by Inda Herwood
I’m right. It doesn’t.
As Jagger and I stand awkwardly next to my father while he explains the real reason for everyone’s presence, an unpleasant hush falls over the crowd, eyes staring at me and then Jagger, mystified by it all – and not bothering to hide it. Arguably, the majority stare at me, namely the scar, and wince before looking at Jagger, heads tilted to the side in obvious sympathy for his circumstances. It doesn’t surprise me. Everyone here has to know that something more is going on. I’m not the type to have a boyfriend, much less a fiancé that looks like Jagger, and everybody seems to know this but Lance Montae.
After a tense moment of silence, my father giving the gathered bodies a dark look, a slow clap begins until it sounds semi-sincere. The whole time I want to escape into the floor. And by the look on his face, I think Jagger would join me.
Dinner isn’t much better. Everyone talks to their counterparts, ignoring us at the end of the table. It would have been fine for me, but it seems to piss off my dad, what with the less than pleased look on his face. But it’s not like he can bully people into congratulating us, much to his dismay.
The only one that paid us much mind was Renee Montgomerie, who stared at me through the length of the four-course meal, her silver dress glinting under the large chandelier hanging over the dining table like a disco ball. Her eyes were like daggers, cutting through me until I had to look away. With that kind of venom, I know she still believes she has some kind of claim over Jagger, though he seemed to act like he had seen the devil himself when she walked into the hall, eyeing him up like a favorite toy she had forgotten she owned.
Jagger never looked up to notice.
Finally, the night comes to a close, and it goes down as one of the longest evenings of my life. As the guests begin to go home, I rip off my heels and refuse to care where they land, Mr. Wells giving me a funny look when one hits the wall closest to him.
At this point, I really don’t give a damn if he thinks I’m the most improper lady he has ever met. I’m tired, sore, and I just want to collapse in a place where no one will find me.
I begin climbing the stairs, giving our fathers a less than half-hearted goodbye as I go.
Reaching the second floor, I make a right, heading to the end of the hall to the last door, painted a fading shade of pink. Opening it with a familiar creak, I find the empty remains of my old room. Even in the dark I can see the brightly colored walls, the marks in the floor from where my bedroom furniture sat for so many years. All that remains now is a long purple cushion sitting on the window seat, overlooking the mountains and the guest house out back. I don’t bother to flip on the light as I enter, making my way to the window and parking it on the bench, my forehead resting against the cool glass.
I have hated parties like these since I was a kid and it was my mother’s favorite pastime. All that tonight proved is that my dislike for them hasn’t changed, and neither have the guests and their obvious staring. But tonight, it hurt a little bit more, like an extra barb was added to the others, and I know exactly why.
When you look like me, something of a monster’s creation, you naturally get horrified and disgruntled reactions from people. But when you look like me and you have someone that looks like Jagger Wells on your arm, the looks are for a whole other reason. I hadn’t expected it to sting as much as it did. And I think it’s because, in a way, it proved my father right. If the people in my house tonight thought it so bizarre that I ‘found’ someone, then maybe there isn’t a man out there that is going to see past the outside and look within, to see what makes me a person and not just a tragic story.
Maybe Jagger really is my only hope at not living a lonely life.
No, I think to myself after letting the thought simmer. I refuse to believe that. Just because a room full of snooty people with sticks up their asses believe otherwise doesn’t mean I don’t have a future with somebody else. I have met enough kindhearted, non-shallow people in my life to have hope that I’ll find another.
A light knock sounds near the open door, and I startle, having been lost in my own head for too long. Looking to see who it is, I spot the tall, sculpted outline of Jagger in the doorway, his knuckles having knocked on the frame. I can’t see his face when he asks, “Can I come in?”
I shake my head. He falters. “I made a pact with myself when I was six that I would never let a boy with cooties enter my room. Do you have cooties?” I ask, not able to keep a straight face.
