The Optimist

by Sophie Kipner

  My mom and I jump up off the floor, both in equally confused and unsubstantiated distress, puff our hair and squeeze our cheeks to get the life back in them.

  ‘Oh, track and field!’ I scream, feeling terrible I might be late for no other reason than my self-pity.

  ‘Is that a new swear word?’ my mother asks.

  ‘Mary and Randall have their track and field day today! Shit! I can’t believe I’m late. I promised I’d be there to cheer them on,’ I say as I move in circles, looking for my bag and jacket. ‘I’ll see you back at the house in a little bit. Love you, Mom. That was good before.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ she declares. ‘You’re in no state to be alone!’

  By the time we reach the school, I realize we’re not late at all. Well, it’s just about to start but we haven’t missed it. There are lots of makeshift referees (a.k.a. parents) and whistles and bright colors and flags and busy bodies and orange cones. Dragging my mom across the field is near impossible, so I eventually have to grab her arm so she doesn’t get too distracted by literally anything she walks past or spots in the distance. She needs a leash.

  ‘Why are we here?’ my mom asks for the fourth time.

  ‘To support Mary and Randall,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘And even if Mary weren’t here, I’d want to come for Randall. I doubt his foster parents are coming so I wanted to be here for him.’

  I see Mary on the field next to the principal and hope she isn’t telling her anything about the Rastafarian that may jeopardize my freedom. As we walk towards her, a few kids stop to look at us like we’re a couple of intruding zebras. I’m so riled up with the track and field spirit it’s hard not to want to chest bump Mary when she runs over to us.

  ‘Auntie Tabby! Grammy!’ Mary screams, hugging my leg with one hand while the other grasps my mother’s frailer limb.

  ‘Hey, you adorable little athlete!’ I say as she blushes, ex­­ercising that fake coy technique I showed her ages ago. ‘You’re going to kick some serious ass out there.’

  ‘Yeah!’ she yells out.

  ‘Where’s Randall?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh I see him,’ my mother says. ‘He’s over there.’ She points to the other side of the field and I see Randall just as he spots me. His eyes light up as he waves.

  Their teachers start to call for them to get ready in line. All the kids are haphazardly organized into teams based on age and grade. It’s an elementary school track and field so the kindergarteners are segregated to a smaller, more controlled area so five- and six-year-olds don’t start running rampant into other lanes.

  Randall organizes himself behind the start line as the referees try to align the other kids and Mary shuffles her feet next to him. I don’t know if she even understands that this is a race because she keeps looking around, distracted.

  ‘Come on, Mary and Randall!’ I call out, hands around my mouth like a speaker. ‘Beat the system! Give it all you got!’ Then as I look across the field I see a kid staring at me. He’s probably sixteen years old or so, chubby, rough looking, shaved head. He’s sending me a look of utter disgust. When I look back to the kids, upon their imminent start, I see Randall’s face drop at the sight of the kid across from me. The boy’s look is sullen, jowls too droopy for his age.

  ‘Randall, there’s that whore you’re always talking about,’ the boy yells out, audible for everyone to hear. Parents gasp and some kids chuckle and point towards me.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I ask, flustered.

  ‘You’re just some crazy-ass bitch.’

  Randall’s face goes beat red, nostrils flaring.

  The referee shoots the start gun as everyone around me stands frozen, shocked. Confused. Kids start running down their lanes but Randall takes off diagonally across the field, dodging others as he charges towards the boy and in one supremely elegant and seamless movement he kicks him right in the balls.

  Everyone along the sidelines is silent as we wait for a reaction. Then, as expected, the screaming pours out.

  ‘Ahhhhh!!!!!!’ the kid shrieks as Randall just stands in front of him. The boy falls in incremental measures, like an accordion, to the ground; at first quite slowly and then all at once, hands cupping his groin.

  The principal marches furiously towards Randall, who’s staring over the boy he just flattened, surprised by his own strength. She grabs him by the skin on the back of his neck as if he is a disobedient puppy and drags him off silently as mouths remain agape. I run over to Randall, screaming after him.

  The principal shoots me a stare. ‘He’s on a time out.’

  ‘But he was just standing up for me!’ I beg as I race over to them. I grab Randall and hug him and hug him and hug him until I fear I’ve cut off his circulation. When I pull back I see he’s looking down, those long gorgeous eyelashes rimming his view of the floor. I lift his face up with my hand and look him in his cowering eyes because I need him to know he’s done nothing to be ashamed of. He stood up for me; the one thing I didn’t know I’ve always wanted someone to do. My little fighter.

  ‘Thank you, Randall,’ I whisper. I ruffle the hair on his head affectionately and hug him again because I’ve never felt so loved in all my life. ‘Who was that kid, anyway? Do you know him?’

