Emerald Towers (written in 2000, dedicated to Brent Spiner, when God showed me Loree McBride was a Vatican agent)

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(copyright 2000, considered part of gabriellechana.com and copyright information for this is on the first web page of gabriellechana.com. Available as an audio book: https://www.amazon.com/Emerald-Towers/dp/B00ZLVZ184). I inserted the year that the verse pertained to, as an extra that was not part of the original piece, to show that this was about my relationship with Brent as I saw it in 2000. The only part that is fiction is I was never diagnosed with breast cancer. However, I did get a biopsy for breast cancer twice in 2000. Both biopsies came back negative.

I will never give up on Brent. God gave me a song, which played on the random mode on my CD player right after I came back from the funeral of a little girl who died from cancer. God told me that the suffering Brent and I endured for our love was as great as the pain of that little girl who died from brain cancer. He promised me in 1992, that there is a place for us (me and Brent), a time for us (me and Brent). Then Jesus Christ personally showed up in 2012 to tell me that indeed, it was He, who gave me that promise in 1992, and that he also would officiate my wedding to Brent Spiner in the millennium. Here is the song and the exact rendition of it that I heard:

EMERALD TOWERS
by
Gail Schuler
written in Jan./Feb./March 2000

May-June 1991: “I want you.” The voice yearned for me, and I searched for it. His eyes had poetry and his face astuteness. The wig and mustache (how Brent looked when I saw him through my son’s bedroom window when he visited my apartment complex in Dec. 1993) could not camouflage his elegance. . .a star.

“Oh, my God, I know you. . .” Streams of light burst through Douglas Firs. The air was pure oxygen. A lush of rainfall from the stream, nodded an entrance. “Please. . .I’d like to be your friend.”
“Can’t we be more?”

“Oh, God.” I crushed my head into my fists. “I can’t, I want you more than anything — but I can’t.”
Nov. 1993: My husband detected us one day and degraded me with divorce threats, so I bared my soul to my friend at watersheds, parks, lakes, Seattle’s Pike’s Place. . .

In private.

1990: Divorce. I’d functioned as a mother and homemaker, dependent on my husband for five years.

I rummaged all news items about my friend, and ached for, not fame, but his presence. I avoided the spotlights.

1993: Three years later, a news item jumped at me: a description of a woman who emerged with him in public. Two more years slid by. Her description jumped at me once more and then a few more times. Probably a business associate.

June 1996: But in the newspapers today, a photo affronts me. He’s with her, and she glares at me. Her occupation: Publicist (Loree McBride). The caption blasts: Star hosts lavish dinner for his girlfriend.

July 1996: Girlfriend? My bed, which once flowered with dreams, suffocates with tears.
Across my stage, she struts her stuff; and I grapple with anguish which ravages my sleep.
Her dazzle flies at my face; I feel embezzled. She flaunts her colors. . .her head: a peacock. Girlfriend.

“She’s your girlfriend? Why do you need a girlfriend? Have you gone to bed with her?”

July to Dec. 1996: His eyes became cats, shifting and jumping. I remembered the day. . .when I’d leaped into the dark and shot some letters to a star (Jan. 1991), inviting him to expose corruption. . . never dreaming he would.

Sept. 1991: “You think you want to write?” My friend smiled. “Do it.”

Overwhelmed with love, my heart poured to the page.

“You’re wasting your time,” my husband said.

1991 to now: But with warmth, my friend nourished me, and I blossomed; he reined music into my heart.

“Since I can’t give you my body, I’ll give you my soul, I’ll write for you.”

“What will you write?”

“I want to write something that will make you feel I’m with you always, because more than anything. . .that’s what I want.”

He grasped my hand.

June 1996 to Dec. 1999: And now. . . when I railed at my friend about her, he remained; and though he bore her, his ears jumped to my every word. Why had I dreamed of marriage? To him? I avoided the spotlights — and he paraded with this woman in public, as if I’d never bared my soul to him, as if he’d never heard all my secrets. Paraded. . .in public. And because he bore her, I convulsed with tears for a month.

June-July 1996: “My husband will kill me over you and you’re not mine.”

He simpered in silence.

“You’ve spoiled her and now she laughs at me.”

The next morning, I limped through the papers: Star and girlfriend may contemplate marriage.

Marriage?

On a bench, he glared.

“What’s the matter?”

His eyes glazed. “I can’t visit you anymore.”

“You don’t seem happy.”

“I do care about you.”

July 1996: “You’re a coward. Make your choice.”

“It’s better we pretend that we’ve never met.”

“What’s going on?” I swaddled my sweater around me, the circle of moon draped in blackness and the dew chilled me.

His eyes raged. “I can’t bear to leave you.”

“What do you need her for?”

Like I’d uttered nothing, he stared; and then, his hands graced my shoulders and I deplored the spirit of his soul: steel and desperation. He stared.

Seattle 1999-2000: Rust, gold, and oranges shimmered from the mountains; my hands froze when I fumbled for my keys; the wind blasted ice; the days dragged on; the leaves flittered away. . .until trees, once full of life, bounced as sticks.

