Let It Be

It's about overcoming adversity and realizing that even when you have lost so much, there is still so much about life that is worth keeping on for.

 

I don’t believe in fairy tales. I don’t believe in wishes. I barely believe in second chances. I hate when people tell me that it’s all going to be okay. There are some things that can’t be rationalized and can’t be okay. I didn’t used to be cynical. I used to laugh, I used to smile and I used to dance in the rain. I miss being naïve and I miss not knowing how cruel and harsh the world can be. I used to honestly believe if I said my prayers every night and listened to my parents, than I would be okay. There is that word again, okay. What does it even mean? According to the dictionary it means “Fairly healthy; well, uninjured; safe.” I’m not any of those things. I’m not safe in this city, New York, with its people who take and take until there is nothing left. I remember the night this all started, as if it was yesterday. A year ago I was lying in my bed, up in my room, thinking about a boy. He seemed like perfection but he was insignificant compared to what happened next. I heard shouts, I heard a scream and I heard a shot and then another. I crawled under my bed in complete and total fear, trying to keep my tears and my cries in my head. I waited for some amount of time I could never tell you. It could have been six minutes, could have been six hours. I couldn’t move, could barely breathe and my thoughts were racing. What happened? Finally I heard sirens. Footsteps. My door opening. An urgent voice yelling, “Anyone in here.” I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out. I picked my hand up and slammed it against the floor. A man got on his knees and looked under the bed, “We have one alive, under the bed.” One alive? One? No. It can’t possibly be what I think. It’s impossible. I’d be alone. “Come on sweetheart. Come with me, it’s over now.” He was wrong. It had just begun. I walked down the stairs and into the living room of the house I lived in with my mother and father. We had a painting of my grandmother hanging over the fireplace, now it had blood on it. I felt my knees go out from under me and I was on the floor. Hands picked me up, supported me and helped me out the door. They were dead. I was alone.

 

 I was sent to live with my Godmother. She didn’t have kids and hated that the responsibility of a teenager was dumped on her door. Lucky for her I was seventeen and would be eighteen in a few months. The minute I turned legal, she threw me out. I was on the streets. I stayed with an old friend for a few weeks but knew I had to leave. I couldn’t rely on other people my whole life. While my circumstances might have made it understandable, it wasn’t acceptable at least, not to me. I needed to find a way to make it on my own and get by.

 

The first thing I did was sell all the jewelry I had on me except for one piece. I sold my emerald ring and bracelet that I had been given when I turned sixteen. The only thing I kept was the locket, with my mother and father’s faces inside. After I had pawned the jewelry, I bought a guitar. I learned to play years ago but lost track of my old guitar in the past months. I started playing on street corners and in coffee shops, earning small tips. I would make ten dollars a day, playing from 6 am to midnight if I was lucky. Sometimes someone would feel kind and drop in a twenty. I would play and sing until my fingers bled but after some time my hands calloused and that was no longer a problem. After I was done playing, I’d pack up and head down to the shut down apartment complex that served as a home for many homeless people. I shared a room; by room I mean four corners of empty space and a couple blankets, with two other girls. One was twenty-four and one was fourteen. They both had sad tales to tell. The older one, Martha, had married young and discovered that the bottle can turn even the kindest man into a monster. Sybil, the fourteen year old, ran away with a boy who promised to love her. She was so young and deceivable that she believed him. She stole hundreds of dollars from her parents and when it was gone, so was the boy. Now she was scared to go home. At night, Sybil would have trouble sleeping so I would sing her a song that my mother used as a lullaby when I was little.

 

“When I find myself in times of trouble,

 Mother Mary comes to me;
 speaking words of wisdom, let it be. 
 And in my hour of darkness

 She is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom let it be.”

 

