Affective Needs

by Rebecca Taylor

  And then, waiting for her to come back, watching her and Ashley grow closer, then giving up on ever getting her back—my heart had eventually coagulated in its own love.

  I had spent the last six years making my love-turned-to-hate of Bella, and everything she did, an occupation.

  Stupid stars.

  Hot tears pooled in my ears.

  And now—now I had also lost Eli.

  And now, now I was losing Porter.

  I closed my eyes to that dumb broken star. The whole world was a confused and broken place. A place filled to overflowing with lost and broken people.

  My body, flat, stuck, still in the middle of my bed, at the edge of my room, in the corner of my house, at the end of my street, on the edge of my town, on the fringe of a landmass, a single point on the Earth—a small blue dot at an unknown location in the never-ending expanse of a universe that didn’t seem to know anything about the dark bottomless hole in the center of my soul.

  A hole shadowed by the fear that none of this really mattered at all.

  A fear that none of us mattered.

  Downstairs, a door closed and my walls shook.

  My mother was home.

  I pulled my eyes from that plastic star and rolled onto my side until I faced my open bedroom door. I could hear my mother’s feet coming up the carpeted stairs.

  “Ruth?” she called.

  I didn’t answer her, but when she got to the landing she glanced toward my bedroom and our eyes met. She stopped where she was, her shoulders dropped and she frowned.

  “Have you been there all day?” Her voice was soft and concerned.

  “No.”

  She came into my room, pushed my legs over, and sat on the edge of my bed. Her hand brushed the hair away from my face. “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t even know what that question meant anymore. “I’m not sure.” I rolled onto my back and sat up, my knees pulled tight against my chest. “I don’t think so.”

  This answer must have made sense to her because she nodded.

  “Do you want to talk now?” she whispered.

  I looked at her from over the tops of my knees and shrugged.

  She sighed, “How long?” she asked.

  “A couple months . . . almost since he started at Roosevelt.”

  “Are you two serious?”

  I shrugged again. “I guess.”

  “Have you slept with him?”

  The question annoyed me, but I answered her anyway. “No. Not that it matters.”

  She could tell I was getting defensive, she waited a few moments to continue. “Do you love him?”

  “I said I did.”

  “But do you?”

  “I think so.”

  “And he loves you?”

  This I didn’t know, I let my silence answer the question.

  My mother sighed again, “You know, when I imagined your first boyfriend, Porter Creed is not exactly the picture that came to mind.”

  I gave her a quizzical look, “You’ve imagined a boyfriend for me?”

  “Well . . . sort of, I suppose.”

  “And?”

  “And . . . on a good day, he was like a straight Eli.”

  This made me smile in spite of everything else. “And the bad days?”

  She twisted her mouth. “The bad days . . . The bad days I envisioned you in the middle of some scandal with an older university professor during your freshman year.”

  “What?!”

  She shrugged and chuckled. “So I guess I’ve always worried about the whole ‘daddy’ thing rearing its head in that predictable way that it does with some girls who don’t have the best male role models. College just seemed like the most likely environment.”

  “I cannot believe you’ve thought that.”

  “It sounds much worse now that I’ve said it out loud.”

  I shook my head at her. “Although I can see your reasoning . . . I don’t exactly have the best father figure.”

  She stared at the space of bedspread between us.

  “What did you ever see in him?” I asked.

  She raised her eyebrows as if the question surprised her, then settled her focus somewhere near where my wall met the ceiling, like she was trying, really, really hard to think of what she could have ever possibly have seen in a man who would one day comb his thinning hair back into a ponytail. She sighed. “Your father”—she actually smiled—“your father was very, very handsome.”

  My face must have looked like I was about to throw up because she said, “I’m serious! You’ve seen pictures!”

  Actually, I didn’t know if I had seen pictures of my dad when he was younger. At least not that I could remember.

  “And besides that, and more importantly, your dad was—is—a very intelligent person.”

  “A very intelligent person who wears ridiculous shirts.”

  She smirked. “Well . . . he didn’t wear stupid shirts when I met him.”

  I hugged my knees tighter. “Why did you get divorced?”

  She took another deep breath and tilted her head to the side, “I always swore I would never badmouth your dad. It was important to me that you develop whatever sort of relationship with him the two of you were going to have without me poisoning the well.”

  “He pissed in the well.”

  Her mouth flattened. “Maybe, but I still wanted him to have a chance to not do that.”

  “I’m not eight anymore. I’ve formed my own opinions now. Why did you hate him?”

  She thought about this for a second even though I was pretty sure my mother could have answered much, much quicker. “I have reasons I left him . . . but I never hated him. I still don’t.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Because I’ve seen your father at his most vulnerable. I know his fears, his regrets. I know exactly why he hides behind tasteless shirts, long hair, and a younger woman. Why he wants desperately to be thought of as important. Your father is very intelligent . . . he just never happened to do anything of consequence with that intelligence.”

  I lifted my head off my knees and looked her in the eyes.

