Catching Tatum

by Lucy H. Delaney

  She took a deep breath and sighed and drove a mile or more before coming clean. “Because I was your age once and wanted nothing more than to have a boy loves me. I see you look at Cole the way I used to look at a boy.”

  “At Daddy?”

  “No, not Daddy. Someone else ...” She took another exaggerated breath. “Someones,” she stressed. “I thought if I gave them what they wanted they would love me back the way I wanted. I did love them. I loved them so much. When you grow up in a small town like I did it was almost like there was nothing else to do when you started going out but tip cows and make out. I thought it was part of the deal. I don't know if it ever meant anything to them, but it meant something to me.”

  “How many are we talking here?” I asked, slightly disgusted and disappointed in my mother.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Kind of ...”

  “It doesn't matter.”

  “It does. How many guys are we talking, Mom? How many before Daddy?”

  “Enough ...”

  “How many?” I couldn't imagine either of my parents with anyone but each other, let alone with multiple partners. Until then I never really thought about it, but she was being so evasive.

  “How many is too many?” she asked.

  I thought about it. How many was too many? I only wanted her with my dad. Anyone other than him, even if it was before him, was too many. I didn't want to answer. I was mad at her, but at the same time I did want to know because I was just like her with Cole. I already knew we weren't a forever kind of thing.

  “Does Daddy know?”

  “Yes and no. He knows enough to know he wasn't my first but not everything. He definitely doesn't know how much some of them meant to me ... I would like to keep it that way.” She was vulnerable. I respected her for that but I still couldn't believe it.

  “Are you talking about having sex with other guys? Like sex-sex ... or other stuff?” I didn't want to say what I was thinking. I hoped she got what I meant.

  “None of it is little but, yes, I'm talking about sex-sex. I know all of this because I lived it. I want to save you from some of the pain I went through. Let him earn your love; don't give in. If he loves you ... he'll prove it,” she said.

  “What's so bad about it anyway? You make it seem like it's so bad. If it it’s so bad how come people do it all the time?”

  “No, it's not bad ... that's the whole point. It's that good. It's special; it's yourself you're giving to someone else and they're giving you themselves. You can shake hands or hug anyone, but that's a part of you that you don't give to everyone because once you give it, you can never take it back ... and they will always be with you and you with them. It's special and shouldn't be given away lightly.”

  “It's not that big of a deal.”

  “Then why did it matter to you how many guys I was with? Why do we make judgments about people who sleep around or cheat? Why are there talk shows about girls who don't know who the father of their child is? I suppose maybe for some people ... maybe ... it's not that big of a deal, but I don't think so. I certainly don't think so for you; you're too much like me.”

  “I'm not like you ...”

  She smiled and shrugged. “Let's hope not.”

  That was it. She let me have the last word even though it was mean. I felt bad about that later. The worst part was that everything she was saying made sense but I couldn't admit it.

  I loved Cole. I would do anything for him. He didn't love me and I knew it. I hated how his lack of regard made me want him more. I always called him first and he brushed me off after a little bit, and I told myself I wouldn't call again until he called me, but when he didn't, I called him. I hated it. I thought I was a strong, proud girl. I knew I was cute. I knew there were other boys who probably wanted me, and I was trying to be loyal to this jerk that played the field as much outside practice as he did during it. He only really cared when he wanted my body. I always knew it, too; that's the only time he called first. I knew what he wanted and I was mad at him for being a lousy boyfriend.

  I was such an idiot. I was tired of being one.

  I decided to break up with Cole.

