The Love Sucks Club (4 page)

Before I can even open my mouth, Susannah has her arm through
Olivia’s arm and they’re walking toward the Focus together. “I’ll ride with
Olivia and you can follow us in the jeep.”

Fuming, I throw the jeep into drive and head over to Hank’s place,
not bothering to wait for the women to get themselves situated. For all I know,
Olivia has to reapply her eight pounds of lipstick before she goes to see the
car dudes.

Pulling into the garage, I raise a hand at the guys and look
around for Hank. He spots me first and heads over, wiping his hands on a rag
that’s covered with oil, grease, and who knows what. He holds his hand out and
I shake it.

“You need something? Your sister’s jeep got a problem?”

“No, her friend had a flat tire. I put the spare on and she’ll
need a patch.”

The Focus pulls in and I wave at Susannah and point at Hank. She
gives me
a thumbs
up, so I leave her keys in the jeep
and head down the road. I figure I’ll walk over to The Sands, a high end resort
where Sam is the head of maintenance. She can give me a ride home when she gets
a break.

A car pulls up next to me and I look in the window.
Esmé
.
Nodding to her, I keep walking. She pulls abreast of me again and sticks her
head out the window.

“Where are you going?”

“Not far enough to need a ride.”

“Come on.” She laughs. “Don’t be scared. I don’t bite.”

“I’m not scared,” I mutter. Coming around to the passenger side, I
let myself in and slide down in the seat. It’s a decent enough car, but small.
What is it with these women driving these tiny cars? “You’re going to have to
be careful on these roads,” I say. “The potholes have been known to swallow
buffalo whole.”

“I didn’t realize there were buffalo on the island,” she grins.

“There aren’t. They were eaten by the potholes.”
      

I direct her to The Sands and fall silent, staring out the window.
I can feel her glancing at me from time to time, but I pretend not to notice.
Finally, she breaks the silence.

“So, do you want to talk about your dreams?”

“Nope.”

“About Fran?”

“Not a chance.”

“The price of tea in China?
Wow, you would make a
fascinating subject for a talk show.”

“I’m a fascinating woman,” I say, dryly.

She chuckles a bit and stares out the windshield for a couple of minutes.
“You know, I loved Fran, too.”

“I don’t know you.” This woman is presuming a lot. “I don’t know
anything about you. How do I know you even know Fran?”

“I know she used to laugh in her sleep. I know she had a tattoo of
a butterfly on her left breast. I know that she thought orange cats were the
best animals in the world.”

“You could have gotten that from my book,” I grumble.

“I know she used to stare at the stars and talk about whether or
not her family was ever going to come back for her.”

Pausing, I stare out the window. That part wasn’t in the book, and
as far as I know, no one except me knew that Fran thought she was from another
planet. I can feel my ears start to buzz and I’m sure an attack is imminent.
Blinking hard, I try to talk myself out of it.

“So,
Esmé
,” I say loudly to combat the
buzz. “What made you move to the Caribbean from Chicago?”

“There wasn’t anything left for me there. My lover left me for
another woman. We’d been together for seven years. I think she was my rebound
from Fran.”

“How long were you and Fran together?” I ask, though I’m not sure
I want the answer.

“Ten years.”

I look at her, not sure I can believe that she’s old enough to
have had at least seventeen
years worth
of
relationships. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“So you and Fran were pretty young.”

“We were pretty young.”

She pulls up in front of The Sands and stops the car. “Are you
going in for lunch?”

“No, I’m just going to get a ride home from Sam.”

“I can take you home.”

“Not in this car, you can’t.”

Standing outside of the front door of the hotel, I watch her drive
away. She glances back once and I slowly raise my hand. My ears are still
buzzing, so I sit down in the lobby and ask the front desk clerk to page Sam.
The tunnel comes down over my sight and I can see
Esmé
and Fran, young and troubled, clinging to each other, both of them with tears
in their eyes. I don’t know whether it’s a vision or my imagination, but I’m
drawn to Fran’s young face, her light brown eyes and her pale skin. The shock
of red hair, curly and full, was just as beautiful in this vision as it was
years later when she came into my life. The vision darkens and for a second,
all I can see is
Esmé
. I’m standing on the edge of a
cliff, looking back at her. Her face is deathly white and there is a trickle of
blood coming out of her mouth. As I slowly become aware that Sam is holding my
shoulders and shaking me gently, the tunnel lifts from my sight. Sam’s face,
full of love and concern is inches from mine.

“Sam,” I whisper. “I just can’t do it again.”

Chapter Three

Sam takes the cap off a bottle of water and hands it to me. With
my feet hanging in the pool, and a cool breeze coming in off the sea, I’m
feeling refreshed. Leaning back on my hands, I look up at the few clouds in the
clear blue sky. Part of me is avoiding Sam’s gaze, but the other part is
genuinely absorbed by the beauty of the Caribbean. The resort’s in-ground pool
is on a raised area, so people on the deck can look out over the sea. The water
seems to blend seamlessly into the sky and the few sailboats dotted along the
horizon just add a bit of color to the vista. Sam is sitting silently next to
me. When I look at her, she’s gazing at her toes which are wiggling in the
water.

“So, I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here today.” I
grin, going for a humorous tone.

Sam isn’t buying it. “Let’s talk about your episode.”

“Let’s talk about your incredibly shitty taste in women,” I spring
back.

“That’s a given. I want to talk about this seizure.”

“It wasn’t a seizure.”

“Well, what was it?”

