This Is Not How It Ends

by Rochelle B. Weinstein

  It might have been lost on him, but it wasn’t lost on me that our deficient childhoods landed us in positions that supported needy children. We had once been that way.

  “Now that’s sexy. Do you pull your hair back in a bun and put on those librarian glasses? I bet there’s a few young lads with a nasty crush.”

  God, he looked handsome when he was being fresh. I rubbed his cheeks with barbecue-coated fingers, and he kissed the tips.

  “I like that you made me wait, Charley. What was it—two days? Three?” He held up his fingers to prove his point. “The only other woman who made me wait, I married.”

  Natasha.

  I listened to him talk about her while he wiped his face with a napkin.

  I imagined a supermodel. Someone who emphasized my flaws. “She lived next door to us. I used to try to watch her through her window. We fell rather madly for each other after she shot me the finger one summer afternoon. We were married at eighteen. Divorced at twenty-two. We still talk every day.”

  Listening to their story made the sweat trickle down my back. It wasn’t the sun beating down on me or the restaurant’s spicy seasoning. It was something else.

  There was a glimmer in his eye, as though he’d caught me in the act of something uncouth. Feelings of jealousy were foreign to me. “Does that bother you?” he asked.

  “Should it?”

  “She left me,” he said. “I didn’t leave her.”

  The confession unspooled around us.

  “I’m not still in love with her,” he continued, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  I didn’t know what I was thinking, but I knew I wanted to hear more.

  “She’s married. Five kids and a physician husband.”

  “What happened?”

  “What always happens,” he said, clasping my hand in his and leading me through the crowded patio. “Expectations.”

  Natasha and their failed marriage filled me with questions, but Philip had something else on his mind. Ice cream. I followed him into a quaint shop famous for their waffle cones, where he ordered strawberry and I ordered mint chocolate chip. He said, “You know people who choose strawberry make better lovers?” I swallowed the cool flavor and rolled my eyes. “They’re also introverts and completely devoted to loved ones.”

  He laced his free hand into mine.

  “What about mint chocolate chip?” I asked.

  “Do you really want to know, Charley?”

  I nodded, imploring him to tell me.

  “Minties are argumentative.”

  “Me?” I danced around him, the ice cream dripping down my hand, my sundress flapping in the wind. “I didn’t argue when you let yourself into my apartment.”

  He reached for his new phone and googled the ice-cream report. “Look here,” he said. “‘Mint lovers exhibit ambition, confidence, frugalness, and argumentativeness. They aren’t fully satisfied until they find the tarnish on the silver lining.’”

  I reached for the phone and pulled up strawberry. “‘Strawberry lovers are often tolerant, devoted, and introverted . . . fans of the berry flavor are also logical and thoughtful.’ Nowhere here does it say they’re better lovers, Philip.”

  Ice cream slid down my mouth, and Philip wiped my chin with his lips. A little boy and girl strolled by with their mom and giggled. We giggled back. We were that happy, me and this stranger I’d met only days ago.

  “I know you’re an introverted, sexual strawberry lover, but I have no idea where you were supposed to be flying to that morning when you showed up at my apartment. Were you going home?”

  “Home,” he shrugged, pulling me near to him as we walked toward the art museum. “I don’t have a place I call home. Not like you, Charley. Like what you have here with your mum.”

  Mum had called me no less than one hundred times since receiving my cryptic text: I know what you wished for. I think it’s come true.

  The bottom of the cone came into view, and this was where things got messy.

  “I travel, Charley. A lot. I’m never tied to one place. With no family left in England, I move around quite a bit. Meghan’s the same. No roots. No ties. She has a girlfriend in Boston, so I expect that’s her home, as you like to call it. We have a business to maintain.”

  If I were truly a mint–chocolate chip lover, I would have picked up on the foreseeable tarnish, but I didn’t. Besides, there was something familiar that reeled me in. I was in the bubble of early infatuation. Those afflicted only see what they want to see.

  We continued down the crowded street. “You know I thought she was your lover.”

  “Perhaps it’s why you stuffed your tongue down what’s-his-name’s throat.”

