My Very Best Friend (19 page)

Drew Morgan and I were both working on our master’s degrees in biology. We’d often stay late, work on our research, and then he and I, and whoever else was there, would eat takeout food together. Monday, Chinese, Tuesday, Indian, Wednesday, pizza, Thursday, Italian, Friday, Japanese. We worked together for eighteen months before he asked me out to dinner one night.

Squirming around, nervous, he said, “Charlotte, I would . . . it would be . . . pleasure . . . an I if our my . . . my honor . . .” He cleared his throat. “Me, I would like to take you to dinner, and dessert, if you want dessert, you don’t have to have dessert, um, at Loralee’s on Friday night at sixteen o’clock. I mean, six o’clock. Would you please me? With me.”

And I said, setting down a folder I was writing in and pushing my glasses on top of my head, “Why?”

“Because I want to have dinner with you.”

Drew was tall with thick dark hair and glasses. Our glasses matched almost perfectly. Like me, the glasses made his nose appear more beakish than it was. But behind the glasses his eyes were soft brown. Drew wore the same pea green sweater several days in a row before changing it for a black sweater, which he wore for another three days in a row. He always wore beige pants, which I noticed were different. They were all the same brand, but one was older than the other two, and of the other two, one had cuffs that were slightly frayed.

“Why do you want to have dinner at a restaurant?” I asked him, confused. We had our takeout schedule already, and it was efficient and varied.

He squirmed. “So we can talk.”

“What do you mean?” I was totally not getting it, as I had not been asked out in a long time. Like, in years. “We talk here.”

He fidgeted. “It’s a, well, if you can, want to, um, I, uh, it’s a date, Charlotte. I’m asking you out for a date.”

“A date?” My voice pitched up. “A date? Why do you want to go out on a date?”

“Because I like you.”

That flustered me up. “As a fellow student here, a colleague, so to speak, you like me. You respect my work. You enjoy how we work together on our research and you appreciate my comments and insights into your research. Right?”

“Yes, I like all of that. But I . . . I . . . ,” he stuttered, “I like you, too, Charlotte.”

I puzzled that one out. I liked Drew. He was brilliant. Soft spoken. Gentle. Everyone liked Drew. Not everyone liked me. One, because I was a woman and there were not a lot of other women in the lab back then. When the men were sexist pigs with me, I called them on it and then I did things to take revenge. For example, I published more papers, completed more thorough research, and when necessary called them out on their misogynistic, sexist thinking and verbally twisted their jocks, in public. Gasp! A woman can, and does, fight back!

It didn’t always make me popular. Too bad for the sexist ape-men.

“Okay, Drew. Dinner. I do not eat oysters or clams, because of the slimy texture.”

“I know.”

“I also do not eat sausages.”

“I know.”

And when I go to a restaurant, which is infrequent, I order and eat dessert first. I have a sweet tooth.”

“I know about the sweet tooth, too. That’s why I bring you chocolate cake.”

“I can socialize for perhaps two hours, then I’ll be tired and need to be alone.”

“I understand.”

We went to the restaurant. He paid. I tried to pay, but he refused. I told him, “I can pay for myself.”

He said, “I know you can, Charlotte, but I want to.”

“Then what do you want in return?”

“Nothing, Charlotte.” But his eyes teared up.

“Why are your eyes tearing up?”

“Because I had the best time.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I like talking to you. You’re the only woman I have ever been able to talk to.”

“Oh.”

“And I think you have pretty hair and eyes, too. I’ve never seen you with your glasses off.”

“And I haven’t seen you, either.”

“Let’s take them off.”

“I’ll hardly be able to see you if my glasses are off.”

“I’ll lean closer.”

“This is silly.”

“Try it. We’ll do it together. One, two, three . . .”

We did it. I was surprised. I actually sat back in my chair. “Well. You are extremely handsome, Drew.”

“So are you, Charlotte. I mean”—he coughed, then smiled—“you’re beautiful. Your eyes are so, so green. Do you remember that lab specimen—”

“From the county health department.”

“Yes. Your eyes are like that. That color.”

I was pleased. “Thank you.”

We smiled. I told him I would pay next time and that I did not want to be beholden to him for anything, as I was a feminist and independent.