1989-1993: I offered tokens, and through letters, confessed my life to him. And at that park where I absorbed him last, I roamed. . .deliberated on the bench. . .My feet crunched on pebbles and gazed at the Cascades.

God would torch for me. On the cliffs, snow encroached; but the evergreens, the emerald towers of the mountains, gripped their leaves and persevered green through the winter.

*********

Three years fogged by (1996 to 1999), and his girlfriend (Loree McBride), who flung my heart to the wind, parades with him. I still bare my soul to him: but I’ve banished him from my dreams.

1997 to 1999: Criminals stampede me and the police, who should flame against crime, make appearances.

Some doctors, rather than heal, deliver torment. To patch the damage, I rummage other doctors for months.

It seems, though I drive with deliberation, I dare not drive ten miles past the speed limit, the police lurk in every corner.

My food, medicines, and life are a plague which contaminate me. I meander through a maze to evade illnesses, but they creep upon me and inundate me.

Jobs elude me, creditors and husband harass me; everyone shouts for money.

2000: “I need money. Why don’t you help?”

“Here, I’ll give you some, but if I give you too much. . .” My friend’s eyes evade me. “I’m so sorry.”

It seems the whole world pursues me.

Though I stumble to protect those I love, they, too, suffer pain. (Jesuit bullies harassed my son so much at school, he became sick a lot and failed sixth grade during the 1999/2000 school year in the Mukilteo school district at Harbour Pointe Middle School. I did not know it then, but one reason he was so overwhelmed by all this is that my ex-husband had also sexually abused him while he was growing up.) My marriage becomes an empty shell and annihilates me. Medical costs inundate me. My health falters, my husband drowns me with sermons, obsessed with the sin of debt. He points fingers at me, shouts accusations, forsakes me.

2000: Compressed by a mammogram, my breasts and neck flinch. The x-ray room haunts me with specters. The radiologist’s features seem an apparition; he nudges me with suggestions of surgery: general anesthesia and the knife. And sprinkles cold water on other choices. Cancer, death’s fingers, he flutters before my eyes. Repulsed by this spook show, I shove it aside.

The snows thaw.

A pain lingers in my breast. Could she conspire with doctors to induce cancer?

Impossible. My breast compresses again. Another radiologist. . .another time. ..A routine bother pervades the room; the recommendation is a needle biopsy: the diagnosis turns out positive.

Cancer, death’s fingers, grip my throat.

He never married that woman, though she paraded with him many years, and I think he took a crack at getting rid of her; then. . . a week later, bullets (2000) shattered my window.

The hospital slated me for surgery. The walls of my room, the I.V. in my arm, echoed images of my existence, my departure. . . Whispers hushed from outside my door, heads glimpsed into my room, but vanished. . .when my friend came to me. He rested his head on my lap. . .and through my sheets, I felt his tears.

“Tomorrow’s my operation.”

He wandered to the window.

“I want to marry you.”

I laughed. “What will your girlfriend think?”

“I’ve always hated her.”

“What did you say?”

His eyes drifted. “Are you afraid you’ll die?”

“I’ve thought about it. . .” Would he make it if I died?

“I arranged for you to have a single room.” His gaze locked on mine. “Everything about me. . .and her. . .was — and is — a big lie — I’ve wanted to marry you for eight years.”

“What did you say?”

“She forced herself on me and I told myself it was alright, because I protected you by keeping her.” His eyes leaked anguish. “If I tried to expose her, she’d harm you. So I hired a lawyer to protect you. It was useless. She wanted you to think I’d betrayed you, so you’d despise me — and kick me out of your life.” He crunched a fist. His eyes searched mine, they shadowed and unsettled. “Whenever I dreamed of intimacy, it was you. . .always. . .you.” Over his face flickered a twitch. “She tried to seduce a friend of mine, I still kept her.” His shoulders slumped and his face limped. “She insisted on attending public events with me, I played her game. If I wanted to help you with money, she threatened to tell your husband that we had sex. I couldn’t let your husband know about us, because then I wouldn’t be able to check on you. I was horrified what she’d do to you, if I couldn’t keep you.”

“She could have said we had sex anyway, no matter what you did.”

“I told her if she did that and your husband dumped you, I’d marry you. But. . .I couldn’t give you the money you needed. I know they bankrupted you — God knows, I wanted to help. . .but it would make you look like my whore.” He chuckled. “It would have been a mess. I mean — your husband –“

2001: “But after my husband left, you should have helped me more. . .”

“She told me she’d tell your husband that I caused all the damage your family received. If I didn’t keep her, she’d harm you. I played her game. But she double-crossed me. She still harmed you. I’m so sorry. . .Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” A quiver staggered over his mouth.

“The photos you saw in the papers. On the Internet. They were (photoshop) frauds. She changed our expressions. She pasted heads on bodies. It was all fake. . .”

A fog lifted from me, but a monster towered over my body and the ceiling glowered.

“Oh, my God. . .”

This woman (Loree McBride). . .whose eyes lacked astuteness, schemed labyrinths. This adolescent, this peacock — at a prom.

