A Lush Reunion

by Selena Laurence

  When I’m done, Colin grabs my hoodie and purse and says goodnight to Jim. We walk out to the parking lot and stand under the light that spills down from the one lamp struggling to illuminate the vast expanse of asphalt that surrounds the squat building.

  “So we’re on a flight that leaves first thing Saturday morning,” he tells me as he lays my belongings on the hood of my car and slouches back against the driver’s door.

  “You bought the tickets?” I ask, my heart falling to my feet.

  “Yeah. I was afraid things might fill up. There’s almost always room in first class, but these flights to Hawaii are popular, so I didn’t want to risk it.”

  Sweat breaks out on my neck even though it’s almost chilly outside this late at night. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea, Colin, I’ve been rethinking it. We talked about being friends. I don’t think that friends go on trips to Hawaii together—or look at each other’s asses.”

  He gives me a small smile. “Since when have you and I ever cared about the rules?” he asks. “We always did what we wanted. Why should we worry about it now?”

  I clear my throat and shuffle my feet. “I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. I really appreciate you giving Sean this opportunity, and I admit that the idea of a vacation is very appealing to me.”

  “But…” he fills in.

  “But I’m not sure I can give you more than what I am right now. I’m kind of overwhelmed that we’re even talking, much less going to Hawaii together. More than that and my head might explode.” What I don’t say is that my heart might as well.

  A gentle smile lands on his face, and he holds my hands in his. “I know this is scary,” he says. “It is for me too. And I’m not taking you to Hawaii under the impression that you’ll sleep with me, okay?”

  I nod.

  “I want us to be friends, and yes, I want us to be something more, but I know we still have a lot of baggage to work through. It’s not going to happen overnight, and it may not happen at all, but I want to try. I want to try because I think you’re worth it, and I think what we once had is worth it. Hawaii’s a way to give us some time, babe. Time to relax and be around one another without all the normal distractions. No pressure. But time, to look at who we were and who we are, and see if we might fit together again.”

  I nod, emotion clogging my throat. He’s always been so intuitive, so understanding of what I need to hear and how I feel—I think that’s one reason it shocked me so much when he quit talking to me after the pregnancy. It was the one and only time Colin didn’t understand me, and it crushed something deep inside me.

  I’m not sure that can be fixed, but I owe it to us both to try.

  “Okay. I guess I can do that. Spend a little time with you.” I try to smile, but it comes across weak.

  His gaze on my face is penetrating. It’s like he’s trying to see into my soul. I’m so scared of what he’ll find if he does that I resolve to tell him everything. The whole truth about what happened—to the pregnancy, to me.

  “Good,” he finally says. “This is going to be good—for us, for Sean. You’ll see. I promise.”

  I hug him then, the only man I’ve ever loved, and inside, there’s something I haven’t felt since that day I first saw those two pink lines. It’s hope.

  Chapter Eleven

  Colin

  WHEN SATURDAY morning rolls around, I’m a fucking wreck. I’ve tried to think of everything—snacks for Sean, magazines for Marsha, an iPod full of PG-rated music. Chet is obviously picking up on my anxiety. He’s pacing around the large foyer of Mrs. S.’s, growling occasionally when he thinks he’s hears something threatening.

  I gave Marsha a Visa card to shop for the trip before I left for Portland, but I have no idea if she used it. She’s a female, and I know that if she isn’t satisfied with what she looks like she’ll have a terrible trip. I’m also anxious to see her in a bikini. Yeah, I’m a nice guy, but I’m still a guy.

  When the doorbell finally rings, Chet goes nuts, lunging at the front door like he’s going to tear pieces from whoever’s on the other side.

  “Down,” I command¸ and he sits, still growling. “Hey,” I tell him firmly.

  He stops the noise and looks at me, waiting for the door to open so he can start it all over again. I bend down and get a firm hold on his collar. With regular meals, shots, and all the attention he’s getting from Mrs. S., my hour-a-day training sessions with him have gone well. Like most shepherds, he’s super smart and really wants a pack to live with. So far, Mrs. S. and I seem to be fulfilling that need.