I shrug, staring at the water again. Looking back at her, I open
my mouth to speak, but close it again before any sounds can escape. It’s crazy,
but for a second there, I thought that I was about to cry. I love my best
friend and all, but I definitely don’t want to cry in front of her. Hell, I
don’t even cry in front of myself. As good as a friend as she is, Sam is not
particularly sympathetic to tears. The one time I cried in front of her, years
ago, a few days after Fran’s funeral, she cleared her throat, slapped me on the
back, gave me a hard one arm hug, and took off for the kitchen to grab a beer.

Composing myself, I try again. “It was just an episode.”

“What’s the difference?” she asks.

“Do I look like a doctor?”

Sam shrugs. We both stare off at the water again.

The episodes started on my thirtieth birthday. My mother had died
a few months earlier. Susannah was in full melt down mode. Our other sister,
Jamie, was in Africa and had not only refused to come back for the funeral, but
had continued to refuse to come back long after, despite Susannah’s heartfelt
pleas across expensive long distance phone calls. Our father, a silent man who
made a life out of hiding in his workshop to avoid our mother’s constant
harassment, had burrowed even deeper into his own silence. I had thought that
the death of my mother, a woman who, by her own admission, believed that the
only way anyone in the house could be happy was by keeping her happy, would
have helped to bring him out of his shell. He would no longer have someone
yelling at him if his boots were dirty, or screaming from the upstairs bedroom
that he still hadn’t fixed that old light fixture. I guess that deep down the
old man must have liked having someone control his every move, because once
mother was gone, Dad was at a loss. A couple of years after my thirtieth, when
I moved to the Caribbean, Susannah
was
livid. She felt
it was her obligation to stay and take care of Dad, and she wanted me to stick
around to help her out. I remain of the opinion that an able-bodied man who is
fully functioning and financially independent should be able to take care of
himself and I have never had an interest in giving up my own life in order to
keep house for the old man.

But on my thirtieth birthday, I was still living in Ohio. I wasn’t
yet making enough on my writing to do it full-time so my life had become a
cycle of working full-time, writing, checking on my father, fielding calls and
visits from Susannah, and dealing with Fran. I don’t think there’s an appreciable
way to explain the madness that was Fran except for this - I was in love with
her. I was in love with her in a way that I don’t think I have ever been with
anyone in my life.

I literally loved her from the moment I met her. It was a Hallmark
moment. It sounds stupid now, but I did look at her across a crowded room and
fall instantly in love. It wasn’t even as if she was that gorgeous, at least
not at first. Most people didn’t think she was even that pretty. I mean, she
did have that incredibly cute shock of naturally red hair that curled around
her face in soft waves. Her ears were tiny and adorable. To look at her,
though, I just don’t think you’d say that she was an “across a crowded room”
kind of hot. First of all, she was short. Not that I’m that tall, but she was
really short. Like five foot two. She was skinny, too. Not that kind of
adorable skinny that some women have, but way skinny, with knobby knees and
hard pointy hip bones that crushed into me sometimes when we were making love.
I always felt that I had to be careful of positioning when I was cuddling with
her or I was likely to end up with bruises. Her eyes were just brown. Not a
deep brown like mine, but just kind of plain brown. She had sweet lips, but her
nose was kind of long. None of her features were offensive in any way, it was
just that put together in that way, they looked a little awkward, like they
were all meant to belong to different people.
Whatever.
I don’t think it mattered what she looked like. I think the universe determined
that we were going to be together and it just happened. We saw each other, our
eyes met, we drifted toward each other, while the rest of the room faded into
the background and some sappy love song overplayed the whole scene. It might
not have happened exactly like that.

On my thirtieth birthday, Fran and I had been together for about
four months. Maybe she came into my life right before my mother died. Meeting
her and falling in love with her is a whirlwind that’s all blurred up in that
time frame. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life. Yes, I
know all about the big lesbian joke about bringing a U-Haul on the second date,
but I had never been that woman. To this day, I am not that woman, though I did
move in with Voldemort about six months after our first date. I still don’t
know why, though I truly think I was still on a rebound from Fran. Somehow, the
idea of being with my ex, a woman so radically different from Fran in every
way, seemed a good idea at the time. I remember Sam literally begging me not to
move in with she-who-shall-not-be-named, but of course, I didn’t listen.

Glancing over at Sam, I smile at the memory. Those two hated each
other from the beginning, but Sam stuck by me the whole time. Sam catches me
staring at her.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.
Just thinking
about you and Voldemort.”

“I can’t stand that woman.”

Laughing, I punch her on the shoulder. “I know. I was thinking
about how you tried so hard to talk me out of moving in with her.”

“You know, you met Fran. Your mom died. Fran died. You moved to
the island. You met Voldemort. You moved in with her. You didn’t give yourself
the time you needed to recover from your mom or Fran.”

“I was lonely. I thought getting into another relationship would
fix me.”

“Yeah, perfect fix for a hermit.”

“Who knew it would last ten years?”

“I should have clubbed you over the head.”

“Probably would have put me in a coma.”

Sam grins. “The hospital bills would have been ultimately less
expensive.”

“Less painful, too.”

“Why are you wasting time thinking about her on a beautiful day
like this?”

“I was thinking about that whole weird time around my thirtieth.”

She nods. “Want to talk about it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Fair enough.”

She flags down a passing waiter and asks him to go get her a beer.
“I’m officially off the clock as of this moment.” He looks at her dubiously,
but trots off to get it for her.