  “Daniel,” I corrected him. “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew, Charley.” He gripped me tighter. “She and Myka have been together for years, but that would have made for some brilliant telly.”

  We laughed until he returned to his transience, explaining how his businesses are his brood. “Each location’s a child to tend to.”

  “You really don’t have a home?” I asked again, my expression that of a question mark.

  “No. I don’t.”

  He waited for my response, but I was studying the different parts of him and wondering what to do with this piece. He wore a powder-blue shirt and a pair of white cotton slacks. His skin was pink from our days exploring the city and the afternoon we picnicked in the park. An ominous question rose in me. His eerie ubiquity was unsettling. “I don’t understand. Where do you keep your clothes? What state is your driver’s license issued in?”

  He chuckled, and I already knew what was coming. He was going to tease me, and then he was going to introduce me to another magical side of him. “My Charley,” he’d say. “You said home. I have several homes.”

  This shouldn’t have come as a surprise. A man as worldly and sophisticated as Philip was meant to have multiple homes. But I wondered where I’d fit. Where we’d fit.

  I’d often wondered in those early weeks what it was that attracted Philip to someone like me. Though we came from opposite ends of the spectrum, our meeting fell somewhere in the middle. A man like him could have had any woman he wanted, and he chose me. In some way, I believed our histories bound us—protected us. Our past hurts became a source of strength, providing a safe and reasonable distance, the impervious shield from future pain. What burned bright and alive was the present, the now we effortlessly found ourselves in.

  What at first was a glaring embarrassment—my shabby apartment, a dull childhood home, my quiet life outside the classroom—became something else. Witnessing my life through Philip’s eyes shined a light on our commonality. We were more similar than we were different. For all his success, he was just as content to sit upon my mother’s frumpy couch and praise her cooking. “Katherine,” he had said, “this is the best chicken teriyaki I’ve ever eaten. Trust me, I’ve eaten a lot of teriyaki in my life.” He was comfortable, at ease, and you’d never know he didn’t belong there. I think Philip could be himself without the glare that followed him around.

  Mom was thrilled to see him again.

  “I had a hand in this,” she whispered in my ear.

  “Don’t.” I stopped her. “You can’t say it out loud.” But I knew, and so did she. She had wished for someone to love her daughter.

  “Just don’t bring up Dad,” I said.

  Philip and I sat in my old bedroom, where we pored over the artifacts of my adolescence. I felt young and childish around him, surrounded by Nancy Drew mysteries and oversize movie posters. He flipped through my yearbooks and faded photographs of awful hairstyles and pudgy cheeks.

  Later, we explored the city, shopping at River Market, where he bought me my first snow globe, followed by a trip to the World War I museum. He walked me through the gallery of my beloved city in my beloved country and told me countless tales of war heroes. We walked hand in hand through Swope Park and took pictures of ourselves with the animals i
n the zoo. He threw an apple at my head. He did. Because he said in ancient Greece that’s how they declared their love. I sat on his lap on the sky tram and let him wrap me in his arms until it felt like we were one.

  I remembered watching the film 9½ Weeks, when Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke emerged from their marathon erotic sleepover and embarked on a journey through Chicago, their weekend highlighted by a musical backdrop. The romantic music and scenes were so artfully crafted, I’d wanted my own reel. Philip gave me that over four days in Kansas City, Missouri.

  My 11:11 wish—crossed with my mother’s—had come true.

  CHAPTER 9

  July 2018, Present Day

  NAET Clinic; Islamorada, Florida

  “Did you hear me?” Liberty asked, crossing behind my desk, sending papers flying in her wake. The clock read 2:22. I still made wishes, though they were different now. World peace. Less cancer.

  I responded to her as I reached for the papers. “Yes. My referral’s coming in.”

  “Hectic morning?” she asked.

  “You can say that.”

  “Tell me about this Jimmy.”

  “Anaphylactic. Eggs, peanuts, and gluten.”

  “Poor kid.”