Hadn’t I, nine years ago (1990-1991), invited him to expose corruption of a Church? Did their labyrinth ferret me out; and then, weasel like snakes to crush me?

I plunged into darkness.

When I’d researched for my book, I discovered evidence that with presidents and prime ministers, a Church (Roman Catholic Church) conspired; and like Machiavelli, these hucksters retreated before nothing to wield a path to dictatorship. Behind the scenes, they’d financed and supported Adolph Hitler and his war machine. These creeps, these butchers. . .corrupted doctors, lawyers, police departments, schools, employers, preachers, and the world, to crush me. They knew I could influence my friend, who hovered over me, and who might sway the masses against them. My friend, a sitting duck, had fallen into their contrivances. Publicity — bad press, obsessed them.

She’d peacock as a girlfriend, but struggle as a publicist — for them, a guardian at the gate, to avert any bad press this Church could sustain — from the scandal. A publicist. A distractor. To veil the real enemy: the richest Church in the world. They commissioned that woman, who strong-armed her way into my friend’s life: to break us up.

Why couldn’t I understand? Rocks had blinded me to the truth — the truth, that he loved me like the sun, that he kept her, for me; my eyes became rivers; tears came, oh, tears came. All those years (1996 to 1999) he needed my warmth. Oh, the coldness I tumbled to him — and I’d banished him from my dreams (1996 to 1999). He suffered a truce with her (1992 to 2018), for me.

Dec. 1999: “I asked you to expose that Church. Nine years ago. Remember? You’re famous and I know too much and she doesn’t seem smart enough to scheme these brilliant plots. You see, that’s why, when you cage her, I’m still harassed, because you can’t cage the one who directs her — that Church. That Church. They think that because of me, you’ll give them bad press. That’s why they hired a publicist to be your girlfriend.”

His features paled. “My God. . .”

“Please forgive me. I had no idea what you’ve gone through.”

“My God. . .” His fingers crunched through his hair. “My God. . .”

“You love me. You poor guy — you love me.”

Like an apparition, he stumbled to a chair.

“My God — A When he bolted to face me, fire leaped from his eyes. He slunk toward me.

His head drifted to my lap.

My bowels ached for him. I yearned to assuage him. . .to comfort him.

He laid beside me, smoothed fingers through my hair, and kissed it. His voice sighed in my ear. “You’re gorgeous.”

“Are we alone?”

On my forehead, his lips smothered my skin. “Of course.”

“We’re really alone?

“Of course.”

“But what about the I.V.?”

“If it bothers you, let me know.” Around me, swooned his arms, and over my face, flooded his mouth. “Is it alright?”

“Please. . .don’t stop.” My pain thawed. . .into my pillow.

A haven that healed my fears were his kisses. Flames were his embraces. I needed to love him, to nurse his wounds. Dreams floated about me and, on me, he abandoned himself.

Over me, waves blew. My heartaches smoothed, my pain eased, because of the feel of his skin; with tenderness, the bed burst. For years, I thought it only a dream to have with him: intimacy. But against me now, his skin was warm.
He smiled and clung to me, swirled my heartstrings; and swayed me like a baby on a lake which cradled; my eyes were relished by his kisses. Sweetness and tears reared me to oblivion — and I drowned.

“You’re so gorgeous,” he whispered.

1990 to now: “Oh God. . . I love you.”

The words lingered.

In the morning, my ears perked to the creaking of wheels, and walls slid by me.

Oblivious to the I.V., I drifted. Today’s operation seemed a blur. I dreamed sunbeams; joy hovered above sadness and waltzed through my bed. The walls slid by — a symphony, because tomorrow. . .my eyes would awaken to his presence.
Morning. . .sunbeams. . .on my windowsill. . .sunbeams. I recollected this room. . .heads which glimpsed through the door and whispers in the corridor. . .then, his eyes shadowed me and glanced down at a ring with a jewel which shimmered with emerald sparkles.

“I know I should have bought you a diamond, but an emerald is your soul.”

I ached to kiss him, but overwhelmed with weakness, I couldn’t rise; but his lips found mine and lingered. . .
“You never quit on me,” I said. “You’re so brave.”

A month later, I visited the doctor and a drift of isopropyl alcohol sifted through my nose: “Your cancer’s gone.”
My heart swelled. We married under a (Jewish) canopy. Yes, an entrance. . .A beginning. . .

The tabloids blasted me: Star (Brent Spiner) betrays girlfriend (Loree McBride) and goes off with fan (Gail Chord Schuler).

Pain. . .and music. . .and flowers. . .Yes — pain could be a symphony and walls, trees, and flowers could sing for me. . .it was time to heal. . .

2018: Maybe our love will expose their treachery and maybe it will help save our nation. My friend, who once dragged in torment, can pounce like a lion. . .his eyes no longer stare, but sometimes. . . they soar. . .so. . .how can I stay sad. . .when I have a man who loves me like the sun? Each day his love enshrines me. And he — who I banished from my dreams, has claimed, his emerald tower.
 




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