“Of course,” she said. “I love you. You’re my best friend. And I tried to be yours. I really did.”
I wrapped my arms around her and rested my chin on her head. “I love you too, Lu.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m helping you move. I just got my nails done.”
“I’m not moving for a few more weeks at least.”
“Yeah,” she said, laughing. “Same excuse then too.”
“Come visit me,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. But no backhanded compliments allowed, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “But you have to call me on my shit. Push back. I won’t punch you or anything.” She smiled and stabbed at the cherry in my drink. “At least, I’m not likely to.”
“Fine,” I said. “It’s a deal.”
“Deal.” She spun around on her barstool and hugged me. “When I visit, can we both take on aliases and talk to strangers?”
“Screw you,” I said, laughing.
“Oh, right back at you, kiddo,” she said, and planted a big, lipsticky kiss on my cheek.
I sat down next to her again and ordered myself a soda.
“So,” she said, wrapping her cherry stems in a bar napkin, “you didn’t get back together with Deagan, did you?”
“No,” I said, stirring the ice around in my soda with my straw.
“Oh! Good! I worried you would.” Her eyes were wide and she scrambled for more words, like she was trying so hard to say the right things. “I mean, it would be easy to, you know? Not just for you. For anyone. To fall back into old patterns.” She swiveled to face me, planting her feet on the bottom rungs of my barstool. “Do you miss him?”
“Not as much as I thought I would,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Because there’s no point in being with anyone who’s too stupid to realize that they should want to be with you.”
The letter offering me the position as Anita’s assistant arrived a few days later. I stuck it to my refrigerator with a magnet from the pizza place. Every time I walked into the kitchen and saw it, I flushed with pride and my stomach wobbled like I was looking down from a great height. I was taking a leap, changing the things I could change, leaving behind the things that I couldn’t.
As soon as I sent in the paperwork to accept the job, I started weeding through my possessions and getting rid of things. I didn’t want to live with ghosts anymore. My dishes were from my parents’ bridal registry. My couch and love seat were hand-me-downs my dad gave me when one of his “chippies” redecorated his condo. Deagan bought me the coffee table for my birthday. I’d always meant for the wing chair to end up in his living room.
I packed it all up carefully and arranged to have Volunteers of America come pick it up. Someone who didn’t know they were relics of failed relationships would be happy to have these things, but I didn’t want reminders of hurt in my new life. I wanted to start fresh.
I kept only what I could fit in my Jeep, only the things that felt like they were really mine: my paints and paintings, some of my clothes, a sketchbook from Ithaca, my Bombers beer stein, the fancy vacuum cleaner I splurged on when I got my first paycheck, Snuffy’s kitty condo.
I packed Deagan’s things in one of the booze boxes I’d snagged from the liquor store. Most of it wasn’t really stuff he needed anyway: the extra toothbrush he kept at my place, a contact lens case, the pair of scratched-up glasses he only wore when he was desperate, slippers with unraveling stitches, a worn-out sweatshirt. When he’d brought these things over, it felt monumental, like a leap in a new direction, but I realized when the box was sitting on the passenger seat on the way to his apartment that he’d left behind things he could spare anyway. Plus if he’d really wanted any of it, he could have taken it back when he left my suitcase. But I didn’t want the responsibility of throwing his stuff away. I guess I also wanted to say good-bye.
The fact that we were done, that Deagan left me for someone else, didn’t negate the fact that for a very long time I had thought of him as the person I was going to marry. I was really leaving. There’d be no running into him at Wegmans or hearing how he was doing from one of his friends when I saw them at the Public Market. We wouldn’t keep in touch. This was an honest-to-goodness end, and I needed to be a grown-up about it and face it head-on. I needed to say the right things and then say good-bye.
“Wow, Jen,” Deagan said, “your hair looks great.” He took the box from me and shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, giving me a sheepish smile. It was all very civilized.
I guess part of me had wanted him to open the door and grab me and kiss me with a passion he’d never had before and tell me that Faye was just a horrible, stupid phase that made him realize how wrong he’d really been. I didn’t want him back. I only wanted the upper hand. It was the natural breakup wish, to be the dumper, not the dumpee, to preserve a little more dignity. But Deagan looked good. Happy. And from the little I knew about Faye, she seemed like the right person for him. She didn’t even mind the horrible foot smell of the indoor volleyball courts. I wasn’t the right person for Deagan, and he wasn’t the right one for me.
“Thanks,” I said. “So, um, I’m moving and I wanted to drop this off before I leave.”
“New apartment moving or moving moving?”
“Seattle,” I said. “Moving moving.”
“Wow,” he said, shifting the box from one hip to the other. “Do you want to come in? I just made coffee.”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
He stepped aside and let me in. It was odd to be in his apartment and not picture it as the place I’d be living someday, to feel like a guest all of a sudden.
He poured our coffee. He put mine in the mug I always liked best—the handmade one from People’s Pottery—but I wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or it was just the mug he grabbed.
“I shouldn’t have broken up with you like that. I’m sorry,” he said.
