Boy in a Band (A Morgan Mallory story) (47 page)

Chapter
52

Ryan and I stayed in San Diego until Tommy was ge
tting close to starting school. We were busy with our lives, so we didn’t get back to San Jose. Ryan wanted to raise our kids some place smaller that had seasons, so shortly after Mathew and Roxanne’s wedding, we moved back to Park City, Utah.

Roxanne O’Conner and I gre
w to be friends over the phone. In trying to keep in touch with Mathew, she and I would talk. I usually initiated the call. I was pretty sure she didn’t know about Mathew's and my prior relationship, and that was good. Mathew was protecting us both. They tried to have children and couldn’t, and it was hard on both of them. At his wedding he’d told me that he loved babies.

About eight years into it
, I could tell some of his old behavior had surfaced. He was out late with the boys a lot. The band was playing together again. She was concerned about his drinking. She suspected the drugs were back. I think Roxanne felt safe with me because she knew how long Mathew and I had been friends. She knew I understood his history. She still picked her words carefully, though; she didn’t want to betray her husband. I could read between the lines, however. The
more
was no doubt back too; it all seemed to go hand-in-hand. They separated and then reconciled, then separated again. It was close to their ten-year anniversary when Mathew called me. I hadn’t talked to him or Roxanne in quite awhile.

“We’re getting divorced
,” Mathew said.

             
“No, I thought you guys had worked it out,” I said, distressed.

             
“We tried,” he said sadly.

             
I could tell he’d been drinking. I was sitting in our home office at the computer alone; I’d been doing paperwork.

             
“I’m sorry, Mathew.”

             
“Me too,” he said. “Come visit me, Morgan.”

             
“You know I can’t.”

             
“I could get us a room at the Hyatt,” he continued.

             
“Mathew, I can’t. Really, I won’t.”

             
“You still love him, don’t you?” he asked.

             
“I do Mathew, Ryan means everything to me. In fact I probably love him more now than on our wedding day, he’s a great husband and father,” I said.

When we hung up
, I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. I hadn’t seen him since his wedding, yet I could still picture him that day: how handsome and happy he was. It shocked me to realize that if I were single or unhappy in my marriage, I would have been on the first flight to San Jose.

             
“Who was that?” Ryan asked, walking into the room.

             
“It was Mathew,” I said, looking up. “He’s getting divorced.”

             
Ryan walked over and bent down to kiss me. His eyes still had the sparkle. He wore his curly blonde hair short now and he’d taken to wearing a cowboy hat. I thought he was sexy as hell.

             
“That’s too bad. How long were they married?”

             
“Almost ten years,” I answered.

             
“Seems like, after that long, they would make it,” he said. “I think he kept your heart longer than that.”

             
He sat down at his desk, which was a mess, piles of paper everywhere.

             
“Would that be jealousy, or just stupidity?” I asked.

             
“A little of both. Did he tell you why?” Ryan asked.

             
“He didn’t specifically. He said there were a number of things, many of which. I didn’t dig. I could tell he didn’t want me to. Maybe it would be too hard to explain. Mathew keeps things to himself.”

I thought about Roxanne and wondered what happened
, how she felt. I had no doubt she loved him. I wondered if it was drugs, alcohol, girls, or a combination of all of the above.
Did she walk down my same road of discovery, finally coming to the same conclusion?
That loving him came at too high a cost. It hurt my heart to think he was alone again.

Mathew
didn’t reach out to me after that phone call. He didn’t return my calls when I left messages on his home machine. After a while there wasn’t even a machine that answered. We emailed now and then, very sporadically, and he would tell me everything was fine. Any communication was brief, very brief. His lack of interaction made me question how well things really were. It had been three years since his divorce. It was a Friday, and I was sitting at my desk at my office. I answered my direct phone line when it rang. My calls usually went through my receptionist, only a few people had my direct line.

             
“Morgan, it's Gayle.”

             
“Hey, what are you doing, calling me at work?” I asked, excited to hear her voice.

Gayle hardly called at all anymore
, so calling me at work was very unusual.

             
“Are you sitting down?” she asked.

I laughed
rocking back in my leather chair.

“Yeah
, I’m sitting down with a desk piled high with files that all have problems.”

I stared at the three stacks of legal manila file folders lining my desk. I needed to get through them all today.

              “I’m serious.”

             
“So am I, unfortunately,” I joked.

             
She was silent a minute.

             
“Sorry, okay, serious. What is it?” I asked, sensing it was not good news, thinking it was her grandmother.

Her Nana
hadn’t been in good health, and I thought maybe it was about her. I leaned forward resting my elbow on my desk.

             
“I heard that Mathew O’Conner died.”

             
Mathew? Mathew died? Died? How?
I felt like I was treading through syrup in my head. He was my age; he was too young to die.

             
“Did you hear me?” she asked.

             
“I heard you, Gayle. Died how?”

             
“I don’t know the details, but apparently he walked into a hospital on Monday and was dead by Wednesday,” she said.

             
I pictured him walking towards me smiling, his handsome face tan. I imagined him walking through glass sliding doors into the hospital like that.

