Beyond Eighteen

by Gretchen de La O

  It was inky dark when we finally rolled into Mendocino. A layer of hovering fog stole the constellations from night sky. The stars told stories about Greek Gods and golden fleeces, stories I wished Max was here to tell me.

  Even though it was colder than a witch’s tit (thanks, Grandpa), and Joanie had the heater blasted to stifling, it was a habit of mine to roll down my window and inhale the damp, salty coastal air. I drew it through my nose a couple of times to burn the smell of kelp and seaweed mingling with the faint scent of the redwood forest. Then I inhaled through my mouth, tasting my childhood memories of strolls across the field of wildflowers behind the house and rugged climbs down the cliff to the cool pebbly beach under my bare feet. There was nothing like it. The freezing air ripped at my chest, across my ears, and rolled around the back of my neck. My face was numb in sixty seconds but I didn’t care. It reminded me of winters with my grandparents and the evenings we’d all bundle up and sit out on the upstairs deck to watch the waves lap and splash against the rocky, jagged cliffs of the inlet.

  I longed to be on Kelly Street. I needed to feel my heartbeat speed faster as we pulled into the driveway. I wanted to smell Grandpa’s Old Spice cologne fused with Grandma’s slight scent of rose oil. I craved the heat of the potbelly stove as it pressed its warmth against me, and the aroma of burning oak as it found me safe and sound.

  “Wilson, if you’re that hot, just turn down the heat.” Joanie’s voice popped the memories that floated across my mind.

  But it wasn’t about the need to lower the temperature in the Durango, or being stifled by the heat J so unselfishly pushed on high. It was about sensing the only home I truly knew before I’d met Max. It was the home of small town familiarity and winter breaks from school. It was best friends sharing their wildest dreams of summer, and sisters lying on the beach while listening to the waves break against the sand. It was the love I felt for J when I didn’t have to tell her where to go as she turned onto Kelly Street. I rolled up the window, smiling at her as I felt my heart speed to the recognizable rhythm of finally parking in the driveway.

  “We’re here!” Joanie sang.

  “Yep, and you know, J, it’s probably freezing in there,” I replied, looking at the weather-beaten white and gray siding that enclosed the petite yet inviting porch that never failed to welcome me home every time I came back. The short, bare picket fence stained gray by the coastal air seemed to be much older than I remembered when my grandpa built it many summers ago. The shrubs in the front, still manicured and kept presentable, reminded me that I had to thank the neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Codwell, for watching the place.

  I took a deep breath, pushed the car door open, and let the cold, coastal air take my entire body in her clutches. It was easier to bite the bullet and freeze my ass off for the moment while my body became numb than to sit in the SUV and argue with my warmer self about putting on a jacket or trying to bundle up against the cold. Unfortunately, that argument only worked when someone was already home and had a fire blazing in the living room fireplace.

  We collected our suitcases and carried them up the worn old steps. The hollow thumps and rattling creaks of our footsteps against the porch reminded me of the times I tried to sneak in after forgetting to let them know where I was on long summer days; times when my grandma sat me down on her old brown tweed sofa and made me listen to all the bad scenarios that ran through her head while I was out. I can still hear her. “Wilson, you could have slipped off the edge of the sea cliff, fell down that sharp, jaggedy face, and been swallowed up by the heavy surf of the ocean. Nobody would have known the difference, because you forgot to check in!” Her stories always seemed to work for a couple of weeks, scaring me into calling the house periodically when I was out playing. But eventually, responsibility gave way to forgetfulness and I would have to sit on the tweed couch and endure another lecture about all the bad things that could happen to me when I didn’t check in.

  I never carried a house key, seeing as my grandpa always had one hidden in the most obvious of places. I reached up and pulled open the old faulty glass panel on the dull black Victorian porch light hanging to the right of the weather-beaten door. Behind the flame-shaped light bulb, next to the socket, there was the key. Even though everyone in the neighborhood knew it was there, he thought it was an ingenious spot to hide a key to the house; thinking nobody knew about it but the three of us.

