The Optimist

by Sophie Kipner

  ‘Heralda!’ I yelled. ‘Where’s the toilet paper gone?’

  ‘Oh, sorry!’ she screamed from the other room. I could tell she was still dancing. ‘I thought we might go out again tonight so I set it aside.’

  I couldn’t blame her. Love is addictive.

  Heralda and I went out a few more times but without much luck in finding her a man. It was nice for me, though, having a chance to do something for her, after all she did to help me. Soon, however, Heralda slipped into a depression. I tried all sorts of things: aromatherapy, jokes, optimism, chanting, vitamins, even Cary Grant movies . . . but nothing cheered her up.

  One night we got into a fight because she was so upset about being invisible and there was nothing I could do to make her feel better. It was the year before my dad moved out, and I remember going to my parents’ room and climbing into their bed. I’d see them sometimes, hugging in their sleep. I was crying so much the skin around my eyes almost swallowed them whole but my dad just pulled me up to bed with them and cuddled me, stroking my hair until I calmed down.

  I often think of this memory: of being sandwiched between my mom and dad, protected by the both of them. If I try hard enough, I can feel their legs, touching them at the same time. My mom was asleep, curled on her right side, when my dad told me I should tell Heralda to go away for a while.

  ‘But why?’ I asked, the option seemingly unfathomable.

  ‘Because it’s not worth being friends with people who bring you down. You’ll never be able to really understand Heralda. You’ll try to help her but you never will be able to.’ He stopped for a moment, moving his head around the pillow, eyes half closed.

  ‘But she’s my friend,’ I argued. ‘I love her. She doesn’t bring me down.’

  ‘Eventually,’ he continued, his eyes open now and glassy, ‘you get to the point where you just can’t carry that weight. It will destroy you. You have to think of yourself, and know that you can’t, no matter how hard you try, always make someone else happy.’

  ‘I can’t just leave her,’ I whimpered. ‘What will she do without me?’

  ‘She’ll learn to make herself happy. It’s the only way to help her. It’s for her own good, don’t you see? She’s staying here and trying to fit in where she never will be able to because she’s wanting to be close to you. But it’s unfair to her. It’s selfish not to let her go.’

  ‘Tabby, baby, why are you awake?’ my mother said, groggily, hoping to quiet us.

  ‘Because her best friend is a ghost who is remarkably like her mother,’ he snapped, assuming I couldn’t hear. ‘She’s trying to get your attention, Twilda. You’re always so up in the clouds you may as well be a ghost, too.’

  ‘I’m not up there,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m right here. I’m right here.’

  That night I lay on my bed and spoke to Heralda before I even saw her appear. It would have been too hard to tell it to her ghost face because, in truth, I didn’t want her to go. I wanted her to be happy and for us to drink martinis again and dance around the early morning hours – hours that were just ours.

  ‘Heralda,’ I said. ‘I love you but you have to leave me alone for a while. You have to get yourself better because I can’t help you anymore.’ Tears streamed down my face. It felt wrong. I was lying to her because I thought it would help her but it ended up just hurting me. Surely I was quitting her too early, yet every time I battled it, I heard my dad’s advice.

  ‘But,’ I heard Heralda’s voice creep.

  ‘Go, Heralda!’ I yelled, mustering up all the courage I had in me. ‘Get out of here! I can’t be your friend anymore!’

  I felt a gust of piercing cold sweep through the room and at once I was left there, silently, alone.

  I haven’t really had any encounters with Heralda since then. Last one was probably ten years ago, when I was twenty, and then it was only her voice. The one thing I regret in my life was telling her to go away, but I believe she knew it was for her own good. Now, when I think of her, I smile, imagining her being busy, waltzing with some handsome ghost, being exactly who she wanted to be.

  I don’t usually talk about Heralda too much anymore. Sometimes I bring her up to my mom but she doesn’t listen too well these days and usually just says, ‘Go get ’em, kid.’ Sure, it’s great that she’s supportive but since it doesn’t really relate to the situation, I know she’s not paying attention. She’ll look at me, wink and then lift the wine glass to her lips while she stirs a comfort soup in the pot. Heralda and my mother were really quite alike. I can see their similarities so clearly now.

