Beyond Eighteen

by Gretchen de La O

  But, of course, it didn’t. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how desolate my bed felt without Wilson in it. I started wondering how she was handling everything back in California without me. My mind was flooded with thoughts of Wilson and how she was forced to face Dean McCallous on her own. I wondered if she was scared or confused. Maybe Joanie went into the office with her so she didn’t have to be alone? Oh, I hope Joanie went in with her. As rapidly as my thoughts volleyed around my mind, I started to think about Wesley and how unconcerned I was about not going back after winter break. I wasn’t worried about Wesley’s executive board finding a sub or replacing me. It was strange, all I felt was relief; like a hefty weight had been lifted off my shoulders and the chain around my neck didn’t exist anymore. After months of hiding our feelings in public and sneaking around, we would finally have some type of normalcy. We’d just be a couple making a life for themselves. Wherever we ended up, whether it be Colorado or somewhere else, one thing I knew for sure, I didn’t want to stay in the Bay Area.

  I just wanted to push up against Wilson, protect her, be her everything. I wanted to make my way to her, continue building a life together. I wanted to share everything with her. Every decision I’d made for our future. I wanted her to know I’d answered the responsibility my father laid at my feet, and that I didn’t blame him for the choices he made. I wanted to tell her that I was planning on spending the rest of my life with her.

  My mind exploded with images of her and how beautiful she was when I saw her for the very first time—her skin smooth as creamy satin, her lips deliciously juicy as she spoke her words and laughed her responses, and her eyes visceral and hauntingly sophisticated as they revealed lifetimes of experience most people her age didn’t have. I started visualizing that first day back at school when she walked into my classroom. The exaggerated sway of her hips against the vacancy of the room and the captivating curve of her hair as it brushed every care off her shoulders when she was finding a seat in the front row. Immediately, I felt my body react. Everything below my belt shifted, I lost my words, my eyes burned dry, and my heart battered my lungs as the air I would normally breathe in deeply…disappeared. That was one of the hardest fifty-five minutes of my life, almost unbearable. I remember, all I kept thinking was that the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen just walked into my room, and all I wanted to do was make her forget who I was supposed to be. I ached to discover what made her so tempting, so different from anyone I’d seen before. I had to come up with ways to hide the evidence of my feelings—standing behind my desk, facing the whiteboard, even thinking of Margaret Thatcher with dead puppies—anything that would loosen the pressure in my pants.

  Even though I was completely exhausted, I was all wound up from thinking about Wilson. My pulse kept time with a race horse, my skin sensitive to the weight of my blankets, and my muscles tightened, reacting to the memories of my naked girlfriend flashing in my head. I needed to fall asleep, let go of everything building in my body. But I couldn’t go to sleep when I was that hard. I dug my heels into my bed and pressed my upper body heavily against my pillow as I thrust my hand below my navel, using the vision of Wilson being on top of me. Faster and faster I imagined her tightening around me, keeping me needing her. The swell of her breasts, the panting moans as she rolled her hips against me as the force of my grip sped. I felt the push and pull of my need to explode as sweat built and cooled my skin. My breathing broke to a pant as every muscle in my body stretched to the intense length of cruel agony before euphoric peace washed over me. My breath caught, my shoulders rounded, and my hips locked as every muscle in my body quaked, tightened, and released. I felt both frozen and thawed as I exploded. Every release and fulfillment I needed coursed from my body. I felt the physical surge push me to its limits before exhaustion flooded every cell of my being. Finally I was truly and completely exhausted. Spent, I rolled over, still shivering as my breathing returned to the natural ebb and flow of an acquired relief. It took no time at all to fall asleep.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  ~ Wilson ~

  I felt my skin pinch between the envelope and the flap that was keeping the contents sealed. I heard the fibrous paper tear along the fold of the envelope and felt the firm edge of the card dig at the cuticle of my nail bed. My eyes stung from not blinking in the attempt to find the smallest of clues that maybe this card wasn’t from Candi after all.