“Freshly vaccinated, actually,” he says with a small laugh, his footsteps bringing him closer until he’s standing in front of me, the light of the moon giving details to his face. The first few buttons of his tux are undone, his blazer missing in action. He is black on black on black: his hair, his eyes, and his clothes. I sigh, and not just because I’m tired.
Without permission, he sits opposite me on the bench, the two of us barely fitting. I lift my legs up and tuck them to my chest, giving us more room. He blanches. “Sorry.”
“Now who’s always apologizing?”
He smiles weakly, looking out the window and up into the sky. “I think we both have a problem.”
“Maybe.” Or perhaps we have been trained to think that things beyond our control are our fault.
“What are you thinking?” he asks me, eyes trained on my face now rather than the moon.
Bad things. Real things. “Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to.”
He chews his lip, still looking at me as though I hold the key to unlocking some sort of puzzle. And then just like that, it disappears. Clearing his throat, he asks, “How are you holding up after all of that?” He nods towards the door, and the hell that had been beyond it only an hour ago.
I lean my head back against the wall, not looking at him for fear it will give away the truth. “Fine.”
There’s an awkward pause, a moment where all you can hear is the crickets chirping outside, and then, his voice – just the right amount of burdened and soft that it has my eyes burning. “No, you’re not.”
I shake my head. “No,” I admit, swallowing hard, “I’m not. None of this is fine. Not for you, me, or anyone else.”
I hear a snicker and look up to find him smirking of all things. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that life isn’t fair? It is rarely fine because of it.”
“It’s not about what’s fair. This is about morality. I wish more people had it.”
“Like your father?”
“And me.” I stare at my silk covered knees, feeling him look me over with that laser vision of his again. I hate being put under the microscope, and his always seems dialed in perfectly.
“You don’t actually believe that,” he says confidently, eyes returning to the window.
“I’m lying to get what I want. How is that any better than what my dad did?”
He contemplates for a second before explaining, “I’m not saying that it’s right. But it’s not all wrong, either. Even before you came up with this plan, and I willingly went along with it, you were trying to help out my dad, find a way to save him. I know that you’re doing this just as much for me as you’re doing it for yourself. That’s what makes you a good person, what separates you from your father.”
Still. “He doesn’t want me to be alone. It’s not completely selfish,” I say, not even understanding why I’m defending him anymore.
“Yes, but instead of giving you a choice about whether that’s what you wanted or not, he blackmailed you into it. That is selfish.”
I stare at him, see that the color of his eyes has changed from gunmetal to cloudy gray. It’s amazing to me how they change so easily with his mood. I wonder if they lighten when he’s passionate about something, excited, or happy. I hope I’ll get to find out. “You’re pretty insistent about my goodness considering you’ve only met me four times before tonight. How do you know I’m not really a sadistic devil worshipper waiting to use you in a sacrifice after I convince
you I’m a perfect angel?”
He eyes me up like I’m just what I described. “Okay, that was oddly specific. I take back everything I just said.” A smile leaks through, and then he’s laughing, and so am I. It feels strangely nice after the terrible night we’ve had.
-12-
It’s Time
As my feet track across the spongy grass, sinking in with every step, I feel the sun shining down on my back, leaking through my shirt and onto my skin. It’s the first warm day we’ve had in over a week, but for what I’m doing right now, it feels…wrong. As if the weather should match my mood, full of rain and thunder.
I haven’t walked this path since the day we took my mother across it. I can still remember the metal of the casket biting into my fingers, for which I was grateful. The physical pain had distracted me from the emotional, which was so much worse.
It had been annoyingly sunny that day, too.
Though it’s been three years, I know the exact steps it takes to get to row four, five over, where Lucinda Ashlin Wells’ headstone rests. It’s unextraordinary, just like she would have wanted. A square, pale gray stone with a scalloped top, small engraved roses flanking her name, birth date, death date, and one of her favorite sayings.
All things pass, and we start again.