  I open the door and Marsha squeaks as Sean dives behind her and starts trying to climb up her back.

  “Sean!” she cries. “Ouch!”

  “Hey, hey,” I soothe. “It’s okay, buddy. I’ve got ahold of him, and I have a story to tell you.”

  Chet is standing but not pulling against me. He sniffs Marsha carefully. She seems comfortable with dogs and holds out her hand for him to smell. Then she moves on to scratching him behind the ears. He takes to it like she’s the answer to all of his prayers. I know how he feels.

  “This is the dog that chased Sean that day,” I explain to Marsha.

  “Oh! No wonder you’re scared,” she says to Sean as she reaches behind her and picks him up.

  “But I rescued him, and he’s living here with Mrs. S. and me. He’s getting healthy and learning how to be a nicer guy.” I tweak Sean’s knee where it hangs off of Marsha’s hip. “I’ve got ahold of him. Do you think you could come down and meet him?”

  Sean looks at me and considers it. “Okay. I guess.”

  Marsha carefully sets him down, and I keep a firm hold on Chet, making sure to stay standing above him as I tell him to sit.

  “Hold still, Sean, and let him sniff you first,” I instruct.

  Sean freezes, his eyes big. Marsha is leery, but she toughs it out. I’m putting a lot of faith in Chet right now. If he bites Sean before our trip even gets underway it’ll be a disaster. But I remember what Mel said about trust. Trust begets trust, so to speak. Chet needs to be trusted so he’ll learn that he can trust humans. I don’t know any other way to teach him.

  Chet sniffs Sean’s feet then works his way up to Sean’s face. They’re about eye level with one another, and I can feel Marsha’s tension as my baby is tooth to cheek with her baby. Then, in a move that slays me, Chet’s long tongue rolls out and he licks Sean right on the mouth.

  Sean giggles, and this spurs Chet to lick him again. Before I can stop it, Sean’s thrown his arms around Chet’s neck and Chet is giving the kid a tongue bath.

  “Well, I guess that’s settled.” Marsha laughs.

  “Yeah. It’s amazing what some love and good food can do,” I answer.

  “So, how exactly did you rescue him?” she asks.

  “Uh.” I scratch my head. “That’s a whole story.” I glance at Sean. “Maybe better saved for another time.”

  She nods, understanding in her eyes.

  “Okay, everybody,” I say, grabbing Chet’s collar and leading him inside. “Let’s get our stuff packed in the truck and head to the airport.”

  As we buckle into our seats on the plane, I notice how quiet Marsha is. “You okay?” I ask as I pick up her hand.

  She faces me, her eyes glittering with emotion. “I’ve never been on a plane,” she tells me quietly.

  “What?” I must have misheard her.

  “I’ve never flown before, Colin. And truth be told, I never thought I would.”

  I should have known this. She said she’s never been on a vacation, but it didn’t connect. People fly for reasons other than vacations. But now that I’ve pulled my head out of my ass, I realize that small-town waitresses who are single moms and have no family to visit don’t.

  I press close, holding her hand between both of mine. “Are you scared?”

  “Not really. I’m…overwhelmed. You don’t know how many times I’ve dreamed about being able to fly somewhere. You’ve m
ade dreams come true for me. I need you to know that. Whatever else happens on this trip, you’ve made my dreams come true. Thank you.”

  And with those simple words I’m done. It’s as if every moment in my life has been leading up to this one. Every emotion I’ve had, every action I’ve taken. It all makes sense, solidifies in a single-focused purpose—to make this woman happy. Because she deserves it. More than anyone I’ve ever known, Marsha deserves to be happy, and I decide I’ve been put here to make sure that she is.

  I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Don’t thank me for giving you what you’ve earned. You’ve earned this, babe. Trips, sunshine, new experiences, a happy, healthy kid, a guy who’s crazy about you. Let me help you have those things.”