  I hoped he would beg and plead for me to change my mind. I wanted him to love me enough to prove it to me. That's not what he did at all.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE NEXT FRIDAY he called to see if I wanted to go out. His parents were working late, I knew the real reason he called. We would have dinner, watch a movie, and it would end at his house, in his room, in his bed, the way it had for the last eight months before. We ate in the mall food court and saw two girls, juniors obviously crushing on my boyfriend, right in front of me. I wanted him to put his arm around me but, instead, he got up and gave one girl a big old hug and told her how good it was to see her. It was like I wasn't even there. The girls were being girls. I mean, they knew we were together but they were flirting like girls do. He was the one I was mad at. He could have hugged her then sat back down by me. He could have included me in the conversation; instead, I was invisible. But I wasn't. Everything my mom said hit me in the gut like a sucker punch. I was better than this, I was better than him. I deserved more. I wanted more and I knew, in that moment, I would never get it from Cole no matter how much I begged or he promised or we fought.

  I was done.

  When the girls walked away, with backward waves and smiles, I tried to break it to him gently. “I don't think we should see each other anymore.”

  Part of me didn't know what I was doing; part of me wondered why it had taken so long.

  He looked at me in disbelief, then lowered his eyes to his food, nodded his head and said, “Probably best ... school's getting ready to start again, it'll be a fresh start for both of us.”

  Probably best?! Fresh start! That was it? What a jerk!

  “Yeah, that's what I was thinking,” I said. I wanted him to feel bad about it. “It's not like we have much in common other than baseball.”

  “Yeah, well, you know, I'm here if you change your mind,” he said, reaching for a handful of fries. “Or ... at least ... we can still be friends, right?” He shoved the fries in his mouth, wouldn't even look at me.

  “Yeah, sure ...”

  “So you wanna do the movie or nah?” he asked.

  “I don't think so.”

  “All right, c'mere,” he said, and stood up and finally came over to me. That's when he hugged me and looked down at me. Why couldn't he have done that when they were here? For a second I thought maybe he would ask me to change my mind, but no. “It's been real,” he said. “I won't be able to drive out Canyon Road and not think about you ... 'Member that?”

  I did remember that, we were making out and a police officer knocked on the window and broke it up. The memory had always been good for a laugh, but not when I was breaking up with him and wanted him to beg me to stay.

  “Yeah, good times.”

  “The best.”

  We walked to his car and he drove me to my house in silence. He actually got out when he dropped me off, something he hardly ever did anymore, and hugged me to his chest one last time. He kissed the top of my head and his fingers found their way to tangle in my hair, I was going to miss that. Then he got in his car and took off ... no backward glance this time. There were only two weeks left of summer and both were filled with silence from Cole. No calls, no begging me to change my mind, no knocks on my window in the middle of the night. No Cole Jackson. Even though I was the one who broke up with him, it definitely hurt me worse than it hurt him.

  I saw him the first day of school and we waved like we never really knew each other, like all of the last year hadn't happened. Then at lunch I knew why, he already had a new girl on his arm—Stacy, an air-headed cheerleader, and she didn't even play ball. I was replaced. I wanted to be mad. In my head I was mad, he was a jerk! He probably went and found her the next day or even the night we broke up. Had he been flirting with her on the side the whole time we were together? Why did
I ever love him? Why? But the anger didn't stick. The hurt was too big; more than yelling or slapping him, I wanted to curl up and cry. I felt so cheap and worthless. I loved him and he didn't even care.

  The next day I caught him in the hall without her. “I see you're doing OK,” I said.

  “I manage,” he said, high-fiving a kid from the team named Jimmy.

  “When did you start going out with her?”

  “Couple weeks ago.”

  A couple weeks ago we had been together. “Wow!” I crossed my arms to keep from slapping him.

  “Hey,” he said, arms out, palms up, making himself look bigger than he was. “You're the one that broke up with me, remember? Why, you miss me?” he said with a wink.

  “Um ... not hardly ... not now. You walk around the school like you're God's gift to the ladies. You've been with everyone. I'm so done with you. You're a man whore.” Curious kids stopped walking in the hall to hear what was going on. I was not one to back down. Chuckles erupted from the crowd. I got him good. I smiled in triumph.

