Confined

by Barbi Barnard

  At least until people started to recognize me and started whispering about me again.

  I pushed the thoughts from my mind as I made my way up the front walk, tripping slightly over the cracked sidewalk. The storm door squeaked loudly as I opened it, the hinges protesting, much like Dorothy’s tin man, in their shrill cry for oil. The key slid into the dead bolt, which gave way effortlessly. The wooden door swung open, the living room stretched out before me, still full of furniture, all of which was hidden by moth eaten cloths. The air in the house was stale and thick with dust.

  Behind me, Emma walked into the house looking around. “Where’s our stuff?” she asked as she looked at the photos of me nailed to the wall.

  “In the garage,” I replied. “We have a lot of work to do. This whole place needs to be cleaned and we have to go through all your grandfathers things and get rid of whatever we don’t want.”

  “Great,” Emma muttered sarcastically. “Where’s my room?”

  I motion for her to follow me up the stairs and I take them two at a time. There are two bedrooms upstairs, one used to be mine and the other was dads.

  The doors stand open, waiting for the return of human inhabitants. Emma pushes around me, her sandals slapping the floor as she heads into my childhood room. “What is all this crap?” she asks and I cringe.

  She might only be ten, well almost ten now, but the definite pre-teen attitude was starting to rear its ugly head.

  “That’s my crap, and it’s not crap,” I snap and walk into my old room. It was like walking out of the present and right into the past. Faded photos hung on the walls, the same ones I’d tacked there all those years ago. Posters whose edges had curled were still hanging on the wall, Third Eye Blind, Eve 6, Sugar Ray. I rolled my eyes at Mark McGrath, amazed that nothing in my room had changed since I left ten years ago.

  I walk further into the pale blue room, crossing the scarred wooden floor to the windows overlooking the front yard. I lift the curtain and peer out of the dirty window. Across the street, a little girl with golden pigtails and a pink and white polka dot bathing suit was chasing a little boy through the sprinkler, their happy shrieking filling the air as the cold water sprays them.

  In the house next door, a squad car pulled up and a ridiculously tall man climbed out. He glanced at my Nissan in the driveway, blatantly staring as he strode toward his house. He whipped off his sunglasses and tucked them into the front pocket of his uniform shirt. I snorted softly. He looked like a 1980’s Eric Estrada wanna-be with the cop uniform and the clichéd cop-style sunglasses.

  I lean toward the window to get a closer look at the local law enforcement official living next door. He glanced up at the second story window and gave me a brief nod. I jump back, feeling sheepish for spying on the neighbors.

  Behind me, Emma Grace laughs. I turn to see what she was laughing at. “Wow, look at your hair,” she was pointing to a picture of me as a little girl, rocking a ponytail on the side of my head.

  “Yeah. That was an ugly time for fashion.”

  “Mhmm,” she agreed. “Can I have this room?”

  “Sure. We’ll get all the posters and pictures down and you can decorate however you want.”

  “Cool, thanks mom.”

  I leave Emma in her room by herself and head downstairs to make sure that our things were indeed in the garage like the moving company man said they were.

  ***

  I bend over and grab the handle, giving it a good tug. It makes a groaning sound and refuses to budge. I yank it again to no avail. The garage door is stuck and refuses to open no matter how hard I tug on it. “Come on,” I mutter, straining to get it up.

  “There’s a special way you have to do it,” a deep baritone rumbles from behind me.

  I straighten up and turn, glancing at the handsome stranger standing behind me. “Oh?”

  “Yeah, you have to do it like this.” He walked up, grabs the handle, and gives it a firm jerk. The catch releases and the door rumbles, rising slightly.

  “Wow, impressive. Thanks.”

  “Not a problem. Did you just buy the old place?” He nods toward the house then shoves his hands into his pockets.

  “Um, no actually, I just inherited it.”

  “You’re Kenneth’s daughter?”

  The handsome man smiles. “The mysterious daughter returned from California. Well, welcome home.”

  “Thanks.” He has a smile that is smirky and sexy to see.

  He turns and heads back down the drive way. “Oh, I’m Steven Jamison. Well, only my mother calls me Steven, everybody else calls me Steve.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m JoJo.”

  “Take it easy, JoJo,” he grins at me. “And don’t be too rough on the garage door. See you around.”

  I raise my hand in an effort to wave goodbye, but I am stunned. He was seven kinds of sexy in the uniform, but deputy delicious is definitely just as, if not more, attractive in a pair of blue jeans and a tee shirt. I can see the ripples of muscles through the thin cotton material, my eyes appreciatively taking in the physique.

