Page 102 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

“Well, it worked, didn’t it? Because here you are. And here I am.” With a shake of my head, I barrelled through the door and charged down the stairs, shaking.

This was the first time in five months that he’d shown anything other than apathy.

But I had to nearly get myself killed to elicit any real emotion from him.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

When Gabriel returned,hours later, I was sitting in the empty bathtub with a glass of wine, listening to “A Love Supreme.”

He set his bags on the kitchen counter and unpacked them, lining up Chinese food containers like three rows of soldiers until the entire counter was filled and the aroma of garlic and spices permeated the air.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked so I got one of everything,” he said.

A peace offering. But what really struck me was that he didn’t know what I liked. We used to sit on the sofa eating Chinese food and watching movies, passing the boxes back and forth. My favorites were the crispy chicken in sesame seed sauce and the shrimp fried rice. Gabriel loved the Szechuan beef and the Lo Mein.

“What are you listening to?” he asked.

I took a sip of my wine as he filled his glass. “Coltrane. He was a jazz saxophonist. He was addicted to heroin, but he beat it. In the liner notes for ‘A Love Supreme’...” I waved my hand toward the living room where the music soared, “that’s what we’re listening to…he said that he had a spiritual awakening thatled him to a richer, fuller life. He wanted to make people happy through his music.”

I wasn’t trying to entice him to play music again. I was just talking, sharing something I knew about Coltrane.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

Gabriel shrugged and looked away. “What are you hungry for?” he asked, opening all the containers.

“Just pick one. I don’t really care.”

He handed me a carton of Lo Mein and a set of chopsticks. I watched him trying to use his, to get the hang of it, but he got frustrated and grabbed a fork from the drawer, abandoning the chopsticks.

Gabriel used to have so much manual dexterity. He was a pro with chopsticks. Just one more skill he’d lost but it wasn’t the end of the world. If he wanted to, he could relearn how to use chopsticks just like he could relearn how to play a guitar. Or the drums. Or the church organ. Or his fancy Italian espresso machine that he hadn’t touched since he came home from the hospital.

I ate Lo Mein in the bathtub while Gabriel leaned against the counter and tried a bite from every container before deciding that the shrimp in lobster sauce was his favorite. How odd. We’d tried it before and he wasn’t a fan but now, out of all the choices on offer, that’s the one he liked most.

For the past five months, I’d been taking care of him. Making sure he ate. Doing his laundry. Accompanying him to all his doctor’s appointments—neurologists, occupational therapists, psychologists. Hovering and caretaking and trying to shield him from the big, bad world like he was a toddler, and I was a doting mother.

The dynamic had shifted, and while there was no manual for how to behave when the love of your life has brain surgery andsubsequently loses all his memories and his sense of identity, I’d gone about it all wrong.

I wasn’t his mother. I was his former lover, his wife, the girl he used to write songs about.

I remember Mandy telling me to trust the universe and to stop holding on so tight. I’d been white-knuckling my way through life lately, too scared to loosen my grip for fear he’d slip through my fingers.

Or jump off a fucking roof.

But Mandy was right. I couldn’t keep holding on so tight.

No matter how hard I tried or how much I loved him, I couldn’t fix Gabriel. He had to want this for himself and only he could do the work. No one else could do it for him.

All I could do was love him. And sometimes not even love was enough to save someone.

Look at my father. My mother loved him beyond measure. He was her sun, her moon, and her stars, but his own struggles eclipsed her love.

“Are you done? Have you had enough?” he asked.

I nodded. After he packed everything up and put it away, there was no room for anything else in the refrigerator.

Gabriel topped up our wine glasses. The CD had changed. We were listening to Pavement now. “In the Mouth a Desert” poured from the speakers. I was obsessed with this album when it first came out, back in the spring of ’92.

The summer I met Gabriel. Another lifetime ago.