by Ray, Lexie
I stayed in homeless shelters, slept on benches when those were full, and camped on the beach. I met people, so many people, and stayed on couches and on the floor of a crowded apartment. I waitressed, I worked retail, and I said yes to every job that came my way until I could finally afford a tiny economy apartment.
I was so busy that I hardly thought about Marcus, which was a relief. It was a relief to have to rely on myself, to not be able to afford to wallow in sadness. I had to get out, work, and earn money to survive. I couldn’t have regrets anymore. Regrets would kill me. They would keep me from being able to live here or anywhere else.
I built a slow, cautious network of friends—usually girls I’d worked with in my travels from the food industry to the retail industry and back and forth, as many times as it took to get rent every month. It wasn’t easy.
“If you need money, you should consider dancing,” one of my friends suggested, looking me up and down in a way that made me feel like I was completely naked. I had to resist the urge to cover my private parts—even though they were safely encased in my clothes.
“What do you mean, dancing?” I asked, my mind helplessly traveling to tutus and ballet shoes. “I don’t think I’m very graceful.” Extracurricular activities had never been a priority for my mom to make me do, so I’d never participated.
“It’s not about grace, stupid,” the girl said, laughing. “It’s about sex. You have a nice body. You’re young. You’d have to invest at first in makeup, costumes, shoes, definitely, and there’s kind of a learning curve. But once you get good at it, it’s a really nice way to make money.”
My head was adding up all of the things she was listing, begging for my friend to still be talking about ballet or something equally as innocent, but it just wasn’t computing.
“You mean stripping,” I clarified.
She shrugged. “You’re not offended, are you?”
“No.” I frowned. Should I have been?
“If you’ve got it, flaunt it, I’ve always said,” my friend continued. “Do your hair, do your makeup, and with a bit of sparkle, you’d be fine.”
“Have you done it before?” I asked, curious but still taken aback.
“Once or twice,” she said. “My boyfriends always make me stop. Bastards.”
That was something to consider. What would Marcus think if I ever started taking my clothes off for money? It had been so long since I’d allowed myself to give him a good mull in my mind. Would he be upset with me for showing the world things that only he had seen?
Then again—had he ever really seen them? We’d been interrupted in our first real night together. Could he still picture the way I looked naked? If I tried hard enough, I could still remember the way he felt inside of my body—a thought potent enough to make me shudder with desire.
I hadn’t had the urge to seek out anything sexual since I’d wound up in Miami anyway, like a piece of driftwood washing ashore. There hadn’t been time or inclination.
And yet there I was, thinking about Marcus, about what I’d left behind when I’d left my home in Los Angeles.
My mother and Marcus’ father had been careful to never reveal to me where Marcus had been sent to school. I was sure that he had graduated by now; I would’ve graduated high school by now, too, had I remained in the city where I’d been raised.
How quickly things changed. My life—my existence as I understood it—had been turned on its head faster than I’d been able to grasp. How had I gone from Parker and Patty, two beautiful broads, to absolutely in love with Marcus, to self-exiled in Miami? It made my head spin, and I wasn’t sure I understood anything anymore.
It was late one night, and I was alone in my shoebox of an apartment, listening to the ebb and flow of the sounds my neighbors made in the dark. Everything about the apartment complex was cheap—crumbling sidewalks, paint flaking off the building’s eaves, and paper-thin walls and floors. I sometimes wondered what was keeping the place from collapsing on itself. It seemed like a stiff breeze would send it all crashing down.
The people above me seemed to like to move furniture in the dead of night. I’d gotten used to the scraping of heavy objects just over my head, but it took a lot of effort not to want to dash outside and hide myself from what I sometimes woke up to fearing was an earthquake.
The woman who shared my bedroom wall spent more nights sobbing than she did laughing. I couldn’t really be sure though. Maybe her laughter simply sounded like crying. But it went on and on, the edges of her voice becoming more and more ragged, which made me suspect that she wasn’t just laughing along to a comedy performance on her TV.
The family that shared my kitchen wall had a little girl in elementary school who was developing a fondness for the recorder. She played the shrill instrument at what seemed like all hours of the morning and evening, working her painstaking way through chords and octaves. She might as well have developed a passion for drums, or a trumpet. The recorder was an ideal instrument for children, as it was cheap, but it was grating on my nerves. I almost preferred the sobbing of my bedroom neighbor to the loud, halting renditions of “Yankee Doodle” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” as I tried to make myself scrambled eggs or tea.
The couple who lived below me fought constantly. It mystified me that I could hear them bickering so clearly through the linoleum that the developer had seen fit to coat every surface below my feet with, including my bedroom, but that was just the aesthetics, I supposed. I sometimes wished I could go downstairs to counsel the couple. Did they even realize that they kept fighting about the same things, circling each other like animals? I would lay on the sticky floor at night, my ear to the arguments below, anticipating the responses and accusations that would last and last.
All of my immediately adjacent neighbors probably thought I was a ghost.