“Yeah.”
We sat side by side on the stools at his kitchen counter.
“I know it’s probably not important,” he said, looking into his coffee cup, “but I didn’t cheat on you.”
“Oh,” I said, taking a deep breath. My eyes stung. “That actually is important.” I looked at him. “I thought—you canceled the spa reservation like a month before and I thought—”
“I canceled because I knew I needed to end things. I knew it wasn’t fair to feel like . . .” He looked at me and looked away again quickly. “Then every time I saw you, I wasn’t sure. I’d change my mind.”
I scratched at a bubble in the glaze on the mug.
“But I didn’t even tell Faye how I felt until after,” he said. “I waited until after we broke up.”
“You mean after you dumped me at the airport and drove off with my luggage,” I said.
He gave me a horrified look. “I’m so sorry.”
I smiled at him. “I want to be mad at you for all of it—to hold on to the idea that you’re this bad guy—but I think I just need to get over it and move on.” It was easier to talk sitting next to him, to just say things out into the kitchen in general. I didn’t have to make eye contact. I didn’t want to. It was easier to say the hard stuff. “I wish you’d been honest about who you are and what you want, but I wasn’t honest either. I don’t even think I knew what I wanted. I think I was just grasping for all the things I thought I should want. Who I thought I should be.” I took a sip of coffee. It was terrible. He always made his coffee too weak.
“So, did you get a job in Seattle?” he asked. He was kicking his foot on the rung of the stool and it occurred to me that he was nervous.
I wasn’t. I felt calm.
“I’m going back to school,” I said.
“Marketing?”
“Painting.” I
smiled.
“Really?” He looked at me like maybe I was someone he hadn’t actually met before.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I remember you used to paint. Why did you stop?”
“You hated the way the paint smelled.”
We were both quiet for a while.
“I had no idea,” he said finally, his forehead wrinkled up.
“Hey,” I said, “I should have told you to suck it up. I was so scared of losing you that I put all my energy into trying to be who I thought you wanted.” I laughed. “That’s really stupid, isn’t it?” I wrapped my hands around the coffee mug to warm them. “We’re not right for each other. And that’s okay.”
“Maybe I have no right to say this, Jen, but I’m really proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I said. I used my ankle to stop him from kicking the rung of his stool.
He smiled.
We finished our coffee. I hugged him good-bye. He kissed my cheek. After he shut the door behind me, I walked down the hallway, choking back tears. The next good-bye would be even harder.
Driving up to my mother’s house, my breathing got shallow and my palms broke out in sweat. I’d spent every day of grade school with the same dizzying nausea taking over my stomach as I rode the school bus home, worried about the state she’d be in when I walked through the door.
We hadn’t talked since I hung up on her. When I finally turned my phone back on, I’d expected a long string of messages from her, but there was only one. All it said was, “Apparently we were cut off.” I tried calling her back, but she wouldn’t pick up the phone. After a week I gave up. I didn’t really want her to answer anyway. I didn’t want to talk to her. It was easier not to. Maybe I should have been worried, but she’d cut me off like this before. It was the price for hurting her pride.
I used my key and let myself in through the front door. The air was greasy, tinged with the sour smell of sweated-out booze and stale cigarette smoke. There were piles of newspapers stacked on the coffee table and empty takeout cartons strewn across the kitchen counter. I hoped she’d had food delivered. I shuddered to think of her driving across town to the Chinese place.
“Hi, honey, is that you?” she called, in her saccharine happy mom voice. There was an edge to it, darkness. I knew I was walking on eggshells.
She sat at the kitchen table in her nightgown, poring over the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. She was gaunt through her face, but her eyes were puffy. Her faded blond hair was dry and frizzy and had a wide swath of dark roots peppered with gray. The fill line on her acrylic nails was halfway to her fingertips, and the polish was chipped.
She turned her cheek to me, expecting me to kiss it. I didn’t.
“What did you do to your hair?” she said, gesturing to her own. “It ages you.”
“So, I came to tell you I’m moving to Seattle,” I said, ignoring her. “I’m going to art school.”
“What about Deagan?” she said. “Surely he’s not going to leave his job.”
“We broke up.” I cleared a stack of magazines and mail off my chair at the table, hung my purse over the back, and sat down. “I got into an MFA program for painting. And I have a job as a research assistant.” I looked down. There was still a speck of purple glitter on my chair. “I’ll be working for the head of the department.” I felt pathetic for telling her, for even wanting her to know, like some little puppy dog hoping for a pat on the head. I knew I’d never get it, but I held my breath for her answer anyway, hoping that something would be different.
“I can’t believe you let Deagan get away,” she said. She got up and bent over the stove to light her cigarette on the burner.
“You didn’t even like Deagan,” I said, scratching at the glitter with my fingernail until it was gone.
“He came from a good family.” She sat down again, taking a drag of her cigarette, blowing the smoke in my direction. She never used to smoke in front of me.
“I don’t want to talk about Deagan,” I said softly, but loud enough.