  I looked into the broken envelope I’d ripped open with the intention of finding closure with Candi. Thrusting my fingers into the gap, I could feel the cool, glossy surface of the card. I pulled hard. The envelope crumpled and tore against the rising pressure of my impatience. It only broke free after bending to accommodate its jagged exit.

  I tossed the envelope toward the end of the bed as I felt Joanie push closer, her weight intentionally pressing against my shoulder. I knew it was her way of telling me she was here for me. I looked down at the card. A picture of Van Gogh’s Starry Night covered the front. Different shades of melancholy blue and buttery yellow swirled and swam like turbulent currents in an evening sky above a gloomy city tucked among waves of bare, blue rolling hills. An out-of-place, dark green and brown flame-shaped object, most likely a tree, burdened the picture with its misrepresented size to the city below. Post-Impressionism at its best.

  I took a labored breath, preparing myself for what I was going to find inside.

  “Are you okay?” Joanie asked, resting her head against my shoulder.

  “Just mentally preparing myself for what’s inside.”

  I pull open the card. Writing filled the interior from edge to edge, cursive with some words smudged toward the bottom. I scanned the writing and noticed it was upside down. I turned the card around and started to read the words that were either going to give me closure or tear open every painful memory of my past.

  My Dearest Wilson,

  Well, you are 18 now. I guess Happy Birthday translates differently when writing from the disbelief that I actually have an adult daughter. I know, where’s my right to say that? Well, prayers only work if the other person you’re praying for is listening. Wilson, I’ve prayed every day that somehow you’d forgive me for what I did 10 years ago. I’ve hoped that you’d find it in your heart to see beyond the person I was back then. I know I’ve said this in every birthday card that I’ve ever sent you, but I was hoping this time would be different and I’d actually hear from you. I will not give up hope, because that’s about all I have left for us. I will never give up on the dream that we may someday have some type of relationship. I know I can’t expect to be the mom you deserve to have, but I would like to be some part of your life.

  FYI, I just moved to Seattle the week before your birthday. I was offered a really good position at Washington General. I just couldn’t pass it up.

  P.S. I’m truly sorry you had to go through losing your grandparents alone. I wish I could have been there for you, but they made it impossible for me to see you. I don’t even know if you’ll see this card! The only way I found to talk to you was through letters and cards I would send, hoping beyond hope they’d somehow find you and I’d hear back from you. I wish my parents would have found it in their hearts to forgive me for the mistakes I made. Maybe, someday, you will…I love you and always will until forever comes!

  Love,

  Candice (your mom)

  I swallowed hard. Her words trampled my head and annihilated my heart. At first, I didn’t understand where she was coming from. I felt manipulated, framed, and used. How dare she call me her daughter and pray for my forgiveness? She didn’t deserve anything from me. It was going to take a lot more than just a card on my 18th birthday to convince me that she’d earned the right to have a relationship with me. But then I looked back down at her words and started to feel the pain in her tone and through her scribbly handwriting. The smeared letters seemed to be doused with tear drops. And there was that one sentence where she confessed to writing the same thing in every birthday card. Every? I�
�ve only gotten this one.

  “Holy f’ing shit, Wilson, she wants a relationship with you,” Joanie said as we looked at each other. Her eyes were wide, her face drained of any color, and her lips curved as if they were at the point of deciding whether to smile or not.

  “What the hell, J. She said she’s sent me other birthday cards. I’ve never gotten a fucking thing from her. She never sent me pictures, letters, cards, or presents on my birthday….nothing!” I steamed as my chest began to rise with each deliberate breath I took.

  “I know, what the hell is she saying about birthday cards?” Joanie wondered as she took the letter and started going back over the words Candi had written.

  “Do you think your grandparents wouldn’t let you have them?” Joanie said, her tone low, serious, and without any sense of light.

  “How? Why? When?” I asked in rapid succession.

  “Well, I don’t know. Did you ever pick up the mail?” Joanie asked.

  “No, most of the time I was gone at school, so I didn’t really put much thought into it,” I said.