Aware of how little privacy I was actually afforded by living here, I tiptoed around the apartment. I didn’t run the water or flush the toilet at night. I watched my television with its sound barely at a whisper. I didn’t have guests over—mostly because I didn’t have friends I felt close enough with to invite them into my living space.
It, unfortunately, gave me a lot of time to think, being so quiet all the time in my own home. Maybe if I was fighting loudly with someone or mastering a musical instrument, I wouldn’t have so much time to dwell on the fact that I had no idea where Marcus might be and no clue as to what he could be doing. In those silent hours, serenaded by the ongoing sagas of my neighbors all around me, I imagined Marcus in a variety of scenarios.
He was back in Los Angeles, living with Patty and Keith, the happy, obedient son they’d always wanted.
He was married, married to that girl my mom showed me a picture of, Marcus’ mouth in a straight line, his arms stiff around her. It had been a forced date, at first. Their parents had made them pair up and attend the dance, pose for the awful picture. But then, they’d got to talking about how unfair their parents were. Marcus would tell her about how they sent him away for loving me…she would commiserate, some unrequited love of hers forcing her into this situation. Then, they’d have a common ground, a common interest, and one thing would lead to another and they’d be married, living in a cute little house, a baby on the way.
He finally decided to give up on fighting his destiny, the path that Keith wanted for him, and he was in boot camp, or already abroad, engaged in whatever conflict our country required of him. He’d become a general one day, married to his career, able to immerse himself into the needs of national security and international pursuits, and forget all about the puppy love that had been so damaging to his youth.
I didn’t know which scenario I preferred. None of them. Any of them. Each was more painful than the last, imagining that Marcus had somehow been able to move on with his life without me, succeeded in spite of our separation.
I finally decided that I was finished worrying about it. I had other things to worry about, like getting food in my belly and keepi
ng this thin roof over my head, paying my bills on time, getting to work, and doing the best that I could so I could earn as much money as possible. These were real world problems, not puppy love. I couldn’t waste my life pining over what could’ve been if only our parents hadn’t interfered. I couldn’t keep going like that.
But nor could I simply will myself to stop thinking about the only person I’d ever loved, wondering if he was thinking of me, too. I had to do something; I had to either find some closure, or find a door I could yank open to shed some light on the whole situation.
I knew I couldn’t approach Patty and Keith about the fate of Marcus. They’d never tell me, or they might try to ensnare me, get me back to Los Angeles. I was out of their reach legally at this point, but what they’d done was too hurtful. They’d caused all of this, been the impetus behind my struggles here in Miami. Reaching out to either of them seemed like a horrible idea. No, I was going to be doing this some other way—any other way—than employing either of them in my search.
My first stop was at a library. That was where people got information prior to the advent of the Internet. That was where I was going to figure out how to find Marcus.
The library was nicely furnished and kept much cooler than I dared to keep my tiny apartment, so it became something of a refuge from Miami’s thick heat. It was nice to be physically comfortable, at least, as I dredged through the mental discomfort of having no idea where to start. I wandered the aisles of books aimlessly, wishing there was a big sign somewhere that read, “THIS IS THE TOME YOU’RE LOOKING FOR, PARKER” with a big arrow pointing to the book that contained Marcus’ location.
I found the section on military items of interest easily enough—that is, after scanning all the spines of all the books in every row of the sprawling place. I wished I’d spent a little more time in the library while I was still in school, but it had never been a priority. For definitely not the first time in my life, I felt a surge of anger at my mom. Maybe if she’d been around more, I could’ve had some sense of purpose at school. Maybe I would’ve been more driven to complete my work or to have an interest or a goal or even a dream. The woman who raised me didn’t even teach me how to dream.
It hadn’t been until I met Marcus that I’d even known what it was to dream. I dreamed of being with him, of traveling the world with him, seeing and experiencing everything.
If I wanted to dream again, I had to put forth the effort to find him again.
It ended up being a kindly librarian who saved me from my own haplessness in the library. It was the fifth day in a row that I had shown up to pirate the air conditioning and try to find my lost stepbrother.
“Can I help you with something, dear?” An elderly woman shuffled up to me, as I was reading the titles on the spines of the books arranged on yet another shelf.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I’m looking for…someone. I don’t even know how to start.”
“Well, dear,” the woman said, “don’t you know that my entire career has been centered on helping people find things? Come with me. We’ll get this figured out.”
We started looking at military boarding schools in the Los Angeles area, then expanded our search when I told her my stepfather’s name.
“My stepbrother always said his dad was trying to get him to follow in his footsteps,” I told the librarian as she pored over a tome. “Maybe he was sent to the same type of institution as his dad.”
“There would be records about a legacy, then,” the librarian said. “We’ll send some inquiries.”
It was a long process, and it never seemed easy, but I felt good with the librarian on my side. She always seemed to have a solution—or at least hope of one—and when the day finally came, nearly two months since the start of my search, that we found Marcus ensconced in a military academy on the West Coast, I knew that I’d never have been able to do it on my own.
