I closed my eyes in defeat. I really didn’t know much about AIDS. I had never bothered to study it. It was something that only happened to gay people. Not to mothers. Not to people I loved.

Becca sat back, held her hands together, and looked quizically at me. Since I had first met her a year earlier, she had lost twenty pounds. She had been thin before, but now she looked like a holocaust survivor. She still smiled at me, but it was empty and hollow. She was in pain.

She had been living on painkillers for three months now. The pneumonia in her lungs had taken six months to get rid of. And now it was back. She had no immune system to fight it off. The virus was hitting her hard and fast.

After she had told me she was infected, I did the only thing I could think of. I asked her to marry me. I told myself it was because Kate-Lyn needed a father.

 

And now she needs a mother. I sit still at the piano, the music rushes by in A minor, running through me again. Pouring my soul out. Kate-Lyn sits in silence and watches my fingers move. She has the perfect vantage point from her perch on the couch. I close my eyes again and lean back as the hot lava pours out of my tear ducts.

 

The hospital was clean and smelled like antiseptic. The heart monitor beeped with the pulse of Rebecca VanTill’s heart. I smiled down at my wife, the woman who used to be called Miss Jackson. Now, Mrs. VanTill smiled back at me, her eyes still that haunting shade of blue.

I squeezed her hand and smoothed back her hair. She had been injected full of drugs. But it was no use. She was just a skeleton.

A skeleton that held the soul of the one I loved. I gave my heart to her, all that I was…but I could not literally tear it from my chest to save her life. I could not exchange my blood for hers. God didn’t work like that.

I felt the tears in my eyes as I looked into hers. “I love you, Becca,” I said. The twenty-four-year-old girl who looked eighty winced. I gripped her hand and kissed it.

Oh how I wished that we could have been together as husband and wife as I looked at her then, and I kicked myself, thinking about sex like a teenaged boy. I looked down at her small frame, all of eighty-seven pounds. And I cried.

She leaned back in the bed, her eyes closed. “I love you too,” she whispered, barely loud enough to be heard. “Todd, it’s going to be soon. Stay with me and don’t let me go until you’re sure, okay?”

I sat next to her. God, don’t do this to me, I thought as I pressed her hand to my tear-streaked cheeks.

“I promise.”

I pulled down the bar on the side of the bed and slowly eased my arm around her frail body. My heart swelled and I wished again that I could give her my own life in exchange for hers.

“Take…take care of Kate-Lyn,” she whispered in my ear, her eyes still closed. I kissed her ear.

“I promise.” My hand brushed back her hair again, and I remembered how it was so perfect when she moved, dancing to the techno beat when I first met her.

“Becca…Becca,” I repeated. She opened her eyes, and I fell into them as I always did. I saw her deep blue, and I felt my heart skip a beat. I leaned close and kissed her lips, held her tightly to my body.

“I love you,” I said again. Meaning it more than I could say. She smiled, staring up at me.

Staring up at me.

It took me a while to realize the heart monitor had flat-lined. There was no code blue. There was nothing. The nurses had been told. It was time to let her go.

It was time to let her go.

It was time….

 

But I can’t. How can I?

“Where’s mommy?”

“She’s in heaven, Kate-Lyn.”

“When will she get back?”

“She’s not coming back, honey. She’s there with God.”

“Oh. Doesn’t she love us?”

“More than anything. More than anything!”

“Then why doesn’t she come back?”

“Because she can’t, Kate-Lyn. People can’t come back from heaven.”

“Why? Does God hate us?”

“No.”

“Then why won’t he let mommy come back?”

“Because…because….”

 

They say there’s one for everyone. And not just anyone, but the one. The only. And there’s one for everyone….‘