  “Who's the whore, Tatum? … It ain't me. You were moaning in my bed begging for it before we were even going out.” I saw a girl behind him put her hand to her mouth. I felt exposed. What we did was our thing; he was crossing a line. Fire for fire, I shot back, “I wasn't moaning, I was crying cause you couldn't get it up. That's why I broke up with you. I was tired of you being my charity case.” I smiled and raised my eyebrows. Victory. “Peace,” I said and walked on. Then the terrorists attacked, and my stupid little relationship drama didn't matter anymore.

  The whole nation gathered together to watch in shock and horror. I remember being in English that day and hearing the announcement over the speakers. There was no class; we all gathered around TVs and computer monitors and watched in disbelief. America's pain made me forget my own. Theo, Brett, and I all went to the same high school and all did cross-country together to stay in shape for baseball, but practice was canceled. How could we run and have fun when people were jumping out of burning buildings, and terrorists were cheering victoriously? When school let out, instead of going to the field we met up at Theo's Jeep and drove straight home. Occasionally one of us would comment on something we heard or saw, but it was mostly a quiet ride except for the radio, which was only giving news. The base was a scurry of activity when we finally got home. Heightened security, patrols and searches like never before. Dad was gone. He'd been gone before on deployments or missions that he couldn't talk about. His absence wasn't the problem—the suddenness was. We always had notice that he was going; this time, though, there was nothing, except an attack on U.S. soil. We got home and he was gone.

  When he finally came home, more than a week later, he was different. Distant, tired, shut-down. I was on the couch watching news updates and trying to do homework by the light of a table lamp. He came in the door, shut it and just stood there. Mom saw him first and went to him. He took her into his arms. They held each other forever ... she held him. My dad, my strong, brave, Colonel Dad was broken and she would hold him together. I thought about them having each other. Then I thought about the women who jumped out of the buildings, who perished in the Pentagon or the field. Who did their husbands have to hold them together? During the embrace, the boys made it into the living room, too. The four of us, Theo, me, Brett and Trav, watched quietly, all of us thinking the same things: Where had he been? What had he seen? What was going to happen now? After he was finished with mom he hugged each of us in turn. Long hugs that said more than any words ever could. I never saw a tear, or heard a sob, but almost wished I did. He held it all in. He was never quite the same after that. I supposed correctly that he was working at the Pentagon, but he never wanted to talk about it. I don't know if he couldn't or wouldn't but he didn't for the longest time and we didn't push him. The images from the news were bad enough; I could only imagine what it was like to be there.

  He had two days, forty-eight hours, to rest and recover before he had to go back. He didn’t know when we would see him again. It was like that for weeks. Unlike that first week, though, he called and talked to us regularly.

  The attacks changed everything, not just for America, for us. We always had an emergency plan, but now Mom made it way more detailed. We put emergency kits in the cars and in the house. We got cell phones, too. Before then it was just Mom and Dad, and Theo, who had his own phone because he had a job and wanted one, but Mom and Dad decided they wanted the rest of us to have them, too ... for emergencies. Mom was way more paranoid about where we would be and when we would be there. And she left us notes about her daily activities. In case it happened again, we needed to know where to look for each other.

  We had lived on several bases—moves were part of our life—but I kind of assumed Andrews AFB would be home for the remainder of Dad's Air Force career. I was wrong. Something about the attacks, something he couldn't talk about, got him orders to move away ... far, far away.

  This transfer took us to McChord AFB in Washington State, all the way on the other side of the country, where it is gray and rains almost every day. Except for the quickness and urgency behind it, the move was like all the others that came before. We got the orders, Dad went first, right away, and we tied up loose ends before they packed us up and shipped us out shortly after. My mom was usually a cheery lady, except right after new orders; they shook her up. It was probably because she grew up on the farm in Ohio. She lived in the same house her dad had grown up in until she met my dad. They called that plot of land that her WOP of a grandfather left the coal mines and tenements of Pennsylvania to homestead, home for generations. Moving wasn't in her blood like it was the rest of us, but adventure was. The wanderlust in me always said “Let's go!” when a move popped up, but Mom needed a plan. I felt like she always had to get her head in the game for a move first, then she was fine. It was a little easier that time because every good American wanted to do something to help or react to the terror attacks, and we had something to do.