I stare at those words, let them burn my eyes until I have to blink. She always used to say this when things were going wrong, when one of us or all of us were at our lowest. Even in the worst of times she was positive, hopeful. She never gave up. In a way, she was like a phoenix. When she was burned down, her ashes turned her into a stronger, more beautiful person. It’s what I wish I had inherited from her most.
When I still went to my shrink, he said that it would be healthy for me to visit my mom every once in a while. He said that seeing the reality of what had happened was a good start to accepting it, yadda, yadda, yadda. I never did it, knowing it would be too painful. And I was right. This absolutely sucks. And instead of closure, all I feel is a bigger wound opening up in my chest.
“I just think you could do so much better, Jagger,” she said, looking at the speedometer with a worried pinch in her brow.
The rain came down harder.
“I love her, Mom. Why can’t you accept that?” I’d responded angrily, my foot pressing down a little harder on the accelerator. I knew I shouldn’t have been driving, especially not in this kind of weather, but it didn’t stop me.
It should have. Because after that, I’d never get the chance to argue with her again.
A tear slips out. I push it away.
“Hello, there,” a small, female voice says to my left, almost making me jump. I hadn’t heard anyone approach. Looking at her, I see a very small, very hunched over woman in her mid-eighties at least, wearing a blue and white scarf around her head, a cane in her hand. Her aged eyes look up at me and then the stone I’m standing in front of. She smiles sadly. “Don’t believe I’ve seen you here before. Is it just recent?” She nods at the stone, but it’s obvious it’s been here a while. The edges are turning green with plant life, the mound of dirt normally associated with a fresh grave long since flattened with time and foot prints.
I shake my head.
She returns to staring at her own stone, placing a bouquet of fresh flowers at the base of the black granite. Only a name and date is engraved on hers, no saying, poem, or favorite Bible verse. It simply says Harold Frances Baxter, aged thirty years, died November 13, 1962.
“I’ve been coming here every day for fifty-five years,” she says matter of fact, still looking at the name of what I suspect is her husband. He died so young. “We were married for a year when he found out he had cancer. He was gone two months later.” She turns to look at me, and then my mother’s stone, and back again. She says, not unkindly, “I’m afraid to tell you that it never gets easier. Everyone says that you’ll move on, grow used to the idea of not having them around anymore, but it’s a lie.”
I nod, biting the inside of my cheek to keep my eyes from filling. “You’re right. It is.” I could even argue that it gets worse.
We stay silent for the remainder of our visits. She primps the flowers a little, pulls up the weeds around his stone, dusts off any stray grass from the last mowing, all while I wonder why I thought this would be a good idea. I guess after what happened with Renee and the panic attack, I figured I needed to do something to rectify it, convince myself that everything is fine. But it’s not, and that’s what I’ve realized standing here, watching a woman fuss over her dead husband’s grave that she could never get over.
My phone rings.
The old woman and I both jump.
I quickly apologize as I take it out of my pocket and decide to head home, my feet taking me back the way I came. I silently apologize to my mother for not staying longer.
Answering it after clearing my throat enough times to sound normal, I don’t even check the caller ID when I say, “Yeah?”
“Hey, it’s me,” Cyvil answers, her voice much lighter than the last time we talked. “Are you busy?”
“No,” I answer a little too quickly, my voice sounding off. I try to fix it before asking, “Why?”
“Well,” she pauses, her voice going up another octave, “Till had her baby last night. I wondered if you’d want to come to the hospital with me? Normally I wouldn’t ask, because I know it isn’t really a guys’ thing, but my mom assumed I’d invited you and so I thought I’d ask. If you want me to make up an excuse –”
With how she’s making it sound, it’s almost as if, “You don’t want me to come?”
“NO! I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that…ah jeez. I really need to get better at phone conversations with you.” She huffs a breath, and I chuckle, not knowing how much I needed it until this moment.