I was playing in a café one day in June and the heat was sweltering. The smell of cigarette smoke was sticking to me like sand on wet feet. I was singing through my normal rotation of songs when a man came up to me and smiled at me. I didn’t smile back but just continued to sing. He came up closer, dropped a hundred dollar bill in my guitar case and walked away. I dropped my guitar and the people stared at me. My mouth was wide open and I quickly packed up and ran after the man. “Sir! Sir! Please stop. UGH SIR.” With each ‘sir’ my voice grew louder and louder. Finally, he stopped, turned and faced me. When he saw I had chased him down the street his smile crept back on his face, “Yes miss?” I thrust out my hand with the hundred in it, “I think you made a mistake. You couldn’t have meant to leave that.” His eyes never left mine. It was impossible not to notice how beautiful he was. His sandy blonde hair was perfectly set off by deep green eyes and pale skin. His eyes weren’t just a pretty color though, they had kindness and humor in them and that was something I was not accustomed to seeing. Still looking in my eyes he replied, “I made no mistake.” He had an English accent; I wasn’t sure how I had missed that. He stuck his hand out and said, “I’m Aiden.” I placed my own hand in his and told him my name, “Adrienne.” He smiled when he heard it, “Adrienne. It suites you.” I felt my skin go pink. I knew I wasn’t pretty. I had rough, tan skin from long exposure in the sun, my eyes were a sharp blue and my hair was dark brown, unruly and curly. “You remind me of someone I used to know. She was a very good friend of mine.” His eyes got a distant look in them and I had to ask, “What happened to her?” He smiled sadly and “accident” was all he said. I couldn’t think of a word to say so I turned to walk away but before I could get very far, Aiden called me back, “How far are you going?” I thought about it, the apartment complex was about half an hour away, “Not very far.” That being said I kept walking. I had my eyes on the road ahead and almost didn’t notice that Aiden had fallen into step beside me. “Anyone ever tell you, you are slightly overly persistent” He kept looking ahead, “Hey, I live this way. Don’t give yourself too much credit. Sure, you’re lovely but I have my pride.” He said it in a way that clearly told me he was willing to ignore his pride. It didn’t make sense to me. I wasn’t pretty. I knew I wasn’t pretty. I wore my problems on my face and it turned most people away. Why it didn’t turn Aiden away I had no idea. We continued to walk and the sun was setting. The sky turned pink and it was prettier than any picture ever painted. We neared the empty apartment complex and I became self-conscious. I didn’t want him to know I was homeless. I stopped walking and stood there. Aiden turned and looked from me to the run down building beside me. “We all have problems Adrienne.” He came up to me and ran his finger down my face from my forehead to my jawbone and said “Goodnight.” I watched him walk away and realized I didn’t want this to be the last time I saw him. “Wait! Aiden! Please wait.” He turned, smiled and walked back towards me, “Yes, Adrienne?” I swallowed all the pride, self-consciousness and knots in my stomach and asked. “When can I see you again?” His smiled turned into a full-fledged grin, “Whenever you want.” I told him the place and time I would be playing the next day and this time let him watch me walk away.

 

            I got inside the room and almost ran right into Martha. She stared at me and looked to be in complete shock, “What in the world happened to you?” I gazed down at my feet and mumbled, “I don’t know what you mean?” She smiled, “You just…look happy.” Happy. I looked happy. How could this man I knew for less than two hours make me happy. I liked to believe that I possessed a little more depth than that. So a man was nice to me, that doesn’t change anything, doesn’t bring them back, doesn’t put me in a house. No. It changes nothing. I told myself that over and over but deep down I knew it changed everything. 

 

