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“It’s Louisa,” James whispered, face ashen as he hung up the phone.
“Oh? How is she?” Francis asked.
James looked up at him, eyes wide and glassy. “She’s dead.”
“Oh, darling,” Francis whispered, and opened his arms to his husband. James slumped into them, Francis holding him up, as if the world had collapsed from under him.
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“Hey, Robert!”
“James, can you talk?” James frowned. Robert sounded serious. Far more serious than he usually was.
“What’s up?”
“You know Louisa’s been sick,” Robert began, and James nodded before remembering that Robert couldn’t see him.
“Yes.”
“Well, sweetheart, she’s…not sick anymore.”
“She’s better?” James hedged, knowing in his heart that couldn’t be it. Robert would be overflowing with joy, he’d been so upset the entire time Louisa had been hurting. But she had been trying that new drug, for her memory, so maybe it was working. Or maybe the physical therapy had led to a breakthrough.
“She’s at peace. She’s not in pain.” Robert’s voice was thick with emotion now, as if the words were knives he had to force past his throat.
“Robert, you’re scaring me.”
Silence. A heavy, choked noise on the other end of the line.
“Robert? What’s going on with my mom?” She wasn’t his mom. But she was. She hadn’t birthed him, hadn’t nursed him. But she’d kissed his scraped knees and sang him to sleep and celebrated when he’d gotten into uni. He called her Louisa, sure, but the name had become synonymous with mom.
“She passed in her sleep last night.”
Robert kept talking, something about how she didn’t feel any pain, but James couldn’t hear him. It felt like he had cotton in his ears. His mother was dead. But he’d talked to her just the other day. Or had it been longer? A week? A month? His mother was dead and he couldn’t remember the last thing he’d said to her. He was going to be sick. Or faint. Or start crying. Robert was crying. He’d never heard Robert cry, and the sound was jarring. He was sobbing, thick and ugly and James wasn’t sure he could have understood his words if he’d had his wits about him.
“I have to go.” He heard himself say, and hung up the phone. “It’s Louisa.” His voice sounded wrong to his ears, tinny and distant.
Francis said something.
“She’s dead,” he gasped, trying to look at Francis. He couldn’t see anything, just blurs, and then he was in Francis’ arm and he was holding him and his husband’s brogue echoed soothingly in his ears.
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It had taken Francis quite some time to coax James into the shower, where Francis had washed his hair with the posh lavender shampoo he liked and gently massaged lotion into him after while he lay motionless on the bed. He had put on Legally Blonde for James to fall asleep to as he started making phone calls.
Robert had confirmed the death, and Francis had helped him draft an obituary, feeling woefully out of place. Words were James’ thing, after all, not his. But he owed it to his lover, to do this for him, to make it easier.
Then he’d started calling the funeral homes. Louisa had wanted to be cremated, and to be laid to rest in an urn signed by James and Will. And she’d loved flowers, so he needed to be sure to create a place in the obituary to send a flower arrangement.
James woke up more than once during the night, shaking and sobbing and snotting and apologising. Francis held him close and stroked his hair and whispered meaningless platitudes and Irish lullabies because he didn’t know what else to do, but it quieted James’ sobs.
As he laid James back down, he started to rise to go make more calls, but James flung out his arms and reached for him. “Stay,” he’d begged, eyes wide and red-rimmed.
So Francis had, even though James cuddled like a gas station hot dog on a spit at the best of times, and his inability to maintain the same position for more than a few seconds was made infinitely worse by stress and grief. Francis held James close and adjusted with him and sang to him until he fell back into a restless sleep.
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“She was my mother,” James whispered.
Francis nodded, squeezing his hand encouragingly. He didn’t say anything else. Why wasn’t he saying anything else, the silence was deafening.
“Say something!” James gasped.
“I’m so sorry, darling,” Francis whispered. “I don’t know what to say but I’m here.”
James nodded. This wasn’t Francis’ forte, he knew, but his husband was here and he was trying and that counted for something.
“When I first came to live with her, I was a bit of a little shit,” James laughed drily. He’d been damn near unmanageable, so afraid of being left that he needed to make it happen. “But Louisa wouldn’t let it drive a rift between us. We were making dumplings one day, and I spilled flour all over the floor. She let me make flour angels in it, and then we made cleaning it up into a game. I stole candy from the jar, and she filled it back up with my favorites. I jumped on the bed, and she moved Will’s bed closer so we could jump between the two. No matter what I did, she showed me nothing but love.”
He hadn’t even remembered the thing about the candy jar until he said it out loud. Memory was a fickle thing. He wouldn’t have remembered it a week ago, even if asked, but now, he was so sure it was real. He could practically taste the little pink candies that looked like Pepto Bismol but tasted sweetier.
“She loved you so much, darling.”
“I can’t remember the last thing I said to her. I don’t know the last thing I said to my mother,” James sobbed into Francis’ shoulder, and he held him close, his stump encircling James’ waist while his hand squeezed his shoulder.
“I know it was something kind, sweetheart. It was something loving.”
“But how?” James gasped. He didn’t know. What if it had been some cruel joke?
“Because you are kind and loving. There’s not a cruel bone in your body and you love your mother so so much.”
Francis’ words only served to make him sob harder.
Francis was singing to him in Irish again, as if he didn’t know how else to help. But admittedly, it was soothing.
“She had this freaky ass doll. A mischievous little cherub with a yellow dress. It used to sit on her dresser. I love it. I miss it.” He didn’t know why he said it. What did that doll have to do with anything?
“You can have it, love.”
James was crying harder again, and Francis’ stump was sliding along his back, rubbing soothing circles. The texture had been disconcerting the first few times he’d done it, but James had grown to love the sensory experience.
“I love you, darling,” Francis whispered. “I’m here.”
“Don’t go.”
“Never,” Francis promised.
“You won’t die on me?” Francis was older by seventeen years. He was healthy, but he’d been an alcoholic. What if he got sick? Or hurt? Or didn’t wake up one day?
“Not today,” Francis promised, and the panicked voices in his head quieted for a moment as Francis kissed his forehead. “Not today.”