What Brings Me to You (2 page)

              "Who mother?" I snap. She wrings her hands and pauses, her eyes resting for a beat on the floor before locking with mine.

              "Don't be mad." Oh, this can't be good. "I called Teddy."

*****

              I can feel all the gears in my mind grind to a halt. I'm going to punch her. I need you to stop me from punching her. Meddling wench. She's really making up for all those years now. Damn her! Okay, what would you do? Breathe. You would breathe and let her do the talking until you knew all the circumstances and then carefully articulate your response.

              "Why on EARTH would you do that? Have you lost your ever loving mind, mother?! What gives you the right?" Okay, so I thought I'd go with a different approach.

              "I thought I would extend my condolences, that's all," as she shrugs her tiny shoulders. I know that's not all. I know by that look in her hazel-gray eye she's working something out. She's lying, but I cannot call her on it. I’m too livid to form words.

              "I thought you extended your condolences at the funeral, mother" I ask through gritted teeth so I don't start shouting again.

              "Well, yes but I did want to see how he is doing. Have you spoken with him?" Oh God NO!

              "No. And I kind of can’t believe that you still do."

              "Oh well you know,” she says dismissively. “How come you haven’t?" And now the real reason she's here. It’s amazing how so much can change yet so little. She's been doing this since I was eight. Mostly to absolve herself of guilt, though she thought she was doing her motherly duties. "Maybe if you had a friend in this world it wouldn't be so..." she never once finished that sentence because she didn't have to. Instead she played matchmaker.
Charley this is Dani, you both have names like boys and neither of you like pink. Go play.
Age twelve: 
Charley this is Jada, she has bad skin and daddy issues too! Go talk.
Age fourteen:
Charley, this is Tanya. She's depressed and has a weight problem too! Go eat something.
Not like she ever actually said that, but it's clear that's what she meant by introducing me to those girls. She's trying it again. With Teddy. Teddy of all people! Now I know she’s getting senile or something.

              "Mother, I am the last person he wants to talk to. Believe me."

              "That's not the impression I got from him."

              "I’m sure it wasn't", 
because you're clueless,
"but I'm not calling him. I'm not going over there. I'm not texting, emailing. I'm not writing a goddamned 
letter
. Not today. Not for a while. Probably never. And that's okay for both of us. If he gets desperate to speak with me, which is unlikely, that's a different story entirely. He knows the number. He knows where I live. If he doesn't, he can find out. But mother, you cannot push us together because we have some shared history. If I'm ever going to move on I need
not
to dwell on the past. Teddy and I haven't spoken because we're trying to move on. Can you respect that?" Damn! That's good! Aren't you proud? It's good. So good, I've rendered  her semi-speechless. I mean, technically she hasn't said anything else, but I know she wants to.

              Any win counts. That's what you always said.

*****

              I'm out of food. I mean, you'd be disgusted with what's been missing from my diet. I finished the last of the bouillon cubes. All there is in the fridge is some soy sauce. The pantry is completely bare- except for your cereal. I kept it all for you. Multi-colored boxes of varying shape and size, each with their unique fibrous, crunchiness. I miss the sound of your munching. The way the spoon would clatter against the bowl. I'm sorry I gave you such grief about it at the time. Who knew when you were gone I'd actually miss it? But that's how everything works, eh? We're never satisfied and never appreciate what we have until it's gone. That's kind of how it was with Teddy. I know I told you that you were my first -which is undeniably true, but I did get close.

*****

              I was eighteen. Just graduated from the torture-chamber-hell-hole-rage-inducing institution known as high school. Mother had forced me in with some girls in the neighborhood my age that I didn’t know because they went to a private school. She thought they were, "wholesome, sweet girls that stayed out of trouble." I don't know why, after everything that happened with her, I thought she'd be a decent judge of character. Those "wholesome" girls were nothing but sluts who stole whiskey from their dad while he was at work, kept clothes they "bought", which really meant stole, themselves in the trunk of their rusty old Beetle, and snuck off to the beach to go to third base with older boys every single day. Obviously, these were not the type of girls who wanted to take me under their wing, but they were being forced by their parents and I was looking for a way to get out of the house. Besides, I knew what they were up to. If they didn't want me to tell we'd all have to play nice-nice. The only good thing was that, at the beach, I didn't have to be around them.

              I'd hide the book I was reading in my bag,
Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina
, things like that. I still hadn't come to terms with my closet romanticism. I was pretty much in denial about the fact I’d been dreaming of finding my own Mr. Rochester or, God that I’m admitting this: Mr. Darcy. I mean, all girls want
that guy
, but, at that time especially, I kind of felt like I’d be alone forever. Not because I was insecure, though I’m sure that had something to do with it, but because being alone was so much easier. Every personal relationship I’d ever had had been exploited and twisted, so I just as soon blocked everyone else out than go through the hurt. It was an unhealthy, yet necessary survival tact. If I were a candy they could describe me as a hard, bitter shell with a sweet, mushy center. I hid my emotions especially from the people who were closest to me in a misguided act of self-preservation, but that summer, ninteenth century trash was my guilty pleasure and, on the beach, I could indulge with abandon while listening to the prosaic soundtrack of ocean waves and seagulls and feel sorry for the fact that nobody knew me. Not because they didn’t want to, but because I wouldn’t let them. It was all very melancholy, introspective, emo-tasticness.

              While the girls were off rolling around in the saw grass with their much older, heavy petting partners I'd sit on a little embankment with a huge rock I could lean against to read. Clearwater beach was anything but clear. The minuscule Gulf waves conducive mostly to watching the dorsal fins of dolphins (and the occasional bull shark) bob to the surface. Florida beaches in the summer double as meat markets, in the physical and in the metaphorical sense, so I had to travel a ways down the shore for any semblance of solitude.

