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But I was living on an island. It was the second kick in the gut of cancer, the way it isolated you from your loved ones, made you feel like no one could understand you and that no one wanted to, really, because you’d turned into some kind of hope-devouring monster, infected with nightmares and frighteningly contagious.
“This is it,” I warned her. “I’m it for you after this.” “You’ve always been it for me,” she gutted me by saying.
I was always cold. It almost scared me the most—the coldness—because it made me think I was already halfway dead, stiff and frozen but clinging to life.
No one had ever spoken to me like that. It was almost degrading but instead, so fucking hot because I knew this man admired me, cared for me, would kill anyone who disrespected me.
It was quiet in the chemotherapy room of the hospital. It was the kind of silence that penetrated my nightmares. There was a texture to it, thick and slippery against my skin so that it refused to emit noise even when I felt my body should have made some.
Saying I wanted him to treat me like a normal woman—a whole person and not one half drowned by sickness—would not go down well with him.
King pulled away from eating at her mouth but kept his face close to say, “How’s my Queen doin’?” She sighed dreamily, clutching his wrists as they cupped her face. “Better now you’re back.” Zeus snorted. “Boy went to get fuckin’ ice, woman. He didn’t go off to war.”
“Not sure what it is we have, the love of my life doesn’t tell me shit about her health.”
My dad broke through Lionel’s hold and stormed over to me. I backed away on my knees and fell onto my ass, hands in front of my face to shield me as he lifted his hand to backhand me. It occurred to me in a strangely manic way that I’d spent my life comparing Zeus to a monster when it was my father who was the true beast, a man dipped in civilized veneer with an empty center where his heart should have been.
There was so much in his eyes as they watched me; pain and stunning acceptance of his fate, pride that he’d saved me and love, so much love it overflowed from him and filled me up to the brim.
Whatever place he’s in where fallen angels go, I know he’s livin’ a dead man’s dream ’cause a soul like his woulda bought him first class seats to paradise.”
So one by one, my brothers stepped up to toss a coin onto the coffin and pay Mute’s way to Eden.
“Feel alive, little wife?” he asked me. “Whenever I’m with you,” I told him.
Girl still gave me a fuckin’ toothache, she was so sweet.
His thick brown hair was pushed away from his forehead and he could have been handsome if his chin wasn’t so weak and his eyes weren’t filled with false pride.
Briefly, I wondered if I had died and gone to hell for my sins because only there would I find that voice again. Only there would I be punished like Sisyphus or Tantalus with the fruitless repetition of a single horrific act; begging my dad not to hit me over and over again, even as his fist crashed into my cheek.
