The Tea Series

by Sheila Horgan

  More brain damage? I sound like I’m trying to blame Barry kicking the crap out of me for all the stuff that has gone wrong since. And I’m not; it just seems like there has been a lot going on since then.

  I don’t have brain damage. Not that kind anyway. I’m just profoundly screwed up.

  A.J. sat in the chair opposite me. I’m not sure how long he was there before I pulled my head away from the towel to blow my nose.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Cara, what is going on with us?”

  “It’s not you; it’s me.”

  His eyes got huge. Why on earth would I grab the oldest break-up line in the world to try to save my relationship?

  “I mean that literally, not like a cliché. I’ve lost my mind.”

  “You haven’t lost your mind.”

  “I’m not kidding. I don’t think the way I used to think. I don’t act the way I used to act. I’m having some huge identity-crisis type thing. I looked it up online. My memory is pretty much shot. I have no confidence in anything I do being the right thing. I go back and forth between acting like an old lady and acting like a little kid. And mostly I just have this weird little voice in the back of my head telling me that something isn’t right. That something really bad is coming, and I can’t hear the details. It’s like some cheap movie that you know is just one implausible situation after the next, but it’s my life.”

  “Cara, most people feel that way at one time or another. I know I have. Suzi is going through it right now. Speaking of that, she and Gran moved her stuff from the condo to her apartment today.”

  “Suzi moved in?” I tried not to get more upset. I tried not to use the fact that he hadn’t told me about Suzi as justification for not telling him about Teagan. After all, Teagan isn’t telling anyone about her engagement until after my parents get home, but everybody knows that Suzi is moving in across the hall. I repeated myself. “Suzi is right across the hall, and nobody told me?”

  “No, her stuff from Gran’s is in the apartment, but she’s waiting on a couple of things before she moves in. She’ll be there in the next couple of days.”

  “But I thought the guys were going to get together and I was going to feed everybody.”

  “Too depressing. She doesn’t have that much stuff. She left most of it with Barry when they split up. I’m not sure what happened to it all, but she said she doesn’t want anything that reminds her of Barry in her apartment. She would rather sit on the floor than sit on a couch she landed on when Barry knocked her across the room.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “I guess she and Gran are talking a lot. Talking about the hows and the whys. Why Suzi ever let him hit her.”

  “I can tell you from personal experience, it isn’t about letting Barry hit you.”

  A.J. snapped at me. A rare occurrence. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do. I didn’t mean to imply anything.” I burst into tears again. I hate it when I do that. It’s like a stereotype gone bad, but at the same time, I couldn’t help myself.

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Cara, but I think this has been coming for a while now.”

  Oh, no!

  He’s going to break up with me. Teagan’s getting married, and I’m losing the only guy who I’ve ever really loved and who understands me and likes me anyway. Okay. Liked. Heavy on the past tense.

  A.J. is the only guy who has gotten the whole O’Flynn thing, which is pretty much a mental illness of sorts. The guy I can see rocking my babies to sleep at night is going to have babies with someone else. I don’t know how to do this. To stop it.

  I started to panic.

  I held perfectly still and waited for him to dump me.

  He’s completely justified, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

  How am I going to live across the hall from his sister? She’s having a baby. One of the things I love most about A.J. is the way he helps Suzi and his grandmother. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they do things like that. He never pushes. He never expects people to fall down on their knees and say thank you. He just does what needs to be done. He will be there to help Suzi all the time.

  I can’t live across the hall from that.

  Now I have to move too.

  He was talking. I forced myself to listen.

  “We haven’t talked. Really talked. In a long time. It’s just as much my fault as yours. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s been my fault.”

  “I’ve been busy with work. It’s hard to build up a business, especially one like mine, and I got so involved with trying to help everyone else that I didn’t pay the right attention to us.”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “I’ve been talking to Gran too.”

  Every cell of my body wanted to fight. Not so much fight A.J., but fight what was about to happen. Problem is, I couldn’t think of a single thing that wouldn’t come off sounding like I was fighting with A.J.

  I wanted to scream that he could find the time to talk with his grandmother, but he couldn’t find the time to talk to me, and now he’s breaking up with me. How unfair is that?

  I thought his grandmother liked me, but I guess not if he was talking to her and now he is walking out on me.

  And I’m gonna have to see her all the time too, ‘cause she is one of the girls, and a really big part of Adeline’s life.

  Great, I’ll be surrounded by the people that A.J. loves most, and when he finds some other girl and they get married, I’m going to hear all about it. Worse, they will insist on me being there. I’ll be a bridesmaid without a date. In a nightmare dress.

  I did a mental eye roll since a real one would send the wrong message to A.J.

  Oh my God, I need medication. This is beyond ridiculous. What has happened to my brain?

  My inner ninety-year-old is fighting with my inner fifth grader, and I’m stuck in the middle.

