Love, Carry My Bags

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Love, Carry My Bags Page 20

by Everett, C. R.


  “I met a guy.” I started to cry.

  “Did you sleep with him?” It was more of a statement than a question. She knew. I cried harder in response.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay,” she said, softening her voice. I sobbed on her shoulder, which was a thousand miles away. “Shhh . . .” she cooed into the phone. Her distant embrace comforted as much as being held in her arms. I could feel her.

  “Did you use a condom?”

  “No,” I said, wiping the wetness from my tear-blotched face.

  “What?” she said sharply, regaining her normal tone.

  “It’s okay,” I said, newly composed. “He doesn’t have AIDS because he gives blood all the time and they’d have told him.”

  “But you could get—”

  “I’m on the pill. I was expecting Reese to come home.”

  “He never wrote you back, did he? He screwed you loose and left you,” she snapped, then exhaled again. Her brutal accusation was as much a stab in my heart as his. She’d never met him. She didn’t know him.

  “No. Well, he wrote briefly last fall, but it didn’t last.”

  “The bastard.” Her words sliced me again.

  “He was having some personal problems.”

  “Like what?” Her tone made it clear that no personal problem was severe enough to dump her sister over.

  “I don’t know . . .” I started to decompose again. “His parents got divorced.” It was all I could come up with.

  “Well, whoop-ti-doo.” I could see her spinning her finger alongside her head. “So did ours. He’s, what, twenty, twenty-one, for Christ’s sake. Get over it.”

  “I broke up with him,” I said numbly. “I met Glenn and he seemed interesting, and interested in me, so I decided to move on. I didn’t mean for things to happen so fast. Then when we were done today, he just up and left for the afternoon, saying he had to visit his parents.” Hearing myself say it made me feel more cheap, used and dirty than I already did. Something I couldn’t undo.

  “He what? He just fucked you and left? That motherfu—” The phone cut out for a second on her end. “Hang on,” she said and switched me to call waiting. “Camryn, I got another call. I’ll call you back. Promise. Love ya. Bye.” At least she loved me.

  “Love you too.” She was gone. And I was alone again with my desolate thoughts. I poured them out on three pages, front and back, to Megan. She was my sister too.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Nothing is black and white. Not even that sentence. There are no absolutes. Absolutes are, well, nearly extinct. Yet extinct is such a strong word, almost an absolute. No wonder life is so hard. Things aren’t what they seem even when you think they are.”

  —V. N. Froling

  Glenn served us pepperoni and pepperoncini pizza in front of yet another hockey game, only the sound of digestion breaking the silence between us. As the phone interrupted, he turned down the cheering crowd with the remote.

  “I’m studying,” Glenn said. The conversation with his mother was short lived.

  “Why did you tell her you were studying?”

  “I don’t know,” he said absently, still tuned in to the television.

  “Why didn’t you just tell her you were watching TV?” I chopped the ‘with me’ off the question. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with an honest answer.

  “Because if I said that, then I’d have to listen to a lecture about how I should be studying—and I didn’t want to hear it. She shouldn’t care anyway, they aren’t paying my tuition, Uncle Sam is.”

  “My parents aren’t paying for my college either.”

  “Why not?”

  “When you’re eighteen, you’re on your own,” I said with an emphasizing look of that’s the fact. “I could have gotten a loan from my mother, but the strings attached would have been an interest rate much too high, so I didn’t even go there. My dad didn’t have any extra money. He just bought his sister a house.”

  “That’s just wrong.” Glenn acted mad. “You don’t go buying your sister a house when your kid needs to go to college.”

  “He didn’t buy it and give it to her,” I said in my dad’s defense. “He bought it as rental property and she pays rent.” I didn’t mention that it wasn’t a very expensive house, just the cost of a college education.

  “Still, a parent’s responsibility is to their kids, not their sister.”

  “She’s sixty years old, no education beyond high school, and works in the middle of nowhere at a livestock feed store. She’s a little old to be making major changes.”

