I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway (12 page)

But this situation is different. Paul had called me so many times, and I had felt
such
a connection to him. I decide to break my rule. Just this once. I think long and hard before I pick up the phone. To clarify my intentions. Am I trying to get him to change his mind, to
see how wonderful I am, to realize that he really wants to fall in love with me? No, I’m calling to act as if I am a girl you cannot just never call again—she’ll think you got hit by a truck or something.

This is new for me. Usually, I think it’s perfectly normal for someone to be your brand-new boyfriend one day and then fall off the face of the planet the next.
People change their minds about stuff all the time,
my warped thinking goes,
like deciding they don’t want to be your mom anymore
.

Paul picks up the phone after one ring.

“Hello, hello?” Singsongy. Like nothing’s at all the matter.

“Hey, it’s Tracy.”

Comic book noises. Lame excuse along the lines of
I know I haven’t called
. Then: “I’m at the doctor’s office.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. This is embarrassing, but…I have a boil. On my leg.”

“Oh,” I say.

That’s weird. First that you have a boil. Second that it’s your conversation opener. When you haven’t called me in six days. After leaving me with one of the most soulful kisses of my life and saying,
Have a sweet, sweet day.

“How’ve you been?” he says.

Does he really want to know how I’ve been? Is he really asking me this? Like everything’s normal?

“Good. I was wondering if you were okay.” I pull over into the parking lot of Astroburger. Although I thought I would be more relaxed if I had the conversation while driving, this is taking more processor speed than I thought it would and I am unable to steer, accelerate, work the blinkers, and talk all at the same time.

“I’m good. I’ve been, uh, really busy,” he says. Of course he has. That’s what all guys who never call you again are: really, really busy.

“Oh. Okay.” There you have it. There is nothing more to say. Why did I call this guy again? So much for my selfish exercise in contrary action. Good job wanting to practice acting like a girl who expects
a man to love her. I’m totally a fool, and one who has read way too many self-help books, at that.

I’m about ready to hang up when Paul blurts out, “I just don’t think we had any, uh, chemistry.”

What?!
This is terrible. The only thing worse than this would be if I slept with him, then ran into him at the grocery store the next day canoodling with another woman over a cart full of wine, and pasta, and very expensive olive oil.

Because “chemistry” is a code word for sexy. He rejected me because I wasn’t sexy enough.

I knew it.

My heart starts beating. Here comes the team of wild puppets. Anxiety and shame wash over me.

I knew it!
This is why I always get rejected by the men I really want. Because I’m not enough. There’s always some girl/object just a little bit shinier, just a little bit juicier, who promises just a little bit more of a thrill. It’s the same girl Freddie wants. The one they all want. And that girl isn’t talking about “getting attached.” She’s going for it. Why can’t I be that girl?

But then I remember what Siobhan said.
You have to act like you personally invited every single person, place, or thing into your life
—and I imagine myself holding a gun to Paul’s head—
so that you could see whatever part of the illusion it’s showing to you.
I struggle for a good thirty seconds to reconcile what Paul is telling me with the intensity of the time we spent together.
Could anybody fake that? Could they?!
Suddenly, I’m reminded of that old line “Who are you gonna believe, me
or
your own eyes?”

I felt your chemistry on my frackin’ thigh, dude.

I’m going to believe my own eyes. I was there. I know what happened! It may sound elementary, but giving myself the authority to name my own truth
the
Truth is a quantum leap in evolution for me. It’s like someone just installed a thousand megs of RAM in my brain, the cursor has stopped spinning, and pages are loading at lightning
speed. I throw the transmission into “drive” and tear out of the parking lot headed for the 2 freeway.

Paul talks for the next four minutes straight—about how he had some initial concern over the exact nature of our chemistry, being sure that it included friendship but unsure if it went beyond that, and how he thought if he dated me at all he would probably have to marry me, and how he was “a silly goose” for not calling.

I listen.

To his contradictions and his paradoxes. To what he’s saying and what he’s not saying. But I have so much clarity about it—I may not know
why
he thinks we have no chemistry, but I do know it’s absolutely not true. And I can also accept that to his mind, for the time being at least, it is. And I can let that difference in perception just
be
.

