“Honey, with Sean there, it would be easier.”
“Mom, stop.” God make the decision to go to school based on a boy? Who is this imposter calling herself my mom? Oh wait, the same person who thought it was fine for my sister to give up art school to stay close to her then boyfriend who became her husband—ex-husband. Right.
Mom’s got concerned face on, eyebrow deeply furrowed, slight frown. I don’t want my perfect afternoon with Sean ruined, so I arrange my face to reflect her expression. She bursts out laughing. “Do I really look like that?”
“Yes, Mom, you do.”
She holds her hands up. “I get it. ‘Butt out, Mom.’” She reaches out and strokes my face and then a strand of wayward hair. “Sorry. I forget how grown up you are getting.”
I catch her hand in mine and say, “Remember how Dr. Foster said you had to let go and you know, let me figure it all out?”
She nods and squeezes my fingers. “Yes. And, sweetie, you are doing a fine job of working it out.”
. . . . .
Later, when I stand at the door again to say goodbye to Sean he says, “By the way I read that chapter you sent me.”
“Yeah? “I go from normal temp to a hundred degrees in just moments. “So…?”
“It was amazing. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your boyfriend.”
The word boyfriend floats in the air.
“Boyfriend,” I whisper back.
“Yeah, your boyfriend likes your writing.” He strokes my hair. “And your boyfriend likes your lips.” He kisses me. “And your boyfriend likes your—” He squeezes my butt.
I swat at him playfully and give him a final kiss.
Boyfriend. I have a boyfriend, and it feels really good.
. . . . .
Later in the afternoon, the air still and cold, my feet slap the asphalt as I run out of our neighborhood. The sky is gray, and it smells like snow. Instinctively I make two lefts out of my street and run towards Justin’s house. A million thoughts flood me as I get closer to his street. How is he doing? Does he ever come home? How come I never run into his mother anymore? My legs burn as I ascend the hill that leads to his street.
“What are you doing, Maddie?” I stop and look at my feet. “I don’t need to moon over Justin anymore. I have a new boyfriend, a real one, not just one based on memory, thank you very much.” I do a U-turn and head home.
Chapter Fourteen
Rewrite
Sean opens the door before I knock. “Welcome to the castle,” he says and kisses me on the lips.
I step inside. Only one window, long and thin, in the whole room. “You mean prison cell. Good God don’t they know lack of light causes seasonal depression disorder.”
“No kidding. Why do you think my roommate is always at his girlfriend’s? She actually does live in a castle. It’s called the all-girl dorms.”
“You could cross dress.” I offer and take off my jacket.
“Are you saying I could pass for a girl?”
I hand him my jacket. He hooks it on the back of his door and closes it with his foot.
“No way.” I glance around. A small bucket of cleaning supplies tucked into the opposite corner and some laundry neatly folded and stacked on his bed. Textbooks and supplies lined up neatly on his desk. “But you keep house like one. I’ve never seen a guy’s room so pristine.”
“You’ve seen a lot of guys’ rooms?” He unzips his hoody and tosses it over my jacket.
“No.” I sit down on his narrow bed and bounce a little.
“What can I say…I’ll make a good husband someday.”
“Or wife,” I crack.
“Ohhh you are witty tonight!” He grabs me into a hug and tickles me under the arms, which turns into sliding his hands up under my shirt and kissing me long and deep.
When we come up for a breather I groan, “Ten days apart. I don’t know if I can go that long.”
“We can talk on the phone.”
“Yeah that’s nice but…”
“Maddie Hickman are you using me for my body?”
“Absolutely.”
He cups my face before kissing me again. “Stay the night.”
“I would,” I say. “But I have those pesky things called parents and I live in their house and my mom is already on edge because Barb and I are going to Cali without her.” He draws lines on my neck with his tongue making it more possible for my mind to figure out a way to have a sleepover. But I know I can’t, so I rattle on, “Not to mention we both have very early flights to catch tomorrow and my sister will kill me if I’m not bright eyed and bushytailed for our trip. She hates to fly. And since Cliff can’t join us—you know I’m so sad about that.”
Sean mumbles into my neck, “Hate to miss any lectures on the Sober Life.”
I take his face in mine and remind him, “We have two hours till dinner, by the way.”
“What to do…what to do?” He pushes the hair out of my face.
“Well, since you love the whole house keeping thing…Maybe I can play the maid and you can play my dirty boss.”
He rolls me over so I’m on top of him. “Didn’t know you’re into role play.”
“Oh yeah. All the time. French maid. School girl.” I bend over him. My hair brushes his face.
He laughs and grabs a handful of my hair, letting it trickle between his fingers. “We don’t need to play pretend,” he whispers. Tingles dart down my body. My hands under his shirt. Glide along the muscles of his chest.
“No pretending,” I whisper back.
He kisses me long and deep. Thoughts and feelings become fluffy and sweet. Where will my fluffy and sweet come from for the next ten days?
. . . . .