  She sighed. “Wasted potential. Your father is full to overflowing with that. He has been practically choking on it for the last eighteen years.”

  “Since he failed out of Harvard because of me.”

  For the first time, I saw her eyebrows knit together and her face darken. “No. Since he dropped out of Harvard after we had you.”

  “But because he had to. Because having a wife and a new baby—”

  “And this is what he’s told you?”

  I shrugged. “Basically.”

  She nodded. “You asked why I left your father. I left because I was not going to spend a lifetime being blamed for something that was his choice. He didn’t fail out, and he didn’t have to leave. It was hard, extremely hard . . . yes. But we were making it—barely, but still, he didn’t have to drop out.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because your father was that kid who graduated at the top of his class in high school and when he showed up to Harvard, he saw for the first time in his life that there were lots and lots of other high schools with kids who graduated at the top of their class. And, in that environment, he was no longer the top of anything. He was surrounded with other people who were just as smart, or smarter. He was getting C’s, a D even, for the first time in his life. He didn’t know how to not be the best of everyone, so he stopped trying to even be the best of himself. It was his decision to leave. The plan was to go to another school, finish his degree somewhere good, but less competitive.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. Harvard killed his confidence, damaged his ego in a way I don’t think he’s ever gotten over. He just threw up his hands.”

  “You left him because he gave up.”

  “No. I left him because at your first birthday, we had lots of friends over. Most didn’t have kids, but they came anyway. Your dad was standing
with a group of his Harvard friends and I happened to overhear him tell them that the reason he left was because of me . . . because of you. That was the first time.” She shrugged. “Then I heard it again at dinner with his parents, and again when he was on the phone with his uncle. Suddenly, his entire personal script was the guy who had to give up his dreams because of a wife and a kid. When we started fighting, and he started throwing Harvard at me like a bomb, I realized it wasn’t just the excuse he was giving to save face in front of his family and friends. It had somehow become something that he believed even inside his own head. There was no way in hell I was going to subject myself to that for fifty years.”

  “Why did he give up?”

  “Because it wasn’t easy for him anymore. He was going to have to work for it, actually put in some effort. He didn’t know how to do that. Because he had always been so bright, he’d never really struggled with school before. He’d never learned how to persist in the face of something that didn’t happen the first time he tried it. So no, don’t let him tell you he failed Harvard because of you. The world is full of people sitting on goldmines of potential, but because their environments are hard, they throw up their hands in defeat. Your father is just one of many.”

  I bit my lip. My brain, having just visited with both Karen and Porter, had jumped tracks. “But sometimes”—my voice was quiet, shaky—“sometimes things, the things around you really are too hard.”

  My mom, hearing the tears in my voice, seemed to realize where our conversation had led me. “Yes,” she sighed. “I would also say that sometimes a person’s, a person like Porter, their living situation . . . you’re right. It’s not like you can just apply the same thinking to his situation. And I don’t. I know that Porter, and lots of the kids I’ve worked with, have been dealt a pretty shitty hand . . .” Her voice broke on the last words. “Some are much worse than Porter’s.”

  Karen. Karen’s was much worse than Porter’s.

  “And I would add, sometimes the most amazing people are born out of the worst kind of shitty life you could ever imagine.” She reached over and held my hand. Her fingers were warm and solid, a sure anchor in the middle of an unsure universe. “And sometimes life is like a goddamn tsunami that drowns a person before they’ve ever even had a chance to learn how to swim.”

  “What’s going to happen to Porter?”

  My mom shook her head. “I don’t know, Ruth. And it’s that not knowing if Porter learned to swim that makes me very afraid for you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was my fourth time driving up to Tennyson and the third time Tom behind the counter was shaking his head at me. “He still won’t see you.”

  I had been up, trying to see Porter again, every day since my first visit.

  But he wouldn’t come to the waiting room.

  “Can I at least talk to him on the phone? Something?”

  Tom shrugged his shoulders, picked up his phone and dialed. Seconds later, “Ruth’s down here wondering if you will at least speak to her on the phone.” Tom’s eyes met mine and he shook his head at me. “I’ll tell her,” he said, and hung up the phone. “Sorry, he won’t.”

  I could scream in frustration. The building was not large. Porter was somewhere within one hundred feet of me, behind a single locked door guarded by a counter, a desk phone, and a grad student named Tom. All of which would open to me, allow me to spend two hours a day with Porter during visiting time, if only Porter would agree. “Why?” I asked. “Why won’t he see me?”

  Tom shrugged.

  “Can’t you make him come down?”

  Tom laughed. “We make these guys do lots of things. Visiting with old girlfriends isn’t one of them.” He picked up a stack of files from his desk and got up. “We try to pick our battles around here.” He opened the file cabinet next to his desk and started fingering through the alphabet.

  “Goodbye, Ruth.” He dismissed me even though I was still standing, defiant, waiting for some magic solution to my stubborn Porter problem to present itself. I felt like digging my heels in, refusing to leave until visiting hours were officially over, stupidly holding out hope that today Porter would change his mind and come down.

