I’d always been greedy when it came to Charlie.
“That’s so disgusting,” she said as I lit my second cigarette. Her nose wrinkled when I inhaled the first hit, blowing out a big puff of white smoke with a wink in her direction. “I thought for sure you’d have given up that habit by now.”
“Nah. It’s like my dad used to say. Something has to kill me eventually, might as well be something I enjoy.”
“You don’t have to speed up the process. You’re going to have lung cancer at forty.”
“That’s still five more years of good cigarettes, great beer, and even better sex.”
Charlie laughed, her cheeks flushing a deep pink. “It’s like trying to argue with a five year old.”
“You would know better than I would,” I told her, taking another pull from my cigarette. I was careful not to blow the smoke in her direction, though my eyes stayed on her. “You’re drunk.”
“Maybe.” She giggled the word, picking up her beer to take another drink, anyway. “It’s been so long since I’ve had beer. I forgot how it makes you feel all… swimmy.”
“Swimmy?”
“You know,” she said, extending her arms to the side and doing a weird version of the wave. “Floaty. High. Free.” Her smile settled into a lazy smirk, her glazed eyes finding mine. “You were responsible for my first beer, you know.”
“Ohhh, no,” I corrected, holding up my right pointer finger. “Don’t even try to pull that. You begged me for your first beer. I said no. You threatened to tell my parents about the porn stash you and Mallory had found under my bed. And then I gave you a Stella, which you couldn’t even finish because you hated the taste so much.”
“Is that how it went?” she asked, feigning innocence.
“It was. You were such a brat for being a quiet little pigtail-wearing bookworm.”
She threw her head back in a laugh. “Oh, my God. I still can’t believe my mother let me wear those things for as long as she did. What sixteen-year-old still braids her hair into pigtails?”
I swallowed, not wanting to admit the answer to that question — at least not out loud. The truth was, Charlie had been unlike any other sixteen-year-old girl I’d ever met. She was smart, quiet, witty, and way too sexy for her own good. Charlie didn’t even have to try to look sexy, either. She had this innocent school-girl thing going for her — no makeup, petite frame, pink lips and rosy cheeks. It was even worse when she wore her glasses, which I noted she’d traded in for contacts sometime in the years we’d been apart.
At sixteen, she knew more about the world than most of the kids I hung out with at college parties. Hell, she knew way more than I did, and I was five years older. I used to love just talking to Charlie, even though I’d fake that she and Mallory both annoyed me. Sometimes I’d even complain when I’d come home from a party and Charlie was there in the kitchen, the only other person still awake in my house. I’d pretend I didn’t want her to be awake, that I didn’t want to hang out with her, didn’t want to spend the entire night playing music for her and listening to the thoughts inside her head — but it was always just that. An act.
Charlie had always been different. Special. She just never saw it herself.
Taking one last drag of my cigarette, I pulled up the sleeve of my cardigan, checking the time on my watch. It was half past ten, and as I drove what was left of my cigarette into the ashtray to extinguish it, I eyed Charlie with words I didn’t want to say balancing on my tongue.
“It’s getting kind of late,” I unwillingly pointed out. “Are you… do you have to go soon?”
Charlie’s eyes grew sad again, and she stared at the amber liquid in her glass before tilting it to her lips, finishing what was left. She wiped the corners of her mouth with a shrug.
“Go where? Home to go to bed alone while he works?” Her fingertips skated the top of her empty glass. “Not exactly in a hurry for that.”
My brows bent together, hand twitching to reach for her again. I gripped my glass of water to keep from reacting the way I wanted to. “So, that’s what happened to date night,” I mused. “He works with your dad, right? I remember him working long nights and weekends when we were younger, too.”
Charlie sighed, running her hands back through her hair before she realized it was still in a bun. She messed it up with the drag of her nails, but instead of fixing it, she just tore the hair tie out and shook out her long brown hair, letting it fall over her shoulders.
I couldn’t help but stare as the strands fell over her shoulders. I was almost positive it was the first time I’d ever seen her hair down, and I had to fight the urge to reach forward and run my fingers through it.
She was so damn beautiful.
“Yeah, he works with Dad,” she said. “And I know he wouldn’t be working if he didn’t have to. I didn’t mean to sound like such a brat.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did,” she argued. “But, it’s not just tonight. It’s not just work.”
I swallowed, feeling like my next words needed to be the right ones. “What is it?”
Charlie looked a little like the young girl who used to read books on my porch in that moment, her eyes a little softer, skin a little younger. The way her hair surrounded her face like a halo took at least five years off her appearance.
She closed her eyes tight, shaking her head before she opened them again and found mine. “Can we go somewhere?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. I just… I don’t want to go home yet.”
I understood what she didn’t even have to say. I knew all too well what she was feeling — that terrible, sickening realization that home wasn’t really home anymore. That what once made it home was now missing. My family had always been home to me, not the place where we lived.
Now that they were gone, I was convinced home was a thing of the past, something I’d marvel at in the museum of my memories and wish I could relive.
