by Suzie Carr
She scooped up another fork full of lentils, and I eased her arm down. The lentils tumbled back onto her plate. I gripped her arm tighter, when she attempted to scoop up more. “What is your problem?” she asked.
“Reina, you need to kiss someone.”
“Why are you looking at me like you’re ready to kiss me?”
Despite a restaurant full of people, I pulled her to me, looked straight into her sorrow-filled eyes and I kissed her. I planted a long, sweet, sultry kiss on her lips and she froze. I forged on, parting her lips with my tongue, and then she softened, even moaned when she caved and kissed me back.
When our lips separated, her eyes grew as big as silver dollars. “What did you do that for?”
“To remove that stubborn obstacle,” I said.
She smiled. “Well.” She waved her hand in front of her flushed face. “I must admit that was rather pleasant.”
I sat back, stuffed another roti in my mouth and took in the full look of surprise on Hope’s face.
“That was hot,” Hope said, leaning back against the booth.
“Sure was,” Hana said and giggled.
Seemed my bold move was a win-win for everyone at the table.
~
Two days later, Reina announced that she scored a date with a young man at the restaurant where she worked. Apparently, she told us, this man, Rajesh, had a crush on her for months and was too afraid to approach her. At least this was what one of the pastry chefs told her. Reina, full of confidence now that she kissed another living soul, pounced up to him and told him she was taking him out for dinner. He responded with a flash of panic and a bow.
Two weeks later, at the start of the new year, Rajesh took her away for a weekend to the Shenandoah Mountains. Reina never smiled so much in her life as she did now. I felt proud to have helped make that happen.
That same weekend, my sister dropped off my niece. Julie’s eyes sunk deeper than usual and her mascara had smeared off into the tiny, but recognizable, wrinkles underneath her eyes. Her hair hung in tangles and her clothes were wrinkled.
“Everything alright?” I asked her.
“I’m just tired.” She massaged her forehead. “Angelina, can you please leave us alone for a minute?”
“Whatever.” Angie sauntered into the great room and played with the piano.
“She’s worse than ever. She’s driving me crazy. I don’t know what to do with her anymore. I can’t get her to do homework. I can’t get her to go to ballet lessons. I can’t even get her to eat half the time. Do you know she ran away from home three nights ago and didn’t come home until yesterday afternoon?”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“What were you going to do?”
“I could’ve called her.”
“She left her cell phone at home.” Julie swung her hair past her shoulder and remained tall and steadfast despite her ragged hobo look. “Honestly, I’m ready to just send her off to military school.”
“Where did she run away?”
“An abandoned mill. The police finally found her with a few other derelicts. They were smoking and drinking.”
All those years of begging her not to smoke or drink down the tubes. “I’ll try and talk with her and see if I can find out anything.”
“This is not my fault you know.”
“Of course not.” I rubbed her shoulder.
“There must be some wild gene gone rampant on her dad’s side of the family.”
“I’m sure there is.”
“All right, well, thanks for taking her overnight. I hope she’s good for you.”
“I’ll call you if anything.”
A few minutes later, I sat beside Angie at the piano and we played chopsticks together like we always did when she was a little girl. After that, we made milkshakes and drizzled chocolate sauce over them. And later, she helped me make favors for Adam’s party. We accomplished more in those four hours than most people did in a workday. I wanted her good and tired before I bothered asking her the real questions. “So, anything you want to talk about?” I asked when we finally sat down on the couch exhausted.
“My mother thinks I’m stupid, and I’m really not.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t.”
She tapped my foot and we began wrestling our toes. She giggled and I let her heart wander to that place where she was at peace and happy, where a little girl should be at this stage in life. “She wants me to be a chess player. Then she wants me to be on debate team. Oh, and she also wants me to be a lawyer someday. I told her I wanted to be a vet and she told me no.”
“Sometimes parents have this idea in mind of how your life should turn out and when it goes off a different path, they don’t know how to deal with that. I don’t think she means any harm. I think she just really needs to see that you’re serious.”
“I love animals. How much more serious can I be? It’s not like I can operate on one to show her.”
I nudged her and tickled her belly. “No, silly, I don’t mean that. But there are things you can do to drive home the point. Like volunteer to walk neighborhood dogs. Clip cat nails.”
She nodded and took it in.
We sat in silence for a few more minutes. “Do you want to take a drive to the animal shelter?”
“Really?” She sat up.
You’d think I just invited her to Disney World.
“Yeah, why not?”
“I’ll get my coat.” She ran off to the foyer. I went to the kitchen to gather some granola bars before meeting her at the front door. She stood with her boots and coat already on, ready to go. She dashed out the front door more like a six year old than the fourteen-year old girl she had bloomed into overnight.
HOPE
I should’ve listened to my inner voice. It told me, ‘Don’t you dare say yes.’ I heard it, but ignored it. And you know why I ignored it? Because I liked to torture myself; I liked to bang my head against the wall and suffer the consequential headache that ensued; and because I was just a tad bit crazy. I just wasn’t ready to be all chummy with PJ again. I wanted to move forward in my new life, with my new friends and not be reminded of Ryan and that whole part of my life.