  That was what I had done yesterday and the day before. I had believed Porter would give in and come down.

  But he didn’t.

  And he wouldn’t today.

  I turned to go.

  “Ruth,” Tom said.

  I turned back, hopeful that he was maybe going to help me out in some way I hadn’t already considered. He was leaning forward with both his hands on the desk in front of him. “I shouldn’t tell you this,” he said.

  “What?”

  Tom took a deep breath. “We’re overcapacity. They’re moving Porter and a few others to another facility on Monday.”

  “Where?” I practically begged.

  Tom shook his head. “That, I absolutely can’t share without his permission. I just thought you should know in case you were going to keep driving up here.” He frowned and returned to his filing. “Save you the trip, you know?”

  Helpless, I stood a second longer watching Tom file files, powerless to even ask Porter, Why, why won’t you talk to me? And now he was going to disappear completely? I would have no idea where to find him. Defeated, I was about to leave—then I had an idea.

  I let my bag slide from my shoulder, took out a spiral notebook, a pen, and used Tom’s counter as a desk to write Porter a letter.

  I wrote three sentences. Tore out the page, folded it in thirds, and asked Tom, “Do you have an envelope?”

  He opened a squeaky drawer and pulled out a long, legal-size white envelope with the Tennyson address preprinted in the return address corner. I stuffed my letter inside, sealed it, wrote PORTER on the outside, and handed it to Tom.

  “Will you please just make sure he gets this?”

  He took it from me. “I can’t make him read it.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” I said.

  And walked out the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Can I skip it?”

  My mother gave me an exasperated look, “You’re the only kid I have, Ruth. Humor me.”

  I nodded and put the cap on so she could bobby-pin it in place. I’d never realized how completely idiotic these caps were, the cheap, wrinkly fabric hugging your skull and flattening your hair. When she finished, she stood back and smiled at me, tears filling her eyes. “I just can’t believe it,” she shook her head. “It seems like just last week . . .” Then her face crumpled completely, and my mother broke down into full-blown crying. “Just last week, you were only a tiny baby—I was holding you in my arms.”

  “That was actually about nine hundred and forty weeks ago.” I reached forward and wiped her face. If she didn’t stop this, she was going to make me cry too. And seeing as how I had probably cried more in the last couple months than I had in my entire life, it was something I had promised myself I would get a grip on.

  She smiled. “Smart-ass.” She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Let’s go or we’ll be late.”

  As I sat in my alphabetically arranged folding chair, sweating in the blue polyester gown, a profound sense of anticlimax settled in my gut.

  I had probably envisioned this moment several hundred times over my mostly illustrious academic career, and this particular scenario was never a picture my brain created.

  At the moment, I was trying my best to ignore Helen Nyugen’s demonstrative valedictory speech.

  Later, I would try to not throw up when I had to stand on stage while they announced the honors students. For the last four years, I’d been on track to graduate summa cum laude. With straight As my entire life, my GPA always a perfect 4.0, graduating at the very top was always how I had seen this moment.

  However, since acquiring my first two Bs ever, I was wrapped in the second-best cord for magna cum laude.

  Up on stage, Helen finished her moment off with her hands in the air, and a
roar erupted from the rest of the graduates around me and all the parents and family in the stadium behind us. I was fairly certain that 85 percent of our graduating class had no clue who Helen Nyugen even was. Like me, she had spent the better portion of the last four years ferreted away in the highest-level, least populated academic classes.

  I clapped for her.

  Five months ago, it could have been me up there—and maybe it should have been. But I couldn’t deny the sense of relief I was currently experiencing. I was happy to not have to get up there and rise to the emotional heights of being inspirational.

  Just lately, getting out of bed every day had been a strain.

  Even though, ten years from now, I would probably end up regretting letting myself drop the ball so close to the end, right now, I was still preoccupied with thoughts, and worries, of Porter.

  They started calling off the names, and after the first fifteen, my palms started to itch from all the monotonous hand clapping. When they announced “Bella Blake,” another roar erupted from our class, and the stadium behind us for no special reason other than that 98 percent of our class did know exactly who Bella was simply because she was genetically gifted all the correctly positioned and pleasing anatomical parts.

  I clapped for her.

  Up until age twelve, I had loved her too.

  I didn’t have the energy to hate her anymore.

  When they got to the Cs, I made the mental note that there was no “Creed” called.

  I turned in my seat and scanned the stadium crowd for the tenth time. Even if Porter hadn’t been hauled off to a residential home, he was missing too many credits to graduate. Still, I had hoped he might show up today.

  My row stood up and headed for the stage stairs.

  Porter’s birthday was last week. He was eighteen now, and could have left the home if he wanted to.

  “Ruth Robinson,” the principal announced. “Magna cum laude.”

  I made my way up the stairs, didn’t trip. I was pretty sure only my mom and dad could be heard clapping in the audience. Hand shake with the principal, accept the fake diploma, the real one would be mailed in three to four weeks, smile for the camera, flash—and it was over.