Page 24 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

With a nod, she selected a book from the shelf and returned to her seat. With the fire crackling and the wind howling, I started reading.

I was transported to a SoHo loft where Jakob, a passionate artist, painted to Rachmaninov on great swaths of canvas. He captured his lover and muse’s face and the dips and curves of her naked body as light poured in through the windows and illuminated her skin.

He fed her orange segments and licked the juice off her lips. Buried his face in her flower-scented hair and breathed deeply. Soft linen sheets, her silky skin, his calloused fingers brushing and gripping. Music soaring, her laughter and melodic voice echoing from the other room.

As the story progressed, all his senses were heightened except for one. Jakob was losing his sight.

I was so engrossed that I lost track of time and read late into the night.

When I finally lifted my head from the pages, tears streamed down my cheeks. “This is so beautiful and tragic and gut-wrenching…my heart hurts. It physically aches.”

My mom smiled. “Good.”

I laughed and wiped away my tears. “You’re evil.”

She took the manuscript out of my hands, set it on the coffee table and pulled me to my feet, hugging me tight. Whenever my mom hugged me, I felt like a little girl again. Like nothing could hurt me if she was there.

“Happy birthday, baby.”

It was one thirty in the morning. I was officially twenty-two.

“On the day that you were born…” she started.

I didn’t want to hear this story again, but my mother felt compelled to tell it anyway. It was her favorite. As the story goes, I wasn’t breathing when I came into the world. The doctor wasready to give up and my mother was hysterical, screaming for my father, certain that he alone had the power to save me.

He’d barged into the delivery room, snatched me out of the doctor’s hands and breathed life back into my tiny lungs. Then he’d rocked me in his arms, and when he sang to me, I “sang” along.

It was the most high-pitched wailing I’d ever heard, he’d always say.You were born to be a rock star.

The song was Led Zep’s “I Can’t Quit You Baby.” Not exactly a soothing lullaby but there you go, my rock and roll life.

It sounded like a myth. A tall tale. My mom was loopy on sedatives and Nicky was probably stoned and drunk, so the story didn’t hold much weight.

But that was how I got my nickname. Baby Blue. Because I was born blue.

CHAPTER NINE

When I finished readingmy mom’s manuscript on Sunday morning, I wept. Great, heaving sobs over fictional characters who took their own lives, bodies tangled in the sheets in a passionate embrace. Together in life and in death with The Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” blasting from the speakers.

Jakob didn’t want to live in a world devoid of color and light, and Petra didn’t want to live in a world where there was no Jakob.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that ending. There was nothing romantic about dying by your lover’s side. It was far more romantic toliveby their side.

I lay in bed, watching the pale sunlight filtering through the lacy curtains and creeping across the honeyed floor.

Was Petra the fictional version of my mother? Would she have gladly died by Nicky’s side?

From what I’d seen of my parents’ relationship, love didn’t exist without pain. It broke your heart and destroyed you.

That was all I’d ever known about love.

Anyone in their right mind would run in the opposite direction if that person entered their lives, the one who wasdestined to change the rhythm of your heartbeat and the entire trajectory of your life. But my mother hadn’t run. She’d just kept going back for more.

Lured by the scent of coffee, I dragged myself out of bed and snatched up my clothes from the floor. Dressed in the baggy jeans and cropped sweater I wore yesterday, I washed my face and brushed my teeth and shut out all thoughts of Gabriel who may or may not have already broken my best friend’s heart and probably had the power to break mine too.

If I let him.

I found my mom sitting at the farmhouse table surrounded by stacks of journals and sorting through a box of photos.