He said I wasn’t beholden. But he held my hand on the way out the door and in the car. He was polite, opened my car door, walked me to the door of my apartment.

We went out again and again. It was my first serious relationship.

Between Drew, my research, and school, I had no free time to write my novel. I put it aside, as so much is put aside, I have noticed, in women’s lives in favor of a man.

I became the woman I didn’t want to be, a woman who would give up interests and passions for her man, a woman who would start to become not exactly herself anymore, a woman who would spend so much time spun up about a man that she spun off her ambitions and dreams, no matter how crazy, and independence.

That was a bubble-headed woman’s mistake.

My mother said she lost “a million brain cells watching that antifeminist circus.”

Some mistakes in life cannot be undone.

That one, thankfully, could.

Stanley I and Stanley II, and their crew, worked fast. The kitchen cabinets were up, all the window were now in, the trim and wainscoting was nailed up, and the bathrooms were being transformed.

Not only do Stanley I and Stanley II have many talents in terms of home remodeling, they have many interests, too. We talked about herbal versus traditional medicines. Stanley II said that when he is depressed he eats cranberries dipped in butter. Cures it every time. Stanley I said that he had squished daisies and put them on one of his “fungus-ridden” toes and the fungus was killed.

I bought black knobs in the shapes of wineglasses for the kitchen and knobs in the shapes of daisies for the downstairs bathroom towel cupboards and knobs in the shapes of toilets for my bathroom cupboards.

“Right-o. These will be in in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” Stanley I said as I handed them to him in a bag.

“I don’t eat lamb,” Stanley II told me. “They’re too cute to eat.”

“They do have a special smile that’s hard to ignore,” I told him.

“I don’t eat alfalfa sprouts,” Stanley I told me.

“We both eat kidney stew,” they said at the same time.

They had sanded and restained, in the same color, our dining room table, with Scientist Bridget and Scientist Charlotte written inside a heart, the two chairs, and the armoire. They looked infinitely better, not crooked, not tilted, not broken. The dents and scratches, made by generations of Mackintoshes, were still there. The character, the history, was still there.

“Old furniture, solid, special,” Stanley I said, understanding.

“It’s a gift from the people in your past,” Stanley II said.

“Yes. They’re not here, but what they made is still here.” My eyes misted. “Still here.” I ran my hands over the honeysuckle vine carved into the armoire. “My granddad did that for my grandma.”

“The one blessed with the Scottish Second Sight,” Stanley II said.

“She had it, truly,” Stanley I said. “She told my mother that when the crows flew backward and the barn collapsed she would get rid of something very bad.”

“What did she mean by that?”

“Your grandma told my mother, at the time, that she had no idea what it meant. Not a touch of a blue idea, but sure enough there was a whippy windstorm here, howling like the devil gone mad, and it pushed the crows out of the trees. My mother saw them flying backward and then our father died when the barn collapsed.”

“Ouch. That was the bad thing she was going to get rid of?”

“Yep, it was. He was a mean son of a bitch,” Stanley I said. He knocked his knuckles on the armoire, pretty hard.

“Used to beat her and Stanley I,” Stanley II said. “We were eight when he died and we didn’t shed a tear, did we, Stanley?”

“None.”

“God crushes the bad among us sometimes, and he came to Stanley I’s rescue, and his mother’s, and your grandma, she saw it coming wrapped in a mystery.”

“We were poor, but happy after that,” Stanley I said, “And my mother, she later made a success out of our farm, that she did.”

“Crows never flew backward again, to my knowledge,” Stanley II said.

They both shook their heads. “No backward crows,” they said together, as if on cue.

No wonder the Stanleys were two of Toran’s best friends. Kind, strong, honest. That’s the type of person he liked. That’s the type of person he was.

“Where is the information on Brekinridge’s Grocery Stores.... I need to talk to the trucking company . . . this bill is incorrect . . . I’ll double-check on the blueberries, they received one hundred thirty-six kilograms, not two hundred thirty-six . . . billing issue . . .”

I muttered to myself while I worked in the office next door to Toran’s. He was hardly there, always out on the farm.

He had given all books and information to me, some in boxes, some in piles. Ledgers. Receipts. Notes. Notebooks. Invoices.

Thousands of numbers.