  She blushes and looks away for a moment, watching Sean, who is glued to the window across the aisle. I bought two seats so he could wiggle to his heart’s content and sleep when he got tired. I don’t tell Marsha that. She only knows that it’s convenient the fourth seat in our row is vacant.

  “Tonight,” she answers. “Tonight we need to talk. About what happened after we broke up. You need to know the truth, Colin. The whole story.”

  I nod, but I’m not worried, because there’s nothing she could say that would change my mind. This is the woman for me, and I’ll stick it out until she knows I’m the man for her.

  EVERYTHING AT the resort is exactly as I wanted it to be. Our suite has a central living area, with a bedroom and bathroom at each end. There’s also a small kitchen area with a fridge, a microwave, a sink, and a coffee maker. Sean is so excited that he’s about to bounce out a window somewhere, so we go with him to the pool first thing to burn off some of his energy. After swimming we go to dinner at a restaurant on the beach. Sean has his first calamari, and Marsha tries mahimahi and loves it. When we get back to the room a little after nine p.m., Sean is asleep in about ten minutes he’s so worn out.

  Marsha comes out of their room, softly shutting the door behind her. “He’s out cold,” she tells me as she sits on the other end of the sofa from me.

  “You going to sit all the way over there now that we’re finally alone?”

  She clears her throat. “I, um, need to keep some space here while I say all of this.”

  “Okay. Whatever you need, babe.” I cross my toes in my Vans. Anything I can do to bring good luck my way.

  She stares out the sliding glass door that overlooks the beach and the ocean beyond. “That night,” she begins. “The night we broke up…” She sucks in a deep breath. “I told you that I’d decided to end the pregnancy.”

  I nod, dread collecting in my gut.

  “But the next day, when I went to do it, I couldn’t.”

  The blood in my veins turns to ice, and I nearly double over from the shock. “What? What do you mean you couldn’t?”

  “I didn’t go through with it.”

  “So, what the hell happened?” My mind is racing with the possibilities this reveals. It’s too much—too much and also too little all at once.

  “Hold on, and let me say it all. I was so mad at you, so hurt”—she pauses to look at me, that hurt still lingering in the depths of her eyes—“that I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I hardly even remember those next few days. I was trying to keep it all from my mom. Telling myself every day that this was going to be the day I took care of it, but I couldn’t. And I was sick. Throwing up every afternoon, crying myself to sleep over you. So confused, and so scared.”

  She stops to breathe, and I run my hands through my hair, trying to absorb it all.

  “Then came the day that my mom found out. I had a pamphlet they’d given me at the clinic. It was about the options and what each of them involved. My mom never went into my room, but that day, for some reason I’ll never know, she did. And she found it, and by the time I came home from school she was insane with anger.

  “I wanted to deny it, but it was no use. I confessed. I begged her to listen to me. I promised her I’d end the pregnancy the very next day, but it was too late.”

  My heart beats a tattoo of dread as I ask, “What did she do?”

  “She slapped me across the face and physically threw me out the door before she locked it. I stayed out there pounding and begging for hours, Colin, but she never answered. And she’s never spoken to me since. I saw her a few days later, at the convenience store at the end of our street. I’d snuck into our trailer while she was at work to grab some of my clothes. As I was walking by the convenience store afterwards she was there. She drove by me in the parking lot and never even looked at me. Not once.”

  I’m sick at this point. Acid-churning-in-my-gut kind of sick. Because what I know right now is that ten years ago, while I was wallowing in my seventeen-year-old self-pity, safe and sound in my bed, wrapped in my anger and my righteousness, the woman who was carrying my child was alone and homeless.

  “I found people to stay with for a couple of days, but then I had to do something longer term, so I went to the homeless shelter and I started staying there.”

  “God. Oh God,” I choke out. “I don’t think I can hear any more. Please… Fuck!” I kick the coffee table in front of me in frustration before I stand up and start pacing.