She acted like she hadn’t heard me. “And it’s not like you’re getting any younger.” Her voice was bitchy and aloof, but I saw her cheek tremble. “I guess I’m never going to have grandchildren. You should have tried harder to keep him.”
I didn’t say anything. I looked around the kitchen at the stacks of newspapers and food-stained takeout menus. Wine bottles filled the space next to the sink, from weeks of missing the recycling pickup. Empty liquor bottles always went directly in the trash so no one would see them.
I looked at the woman sitting in front of me and thought about all the things I’d always wanted from her. I wanted her to be a mama bear teaching me to fish in the river, nudging me over logs and rocks. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She didn’t know how to hug me and tell me everything was going to be okay. She didn’t know how to love me through all her hurt.
I stood up and walked around the kitchen, collecting half-empty Chinese food containers that smelled like they were at least a few days old. I dumped them in a plastic grocery bag along with the pile of condiment packets and questionably clean plastic utensils that littered the counter, saving a chopstick so I could poke it down the garbage disposal to check for silverware. I pulled out a fork and an earring, and then I ran the water and flicked the switch to get rid of the random detritus that had collected, probably since the last time I had been there and run the garbage disposal.
“Have you eaten today?” I asked, opening the fridge. There was a carton of eggs four months past their date, a bottle of ketchup, an empty carton of milk, and an assortment of decaying vegetables in the crisper that were so far gone it was impossible to tell what they had been.
“I’m not hungry,” she said, smiling weakly. She liked the attention. She liked forcing me into this role where I had to feed her like she was a petulant child, clean her messes, calm her fears.
“You need to eat,” I said. “Do you want me to order something?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I have to watch my figure.” She patted her hip with her bony hand. I wondered who she thought she was watching her figure for. She looked so frail and feeble.
I grabbed the protein bar I kept in my purse for emergencies and placed it on the table next to her. “At least eat this,” I said. “Please.”
I picked up the array of mugs and glasses that formed the perimeter of her place at the table like a fort to obstruct her view of the seats that were empty. I balanced them in the crook of my arm, against my chest, and grabbed more with pinched fingers. She held her hand over the mug closest to her to keep me from taking it. I walked carefully to the dishwasher and stacked the glasses in the top rack one by one.
I thought about calling Anita, telling her I’d have to stay.
I set the dishwasher to run and sat down at the table. The protein bar lay unopened next to her. She flipped the pages in her magazine too quickly to be reading anything. My throat tightened. Her eyebrow twitched.
“I don’t know how you think you’re going to survive a grad program in art,” she said, her voice a soft slur, her eyes shooting daggers. “Your paintings are always so self-conscious.” She stared me down, waiting to watch the wound bleed. “You should have stayed with Deagan. I mean, I’m just worried what will happen to you when you can’t make money with your little art projects.” She placed her hand over her heart, like she was playing the part of a concerned parent in a community play. Her eyes sparkled. She lived for this. When she fought with my father, she used to glow. “I finally threw out those creepy girls in your room.”
“What creepy girls?” I asked, but my heartbeat sped up. I knew.
“All those hideous portraits you had taped to the walls. The tape took the paint off with it. I’m going to have to repaint the whole room.”
I thought about the way I’d
painted Scout’s face with the right amount of defiance, Jo March looked wise, and Emma had the kindest eyes. I’d painted them so carefully. I used to lie in bed and look at them and think about what it would be like to have Anne as my kindred spirit friend. I showed Jane Eyre to my art teacher after class. He’d encouraged me to apply to art schools. My portraits weren’t hideous or creepy. She did it as payback for hanging up the phone. “You threw them away?” I said, blinking. I wished I could hide my hurt. She fed off of it.
She took a long drink from her mug. “I couldn’t stand looking at them anymore. I don’t know how you’re going to make a living. No one will hire you to paint a hideous portrait. No one would want to look like one of those creepy girls.”
“You’re drunk,” I said.
Her eyebrow twitched. Her face turned bright red. “You’ve always been an ungrateful bitch.” She spit the words out. “I gave up my life for you. My career, my marriage. Such a waste! I wasted my life on you, Jenny.” She said my name like it was the most trivial word in the world.
I stood up and grabbed my purse off the chair.
“You’re drunk,” I said again, trying not to yell, tears choking my voice. I wanted to say more, to find the right words to make her better. I wanted her to say she was sorry. I wanted her to be sorry. I still wanted her to be a mama bear. She couldn’t.
“I can’t fix you,” I said, sobbing. I wiped my face with my sleeve. “I really, really wanted to, Mom, but you have to fix yourself. And if you won’t, I can’t be here anymore. You broke my heart. You keep breaking it. And I can’t let you.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at me. She clicked her nails together, flipped the page of her magazine, and pretended to be completely absorbed in a story about Brad and Angelina. I didn’t exist.
“Call me if you’re ever ready to get help,” I said, squeezing her shoulder gently. “I’ll help you find a program.”
I went out through the garage. I opened the door to her car and sat in the passenger seat.
Why Can't I Be You (9781101602843) Page 24