by Bridie Hall
Chapter Twenty-One
CHLOE
A tropical storm is forecast for late afternoon. Izzy and I are watching the portentous clouds rolling in from the east. They feel appropriate for my mood. Nature commiserates with me and my pain.
I lean my head back on the lounger and inhale. “It’s almost like breathing under water, the air’s so moist.”
“It’s almost like I were listening to myself, the way you’re still trying to avoid the topic,” Izzy counters.
“It’s not fair that you manage to be funny and mean.”
“You mean it’s not fair that I’m taking over your role?”
“Shut up.”
“Refusing to talk about him won’t make it hurt any less.”
“I said, shut up.”
That silences her for a few minutes so I can finish my soda in peace. That’s all I want, a little bit of peace. A few moments a day when I’m not reminded of Chris, and how much it all hurts. But now that I’ve started thinking about it, I can’t stop, and all hope of forgetting him is now lost. I sigh and get up.
The view from Isabelle’s porch sucks. All I can see is the back alley and the backyards of the houses on the other side. They’re all empty and silent. It’s still better to pretend to be watching that, than to face Izzy’s stubborn glare.
I hear her inhale to say something, but no words follow.
“Yeah yeah, I know.” I sigh. “You’re only trying to help.”
I turn to her, apologetic, but I catch her shaking her head.
“That was not what I was going to say.”
“What, then?”
She gets up too, and joins me by the balustrade.
“Well, I was thinking that Chris put a lot of effort into it. If it was only about winning the bet, I mean.”
“I know.”
“Maybe …” When I look at her, she gestures for me to wait with my reaction until she finishes. “Even if he accepted the bet, maybe his feelings were genuine anyway? Did you ever consider that?”
“Yes,” I say. I keep sighing like I’m on a respirator. “I realize that maybe he fell for me just like he said he did, and that the bet was just a bad, alcohol-fueled decision in the spur of the moment. I know all that.”
“So?”
“I can’t get past it, Iz.” I massage my scalp with my fingers because it aches from all this thinking and hurting.
“I don’t get it.”
“The initial problem was Chris and what he’d done, certainly. But now, the problem is me.” When I touch my chest with my hand, I feel my heart beating and I wonder if it beats any differently now that it’s broken. I’ve missed him these past days, once the anger and humiliation ran their course and the longing set into my heart like a frigid winter on the land. I’ve missed him with a passion.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been very stupid, trusting him. Like you said I was, at the beginning, when I moved in with him. I can’t forgive myself.”
“You weren’t stupid, Chloe. It was the right thing to do. You know that.”
“Look how well it turned out,” I say, and even I wince at how jaded my voice sounds. I realize I’m being a drama queen over this. Yes, he was a jerk. He broke my heart. He ruined my last vacation before college. For a day or two, he made me hate all men. But I was the one who initiated things that day. I kissed him first. I made it possible for him to break my heart.
Wait, no … that’s not right. Me trusting him was not the problem. Despite the hurt and humiliation, there’s a part of me that believes that he didn’t set out to hurt me at all. It just so happened. Partly, it was his fault, partly mine. Partly, it was the fault of the stupid, childish male need to brag and taunt.
And still, even knowing all that, there is a barrier in me that I can’t push myself through to get to the other side where I could possibly forgive and move on. I am circling on the spot. Endless circles of Dante’s Inferno that have me burning with anger and pain.
“I know it was the right thing to do,” I say. “Just not at the right moment or maybe not with the right person.”
“You’re wrong,” she says, and shakes her head stubbornly. “Why don’t you listen to him? See what he has to say for himself?”
“I listened to about a hundred voice mails from him.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Sure I did.” She was right there with me when I played them. Why is she pretending she doesn’t remember all of a sudden?
“You listened to a pre-recorded loop that goes on and on in your head, Chloe. You didn’t hear him.”
I wish I had a better reply to that, but I just snort with scorn.
“Even my heart was breaking when I heard his voice, Chloe. Or when he came here with your favorite ice cream. Please, next time he calls, pick up and talk to him. Please?”
“You’re on his side now?” I know she’s not, but I want to get back at her for being his advocate after he humiliated me.
“Just ask him whether he told his buddies that he won the bet.”
She makes sense, and I inhale deeply and accept it. She’s smart and knows how to get to me. Also, she loves me like a sister, and she’s definitely not on Chris’s side, because there are no sides here. It’s just a mess. A side-less, shapeless mess.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
“Did you call your mom yet?” she starts with another painful topic.
I haven’t and I ignored Mom’s calls. I know I handled the situation badly. I was upset and angry, still am, but I said the first thing that came to mind, without considering how my words would hurt Mom. I didn’t react very maturely. I feel bad about it, but I also need some time before I face Mom because I don’t want a repeat performance of our last altercation. I needed my anger to cool down a bit first.
“I’m waiting for a good time to talk to her.”
“We’re leaving for college in less than two weeks. You’re running out of time to fix your relationships, Chloe.”
“I know, Iz. I know.” I sound harsh, but I’m angry with myself, not with her. “It’s just that a part of me wants one thing, another part quite another.”