  But Marsha’s in another place now, her focus hazy, her voice soft as she continues the story, my outburst hardly even noticed. “It got really hard, waiting in line for food and to see if I could get a bed every night. I was still having problems keeping food down a lot of days, and I was so tired all the time. In the shelter, I was in a big bunk room, and people coughed and talked and came and went all night. It was never restful. I ended up flunking a couple of my finals, so I couldn’t graduate. Around that time I ran into someone at the shelter, and she helped me.”

  Finally! My heart lifts at the possibility that this horror I’m hearing might have an end.

  “She was one of the program managers for homeless services, and she’d seen me coming and going from the shelter. She knew me already, Colin.”

  “Who was it?” I ask. But almost as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know the answer. “My mom?”

  “Yes, and thank God, because she saved my life. Your mom saved me that week at the shelter.”

  “She never told me. I swear she never told me.”

  “I know. I made her promise she wouldn’t. I had to tell her that I was pregnant. She needed to know why my mother had thrown me out. I think she’d figured most of it out anyway.”

  “Holy hell,” I whisper as I collapse back onto the sofa.

  “I told her I’d decided to have it and give it up for adoption after all. She respected my right to make that decision and she never once questioned me about it. She knew of a place in Dallas, a group home, where I could stay until the baby was born, and she set it up for me. But before I left town she got me a prenatal appointment. That wasn’t part of her job, but she said it was her duty as the grandmother. She wanted to make sure that everyone was healthy. It was how she could help all of us out.”

  That sounds like my mom. She’s as independent as they come, and she’s a strong feminist. She would never interfere with a woman’s right to choose what’s best for her body, and she’s loving and caring and would want any young girl, especially one carrying her grandchild, to be healthy in body and mind.

  “Colin,” Marsha says, her eyes swimming with tears. “This is the hard part.”

  I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine this all could get any harder than it’s already been, but I steel myself and give her a small nod before she continues.

  “When they did an ultrasound, they heard something wrong with the heartbeat. Your mom was there with me, and she insisted they get more detailed screenings done. It was early, but they could tell that the little heart had a flaw, and they said it would only get worse as she grew. The baby was going to need surgery the moment she was born. It was going to be expensive and complicated, and it still might not fix what was wrong. I couldn’t have cared for her, and no one
else was going to adopt a baby who was so sick.”

  She’s crying now, silent tears rolling down her face, and when I lift my hand to rub my stubble, I find that I am too.

  I scoot over and put my arm around her shoulders. She melts into me as if she’s been bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders for the last decade. And it’s the sad truth that she has.

  “I terminated that afternoon. Your mom was with me. She held my hand and cried with me and promised me that she still respected my choice. Then she checked me into a hotel to recover, and a couple of days later, she put me on the bus to Dallas because that’s what I wanted. I needed a fresh start, and she gave that to me.”

  The purging finally over, Marsha sits, resting against me, her heart beating slowly, her breath deep, as she waits for me to say something. But what do you say to the woman you abandoned and shamed and left to handle life’s dirtiest, most gruesome tasks when she was barely more than a child herself? Although part of me is livid with my mother for not telling me—then or later—another part is so grateful that she was there. Doing what I should have done, filling in when my immaturity and selfishness overtook my good sense and humanity.

  “I don’t think there are words for the wrong I’ve done you,” I tell her. “I don’t know how I can ever make this right.”

  She shakes her head. “I could have come to you. At any time I could have come to you. Your mom offered to help me see you. I could have found you at school. I could have called you on the damn phone. I could have come to you. This wasn’t your fault.”

  She swallows, and a shiver rolls through her body. “This wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just what happened. It was two kids who got into something they weren’t ready to handle. And it was the worst and the best of the adults around them. I am so thankful that your mother found me. That she showed me what a real mother does for her children. After what my mother had done, your mom was the closest thing I had to a parent during the whole thing. Her compassion, her love, her care is what I think of every time I make a decision about Sean. I ask myself, ‘What would she do?’ She’s been my role model ever since.”