Why Can't I Be You (9781101602843)

by Larkin, Allie

  “Suit yourself,” I said, smiling. I pulled my napkin off the table and draped it across my lap.

  “All right, fine.” He stood up and took his menu with him. “You twisted my arm.”

  He sat across from me and unfolded his napkin.

  “Have you ordered?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Red or white?”

  “Red.”

  He called the waiter over and ordered a bottle of cabernet without any further consultation. It bugged me. Not that I was particularly picky, but it was the kind of thing Deagan did. It made me feel like an accessory.

  “The salmon is amazing,” he said. “I had it my first night here. It has a vanilla glaze.”

  When the waiter came back, I ordered quail, not because I particularly wanted quail, but because I wanted to exercise my right not to appease people. Kyle raised his eyebrows, like he had expected me to take his advice on the salmon.

  The rest of our dinner was pleasant. Kyle, when he dropped the salesman bravado, was actually a pretty nice guy. He told me a story about how one of the other presenters got his tie stuck in his briefcase about twenty minutes before his presentation started.

  “He slammed it shut and it locked, but then the lock was stuck. I had to help him open it, but he didn’t want to tell me his lock code. Like I really want to break into that guy’s briefcase.”

  I laughed.

  “See,” he said, pointing his fork at me. “You’re having a good time.”

  “I am,” I said.

  He shook his head. “You had a whole weekend and you blew it.”

  “Eat your salmon,” I told him.

  “You’re so bossy.”

  “Actually, usually I’m, like, the opposite of bossy. You bring out the worst in me.”

  “Worst or best?” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Because it’s kind of working for me.”

  “You’re impossible,” I said.

  “Actually, I’m really quite possible.”

  “You did not just say that!” I laughed.

  Kyle laughed too. “No, of course not.”

  We finished the wine and ordered dessert. Kyle tried to pick up the check, but I had the waiter charge my half to my room.

  Kyle walked me back to my door. “So, are you headed home tomorrow?” He rubbed his hand over his head.

  “Yeah,” I said, and the way he looked at me made me blush. I thought about how much less complicated everything would be if I had gone out with Kyle instead of going to the reunion.

  “Well,” he said, giving me his fake shy smile again. He leaned in and tried to kiss me. It would have been so easy to just let him. To go back to being the same old Jenny Shaw, making the same old safe choices. But I didn’t want to. At the last second, I turned my head.

  “Oh,” he said.

  I grabbed his hand and shook it. “It was really nice to meet you.” I slipped into my room and shut the door behind me before I could make any more mistakes.

  I washed my face, trying to focus on the sound of the water running, the calming scent of rosemary-mint soap, and the way the lush loops of the cotton hand towel felt against my skin. I brushed my teeth and counted tiles on the floor. Anything to keep from thinking.

  When I checked my phone, there was a message from Deagan, saying, simply, “I thought maybe we should talk.” I didn’t call him back.

  Before I climbed into bed, I set the alarm clock, so I’d be packed and ready to meet Myra when she came to pick me up.

  Myra pulled up to the front door of the Salish Lodge at nine on the dot. I was already waiting with my carry-on bag and travel tote.

  “I’m so glad you’re staying,” she said, as she took my bags from me and loaded them into the back of her car. She wore dark, widely cuffed blue jeans, a tailored teal, plaid flannel shirt, and her hair was tied back into two low pigtails, like she had perfectly styled herself to look casual.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Okay, so here’s another one,” she said, cranking up the car stereo as we drove through downtown Snoqualmie. “En Vogue!”

  The song was “You’re Never Gonna Get It.” I didn’t know the words well, but Myra knew them all. I mostly just joined in on the chorus, because it was easy, and Myra didn’t seem the wiser.

  Myra was singing her heart out, so she didn’t notice a man who looked exactly like Fish walking down the sidewalk with a gorgeous blond woman wearing movie-star sunglasses. They had a gorgeous blond dog by their side, and both their hands were on the leash, like they were so in love they needed to share every little experience. They were walking in front of a cute little gazebo, and I wondered if they were going to sit there and canoodle. My heart pounded. My palms started sweating. I’d lied to Fish, but Fish was lying to me and to that woman.

