Fortunately, I never had to see her again, but every other weekend there seemed to be a new one. All tall, long blonde hair, perfectly manicured and well bred. They hardly paid me any attention and I stopped sticking around after dinner, using homework as an excuse to lock myself away. I wasn’t sure if he had a type or it was just coincidence, but with each passing woman, I became more and more aware of what boys wanted. I sat in my bedroom the night before my twelfth birthday and looked at my short curly brown hair, the freckles that crisscrossed almost every inch of my pale peach skin and my boring brown eyes and I felt sad but I wasn’t sure why.
“Wake up my beautiful Makayla.” The whisper carried over the roar of the engines in my dream. “Happy birthday.” Warm breath tickled my ear and I opened an eye to see Mommy and Daddy standing over me with big smiles, a big package in his hands, topped with a large, hot pink bow. When I opened the box my heart dropped. I couldn’t have said why at first because I had picked it out myself, but the sight of that dowdy dress, fit for a twelve-year-old made me want to cry. I couldn’t hurt mommy’s feelings, she looked so excited so I just smiled and said thank you.
She had planned a big party even though I didn’t really have any friends, none my own age anyhow. I always preferred to be at the track with my dad, I liked being around the cars and the guys, so that’s who Mommy invited. I had started to forget my meager age and have fun when Kelley arrived.
I had seen her before, in the papers, on the news magazine that Mommy watched while she cooked dinner, she was a royal, distant, like ten times removed, but royal none the less. She was polished and polite and she had brought me a gift. I watched them cross the garden, Kelley in dark slacks and a button up, carried a small gift bag. She wore a cotton wrap dress and a stylish coat that looked like it was made for her, holding a plain white box with bold black letters in her arms. I had seen this box before. This was the box that made Mommy giddy and usually meant a big date night in the city for Mommy and Daddy. She smiled widely and walked right to me.
“You must be Makayla.” Her big almond shaped eyes were soft, her smile genuine. She sat down next to me and placed the large box on my lap. She was even prettier in person, her straight hair shined like glass and her blue eyes sparkled. “Thank you so much for inviting me to your birthday.” Before I could stop myself, before I knew I had done it, it was too late.
“I didn’t invite you.” I felt my eyes grow wide in tandem with hers and a moment of silence stretched between us before she smiled again. “I’m…I’m sorry. I just meant that.”
“It is quite alright, I understand.”
“I just meant that my mom invited everyone,” I could barely meet her eyes, and stared at my hands on the box, feeling foolish and rude.
“No harm, love. I just hope you like what I brought you. Let’s open it shall we?” She winked. “Gifts make everything better,” she whispered. I couldn’t help but smile back at her as she pulled the bow and the long ribbon came undone in my lap. I looked up to see Kelley standing away from us, but watching. He winked and took a step closer as I lifted the lid from the box. A Burberry coat, the same as the one she wore, yet pale pink. I loved the coat, I loved it on her and I knew I would love it on me.
“A Burberry coat is a must have for any proper country girl.” Her rosy cheeks swelled as she pulled the coat from the box and shook it loose. “Do you like it?” She asked, standing up, showing it off to me. I looked up at her, looking flawless in her wrap dress and Burberry coat, and locked the image away. Everything about her was what I wanted to be. She was beautiful, confident, effortless and kind. I nodded with a grin, stood and spun around with my arms out.
She slipped the coat over my shoulders and I immediately felt older, more sophisticated. She turned me around by my shoulders and beamed at me as she pulled the sash around my waist and cinched the coat. “It looks perfect on you! How does it feel?”
“I love it,” I said in a whisper, sliding my hands into the pockets and taking possession of my new coat. “Thank you.” She bent and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, giving me a loose, but friendly hug.
“You are most welcome, Makayla.” When she stepped back Kelley shoved his gift bag into my hands.
“I like the coat. It looks good on you, you look very grown up.” I decided right then I was never going to take the coat off. I pulled the tissue paper from the bag to find a square gray box with gold embossing. I grabbed it eagerly and dropped the bag to the grass, tearing the paper seal. A silver bracelet with a single charm lay on the white cotton tuft. A racecar, with Daddy’s number on it. I loved it. Kelley took the bracelet from the box and I offered him my wrist.
“Thank you, Kelley,” I said as he opened the bracelet and laid it across my wrist. The feel of his hand around my wrist did something to me and I felt my cheeks catch on fire. I watched his big hand work the delicate clasp and spin the bracelet around my little wrist, his fingers easily able to wrap around me. I looked up at him just as he smiled and let go of my hand.
“Just a trinket, kid. Happy Birthday.” He straightened and put his arm around Mara’s waist, pulling her to his side and my heart fell a little. I fingered the bracelet around my wrist, loving that it was from Kelley, and though I wore a new Burberry coat, it was the trinket that was my favorite.
All night Kelley seemed to have his arm around Mara, and all night I had my hand on my bracelet. When the party was winding down Kelley found me falling asleep on the couch in Daddy’s study as he collected Mara’s coat. I watched him for a moment before letting him know I was awake. He walked around the study, and even though he had been in the room numerous times he admired each picture as if it was the first time. I sat up on the couch and the leather shifted beneath me. He turned on his heel and our eyes met.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, Kiki. I was just getting our coats.” He moved to the coat rack. “Did you have a happy birthday?” He asked swinging his jacket around his shoulders.
