LOST

“He really likes artichoke hearts on his pizza?” Jacqueline asked Alex as she cut up some vegetables to put on a pizza.

Alex opened the fridge and grabbed a package of pepperoni slices. “Yeah, he does. He says he likes to order a pizza from the place uptown and have it delivered to his work. And he’ll have people walk by his desk, smell it and ask for a piece, but when he tells them what’s on it…”

“He gets the pizza to himself.”

“Yep.”

“Smart man.”

They finished preparing the pizza and put it in the oven. As they were washing their hands, they heard a knock on the door. “Speaking of smart men,” Alex commented as she hurried to answer the door, “he’s on time,” eager for her two favorite people to meet. She grinned from ear to ear as she opened the door. “Hey,” she said as Stew stood in the hall with two bouquets of flowers in one hand, and the loop of Goose’s leash in the other. Goose sat and panted happily behind Stew’s legs.

“Is she here?” Stew asked.

“Yeah. She’s in the kitchen.”

“These,” he handed Alex a bouquet of yellow tulips, “are for you.”

“That was sweet. You shouldn’t have.”

“And these,” he said, holding a bouquet of orange carnations, “are for your ma-maw.”

Alex took both bunches of flowers into the kitchen; Stew and Goose followed her. He rounded the corner to see Alex’s grandmother at the counter beside the sink, cutting up green peppers.

“Hello, Stewart.” She looked up from her task, saw the flowers and stopped cutting to turn and give him a hug before accepting them. “Aren’t you something? Alex, do you want to put these in some water? Stew, I hate to throw you in the thick of things as soon as you get here, but could you reach on top of the refrigerator and grab the pizza stone, please?”

“Sure,” he replied, carefully reaching for the heavy platter. “Are we having pizza?”

“Yes. Alex tells me you’re a fan of artichoke hearts.”

“I am. Artichokes and bacon is my favorite.”

“Well, Alex and I like Hawaiian, so, we’ll do half and half.”

“Sounds good.”

Goose let out a playful bark as he sat beside Stew. “I guess it sounds good to him, too.”

“Oh, God,” Jacqueline groaned. “Don’t tell me you feed that dog pizza?”

“Umm… occasionally, yeah,” Stew said, embarrassed. “Am I a bad parent?”

“No,” she chuckled. “He’s not fat, by any means. Now, when he gets older…” She shrugged her shoulders and let Stew finish the thought on his own. However, he had to hold back a laugh as he wondered, How much older could he get?

The casual conversation continued through dinner—how much he liked Charlotte compared to Salisbury, life as a film critic, and would they ever make another movie as good as Casablanca. As the pizza slowly disappeared, the conversation gradually became less casual. The talk over Thanksgiving dinner, four days before, was, for the most part, geared toward how much the kids had grown, job changes and new houses, so Alex’s grandmother didn’t get to know Stew very much the first time they had met. She took the opportunity she had now to do just that. She asked him about the attack, how he felt about it now and what things he found himself doing differently because of it.

“I don’t think I consciously do anything differently, although, I do find myself looking over my shoulder when I hear a loud noise. Sometimes, I think… you know… why did this have to happen to me? But then, why not me? I’m not so special that this could never happen to me. And besides that, if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be sitting at this table with you and Alex. If I had it to do over again, I’d still take that shortcut. If I have to go into a coma to meet the girl of my dreams, then, so be it.” As that last statement passed through his mind, something else came with it—the dream he told Wiz about. Astrid. Who was she?

“Well, even if it’s fate,” Jacqueline noted. “a relationship still takes work. The key to any relationship is communication. And especially in an intimate one such as yours. Tell each other everything. Keep nothing hidden. I nearly lost the love of my life—your grandfather—for not being open and honest with him.”

“What happened?” Alex said, curious. She had not heard this story before.

“When I met Cleveland, I was a waitress at a diner on the North side of Chicago. He had just come home after fighting the Germans. He came in one morning for breakfast and he flirted with me a little. Then he asked me if he could take me to a baseball game that afternoon. He had a friend who had returned with him who played on the Cubs. They lost that day to the Reds, five to seven. I remember it so vividly, not because it was a particularly exciting game—I was not much into sports—but because he asked me to join him for dinner afterwards and I had to decline. I told him my mother was sick and I had to tend to her. The truth was that I was a dancer at a burlesque nightclub on the South side and I had to work that night. They called me Jackie Rose.”

Stew and Alex shifted their seats so they could get closer, both of them enraptured by the story.

“We kept seeing each other, but I hid my secret life from him. I was just so ashamed to tell him, but the money was too good and I was saving to go to nursing school. One night, after having enough money to quit dancing, I told the club owner it was going to be my last night. I had taken my clothes off probably a hundred times, but never before and never since have I felt as naked as that night. Cleveland and some of his buddies from the Army were there that night. Honestly, I don’t know who was redder in the face. As soon as he saw me, he got up and ran out.”

“Did you try to catch him?”

“Yeah, I went and grabbed my clothes and then, ran outside to look for him but he wasn’t there. And the South side of Chicago was not a place for a woman to be out at night. Not to mention, a stripper who barely had her clothes on. My ride didn’t get off until closing, so, I caught a taxi. He wasn’t at his house. I suppose he went to a bar for a drink or something.”

“Well? What happened? You had to have found him or I wouldn’t be here.”

“I’m getting there. Be patient. You have to let a story like this steep for a bit before you can really enjoy it.”

“Okay. Continue, Ma-Maw.”