  I wonder if my dad just gave me bad advice because he couldn’t see how great we were, how we were bringing him up, not down. The thought rips through me, giving me shivers, and I try to shake it off, head side to side to blast it, but it lingers. Maybe Heralda wasn’t bringing me down, and like Dad did with us, I let her go too quickly.

  ‘What are we having tonight?’ I ask my mom.

  ‘Not sure,’ she says. ‘I’m experimenting.’ She loves to experiment.

  ‘What happened to Lewis? I thought he was taking you out.’ Lewis is her latest lover.

  She lights a cigarette but the smoke is eaten up almost immediately by the hot air rising from the pot. ‘Oh him?’ she eventually says. ‘Who needs him. I’ve got you. And you, baby girl, you’ll never leave.’

  It’s true. I’ll never walk away. Being abandoned before makes you swear you’ll never leave because you’ve tasted the crippling effects it has. You’re scarred by the idea that someone, at any moment, might leave you. That’s why I pushed and fought until the others walked away. Harrison Ford left because he didn’t like lingerie and Heralda left because she had to. I’m not sure why Lewis left my mom, but I know that Rainbow Dan left because she was too untamed and because she didn’t always feel like eating pepperoni. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I’d rather be left than be the one to leave. There’s no guilt that way.

  Sometimes people have asked me if Heralda was an imaginary friend, not a ghost. Are you sure she was a real ghost? they insinuate, questioning my memory. Of course she was real! I rebut. Topanga is full of ghosts! I wasn’t making anything up. I mean, who would make up having friends? In all reality, though, with some distance now from my childhood, I’m just not sure what was real and what wasn’t. But either way, would it make a difference?

  The Gardener

  Apparently you can’t find true love until you really love and understand yourself, which is great news because as I’m ­reminiscing, I’m falling in love with myself all over again and it feels so good.

  One thing I’m realizing is that I’ve always had a thing for Mexicans. When I say Mexicans, I mean real Mexicans, from Mexico. The kind of men who inadvertently tickle your neck with their mustache whiskers and breath-heavy accent, calling you names you haven’t been called before like jaina or turkey slice. The kind of men who peer so deeply into your soul you don’t even have to take your clothes off to get wet.

  My affinity for Mexicans began at the tender age of nine, when my mother found me seducing the gardener. His name was Ernesto. Brenda, being a few years older than me, wasn’t interested in playing when I was interested in playing, which meant I spent the better portion of my childhood learning to play all by myself. The good thing about playing alone is that I would usually win, which was good for my self-esteem. But sometimes winning would get old, so I’d venture out into the garden.

  ‘Hola, Ernesto,’ I’d say, seesawing my hips. I thought if he saw how my prepubescent joints could move, he’d know I had Latin in me. When I was born I had so much black hair the nurse said, ‘I didn’t know you had Mexican in your family!’ Both my parents were very light-skinned (I think my mother enjoyed the contrast of her porcelain complexion against her jet-black hair; a severity that matched her temperament) but I was convinced my mother had had an affair with the mailman – a beautiful hombre named Hector from just outside of ­Guadalajara. If you saw Hector, you wouldn’t bla
me her. I never saw Hector but I imagined that’s what people would have said if they saw him.

  Ernesto would look up at me with his sweat-drenched hair, his body curved over his tools, and smile. I imagined being swept up like the remnants of a changing season into the ­fingers of his rake. He would run his hands through his hair like Kenickie from Grease, and send me a little wave. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Sometimes, I’ve learned, the best things in life are the little things: the waves, the body language, the looks that say more than a date under the Eiffel Tower . . . And I’m not just saying that because I never get taken on dates to the Eiffel Tower! It’s simply because they are so much more exciting, and because they’re small and bite-sized, you can collect a million of them. I can’t imagine how miserable life would be if I didn’t live for these moments; sometimes I get sad for all the people who are waiting for the big diamond rings and private jet proposals to be happy, when all they need to see is the beauty in the space they share with someone. Time captured and preserved for as long as you can recall it. I would pretend to catch the love Ernesto passed and tuck it into my pockets as if it were a piece of dark chocolate I could save for later, for some time in the middle of the night when I’d wake up parched and lonely.