  ‘He’s my foster brother.’

  ‘And you told him about me?’

  ‘I told him you have funny stories.’

  ‘How did you learn to kick like that?’

  ‘Milk. He told me to look out for you.’

  ‘Really? Why would he tell you to do that?’

  ‘Don’t you get it, you moron?’ he says, an adult in a little body. ‘Milk loves you.’ And it hits me. Milk’s been the one behind the scenes the whole time, standing up for me both in front of me and without me seeing it for all these years. I’ve just been too stupid to realize it until now. ‘He taught me when you went to that party with your mom and sister. He wanted me to know how to fight for someone I loved.’

  The boy, who apparently is named Kyle, whimpers off to the nurse’s office as the principal warns Randall about the repercussions of violence. We wait for Mary to finish the race – she came fifteenth out of twenty, sweet thing, but she doesn’t seem to care – and pile out of there as fast as we can. The games are still going on but Mary seems content with any excuse to leave. On our way home, we’re all silent. We drop Randall off at his house and I give him one more hug until his hands lose their grip. I walk him in while my mom and Mary stay sat in the car.

  ‘He did so well today!’ I say as his dad opens the door, completely omitting his disqualification, but I get no interest in return. It’s hard to leave Randall here but I know I have no other choice. He pats him on the shoulder and says, ‘Good job, buddy. Go wash your hands before dinner.’ I stop him just before he closes the door.

  ‘So . . . Kyle?’

  ‘What about him? Did he start some shit again?’

  I want to ask him so many questions but know it isn’t my place. There’s so many stories behind these doors I can’t even begin to try to unravel and I might do more damage than good if I do. All I can do is make sure Randall’s okay and be here for him.

  ‘I don’t know where he is now and I’m sure he’s fine, but he wasn’t feeling too well so he went to the nurse’s office at their school. I just didn’t want you to worry if he’s late coming home.’ I look at Randall and send him a wink. He catches it without a blink, smiles and waves goodbye.

  Doors close; engine’s on; seatbelts buckle.

  Milk! I can’t wait to get back; each second, each block too long. I look at my mom in the car and see that she will never change, and even if she doesn’t, she’ll be just fine. We both will.

  The minute we pull into the driveway, I jump out of the car and run to Milk’s house, hoping he’s home. I see him in his living room on the treadmill, running with headphones on. I start yelling his name to get his attention but he can’t hear me so I bolt into the house and charge towards him.

  I run
up behind the treadmill and reach my hand out to grab him, anxious to talk now that I’ve woken up from this thirty-year slumber. When I touch him he freaks out and jumps, flicking his iPod headphones out of his ears as if a swarm of bees is attacking him. His wild movements throw him off the machine. He falls back onto me and we both start screaming.

  ‘Ahhh!’ he’s screaming.

  ‘Ahhh!’ I’m still screaming as he rolls off of me. Still frightened.

  ‘What the hell, Tabby?’ he yells. ‘You freaked me out!’

  ‘I’m so sorry!’ I scream as I, subconsciously, pounce on top of him. I’m straddling him now as he lies frazzled on the floor, iPod thrown somewhere off in the distance. ‘You love me!’ I yell, because we are both yelling and the release of all this warranted tension feels amazing.

  He puts his head back down on the floor and laughs, reaching his arms behind his head.

  I’m smiling and hugging him, still on top. ‘But can you move over?’ he asks. ‘You’re on my ribs. I can’t breathe.’ K-Ci and Jojo’s ‘All My Life’ is playing loudly from his headphones, setting the scene.

  ‘Who works out to K-Ci and Jojo?’ I ask.

  ‘I do, apparently.’ He touches my hair. ‘You look great,’ he says, smiling at me in the way he’s always done. ‘I love it when your hair is all messed up like that. I don’t know why but it makes me happy.’

  It’s a strange feeling when you can feel yourself, when you can feel every cell in your body.

  ‘What you did for Randall, teaching him how to stand up for someone,’ I start, unable to really get the words out.

  He doesn’t have to say anything so he doesn’t. All he does is reach out for me. I thought he’d be more awkward but he hugs me so softly, my face resting perfectly on his chest. I didn’t feel I had to make up stories, or imagine a best-case scenario, I just let us be there. All this time, Milk’s been right in front of me but I was too close to see him clearly. A level of calm, not feeling a need to fill the gaps, blankets us.

  ‘But you think I’m crazy,’ I say as I pull back. ‘You must, I mean, you’ve seen me do the most ridiculous things, you’ve seen me have food poisoning, seduce blind men, and embarrass myself. You’ve seen too much in all these years, I figured you’d be grossed out. And, even though I just kept doing the stupidest things, you never told me not to.’

