Andy

"Is this how you thought it would be like?" I asked Ellie.

"I was better than what I could have imagined."

I watched her face and studied her eyes. "Ellie, I wouldn't trade this moment for all the Sue Lings in the world." Ellie leaned her head on my shoulder. The TV flashed a kaleidoscope of colors into out little nest.

"Andy called me daddy tonight."

"Did he?"

"Would you like to fill me in on it?"

"A few weeks ago when I picked him up at daycare, he was crying and fussy. When I asked his teachers why, they told me that he didn't want to draw pictures for his dad 'cause he didn't have a dad to give it to."

"I see..."

"So I kind of told him that you were his dad. I didn't think you'd care."

"I never thought I'd hear those words." I thought for few seconds. "But it's okay. Yeah, it's better than just okay."

"You're more of a father to him than any man I've ever known," Ellie said as she wiggled closer.

The curve of Ellie's hip filled my hand. I leaned my head onto her shoulder and closed my eyes. I don't know what Ellie was thinking, but from the way her breathing had slowed and the glow on her face, I'd venture to say the lock had fallen from her heart.

"Ooh, this is so nice," Ellie said.

The fragrance of the perfume she wore filled my head. The flowery hint of shampoo still lingered in her hair. The softness of her breasts filled my hand. I kissed the makeup from her eyes.

My arms slipped around her and I pulled Ellie against my chest. "I hold you and I feel the crispness of a cool walk in an autumn woods. The warmth of a fire on Christmas Eve. The way the air smells right after a thunderstorm. The sound of a gentle spring rain on a metal roof. I hold you."

I traced the outline of her lips with a single fingertip then I cupped her head in my hands and I kissed Ellie with the softest of kisses.

Ellie's arms moved around my neck and pulled me closer. "All this time, you've been putting on an act. Jake, you've been looking for love."

"I found it, haven't I?"

"Yeah, you have, Jake."

I don't know how long we sat inside our little fort. I do know the late night TV shows were over and the screen filled with a test pattern. I undressed Ellie out of her remaining clothing as slowly as I could. I don't know who enjoyed it more, her or me, but I'm glad she put that dress on. Ellie was right. I didn't know I was on a quest but I found what I've been searching for. I had made the right decision.

*******

"Grrrrr."

I slowly opened one eye and then the other. My eyes focused on a small green Godzilla that was biting my nose. "Grrrrr," I said back. It was Andy. I moved my arm from under the sheets and scooped him up from the floor and onto the bed. I tickled him till he giggled.

"Daddy, we're hungry," Andy squealed.

"Okay. Apple slices for you and what 'bout Mr. Godzilla?"

"He wants a banana."

"I see. Well you get your butt downstairs and when I get my pants on, I'll be down to feed you two."

"Grrrrr," Andy growled and scurried out the room.

Saturday morning is cartoon time in our house, so I sliced an apple and a banana and let him watch the TV. I went back upstairs and sat on the edge of the bed by Ellie. She was still asleep, and exhausted from last night's romp on the living room floor.

The Saturday sun was trying like mad to work its way into the bedroom. I opened the drapes allowing the warm rays to enter. I sat down beside Ellie. She seemed to be asleep. I touched her face with the back of my hand, and then I pulled the sheet she had used to cover herself, exposing her bare breasts. I folded my hands on my lap and just looked at her lying there. Her hair flowed around her face, framing it in its yellow glow. I tugged the sheet down to her toes. With the back of my knuckle, I caressed the short brown curly hairs between her legs.

In the sunlight, her body seemed to glow. Last night, the flicking light from the TV was dim and I wasn't able to fully appreciate her female form. I recalled from last night, the mole on her right breast, the small birthmark by her waist. My fingers slid across the smooth skin of her legs. A smile grew on my face.

My fingers touched her breasts, so full and ripe, soft, and smooth. I lowered my lips to her ears. "I love you." I flicked a few stray hairs from her face. I saw a smile break across her face. I knew she was faking being asleep.

Ellie opened one eye. I caught her. She filled my hand with hers, and then she pushed herself up resting on her elbows.

Ellie took my hand and placed it on her breast. Just like last night, the curve of her breast fit my hand just like she was made especially for me. Ellie slipped her hand behind my neck and lowered my lips to hers. She bit down on her lips. "This is our bedroom now?"

"Yup, sure is from now on." I kissed her just where the small of the neck meets her collarbone. I felt her body flash with heat. "Ooh, as much as I'd like to, we'd better get up."