  “Holy shit, Wilson, I forgot how cold winters are here. Can you even feel the key, or are your fingers as numb as mine?” Joanie said through bone-shaking chills and teeth-rattling chatters.

  I felt my fingers tickle and catch the sharp edges of the key before I dragged it to the end of the light fixture.

  “Got it,” I said as I pulled it down and opened the door. Thank God my grandpa rigged the porch light with a motion sensor.

  Once in the house, the strong aroma of cedar laced with a hint of old books and aged wooden furniture swept through every cell of my body. The calm cold of the house was captured by the locked doors and windows.

  I looked around and noticed the pile of wood Max and I left next to the stove the last time we’d been there. A smile crept across my face, thinking about how blazing hot we had the place. It also reminded me that I hadn’t really heard from him since I called him and left a message a couple of hours earlier. I pulled my phone from my pocket and noticed he hadn’t responded to the last text I sent.

  “Max hasn’t texted back yet?” J asked. She slid her hands up and down her arms, trying to warm up. Her words actually steamed and floated out of her mouth. Yeah, it was too cold.

  “Nope, but he said he would be in meetings all day and that he’d call when he could,” I answered her before I slipped the phone back in my pocket. I noticed a pile of junk mail on the tiny dining room table, perfect kindling to start a fire and warm the place up. It might even give me something to focus on besides Max and not hearing from him.

  Joanie rummaged around the handful of jackets, coats, and thick shirts that hung on the rack behind the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she managed to find my grandpa’s favorite lumberjack flannel—a red and black quilted button-up. Another moment that made my heart skip.

  I could tell Mrs. Codwell was the one who’d brought this last stack of mail in. She was always thoughtful enough to make three piles. The first one was a heap of pure advertisements and junk mail, the second pile was important letters and bills, and the third was a newly created stack of sympathy letters and cards. The third pile began when my grandma died six months ago, then seemed to dry up a month or two after that before it found its way back to the table upon Grandpa’s death. I sorted through the junk mail, collecting anything that would burn well, and tossed the rest back in the stack. I slid my hands across the other two piles of mail, making sure I wasn’t missing a 15-day shutoff notice for my water or electricity. I was relieved to see only white legal sized envelopes and no bright-colored notices.

  I dragged my fingers across the third stack of mail, watching it separate into four rectangular envelopes without windows. Handwritten and addressed to the Mooney family, I knew if I stopped and took a moment to open and read the cards it would be inviting a sadness I really didn’t want to experience right then. I just didn’t want to read the stories of a man who died of a broken heart. As I continued to drag my fingertips across the mail, in an unconscious act of feeling the table, my fingers caught behind one of the thick envelopes and I hauled it to the edge. The goldenrod colored envelope teetered for a moment before it tumbled to the hardwood floor. My eye caught the handwriting that stretched across the front. My name was sprawled in big, bold block letters, in a print that seemed recognizable but at the same time unfamiliar. I bent down and picked it up. My heart thrashed hard against my sternum. There was no return address in the left hand corner, and a ‘Forever’ stamp in the right was marred by a postage date haphazardly inked across it. I flipped it over and noticed an address written right where the flap meets the envel
ope. Where the name should have been was a haphazardly drawn heart. It was from someone in Seattle, Washington. I tried to link it with anyone I knew who lived in the Pacific Northwest, but I couldn’t seem to think of a single soul.

  Joanie must have noticed me standing there, frozen in thought. “What is it?” she asked casually.

  “I don’t know. I have a card addressed to me from someone in Seattle, Washington. I don’t know anybody from Seattle,” I answered, preoccupied as I still search the recesses of my mind trying to think of who it could be.

  “Well, maybe it’s someone who went to Bethany’s with us. Let me see,” Joanie said as she meandered over and I handed it to her.