  “Isn’t she married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why doesn’t her husband take care of her?”

  “There’s only so much you can do in small town USA.” I chose not to further justify it with Uncle Milton’s gambling addiction. That was beside the point. When Aunt Ada’s up-and-comer first love was smashed to bits in a helicopter in Korea, and then she had to home hospice Grandma Johnson all by herself, and then wound up with Milton . . . it wasn’t a far stretch to see the logic in helping her out.

  “I don’t believe there’s only so much you can do. Your parents are supposed to give you the tools to make it on your own, not push you from the nest just because you turn eighteen.”

  “My dad saw that I had all the tools I needed before I turned eighteen. Aunt Ada’s toolbox is nearly empty and what’s left is worn out.”

  “Still . . .” Glenn said, still angry. I was touched he seemed to feel sorry for me, yet disturbed it was so black and white to him. Glenn continued, “My parents paid for my sister’s education. Of course they paid for anything she wanted.”

  “But they didn’t pay for you.”

  “They would have, but I told them they didn’t have to. I joined the Navy because I wasn’t ready for college and now they don’t have to pay.”

  “Well, that’s your family. My family is different,” I said, ending the conversation. Intermission was nearly over. My homework sat at home, not being worked. The subject that had been eating away at me all day waited no longer.

  “I need to talk to you about something else,” I said, my palms turning hot.

  “Okay.”

  “I think . . .” I looked down at my shoes and decided to just blurt it out. “I think what we did yesterday was too soon.” Relieved to have brought it up, I watched my words silently fall. Glenn sat across the room looking my way.

  “I was thinking that too,” he said, quietly. Whew! Further relief that he agreed we’d made a mistake.

  “I think we should just be friends, take it slow,” I said.

  “Me too.” His agreement made me want to draw closer. I sat on his lap. He gave me a comforting peck on the cheek, then hockey took over. Watching more hockey with Glenn interested me less than going home to study. I excused myself.

  * * *

  The next day I was back in Glenn’s bed.

  * * *

  “Where were you this morning,” Glenn asked.

  “Flying.”

  “Flying?”

  “Yeah, my friend Sarah’s friend goes here. Pilot. He came over this morning and asked if I wanted to go for a ride, so, I figured, why not?”

  “He asked you to go for a ride?” Glenn repeated.

  “Yes. But I didn’t know it was for his twin engine check flight.” I laughed, it being funny in retrospect. “We get up there and the instructor says he’s going to kill the engine. I’m freaking out, right. So he shuts one engine off and Ron’s supposed to restart it in the air.”

  “Well, you still had one engine,” Glenn said, jealous he didn’t get to go.

  “Yeah, but it was still scary. I feel better with two . . . but, it was fun.”

  “Next time, bring me.” It seemed my status had grown in Glenn’s eyes.

  * * *

  Because eating dinner together became routine, grocery shopping together became routine. Shopping—window, grocery, or otherwise became a date since nothing else appealed
to us both. Sometimes I drove—not often, due to Glenn’s unease with being a passenger. I had talked Father into letting me have his car away from home, making a case for my personal safety getting to and from work.

  “Movies aren’t any fun,” Glenn had said, to my great disappointment. Unbeknownst to him, I squelched my love of movies as a social event and enjoyable hobby down to merely working in a video rental store part-time, viewing what I could, there. I had no VCR. Glenn had one, but only wanted to watch videos with me if they were Rated X, an indulgence I granted in the interest of open-mindedness and exploration.

  Being underage was a convenient excuse not to go to bars. “Here’s my sister’s old driver’s license,” Glenn offered.

  “No one’s going to believe that’s me,” I said, looking at a semblance five years older than me. It’s okay, I’ll wait ‘til my birthday.”

  “I know you could get in with this,” Glenn said, as if it was an urgent matter.