The next day I played in central park, sitting under a tree, pretending to be an anti war hippie. That was something I would do to pass the time. I’d put on personas and it would make my own life seem simpler. So I strummed away, closed my eyes and felt the breeze as it played with my hair. When I opened my eyes, he was there, sitting in front of me, watching me. I faltered a bit but picked the song up almost immediately. Smiling to himself, he dropped another hundred in my guitar case. I continued to play but stopped singing to say, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to try to buy your friends.” He chuckled, “Actually my mother encouraged it. Said I spent too much time with my head buried in books.” He was a reader. I felt my heart melt a little. “I love books. I just don’t get to read much anymore” He looked at me carefully and asked, “Would you mind if instead of money, I brought you books?” My heart then completely melted into a puddle at my feet. “Would you? That would be so wonderful!” He laughed at my enthusiasm, “Now of course if I stop giving you money, you’re going to have to let me buy you dinner.” I glanced at the gathering storm clouds and agreed, “Let’s get out of here before the rain falls.” As we walked, it began to pour. We both yelled as the first ice-cold drops fell down our backs. He grabbed my guitar case in one hand and my hand in the other and yelled, “My apartment is a few blocks away. We can go there and wait out the storm.” He pulled me down a couple different streets and then we were there. “A green door?” I scoffed. He smiled and put his finger over his lips. We went up six flights of stairs and he finally stopped at his door. Before he put the key in the lock he said, “And now I show you the magic.” I laughed and he opened the door. My laughter abruptly ended. He wasn’t kidding. There were books. Everywhere. I felt my breath catch in my throat, “Wow, your mother wasn’t kidding. This is incredible.” He turned and looked down into my eyes, “I never met anyone before who thought so too.” We went inside and he put a pot of tea on the stove. He worked in silence and I began to hum. As I watched my mind wandered back to the day before when he mentioned the girl I reminded him of. “Aiden, who was she?” He stopped moving for a moment and slowly turned to face me, “My sister.” I could feel this was a hard topic for him but I pressed on anyways, “How am I like her?” He walked over and sat on the chair across from the couch I was sitting on, “You’re strong. You don’t take anything from anyone. You are faced with such a hard life yet when I dropped a hundred at your feet, you ran after me to make sure I hadn’t done it on accident. No one would do that.” The words that poured out of his mouth caused my eyes to fill with tears for the first time since that awful night. All the frustration, anger, pain and hopelessness spilled over and ran down my cheeks in jagged paths. He rushed over to me and put his arms around me, “Adrienne, what did I say?” I tried to speak but choked on my tears. I took a deep breath and tried again. “The reason…I live…alone.” He squeezed me encouragingly and I went on, “My parents. I was up in my room and I hid. I hid under my bed when they were shot.” I heard his sharp intake of breath. My sobs continued on, “I hid. I crawled under my bed and didn’t move until the cops found me. I never got a chance to say goodbye.” I started to hiccup and gave up on speaking entirely. I buried my head in his shoulder. This man, I had just met him yesterday, yet he had broken through all my barriers and defenses. “I understand in a way. My sister. She died in a car accident. She was coming home from the airport and a drunk driver hit her.” He continued to hold and me and then laughed softly in my ear, “I knew there was a reason I met you.” He then realized I was shaking in my wet clothes. He walked into an adjoining room and come out with a pair of sweats and a long sleeved black shirt, “The bathroom is right over there. Go put these on. I’ll have tea and soup ready when you’re out.” I did as he said and as I pulled the shirt over my head I inhaled the all American smell that was attached to every stitch. He was by far the best smelling guy I had ever met yet he didn’t douse himself in cologne. He smelled like soap, shampoo and just Aiden. I walked out of the bathroom in his oversized clothes, “I look like an drowned rat.” He laughed, “Really? I was thinking more of a beautiful woman in my clothes.” I rolled my eyes and sat down at his table. He was ridiculous and he made me happy. Sitting across from him in his apartment, drinking tea and shoving soup in my mouth, I felt the most relaxed I had ever been.

 

Aiden worked at a small English pub as a bartender. He pulled a few strings and found me a steady paying job as an entertainer. I would play and sing just as before but now I had a solid paycheck I enjoyed watching Aiden work. He was adorable as he overconfidently poured drinks in tricky ways. I always laughed when he dropped a glass or spilled on the counter. It was so different for me, feeling like I belonged. Even when I lived at home with my parents, I still never felt like I was truly in place. How could a man I’ve known for six months now could give me a feeling of completeness and comfort? It amazed me. I was still not at peace though, Martha and Sybil were still living in that run down apartment complex while I, now bringing in steady money had been able to rent out a small room over a bakery. It didn’t make sense to me that I would be given this fount of good luck while Martha and Sybil were still homeless. It was something that sat on my mind but I was so busy I wasn’t able to do anything about it.

 

As the months flew by, I began to feel more and more normal. It wasn’t as if what happened hadn’t happened but it was as it I was able to deal with it, or so I thought. One night Aiden was supposed to pick me up for dinner at seven and at nine he wasn’t there. As the minutes passed and he didn’t come, I felt a paranoid panic begin to flow through my veins. What if something happened? What if I never saw him again? What if he was in danger? It became to clear to me then I wasn’t anywhere close to being able to deal with it. I panicked myself into tears and curled into a ball on my couch and I stayed there until my phone rang and it was Aiden telling me his car broke down and he had to wait to call from the tow trucks phone because his cell ran out of battery. I felt stupid of course but I was immensely relived he was all right that I let it go. He asked if it was too late for him to come over and I practically yelled for him to come. I had to see him with my own eyes in case my paranoia returned. When he walked through the door, I flung myself in his arms, unable to disguise my fear. He stood there, holding me, running his fingers through my hair. When I had calmed down a bit he asked me why I had been so upset. I swallowed all the excuses I had come up with and opted for the truth, “I was afraid you were gone and I was alone.” His eyes lit up with understanding and he lowered his voice, “Adrienne, honey, as long as I have any say in the matter I will be here.” He cleared his throat and grabbed my hand, “Alright, where do we want to go eat?” I smiled and told him that I had no preference. It was true, as long as he was there; I was content.