  We headed out just before Thanksgiving and, even though it meant missing a big chunk of school, mom wanted to drive the trek to McChord instead of fly. We stopped at the farm for a week on the way, even though it was out of the way. Everyone was evaluating what mattered most in life; family mattered most to my mom. She wanted time with us while she still had it. Thomas was already gone, it was Theo's senior year, and he had plans to enlist and leave the nest right after graduation. She wanted time with her parents. She wanted us to know our roots, spend time in the soil. It felt good to go and visit the farm. It always did, only it felt more like home that time than ever before. Nothing there ever changed except the tractors and irrigation equipment. The house was still the same old house with shiny wooden floors that were so polished from wear they didn't even creak anymore. The barn was the same old barn; it did have a fresh coat of paint smeared over the ancient layers that sometimes appeared here and there where quarter-sized flecks had chipped away. Gramma and Grampa were the same old grandparents–ageless, timeless, and steadfast. There was something inside me that appreciated how things there could stay the same even if I couldn't imagine living life like that. The farm was a beautiful, gentle reminder that not everyone needed to venture out like I did, not everything needed to change, and there was nothing wrong with staying the same if there was love and contentment in the sameness. We stayed a week before we ventured out to our new home, the last base I ever called home.

  I'm not sure if it was 9/11, or my breakup with Cole, or the move, but something inside me changed that fall. I wasn't the same girl I had been. Too much was different for me to stay the same. I didn't want to be that desperate girl who fell for the first guy to smile at her anymore. I wanted to be strong and brave like the people on the Pennsylvania flight that took the terrorists down. I wanted to be different.

  So ... I cut my hair; it seemed the most logical place to start.

  I didn't even think about the scar when I cut it off. I was tired of it always in my way. I hated
tangles; they would make me so incredibly, unbelievably mad. Sometimes I cried in the mornings trying to get the brush through my hair after a night in bed. I tried to flip it up on my pillow, to sleep with it in a ponytail, even a shower cap, anything I could think of to keep it from tangling. Nothing worked. I move like a maniac when I sleep and woke up every morning with a snaggle of rats. If that wasn't bad enough, my hair reminded me of him, he who I hated, who loved to run his fingers through it. I hated that memories of him were stuck in my hair as thick as the tangles.

  A couple weeks after we settled in at McChord, I lost it one morning and had my last fit over tangles and chopped it off. I knew as soon as I sawed the scissors through the left half that I had made one of the biggest mistakes of my life but it was too late by then. I wanted my mom to fix it. I was so embarrassed I didn't want the boys to see me. I screamed for her to come to me, “Mom!”

  “What?”

  “Come here, now! I need you.”

  “Tatum, I'm making lunches. You come here.”

  “No! I need you now ... it's an emergency!”

  “There are pads under the sink.”

  “Oh, my gosh! It's not that! Come here NOW!!!”

  “Tatum Rose, I swear if this is a joke you're going be on solo dishes duty for the week.”

  “It's not a joke. Come here!”

  Usually the boys would have been all over a crisis like that but since mom mentioned the pads they stayed far, far away.

  She opened the door, and stared, then finally asked what I had done to myself.

  I thought I was in trouble. I couldn't read her face. Usually she was easy to read; her face betrayed all of her emotions but I couldn't tell until she started laughing. Then I was mad.

  “Mom! It's not funny. Help me!”

  “What were you thinking?” she asked through her chuckles.

  “The stupid brush got stuck! I hate my hair!”

  “So you cut it?”

  “I thought it would be better shorter. Can you fix it?” I started to cry.