Isabelle opens her mouth to say something, but then we hear the door bell from the depths of the house.
Isabelle goes in, but she’s back within a minute. I turn around and I’m surprised to see my mom walking behind Izzy.
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
“Chloe, dear.” She stops like she doesn’t know what else to say. I know she can tell from my expression that I’m still angry and hurt. I want her to know it, because I’ve had enough of her not being able to remember a single thing. I’ve had enough of having to be the dependable one out of the two of us. It just got too much having to be responsible for every person in my life when I sometimes feel like I can’t even be responsible for myself. I buckled under the burden and now I’m not willing to shoulder it again. I would never be able to fly, so to speak, with all this weight pressing me down.
“Not answering your calls was supposed to send a message,” I say, careful not to raise my voice because if I do, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop yelling.
“But love, you have to let me explain.”
“I would’ve, in my own time. But I first needed some distance to cool off. You should have known that.”
“I do, Chloe.”
“Do you? Because it seems to me you don’t even know your own daughter anymore. How could you talk to Chris behind my back otherwise?”
“Chloe, you know it’s not like that. I’m just … well, I tried to help.” She smiles sheepishly.
“Right now I’m so angry with you for doing this to me. I’m not here to be your obedient little helper, Mom. I was not born so you would have it easy. I was not. I want you to take care of me for once. Chris broke my heart and I’m really hurting, and right now I need a mother. A proper mother. I can’t do this anymore, Mom. Just can’t …”
I don’t real
ize I’m crying until a warm tear drops on my hand.
“Oh, dear,” Mom says, but doesn’t look half as distraught as I’m feeling. She walks to me without hesitation and throws her thin arms around me and pulls me into a fierce hug. After I’ve been a bitch to her, she hugs me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and hug her back. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you, love. Nothing at all. I made a mistake. I thought I could fix whatever went wrong between you and Chris. I thought if I could convince him what a great girl you are, that he’d try and patch things up. But I only made a bigger mess. I should never have intervened. That was between you and him. I had no right …”
“That’s why you asked him to help? So you could get us back together?” It never occurred to me that Mom would try something like that. She’d never tried to interfere with any of my previous boyfriends.
“Well, you seemed pretty stubborn when I tried to get you to talk to him. I imagined he’d react the same way if I just went to talk to him, so I thought I’d ask him for help and … slyly mention you a few times …”
“Oh, Mom.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out. Whatever it was between you, and my intervention. I know he was different than the others. I could tell from the beginning that he meant something to you.”
“Thanks for trying. I’m sorry I was mean to you, but I wanted someone else to hurt like I’m hurting.”
She wipes the tears from my face. I realize that she may have fucked up a few things in the past, but so have I. We learn and we move on to being better people.
“I love you, Chloe. That has never been questionable, although my mothering skills may have been and still are.”
“I wouldn’t be who I am without you, Mom. And I’m pretty awesome, so I guess that makes you a pretty awesome Mom.”
Her giddy giggling sound makes me laugh through my tears.
As we stand embracing in the backyard, I feel the winds pick up. The sky has turned even darker, and there’s a rumbling quality to the air. The storm is closing in. It feels appropriate.
“How cliché,” I say, and Mom looks at me like I’m insane. “Stormy emotions and all that,” I say.
Mom caresses my cheek. She’s already forgiven me. I, in turn, have a lot of forgiving to do.
I notice Isabelle has vanished.
“Let’s go inside.”
As we walk up the steps, Mom hesitantly says, “And you’re not the only one hurting, you know.”
I don’t want her to continue because I know what she’s going to say and I don’t want to hear it.
“Chris is in a pretty bad way, too.”
I make a noncommittal sound, hoping she’ll get the hint.
When we enter the house, Harper arrives. He is supposed to cook dinner tonight, and he says he didn’t want to brave the elements later, so he came before the storm broke. He starts on the dinner early in case of a power outage during the storm. Isabelle helps him in the kitchen and I watch them wistfully as they joke and smile, touch each other deliberately while passing one item or the other, and banter as Harper scolds and instructs Izzy teasingly.
Mom and I sit on the couch in the living room and talk. Izzy’s dad joins Harper and Iz in the kitchen for a while, then returns to his study.
“You’ve been through a lot lately,” Mom says. “Because of me, our roles have been reversed since you were a little girl, Chloe. I imagine that must’ve been a lot of pressure on you. Pressure you didn’t deserve.”
“It was, but I handled it. Just this thing with Chris … upset me. I lost … myself for a little while.”
“Of course, hon.”
“I shouldn’t have said those things,” I say.
When she shakes her head, her brown curls bounce left and right. Her eyes are blue like mine, but with a greenish tinge. They remind me of Chris a little, and everything inside me starts breaking all over again.
“Most were true,” she says. “I’m sorry that even though I’m doing my best, it isn’t good enough.” She doesn’t say it with resentment or sadness. She’s stating a fact. I realize how, despite her frailty, she’s also strong. She’s raised me on her own. She’s given up a lot because of me, for me. Her strength is the one thing I want to learn from her.