"I suppose so," Ellie said somewhat reluctantly.

I stood and walked over to one of the dressers. I opened the top and then the next drawer down. I found what I was looking for; her bras.

Ellie had slid her legs out from the covers and was sitting on the edge of the bed. I moved beside her. "Turnaround," I said.

Ellie turned slightly and I threaded her arms into her bra working the straps across her shoulders. Gently, I wiggled her breasts into the cups. Satisfied I hooked the clasp together.

Ellie looked over her shoulder at me. "You know, I'm twenty-five. I'd had my share of men in my life, but this is the first time that a guy ever put my clothing on."

"I like silky things on a beautiful woman."

"Am I beautiful?" Ellie turned toward me. "As beautiful as Sue Ling?"

I reached up to the dresser and snatched a pair of panties. Lifting both of her feet, I snaked them up her legs to her waist.

"Jake?"

I moved my hand across her back. My fingers traced along the straps of her bra. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever known. And, Ellie, not just on the outside, but inside, too."

Ellie spun around on the edge of the bed, her knees now pressed against mine. "I don't want to sound greedy, but, Jake, I don't want to share you with other women. Will you, right now, tell me that I'm yours?"

I folded her hands together and held them in mine. "From this moment on, I'll never hold another hand but yours." I leaned down and we kissed. Then we both heard the sounds of little feet as they came up the stairs. Ellie pulled the sheet up to her shoulders just as Andy climbed into the bed. He scooted over by Ellie and I wrapped my arms around them both. "Daddy loves you two whole bunches."

*********

Life seemed to hand us nothing but good things. It was so hard for me to believe, but it's been over a year since Ellie and I met. Andy turned four and he was quite a talker. A real chatterbox. It was June and robins that call Compton Hill Reservoir Park their home were raising their young. This decision was easier.

Ellie looked so sexy in her miniskirt and yellow shirt. We sat on a bench. The very same bench I sat on when I pulled Andy out of the duck pond. Our knees touched. I placed my arm around Ellie's shoulder. "I'm getting tired of introducing you as my girlfriend."

Ellie turned toward me, surprised. "What else would you call me?"

"Oh, I don't know, there're a couple of names we could use I guess."

"Like what?"

"I like Mr. and Mrs. Or husband and... Wife.

I fished a ring out of my pant's pocket and I dropped down on one knee. I shook like an old rusty Pinto. I heard Ellie gasp. "Ooh, Jake are you?"

"Ellie, it's not the biggest ring in the world, but it's big enough to hold all the memories you and I will make together. Ellie, will you marry me?" I slipped the ring onto her finger.

This time I caught Ellie off guard. She just stared at the ring I placed on her finger. Then she jumped and wrapped her arms around my neck.

"Oh God yes. Yes! Yes! I love the sound of husband and wife together. Ooh, god yes!"

Ellie cried and I tried my best to dry her tears with my fingers. Holding her hands in mine, I watched the tears pool in the corners of her eyes and trickle down her face.

"I love you, Jake."

When we got back home, and after the babysitter left, we told Andy. I don't know if his mind wrapped around the idea of me marrying his mother, but he seem happy. The wheels of life began to move around us. We talked of the future. Of maybe giving Andy a brother or sister.

Since my days of girl watching had come to an end, I decided I needed a new hobby. So Ellie and I began to work on turning the house into a home for her, Andy and me. Andy was my helper. He held my tools. Andy was my best buddy.

I found that home is where you grow tomatoes, string up a hammock between two trees, and welcome the daylilies in the early summer. It's a place where your toes are welcomed on a green carpet of lawn. Home was a place where Andy could chase fireflies on a summer night.

We'd camped in the back yard. Just Andy, Ellie and me. We'd listen to the crickets at dusk, and watch the moon as it rose in the evening sky. We'd toast marshmallows in the fire and I'd tell him a scary story while the grass turned wet from the dew. Ellie and I would sit by the fire; my arm around her, our hands wove together. It truly was the best of times and I'd give anything to keep those memories, those nights, if I only could by dipping them into drops of amber locking them away forever.

*******

I was unusually busy, after all it was an election year and the politicians were as slick as snot on a polished doorknob. It was great hunting season for a journalist like me. The former president gave the country a used Ford, and editorials were flying like UFOs over a Nevada desert. When I got back to the office, a note was sitting on my desk. I was to go immediately to Andy's doctor's office. I dropped my briefcase on my chair and took off. I wondered what it could be this time. I hoped he didn't try jumping off the back porch railings trying to fly again.