  Maybe being back home after all this time wouldn’t be such a bad thing. After all, people only remember what they want to remember. As long as I didn’t go causing a scene and making trouble for myself, no one would go out of their way to remember what happened all those years ago.

  Deputy delicious leaned over, retrieving the mail from his shiny silver box. His jeans taunt across his backside made me shiver as I watched him reach for the mail.

  “Mom? Mom?”

  Finally, I look away. “What?” I ask looking down at Emma

  “Where’s my stuff? I want to start setting up my room.”

  I point into the dark garage. “It’s all in there. If you want, I’ll give you a hand carrying it all in.”

  Emma nods and says, “Sure, mom, I’d like that.”

  “Good. Come on, kiddo.” I take her hand in mine, relishing the way her not so small fingers wrap around mine. I take advantage of this moment because soon she won’t let me anymore. “I think you’re going to like it here.”

  Emma doesn’t answer. I know what she’s thinking – that it’s not going to be likely and that she’s pretty pissed about leaving L.A., but she’s going to try because she wasn’t the only one who got abandoned. We were both shoved aside and in that fact, we are united.

  Chapter Two

  As dusk descends upon the town, I find it hard to keep the demons at bay. Past and present swirled together pressing down on my heart. I sought refuge in the kitchen - baking. Soon, the smell of chocolate brownies was wafting through the living room. It smells so good that it roused Emma out of the tub and down into the kitchen where she sat down at the table, tossing a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book face down on the table. She props her boney elbows up and distractedly picks at the sparkly fingernail polish on her stubby fingernails.

  “What smells?” she finally asked after a moment of nail picking silence.

  I leaned across the counter and turned the radio down. Nothing like double chocolate brownies and Bruce Springsteen to heal a broken heart. “I’m making brownies,” I tell her, stating the obvious.

  “Duh,” Emma replied. “I can smell that much.”

  The parent in me thought about chastising her for the way she’d been speaking to me the last couple of days. However, she was entitled to a little teenage angst; she has been through just as much as I had these last few days.

  “They’re special brownies,” I tell her. “My grandmother used to make them for me when I was upset. She always used to say that “they’d chase the rain from the sky” they were so good. I figured after the last couple of days, we could use a pick me up.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but she didn’t need to know that.

  Emma nods wordlessly before picking up her book. She stares at the pages, flipping them every few seconds. I know she isn’t really reading, but I don’t say anything. Something is weighing on her mind and if I give her some time, she’ll o
pen up.

  “Why did you and daddy get divorced?” she finally muttered.

  Good question, I thought, wondering why exactly did we get divorced. I knew Kyle wasn’t happy, it didn’t take a fool to see it, but I didn’t know why he was unhappy. He never said and I never asked.

  To Emma I said, “Sometimes people stop loving each other.”

  “Why? I thought love was supposed to be the greatest superpower in the world. All those stupid cards say stuff like - love is the greatest gift and that love can move mountains, stuff like that. How can love move mountains, if it’s so easy to just stop loving somebody?”

  I smile at her, my beautiful smart daughter. “Because,” I said, “It’s easy to stop loving someone when you never really loved them in the first place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I shrug. “Just what I said. Maybe it was so easy for daddy to stop loving me because he never really loved me; I mean the kind of love that moves mountains loved me. Maybe he just liked me an awful lot. Think of it this way, do you really love that Justin Bieber kid, or do you think you just really like him a lot?”

  Emma tilted her head to the side. I saw her contemplate her obsession with the baby-faced singer, battling it back and forth in her mind.

  “Okay,” I said. “Look at it this way. If Justin and Nick Jonas walked into the kitchen right now and asked you to go to the movies with them, but you could only choose one, who would you pick?”

  Emma’s face flushed red. If Nick Jonas and Justin Bieber walked into the kitchen right now, she would probably die and go to teen girl heaven. She giggled, pondering the scenario. Finally, Emma said, “You’re right. I don’t love Justin, but I like him a lot. He’s cute. So is Nick Jonas. So what you’re saying is Daddy didn’t love you like you loved him, and that’s why he wanted to divorce you?”

  I nodded. “I suppose so. I love your dad, but if he’s going to be happier without me, well, there’s really nothing I can do about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when you love something you have to let it go. If it comes back to you, then maybe it’s meant to be, or maybe you just didn’t learn the lesson the first time around.”

  “It’s confusing being a grown up. I mean, how hard is it? Either you like someone or you don’t. Like, I don’t like cats, but I like dogs. So I won’t get a cat, but I would get a dog instead. Then I would love the dog until it died, even if it did stuff wrong I would still love it. Daddy should have done the same thing. He should have loved you forever.”