Marcus had an address—a physical address—and he was more real to me now than ever before. An address was somewhere I could go, or somewhere I could find. But that was wishful thinking. I didn’t have the money for even a bus ticket to reach the address that the librarian had located. I clutched the information in my fist like someone was going to take it away from me. I could, at the very least, write Marcus a letter, let him know that I was still alive, that I existed—just on the other side of the country.
I bought the cheapest stationary I could find and sat down in my tiny apartment, tapping the top of the pen against the paper. What did you say to someone you hadn’t seen in so long? What combination of words would convey what had happened since he’d left me?
I took a deep breath and pressed the point of the pen onto the page.
Dear Marcus, I wrote, and bit my lip. It had to start somewhere. Maybe I could just write whatever came to mind. There wasn’t any pressure to send it. I could call this the first draft. The next one would be better.
I bet you didn’t expect to get this letter, I wrote. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? And I’m in a completely new place, just like you. I found your military academy—is that like college?—with the help of a librarian here in Miami. I’m not going to school down here. I’m working, doing whatever I can to make rent.
Was that too desperate? I didn’t want him to worry about me. I could take it out of the second draft, if need be.
I ran away from Los Angeles after you left, I wrote. I just couldn’t be there anymore. I know that I’d been there my whole life before meeting you, but the places we explored in the city reminded me of you constantly. I couldn’t walk down a familiar street without feeling your hand in mine. It was like living with a ghost. I had to leave.
I wound up in Miami. I just got on a bus and took it. Things weren’t easy when I first got over here. If I’m being perfectly honest, nothing is easy still. It’s hard to find a job and keep it with my level of education. I can barely afford my apartment. I guess I just finally wanted something good in my life, and that’s why I wanted to find you again.
Ugh, all of that was going to be edited out in the second draft. I didn’t want him to know all of those things. He’d worry terribly. It was the opposite of what I wanted to do.
After many balled up pieces of paper, I finally had a letter I wasn’t too terribly embarrassed by. I sent it off before I could think too hard about it—or else Marcus would never get a letter from me. Then, he would never realize that I’d made it out of Los Angeles and was working toward building a life of my own.
In a couple of weeks, I had a glowing response from him—a letter I read again and again until the paper it’d been written on was fragile, falling apart.
It was strange to hold something that Marcus had created, something that he’d held in his own hands, and it ignited a plethora of feelings inside of me—love, doubt, discomfort, yearning. I wanted to know more. I wanted more from the person I had wanted to spend my entire life with.
What followed was a faithful exchange of letters, more regular than any relationship I’d ever had in my life—my relationship with my mom included. We told each other everything, from ridiculous customers at my minimum wage jobs to ridiculous rules imposed on Marcus from his strict taskmasters. We were leading completely different lives from across the country, but we were leading them together, connected by thin sheets of paper covered with pen markings.
Marcus could never get leave from school. During academic breaks, he often had to complete special projects that he suspected his father signed him up for. And even in the summers, during his breaks from classes, he was controlled by both his academic advisers and the influence our parents still wielded over him.
There was the summer he took a business internship and defied his father and the military teachers, who wanted him to focus more on the Armed Forces. He was thrilled about his small rebellion but regretted still not being able to see me. He wouldn’t have enough time away from his internship to travel, and his father restricted his pocket mone
y.
I tried to be understanding and supportive, writing to him that it was important for him to forget about me, for now, and focus on securing success for his future. If he really wanted to stay away from the military, to dodge the path that his father was trying to direct him toward, he needed to excel at business and avoid any distractions.
I was a major distraction, and it was something that weighed on me.
When Marcus finally graduated his military academy, he entered an MBA program immediately. Just when one degree was achieved, he embarked on another. It was dizzying to try to keep track of what dazzling achievements he was racking up.
And it was disheartening to realize that the only thing I was achieving was barely affording rent with the three jobs I was juggling.
I refused to be jealous of Marcus. Our lives were completely different at that point. However, it was hard to ignore the tiny niggle of envy that worked its way through my veins when he would gush about an amazing opportunity he’d been offered upon completion of what seemed like the thousandth business degree when I was too scared to ask my landlord to fix the roof of my apartment because I’d been late on rent.
At times, he seemed full of excuses. Once he was finished amassing business degrees, he went on a tour of working for firms I couldn’t begin to keep track of, always saying that it wouldn’t look good for a fresh employee to ask for time off.
I always wanted to ask him why he couldn’t find these big businesses to work for in Miami. The city was full of tall buildings, and I was sure they housed important people and companies. However, most of his work kept him on the West Coast, and he was too busy focusing on his future to focus on me—the very bit of advice I’d given him.
The letters were nice, but they ushered whole years by without us seeing each other, and my self-doubt grew with each fat envelope that arrived in my mailbox. Maybe it was easier for Marcus to keep me at arm’s length, away from the glaring eye of the success he was enjoying. It wouldn’t do for any of his new friends and coworkers and bosses to learn that the woman he loved was actually his stepsister, living in squalor in Miami. It was easier for him to keep me here, caged in his letters, than to see me in person.