“Yes,” I watched him button the toggles on his coat, “thank you for the bracelet.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll see you tomorrow for supper.” I shouldn’t have asked, but I did.
“Will you be alone?” He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head, his lips pursed before letting out a low chuckle.
“Yes, Kiki, I will come alone.” He did come alone. Three weeks in a row. But he was still seeing Mara. They were still being photographed together, yet less frequently now that race season had officially begun. Daddy had doubled their training schedule and they were on the track almost every day, and when they weren’t on the track they were at the gym or watching film in the study.
Chapter 3
New Eyes
It was a stark turnaround, but eventually, I came to like having Kelley in the house. I loved the press of race season, the intensity of the schedule, the intensity of his commitment and excitement. It was infectious, and Mommy and I were not impervious. The whole house buzzed with energy from daybreak till the moment Daddy laid his head on the pillow. We were alive and it was time to race.
First up, Austria. Daddy and Kelley left ahead of us with the cars. Mommy and I flew in two days before the race. They both placed well and without incident. Next, we went to China and then on to Malaysia. Mommy and I shopped and ate street food. It was hot and loud and exciting. She bought so many purses and I ate things on a stick that I didn’t want to think about. They were delicious, the rest I was content to leave a mystery. The races were getting more and more exciting as the season came into full swing and the drivers started really vying for those points.
Then, he sent Mommy and I home, not wanting us to go to Spain, but promised that we would meet him in Monaco the following month. I was beyond disappointed, I had never missed a race, but the promise of Monaco was a small consolation for being left behind. This was his dream, it had become all of our dreams.
All I knew of Monaco was through the lens of my father’s obsession. I had be
en shown footage of the Grand Prix since I was a baby. My Dad always told stories of the drivers and the opulent lifestyle. The prince and the beautiful American movie star, Grace Kelly. When I thought of Monaco I thought of the Grand Prix, Royalty and To Catch a Thief, I thought of my father.
“I’m sorry princess,” He whispered against my forehead as I pouted. I could hardly see him through the pools that welled in my eyes. He had always, always taken us with him.
“But, Daddy,” I tried to catch my breath but he wrapped his arms tightly around me and put his lips to my ear.
“No, Makayla, I am sorry but the decision has been made. I know you are disappointed but I will make it up to you. You cannot continue to miss so much school.” He looked up at my mom and I knew she was making him do it. Ever since we had moved she had been pushing school harder and keeping me away from the track more. He swiped at the deluge of tears now streaking down my face before tucking my hair behind my ear and tugging on the lobe. “It will be ok princess. You and Mommy can meet me in Monte Carlo.
***
The French Riviera was not in our future. Our future held something else. A concrete barrier, a fiery explosion and an empty house, that was our future.
Everything happened so fast yet seemed to go by in frames, like an old reeled movie. My mother’s face, the horror she refused to accept, blaming her eyes for the nasty trick. She tried to hide her hell from me; from every soul that gathered in our home that day to watch Daddy and Kelley race; but that is a pain you cannot hide and a soul ripping terror to watch on television, completely powerless.
Her heart stopped when he hit that concrete barrier, and it was ripped out when the phone call came from Uncle Robert. People stood around, stunned….silent, while she wailed. I don’t even remember who held her, or who held me. I just remember watching her heart break, the light draining from her. I watched my mother crumble before my eyes.
Kelley rushed back and was in the kitchen within 24 hours. 24 sleepless hours. 24 torturous empty hours, but she didn’t want to look at him, not at first. I, on the other hand, wasn’t sure I wanted to be alone; I knew the feeling would swallow me whole, but I was already so tired of being on display, look at the poor little orphan girl.
I was sick of people being in our house, I was tired of people crying when they looked at me as if I was the cause of their pain as if their pain could even hold a candle to my own. I was tired of people making my mother cry, even if their intentions were well-meaning.
I wanted everything to go back to the way that it was. I wanted to walk into Daddy’s den and see him and Kelley watching tape. I wanted to smell burning sausage on Sunday morning from him making us his ‘famous’ breakfast. Mostly, I wanted my mom to stop crying. The first few days were hard and she kept everyone at bay but my Aunt Ina and me and Kelley.
Even though she said she didn’t want to see him, he never left. He stayed and waited, and took care of us. He cleared the house and fielded the endless phone calls. He waited, knowing she would need him eventually. But mostly I think he stayed because he didn’t know what else to do. He looked lost when he thought no one was looking.
After a few days she let him in and I would hear her sobbing in his arms at night. They always thought I was asleep, I never was. The whole thing felt like it lasted barely a second, yet dragged on for a lifetime. The overwhelming weight of a full house as people filed in and out for weeks, barely giving us a moment alone. A moment in our sorrow. My bones were full of it, bursting, but I didn’t know how to let it out, so it made me heavy.