She just showed up at my work one day, though, with an invite to join her for a sandwich down at the café. I could’ve looked her straight in the eye and said no. I said yes on autopilot. Next thing I knew, I was sinking my teeth into a Ruben sandwich on pumpernickel.
PJ filled me in on everything about her and Rachel. Their baby would arrive any day. They painted the room yellow, selected the crib, and equipped the closet with baby clothes. Oh, and they already researched early learning centers and decided on the Meyerhoff Academy.
She was positively glowing. I felt cornered into mirroring her joy. “Wow, you’re going to be a mommy.”
“Yeah, imagine, me a mommy? Rachel is so excited. She bought us one of those baby carriages with the three wheels so we can run with her.”
“Do you have a name?”
“We want that to be a surprise.”
“I understand.”
She placed her sandwich down. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”
“Okay, I’m all ears.”
She cleared her throat and scanned the nearby tables as if searching for consensus for what she was about to unleash. “Ryan and his girlfriend are expecting a baby. She’s six weeks pregnant.”
I felt kicked, beaten, down trodden. Air hung in my lungs and refused to come out. “Wow.”
“Are you okay about it?”
I couldn’t even speak. I just sat there like a fool, shrugging and spilling tears. PJ reached over at one point to console me, and I pushed her hand off of mine. “I’m fine.” I said this as I wiped salty tears from my cheeks. “I am. I’ll be fine. It just amazes me. It didn’t take him too long.”
“He moved on. Isn’t this what you wanted for him?”
“Yes.” I tossed my Ruben down and the meat spilled out, capsized in a sea o
f lettuce and pumpernickel. “Absolutely. I’m just in a bit of shock. I wasn’t expecting that.”
She combed her fingers through her perky highlighted layers. “I wanted you to hear it from me before you heard it from someone else.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
We sat in silence chomping back on our sandwiches. People rushed by toting sandwiches, tripping over handbags hanging off the back of chairs, racing to meet a deadline. Meanwhile, the world stood still for me. Ryan was having a kid and I was getting older by the minute without someone to call my own, chasing after a girl who intended to never be with me other than in a closet, locked up and sealed tight so no one would ever know.
Just then, a colleague rushed over to me. “We have a problem with the software. The date is 1900 and all the marketing reports are missing. You might want to come up and see this.”
I tossed my sandwich onto the wax paper, crumbled it up and told PJ I had to run.
“Call me,” she yelled after me.
“I will.”
A few hours later, the computer team restored the software, and I texted PJ to apologize for running out on her. Then, without giving it a second thought, I texted Nadeen and asked her if we could meet up that night for drinks.
Chapter Fourteen
LUCY
A few nights after my niece left, I ate dinner with Hope and Reina. Hope was down that night. Her eyes were swollen. Her hands were jittery. Her shoulders hunched down like an insecure teenager. She barely touched the tortellini Reina cooked for us.
She absently pushed a noodle back and forth across her plate, playing air hockey with it.
“Is something wrong with the tortellini?” Reina asked her.
Hope didn’t even look up at her to answer. “My stomach’s just not feeling right.”
“Well, don’t waste it.” Reina rose, went to the cabinet and pulled out a plastic container. “Here,” she said handing it to Hope. “Save it for your lunch.”
Hope grabbed the container and packaged her tortellini.
Five minutes later, she ventured out the front door without saying goodbye.
“Was it me or was she a total bitch tonight?” Reina asked.
“She’s probably just not feeling well like she said.” I got up from the table and began cleaning up and was not disappointed when Reina took her plate and carried it down the hall to her bedroom to finish.
I soaked the plates and leaned over the sink for strength. I desperately wanted to know what was floating around in her head that night. Was it something I did? Did someone offend her? Did she lose her job? Did she get bad news from a doctor? I couldn’t stand not knowing. I could end the suspense in two seconds. All it required was for me to scale the staircase, sneak in her room, and flip to her latest entry. This all seemed so logical. So, I didn’t even try to talk myself out of it this time around. I headed towards her bedroom. And, I didn’t stop myself when I picked up her journal and began reading that day’s entry. I needed to know how to help her.
January 7
Dear Journal, it’s Hope and I’m feeling kind of hopeless right now.
I watched a video of a man painting a New York firefighter cradling a young child in front of the American flag. He painted to the songs “Proud to be an American” and then to “Hero.” His body vibrated to the beat, punctuated each stroke, and cried out in pain. He swooshed paint on the canvas in front of a silent, crowded audience, flicking it all around as he dunked pair by pair of brushes into buckets of paint. The sweat and the untold stories within him echoed so loud my heart broke. That was artistry at its finest. That was what I wanted to feel about something, anything other than the regret I lugged around with me day in and day out. This constant knocking at my temples caged me in a life of unease. If only I could release this pressure through artistic display. I am not that lucky. I have only mailing lists, promotional campaigns and spreadsheets to deliver.