“Well, I tried to catch him at home the next day… and the next day after that, but he was never there. I tried calling him. He never answered his phone. I thought he had left town. I figured I had lost him for good. Then, my boss at the diner hands me a ticket one day. A ticket to a Cubs game. He said a man had left it for me.”

“And you went. Right?”

“Of course, I went, silly. You’re here. Aren’t you? Section R, Row twenty-three, Seat seventeen. And right there in seat sixteen was Cleveland. He didn’t even look at me as I sat down next him. He said he wanted to give me a chance to explain. I told him everything and he understood. We dated for another three months and he asked me to marry him. His friend on the Cubs, well, Cleveland had saved his life in France, so he talked to Mr. Wrigley and they let us have the ceremony on the field.”

“You made that story up.”

“No, I did not. Look,” she said, pulling something out of her pocketbook. “I still have the stub from the ticket he left me.”

“Wow. That’s really sweet, Ma-Maw.”

Stew was stunned into silence. He tried to calculate, in his head, the odds of Alex’s grandmother relating such a mundane story and it having such a striking similarity to his current, extraordinary situation. The odds were incalculable and, besides that, he was never good at statistics.

He decided then and there, as he watched Alex stand up, go to the kitchen and fix three mugs of hot chocolate, that he was going to tell her everything, just as her stripper grandmother had told Cleveland. He knew she was too good and too right for him to let anything as trivial as immortality and magic come between them. But he didn’t have the guts to tell her that night.

“I never told your parents that story,” Jacqueline told Alex.

“Dad doesn’t know?” she said, shocked.

“Well, if he knows, he didn’t hear it from me. Cleveland and I moved to Virginia before he was born and we just never talked about it. I can’t imagine Cleve would have ever said anything. But I think you’re father knew I was no angel. Maybe that’s why he was so adamant that you go to church—so you wouldn’t end up like me.”

“Well, so much for that. I’m just like you. I’m not a stripper but I’ve got my wild side. And I’ll do what I have to in order to get where I want in life—just like you.”

“Just like me. It’s a shame, really.”

“What’s a shame?

“It’s a shame you’re not a stripper.”

“Ma-Maw!”

“What? You’d make your rent in one night. Stew would buy a lap dance. Wouldn’t you?”

“Every freaking night.”

Alex pulled the neck of her shirt over her head and hid her face inside it.

Jacqueline chuckled as she stood up. “Well, kiddos. I’m going to bed. I’ll see you two in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Ma-Maw. Thank you for the story.”

“You’re welcome, Sweetheart. I hope you both learned something.”

“Goodnight… Jackie Rose.”

“Hey,” she said firmly, “Jackie Rose is dead.”

“I’m sorry. Goodnight, Mrs. McDaniels.”

“Goodnight, Stew. Goodnight, Sweetie.” She kissed Alex on the cheek and turned to walk down the hall toward the guest bedroom. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“She’s something else,” Stew commented. “I’ve never known any grandma that cool.”

“So… you want a lap dance, huh?” Alex said, lightly pushing him on the shoulder, urging him toward her bedroom.

“Well, yeah.”

“Okay… but first… any secrets you need to tell me?”

All the color left Stew’s face and a cantaloupe grew in his throat.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I… I do… have a secret.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. And I want to tell you really bad.”

“So… tell me. Hold on—you’re not a burlesque dancer, are you?”

“As ridiculous as that would sound, I would rather tell you that. It would be easier than this.”

“Than what?”

“I was working up the guts to tell you in the morning.”

“No. Tell me now.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

“Why not?” Her brow grew knots in the corners as she became more irritated. Stew couldn’t do anything but run his hand through his hair in frustration.

“I think it’d be best if you went home now,” Alex said with her head down.

“Alex. Please… just give me a little time.”

“I’ll give you all the time you need, but we’re not going to be together while you take it. I just can’t do it, Stew.”

Tears welled up in his eyes as he walked toward the door. “Come on, Goose.” Goose trotted after him, his tail hanging low between his back legs, as Alex opened the door for them.

“Wait,” she stopped them before they entered the hallway. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to you. And your mom would kill me if she knew I let you walk home by yourself this late. You can sleep on the couch.”

“Thanks,” he replied somberly.

“Does Goose need to go out?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“I’ll go with you. We’ll take him out the back entrance. There’s a dog walk area with a little baggie dispenser and everything.”

She hoped the walk would coax the secret out of him and they wouldn’t have to go to sleep with it hanging between them, but it was to no avail. She was afraid to pry anymore, thinking that if she did, he would retreat even further. Twenty silent minutes later and they were getting out of the elevator on her floor and headed back inside her apartment. She went to the hallway closet, retrieved a blanket and handed it to Stew. He could only look her in the eye for a split second as he took it.

“Stew…” she said, quiet and warm compared to the harsh tone of her earlier questioning, “if you need until breakfast to get the courage to tell me whatever this secret is… I’m fine with that.”

Stew sighed deeply and nodded, the slightest hint of a smile peeking through his gloom.

“Do you need anything before I go to bed?” she asked him.

“A hug, maybe?”

“Just maybe?”

“Well…”

“Come here, you big goofball.” When she wrapped her arms around him, he felt like he had been born again and he wanted her to never let go. But then, she did.

“Breakfast,” Stew said, assuring her that would be the moment all would be told.

“Breakfast,” she replied, then smiled. “Goodnight, Stew.”

“Goodnight, Alex.”

She turned and walked down the hall to her bedroom and once she was inside it and he was sure she could not hear it, he whispered, “I love you.”