I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway (19 page)

My mouth is starting to get stubble-burned when Kenny stops kissing me and checks his watch. “What time is it? I’ve got to get you home.”

“It’s okay. I’m fine.”

“Don’t you still live with your parents?” He’s very thoughtful. But obviously his idea of parents and my idea of parents are two totally different ideas.

“It’s not like that,” I reassure him. “I can come home anytime I want.”

It’s 3:52 in the morning. “Okay,” he says, sliding out of the booth. “We’ll stop off at my house for a quick nap and then I’ll take you home. How does that sound?”

It sounds like he’s opening the door to having sex with me. But I don’t say that. That would make me sound young and silly.

And I want him to think I’m nineteen.

I WAS HOPING SCOTT
would just die a natural death, but it’s turning out that a natural death is just as painful as an unnatural one. At least for him. I’m in college now, having the time of my life.

I’m going to St. Cloud State University, widely known as the biggest party school in the state, but that’s not why I’m here. I chose it because it accepted me. And it’s cheap. If the state of Minnesota didn’t make it so easy—no letters of recommendation necessary, no personal essay, and it’s not very competitive—I wouldn’t be here.

So far my studies are going well. It turns out I am much better at college than I ever was at high school. I am getting all A’s! This is a miracle, seeing as how I drink a lot of gin and sours. Like, every night. Unless it’s not a miracle and the gin and sours are
responsible
for my new, improved academic performance. Actually, that sounds more like it.

Anyway, everything is great except for Scott, who is gasping for breath, though he doesn’t seem to know it. I just don’t have the courage to break up with him. I know that he will not take it well. It’s not that he will yell at me or cry, it’s that I will feel responsible for giving him pain and I really, really don’t want to inflict pain on anyone. It seems easier to just let circumstances do the dirty work for me—just go off to college and let the relationship drift away.

Unfortunately, Scott’s not allowing that to happen. The phone rings in my dorm room every night, and it’s him, calling to make sure I’m still in a relationship with him.

“How’s my Trace-Face?” he coos. Trace-Face is his nickname for me. It’s a sweet nickname. Much better than Stack-Millan. But hearing it makes me feel bad. Guilty. Scott really does love me. How do you leave someone who really, truly loves you just because someone better came along?

“I’m fine,” I say. There are six boys and girls in my dorm room playing Quarters. With gin. “How are
you
?”

“I’m okay.” He sounds needy. He wants something from me that we both know I can never give him. “Good news! I’m coming to see you.”

“This weekend?”
There go my plans for Saturday night.

“Tomorrow!” He thinks this is a wonderful surprise. I think it is a bummer. “I have the next two days off from work.”

Scott has this crazy job where he sprays pesticides on people’s lawns to kill crabgrass. This being Minnesota, business drops off substantially come September. When it snows. (Just kidding. It won’t snow until Halloween. Though I hear global warming is changing all that.) “
And
your birthday’s almost here.”

It’s true. My birthday is really soon.

I wave the party out of my room, since it’s obvious Scott’s going to need more extensive servicing tonight. The boys and girls reluctantly get up, en masse, and head to Heather’s place, two doors down. I mouth the words
I’ll be there in a minute
and shut the door behind them. I’m sad to see them go. We were having such fun.

“I thought I could drive up and give you your birthday gift in person,” he says.

Ugh.
“You don’t have to do that!” I’m hoping I sound thoughtful, like I don’t want Scott to go to all the trouble. Not uninviting, like I would dread his visit.

“No, I want to. I have something special for you,” he says. “You’re going to love it.”

Probably not,
I think to myself. Whatever it is, it will make me feel worse than I already do.

The next day Scott shows up on my doorstep with his own stereo, a very fancy (for the early eighties) Technics setup that includes a turntable, cassette deck, radio/tuner thingy, and speakers. I am…pleased. And guilty.

“Oh my god. It’s great.” I try to sound excited, but in my heart I’ve already written him a dear-John letter and mailed it—by Pony Express. It’s just going to take a few weeks to get there.

That night I have mercy sex with Scott, in the bottom bunk of the bed I share with my roommate Penny, a farm girl–slash–homecoming queen whose feathered-hair game is seriously world-class. Penny is staying with her boyfriend tonight, so she is spared the pain of listening to a long-term teenage relationship in its death throes.