  He was from Zihuatanejo, this marvelous creature, my Ernesto. I remember melting over the way he’d say it, too. ‘Where are you from?’ I’d ask him, repeatedly, already knowing the answer, continually hopeful that each time he’d let the ‘e’ slide in Zihuatanejo: AN-EY-HO. The ‘j’ becoming an ‘h’ on his masterful tongue, hopping delicately over those three romantic syllables. Slipping, skipping and sliding into home base. Baseball is boring but I’d be its number one fan if the players could hit like Ernesto.

  I would sit in the garden as he watered and fed our plants with fingers that, I was utterly convinced, were designed to do more than just pull weeds. I’d use the old let’s-play-waitress card to initiate interaction under the pretense of game-playing, because role-playing is always less threatening. Whenever I’m working with teens struggling with body issues and confidence, I always tell them it’s smart to start off with a little role-playing because it makes you feel like an actress. Men find it really attractive when you’re sure of yourself so if you’re not sure of yourself, pretend to be someone else (just for the moment). I really love helping women to feel better about themselves.

  ‘How about you play the waiter,’ I’d say to Ernesto. ‘And then I’ll ask you to tell me the daily menu.’ At first the game confused him, partly because he didn’t know the rules and partly because his English wasn’t very good.

  ‘Why is this a fun game?’ he’d ask.

  ‘It just is!’ I’d sing, unsure of how to answer him when the real answer was because I wanted him to say the names of the things I wanted to eat because food is sweet and sensual and it was one step closer to being in love.

  ‘Look, Ernesto,’ I’d continue. ‘Sometimes you can’t make sense of the heart.’

  As he’d contort his face, his whiskers would dance around his nose. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it!

  ‘But I don’t know what’s on the menu,’ he’d say.

  ‘Oh, Ernesto! Use your imagination!’

  This back and forth would happen every time and every time it happened, he would be more and more confused. He’d usually start with really bland specials of the day, like macaroni and cheese. I thought at first this was a cop-out because mac and cheese is never a special dish, but then I caught on that he was probably meaning the gourmet version, with three types of cheeses and truffle oil. Of course, he’d say it in his Ernesto-way: Ma-Care-Oni. Only a Mexican would know to put the word ‘care’ in ‘macaroni’! That’s the kind of attention I’m talking about. My whole day centered around the anticipation of Ernesto, with his coarse but soft, sweet but salty kettle-corn voice, reciting to me the list of specials that would otherwise be so dull and unappetizing.

  ‘Desserts, Ernesto,’ I demanded. ‘I want to hear the desserts!’

  He’d stop, take one of his signature heavy breaths, put a hand on his hip to support his back and say, ‘You’re something else.’

  I was in love with Ernesto. It was the first compliment I ever received from a man of his caliber and let me tell you, a girl doesn’t need much more than that to last her a lifetime. How he said CHO-CO-LATE like Dracula. How he’d drench every syllable with a passion the boys at school knew nothing about. I would dream of him and his rich intonations, even count the specials he’d recited earlier backwards to help me fall asleep, like sexy sheep.

  But Ernesto was a methodical man. He wanted to start at the beginning and follow through to the end (oh, how I adored him!), but my mother would usually call out from the kitchen right around the time he’d get to the good stuff. On one particular day, when the sun was burning quite brightly, my mother must have been preoccupied getting ready because Ernesto got all the way to tiramisu, or as Ernesto pronounced, TEERU-MISS-EW (it sounded like he was saying ‘miss you’!) before she stuck her head out the window.

  ‘What are you doing in the garden again?’ she asked. I fumed, so vexed I could barely walk. ‘We’re late for your sister’s piano recital. Get in the car!’

  The car engine puffed as she turned it on, and I crawled in the back seat like a dog that knew it was going to the vet. I was sad to leave my Ernesto behind but I used the opportunity to practice my princess wave.