  “I don’t recognize the handwriting, but whoever sent it mailed it from Crescent City, California on December 21st. Look,” Joanie, pointed to the postage marking across the stamp. “Do you know anyone from Crescent City?” she asked.

  “I don’t even know where Crescent City is,” I answered her.

  “Oh my God, Wilson, it’s at the border of California and Oregon,” Joanie huffed as she tossed the envelope back to me. “Open it. What do you have to lose?” she mused as she snatched the junk mail from my other hand and walked over to the fireplace.

  I tried to think back to any friends of my grandparents or long lost relatives that may have moved up to the Pacific Northwest, but nobody was coming to mind.

  “Who wouldn’t write their name on a frickin’ card? My guess is that it’s someone who doesn’t want you to know who they are,” Joanie said rhetorically as she crumpled paper and stuffed it around the wood she had positioned in the fireplace.

  Then it dawned on me, and there was a pit in my stomach.

  “I think it’s a letter from Candi,” I answered. “I don’t think I can open it,” I continued as I looked up at her. “I don’t want to read her lies or the fake love she’ll try and manipulate me with. There’s nothing she can say that will make me forgive her for the last ten years of my life.”

  “Then don’t. You don’t have to open it. Just toss it into the fire and forget you ever saw it,” Joanie said as she slowly pulled it from my hands. “Do you even have her last address?” she asked as she kept flipping and turning the envelope over, trying to find evidence that it was from Candi. “Her name isn’t even on it; I don’t think you should work yourself up when you really don’t know if it’s even from her.”

  “I just have a feeling it’s from her, J. She’s called me and now she’s trying to write me. What the hell does she want?”

  “Well, there is only one way to find out. You have to open it,” Joanie said holding it out to me.

  I didn’t take it. I didn’t even want to touch it. I just stared at it as she bounced it up and down in front of me.

  “Wilson, what if the closure you are looking for is in this envelope? I think you should open it.” Joanie said.

  I took the card from J and wondered if it was going to give me the closure I wanted or tear apart what little hope I had hid in the bottom of my heart for my mom.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  ~ Max ~

  I looked up at the clock. It was 6:30. I couldn’t believe I was finally leaving the office. Man it’s late. I pushed the Bluetooth into my ear, pulled out my phone, and dialed Wilson. I needed to hear how the meeting had gone with Dean McCallous.

  “Hi,” she said in a low grumble.

  “Hey, sweets, I’m just leaving the office. I am so sorry I haven’t been able to call you sooner,” I told her as I tossed my briefcase onto the passenger’s seat of my BMW, took off my sports coat, and loosened my tie from around my neck.

  “That’s fine,” she sounded preoccupied.

  “You don’t sound too happy…it went that bad with the dean?” I answered immediately as I slipped into the comfort of my Z4 and started it up. Even though the engine purred, I could feel the muscles across my shoulders tighten and a pressure slowly rake down either side of my spine. I was bummed that I wasn’t there with her.

  “No, it went okay with Dean McCallous,” she answered.

  I waited to hear more, but she never carried on talking. I drove out of the covered garage just in time for it to start snowing.

  “Sooo, then, it wasn’t about losing your financial aid?” I asked. It was like pulling teeth to get her to engage in some type of legitimate dialogue.

  “No, it wasn’t about my financial aid. But I signed a gag order, stating I wouldn’t discuss any particular incidents involving specific people working or attending Wesley in the last six months; so, you can imagine what it was about, Mr. Goldstein,” I heard her voice lighten as she said my name.

  “Oh, so that explains the voicemail from Dean McCallous. Tell me…no expulsion or disciplinary action, right?”

  “Nope, they wanted to cover their asses. They graduated me early. They said I was eighteen and had enough credits to get my diploma right then. But they did say I had to be out of the dorms by January 7th. Tell me you are available to help me move…” I could hear her actually laugh.

  “Aaahh…yeah…no, I don’t think they’ll let me set foot on the Wesley campus anytime soon. So sorry, babe, you’ll have to do that without me,” I answered. I felt a bubble grow in my throat.