  Holy hell, this must be what it is like to be a crazy person.

  “The problem as I see it, Cara, is you and I have a lot of the same strengths, but we also have a lot of the same weaknesses.”

  “Having a lot in common is a good thing.”

  “It can be, but for us, it is a complicating factor that we haven’t addressed.”

  “What does that mean?” I tried not to whine, but when your heart is literally breaking into pieces, the blood flow gets screwed up, and you don’t have the energy to control your voice modulation or clarity.

  “It means that we are both the kind of people who look outward. We are the kind of people who are always looking out to help. We are the kind of people who see a lady in a wheelchair in the parking lot and walk all the way back to open the door for her, and when she gets annoyed and snaps at us just for having good manners we smile and think, I’m sorry she’s having a rough day.”

  “That actually happened to me once.”

  “I know. You told me.”

  “So we’re nice people; that shouldn’t break us up.”

  “Break us up?” His eyes got huge.

  “You’re leaving me.”

  “I’m not leaving you. I’m talking to you. What’s wrong with you? This isn’t the first time that you assumed that we were breaking up.”

  “Wrong. When Barry kicked the crap out of me and your sister was in the guest room and I just couldn’t take it anymore, I called my sister and basically ran away from home, and when I did come back you asked if I wanted you out. You asked. It about killed me. Remember?”

  “I didn’t understand it at the time, Cara. I didn’t understand why you needed to go to your family instead of me. At the time, I took that to mean that you didn’t want me.”

  I couldn’t talk. I just shook my head and cried some more. When I finally caught my breath I more sighed than said, “But you said that we’re screwed up. I thought that meant that you were leaving.”

  “Everybody’s screwed up, Cara.”

 
“I know. It’s just that we’ve seemed so out of sync lately, and I don’t know how to fix that, and then everything else that’s been going on, and I can’t fix any of that either. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to fix myself. Everything is just going wrong.” Tears again.

  “Cara, why is it your job to fix all of us?”

  “What?”

  “You’re driving yourself crazy trying to fix everybody’s problems.”

  “Literally.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Cara, I know the last few months have been hard on you.”

  “Us.”

  “Okay, us. I don’t know how to help you, so mostly I’ve just been trying to stay out of the way. I decided to stand back and let your sister and your family step in and do what they do because I thought that’s what you wanted. Needed. But it doesn’t seem to be working. I’m not sure how to help you help yourself, but we need to do something.”

  “I went to the counselor.”

  “I know you did. And I think that was a good idea.”

  “It was really hard for me.”

  “I know. And I’m really proud of you.”

  “But you didn’t tell me. You didn’t say anything when I talked to you about it.”

  “You didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know you. You were embarrassed and confused, and you didn’t want to talk about it. I respected that. I thought that is what you would want.”

  “It is. But then Teagan said that I don’t tell you stuff, and she got me all whacked out about that, and then when I did tell you that she and Jessie are getting married I did it in a really shitty way, and that came back and bit me in the butt.”

  “Cara, I know that you love your family. I know that they are your first priority.”

  “No, they aren’t. You don’t come second to them.”

  “I would never make you choose.”

  “Thank God.”

  He smiled. “Cara, one of the things I love most about you is your loyalty to your family and the close relationships that you have with them. That isn’t the problem.”

  “Then what is the problem?”

  “When you use it against me.”

  “What? I would never — ”

  “Okay, maybe I said it wrong, but you know what I mean. It’s one thing that you didn’t tell me that Teagan’s getting married. I’m not happy about it, but I can live with it. It’s not okay that you throw it in my face that you didn’t tell me. Especially when you did it specifically to hurt me.”

  “I know. That was mean. I’m sorry.”

  “But even that’s not the biggest problem.”

  “What is?”

  “Everybody has baggage, Cara. I know that if you want to have a healthy relationship you need to learn to live with some baggage. Embrace it even. Your baggage. My baggage. I get that. But I don’t want to live the way my parents lived. I love you too much for that. I’d rather not be together than to be together like they were.”

  “I’ve never even met your parents, I don’t know what that means.”

  “My grandmother always said they found barbs against each other in the most mundane things. That’s what she called it. Mundane things. Barbs. They could take something that should have been easy or harmless, and they would turn it into a weapon to hurt each other.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Commenting on the difficult times of someone’s parents is not only a tricky thing to do, but it is foreign territory for me. My parents snap at each other every once in a while. I’ve even heard them come up with a couple of tense sentences, but they never really fought. Not like my friends’ parents. I just never saw that. People think I’m lucky, and in a way I guess I am, but on the other hand — and there is always another hand — when you grow up in a house where the adults don’t argue or fight you never learn how to do it the right way, and you grow up thinking that if you do get into an argument or fight with your partner, it’s a bigger deal than it really is. If you have never seen a fight, a fight feels like the end of everything.