“It’s good enough, Mom.”
When dinner’s ready, we all sit at the table: Isabelle, Harper, Isabelle’s Dad, Mom and I. It’s a quiet dinner, and the lights go out half-way through. We chat and praise the food, and I know Iz and Harper are playing footsie under the table. I have a difficult time keeping my face straight.
Although Mom and Izzy’s dad have met countless times over the years, I can’t help myself but wait for them to suddenly forget each other’s names or ask who the stranger at their table is. Sometimes, it’s difficult living with a parent like that. Other times, it’s liberating and fun. Like with everything in life. You cope and fight to get to the good parts. You don’t give up just as you reach your goal and fall back on the hardships. You don’t give up, period.
Chapter Twenty-Two
CHRIS
It’s been thirteen days, and I count them like a lovesick idiot. Which is, I guess, what I am. But still, you know … It’s humiliating. It’s distracting me at work. Salvo’s given me a dressing-down twice this week. I messed up four deliveries. Needless to say, I didn’t get any tips for that.
Every morning, Sal’s trying to convince me to take a box of croissants to Izzy’s and try to talk to Chloe. I think my love life is beginning to substitute for his soap operas, which is just tragic. I’m not convinced his idea is a good one. I think trying to talk to her when she obviously doesn’t want to talk to me would only make it worse.
I can avoid her, but there’s nothing I can do to stop feeling like this. Nothing I can do to stop thinking about her the way I imagine alcoholics think about their next drink, even dream about it.
I fucked up. What pisses me off is that it wasn’t even deliberate. That bet was an act of total idiocy. My only excuse is that I made it when I still thought I didn’t have the slightest chance with Chloe. I would never have done it otherwise. I don’t sleep with girls for bets, for chrissakes. Especially not with Chloe. She wasn’t even just a girl. She was different. She was supposed to be my girl.
I tried calling her. I left her two dozen messages. She hasn’t responded, so I gave up. I need a better plan. Inundating her cell phone is obviously not going to help. Maybe I should ask Isabelle for help, but I’m not certain she would even listen to my reasons because she is Chloe’s best friend and she’d feel she has to be loyal to her, not to me. Maybe Harper. But I don’t want to put him into a position where he’d have to choose between Isabelle and me.
I am on my own. I just need to get her to listen to me. She is smart enough to see the truth once she hears me out. I decide to write her a letter. My handwriting is awful and my hand will hurt for a week, not being used to writing, but I think it will get the message across. She’ll see how much she means to me.
It takes me ten minutes to get a pen and paper. I can’t remember the last time I wrote something down by hand.
I sit at the kitchen table and think about how to start. I’m half way through a bottle of water by the time I write ‘Dear Chloe’. I empty it by the time I start the first sentence. Then I’m interrupted by a knock on the door.
I open the door to find Chloe on my doorstep. Shame and gratitude and hope and unease wash over me, and I’m so overwhelmed I avoid her eyes. That is my first mistake. Wait, no, it’s my second. My first was made weeks ago.
“Hi,” she says, all neutral and poised.
I step aside, and she walks in. She stops in the middle of the room, a step from the table where my letter to her lies abandoned. I cringe at the thought of her seeing it. Now that she’s here, a letter seems such a stupid idea. But all my thinking about it must somehow align the energies in a way that make her look directly at the object of shame.
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She reads the single line on the paper, and then looks at me.
I think of the inadequate words. Dear Chloe, I don’t think I’ve ever written a letter before.
Sounds silly, now that I think about it. “You refused to answer my calls,” I say, and feel even sillier.
“I heard your messages.” She sounds calm, but somehow raw, hurt.
I don’t know what to say. I want to invite her to sit, but that would be lame. I also can’t just let her stand there, that would be rude. So I opt to offer her some tea.
“Coffee, please,” she says, and shrugs when I look at her surprised. “I’ve been spending too much time with Izzy.” She almost cracks a smile, I can tell. It’s there, behind the cool façade, her sparkly personality itching to get out and laugh and joke with me, the way we used to. The realization of what I’ve lost is like a slap, and I feel all this is useless. But why is she here, then? If she could switch from tea to coffee, she could go from being pissed at me to trusting me again. I know it’s not quite the same, but people and situations change, right?
While I try to get the machine to work (it takes two attempts and one strong punch), she says, “I couldn’t just leave it like this.”
I’m afraid to turn because I’m not sure what I’ll see. Is she here to give me a second chance or to tell me I’m the worst sort of scum?
“We became friends over the few weeks, and I couldn’t just ignore all this forever and pretend it never happened.”
That is good, right? God, please say it’s a good thing. Please?
“Chris?”
I don’t have a choice anymore. I can’t stare at the machine spewing out coffee while Chloe’s asking me a question. I turn. “Yeah?”
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” She’s holding the back of a chair for support and her fingers are tapping out a frenzied rhythm on the blue wood.
“I’m glad that you decided you’re not angry with me anymore?” I say, making it a question more than a statement.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t angry anymore. I just said it couldn’t go on forever without … talking to you and … giving you a chance to tell your side of the story, I guess.”