The doctor's office is in midtown. It's not too far from my office, and it seemed I was there within fifteen minutes. I didn't see Ellie or Andy in the waiting room so I knocked on the sliding glass window.

"Oh, Mr. Peters. Yes," a nurse said. I've been here so many times, I was practically on a first name basis with the staff.

Seconds later the side door opened. "What did he do this time?"

The nurse smiled, like they always to, but instead of taking me back to one of the examination rooms, I was led to the doctor's private office. My gut tightened when I saw Ellie, a tissue in her hands, the doctor at his desk.

"Andy? What's wrong with Andy?"

"Perhaps you should sit down, Mr. Peters."

I melted down into the chair. This wasn't one of Andy's usual scrapes and cuts. I could tell. This was more. Way more. I felt Ellie's hand on mine.

"He complained of a headache today. He could hardly talk. It just came out all jumbled," Ellen began, "It hurt so much I couldn't get him to stop crying. Jake, he can't stand up."

"What?"

"Mr. Peters, we don't know yet, but we're taking X-rays now of his head. They won't give us a very clear picture, but if there is something—"

"Something? Something as in what kind of something?"

"Mr. Peters. I'm not saying anything right now. But—"

"A tumor?"

"I suspect so."

Ellie started to cry. "No..."

"Are we talking cancer?" I asked sheepishly.

"We're running some tests now as we speak."

Just then a nurse walked into the room, several large X-rays under her arm. The doctor slipped the first one into the light box. I couldn't tell a thing. After all, I was just a medic and obviously not a very good one. He took it out and placed another one in. Then the third. He flipped the light out.

"I'm going to refer you two to a Oncologist."

I looked at him with the most sincere look I could muster. "What do you suspect?"

"Without exploratory surgery, X-rays are our only tool. They're shadows of light and darkness. I thought, as you probably did, that Andy was just a rumpus little boy that seemed to have more accidents than a dog has fleas. I wonder now if his sense of balance was being affected. With his history of falling and loss of balance and his recent problems with his speech..."

"Doctor?"

"Given his history and the shadows I see on the X-rays, I suspect Andy sufferers from a glioma.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.

"In laymen terms. A brain tumor."

There, he said it. I looked over at Ellie and she turned as white as could be. "Oh, no, not my son. Not Andy. Oh God, Jake. Not Andy."

I held Ellie in my arms as tightly as I could, trying with all my strength to hold us both together.

*****

Time was not our friend. I knew a lot of people in the city government and I called in some favors. When I told them our story, they pushed Andy's adoption through. Weeks later Andy was legally ours. I had a son.

With a borrowed wedding dress, a rented tux, family and friends, nurses and doctors, Ellie and I were married in Andy's hospital room. Mick was my best man. Ellie's sister drove in from LA to be her bridesmaid. I promised her a second wedding right down to the white church in the country, but she said she'd never been as happy seeing Andy's face as we said our vows to each other. We had become a family.

Test affirmed that Andy had glioblastoma multiforme. It's an aggressive cancer, and Andy's doctors wasted no time in staring treatment. If you call being zapped by a radiation machine treatment. Then there were the drugs. Even a full grown adult would have been knocked to their knees. But Andy, always the trooper, hung in there.

The radiation treatments cause him to lose his hair. The medication made Andy weak, so Ellie was there every day to help feed him. I was, too. But somehow, my task was to keep him in good spirits. I became the comedy relief guy by telling him goofy stories. I'd come into his room wearing a wide brimmed hat, telling him I was back from safari trying to catch dinosaurs.

We quickly found out that having a child with cancer required a paradigm shift in our way of life. The hospital's routine soon became our routine.

But no matter what we did. Or what the hospital's nurses and doctors did. Andy's cancer didn't respond. The doctors unleashed a barrage of every weapon they had. But the tumor remained. Defiant as ever.

******

The weeks seemed to drag. The endless trips to the hospital. Never any good news. We fell into a deep rut lined with self-doubt and second guessing. Sometimes at night, I'd hold Ellie in my arms as we lay in our bed. She cried endless tears. So did I.

Ellie always kept a bag packed and ready by the front door. It had two complete changes of clothing for her and me, a roll of dimes for the phone, and a few coloring books and some toys. It was our 'go kit', because as soon as the phone rang, we'd be ready to go. We used our kit a few times when the hospital would call late at night.