  ‘Why are you waving to Ernesto like that?’ my mother asked, more rhetorically than anything else because, if you knew my mother, she never cared about the answer. She was in one of her more neurotic, absent states. She started hearing less after the divorce, said she couldn’t handle the extraneous chatter because she had to concentrate all her brain space on hating my dad.

  ‘We’re in love,’ I said as I pulled my hand back, wondering if she’d lash out at the word.

  ‘It’s good you’re exploring your sexuality,’ she said. ‘A real woman knows how to harness it, but you’re still so young. I guess you’re just ahead of the curve.’ She paused, preparing to make the switch from compliment to parental advice.

  ‘But,’ she continued, ‘just remember he’s a man. He won’t get it unless you spell it out. Men are like uneducated adults at a reading center. All they see are letters, they can’t put them together until you say the words you want them to say.’

  ‘You mean Ernesto might not know we are in love?’

  ‘They never do, baby girl. They never do.’

  ‘So how do you tell them?’ I asked.

  ‘All I’m saying is you can’t wait for a man to make the first move. You can’t wait for him to be romantic or do all the things you know you want because they’ll never think to. You have to make the magic happen. You have to tackle them and literally make them see how amazing you are or else they never will.’

  ‘But you and Dad,’ I started, ‘did he ever try to make the romance happen?’ I knew the story, but some part of me wished it were different every time.

  ‘Your father?’ she huffed. ‘Are you kidding me? He didn’t have a romantic thought in his head. I had to come up with all the ideas but he still didn’t do them. Even after I’d tell him! He was boring. Gave up because he couldn’t handle the pressure of giving a goddamn about magic. I tried and tried to get him to dance with me after midnight, you know how we do? But he’d always stop after a song and say he was tired!’

  Ernesto just looked at me through the car window, eyebrows furrowed and collected in the small of his forehead in confusion as we backed out of the driveway. It was okay that he didn’t know how to respond, because I hadn’t coached him. Maybe my mom didn’t try hard enough with Dad, so I figured I’d have to try just that bit harder with Ernesto. I closed my eyes and pictured myself wrestling in a well-groomed garden with him as he told me things in Spanish I didn’t understand, like the words for pruning and mulch. Words I didn’t even understand in English but had every ­confidence that in Spanish they’d me
an so much more. I fantasized about all the feelings he’d have in his native tongue that I didn’t have the words for in English.

  At the recital, all I could think about was how Ernesto told me he missed me. So one day shortly after, as his gardening duties were coming to a close at our house, I crawled into the back of his pickup truck and buried myself in soil. Thinking about it now, in retrospect, it was crazy; I should never have used soil! It was so dirty! It was early evening and the sun was nearing its settle. The scary thing was not knowing where I was going, but I trusted Ernesto and this was the only way I was going to get him alone.

  I felt the car stopping. Spanish was flying all over the place like spaghetti in a New Jersey dining room, which made me nervous. I waited until I knew we were home and not just at a gas station. I thought maybe this could have been a bad idea; this soil was probably so far up my daisy I’d never get it out. But then I thought: Thank God Ernesto is a gardener! The tarp was above me; it was pitch black and I was starting to feel really nauseous from the smell of the manure. It made me feel dizzy and I nodded off for a moment. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember if I was being abducted or if it was my decision to be in the back of a pickup truck but then I remembered it was definitely my choice and making my own decisions made me feel powerful.

  I waited as long as I could, until I couldn’t take it any more, and then I tossed the tarp off and popped out like I was the surprise in a cake, my arms extended wide and hopeful. ‘Surprise!’ I shouted, out of instinct, but no one was there to witness it. I went up to the front door and climbed along the ridge of the bushes to get a peek into the living room and saw – to my horror – Ernesto sharing a moment with his wife. His WIFE. I felt cheated on. I wanted to bash the window in and ask her what she was doing with my man but I couldn’t move my arms. They were clasping on to the concrete so tightly it was as if they had their own little brains with their own little tiny self-conscious and they just didn’t want to let go.