It’s the last time Scott and I will be together, and as usual, it kind of sucks.

On my eighteenth birthday, I come home from class to find a bouquet of flowers on the doorstep of my dorm room. Pink roses. The card says:
Happy Birthday!
It is signed,
Kenny
.

I can’t believe it. I haven’t heard from Kenny since the second weekend in August, before I came to St. Cloud. I thought it was over. We had that one cool night where we made out in his bed as the sun came up. But since then, we’d both had major life changes—he returned to school, and I started college. I thought he’d forgotten about me. But apparently not.

It’s official now. Scott is toast.

Not because I don’t love him, I do, in this one way. But I’ve always suspected I could do better—not in terms of looks or money; I don’t seriously care about those things. But in terms of being with someone who is more interesting, more challenging, and who is going more in the direction I see myself going in life—a better overall match. The flowers are proof positive that I can.

Actually, they’re proof that I already have.

I WAIT FOUR MINUTES
before confronting Paul about the movie ticket. I pick up the ticket stub and, still in character, pretend like a thought just occurred to me. “Wait a minute. This ticket says May seventh. Isn’t that when you were out of town visiting your son?”

I watch Paul’s face carefully. It betrays
nothing,
which should scare the bejesus out of me, but it doesn’t. Probably because I’m a hunter right now, closing in on a big ol’ moose.

“Hmm. I don’t remember.” He shrugs.

No way am I letting him off. “Yeah! I remember it now,” I say, not breaking character. “You called me on Sunday morning. It was Mother’s Day. That was the eighth. And you said you got home late
the night before. Wait. I can show you.” I lean over and start rummaging through my purse. “I have my calendar right here.”

I can feel tension coming from Paul’s direction, but I don’t stop. There is a small part of me, the part of me that is always observing myself, that can’t believe I am putting the screws to him like this. I know myself as a person who doesn’t have the balls to confront people directly in this way. It’s pretty much the entire reason I’ve spent my TV news career behind the scenes rather than sticking microphones into people’s faces.

I produce my date book, a ratty old thing I got at Sav-On. “Right. See here? The seventh was a Saturday. I have it marked down—Paul returns, Sunday the eighth.”

I turn my full face toward him. I wait for a response. He’s staring straight ahead, at the road. I can see his chest heaving up and down. He knows he’s caught.

“Are you sure? Huh. Well, I must have made a mistake.” He’s giving me one last chance to back off forever and allow things to go back to “normal.” Whatever that is.

I’m not taking it.

“It’s not a mistake,” I insist. “It says right here—”

He cuts me off. “Okay.” His voice is taut, metallic. He takes a big breath. The decision to tell the truth ripples across the muscles in his face. “I lied.”

I’m kind of surprised he just admitted it like this. I guess I expected him to defend himself to the death. Like Yvonne would have. Instead, he flipped. And quick, too. Maybe he’s not so bad after all.

“Oh, Paul.” Now I’m momentarily flooded with this weird compassion for him. I see that he is scared. That this is how he has survived his life. That he grew up in a world where being truthful put you in danger. I get it. I get it. I get it.

I grew up like that, too.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” I say calmly.

He looks at me distrustfully. He doesn’t believe me, but at the
same time, he does. His expression shifts to contrite. “I’m sorry. It’s just that when I come back from seeing my kid, I have to spend a couple of days decompressing. It just affects me so much.”

This should raise a red flag—and it does. But I’m so eager to forgive him, it’s a red flag only about the size of one you might find floating in an overpriced fruity cocktail at TGI Friday’s. So instead of continuing my interrogation, I forgive him.

“It’s okay,” I say. For some reason, I feel more concern for him than I do worry for myself.

“I just can’t deal with people.” He looks stricken. “I’m sorry.” His eyes are sad. He sincerely feels terrible.

“You can tell me anything, you know,” I offer.

“I know,” he says.

We look at each other. He has an expression of gratitude on his face—that I’m going to let him off the hook. That I’m not going to leave because he was just doing what comes naturally to him.
It doesn’t mean I don’t love you,
his eyes say.

Which, weirdly, I know.