I was in number heaven. I pulled on the collar of my shirt. One of my favorites. It had a picture of Julia Child on it. I was wearing one of my two pairs of jeans. Too large, but I had found the perfect rope on my island on the sand to use as a belt.

Toran stuck his head in. “Charlotte.”

“Yes.” I took a pencil out of my mouth. My glasses slid down my nose and I pushed them back up, as visions of accounts, potatoes, blueberries, apples, shipping containers, and boxes danced through my head. And the cost of a new engine for one of Toran’s semis and the cost for an air-conditioner in the cooling unit. I had called Dorian’s Cooling directly, and we had worked out a discounted price. Dorian thought I was a “tough negotiator.” I could tell by the end of our conversation that he was tired.

“How is it going?”

“I believe I am making adequate progress.” I had to smile into his blueberry/Scottish blue sky eyes.

“I’m sorry, Char, that this isn’t more . . .”

I waved a hand. “Think nothing of it. I’m getting things together, categorized, organized, in a general sense, then I’ll begin on the smaller subunits. Next, I’ll analyze and suggest an efficient system of accounting and begin my spreadsheets.”

“You have an accounting degree, too?”

“No. However, I have had statistics, calculus, differential equations, and numerical analysis, so numbers are a joy.”

“So . . . you are joyful now?”

I pushed my hair back. My hand ran into my clip and undid it. I hardly noticed. “I could not be more joyful if I tried.”

“Thank you, Charlotte.”

“It’s my mathematical and numerical pleasure.” I rested my other hand on the rope holding my pants up.

He grinned and headed back out. I swallowed hard. I would find satisfaction in entering all of the numbers from Bridget’s Haven Farms into ledgers and spreadsheets, buying and selling, products and shipping, employee salary and benefit costs, overhead costs, and income.

But what was truly tingling and tantalizingly torturous was being near Toran.

The TorBridgePherLotte fearsome foursome could also time travel. We could go back in time, crawling into the fort we built together then bursting out into the Land of the Monkeys, or the Reign of the O’Shaugnasseys, a dangerous family that kept the village people in quaking fear and poverty. We even popped into the future and saved the world from destruction.

To return home, we scrambled into the fort, put all of our fists together, shouted, “Escape, Clan TorBridgePherLotte, back home!” and ta-da! We were back in the hills of Scotland, sheep everywhere.

When it started to get dark, Bridget and Toran would look at the time, their faces would fall, and Toran would take Bridget’s hand and we would all trudge down the hills, past the sheep, the potatoes Toran’s father grew, the lettuce and strawberries my father grew, and head home.

Pherson would clap Toran on the back to say good-bye. Pherson lived with his parents and three younger sisters, two of them twins who came when, my mother told me, “Pherson’s mother was not expecting babies.” I was about eight at the time, and since his mother was not expecting babies I assumed she did not know that they would be dropped off at her doorstep like milk bottles.

Pherson’s family was loud and friendly, their house in happy chaos. My home was filled with unending love and attention from my parents. As we watched Toran and Bridget leave, I would feel . . . scared. As a small child, that’s what I felt: Fear.

Turns out, I had every reason to feel that way.

It would have been better if Clan TorBridgePherLotte had left Bridget and Toran in the past in a magical land far away from their father’s fanaticism.

October 16, 1971

Dear Charlotte,

Do you remember Father Cruickshank, who I told you about? I told you I didn’t like him. He always wants to see me, always wants to pray with me. He gave me chocolates one time, a game, cards. He’s made me drink wine with him. Told me it was Jesus’s blood and it would bless me.

Two weeks ago he told me to come with him for a special Bible study at his house in the woods to study, so I did what I was told.

When we were there he told me to lift up my skirt and pull down my panties for a thrashing. I told him no and he grabbed my arms and held me tight and said if I didn’t he would tell my father that I had snuck out and had sex with boys in town.

You know my father, Charlotte, and what he would do to me if I was in trouble at school with a priest. Father Cruickshank ripped down my panties and yanked me over his lap and hit me on my bum. It hurt, but then he . . . he . . . he put his finger up me and made me bleed and shoved my head down hard so I couldn’t look up. He told me he was purifying me from sin. That I was too sexy and needed to be purged and this was the only way.