  I could sort of manage being Jessie, but I couldn’t handle being the Faye in this situation. Maybe I was a liar, but I was not the other woman, not under any circumstances. I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to stay for a week so I could see more of Fish. I felt sick.

  I didn’t say anything to Myra. I took deep breaths and tried to sing harmony on the chorus, so she wouldn’t notice how upset I was. I felt like I was choking.

  Myra’s house was not at all what I expected. Her store was impossibly chic and flawlessly designed, but her house was like the inside of a bag lady’s bag.

  “Oh my God, it hasn’t changed!” I said, taking a not-so-wild guess.

  “Well, a little bit,” Myra said, her face turning red. “The living room curtains used to be in the dining room. And I had to get new dishes. Grammie’s had that gold edging on them. It sparked in the microwave.” She used her sleeve to wipe some dust off the top of the coffee table. “And I got a microwave. Grammie was always scared of them. Said they cooked your insides.” Myra laughed. “You know how she was.”

  “Yeah,” I said. It sounded like something my own grandmother would have said. Back when I still saw her, before the divorce. Before she stopped talking to my dad because she hadn’t raised him to leave his family like that.

  “It must be hard to think about changing anything,” I said, even though I really wanted to ask her about Fish. Did she know Fish had a girlfriend or a wife? Did he have kids? How big of a home wrecker was I?

  “It is hard,” Myra said, walking into the kitchen. “Part of me wants to leave it all exactly the way it is. And then there’s the part of me that lives on microwave enchiladas.” She opened up the fridge. “I have PB and J and”—she pushed a pickle jar out of the way—“PB without J. And half a pickle that I haven’t eaten because I don’t want to deal with dumping out all the pickle juice.”

  “PB and J works,” I said. “Hold the pickles.”

  “We need to call Heather and beg her to feed us tonight.”

  I laughed.

  “No, seriously. That’s our best plan.”

  “I don’t want to put her out or anything.”

  “Are you kidding? That girl is like the Iron Chef. Remember how she used to bake cookies all the time? Now she’s moved on to high-level spa cuisine. It’s crazy! And Robbie is so meat and potatoes. He doesn’t appreciate it. So Heather is just as nuts about cooking for me as I am about eating what she cooks. When I actually have time to eat, I keep her in groceries and she keeps me fed.”

  “It’s nice,” I said, “the way you guys are like family.”

  “They’re my everything,” Myra said. Her eyes welled up.

  My eyes did too.

  Myra pulled out every photo album and yearbook she owned, and we sat on the couch, eating our sandwiches while we flipped through the pages.

  In a series of Halloween pictures from high school, Myra was dressed as a robot in a big cardboard box painted silver, and the girl I assumed was K
aren wore a Raggedy Ann costume that was fairly modest. Heather was a chubby Edward Scissorhands, with a white face and aluminum-foil talons on every finger. Robbie and Fish were dressed like Scully and Mulder. Robbie, in a red wig and unflattering pantsuit, towered over Fish.

  “Oh my God!” I said, pointing to a picture of Jessie in the shortest, tightest French maid’s costume I had ever seen. Her butt cheeks peeked out past the hemline. “That doesn’t even qualify as a dress! Who lets their kid out of the house like that?”

  “I don’t think your parents were really paying much attention,” Myra said.

  In the picture Jessie had a big smile on her face, but her eyes looked sad and dull. I didn’t understand the outfit, but I understood that kind of unhappiness.

  “Where are your parents now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, deciding it was better to be vague. “We don’t exactly keep in touch.”

  “I figured,” Myra said. “I mean, you left and then there was a For Sale sign at your house. Your mom wouldn’t talk to me, you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I had a box of your leftover portfolio photos. You left them here, and I thought you might want them, so I went by your house to get your new address. She said she wasn’t your keeper anymore.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s not like she was ever a particularly warm person,” Myra said, laughing. “Remember when she told us not to bother trying out for the school play because no one would pay to hear us sing?”