The vibrations of the plane make my cup of Diet Coke (caffeine free) shake. Barbara doesn’t notice. She’s asleep. I sip my soda and hold a pen in my hand posed over my notebook. No words on this page yet but words on other pages. A lot of words and a lot of pages. Who knows if I will keep those words. “Mya” has made it through the Christian cult minus her star of David. She’s back in her car and on her way to California. (She has pepper spray in her bag and a pocket knife so don’t worry, and this isn’t turning into one of those kidnap flicks on good ole Lifetime Movie Network.) I reach for the can of Diet Coke and pour a little more into the shaking plastic and press my pen to the paper.
Before we begin the descent and after the captain comes on the speaker and says a few unintelligible words that have something to do with the weather, I finally put down the pen and close the notebook. Barbara stirs and switches sides to sleep. She opens and closes her mouth. I count ten opens and closings before returning to my work to count the pages I have written in the last four hours, with only three bathroom breaks and several rounds of Diet Coke: Eighteen pages and on page seventeen begins the reunion scene of Dylan and Mya at the rehab.
My hand throbs and I wiggle the fingers and stretch back my palm. Barbara’s eyes open, but she doesn’t move from her sideways position, face against the back of the seat.
“Are we landing?” She asks, eyes still closed.
I clutch my pen, inspired to write a bit more. “Not yet.”
She nudges me and opens one eye. “You’re writing.”
I look at my pages. “Rewriting.”
“Story of my life, Maddie. Rewriting is the story of my life.” She puts her hand on mine and closes her eye again.
I know she isn’t talking about writing.
I touch my pages. Back to work.
. . . . .
; Lemonade. Fresh cut grass. Lawn mower going in the distance. Air plane flies overhead. No wind. Sixty-five degrees. Warm for this time of year in San Francisco.
We sit on the screened-in porch of Bubbie’s townhouse. My fingers are lightly wrapped around a clear pink glass of cold lemonade. Barb is downing Madeleine cookies. My stomach is slightly bloated from all the soda on the plane, but I manage to squeeze in some lemonade.
“Tell us about Sean.” Bubbie snatches her first Madeleine from the ceramic plate.
I blush.
“Ohhhhh! Could this be love?” asks Joyce, Bubbie’s best friend and partner in everything from yoga retreats to the occasional (double) JDate, online dating for Jewish singles.
“Is it?” Bubbie asks sipping her lemonade.
“I don’t know.” I hold the glass of lemonade in my lap. “Like, it’s really strong like.”
Joyce shakes a long finger at me, the nail is short and square. “You’re young. Don’t get hitched too soon. Don’t do what I did, get married at twenty and bang out a bunch of kids. Then find out your husband is in the closet.”
“Oh, Maddie’s gaydar is pretty good now, thanks to Peter!” Barb cracks.
I reach over and nudge her arm and add, “I won’t be banging out kids and getting married any time soon!”
“I almost did,” Barb says.
Bubbie reaches out and strokes Barb’s knee.
“Is the divorce official?”
Barb puts her third Madeleine down. “Papers have been signed and filed. Now we wait for it all to go through.”
Bubbie and Joyce murmur words of support. I stay silent.
“There’s not much else to say.” Barb plays with a piece of cookie, pinching it and then letting it fall back on to the plate.
“We are definitely better off apart, Michael is doing something he wouldn’t be doing if we were still together because he was worried about leaving me alone.” Barb takes a long drink of lemonade. “I’m going to be a teacher, have my own job and money. Take care of myself. Something I would have never done if Michael and I stayed together.”
“And this new fellow, he’s a good man?” Bubbie wipes a crumb off the table.
“Hard to top that Michael, though!” Joyce laughs.
Barb isn’t insulted by that. She just kind of chuckles and says softly, “Yeah, it is hard to top Michael. But Cliff is good man. A wonderful man.”
I squeeze my eyes shut briefly to resist the roll of my eyes.
“I don’t want to lecture you, Barb, but it’s kind of soon, you know?” Bubbie says.
Thank God that Bubbie said it because no one else has. But not even Bubbie can get through to her because she just gushes, “He’s amazing, Bubbie. He gets what I’m going through because he’s been through it.” Barb rattles the ice in her almost empty glass. “You know, one day at a time.”
“Why couldn’t you stay with Michael and still change and grow?” Bubbie asks. I’ve been wanting to know the answer to this one too.
Barbara looks out into the clear sky and squints. “Because we were each other’s best excuses. Because when you take away my drinking and all its care-taking drama, there wasn’t much between us.”
I pour myself more lemonade and grab a cookie, when Barbara brightens and says, “But Maddie, she has a chance to avoid all these kinds of mistakes.”
I smile even though my mouth is full of cookie.
“How are you, Maddie?” Joyce asks.
“I’m good.” I swallow the cookie and smile bigger.
“All ready to go off to school, then? Still want to do some writing, like your Bub?” They all are looking at me waiting for an answer.
The smile fades. Anxiety monster slowly emerges like some wacked out Muppet and scares the crap out of me.
. . . . .
Barb kneels in front of me, Bubbie has my hand, and Joyce is fanning me. I want to tell them all to get off me because I feel hot with them hovering, but all I can say is. “Muppet.”