  “It’s okay.” I shrugged. No big deal. I never said, I didn’t want to. That would make me seem dull. Skirting the issue allowed me to avoid appearing dull to Glenn. I knew I wasn’t dull, but proving it to a budding frat boy and the remaining ninety-nine percent of the party-minded student body was complicated. I didn’t know the other one percent, of which I was a part.

  Glenn dropped into the video store during my shift. “We’re going down to the OZ. I’ll see you when we get home.” The OZ was a seedy cigarette-smoke-laden dance club, flanked by strip clubs in the conveniently located industrial district a few miles up the road. I wasn’t sure who he referred to as we, most likely his new best friends. And seeing me when he got home seemed like we shared a place. The sound of it made me feel warm, but it really meant that he’d knock on my door sometime after midnight, we’d watch a video and I’d go back home, sensing it was too much of a commitment for him for me to sleep over. It was nice for him to let me know where he was going, after all, he wasn’t on a leash. Occasionally, when his commitophobia waned he let me spend the night, but we took it one night at a time. Two in a row didn’t happen. Sleepovers were usually not on a school night. When I had thought I’d stay over on a Friday night, Glenn said, “No, it’s a school night.”

  “No it’s not, we don’t have school tomorrow,” I said, correcting him.

  “You went to school today, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a school night,” he replied, stating his fact.

  Saturdays were the only days that met both of our non-school-night criteria. When I did stay over, I returned home the next morning to shower. We were taking it slow—getting to know each other, see if there really was any love there. It was like backpedaling on a bicycle, returning to B, after having eclipsed the relational alphabet, errantly speeding straight from A to X, missing all the stops in between.

  * * *

  Glenn was away for the weekend. He didn’t invite me along, leaving me wondering why not. I didn’t know where I stood in my life, or where I stood with him. My mind took a meandering course through the past, present, and future, stopping at thoughts of Reese along the way. I decided to call him. My heart raced as the phone ringing in my ear transmuted into Mrs. Dahlgren’s ‘hello.’

  “Is Reese there?”

  “Just a minute.” I could tell by her voice that she was excited by my call, but I wasn’t sure she knew it was me.

  Reese picked up. “Hello.”

  “Hi. It’s Camryn.” No more words would come forth. I tested the stagnant water.

  “Hi.” Happy was in his voice, but little conversation.

  “How have you been?” I asked. Small talk ensued, leaving our central issues unaddressed.

  “Listen to this.” Reese moved the phone away from his ear. I heard some scratching noises and a chirp. “That’s Tweety, my mom’s parakeet. He’s always making that noise, kicking seeds everywhere.”

  “Uh-huh.” I hadn’t attempted a final last-ditch save to talk bird talk. It was an obscure affirmation that when I had come to the fork in my life’s road, I correctly took the path that was going somewhere—muddled as it was—and leaving Reese behind. “I need to go now, Reese. I just wanted to see how you were doing.” I paused, briefly hoping for something from Reese that wouldn’t come. “Take care.”

  “You take care too.”

  And that was it.

  * * *

  “Hey, come in here,” Glenn called to me from inside his apartment, his door ajar, again. It was a ritual I welcomed, being wanted. Glenn often waited for me to get home from classes, and then we’d decide what was for supper. At times we’d run up to the store together for last-minute ingredients, spending the evening talking, cooking. Sometimes I’d drop in after I got home from work later in the evening. We’d talk some more.

  “I have a paper due soon,” Glenn said. “I don’t type very well.” His forlorn puppy eyes came out until I agreed to help. Helping consisted of rewriting papers as well as typing them in real time, before the ink dried from his hand-scribbled first draft—a process that continued into the wee hours of before dawn.

  “Thanks. I owe you,” he said, planting a kiss on me before I went home to fall into my own bed. I helped with his homework when he was home and did mine when he was gone, or in down time at my video-store job.

  “Why don’t we just live together?” I asked Glenn.

  “No. I don’t want a roommate.”

  “But we’re together all the time. Most of my food is here. I’ve moved half my kitchen stuff over here. I can’t afford my place by myself anymore and it would save us both money.”