It doesn’t feel crazy to just go to the restaurant and eat coq au vin and profiteroles and let something that happened two months ago just be in the past. Because I’m hell-bent on healing.

Remember?

I GET DRUNK ON THE PLANE.
There is some kind of delay taking off—we sit parked for an hour on the runway—and to make up for it, the airline offers us free drinks all the way to Minneapolis. So, I drink. And smoke—Benson and Hedges Menthol Light 100s. It’s only a two-and-a-half-hour flight, but I nevertheless manage to make a pretty good-size dent in my liver. I’m twenty-two, though, so no worries. I’m still immortal.

My dad meets me at the airport. This is our second or third visit since getting back in touch a couple of years ago. That’s when I, bored with my life as a teenage housewife, called him one day, pretty much on a whim. I just dialed his number, and he answered! I think I was more startled to hear his voice than he was to hear mine. But after two seconds, it was like we’d been playing Crazy Eights at Leavenworth just yesterday.

We’ve never talked too much about the years in between. About how Yvonne finally kicked me out for good (though she says I “left”) after my freshman year at St. Cloud, and how I couch-surfed all summer at Betsy’s and Dianne’s (special thanks to their moms, Bev and Lois—lifesavers), and worked three jobs to save enough money to move into a little two-bedroom with this really troubled girl
whose boyfriend ended up getting shot by a guy outside a club (he lived). Or about how I got pregnant on my nineteenth birthday, had an abortion, fell into a depression, dropped out of college, started smoking pot all day long, and only got out of it when Kenny got his big job in San Francisco and I begged, I mean down-on-my-knees
begged,
him to take me along. Or even how I married Kenny later that year in a ceremony on a yacht sailing around San Francisco Bay, wearing a satin dove-gray vintage dress with pearl-pink shoes, and how at the end of the cruise I said to a guest, “Well, it’s all over,” and she shocked me by replying, “No, dear, it’s just
begun
!” and how that’s when I knew that the marriage would probably fail. Or how a year after that, Kenny’s job transferred him to Salt Lake City, of all places, which is how I ended up in Utah.

My dad doesn’t say a lot about those years either, though he did tell me how he’d spotted me a couple of times downtown when he was still driving a taxi, so at least he didn’t have to worry that I was dead. I didn’t mention it, but I had seen him, too. One time I got on the Grand Avenue bus at Thirty-eighth Street, and out of the corner of my eye I saw him sitting near the very back. It was during my New Wave phase, and I had on black velvet capri pants and white majorette boots. I remember being a little distressed that my dad was going to think of me as the kind of girl who wears white majorette boots around town. I slipped into the first open seat, a blistering heat rising in my face, pretending I hadn’t seen him and hoping he hadn’t seen me. I mean, what was I going to do? Have a big dumb reunion with my dad whom I haven’t seen or talked to in four years
on the bus
?!

Right.

But these days, we’re quite chummy. Not to sound weird, but being a daughter to Freddie is an awful lot like being a girlfriend to any other guy. You laugh, and swear, and talk about life and love and relationships. It wasn’t hard to get used to Freddie being back in my life, because not that much really changed. We talk on the phone and
visit once or twice a year, just like we always have. Except now when we visit, there are no guards.

On this trip, I am traveling alone, and the plan is for me to stay at his house not far from the University of Minnesota. Usually I come to Minneapolis with Kenny and stay with his parents or his brother. But marriage has been feeling especially confining lately, and Kenny and I both decided a trip alone might alleviate my boredom and do me some good.

“Hey, little gyurl!” My dad gives me one of those giant hugs he does. Then he puts his hands on my shoulders and holds me away from him, so he can get a better look at me. As usual, he notices
everything,
and he feels free to coach me if he thinks he can bring my game up some. His favorite pointers regard my posture and my outfit. This time I pass the preliminary round and head straight for the semifinals. “Lookin’ good,” he compliments me. “I like those pants you got on.”

“Thanks!” I’m all smiles. I want approval, so I’m glad he’s giving it.