“People don’t usually walk into a hospital fine one
day and die a few days later,” I said, baffled.

             
I felt like I might be sick. I wondered why I hadn’t heard from anyone: Sara, Bobby, Ann. No one had contacted me, it had to be a mistake.

             
“This has to be wrong,” I said.

             
“I heard it from a pretty reliable source, I don’t think it is. I’m sorry, Morgan, I know what he meant to you.”

             
My chest tightened as I looked around my office. The window was the same, same blind, the tan walls, and same green patterned carpet, but it looked different to me. Like I was seeing it from a different viewpoint.

             
“I have to go,” I said, feeling dazed, frantic. “I need to make some calls. I have to confirm this.”

             
“Call me later,” she said.

When I hung up
, I was surprised at how numb I felt. I tried to remember when I last heard his voice. “We’re getting divorced. Come visit me, Morgan” he’d said. That was the last time.
Why hadn’t I talked to him in so long?
It took some digging to get Bobby’s cell phone number. We hadn’t talked since Mathew’s wedding. I pushed the numbers on the phone slowly, hesitantly, and listened to the phone ring.

“Hello.”

              “Bobby, it's Morgan.”

             
There was a pause.

             
“You heard?”

I could feel the dread spread through me.

              “Please tell me it’s not true,” I begged, hoping against hope.

“It’s true
,” he said sadly. “I saw him the day before he died. He wasn’t awake, hadn’t been for a while. All I could think about is how young he looked. Not old enough to be dying.”

We talked for two hours
. Bobby had seen him over the last few years, but always on Mathew’s terms. A quick lunch out or a quick stop at Bobby’s house, he said Mathew never stayed long. Bobby was never invited to his place, not like when he and Roxanne were together. Bobby felt that he left a lot out when they did see each other. He figured that the partying had never stopped; that he’d hidden it well. Any new girl in his life never stayed around very long he said.

“What did he die of?” I asked.

              “They’re not sure, maybe an accidental overdose or some sort of organ failure,” he answered.

             
Images were filling my head, him laughing on the merry-go-round, him playing his guitar in his room, the beach, skiing, out by the O’Conner’s pool.

             
“He would have turned forty-seven May tenth,” I said absently, remembering his birthday. “Bobby, why hasn’t anyone called me?”

             
“Morgan, everyone’s in shock. I think the O’Conner’s are trying to get to people the best they can.”

             
Sara emailed me shortly after Bobby and I hung up to tell me she was sorry she hadn’t gotten to me first. She’d obviously spoken to Bobby. I could sense her devastation in her email. It sounded like she was the one taking charge. She told me there would be a celebration of his life at the Apollo the following Saturday and hoped I could make it. The Apollo; I saw him sitting lazily in the back room, me on his lap. Remembered getting so mad that same night and leaving.

My heart was beating in my throat.
I called Ryan.

“Hey,” he said answering his cell phone right away.

              “Gayle called me. Mathew O’Conner died.”

             
“No way?” Ryan said, shocked. “He certainly wasn’t very old. That’s too bad.”

             
“I know,” I said, my head starting to throb.

             
“What happened?”

             
“I’m not real clear on that yet.”

             
“Finish up at work and go home,” he suggested.

I kept waiting to feel something
more. I thought the tears would come, but nothing. I tried to focus on some of my files and, after an hour, I gave up and went home. Over the next two days, Mathew ran like a movie in my head. It didn’t stop day or night. I remembered things I hadn’t thought about in years. I heard his voice. I heard him playing his guitar, singing “Wild Horses”
.
I dreamed about us. I felt guilty that it wouldn’t stop.

I called Bobby several more times
, and we reminisced over the phone. I told him and Sara I wasn’t going to come. I felt like an outsider. The love that was, but really wasn’t. The one-sided love few knew about. The friendship that had faded long ago. The movie kept playing in my head, flash after flash of him through the years. I was having trouble sleeping and eating.

             
“Morgan, you should come,” Bobby encouraged again.

             
He was working at wearing me down. He and Sara both had pressed me to come.

“Bobby
, you know bits and pieces about us; we had a complicated relationship. Mathew is playing in my head like a movie, and I can’t get it to stop. I’ve remembered things that have been buried for years. I’ve come to realize he kept me at a distance from the rest of his life. Maybe to protect me, maybe to hide me, I don’t know. I liked the distance. I liked him best when we were alone. When other people were around, he was different towards me.”

“I remember that day in Capitola,” he chuckled.
“You were on fire mad at him. You tried to pretend to me that you weren’t, but I knew. I felt bad for you, him acting the way he did.”

“I went home that summer without seeing him again.”

“I know, I asked him what had happened,” Bobby said.

I pictured Bobby and I sitting on the sand, the emotions swirling in me like the waves.

“You know I met Mathew just a few weeks prior to meeting you at the ranch that day in Almaden when we were twelve. Our relationship spanned thirty-four years in varying degrees,” I laughed. “Some pretty crazy degrees.”

“He talked about you
. He wasn’t trying to hide you,” Bobby said.