  “Geez!” I said. It sounded like something my mother would say.

  “It’s amazing that you’re not in the loony bin, Jess.”

  I wondered if that’s where Jessie had actually ended up.

  “I think I have those photos in the basement somewhere. I should remember to look while you’re here,” Myra said.

  I flipped the album page and there was a picture of Myra, Jessie, Heather, and Karen sitting, cross-legged in a row, on the same couch we were sitting on now, wearing pastel flannel pajamas with crackly green mud masks on their faces.

  “We were such babies with our pudgy faces!” Myra said, squishing her cheeks with both hands. She studied the picture and looked at me. The look in her eyes made me worry.

  The phone rang and Myra jumped up to get it. “Hey,” I heard her say from the kitchen. I grabbed another photo album and flipped the pages quickly. “That sounds perfect!”

  Toward the end of the album was a photo of Jessie, Myra, Karen, and Heather dressed in black, wearing matching military caps that were way too big for their tiny little heads. They couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. There was a ripped ticket stub from Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation tour next to the picture. I wondered whose parent had taken them. Neither of my parents would ever have taken me to a concert when I was that young. Or at all.

  “Great,” Myra said. “We’ll see you then!”

  I put the photo album back on the coffee table, as close as possible to where it had been. When Myra came back in the room, I pretended to be consumed by the sleepover party pictures.

  “That was Fish,” Myra said. “He’s on his way over.”

  I wondered if his girlfriend was coming. Or his wife. Or whoever that gorgeous woman with the dog was. I didn’t want Myra to know I slept with him. Maybe they’d all really thought Fish had picked me up on the way to breakfast, that he hadn’t spent the night. Maybe they assumed he’d been at his girlfriend’s house. Maybe they didn’t know about his girlfriend. I didn’t want Myra to think I was the kind of girl who would sleep with a taken man. I didn’t want to leave her friendship with Fish in ruins by telling her he’d turned me into the other woman without my knowledge. So I just smiled and said, “That’s nice. Hey, remember when we went to see Janet Jackson?”

  “Oh my God!” she said. “I think the pictures are right here!” She reached for the photo album I’d just searched through and showed me the photo and the ticket stub. “Our first concert! Remember how grown up we thought we were?”

  “Yeah,” I said, running my fingers over Jessie’s face in the picture.

  Myra jumped up and plugged her iPod into the stereo. “This calls for a bounce!”

  She scrolled through until she found “Rhythm Nation.” “Do you still remember when we did the dance for the talent show?” she asked, over Janet’s pledge about color lines.

  I had never even been in a talent show at all. But I did dance to the video on MTV on the big TV in the living room, trying to copy Janet’s moves, with the sound turned down low so I wouldn’t bother my mom. So when the robot voice counted down—“five, four, three, two, one”—I was ready. Myra and I hopped around the living room doing our best with Janet’s hand movements. I didn’t remember all the moves perfectly, and I wasn’t the world’s greatest dancer, but neither was Myra. During the dance breakdown at the end of the song, Myra and I were jumping high and giving it everything we had. Grammie’s Norman Rockwell collector plates shook on the walls. Hummel figurines rattled in the china cabinet. We were breathless and laughing and we must have looked like complete idiots. When the song ended, we heard clapping. Myra screamed.

  “Oh my God, Fish!” she said, holding her hand over her heart like she needed help to keep it in her chest. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Can you do it again?” Fish asked, smiling. “I only caught the last minute or so.”

  “Screw you,” Myra said, giving him the finger.

  It’s kind of what I felt like saying to him too.

  “The truck is running,” he said. “Ready to go?”

  “Oh!” Myra looked at her feet. “We need boots!”

  “I don’t have any with me,” I said. I didn’t even own a pair of shoes suitable for hiking. I’d never been on a real hike. Sometimes Luanne and I walked the canal path on our lunch hour, but we just slipped sneakers on. It was flat and straight. Most of the stretch we walked on was paved. But here, with all the mountains surrounding us, I highly doubted that was the kind of hike I was in for.