  I give her a half shrug, it is an indistinct gesture, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her. Over the stove, the timer dinged. I pull on oven mitts and reach into the oven, retrieving the pan of perfectly baked brownies, which I set on the stove to cool.

  Emma had picked up her book and was actually reading it this time so I let her be and set about cleaning up the kitchen, humming along to the radio. The song tugged at my heart; I listen to the words as I wash the bowl I’d used to mix the brownies in. He sang about a girl he met in Long Beach, California and how they sat on the beach making plans, and sat on a pier as he told her everything and wiped her tears. Then an earthquake made his heart break, it was too late and now it’s all gone.

  I wondered if the songwriter had been following me around for the last ten years because it sounded like the song was written about our – me and Kyle’s – relationship. I had half a mind to get back in the car, drive back to California, and make him see that we were supposed to be together. He helped me through so much and I still loved him, and I missed him. How was I supposed to just stop loving him? That was like asking the sunset not to be beautiful. It was just impossible.

  I set the sponge down and take a deep breath. I feel my heart breaking into a hundred million pieces. It hurts so bad. I couldn’t fathom how deep it would hurt. My whole life was just one long series of men not wanting me. Boys in high school, the incident after spring break, now Kyle. Maybe I am just destined to be alone.

  “Mom, are you alright?” Emma asks behind me. I hear the book hit the table and the chair slide across the worn wooden floor.

  “I’m fine, Emma,” I replied. “Why don’t you get out the milk and I’ll cut up the brownies and we’ll have a snack before bed.”

  “Okay. Can I watch TV in bed for a little while? Please?”

  I nod without looking at her and take a deep breath. Just keep it together until she goes to bed then you can sit in the tub, run the water, and cry your eyeballs out in peace, I tell myself.

  I cut Emma a small square of brownie and set it on a napkin in front of her. “Here, Munchkin.”

  “Thanks. mom,” she says picking up the book again.

  I sit down across the scarred table from her and pick at my own square of brownie, tearing it into little pieces counting down the minutes until I could seek refuge in my solitude. The first night – the night we left Los Angeles, Emma and I stayed in a hotel and I had cried silent tears the entire night. It wasn’t enough. I need to sob and rage and let it all out. Once it was all out of my system, I can get back to the rest of my life.

  Across the table, Emma finished the rest of her brownie with a yawn. “I’m going to bed,” she announced folding over the page she’d been reading.

  I glanced up and reminded her, “Only one hour of TV and then it goes off. Got it?”

  Emma nods and shuffles out of the kitchen. As her footsteps faded toward the top of the stairs, I stood up and swept the brownie mess off the table onto the palm of my hand, then cross to the other side of the table and cleaned up Emma’s mess as well.

  Upstairs the TV clicked on and the canned laughter of the kids channel echoes down the stairs and into the kitchen. I feel like the laugh track on the show, fake and forced to pretend to be happy or bubbly. I thought about what I told Emma earlier tonight, about Kyle never really loving me.

  Maybe he did love me once upon a time, but it was so long ago. Where did that love go? I wonder. Did it dry up or evaporate, disappear into the skies, never to be seen or heard from again? I had no idea. I just know that one day everything was fine and then it wasn’t. I can’t even pinpoint the day it stopped being fine or the reason why.

  I am so confused and hurt that I want to scream until the world is right again, not that it really ever had been, but for a little while, it was. For a few short years, I was the normal girl with the baby and the husband. There were no breathy whispers or pointed stares. There was no one proclaiming what I did or didn’t do, no speculating whether or not I was a liar or a slut or a tease who asked for it and then when I got it, got scared and claimed otherwise.

  The only person I ever lied to was dad. Right after graduation I left for San Francisco and after that, it was just easier to lie and tell him I couldn’t come home for a visit was because I had classes or I had to practice or that I had a concert. He was so proud of me; he said it all the time. I felt like a fraud lying to him, but again, it was easier to lie and say I was attending the San Francisco Conservatory of Music than to tell him the truth – that I was eighteen and pregnant and had run away because a gay couple there wanted to adopt my baby.

  He had no idea he had a granddaughter, again I felt like crap for not ever telling him, but if I had then he would have known about what happened and I couldn’t live with that. Beside me, there were only three other people who knew about that night: Kyle, God, and Curtis Duggan and two out of the three weren’t talking about it.

  Once the kitchen is returned to its orderly state, I wearily climb the stairs wondering if I even have enough energy for a good cry. As it turns out, I do. I sit on the floor of the shower sobbing uncontrollably until the hot water runs out and the icy spray shakes me out of my stupor. The tears don’t stop there however. Once I turn Emma’s television off and tuck my own self into dad’s old bed, the tears return.