 

Martha and Sybil stayed on mind. Beautiful Martha with her long brown hair and skin that stayed perfectly porcelain and immaculate no matter how dirty she actually was. Sweet, young, naïve Sybil, who traded security and her life for a boy who claimed to want her and all he wanted was her money. I finally voiced my concerns about them to Aiden and he promised that he would see what he could do. I realized in that moment how much faith I had in him. When I felt I couldn’t deal with life myself, I turned to him. I could only hope he felt the same way about me. I worried that I didn’t deserve him, that he was so much better than me. It also hit me that day that I didn’t just depend on him, I loved him but more than that I was in love with him. He filled every hole in my heart and made me believe in all the things I used too. A few days after my revelation, Aiden came to me telling me that there was an opening for a waitress at the pub we both worked at and if she wanted the job, it was hers. I looked at him and felt tears form behind my eyes. He was so good. He saw my reaction and his face clouded over, “Adrienne? I thought this was what you wanted?” I laughed, hugged him and whispered, “It is what I want.” I took a deep breath and decided to jump, “Aiden, I love you.” He smiled and looked in my eyes, “Adrienne, you know I love you.” I took a step back and took a few preparatory breaths, “No, I am in love with you.” When he saw the apprehensive scared look on my face, his smiled turned into a wide toothy grin and he pulled me close to him and kissed me, “You silly girl. I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you.” I swear I felt the earth move underneath my feet. He was in love with me. He was in love with me. He was in love with me.  It felt so good.

 

Martha took the job at the pub and soon moved into a small apartment and took Sybil with her. Aiden went over a few times a week to make sure they had all they needed and he took the opportunity to get to know Sybil. She was wary of him at first but his charm won her over in the end. She told him she was scared, afraid her parents would hate her for her thievery and running away. Aiden told her that by now, over a year a half later, her parents would be relived to know their daughter was alive. She was resolute at first but as time went on, the hunger she felt to be with parents grew and soon she called them. They were hysterically joyful to hear their daughters voice again. She told them she was fine and living with a woman who had taken care of her for the past two years. They begged her to come home and she considered it. Sybil didn’t want to leave Martha. Sybil was attached to her, she had been her mother in almost every sense over the past years and it was hard to leave. When Martha found out, she told Sybil to go home. She loved Sybil but she knew that the girls place was with her parents. Aiden lent Martha his car and she drove Sybil home to Maine. Martha came back, her face stained with tears but happy that Sybil was home. I told Martha that it wasn’t the end of Sybil; she would still contact us and probably visit. I was right. Sybil took to writing letters and sending pictures, demanding letters and pictures in return. Soon Martha’s home was covered with them. It eased the pain. It felt wrong to me, to be so happy when Martha felt so miserable but I couldn’t help it. Aiden was my happiness. Every night after work we walked hand in hand around the city, talking about every topic under the sun or being silent with each other. The silence wasn’t an awkward “I have no idea what to say to you” silence but one full of love, compassion and empathy. Sometimes words aren’t needed to say the most important things. He didn’t need to tell me he loved me, though I liked to hear it, because I could see it all in his eyes. Aiden and I were walking through central park hand in hand, listening to the world around us. He seemed nervous and I could not figure him out. We kept walking until we reached the spot where I had played guitar the second day I knew him. He walked me under the tree and as he held my hands, he dropped down on one knee, “Adrienne” I felt all the air in my body leave me, “Adrienne, when I watched you play here, I knew I had to know you, had to be with you, had to love you. It blows my mind everyday that you feel the same way. If you let me, I will love you until we die. Actually I will do you one better, I will love you here on this earth and into the next. Marry me Adrienne.” I couldn’t make my lips move and his mistook my silence for rejection, “You don’t have too.” For the second time in my life I felt the earth move beneath me, “You silly boy, do you really think I’ll say anything but yes?”

 

So here I am four months later on my wedding day and while I do not believe in fairy tales or wishes, I do believe in love. I am sitting in the bridal room in my long white dress, wondering how I got to be so lucky. Martha is standing next to me, my maid of honor, crying and fixing my hair. Sybil is a couple chairs away putting the finishing touches on her makeup and smoothing out her bridesmaid dress. I am impatiently waiting for Martha to tell me she is done doing my hair and makeup so I can go out and see him, no, that isn’t quite right. I want her to be done so I can go out there and marry him. After minutes that seemed like hours of torture, she declares me perfect and soon I find myself standing in front of the doors of the church, ready to walk down the aisle, to my Englishman, my life, my love, my Aiden.