When you're a parent with a sick child in the hospital, you sleep with one eye open. For some reason, tonight, I slept with both eyes wide open. I had a gut feeling. Around a quarter to four in the morning, the phone rang. We grabbed our bags.

I somehow believed that I could let go of the steering wheel of the car and it would just drive to the hospital, as if it knew how to get there by itself. We arrived just a few minutes after four in the morning and quickly made our way up elevators and down corroders to Andy's room. As we approached, we noticed a young doctor was waiting just outside his room. He made the call to us. Ellie talked to the doctor, I stood guard. I didn't want to hear the soft shadowy words that he spoke.

"Noooo..." I heard Ellie moan, as she turned stone white.

I felt the doctor's hand on my shoulder. He held Ellie's hand. "Be with him. I'm sorry." The doctor took a few steps back then disappeared down a long corroder. We both knew what he meant. We knew this day was coming; and it had arrived. Then Ellie and I did what every parent with a dying child does before entering their room—we became actor and actress. We painted our faces with the makeup of calm, of reassuring, of hope.

Ellie entered the room first. I felt her melt beside me. Andy had curled up in his bed. I couldn't look at first, so I turned my head to the brightly painted Walt Disney characters on the walls. But somehow even they knew, as it seemed even Mickey Mouse had a tear in his eye.

Like stucco falling from an old rotting building the façade we had painted on our faces just seconds earlier broke off in large chunks, hitting the floor as moans of loss. We stood there, our emotions bare. Raw. "Oh shit." I said.

Ellie kicked her shoes off and while I lifted Andy from his bed, Ellie got in and I lowered Andy down into her arms. "Hey, doc said you weren't feeling so good so dad and I came here to help you sleep," Ellie said as reassuring as she could.

Ellie gently rocked Andy and I smiled a weak smile and walked to the door of his room. I needed some air. I turned back into his room and Ellie looked at me. "He wants you."

There was a large leather chair that appeared to be older than Ellie and I combined. It was well worn and two people could almost fit in it. I picked Andy up and carried him over to the chair. Ellie gathered pillows and we stuffed them into the sides and under Andy's head. I held my son in my arms. His snow white hair was gone, just a few long rebellious strands remained. He seemed so small. So light. He was awake, yet he'd close his eyes every now and then.

"How you doin'?"

There was a long pause. "I'm going to die, aren't I?"

This time I paused. I swallowed hard.

"We talked about this before, Andy." My words came out like dust that blew away without form or meaning. I looked up at Ellie standing in front of us. She had a knuckle in her mouth and she was biting down hard on it.

I pulled everything I had together and I pushed those few long hairs away from his face. "Yes..."

"I'll go to heaven?"

"Yes, you will."

"What's it like, daddy?"

"I don't know, Andy. I do know there are no needles or IVs or silly nurses that wake you up and ask if you're sleeping okay." He smiled just ever so slightly.

"Will you and mom be there?"

"Yup, we'll be there in a flash." Ellie lowered herself down on her knees rubbing Andy's small hand in hers. Andy closed his eyes and then quickly opened them up. "It's okay, you can sleep."

Andy moved this head side-to-side slightly. "No...if I close my eyes I won't see you anymore."

My thumb stroked his cheek. "Sure you will."

Rivers of tears started to run down my cheeks unabated when I felt Andy's small fingers touch my chin.

"Daddy, you're crying?"

I cradled him and dip my lips to his ears. "Oh, Andy, I'm going to miss you so much. I love you, Andy. I'll be here for you...always. Always."

Ellie and I traded places off and on all night long holding Andy in our arms while we sat in that old leather chair. It's funny how your subconscious keeps track of time. I noticed the hustle as the night shift finished and the day shift began. The rattle of the food service carts. The mechanical hum of a floor scrubber; the sound of broom and dustpan of the cleaning staff. A nurse came in around six and removed the IV stint in his hand. Ellie comforted Andy as much as she could. Andy stopped talking.

The sun was shining, a new day was beginning, yet in our world, the drapes remained closed as we tried in vain not to allow death to find Andy. Noon arrived without fanfare, and a young nurse came in and gave Andy a shot of something. I didn't ask. It would've had made any difference. Ellie held Andy. The room was so very quiet. Even the busyness of the nurse's station didn't dare to enter the room.