  “Holy crap!” Myra said, clapping her hand to her forehead. “I have your boots.”

  She tore off though the kitchen, and we heard her feet pound on the basement steps.

  “Hey, Jess,” Fish said, coming to kiss me. I turned my head so his kiss landed my cheek.

  “Hey,” I said, flatly. With Myra bound to come back any minute, I didn’t want to start anything, but I didn’t want him to think I was happy with him either.

  “So,” he said, “it’s pretty nice out today. We should get some good views.”

  “Good,” I said softly.

  He watched me, trying hard to keep eye contact. I looked away, but I knew he was still staring. When he looked away, I looked at him. His face was soft and sad.

  When I got back from the hike, I would look for a flight home. I had no right to fight with him, but I didn’t want to spend a whole week feeling so awful.

  We heard Myra’s feet on the basement steps again.

  “Look what I found!” she shouted, tearing across the kitchen, into the living room. She held up a pair of powder-blue hiking boots. They were hideous. “Remember right before graduation, when we all went hiking? You left these here. Grammie was going to give them to Goodwill about six times over, but I wouldn’t let her.”

  She handed me the boots and pulled hers out of the closet. I sat on the couch to pull them on. I felt like Cinderella taking the shoe test.

  I failed miserably. Jessie Morgan had markedly bigger feet than me. Better bigger than smaller. At least I could get my feet into the boots, even if it felt like there was room for about four pairs of thick socks in there too.

  “I don’t really have a jacket either. Just my blazer,” I said, hoping that maybe Myra and Fish would go hiking without me.

 
“I have an extra jacket in the car,” Fish said.

  “Great!” Myra grabbed her camera bag. “We’re all set.”

  “Great,” I said, smiling at Myra, trying so hard to be upbeat, even though I didn’t want to wear Jessie’s ancient boots and Fish’s jacket. His jacket probably smelled like him.

  When we got out to Fish’s truck, I ducked down and pretended I needed to retie my laces, so Myra would get in next to Fish and I could sit by the door. I didn’t want to sit in the middle, with my leg touching his leg. I didn’t want to think about what we had done.

  “Where’s Chip?” Myra asked.

  “He’s with my dad today. His nurse had to take the afternoon off, so I left Chip to take care of him.”

  I wondered if Chip was Fish’s brother, until Myra said, “Chippy’s such a good dog.” It seemed crazy to me that a dog could take the place of a nurse, but I figured maybe Fish’s dad just got lonely or something. I didn’t know why he needed a nurse to begin with, Fish hadn’t mentioned it. I wasn’t sure how new the situation was, so I couldn’t ask.

  Myra fiddled with the radio and filled Fish in on the latest about her new clothing line. I looked out the window and took in all the storefronts as we drove back through Snoqualmie. I watched Fish when we drove right past the spot where I saw him with that woman. He didn’t even react. I wasn’t expecting him to break down and confess or anything, but maybe he’d twitch his eyebrows or something.

  “You’re so quiet, Jess!” Myra said. “What’s up?”

  “Oh,” I said, “I think the jet lag is finally catching up with me.”

  “Did you guys eat lunch?” Fish asked.

  “We had some PB and J,” Myra said, laughing.

  “My! You have to eat like a real person,” Fish said. He gave me a look like he wanted me to back him up. I turned and looked out the window again. “You can’t hike if you don’t eat.”

  When we got to North Bend, he turned into the parking lot of a place called Taco Time.

  We got out of the car. My feet were swimming in my boots. I felt like I might turn my ankle in the parking lot before we even started hiking. When we got inside, I handed Myra a twenty and said, “Just get me whatever you’re having.” I ran into the bathroom to find some paper towels to shove in my boots to keep my feet from slipping around. But of course they had hand dryers, so I had to go into a stall and cram heaping wads of toilet paper into my boots instead. It wasn’t much help, but it was something.