Page 45 of All the Way to the River

I called Rayya on a weekday morning in late August and asked if I could come down to our apartment for a few minutes to talk to her in candor and honesty.

“I’m not coming over to accuse you of anything, Rayya,” I promised. “And I won’t demand anything of you. I just need to talk to you for ten minutes, heart to heart.”

She must have heard the sincerity in my voice, because she agreed to the meeting.

I didn’t have anything scripted. A friend had advised against it. “This isn’t an orchestral performance, Liz. It’s jazz. You’re going to have to improvise. Just play it from the heart.”

I wasn’t sure if I knew how to do that.

But in the elevator, I heard the voice of God again.

And again the message was simple and direct: Don’t go in there thinking you’re any better than her—because you aren’t.

You are no better than her. You are no different from her.

If she senses that you feel superior to her in any way, none of this will work.

“What will work?” I asked.

The answer came: The same thing that always works, my love. Tell the truth .

The place was a mess, she was a mess. But I suppose it was a sign of respect that she had sent away all the people she’d been partying with so at least we could be alone.

We didn’t hug. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down. She was pacing nervously, tugging at her hair, muttering under her breath. She seemed totally out of it.

I said, “I only need a few minutes of your time, Rayya, but I do need you to be fully present for this conversation. Do you think you could do whatever you need to do, substance-wise, in order to really be here with me, with a clear head? Ten minutes is all I ask. Then I promise to leave you alone.”

She nodded. Then she went into the bedroom and shut the door.

Then she must have done whatever she needed to do—smoked whatever she needed to smoke, injected whatever she needed to inject, swallowed whatever she needed to swallow—because when she came out again, her eyes were clearer, and she was able to sit down and look me in the face.

“Give me your hands,” I said.

She gave them to me. They were cold, though it was the dead of summer.

I didn’t know what I was going to say.

Help me, God , I prayed.

Then I opened my mouth, and somebody far older, wiser, and calmer than me spoke through my voice.

“Rayya, I need to let you know that I can’t be in this story anymore.

It’s doing too much damage to me. I acknowledge that I helped to create this story—that we built this mess together—and I am very, very sorry for my role in this chaos.

We are trapped in a codependent relationship, and I am every bit as responsible for that reality as you are.

I am deeply sorry for my dysfunction and my own insanity.

I’m sorry for the way I threw myself at you when you were in such a vulnerable state after the cancer diagnosis.

I’m sorry for having been emotionally dishonest with you for so many years, and for not having shared how much I loved you.

I’m sorry for the confusion that must have caused in your head, and the time that my cowardice cost us.

I’m sorry for the ways in which I have used you over the years to prop me up emotionally, and to defend me.

I’m sorry I put you in charge of stabilizing my nervous system and keeping me safe.

I’m sorry for making you into my higher power.

That was wrong of me, and dehumanizing.”

She didn’t interrupt or challenge me, so I went on.

“You and I were best friends for many years, and I have always loved you. But I haven’t been a good friend to you since you got sick.

All I’ve been thinking about is what I can get from you—how much love, how much reassurance, how much of your time and attention.

I’ve also been trying to control you by taking over ownership of your life.

I’ve been calling myself generous, but I haven’t been generous.

I’ve been selfish and self-centered, and that’s on me. ”

She nodded gravely, even theatrically, like: I will allow it .

Her patronizing nod almost made me laugh, but I returned my focus to the conversation.

“Now here comes the part about us,” I went on.

“I believe you’re in big trouble right now with addiction, and that you’re losing your soul.

Maybe you think it doesn’t matter because you’re dying anyway, but I think it does matter how a person dies.

I think you made a deal with the devil a few months ago when you introduced cocaine into your system.

You were trying to give yourself a little more energy, to buy yourself some more time—but it’s cost you everything.

You were once a great person, Rayya, but you’ve walked away from your greatness.

You’ve lost all your integrity. I wish I could help you—but the truth is that I don’t know how to help you.

Everything I do or say seems to make you angry.

You keep telling me that I don’t know what it’s like to die, and you’re right—I don’t know what it’s like to die.

I can’t even imagine. You have a lot to be angry about right now, I get it.

But your anger has caused you to become abusive, and I won’t stick around for any more of that.

I’ve done too much work on myself, and I’ve come too far, to allow myself to be abused like this again.

I can’t allow anybody to treat me this way—not even you, and not even under these circumstances.

If you were here right now—the real Rayya, I mean—you would never let someone treat me the way you’ve been treating me.

The real Rayya would have killed someone who treated me the way you’ve been treating me.

But the real Rayya isn’t here anymore, so now I have to step up to my own defense. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She didn’t nod or shake her head, but I could feel that she was listening, at a level deep below surface comprehension. We were communicating soul to soul now, locked in a moment of profound, intimate connection. Earned connection.

I went on.

“I don’t know what you’re going to do next, Rayya, but it’s your life and your death—so it’s your move.

I don’t know how much time you have left.

I’m all out of ideas for how to make this journey easier for you.

I keep trying to take care of you, but you won’t let me.

And I know you well enough to know that you will never live or die by anyone else’s code, anyhow, so I need to stop trying to control you.

All I know is that this apartment is being sold—and that’s a hard out.

So you’re going to have to leave here, one way or another. ”

“But where will I go ?” she asked, suddenly looking panicked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You need to figure that out. If you make a plan for yourself that sounds like sanity to me, I’ll come back into your life. But if you keep living like this, I’m gone.”

“But where will you go?”

“I’m getting my own place.”

“But I’m dying,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “You can’t abandon someone who’s dying .”

“I hear you,” I replied. “And I accept that you’re dying.

I’ve been preparing for months to say goodbye to you.

But this might be the moment when we have to say our goodbyes, because I won’t stick around for what you’ve gotten yourself into.

If we need to say our goodbyes now, then I will tell you right now that I love you more than I have ever loved anyone, and I always will.

You are the love of my life, and of all my lives.

I wanted to walk all the way to the river with you, but that might not be possible for us anymore, because I can’t survive the way you’re living.

It’s too costly for me. It’s too degrading to my soul.

And if the real Rayya were here, she would totally agree with me on this. You and I both know that’s true.”

She nodded, suddenly looking exhausted.

She looked as if she were about three hundred years old.

I felt sorry for her then—so terribly sorry.

For a moment, of course, I wanted to take it all back. I wanted to start crying and promise her that I would never leave her side. I wanted to give her a thousand gifts—everything she could ever want, just to make her happy for even one minute.

But the more ancient part of me knew better than to bend on any of this.

After a long while, she sighed, squared her shoulders, and said, “Okay, man. I hear you.”

“Thanks, man,” I replied.

“So I guess that’s it, then?”

“Yes, my love. I guess that’s it.”

I stood up and walked toward the door. Rayya stopped me. She took my arm and looked into my face with searching, tear-filled eyes.

“But are we good , babe?” she asked.

“We’re good,” I told her. “We’ve always been good. We will always be good.”

That’s when we hugged.

Her body, thin and small.

Her racing heart, beating against my chest.

My Rayya, my vampire, my beloved.

Then I walked out of our apartment—shaken but straight-spined—not knowing if I would ever see her again in this world.