  I recounted the market story and our visit to the hospital. “I’m surprised they called you so soon. People are usually far more skeptical.”

  Liberty brushed it aside. “You were always better at drawing people in. I think it’s that wholesome charm of yours. You’d think I was a sorcerer.”

  When I’d first been diagnosed with an almond allergy, Mom sent me to a doctor in Kansas City who’d performed a barrage of tests that almost drained us of our life savings. I’d left the office with tracks of Braille lining my arms and a life-saving EpiPen. Up until that day, I was a healthy eight-year-old with one nasty ear infection to my medical file.

  Suddenly, I was under a doctor’s care and advised to return for cost-prohibitive monthly allergy shots. I had spent my early years unfazed by what I put in my mouth and hated that I had to be vigilant, restricted. I toted the pen around like a third arm, nixed the allergy shots, and avoided not only almonds, but all nuts.

  Unless you counted Liberty.

  At first, I’d fought hard against her treatment. Those who subscribed to it were bigger kooks than she was. But weeks into her voodoo of eating cauliflower and potato chips for breakfast while she massaged me with a mini massager, followed by a quiet slumber that included holding glass vials of allergic substances, I could safely eat almonds. I would never judge the witchery again. I had passed.

  “What’s with the long face, Charlotte? Were you able to talk to Philip?” Her broad nose was stuck in a chart, giving me time to admire her boho style. With her flaming red hair falling past her shoulders, she could make wearing a tablecloth look chic. I never could guess her age. Some locals had her close to seventy, though her firm skin and childlike eyes gave her the illusion of fifty. She claimed her all-natural lifestyle—no alcohol or drugs, ten glasses of water a day, granola eating, organic, cage-free, preservative-free, gluten-free, I may as well eat kale for the rest of my existence—kept her young and unwrinkled. I believed it was more than that. Some people were put on this earth to do good, to be good. Liberty literally saved people. I think God had preserved her as a way of saying thanks.

  “Philip and I are fine,” I said, avoiding her eyes.

  “You’re a terrible liar, Charley.”

  I had grown to love Liberty as both my friend and extended family. She was a big sister, a favored aunt, and the first person to return to me the comfort lost by my mother’s absence. She was all these things, but mostly, she was the person I couldn’t hide from: my truth spiller.

  “Yesterday you said you were going to talk to him.” Her hands were planted on her hips. “Yesterday, you waltzed out of here with a plan. You were going to tell him how you felt . . . what you need from him.”

  I fell silent, feeling her pluck at the strings that connected me to my fiancé. The argument felt like a lifetime ago. Then the call from Natasha set me off again.

  “Maybe I’m being paranoid, maybe he’s just stressed . . . He works hard. I’m the last person he needs nagging from when he walks through the door.” I said all this in one convincing sentence, wondering if she could see through me, if her voodoo voyeurism read minds.

  “Charlotte Myers.”

  She called me that when she wanted my attention. I looked her in the eyes, and the warmth was meant to erase the clawing emotions.

  “You promised me, Charlotte.”

  Chimes filtered through the small office, and in walked the next patient. Liberty waltzed over and greeted her, which left me to return to the mundane tasks of filing, answering phones, and waiting for the father and son to arrive. I didn’t want to talk about Philip. Or the distance that had pervaded us since he slipped the ring on my finger three months ago.

  When the office door jingled again, it meant Ben and Jimmy were here.

  “Hey, Jimmy!” I brightened for the sullen boy with the full cheeks. Liberty made a big deal about their entrance, remarking on Jimmy’s bravery and his big trip to the hospital. The little boy was undeterred. She settled on his father. “I’m glad to see you here, Mr.—”

  The man stuck out his hand. “Call me Ben.”

  “You’ve met my associate, Charlotte,” she said, motioning in my direction.

  We waved, and Liberty knelt to meet Jimmy’s pout. Her bracelets jangled, and his eyes reflected the shiny gold. His bottom lip quivered. “Am I getting a shot?”

  Liberty placed her hands on his shoulders. “No shots, no more needles.” Then she held out her pinkie. Jimmy wrestled with her offer while his father looked on, nudging him until he curled his pinkie into hers.