              While engrossed in
Jane Eyre
, a Frisbee hit me square in my knuckles and I dropped my book. There was a sharp throbbing in my entire hand and I almost cried it smarted so badly. When I finally got myself together my book was gone. Gone. Rolled down the embankment and was being carried by the wind. It was rolling end over end toward the surf. I went chasing after it like a moron, but I didn't have anything else. Problem was my wardrobe. In an effort to cover up my knobby knees and protruding ribcage I was dressed in what I call the How Can I Show As Little Skin As Possible And Still Be Beach Appropriate look. At the time, I had a huge, and I mean HUGE floppy hat I'd wear that I picked up at a thrift store. I thought it was cute -who knows maybe it was, but it also protected my hair which would fall out in clumps if I was hit with a stiff wind. Added bonus it pretty much hid my face from the world. I wore a jet black one piece which exposed the smallest amount of skin, and a very long navy blue and black sarong around my waist. So imagine: me, running, crouched over into the wind holding my hat on with one hand and my sarong with the other, chasing a book. I bent to get the book and the wind took my hat. I got my hat and then I dropped my sarong, I wrapped my sarong back around my waist and the book went floating out to sea. Soaked. Completely soaked. It was a hardcover but that didn't save it - actually made it look worse. I tried to       resuscitate       it but it was no use. The salt water disintegrated the pages immediately. It was trash and I was       devastated. You know how I am with books, they're precious things, and some douche with a Frisbee just committed literary murder.

              Full of righteous indignation I marched, literally, like the petulant little girl I was, toward the Frisbee throwing ruffians. (I did       actually call them ruffians.) There were four or five. All shirtless, skin glistening in the mid afternoon sun. "Don't get distracted Charley," I thought. "What would Jane Eyre do?" So I started yelling at them.

              "Oy! Oy! Which one of you is going to pay for this?" I held the now warped and exposed cardboard cover so it fell open and a number of pages came spilling out in a soggy heap on the sand. None of them would fess up, but they'd obviously seen me chasing it down the beach because they were suppressing their cowardly laughter. I shot the gigglers an icy stare and decided it wasn't worth my time.

              "That's what I thought. Thanks a lot you creeps! Move your Frisbee circle jerk down the beach, will ya!" I hurled the corpse of my book in their general direction and stomped away in a huff. Back at my embankment I watched the offending fraternity, five shirtless backs, saunter down the beach away from me, and felt tears prick my eyes. Without a book, without my iPod (I had no charger so the thing was worthless), without a friend, it was utterly lonely sitting listening to the sound of the waves lap onto the shore.

              The next day, when The Sisters Slut dropped me off on the beach to go do unspeakable things with their boyfriends or friends with benefits or whatever, I made my way to spot. Making sure to avoid focusing on the rumbling of my empty stomach by looking out for any Frisbee throwing douche bags. About thirty yards out, I saw someone on my rock. I was totally peeved and was about to turn around when he, yes a “he”, saw me coming. He stood and waved, holding up, what seemed to be, a book.

              It was against my instinct but I had to know.
Is this guy for real?

              The trip to my spot felt like a reverse walk of shame. Not that I'd ever had a regular walk of shame, but I could use my imagination, and I felt like a spectacle. It wasn't the lovely walk toward someone you know; laden with air kisses and smiling pleasantries. I tried to keep eye contact so as not to appear weak, but it was too awkward and I ended up keeping my eyes cast down toward the sand. The mystery boy didn't ease the awkwardness by courteously meeting me half-way like a friend would, he waited, albeit patiently, for me to make the trek to him. Carefully eying me the entire time so I could feel my skin tingle under his gaze.

              "Hi! I brought you a new one. Sorry about yesterday. Totally my bad." I nodded and took the three-hundred page peace offering. It was Jane Austen 
Pride and Prejudice.
Gag me with his presumptuousness.

              "Thanks, but this isn't what I was reading." and I tried politely, but firmly, to hand it back to him.

              "Oh?" and some kind of, what was it, passed over his face. Shock? Embarrassment? It didn't last long. With a flourish of his hand he casually said, “Well, all I saw was small print. Gold leaf and the name Jane." He looked up at me expectantly, smiling brightly. 
What does he want? A medal for invading my space and bringing me not the book I was reading?
       Though secretly, I thought it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. "Anyway," he cleared his throat and continued, "All girls like Austen. The only thing I can figure is you already have this one, yellowed and spine creased, on your shelf chocked full of romantic classics at home."
Oh please,
I wanted to say, 
you don't know me.
Though, he was right. I did.      

              "I despise Jane Austen,” which wasn’t entirely true. I just figured the faster I shot this guy down, the faster I could get back to reading
Jane Eyre.
Alone.

              "Oh?" He seemed genuinely nonplussed as if it never occurred to him that a woman would not like Jane Austen. Or maybe no girl had ever given him the brush off. Either way, I almost felt bad for him.

              "Perhaps despise is a bit strong. Indifferent? Ambivalent, maybe? I mean, don't get me wrong, I have respect for her as a woman ahead of her time, but it's the stories that bore me. It's unrealistic for characters, despite all odds, to get everything they've ever wanted every time." Again, all of this was a load of crap. I was probably going to read it as soon as he went away.

              "You don't believe in happily ever after?"

              "It's not real life." The way he was staring at me was making me feel uneasy so in a show of nonchalance to hide my discomfort, I crossed my arms over my chest. Big mistake. His eyes unexpectedly and unabashedly flicked over my chest. A crooked, lazy grin played on his face and, I’ll say it, his attractive lips.