  “You never got the mail? Never waited for a letter from a friend or a package you were expecting? Nothing?” Joanie questioned. I watched her whole body change to disbelief.

  “No, I didn’t really think about it, J. They’d get the mail and hand me my letters,” I said, feeling totally stupid.

  “What if they were keeping Candi’s letters from you?” Joanie posed, creating a frenzied nervousness in my gut.

  I got up and paced the cold hardwood floor. If they did that, if they didn’t let me see any of the letters and cards Candi sent, where would they have put them? Grams and Gramps wouldn’t do that…but then again, they knew she was a loser and they wanted to protect me.

  “They wouldn’t do that,” I vocalized my thoughts, pacing back and forth.

  “Well, let’s just assume for a minute that they did…where do you think they’d keep ’em?”

  “J, hell, I don’t know; in their dressers? Maybe under their bed?” I suggested as Joanie hoped off and dropped to the floor, pulling up the beige country lace bed skirt.

  “We should look for a box, maybe even a couple of them. Assuming Candi wrote you every birthday and major holiday, it could be a pretty big box,” Joanie said, muffled with half her body lodged under my grandparents’ bed. “I don’t see anything under here that has letters in it.”

  I started to react to Joanie’s frantic need to find a box that may or may not exist. My skin started to perspire and my heart didn’t help out when it began to thrash in my chest. I had to shake my hands out as I paced. The blood seemed to refuse to circulate into my hands and feet. Before I realized what I was doing, I found myself opening the top drawer of my grandma’s dresser. I shuffled through what little was left from my grandfather going through her things after she died. It was mainly things that gave him a moment to feel her—her favorite scarf, a hat she always wore when they walked on the beach, and a pair of wool socks with a broach made from ivory wrapped down in the toe. No letters, no unopened envelopes. Every dresser drawer I opened revealed the same thing, just some odd items that must have held some sort of special meaning to my grandpa. His world, wrapped up and shoved in an old wooden dresser that smelled of cedar and Woolite.

  “What if they threw them out?” I asked Joanie.

  “Check your grandpa’s dresser,” she said as she pulled another box out from under the bed and pulled the lid off.

  I hesitated just before pulling the handle on his dresser. I’d never gone through his drawers before. This was my gramps, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t know if I was ready to find parts of his life that I had never been privy to. Cufflinks and cologne were one thing; I didn’t know if I wanted to get real personal with his underwear drawer. What if there were things in there that would burst the bubble he’d been protected by for most of my life? What if I found out he’s only human? I know that sounds stupid and childish, but there was something about my grandpa that made him a notch above human for me.

  “What’s wrong?” Joanie asked as she stopped and watched my body frozen at the closed top drawer.

  “I don’t know if I can open these drawers yet,” I answered.

  “Alright, well, where else would they put letters they wouldn’t want you to find? Better yet…was there ever a room or place they didn’t want you to get into?” Joanie stood up and scanned the room as she meandered over to me.

  “No, not really.”

  “No place your grams would act strange about or get pissed when you’d play in or get into? Think, Wilson. Their safe? Jewelry box? Closet?” As Joanie named each place she pushed on her finger, trying to exaggerate her choices.

  “Well, they didn’t have a safe, and my grandma’s jewelry box wasn’t big enough to hold any letters. But she was super possessive over her closet. She never wanted me to play in it. She’d always yell at me when she’d find me up here getting into her shoes and my grandpa’s coats,” I said methodically.

  “Bingo! I bet those letters are somewhere in there,” Joanie said as she hurried to the small four-by-six walk-in closet and flung the old white door open.

  I reached up and pulled the chain that dangled from a lonesome light bulb clinging to the center of the ceiling. There was the proverbial click before the soft glow filled the small closet. It wasn’t the brightest form of light for chasing away and pulling back the shadows cast by pretty dresses and fancy suits. Joanie took my grandma’s side and I took my grandpa’s. Every shoe box she looked in had Grams’s heels, and all the ones I opened contained Gramps’s dress shoes. We searched through three stacks of boxes, two rows deep, and found nothing but shoes. No box filled with letters, birthday cards, or mementos. There was no sign of Candi anywhere to be found.