  “How are you going to clear your stuff out of your classroom, then?” Wilson asked, seriously concerned.

  “Well, it isn’t my room any more. If they haven’t already boxed up my stuff, I’ll probably ask Calvin or someone to do it for me. I’m not too worried. My only concern is you, and that you are okay,” I told her.

  In all honesty, though, I had this hovering guilt that came at me in waves. Some days were better than others, but the days that were hard were the ones where I just couldn’t help but feel like I’d let Wilson down somehow. There was this part of me that kept thinking it was wrong to be with her; for taking her away from her last six months at Wesley. I couldn’t help but think about things she’d miss…she wouldn’t be going to her senior prom or ever walk proudly across the stage to collect her diploma. I knew she’d say it didn’t matter. That she only wanted to be with me.

  I’m fully aware most people will look at us and never ever understand our relationship. They will judge me at the surface of what they see and call me fucked-up names and hate me for stealing her innocence. Some people will always look at me, no matter what, as the teacher who took advantage of his student when she was so vulnerable. No matter if we are together 5, 10, 50 or 100 years, there will always be those people who say what I did was wrong. There will never be a day that goes by where I don’t question my actions and the repercussions of what I have done, simply because of the judgment of strangers. It’s just something that I will have to endure for now.

  But at the end of each day, when she walks through the door…she has found her home. At the end of the day, she has found someone who loves her enough to stop the world for her; and no matter what anyone says, thinks, sees, or feels…that’s the only thing that will ever matter to me. I’ve found the person I am going to spend the rest of my life with.

  “Well, Max, surprisingly everything went smooth at Wesley. Now here in Mendocino, well, that’s a whole different story,” she muttered and I heard her tone shift again.

  “Why? What’s going on? Joanie’s there with you, right?” I prodded.

  “Yeah, J is here. As a matter of fact, she drove the whole way up and we literally just got here about 10 minutes ago. It’s really foggy, damp, and cold. Joanie’s trying to make a fire in the stove, and well, the fence looks like it’s falling down,” she rambled on.

  “Wilson? Did you find the paperwork the lawyers are asking for?” I said, redirecting her focus.

  “Well, no, but we haven’t looked yet,” she answered.

  “What’s really going on?” I could tell by the way she was rambling off random things that something was on her mind.

  “It’s just…I think I got a letter in the mail from Candi,” she sighed.

  “You think?” I rep
eated.

  “I haven’t opened it yet. I don’t know if I want to. I don’t think I want to know why she’s trying to contact me now,” she spat. I could hear it in her voice that she was getting all worked up.

  “Alright, babe, listen, you don’t have to open it. What did Joanie tell you to do with the letter?”

  “She said to burn it.”

  “Okay…well, we don’t even know if it’s technically from Candi. I’ll tell you what; just put the letter in a drawer. I’m trying to button up a few more things, and after tomorrow I should have a pretty good idea of when I can leave and come out there to be with you. Sound good?”

  “I’m meeting with the lawyers tomorrow at 2:30. I really wish you were here with me, and I didn’t even think about it being New Year’s Eve. Maybe I should look for the deed tonight,” she yawned. I could hear her open and close a couple of drawers. “I just wish I wasn’t so tired,” she complained.

  “Well, Wilson, you’ve had a pretty stressful day. Did you guys eat dinner already?”

  “No,” she answered quickly.

  “Well, maybe the deed can wait until tomorrow morning. Go get something to eat and then just go to bed early. What is Joanie doing?” I asked.

  “She’s talking on the phone with—” she stopped speaking abruptly.

  I knew who she was about to mention, and I respected her for not saying his name. Truthfully, I didn’t understand what Joanie was doing with him anyway. That whole relationship was…well, it wasn’t any of my business. I just wanted to get to Wilson as soon as possible.

  “Listen, sweetheart, I think you should get something to eat, relax, and then look for the deed in the morning.” I knew she was getting tired because she didn’t argue with me.