Eleven
"Why didn't you bring your boyfriend with you?" Gerard LaPorte, Lucille Graham's husband and Robin's friend, asked Robin as they stood next to each other at the sink washing and drying the fine china that was going to be put out for the get together at the family home after tomorrow's memorial service. The children, Amelia and Pierre, were spending the night back at their own homes with their spouses and the grandchildren, Giselle and Lucille, were staying with Gerard so that he had company in the morning.
"I wanted to see all of you before tomorrow," Robin answered, avoiding his sharp gaze.
"I was surprised when you told me that you had brought a boyfriend with you all the way from America. He must be very important to you, very intimate," Gerard said conversationally as he tried a tea cup.
"We work together, we, uh…" Robin trailed off as she searched for an appropriate prevarication. "We're good friends."
"Lucille would have been so happy for you, finally finding someone who you let see your heart."
"We don't, we're not. Patrick and I are casual." Robin turned and pretended to be scrubbing at a spot on the platter she was cleaning. Her cheeks were flushed.
"Casual does not come on a moment's notice to Paris for a funeral, Robin." Gerard put a hand on her bare shoulder. She had taken off her sweater and was wearing a blue sundress that tied around her neck. "You are running again. I could see it in your eyes when you came in. Even when you were reading the children their bedtime story you looked sad."
"Lucy just died, Gerard, of course I'm sad." Robin turned and handed her friend the beige platter.
"You don't fool me, ma petite." Gerard put the wet platter down on the counter. "You are once again letting your fears of this disease trap your heart. So many times we have discussed this."
"There's nothing to worry about." Robin's eyes darted away from Gerard's brown eyes which were so like Patrick's, all-seeing, beautiful. "I…."
"Yes, you love your career. You're healthy. There is more to life and this Patrick Drake showed you that and now you are running because you remember about death. Come." Gerard gently put his hand on Robin's arm. Robin put down the towel she was nervously crumpling between her hands and followed him to the back of the house. He opened the door to the grandchildren's room.
Just an hour earlier Robin had been reading Gerard's granddaughters a bedtime story The Velveteen Rabbit from the beautifully illustrated volume Robin had brought them years ago.
"What do you see?" Gerard asked Robin.
"Your grandchildren." Robin didn't understand the question.
"And?" Gerard's eyes bored into her.
Tears suddenly filled Robin's eyes and she turned and walked hurriedly down the corridor.
Gerard quietly closed the bedroom door and walked slowly after her. He caught up with her in the small solarium. She was standing stiffly with her back to the entryway, her tears already contained.
"It's scary to know you are going to die." His words rang clearly in the plant-filled room. "But we all know it, Robin. Not just people with HIV."
"It's different." Robin turned and faced him, her eyes red-rimmed and bruised. "There's so much I cannot do."
"Like what?"
Robin shook her head. "All of this, family. Children. Someday whoever I marry will have to watch me die. How can I do that to someone? Why did you choose this?"
"Or maybe you will watch them die. I could have died long before Lucy from any number of diseases or an accident. Lucy herself could have been hit by a bus. There are so many ways life can end, but it's the quality of the life that you live before that which matters. I know you know this?"
Robin nodded slightly at Gerard's soft query.
"Living is the hard thing, Robin. Whether you have HIV or not. Whether you love someone with HIV or not. I understand the precautions, the health limitations. But the real challenge is how having HIV affects your heart and mind. All of us have limits, you just find a way to live with them or around them."
"How are you okay with this? Losing Stone." Robin shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. "Was the hardest thing I ever did. I cannot imagine putting anyone through that."
"You were a seventeen year old girl who had just been diagnosed herself. I am a fifty-seven year old man with many years of memories. Stone did not know he was sick. Lucy did. I did. Patrick Drake knows about your condition?" At her nod he continued. "I am desperately sad that my Lucy is gone from my life, but I would never have chosen to live without her to save myself from this end. We would have been cheating both of us. Our entire family. You have seen us together, you know."
Gerard walked forward and guided Robin to sit down on a purple velvet chaise and sat down next to her. "My first wife left me and our children when they were very young. Should I have regretted loving her and not saving myself from that heartache? Do you regret loving Stone?"
Robin dropped her eyes, her fingers twisting together. "Sometimes I do," she whispered, saying out loud what she had never dared to admit before.
"Finally, you are human, Robin Scorpio." Gerard smiled sadly.
Robin looked up at him in surprise.
"No one ever believed you when you said you had no regrets. You couldn't not and be human. Your heart is turned off when you say that. You loved Stone, he loved you. No one doubts that. But the rest – death, HIV, how could you not hate it? Did I not wish sometimes that I never fell for the fickle Collette, of course I had my moments, but I got over it because I had my children and found love again." He shrugged. "Did I curse and despise the disease my Lucille had? Of course. Did I regret loving her? Sometimes, like when she was sick or when I had to go in for tests every few months and wait for the results. It was not a perfect life, but it was the life I chose to have, or that chose me. Do you remember what Lucille used to say?"
"That you and the children were fated to be her family." Robin brushed a tear off her face.
"Could Lucille have turned me away and say she did not want us to live through her death or me to live through possibly being infected myself? She tried." Gerard chuckled at Robin's look of surprise. "The advice you gave you was from her heart because she understood. Do you know what I told her when she tried?"
Robin shook her head.
"That she had no right to decide my fate and to stop being such a control freak. Of course, it sounded lovelier in French." Gerard put his hand over Robin's in her lap. "All of us were prepared for Lucille's passing. We prepared by living our lives and making sure our love was acknowledged. We will miss her every day, my heart yearns for her, but I would never have really lived without her. She was our passionate flame. Do not deny this Patrick, or whoever is your fate, that experience because you are afraid. Patrick is not a scared, seventeen year old girl, and neither are you, anymore."
"I feel like I've heard this a thousand times before," Robin said, not bothering to wipe at the tears running down her face. "But I never really understood it before."
"You have heard it a thousand times before." Gerard laughed. "But your heart was not open to really hear it."
"Patrick," Robin sighed. "What if he doesn't want to or can't live with this? He thinks he knows because he's a doctor, but he thinks it's just about sex."
"That's his choice, not yours. Talk to him as you talk to me and if he chooses no he is both a fool and not your fate." Gerard waited a beat. "Do you want to stay here tonight or will you go see your Patrick?"
Robin shook her head.
"You can let yourself out. I'll see you tomorrow." He leaned over and pressed a kiss to Robin's forehead. She grabbed his hands before he could move away.
"Thank you." She let out a deep breath and smiled through her tears at him.
After he left the room she remained sitting alone for a long time before getting up and heading back to the hotel.
A little while later she stood in her and Patrick's hotel room looking at the empty bed.
TBC...