“I’d love to come,” I tell her, finding my car, slipping in, and starting the engine. “Want me to pick you up?”
“Actually, I’m just about to head out. Meet you in the lobby at St. Joseph’s?”
“Yeah, see you there.”
***
I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person that likes hospitals. The noise, the sadness, families crying, the nauseating smell of disinfectant. It’s almost as bad as the animal shelter. But walking by the window showing the newborn babies, I realize it can be a place of beginnings, too.
Cyvil smiles at them through the glass, her entire aura alight with happiness. She’s been like this since we got here. I met her in the lobby and she was full of smiles, dragging her terribly wrapped baby present with her in a basket she had to carry with two hands. I took it into my own with a grin. “Not excited about this at all, are you?”
She smiled wider. “Nope. Not in the slightest.”
And when we passed the baby window, we were pretty much helpless but to stop.
“They’re so little,” I comment, staring at the wiggling bodies in their blankets.
“What were you expecting, linebackers?” she laughs, dancing her fingers at them.
“Yep, I was thinking they’d be NFL ready the moment they came out.” I roll my eyes, wrapping my hand around hers, pulling her away from the window. “Don’t worry, we’re about to see another one,” I say when she pouts, looking over her shoulder at the retreating figures of the newborns.
A few minutes later we arrive at Atillia’s room, Cyvil knocking lightly on the door before peeking her head inside. “Till, you awake?”
“Yes, and please tell me you brought caffeine,” the familiar voice whines, and her sister chuckles, entering the room while beckoning me forward.
Instead of a small, shared room, it’s a large, private suite with a wall of windows overlooking the NYC skyline as night slowly falls. And in the middle of the room is Atillia in a hospital bed, along with a tall man with oversized glasses that is unfamiliar to me, but whom I’m assuming is her husband. Cyvil wastes no time in running over to the small bundle held in her sister’s arms, cooing over it instantly. “Oh, he’
s beautiful, sis. He definitely takes after his father.” She smiles at the baby, running a thumb over its pink little fingers.
“Gee, thanks. That’s what I get for making you his godmother.” Till shakes her head, finally spotting me in the corner. Her eyes light up. “Hi, Jagger. It’s nice to see you again. Quincy?” She looks at him but motions to me, explaining, “This is Jagger Wells, Cyvil’s fiancé.” She gives me a wink, and I shake his hand.
“Quincy Devoux. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
“Can I hold him?” Cyvil asks her sister a minute later, and she nods. Carefully, her hands go around the baby, picking him up slowly and cradling him in her arms. I come closer to get a better look at him. With red cheeks, puffy lips, and tiny fingers, he really is adorable.
“Hi, little guy,” she says in a cutesy voice, bouncing him lightly in her arms. “I’m your fun Aunt Cyvil. The one who will give you candy when you stay over and then send you back to your parents on a sugar high.” As though he understood, the baby’s mouth opens and closes, its hands reaching for her face, gurgling in a shadow of a laugh.
“Not funny.” Her sister glares. “And to think he’s already more like you than he is me,” she says with a falsely disgruntled look on her face. Cyvil turns to look at her.
“What do you mean?”
Quincy and Atillia both smile, Quincy telling her, “Pull back the blanket from his head.”
Slowly, Cyvil does what he says, pushing the pink and blue striped baby’s blanket back from his forehead, revealing bright orange hair underneath. She makes a noise somewhere between a giggle and a gasp, looking up at her sister and brother in-law, declaring, “Oh my gosh, he’s a Weasley!”
“A what?” Atillia’s face scrunches up in confusion while Quincy bends over at the waist, laughing. “What is so damn funny?”
“Long story, baby. Another time,” he says, kissing her on the forehead. She doesn’t look satisfied with the answer, but lets it go.
“What’s this little guy’s actual name?” I ask, looking over Cyvil’s shoulder at him. His hands reach upwards, past his aunt, and I let him play with my finger, which seems to delight him.