I didn’t know why Charlie felt the way she did that night, or what was now missing in her home that had been there at some point before I’d moved back to Mount Lebanon. I didn’t know exactly what to say to make her feel better, or if there even was anything I could say that would comfort her. I didn’t know who she was five years ago, or even five months ago — didn’t know what had changed her since the last time we’d stood together in the garage of my old house.
But I did know exactly where to take her to clear her head.
Reese
The Duquesne Incline was a historic staple in Pittsburgh.
When we were younger, our parents used to bring all of us kids out to ride the old rickety cable car up Mt. Washington to the historic outlook over the city. It had been so magical as a kid, all of our faces pressed against the glass as we rode up, the pizza we’d stuff our faces with once we got to the top. But tonight, as Charlie and I rode the eleven o’clock cable car up to the top, it was beyond magical.
It was surreal.
I watched her profile as her eyes skated the lights in the distance, the car creaking and groaning as it pushed us up the incline, and she was no longer the little girl I’d known. Her long, dark hair was still down, curtained around her small, pale face. Her eyes were heavy and tired, from the alcohol and from something else I wished I could reach inside her and pull out to inspect, to fix.
The guilt I’d once felt for looking at her that way because she was too young had faded, but it was replaced by the fact that she was a married woman. I had to keep repeating it to myself, had to have those thoughts on replay so I wouldn’t forget. Because looking at her this way, in this light, in the cold — it was easy to forget.
“I haven’t done this in years,” Charlie confessed when we reached the top of the incline. We climbed out of the car, skipping the little museum at the top and opting for the scenic overlook that was just outside the old building, instead. She slid her arms over the railing, her dainty wrists hanging over the edge as her eyes swept the view. “In a decade
, actually. Gosh, I feel old saying that.”
I chuckled, twisting the top off the hot spiced cider I’d whipped up at my place while Charlie waited in the car. “You’re not old,” I said.
“I feel like it sometimes.” Her voice was soft, almost like the song of a bird. “I feel tired.”
“I think we all do.”
I passed her the lid of the Thermos, filled with cider, and took my own sip straight from the bottle. It was hard to take my eyes off her in that moment, to not stare at the flush of her cheeks, at her dark eyes, wider and brighter now that we were looking out over the city. Those eyes stayed on mine for a moment before she turned back to watch the spot where the two rivers met at The Point.
A shiver wracked through her, and I shrugged off my coat, draping it over her shoulders.
“Are you nuts?” she scolded, but she pulled the coat around her tighter. “You’ll freeze.”
“I’ll live.”
She smiled, a lazy, drunken smile that curled softly on her lips like the tips of a warm flame. “Thank you,” she said, nudging her shoulder into my rib. “Always such a gentleman, even when you were a rule-breaking piano prodigy.”
I always waved her off when she referred to me that way, but inside, I beamed. There weren’t many people in my life I’d ever really wanted to impress, but Charlie was one of them, along with my father. I still remembered the first time he heard my audition for Juilliard, and he told me that even though I was a little shit, he was proud of me. Those were his exact words.
I missed him.
For a long while, Charlie and I just stood there, both of us leaning over the railing and pointing out different things here and there as we drank the cider. We found the stadium where the Steelers played, and the field belonging to the Pirates — those were both easy staples to spot. We joked about our parents and their long nights at the country club we spotted off in the distance, or how we used to play in the water down at The Point. We told ghost stories about the old historic buildings downtown, and even tried to point out our old houses, which was mostly from memory of our parents pointing them out as kids. We couldn’t actually see them, but we could imagine them, the two yards touching, two families sewn together by proximity and later by love.
Every now and then, a sadness would sweep over every inch of her, from her tired eyes to her small hands cupped around the mug of cider. And though I knew Cameron was the one responsible for that sadness, I couldn’t deny that I was happy he’d been too busy for their date.
If it meant I got to have this night with her, I’d wish for him to screw up time and time again.
“He is my favorite,” Charlie spoke after a long period of silence.
She took a tentative sip of her cider, her eyes focused on the lights below us, and I frowned, wondering if she’d read my mind about Cameron. But her next words steered the conversation in a completely different direction.
“The little boy you saw me with earlier this week,” she clarified. “Jeremiah.”
I opened my mouth to ask a question, to ask why he’s her favorite, but something told me she already knew what she wanted to say. So I just stood beside her, our arms touching, and I kept my eyes off in the distance to give her space to feel out her words.
“I had a son,” she said, her voice cracking.
It was the last thing I expected her to say, and the words hit me like a shot gun bullet, piercing me at different depths. It was the first time she’d mentioned her son, and I knew she hadn’t brought him to dinner with her parents. There was no way Gloria would ever miss out on the opportunity to see her grandson.
My stomach churned, already sensing the direction the conversation was going.
Had. Past tense.
“Actually, I had two. Twins.” In my peripheral, I saw her smile, her pink lips turned up in a sad kind of joy. “We’d been so happy to find out we were having two. It was the best eight months of my life, being pregnant with them. But Derrick, he was stillborn.”
A pained breath escaped my nose, and I closed my eyes tight, wishing I’d heard something else out of those sweet lips of hers. I put my arm around her shoulders, pulling her into me, just letting her know I was there, but she wasn’t finished yet.