Besides, I’ve learned my lessons well. If you want to make it as a pimp’s daughter, you
must
know how to dress. It is imperative to develop a personal style that gets you admiration and—even more important—envy. A cute outfit every day of the week is essential. And that includes smart and/or whimsical accessories. You will never catch the female offspring of a pimp dashing out to the grocery store wearing sweatpants, no makeup, and a pair of Ugg boots. Uh-uh. We are held to a
higher standard.
It’s part of the legacy. The downside is that you never
really
feel that you measure up underneath the clothes, underneath the skin. The upside is that your dad likes to shop as much as you do.

We jump into Freddie’s two-door Mercedes sedan and head north on 35W, past Fort Snelling. Off in the distance I can see the big red-and-white-checkered water tower I tried to climb when I was twelve. I was never much for taking stupid physical risks, preferring the more calculated kind that I’d get from a new drug, or venturing off to a new
part of town, or meeting a prospective new boyfriend. But I guess the screwdrivers must have had an effect on me, because out of nowhere I hear myself ask Freddie, “Where does Linda live these days?”

That’s right, Linda, my birth mother—whom I last laid eyes on the day she came to Yvonne’s to sign the adoption papers that would essentially
give me up
to her chief rival for my dad’s love. The image in my mind is of Linda, kind of heavy-set and undecorated (these were her lesbian years), sitting in the sunroom, talking rationally with Yvonne, as I watched from two rooms away. She didn’t feel at all like my mother. I don’t even remember saying good-bye.

“Linda?” My dad always says her name with a fondness, like he’s reliving what it feels like to be young and in love. He was still (relatively) innocent when they met. He hadn’t even been to prison yet. “Last I heard she was living over on the north side. She calls me sometimes. I give her money. She’s good right now, I think.”

“Good right now” means sober. Linda’s life has two channels: “drinking” and “not drinking.” When she’s sober, she’s a halfway decent welfare mom. When she drinks, she gives her children away. I am aware that she and my dad have maintained some type of loose contact with each other. Since he’s been out of prison he has turned into something like an uncle to three of her four remaining children, all of whom carry the McMillan last name, for no apparent reason other than because Linda uses it; it’s the one name they all have in common. But until this very moment, it has never occurred to me to want to see her.

“You want to see Linda?” my dad asks. “I know where she lives.”

Maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s just time, but suddenly I am ready. “Yeah,” I say. “Let’s go see her.”

I NEVER DO FIND OUT
exactly what happened during Paul’s lost weekend. But my “decision” to love him despite his lie has an interesting effect on our relationship. We are closer than ever.

It makes sense, if you think about it. Now we are truly joined in an unspoken, powerful agreement, a covenant. We are both putting the relationship above something—anything, everything—even the truth.

It’s not just me. It’s him, too. Because if he didn’t value me, value the relationship, he wouldn’t even bother to lie. He’d just say what he did and let me leave if I wanted to. But he doesn’t want me to leave. Won’t allow me to leave.

We’re bonded together now.

Paul wants us to move in. He kind of backed into the discussion today, as he was packing for a two-week trip to Chicago, and I was getting ready to go pick up my son from school.

“I’m thinking of painting this room,” he says. “Green.” He kisses me deeply. “What do you think of green?”

“I like green.” I’m always very agreeable with Paul. Where I used to be wildly argumentative with men (like with Scott, or my dad, or Kenny), now I’m much more subdued. You know how in the gay world there are tops and bottoms? Well, I used to be a top, and then I met Paul.

“Are you sure? I want you to like it.” This is one of those times when Paul sounds very vulnerable. It makes me love him. “It’s really important that you like it.”

“Green is fine. Really. Do what you like, I’m sure I’ll love it.” He’s getting at something, and I think I know what, but I don’t want to be the first one to say it.

“Do you think Sam would like it?” Sam is my seven-year-old son. It always warms my heart to hear Paul mention his name. Somewhere deep inside, it triggers the hope that I could be the mother in a family unit.

“Yeah. He loves green.” I smile quizzically. Wow, is this going where I think it’s going? I don’t want to get my hopes up, but then again, I already know.

He kisses me again. It’s another one of those moments where I feel so connected to him. “I want you guys to move in.”

He looks at me. He really means it.

“Really?” I smile bashfully. My heart is just wide, wide open. It’s hard to believe that the person I want—this person I love like I’ve never loved any man before—actually wants me in return. “Wow.” And he cares about Sam, too.

