The Girl I Was Before (11 page)

“I told her you were coming to live with us. And there’s something you should know,” he says, finally filling the void. I’m a little thrown by what he says. He already has a daughter, and his wife…she’s…
gone.
I’m not sure what else there could possibly be.

“I maybe sort of, kind of, told her that you…well…” I hear him laugh a little under his breath.

“Jesus! I what?” I say loudly.

“I kind of told her you were Barbie,” he says, letting his laugh take over and spill through the phone.

“Nice,” I say and on instinct lean over the edge of my bed to look into the mirror anchored to the back of my door, I run my fingers through my hair, letting the curls fall from my hand one at a time.
Barbie.

“I’m sorry,” he’s still laughing, but less. “I wanted her to be comfortable with you. New people make her nervous.”

“But she met me. At the store,” I say, standing now and twisting to the side. I’m posing—like
Barbie—
with my right hand to the side, fingers stuck together but my thumb out.

“Yeah, I know. But she might not remember, and she gets a little freaked out…”

“It’s okay,” I interrupt. I don’t want him to feel bad. Now that I’m over the shock, it’s actually sweet that he wants to make his daughter comfortable with me. “I guess I do kind of look like Barbie.”

“Nah, not really. I just panicked,” he says.

A silence settles in again, but this time it feels different, and it makes me smile.

“So…Paige…” I can hear him relax, and there’s something extra in the tone of his voice that makes me bite my lip. My door is still open, so I get up to close it, feeling suddenly protective over this conversation.

“So…Houston,” I mimic his inflection, and he chuckles—that raspy tired laugh I remember from our late-night studying. It’s probably not good that I remember that sound. And it’s
definitely
not good that I’m chewing my fingernail. It’s not good because I’m pretty sure we’re flirting.

“How was your Christmas?” His question is so warm, so genuine; it makes my eyes sting. I’ve been holding on so hard—trying to fight off things hitting me from all directions—this simple question from Houston has me floored.
How was my Christmas?

“It was…” I pause, letting a tear slide down my cheek, but only halfway before I stop it. “It was incredibly uneventful,” I laugh through my cry, mostly so Houston doesn’t sense my sadness.

“Mine too,” he says.

“Oh I don’t know. All day at Aunt…” I wait for him to fill in her name.

“Jody’s,” he says.

“Right, Aunt Jody’s. I bet you spent the day eating homemade things and playing some games and singing around the piano.” I’m basically imagining his Christmas as every single one of my favorite holiday movies.

“Something like that,” he confirms. “How about you? Why was yours so, what did you call it?
Uneventful
.”

“We had sushi,” I say. There really isn’t a need to elaborate; that kind of says it all. My entire winter break has been a series of nothing-days and blank-evenings. My dad worked most of the time; he’s been wrapping up my sister’s assault charge. We exchanged gifts this morning, mostly items we all could have easily bought for ourselves, and then we went our separate directions. It’s too bad I don’t like reading more. I could have filled my lonely hours with that today.

“Sushi’s…
good,”
Houston says, and I hear him fighting against his laughter, finally losing the war. “I’m sorry, I can’t lie. Sushi…for Christmas? I’m sorry, Paige. That’s pretty uneventful.”

“Yep,” I say.

“Well, if you’re living here while there’s some holiday,
any
holiday, I promise you one thing—it won’t be uneventful,” he says. I shut my eyes and imagine what his house must look like, picturing it filled with plates of cookies, holly, and candles. That comfortable lull drapes over our conversation again, and I let myself crawl into bed and pull my blanket up to my chin. I’m strangely more at ease talking with Houston than I am talking with my sister and parents.

Perhaps too relaxed, as I let myself ask Houston one of the millions of deeply personal questions that have been pecking away inside my head since I met his daughter.

“What happened…to Leah’s mom?” The calm in our silence from before gets icier as my question lingers, Houston’s breath heavy enough to be heard through the phone. “I’m sorry. Too…that’s probably too personal.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s something I talk about. We don’t really keep secrets or hide things in my family,” he says. Maybe I’m jaded, but my mind immediately throws up a dozen flares ready to call him on that bullshit statement. It’s not possible for a family to be
that
honest. Everyone has secrets.