“What’d she say?” Joyce asks.
“I think she said, ‘Muppet.’” Bubbie is talking.
“She always hated the Muppets,” Barb says. “Maddie, can you hear me?”
I nibble something scratchy and spit it out. Indoor porch carpet. I blow a raspberry.
“I think she’s okay,” Barb says and gives me a hand.
“Have you eaten anything besides cookies today?” Joyce is a retired nurse.
I nod and slowly sit up, allowing Barb to pull me to her side.
Barb strokes my hair and Bubbie sits next to me with her hand on her stomach. I know her incision is still tender.
“Oh, Bubbie, I’m sorry. You didn’t try and lift me, did you?”
“Of course not. Don’t be silly.” Bubbie says. “Eat a cookie.”
“Listen, we can talk all about this later, you guys just got here. Maybe it’s just the jet lag. You always take a day or two to adjust. You should take a little nap and then we can go to dinner,” Joyce suggests.
I nod and let them help me settle into the couch and tuck a blanket around me.
They each kiss my head and then go into the house to let me sleep it all off.
. . . . .
I sleep through dinner and don’t wake up until the next morning. When I open my eyes, I have a vague memory of them helping me get into the house and upstairs to the room I was sharing with Barbara.
When I climb out of bed, following the scent of cinnamon and apples, I feel completely rested. I walk downstairs to Bubbie at the stove flipping pancakes with one hand and using a pair of tongs to flip sausage with the other. Barb looks up from her coffee and the paper. “Hey, feeling better?”
I nod and sit across from her but think immediately of Bubbie. “Are you allowed to cook? I mean that requires standing for a while.”
Bubbie turns to me, “Are you kidding? I feel great! It’s been almost a month! By the way, you look so much better today.”
“Thank you…I guess?”
Bubbie slides some pancakes on to three plates and then comes to the table and hands them out.
“I only eat cinnamon apple pancakes here,” I tell her.
She smiles and takes a bite. “I only make them when you are here.”
We all eat in silence. I put my fork down after only a few mouthfuls.
“Bubbie,” I begin. “I just want to say I’m sorry about yesterday.”
She pauses mid stab at a piece of pancake. “No honey. Don’t be sorry.”
The look Barb and Bubbie exchange makes my face get warm.
“What?” I ask putting my fork down.
Barb stuffs more pancake in her mouth but Bubbie doesn’t. She folds her hands on the table and says, “What’s going on with you and college?”
“And don’t faint,” Barb says. “It’s practically Pavlovian. Someone says, ‘college,’ and you drop to the floor.”
Barb and Bubbie wait.
“Everything is done. I just have to send it out.”
“Why are you waiting, honey?”
I look out the window at the lush green outside. So pretty in California…
“Maddie, come on, what’s the deal?” Barb gulps down the rest of her glass of milk and wipes her mouth with a napkin.
“You know what, fine. You guys are right.” I stand up. The only way through hell is through it. A Dante quote or something. Josephine has often reminded me the only way to conquer That Which Scares The Crap Out Of You is to attack it.
“Where are you go
ing?”
“I have my lap top with my essay and everything. I can load it all to the common application website. All I have to do is click send. No big deal.”
I expect them to say, no, sit down talk to us. But the only sounds I hear are clinking of dishes and glasses.
“Good,” Bubbie says. I hear the water running behind me as I head to the living room. “Because honey, you only live once. Let’s get it right.”
“Right,” I say feeling a knot form in my stomach. “I gotta get it right.” I see my laptop on the coffee table and sigh. I feel Barb behind me. “Don’t over think this, Maddie. And most of all don’t blow it.” She hugs me and walks back into the kitchen.
I sit on the couch and open the laptop. And yet, I kind of want to blow it.
Chapter Fifteen
1-3-4
Valentine’s Day. Sean and I have been together a month and a half. Although I love our weekends in his dorm or at my house, I’m hoping that tonight we can maybe drive into the City. Maybe even go to a club and listen to live music. Lately, I’ve wanted to get out.
So, when Sean asks me, “Hey, wanna cook tonight?” My disappointment is hard to hide.
“Hey, I make an amazing lasagna, baby.” He pulls off his sweater and walks over in just his t-shirt to where I sit on his bed with my notebook on my lap.
I let him kiss me. “I know. I’ve had it a few times.”
He stops kissing me. “Oh shit. You’re bored. I’m boring you.”
Sean is so sweet that I can’t let him think that. “No,” I say kissing him because when we kiss it’s never boring. “It’s just Valentine’s day and I thought maybe we could do something special.”
“I did plan something special, but it sounds like my something special doesn’t mean the same as your something special.”
There it is. That weird pause that’s been happening between us lately. But we don’t talk about it. Instead, Sean lays down next to me. “Forget dinner here in the dorm. That is kind of lame.” He looks at me. “We’ll drive into the City and have dinner and maybe do one of those horse drawn things. It’ll be nice and romantic.” Sean leans over and kisses my cheek. “We’ll study for a little while and then get ready.”
Till it Stops Beating Page 10