The rest of yesterday passed by in a blur. After Stew got out of school we picked him up and tried to explain everything to him. In hindsight, it went just about how I would have expected it to.
There were tears from both him and her, both of them acknowledging a stark amputation to the carefree relationship they had before. They both tried to make jokes at times but it didn't seem to matter. People cried, words were said, and a blanket was thrown over a fire that Stew didn't know was already extinguished.
After that, Stew went in his own direction as Emma and I left in ours. She still confused me. We weren't talking about her diagnosis or anything else relating to it. Well, we had talked about it but we hadn't, like, talked about it. And I wanted to. I knew she couldn't be okay, but she hasn't shown me anything else. I didn't know if she was trying to fool me or fool herself. Either way, I wanted to get something out of her.
I looked for a crack. An odd wink, a hint of a frown, a daunting flip of her hair, anything. She did a double-take in my direction.
"Everything fine?" She asked.
"Yeah, yeah. Everything is perfect."
"You can't bullshit a girl with cancer, you know that right?"
"Sorry. I guess I'm a little confused."
She turned her head another time to the side. "Cancer confused, existentially confused, morally confused? Cuz I have all of those too, don't worry."
"I don't know, it's things like that right there." I could feel myself getting frustrated.
"I don't know what you mean." I could tell she was getting frustrated too.
This was good, maybe she needed to be frustrated. "How are you fine? Like how can you rattle off those things you just said without a hint of going off the walls?"
"Let's just talk about something else."
"No, Emma. Come on. We can't just ignore this."
"I don't want to." I could sense the annoyance in her voice.
"We can't ignore it, we might as well talk about it."
"Israel, stop." Heat rising.
"Emma, we need -"
"OKAY," she screamed. She pulled off to the side of the road, her face turning red. "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO HEAR ISRAEL? THAT I'M BROKEN? THAT FINALLY, WHATEVER POWERS THAT BE HAVE WON OVER MY LIFE?
"You don't understand Israel. It's insane for me to expect you to understand and impossible for you to actually understand, but you don't and I do. I understand. No matter how much you research, talk to me, help me out, or any fucking thing else, it will always be that way. I am the one who has cancer, not you. I am the one who will die because of it, not you."
She was right. I didn't understand. I pray I never understand.
"Don't do this," is all I could get out.
"Do what? Die? Sorry to disappoint, but there's -"
"No," I interjected. "Don't use this as a reason to isolate yourself from me. You say I don't understand? Then help me at least get close. Because as long as I'm here, you are never going to be alone. If you're expecting things to change on my side because of anything that happens then you're wrong. If you want to be sad, happy, miserable, adventurous, or anything else, then so be it. But you will not be alone because I will be right next to you. Always."
She let her head fall against the headrest. As sharply as it began, a blanket was put over the frustration we both felt.
"I feel like I'm getting pushed to the outskirts." It came out softer than I expected, almost inaudible. "You're an amazing kind of confusing, but dammit you're confusing all the time. I feel like I'm an idiot now more than ever about you."
"It's hard," she said.
"Well we need to try. I want to be there for you."
"All my life, the truth was made to be dodged. It was something I was trained to push down when it got brought up," she said. "The truth was what made families not want me. I'm a professional in Letting People Down, but for some reason that hasn't worked on you. I know you're different and I weirdly feel safe when I'm around you, but I don't know what level of truth is going to turn you away from me.
"And now there's so much more. There's so much more truth that I don't even expect myself to be able to face but... Ugh, I don't even know where I'm going with this." She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her handbag. It was the letter I wrote to her when I couldn't find her. "I believe this. I really do. I still read it over and over and I'm subconsciously trying to find a reason to not trust you, but it's not working. I know this is a really shitty way to say I trust you, but I guess that's what I'm trying to get out of this."
I couldn't hide a smile.
"We can't help it whether or not we go through this," I said, "but we do have control over how we do."
"Yeah," she said, "we do."
I might be confused and disoriented, but at least I know it felt good to hear her say we instead of I.