“The other, though,” she said, her voice shaky, and I didn’t have to pull back and look at her to know there were tears in her eyes. “He was a fighter. I held him for less than a minute before he was rushed off to the NICU, where he lived for the next nine days.” She shook her head. “The only nine days of his life.”
“Charlie, God, I am so sorry,” I whispered, tucking her closer to me. I wrapped my other arm around her as her head fell against my chest, and I was thankful I’d abandoned the empty Thermos on the ground. I had both hands to hold her, to embrace her, to stroke her hair and rub her back. “That’s… I don’t even have the words. It’s heartbreaking.”
“It was,” she choked. “They would have been five this year, starting kindergarten, probably in my class. Derrick, he would have been the oldest, even if just by a few minutes, and I imagine he would have had the same strong build as his father. But Jeremiah,” she said, and my heart cracked with the realization.
He had the same name as the child in her class, and he would have been the same age.
“I think he would have favored me. Just from those forty-eight seconds of holding him, of feeling him against me, I think he would have been the small, timid bookworm like his mom.”
“Shit, Charlie…”
“When Jeremiah — the one you saw me with — when he walked into the classroom on the first day of school this past August, my breath caught at the sight of him. I can’t explain it, but before I even knew his name, I just felt this pull to him. And then when I called roll…” She paused, shaking her head where it was buried in my chest. “Oh Reese, my knees buckled. They nearly gave out. It was like my own son was there, in some way, not completely, but in a way that told me he’s still with me somehow. In my heart, in spirit. I don’t know. It sounds silly.”
“It doesn’t.”
“It feels silly,” she confessed. “But, I’ve had this connection with him ever since. And he’s just like I imagined my little Jeremiah would have been. Quiet, shy, but so, so smart. And kind. His heart is as big as the world, and I know when he’s older, he will do amazing things. I just know it.”
I didn’t have any of the right words that I needed to comfort Charlie in that moment. I didn’t even have words for myself, to ease the ache that had built heavier in my chest with every word she’d spoken. All this time, I thought I’d seen a woman who used to be a girl, broken by a marriage that didn’t make her happy.
How wrong I’d been.
How devastatingly naïve and stupid I’d been.
“Sometimes, I have entire days go by where I don’t think of either of them,” she said softly. “On a weekend day, a Saturday or a Sunday, when I play in my garden or clean around the house or lose myself in a new recipe. And then when I think of them again, I feel terrible for ever forgetting, even if just for twenty-four hours.”
“It’s okay to keep living,” I assured her, still rubbing her back with a warm, hopefully comforting hand. “You know they would have wanted you to. They’d want you to be happy.”
“I know,” she said, but she shook her head. “It’s easier to say that, though, than to actually believe it. To actually do it.”
Charlie let me hold her, both of us silent, both of us moved in our own ways.
I wanted to crawl inside her and hold the most tender parts of her. I wanted to wrap her heart in my arms, soothe her bruised and aching soul with my touch. But, then again, hadn’t her husband wanted to do the same? How had he handled all of this? Was this the reason they were so distant, that she was so sad, or was it something more?
After a moment, Charlie breathed a long, heavy sigh into my chest. “I still have stretch marks from them, you know,” she whispered. “Marks from a birth that barely happened, from childr
en I never got to raise.”
I squeezed my eyes shut tight, fighting back the emotion threatening to overcome me in that moment, at those words. Then, I placed my hands around her thin arms, pulling her back from me to look into her eyes.
“Show me.”
Her eyes were wet and wide with confusion as she looked up at me, the lights from Pittsburgh shining in their gloss. “What?”
“Your stretch marks. Show me.”
Charlie’s brows bent together, her hands hesitant as they moved to her stomach. She opened my coat she wore first, then unbuttoned her own beneath it. Her hands finally found her thin blouse and she yanked it from where it was tucked into her jeans, lifting it along with the tank top she wore underneath.
Chills broke against the pale skin of her bare midriff, and I dropped to my knees, leaning in closer to find the shiny pink marks that ran across that white skin like tiny roads on a map. I pulled one glove off, reaching forward with warm fingertips that made her shudder when I pressed them against those marks. My fingers skated the lines, the thick bottoms of them that faded off into thin tips. A tear fell from where Charlie watched above me, hitting my wrist, and I cast my gaze upward to find hers.
“Charlie, they’re beautiful.”
And then, she broke.
Charlie’s face warped, emotion taking over her, and she collapsed into me. Her arms wrapped around my head, pulling me into her bare stomach, and I wrapped my own around her, too. I caught her as her knees gave out, as tears ripped through her. Her tiny shoulders shook and small cries left her lips in sounds I knew would haunt me forever.
My little tadpole, no longer innocent, no longer untouched by the cruelty of life.
I waited until her sobs had subsided, all the while holding her tighter and tighter, letting her know I was there to bear the weight she could no longer hold. Then, when she was quiet, I stood, lifting her chin with me so her eyes would find mine.
“You are an amazing mother already, Charlie, and I know you will make your future children happier than you can even imagine now.”
Her face warped again, but she fought against it, nodding into my hand that had found her cheek.
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