I also watched Adam through the crack in his door. His fingers pounded his laptop, forcing his soul into his sentences and his speculative literary genius. Even his hair bounced, reverberated against the thoughts wailing in his brain, vying for their chance to escape the confines of his creative brain and land eloquently between the white space that would one day buffer the story for an eager fan. Some people have a way to escape their worlds, and I am growing more envious of such people by the second. I need an outlet.
I love writing my blog, but it also reminds me of how pathetic my life is right now. Here I am writing about love and dating and I can’t get it right. Nadeen is a total loser, and yet I dated her again. When she pulled out that cigarette and I smoked it with her, I realized one thing, I am heading nowhere fast.
Maybe like in love, my karma is lashing back at me and will never allow me to move forward. I go back and forth on whether I deserve to be happy or not. Why would I ever have the gall to think I deserved to be loved by someone special and put together when all I do is compromise my integrity? Of course idiots like Nadeen, Isabella, and that freak from the Internet are going to be tossed in my path. God wouldn’t waste his time handing me the genuine ones when all I know how to do is stomp on hearts and send them reeling into the arms of others. I can’t believe Ryan is going to be a father. And, then PJ and Rachel’s family will begin. They’ll have family picnics together. Their kids will have play dates at Centennial Park. They’ll throw birthday bashes and eat cake and ice cream together. They’ll watch as their kids graduate one day. They’re all so put together and I, on the other hand, am so far from anything real that I may as well smoke cigarettes with drug-using women and long for the one woman that’ll never be mine. The Adams of the world got the good ones. The likes of me, we got the leftovers, the discarded, and the ones who were just as undeserving as ourselves.
Poor Hope. I ventured to the window and peeked out over the driveway. The night was calm, the sky clear, and all cars were folded up nicely in the driveway like a pack of sardines. Even Hope’s.
I panicked and ran out of her room, sealing the door in a hush. I walked down the hall and down the stairs without taking as much as a breath of air into my lungs. I rounded the foyer and there she stood in the kitchen again making a cup of tea. Her head still hung low, her shoulders still hunched over. I wondered if she’d heard my panicked footsteps above?
I did my best to iron the guilt off my face before approaching her.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I join you?”
“I’m not going to be good company right now.” She poured some honey into her tea cup and picked up the teapot from the stovetop before it blew its whistle.
“I’m willing to suffer through.” I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I opened the cabinet and took out a tea cup and teabag for me, too.
She poured semi-hot water into our cups. “PJ told me yesterday that my ex is having a baby with his girlfriend.”
Oh thank God she spilled this one. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. I know that must have hurt.”
“On so many levels.”
We sipped thoughtfully. “You look like you’ve been crying,” I said to her.
“I’m just frustrated. Things aren’t turning out for me the way I thought they would.”
“Give it time.”
“I feel like as time goes on, things are getting worse. I’m feeling stuck.”
“Maybe you just need to run it out,” I said.
“I feel like I need to do something completely different, like I really need to shake things up in my life, and change everything about it.”
“You can’t run away from problems.”
Hope laughed at this. “No offense, but I can’t take that advice seriously from you.”
I jumped into defense mode. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, then.”
She bowed her head again. “I know you’re just trying to help. I’m just not in a good place right now. So forgive me ahead of time for anything I say that might offend. I really don’t mean a word of it.” She turned to t
oss her teabag out in the trash.
“You know what your biggest issue is?”
She turned around obviously surprised at my sudden bold move. “Tell me.”
“You can’t forgive yourself. You think if you run away, you won’t have to forgive yourself. You’ll be able to just start fresh and never look back. But it doesn’t work that way. You’re never going to feel like you deserve anything good until you can learn to let go of that guilt.”
“You believe I think I don’t deserve good things?”
I needed to tread carefully. “It’s written all over your face.”
She ran her fingers down her cheeks. “Huh.”
“What happened in the past, happened. So why let it hold you down, still?”
“I feel branded, like I’ll never get away from the pain I caused. I feel like no one’s ever going to be able to trust me knowing I cheated on someone.”
“Do you trust yourself?” I asked.
“Not always.”
“I trust that you’re a good person.”
“The fact that I care so much that you trust me, just proves I can’t be trusted.” She grazed my cheek with her hand.
I cupped mine over hers for another few seconds before resigning us back to separate entities pining for each other over our brick walls. “Just focus on forgiving yourself and everything will eventually fall right into place as it should be.” And to this I walked away before one of us crossed that line that would send her off to a far worse place mentally than ever before.
~
Hope and I ran in silence for the rest of the week. Not mad silence. Not awkward silence. More so reflective, comfortable silence between two friends. She didn’t bring up PJ or Rachel or Ryan or Nadeen, and I didn’t ask about whether she was learning to forgive herself. We just pounded our sneakers on the pavement and sweated out our frustrations, widening our strides, increasing our pace, and furthering our distance. We were running ten miles some days now.