  Joanie left first before I reached up to snatch the chain that was swaying back and forth. I pulled the chain tight, and looked up at the same time. That’s when I saw a brown cardboard box, hidden under grandpa’s V-neck sweater vests. I would never have seen it, except for the fact that I was on heightened alert to find a box with letters from my birth mother.

  “Wait, J, I found a box. Would you grab that desk chair and bring it here?” I hollered out of excitement.

  “Where?”

  “The top shelf of the closet.”

  “No I mean where do you want the chair?” Joanie was curt as she carried over an old, hand-carved honey oak chair.

  It looked super heavy, even awkward. She pushed it through the closet door, and it only barely fit. I was pinned in the closet and she anxiously waited outside the doorway, a bystander of circumstances. I stood on the chair. On my tiptoes I was just high enough to reach the farthest corner. I wedged the tips of my fingers into the shorter flap of the box and pulled as hard as I could. My grandpa’s rainbow collection of sweater vests, folded perfectly to hide the box, cascaded and tumbled off one another then fell past me through the air and landed on the floor. The box scraped like sandpaper as I pulled it to the edge of the shelf. It was slightly bigger than a shoe box, and seemed to have some weight, but nothing I wouldn’t be able to get down myself.

  As I balanced it in my hands, my toes teetered on the edge of the chair. When I shifted my weight down on the balls of my feet, the teeter gave way to totter and I tumbled off the chair. Swimming through the air, I collapsed against the back wall and the box sailed toward Joanie. I landed hard, twisted on the floor, while the box hit the top of the chair and landed next to me. The only thing that crossed my mind was God, I must have looked graceful.

  “Oh, shit, are you okay?” Joanie screamed as she pulled the chair out of the closet and landed on her knees next to me.

  “OUCH…that hurt. I think I banged the top of my foot against the chair. Mother…F’er, that hurts, ahhhh,” I said as I began to chant under my breath every foul word that would make my grandma turn over in her grave.

  “Does your neck hurt? How about your back? Oh my God, that was so scary,” Joanie breathed.

&
nbsp; Truthfully, I was more embarrassed than hurt. I kept replaying how ridiculous I must have looked flying through the air. I’m just glad nobody else saw it.

  “I’m okay. Can you hand me the box?” I asked as I adjusted myself to a sitting position, my back against the back wall of the closet.

  I pulled my knees up, taking the pain off my lower back. I wasn’t about to tell Joanie that my back right above my tailbone was beginning to throb. J caught the flaps of the box between her fingers and dragged it toward us. Maybe it was heavier than I thought.

  “Here,” she huffed as she reached around and dropped it next to me. I stretched out before we both folded our legs criss-cross applesauce on the cedar floor of my grandparents’ closet.

  I inhaled roughly, blowing out a breath filled with anxiety, fear, and confusion. I pulled on the edges, folded to seal whatever was so important to keep confined. The scrape of the cardboard flaps against each other seemed to echo deep in my mind. Then the sound abruptly stopped; with my eyes closed tight, I couldn’t stop from wondering if I was making the right decision. My heartbeat ricocheted across my ribs, under my breasts, and up through my throat before rebelliously crashing in my head.

  I heard Joanie gasp just before I opened my eyes. I could tell by the look on her face, the contents of that box were exactly what we’d been looking for. She had her mouth covered by both of her hands, her eyes exaggeratedly round, and every part of her irises visible with shock. I lowered my sight to the box that sat heavy across my thighs. An array of colored envelopes mixed with cream and white rested in a perfect row. Pinched and clustered by rubber bands, I noticed not one jagged or ripped edge. They were all still sealed with the same intention from when they were mailed—secured and protected. The cluster of banded envelopes closest to my gut seemed to hold less than the larger group at the end of the row. My windpipe closed as my heart clung to whatever ledge in my throat it could find. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I gasped. Joanie reached over and held back the aged cardboard flaps that kept wanting to return to their natural closed position.