Then I got angry; angry at Kelley; angry that he had made it and Daddy hadn’t. I didn’t understand, and trying to make sense of it was impossibility at any age, much less twelve.
Every night as the last person would leave he would quietly shut down the house, turn down the lights, shoo me off to bed and check on my mom. The first few nights I heard her crying, pleading for him to leave. Yet every morning there he was, on the couch. After the first week, she stopped crying and I would hear them talking late at night.
I sat on the upper stair just out of sight and listened to them talk about Daddy, about what a good man he was. Was. They were already using past tense when I could still smell him in his study. I heard mommy tell Kelley what Daddy had hoped for him, how much he cared for him and wanted the best for him.
Kelley would do chores around the house every now and then, he had dinner with us every night, but eventually he went back to sleeping at his own house, wherever that was. I knew he lived with his Aunt, I just didn’t know where. But he would stay late and show up early every day and stayed far away from the track.
People continued to show their respects with food and prayers said at mass, and everything seemed to calm down a bit, so I thought. After a month, the crying started again and it all got to be too much for her. As the services had all come to a close and Daddy’s memory had been properly honored she packed me up and took me back to Indiana. We were to spread his ashes and spend some time with Grammy and Pappi, my mom’s folks. She needed some time, needed to be around family. I understood that I thought.
Three weeks later
“When are we leaving?” I asked, sitting in that afternoon sun on my grandmother’s porch, her raggedy cat at my feet, a crustless peanut butter and jelly in my lap. “I want to go home,” I muttered to mostly no one. I missed Kelley. We had been in Indiana for what felt like forever and I wanted to go home, back to my things, back to our house. She just looked right through me, blank. Mommy shook her head slowly as a large tear rolled in slow motion down her cheek before she stood and walked inside without a word.
“Come here, Makayla.” My grandma patted the wicker rocker she sat on, beckoning me to her side. Obediently I rose and took the seat next to her. She grabbed my hand and folded it into her lap. “Look at me child and listen closely.” I narrowed my gaze in wait. “Your momma has a broken heart. She needs time.” I watched her lips and felt her hand tighten around mine.
“How would you like to stay with Grammy and Pappi for a while?”
“What?” My head snapped up. “No! I want to go home!” The blood started to pound in my head and I felt panicked at the thought of not returning home, and then it slowly dawned on me that the decision had already been made.
Chapter 4
One Track Mind
10 years later
I never stopped watching him. It made me feel connected, connected to my Dad, connected to the little girl I was. I watched Kelley, kept up on his stats, watched him change teams and move up the ranks. He was talented, he was everything my dad thought he would be.
I longed for him to reach out, to do anything that said he cared. That he missed us, missed me. I watched the races and waited to see him do their salute, but he never did. I wished he would call, watched the mailbox on my birthday, but nothing. The more time that passed the grander my fantasies became. It was no longer a surprise phone call or a letter in the mail I fantasized about. I had elevated Kelley to unreachable heights in the absence of my dad, and in his absence.
I imagined that he would make a grand gesture after he won the grand prix, that he would dedicate a race to me. I fantasized on my sixteenth birthday that he would show up and take me for a ride in an amazing car that he had built just for me and we would drive off into the sunset. Pay no mind to the fact that I was only sixteen, a minor, and he would be in his twenties. Not to mention that he was a serial dater. Not a committer mind you, a dater, like it was his job. It was then, as I rounded the corner of my teens and I really started to understand boys and girls that I began to understand that Kelley was never coming for me.
***
“Something came for you from Uncle Robert today, pumpkin.” She pushed a plain white envelope across the counter.
“You ok, Mom? You look tired.” She did look tired, her dark hair was swept up in a bun, for the second day in a row and her blue eyes were dull.
“Oh yes, Kiki,
I’m ok dear. You know I don’t sleep, but enough about me. What has Robert sent, hmmm?”
I swear, even with an ocean separating us he still knew me better than anyone. He knew that I had been racing the carts, knew I had never let the track go and he knew exactly what I wanted. A one-way ticket to London and pit passes for Silverton. I was going home.
I had finished college, done as I had promised. I had a degree of use to some people if finance was your thing. I had finished college and set myself up for a comfortable life with a career that offered a bit of security. I had kept my word to my mother, did all that she asked of me, although I had no intention of doing anything but race. In some capacity or another, I was going to be on that track, smelling that asphalt, living for the roar of those engines. It was all I had ever wanted. If I was completely honest, I wanted my ass in the seat of one of those cars; ultimate goal, but a lofty one. Yet one I had been secretly working towards for years, and the only other soul that knew of my pursuits was my Uncle Robert.
***
2 weeks later
Once my mom had me back in the states, she never looked back, but I had always felt like a part of me had never left this craggy, green and gray landscape. I missed it and I felt like I was coming home. As we drove through the gray drizzle and I saw the Track come into sight my heart lurched in my chest and I felt light-headed, unable to breathe. As if an elastic band snapped me back in time I could suddenly smell my dad’s cologne, hear his voice in the car as he talked about the track. Like reliving our first moments here, reliving our first drive to the track. I closed my eyes and tried to record it all, to commit it to memory and never let it go.
The Curve Page 2