“Do you want to?” he asks.

“Yeah, I want to!”

We kiss. We gaze. I can feel the heat starting.

“So, you will?”

“I will,” I say. “I totally will.”

It is decided that when Paul gets back from Chicago, we will make it official. In the meantime, I will house-sit while he’s gone, taking care of the dog and living in this place that’s not only beautiful but has central air-conditioning.

I love my new life.

FREDDIE PARKS IN FRONT
of a large rental property in a tough African-American neighborhood. I feel out of place—I’ve always had some sort of invisible sign on my forehead that says
MY MOM IS WHITE, MY FRIENDS ARE WHITE, AND EVERY GUY I’VE EVER KISSED IS WHITE
—and I look out of place, too, enough that an older lady next door offers assistance, asking, “Can I help you?” She’s not being nosy, she can just tell I’m not from around here.

My dad answers for me. “We’re looking for Linda?”

“Linda? Oh, she moved,” the lady offers. “She’s over on Knox, I think. Somewhere over there.” She waves her hand in the general direction of Knox Avenue.

“Why, thank you,” my dad replies, pouring on his customary oozy charm. “This is Linda’s daughter. Tracy.” He gestures toward me. I’ve never been introduced as Linda’s daughter before. “Linda’s oldest.”

“You don’t say?” She has that black-lady sass, but not over-the-top like you hear on TV. It’s more like the language equivalent of a creative color combination or a unique hairdo. “Well, good luck,”
the lady says, and she means it. Minnesotans are seriously the nicest people. Even in the tough neighborhoods.

We get back in the car and stop at a pay phone outside of a Qwik Mart. I call directory assistance and ask the operator for a listing for Linda McMillan. She gives me one. Just like that. It’s a bit disconcerting to discover that one of my life’s central mysteries and core losses could have been (re)solved by calling directory assistance. It’s like,
I could have had a V8!
Except in my case, I could have had a mom. Not to be maudlin.

I fish the dime out of the coin return and drop it back into the slot. I dial. It rings. This whole thing is unfolding so smoothly, it’s happening before I can even get an opinion about it. Then she answers. My heart stops. It’s really her.

“Is this Linda?” Wrong thing to say. She’ll probably think I’m a bill collector.

“Oh, my god, baby! How are you?”

Wait, she just sounded like she recognized me. Is that possible? “It’s Tracy,” I say. She’s probably mistaken me for someone else.

“I know, baby. How
are
you?” Her tone is one of concern, like I just ran a very long race or maybe got into a minor, but still unsettling, car accident.

“You really know it’s me?” I can’t get over this.

“Of course! Oh, baby, I’ve missed you so much.” I’m struck by her voice. It’s kind of raspy, and even though she’s only said, like, six words, there’s a clarity to her, an intelligence that I recognize. As my own. “And your sisters, they miss you, too.”

Um, now she’s weirding me out. But I pretend I’m cool. “Hey, my dad and I are at the Quik Mart on…” I look up to see where we are. “I don’t know, somewhere near you—”

“Come on over!” She says it way too fast. I’m not ready.

She rattles off the address. There’s something slightly unstable in her voice. You know when you can tell over the phone that someone’s just a little crazy? That’s how she sounds. Too much familiar. Not
enough wary. And what’s with saying my sisters miss me? I don’t even
know
these people.

One time, when I was thirteen, Linda called me, drunk, and told me she loved me, and missed me, and that I had a sister, “who loves you, too,” she said. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now it’s making a little more sense. Linda’s been thinking I’m still part of her family all this time! Even though I was living with some other mom in some other part of town.

Linda’s clearly delusional.

WE PULL UP OUTSIDE
the house about two minutes later. There are three kids with their faces pressed up against the screen door, filled with expectation. You can tell from their expressions that I am not a stranger to them like they are to me. As my dad and I get out of the car and walk toward the door, they bound outside and crowd around us. I am thinking this must be what it feels like to be Tom Cruise. On vacation in a developing country. I am also starting to sober up really fast.

We walk into the house, the lower unit of one of those big old Minneapolis duplexes built in the 1920s. Inside it’s way tidier than I would have expected—apparently this is the difference between Sober Linda and Drinking Linda. Sober Linda seems to be an okay gal.