  ‘It’s what makes you so fascinating. I wouldn’t want you to change.’

  ‘You know, for so long I ruled you out because of that prom moment and because I thought the reason my dad left was because he was having an affair with your mom. I thought that was why he kept going over here. I didn’t realize that their friendship, the fact that your family was his safe haven, was what you were trying to tell me, you know, when I came to your ju-jitsu school. That it wasn’t about taking sides, or being against my mother. It wasn’t about any of that. I couldn’t get it then. I couldn’t see it.’

  He keeps his stare on me. Quiet.

  ‘Say something! You’re so quiet,’ I say.

  ‘I’m taking it all in.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, returning the smile. Realizing silence can be okay sometimes. ‘And the reason why you took me to my dad, it was because you wanted me to see for myself what really happened so it wouldn’t happen to me?’

  He nodded.

  ‘But what about your date?’ I ask, the machine still running in the background.

  ‘Well, hey, she wasn’t you.’

  If I were standing up, my knees would buckle like Delina’s do when she stands in heels too long. Good thing I’m sitting down.

  ‘So you knew all this time we were going to end up together?’

  ‘I’ve been hoping,’ he says. ‘But you’re a hard one to wrangle.’

  My eyes light up. ‘Like a slippery, elusive salmon trying to swim upstream?’ I ask him, because I know all too well what it’s like to swim against the current. Hopeful.

  ‘Um . . .’ He laughs. ‘Sure. Yeah, I guess you could say that.’

  All I can do is ogle at him. Every now and then I forget to breathe and take in a deep breath. When I look over to my house, the lights are all on, and I see Mary and my mother looking at us from the window, smiling. I can finally see my mother clearly.

  ‘Are you going to kiss me now or what?’ I ask. Wondering how this works.

  ‘Well, give me a second to find a less contrived moment,’ he says, kidding; the fact we are still on the floor is evidence enough of spontaneity. You’d never plan a fall!

  ‘Good!’ I yelp. ‘I hate contrived!’ I pause. Wait. ‘Well, I mean, we could—’

  ‘I kind of always thought of kissing you in a supermarket, around the fresh fruit section when you were picking out ­cantaloupes or watermelons,’ he indulges me. ‘I’d stop you while you were telling me a story and turn you around and kiss you. The fruit would dislodge and we’d be making out while those bowling balls of fruit would fall, one at a time until the stand fell over, melons rolling out in all directions.’

  ‘And do we fall over? Do we trip?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  ‘You’d think we’d see it coming, maybe move to another section or something, but we don’t because we’re so happy. It’s our spot?’

  ‘Yeah. But sometimes we go to the freezer section to mix things up.’

  ‘Does this happen every time we go shopping?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he smiles. ‘Every time.’

  Acknowledgements

  Had The Optimist not ended up in the hands of a long list of incredibly kind and supportive people, I fear it would have become a very different book. In particular, had I not serendipitously walked into The Society Club – a place that would soon become a world of inspiration to me on every level – my story and the characters in it would have had another evolution. The Society Club taught me, through the people who filled the room and the beautiful books that lined its shelves, how to live richly and curiously no matter how broke I felt.

  Thank you to the ever-magnetic Babette Kulik, for her magic, wisdom and guidance. I am forever grateful to my agent Carrie Kania, who I first met on that fateful night at the club, for encouraging me to write this novel and for steering me every step of the way with her experience, and for talking me off the ledge every now and then with her confidence, steadiness and practicality.

  John Mitchinson, the greatest, thank you for being an unshakable champion of this book from the very beginning. To Rachael Kerr, the best editor I could ever imagine working with, for your expertise, your insight, your incredible skill. This novel is entirely better because of you. To the miraculous patience and attention to detail of Anna Simpson, who kept me sane (almost) and comforted me throughout the production process, and to Amy Winchester for her enthusiasm and belief in Tabitha and what this book is about. And a huge thank you to the entire team at Unbound who helped to bring The Optimist to life in the most effortless way.

  I must also thank Stephen Cooper and David Holub, who saw the potential in Tabitha in her first outing in The Gymnast, which was published in Kugelmass: A Journal of Literary Humor in 2013. As well as the amazing Amy Ephron for her early read of the book, and Chris Keith-Wright, for his constant reassurance, help and kindness.

  Everyone who pledged their support via Unbound, including the unbelievable generosity of Steve and Leslie Carlson, Olivia and John Easterling, Danny O’Donoghue, Lene Bausager and Joanna Dudderidge.

  Lastly, of course, to all my cherished friends and family. My brother, my nana, and my mum and dad. Thank you for pushing me to remain optimistic even when I wavered.

  Supporters

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  The names listed below are of readers who have pl
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