As I merge onto 134 East, this calm comes over me. And I hear myself do something I have never, in two-plus decades of dating, ever done.
I let him go
. Without anger, explanation, questions, or blame. Gracefully.

“Oh.” I take a breath. “I understand,” I say, and I really do. I understand that we each have a different truth and both are valid. I don’t need to talk him into mine, because his version doesn’t mean anything about me. It’s just…his version. And that’s it.

So now I’m all finished. Ready to hang up the phone. I tell him how nice it has been to meet him, how much I enjoyed our time together. “I wish all the very best things for you, Paul,” I say. “It was lovely to meet you.” I mean it, sincerely. “This is a small town. I’m sure I’ll see you around sometime. Probably when I least expect it!” I’m light and playful.

There is stone silence on the other end of the line.

In the silence, I become acutely aware that this man has probably brushed off dozens of women in this exact manner, with this very line—
I just don’t think we had chemistry
—and it’s likely that not one of them responded by wishing him all the very best things.

“Okay,” I say. Now it’s me who’s singsongy. “Take care,” I finish. “Bye.”

“Bye,” he says, confused. “Bye-bye.” He sounds like a little boy.

It’s kind of hard to take the phone down from my ear and hang up. It feels like I’m letting go of the one man I’ve been looking for my whole life. But the second I do, this weird thought pops into my head:

That
is who I really am.

EVER SINCE I SAW THE BALLOONS,
I’ve been lying awake at night, listening for my dad to come home. And when he doesn’t, which is often, my mind can’t stop obsessing over and over about a single thought:

My dad’s in jail
.

I’m not exactly sure where I got this idea. Probably in the ether, where the collective unconscious of a household hovers disintegrated, weightless, and unseen. Eventually it is absorbed by the people who live there and is metabolized as fears, hopes, dreams, weight gain, headaches. Or maybe it’s simpler than that—maybe it would have been obvious to anyone that my dad was on his way back to the penitentiary. I didn’t have to be smarter than a fifth grader to suspect that.

In any case, it comes as no surprise, really, when one day Mrs. Turner, who lives on the corner of our block, knocks on our door to inquire about the article in the
Minneapolis Star
detailing my dad’s arrest.

Yvonne opens the door. There stands Mrs. Turner in the small enclosed porch. She is not holding a casserole.

“Oh, hello.” Forced smile. “I’m Susan Turner; my son Ronald goes to school with Tracy?”

Ronald is notable for his horn-rimmed glasses and not much else. (Not to disparage Ronald. For all I know he’s an appellate court judge or something equally respectable by now.)

“Yes?” Yvonne isn’t going to give this woman anything to work with.

“I saw the article,” Mrs. Turner offers, hoping Yvonne will want to assuage her guilt for bringing ruin to the neighborhood by coughing up information without having to be asked directly. “In the newspaper?”

Mrs. Turner clearly has never met Yvonne. Because if she had, she would know that Yvonne has a special flat, dark gaze that is mostly awful but perfect for a situation like this one. And she doesn’t hesitate to use it.

“Hmm,” Yvonne replies. “I don’t remember Tracy mentioning your son. What’s his name?”

“Yes, well, she probably hasn’t.” Mrs. Turner is getting a little fidgety. Yvonne’s gaze will do that to a sister. “His name is Ronald.”

“Oh. Huh.” Steely blue eyes. “Well, would you like to send Ronald down sometime? To play?” Yvonne can be such a scream when she wants to be.

From the look on Mrs. Turner’s face, she would not like to send Ronald down to play sometime. She stands there in astonished silence.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Susan. I’ve got to run.” Yvonne shuts the door, leaving Mrs. Turner standing out there, wondering what just happened. Once she recovers the chutzpah that got her onto our doorstep in the first place, Mrs. Susan Turner turns and slinks back to her big house around the corner.

That’s the last we ever see of her.