“That’s novel,” I say, not really masking my cynicism.

“I guess,” he says, with a sharp laugh. “But…it’s sort of sad that you think that. I don’t
blame
you. Most people do. I guess I mean it’s sad that most people think being honest is strange. I just feel like even the ugliest truth feels a whole lot better than carrying around the weight of lies.”

His argument resonates with me, and even though my instincts are still to reject it, I tuck what he said in the background, on top of that pile in my head of reasons-I-should-respect-Houston.

“In that case, I’d like to hear your story…Leah’s story,” I say, giving in to my natural tendency to charge forward and question, to test his
open-and-honest
policy.

“Bethany moved here her sophomore year,” he begins, and I don’t know why, but hearing her name hurts inside, as if her name instantly makes her more real to me, even though I never met her. “Her parents got divorced, and she wanted to stay with her mom, and since she had family here—”

“Aunt Jody,” I fill in the blank.

“Ha, yes. Aunt Jody, and about a dozen other people,” he chuckles. There’s a longer pause as he breathes again, almost as if he’s gathering breath to save himself from suffocating through the rest of his memories. “Bethany was pretty much the hottest girl ever to step foot in our school. She had this long dark hair, and a body…”

“Uhm okay, you can skip the locker-room talk. I’m a girl, so not really interested in hearing about her body,” I say, not wanting to get the details on Bethany’s ass and tits.

“Haha, right…well, I
noticed
her…pretty fast, almost the minute she finished registering for school. I saw her through the office windows, and waited in the hallway until she exited with her school map and a schedule in her hand,” he says.

“And let me guess, you guided her to her class…and asked her to the prom, and the rest is history,” I say, not really sure why I’m rushing him, or why I’m jealous. I’m jealous;
mother fuck
.

“Uh, no. I walked up to her, and before I could get a single word out, she held up her hand and said ‘Not interested,’” he says. Now I regret dismissing Bethany so quickly; I actually feel kind of proud of her.

“Romantic,” I tease.

“Indeed,” he says. “But I kept trying. I walked up to her every time I saw her, and every single time, she shot me down. When her mom dropped her off in the morning and I saw her outside, I’d ask. When I happened to be behind her in line at lunch, I’d ask. In biology—
every single day—
I’d ask. She always said
no
. I was relentless!” He almost seems proud of his portfolio of rejections. It’s so odd.

“Why not give up?” I ask.

“Because Bethany was the one,” he says. I can’t help it, and I laugh harshly. That whole concept of
the one—
it’s preposterous. And
the one,
when you’re what? Sixteen? Uhm, no. Just…no.

“I know it sounds crazy. And really…at the time, I wasn’t thinking she was
the one
. I just knew there was this really hot chick at school that I couldn’t stop thinking about, and the fact that she didn’t want me was killing me,” he says. “And then one day, she said
yes.”

“Just out of the blue, just like that?” I respond, suddenly hooked on this melodrama from Houston’s past.

“Just like that,” he says, practically holding his breath before letting out another laugh. “Okay, so maybe she had a flat tire in the school parking lot, and no one was around to help…and maybe I said I would if she agreed to dinner.”

“So you extorted her into dating you,” I say, sitting up again in my bed, and smiling. I’ve been smiling through most of this conversation, and it strikes me that I haven’t smiled much since I’ve been home.

“Wow, that sure makes me sound like a creep,” he says.

“If the shoe fits…” I tease.

“Anyhow…” he shrugs off my remark, but his voice is a little more guarded when he continues, and I feel badly that I took things too far. But he’s still sharing, so I admonish myself in my head and vow to be good for the rest of his story. “I had these big plans. I was going to take her to this big fancy restaurant on the top floor of the Marley building downtown. You know…one of those places that has waiters standing behind you the entire time, waiting for you to need
anything.
Only the day I went to pick her up, my shitty-ass car blew up.”

“What, like a battery or something?” I ask.

“No, I mean it literally blew up. Something caught fire in the engine, and the thing was smoking in my parents’ driveway,” he says, chuckling at the memory.

“What’d you do?” I ask, now totally invested in how this ends.

“Like any respectable sixteen-year-old, I got on my bike with a backpack filled with lame-ass picnic food and rode to her house,” he says. “She was dressed in this really nice outfit, and here I was in Dockers and a shirt that I sweat up on my way to her house. It was a truly pathetic display.”