  I forced myself to listen to A.J. “Like the thing with Teagan. Her getting married should have been good news, but first you kept it from me, and then when you did tell me about it you did it only to get back at me for some insult that you conjured up that wasn’t an insult at all.”

  My brain screamed, Conjured? Really? But I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “All I said was that I wasn’t going to tell you what Jordan told me. That simple. We both know that you don’t tell me everything. But when the exact same circumstance comes from my side toward you, you actively try to hurt me.”

  This time I actually meant it. “I’m sorry.”

  “Cara, I don’t want to step on your relationship with your sister. Or anyone else. I know that you two had this freaky thing going long before I came into the picture. I get it. And even if I don’t always get it, I can live with it. Your family is part of who you are. The way you see them, the way you deal with them, it’s all tied up together with everything else in your life. But I’m not going to let you turn it into a ‘me against them’ thing, because in that situation, I’m gonna lose. Every time.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  His tone was much more gentle, but it was firm. “Yes, you are.”

  “Okay, I’m not doing that on purpose.”

  “I’m sure that’s true. But the outcome is the same.”

  “I’ll fix it.”

  “Here we go again. Cara, there’s nothing to fix. Now that you’re aware, just be conscious of it. You’re a nice person. If you’re aware that something is hurting someone, you’ll adjust. You don’t have to make any huge change. You don’t have to make some big, dramatic gesture. Just be aware. Like Franky.”

  “Franky?”

  “The guy that cleans up the bar for Jovana.”

  “I know who Franky is, I just don’t know why you brought him up.”

  “Cara, you’re basically the only person who doesn’t work around Franky all the time who noticed he has a problem hearing out of his left ear.”

  “I’m betting it was a war thing.”

  “Probably, but that isn’t the point. The point is you noticed. Not only did you notice, but you’re careful to always be on the other side of him when you’re talking to him.”

  “My grandpa had a bad ear and a good ear. When we were little my mom said we should try to remember to talk into his good ear.”

  “Everybody knows someone like that. The difference is, without any big deal, without making him feel self-conscious, without expecting anyone to notice or to care, you always remember to talk into his good ear. That’s the difference between you and other people.”

  “Really? Why wouldn’t everyone do that? You would have to be fourteen kinds of jerk to know that somebody can’t hear well out of one ear and not accommodate that. I can’t believe that everybody is a jerk.”

  “It isn’t that people are jerks. It’s that they are busy, and they’re so wrapped up in their own world they just don’t notice, or they just don’t remember.”

  “But when you do notice and you do remember, it makes the whole world a better place. Universal karma and all that.”

  “Most people don’t believe in it.”

  “If I don’t believe in protons, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

  “Cara, most people would argue that if you believe in unicorns, it doesn’t mean they do exist.”

  “True, it’s the believers versus the seers. It almost always is.”

  “What?”

  “My mom always told us that some people need to see to believe and other people believe so they can see. You have to make a choice. I believe people are good, so I see the good in people. If I believed people were basically jerks, I’d find evidence to support that too.”

  “We are
off on a whole other tangent.”

  “I do that. I go off the tracks. Drives people crazy.”

  “I think it is just part of being creative.”

  “Then what’s my excuse?”

  “What?”

  “I’m the least creative person I’ve ever met. Teagan can do all this stuff with color. Liam is actually a really good artist. Maybe that’s what Morgan saw in him since she’s into all that graphic design stuff. I didn’t get that gene. I got the hairy-toe gene.”

  A.J. chuckled. “Hairy toes aside, you’re a very creative person, Cara.”

  “Are you just trying to end the fight and make up? I’m good with that if you are.”

  “No, I’m serious. You know, I’ve been watching you since this whole thing started, and to be honest, it started before Barry.”

  “What?”

  “It’s one of the things that worried me. One of the reasons I kept my mouth shut about everything that was going on. I thought maybe it was me or something I was doing.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Over the last several months you have been floating away. That’s the only way I can think to describe it. It’s like there’s this really faint breeze and you’re this beautiful balloon — at first I thought about butterfly, but a butterfly has some influence on the direction she takes, and you don’t seem to have any — so you’re like this beautiful balloon on a faint breeze, just floating away.”

  I started to cry.

  That’s exactly how I feel.

  “So do you know why? Why I’m floating away?”

  “No, but I’ve convinced myself it isn’t me. Maybe that’s just self-preservation, but I don’t think so.”

  “Should I go back to the counselor?”

  “Do you think that will help?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  “I have to do something. I’m driving me crazy, so I know I’m driving the rest of the world crazy.”

  “Sometimes you just have to let things go and allow them to work themselves out.”

  “Yeah, and sometimes when you ignore problems they just grow and fester, and then before you know it you have screwed everything up to the point that it can’t be fixed.”