My secret is apparently out, but none of the kids are teasing me about it. In my new school I’m weird to begin with, so it’s not as though my dad’s transgressions are a threat to my social status. I have none to lose. My brand has pretty much become the Girl on Whom Jody Jeffs, the Queen Bee of Mrs. DiVito’s Fourth-Grade Classroom, Proves Her Dominance. Jody does this by ordering her lieutenant, Pamela Vigen, to kick my ass every day. Just a single kick. What long blond hair and supermodel height alone couldn’t do for Jody’s social profile, a single kick to my ass could. Really, I should’ve been honored.

At home, the arrest and the trial are discussed ad infinitum but never openly. Instead, the name of my dad’s lawyer becomes like a mantra—on a continuous loop of every third word in every last conversation.
Eisenberg
this.
Eisenberg
that.
Eisenberg
here.
Eisenberg
there. The name is not so much uttered as it is intoned.
Eisenberg
is being paid a lot of money to defend my dad. And
Eisenberg
will surely come through. Of this, Daddy seems very confident.

During the trial, I go to Betsy’s house after school, while Yvonne sits in court. No one in Betsy’s family (not even her boisterous older brother Randy, on whom I have a secret crush) says anything about why I am there, and I don’t bring it up, either. And when Yvonne gets home from a long day listening to testimony, no one asks her how things are looking for my dad. No one really wants to know the answer.

Anyway, soon it becomes obvious how things are going. Badly. Because one day, it is just me and Yvonne in the house, and the next time I see my dad, I have just left the Cody Hotel.

Turns out not even
Eisenberg
could save him. But I’m sure Mrs. Turner is very relieved.

FIVE-POINT-FIVE WEEKS
after I have my epiphany on the freeway, my phone rings. I just miss the call, but I recognize the number. Sort of. I’m certain I know who it belongs to, I’m just not quite sure from where. And even though I don’t usually do this, I call back the number. Someone picks up on the first ring.

“Hello, hello?”

Oh, shit.
It’s him. That guy Paul.
I can’t believe this. And BTW, what took you so long to call me?

“Hi. You just called me.” I make it a statement, not a question, because even though I already know it’s him, I don’t want him to know that I know. So I pretend I don’t. It’s kind of dishonest, yes, but I’m
not sure why he’s calling, and I’m not willing to give him that kind of power over me. Taking back my power was the
whole point
of my Freeway Epiphany.

“Hee-hee. I did.” He sounds like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I certainly did.”

I smile like I do when we’re all sitting around in TV news and someone asks what is, say, the capital of Bulgaria, and I say Sofia, and the other writers are dubious, but I just sit there while they debate (
Bucharest! Tallin! Bratislava!
), without saying a word. Finally someone will Google it and they look at me and see I’m still smiling that particular smile because I already know I’m right.

I smile like that.

Because I knew he would call me again. Those three days we spent together were probably the most powerful I have ever experienced with a man, and though I know there are times when two people can have wildly divergent perceptions of the same experience, I knew those three days weren’t one of those times. If I had to surmise what happened—and I don’t have to—I would say that Paul wasn’t completely ready for what our connection was going to mean to his life, i.e., that it was going to change it completely. But that’s really not my business.

All I know is I knew he would call me again, even if I didn’t
know
that I knew. Until right now. So it’s easy to be generous and act casual because mostly I’m just enjoying the confirmation that my intuition is excellent. And if that sounds just slightly bitchy and know-it-all-y, I suppose it’s because it is.

“How’ve you been?” I say, but not like a know-it-all.

“Good. I just got done shooting a commercial. In Vancouver.”

“Vancouver? I heard it’s pretty there,” I lob back.

“It’s
bee-yoo-tiful,
” he singsongs in his best Looney Tunes voice before slipping back into his management voice: “I’ll have to take you sometime.”

Here’s what I want to say:
You’ll have to take me sometime? Are you high? You told me we didn’t have any chemistry!
But I don’t say that, because if I do, this conversation will be over. And I don’t want it to be over. It just started. Or restarted. So instead, I say, “What made you call me?” I’m a bit salty. Why pretend he hasn’t called me in 5.5 weeks after a conversation where he in no uncertain terms gave me the brush-off? (Even if it
was
a lie.) My technique for getting straight answers is to ask straight questions.