  Watching Liberty guide them down the hall filled me with deep longing. Ben’s loving arm across his son’s back brought it forth, and when the feeling emerged, it sent a ripple through my system. Philip’s traveling, once an acceptable part of our relationship, something I defended on more than one occasion because it made us better when we were together, was overshadowed by something else. Something that had been slowly giving way.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, the ache that made it difficult to speak, and focused on the journey Jimmy—and Ben—were about to take.

  The stack of files in front of me beckoned—patients on the schedule, puzzles to be solved—while Liberty’s voice filtered through the air, dusting away the unease. She was poring through Jimmy’s medical history, making note of the allergens confirmed by his physicians.

  I admired Liberty’s commitment, but NAET wasn’t an option for all. For some, it was a final act of desperation, despite its controversial nature. And listening to Liberty explain it through the walls, describing how kinesiology, or muscle testing, flagged allergies and sensitivities, reminded me of its complete hokeyness.

  “Anybody with severe allergies tends to have lower-level allergies that raise the histamine level in the body. When Jimmy eats peanuts, for example, the histamine level is already so high it triggers anaphylaxis. If we treat the lower-level allergies, we decrease the histamine levels, making his body less reactive to peanuts.”

  Ben asked about the lower-level allergies.

  “Jimmy has them,” Liberty said. “Their reactions haven’t been as severe as the big three, so you probably ignored them. He might’ve had a sneeze, some mild itching, or a headache. No cause for alarm.”

  I heard Jimmy. He raised his voice, excited to share information with Dr. Scott. “Remember that day at the park, and I told you I was itchy from sitting on the grass?”

  Ben must have been tracing the boy’s history. “He’s had some reactions, but they’ve always been mild. Perfumes give him headaches. Frequent congestion. Could that be allergies?”

  “You betcha,” Liberty said. “We’ll test Jimmy on the fifteen foundational vitamins and nutrients and treat him for those he’s allergic to. Once he passes each test, and th
is can take months, then we can move to eggs, peanuts, and gluten. The big guys.”

  Next came the million-dollar question. “How do you desensitize him?”

  “I’ll get to that,” she said. “First, let’s complete the testing so we know what we’re dealing with. Jimmy’s going to hold some vials in his hand and I’m going to push down on the opposite arm. We’ll know if he’s allergic if the arm weakens.”

  It reminded me of the day I’d come home and tried to explain Liberty’s treatment to Philip. He’d laughed. A hearty snicker that chipped away at my excitement. But soon he’d perked up and narrowed his eyes with interest. He’d reached for my hands and told me to do whatever it was that made me happy—even if it meant boarding the crazy train with Liberty Scott. I hadn’t even told him about the treatment.

  “You mean there’s more to this silly sorcery?” he had asked.

  There was, and Jimmy and Ben would fall under Liberty’s spell, just as I had.

  Okay, it was ludicrous in theory. Treating the lower-level allergies meant holding vials in my hand, anything from spices to peppers to papaya. The more bottles we fit in my sweaty palm, the more I questioned what the heck I was doing. But I’d suspended disbelief in a dark room where Liberty told me to relax and take a nap. How was I or any sophisticated human being supposed to believe that these nontraditional treatments would redefine my body’s chemistry? But I complied, and after the snooze, I was relegated to a specific diet for twenty-five hours.

  Philip had eyed me curiously after my first treatment, calcium, when I’d entered our kitchen carrying a bag of allowed foods. I was embarrassed to tell him I’d be eating pasta and chicken for breakfast, that any milk or milk products were unacceptable. Knock yourself out and read the ingredients of your favorite foods. Twenty-five blissful hours of retraining my body to accept these morsels rather than resisting. Liberty provided a list of foods and products I couldn’t even touch while submitting to the desensitization phase. Without the support of medical research, it was illogical and highly implausible to think this treatment cured allergies, but I complied. For nine straight weeks. And lo and behold, it worked. I avoided the fundamental minerals and vitamins found in most every food. All for the love of almonds.