  “I won’t live with a girl without being married.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s against my moral code.” Then let’s get married was the next thing on the tip of my tongue, which stayed there. I loved him, but I wasn’t absolutely sure he loved me. He never said, and neither did I.

  “You have a moral code?” I asked, shocked. I was surprised by the ‘greater than thou-ness’ of it.

  “Yes. I won’t live with someone, and I’d never cheat on anyone.”

  “We’re already the next thing to living together.”

  “No. My mother wouldn’t like you, anyway, if she knew we lived together.” But she’d like me just fine occasionally being in your bed? The incongruity of the argument choked me. He didn’t budge. I was in no position to cause anything different to happen. I’d have to settle for this hand right now. Maybe one day he’d marry me. In the meantime, I got my own roommates, whom I rarely saw, because I was so often with Glenn.

  * * *

  “I’m going to bed.” Glenn got up and turned off the lights. We had spent a pleasant domestic evening at his place, relaxing. The only thing missing was the white picket fence—and my sense of security. I wondered if he expected me to go home or follow him. I chose to follow my heart’s desire and tag along to the bedroom. “Aren’t you going home?” Glenn asked when I took my shoes off, bedside. I froze, mortified.

  “You don’t want me to stay?” I asked, forcing back tears.

  “You can stay. I was just kidding.” He thought it was funny.

  “Don’t do that to me,” I said, frustrated.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t read your mind. Sometimes you want me here and sometimes you don’t. It’s kind of hard, you know.” I held on to the times I knew he wanted me around and told myself that he needed a little space when he didn’t. “You know, I had thought you might have been married before. You talked about having a house,” I said, feeling a wave of security as I crawled into the sheets.

  Glenn looked me in the eyes. “I was.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “At least I could profit from my own death—or was it a long, arduous birth?”

  —M. E. Poukeepsie, Author

  “What happened? You’re divorced?” I asked, surprised, yet deep down, a nagging suspicion prevented total shock.

  “She cheated on me. If you can’t trust s
omeone, there’s nothing left,” he said plainly. What a bitch. I felt sorry for him again. My heart softened.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I touched his shoulder as we lay in bed. His need for space became clearer, easier to accept.

  “It’s not something I want people to know. I’m not proud of it.”

  “Oh.” I thought it should be something you tell a girlfriend up front. I was his girlfriend, wasn’t I? He never introduced me as his girlfriend, yet people regarded us as a couple. “How old are you, anyway?”

  “How old do you think I am?” he said, knowing I’d be wrong.

  “Twenty-five,” I guessed.

  “Thirty.”

  Thirty.

  “What else haven’t you told me?” I asked, holding his hand. “Have you ever been in jail?”

  “Almost, once. It was a misunderstanding. I wasn’t really over the blood alcohol limit. Sometimes cops harass people. My dad straightened them out. He knows people. Dad just said to be more careful because his favors were about up.”

  “You make it sound like you really were driving drunk.”

  “No, it was a close call. Dad helped them decide which side of the fence I was on. It was scary.” I looked at Glenn, adding up all the facts I had gathered, weighing them, evaluating the situation I found myself in. I resolved to stay the course, seeing promise that together, we could do better. I snuggled him hard that night, silently proving I was true and that these things . . . these things from the past didn’t matter. That was the first time since I’d started sleeping over, that sleep was all we did.

  * * *

  We both had summer school that year. Glenn came through with baseball tickets and we saw the Cards play more than once. “Grab that guy.” Glenn held up a five-dollar bill. I tugged at the beer concessionaire’s shirt. “One.” Glenn said. “You sure you don’t want one?” he asked me, double checking.

  “I’ll have a soda.” Carbonated beverages ceased being pop in St. Louis.

  “You sure?” Glenn asked again.

  “Yes. Diet Coke.”

  The concessionaire wiped the sweat from his forehead then handed us our drinks.

 

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