“It sounds sweet,” I say, surprising myself when I hear my voice speak. That…
that
was meant for my thoughts. Houston remains quiet for a few seconds, and I lie back down, rolling my face into my pillow, wishing like hell I had the power to reverse time.

“Thanks,” he says finally, his voice soft. “She…Bethany…she thought it was pretty sweet too. We sat in her front yard, eating crackers and cheese and weird Hostess snacks, and then…she kissed me.”

My smile fades when he says this part, but I force it back on my mouth. I don’t know why; no one can see me. But I shouldn’t be upset hearing about Houston kissing his late…
wife?
This…it shouldn’t upset me, so that smile—it’s staying on my damn face, even if I have to hold it there with my fingers.

“So, when did Leah happen?” I ask, getting to the part I really want to know.

“About six months later,” he says. “We started dating near the end of sophomore year. Junior year I was on the football team. We were pretty good, and every Friday, we’d have these huge parties. There was a lot of drinking, and other…
stuff.”

“So you and Bethany…did some of that
other…stuff?”
I say it like him, amused that he can’t just say
we had unprotected sex and whoops!

“Yeah, pretty much. I mean, we were always really careful, but I was coming off a huge win, and Beth and I were doing shots, and we were at my friend Casey’s house. It was late, and we just got caught up in it,” he says. “About three weeks later, Bethany started throwing up. She tried to keep it from me for the first week, I think because she was afraid to find out for sure. But I could tell something was up. She was really emotional, and she’d get so pissed at me, out of nowhere. She finally got sick in front of me, and she just broke down and started crying. I knew the second she looked at me.”

I’m rapt now. This scenario scared the hell out of me in high school. It’s why I was always in charge, why I was careful about who I gave it up to—why I always have condoms in my purse. The thought of something going
wrong
and me ending up pregnant with Carson’s baby runs through my mind, albeit briefly, and my stomach sours fast.

“Was there ever talk of…of maybe…
not
having Leah?” I ask, biting my lip, hoping I asked that delicately enough. The longer Houston takes to respond, the worse I feel for asking. I’m about to take it back, to tell him it’s none of my business, when he breaks in.

“There was,” he says finally. He doesn’t elaborate, and his tone—it’s flat and emotionless and broken, as if the fact that he ever had that thought at all kills him. After long seconds, I hear him let out a heavy sigh, the kind weighed down by a past made up of nothing but life-altering, complicated decisions. That single admission shows that Houston wasn’t kidding when he said he believed in honesty. That right there—that was honest. And I think it might have been a little painful for him to say aloud, too.

“How did you lose Bethany?” I ask, after rehearsing this question several different ways in my own mind. It’s not like me to be sensitive, but I feel maybe Houston deserves it.

“Drunk driver,” he says. This time his words come fast, and there’s an edge, an angry edge. I’ve gotten the sense that Houston’s wife has been gone for a while, but the way he sounds right now…his voice reacting as if it happened yesterday. I think of all the times Carson drove home from parties drunk. And I think of the times I let him drive me home that way too. I’m struck with a sudden sense of fortune.

“Leah was a month old, and Beth and I had just gotten married. Getting married—having a
real
family—that was something important to her. Her dad pretty much disowned her when he found out she was pregnant—not that he’d been much of a part of her life in the first place,” he says, his anger still obvious. He slowly lets it go as he continues, as his setting shifts to his world, away from Bethany’s. “We were living with my parents. My mom and dad were supportive, and my mom always wanted more kids, so I think in some weird way, she loved having a full house. I don’t even think she minded helping with Leah those first few weeks.”

I let Houston continue without interjecting. He’ll tell me what he’s comfortable with me knowing. I nestle deep into my covers, pressing the phone tightly to my ear so no one else could ever hear his story. Every word he speaks feels intensely private.

“Beth was smart. I know what you’re thinking…
smart girls don’t get knocked up.
But Beth…she was
crazy
smart. She was on her way to being our valedictorian, and she had tons of scholarship offers. She had one night with me where we both…we didn’t think, but just acted, in a moment of weakness, and she got pregnant…but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t smart.”