If I Could Turn Back Time

by Beth Harbison

No one really noticed as we walked away, but the announcement had been a nice gesture anyway.

  “That selfish cow,” Sammy said scathingly. “She didn’t need to bring that up now, of all times.”

  Of course, this bit of cattiness was completely validating for me, as he knew it would be, even though I said, “I did put her on the spot by insisting she have champagne.”

  “Oh, please.” He settled his blue eyes on me, and even though what he was saying was tacky and uncalled-for, the sincerity was truly written all over his face. Which made it almost worse. He felt sorry for me. “She could have taken the glass and set it down after the toast. She wanted this. Next thing you know, she’s going to be opening your presents!”

  I laughed outright. It was a funny visual, and even though obviously Lisa would never do such a thing, in a way it was kind of consistent with her personality. Her shallow party-girl personality was exactly what I’d always found fun about her; how could I expect her to turn it off now that she really was going to be the belle of the ball for nine months?

  “You’re being an asshole for me and I love you for it.”

  We clinked glasses and lay down, turning our faces to the sun.

  “This is nicer than having another euphemism-filled conversation about golf with Ray anyway,” Sammy said. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Did I tell you he made a pass at me at the Memorial Day party?”

  “What?” I gasped. “No, you did not! There is no way; he and Kristin have been together for like three years now!”

  “So? I’ve turned straighter men than that before.”

  “I don’t believe it.” But I did. Sammy could almost coax me into bed if he wanted to, and I knew his habits better than anyone.

  This was a different crowd than I’d grown up with. Once upon a time, life had been simple for me. Full of what you’d think of as “normal” people, not characters out of central casting.

  All that had changed, though. When you enter a world of big stakes, there are big personalities with big lives and, more often than not, big differences from the population at large. Honestly, I wondered sometimes why I had any popularity at all, because inside I felt like the same suburban girl I’d always been, counting coins with my father and hoping to someday have a four-bedroom brick house with one-sixteenth of an acre and boxwoods, azaleas, and a viburnum bush under my bedroom window, just like when I was growing up.

  “Ohhhh, he wanted it bad,” Sammy continued, oblivious to the leaps my mind and memory were taking. “But he gave up fast. Chickenshit. As soon as I brushed him off, he began doing that dance where he was pretending that anything I’d rightly interpreted as an advance was a misunderstanding.”

  I smiled and nodded and took a long gulp of champagne. “I know that dance. I got it from Bill Whitestone himself once.” President and CEO of the company. Turning him down could have lost me my job.

  But taking him on almost certainly would have. Eventually.

  Sammy laughed and pointed at me. “I knew it! I always suspected he had a hard-on for you. Ever since that company picnic you made me go to with you on Roosevelt Island that time. I could just tell he had the hots for you.”

  “He has the hots for everyone.”

  “Especially the women he can’t have.”

  “Yeah.” I took another sip of champagne. “It’s really pretty icky, isn’t it?”

  “Yup.”

  A few minutes passed in silence. I looked at the rolling swells of the sea in the distance, thinking how this was a dream-come-true for so many people—even just a day on the water like this—yet I was bored. Unfulfilled. Already thinking about going home alone.

  Even looking forward to going home alone.

  Once upon a time, I’d thought money could buy everything to make me happy. Well, not everything, I guess—we all know the clichés—but I did think that it could buy a lot of things I wanted. For instance, when I was a kid and had a modest $5-per-week allowance, that was enough for two Bonne Bell Lip Smackers (the large ones). Or almost a week’s worth of Good Humor ice cream at the pool. (Inevitably, Saturdays I’d be out of money and disappointed, scrabbling for a place on the white lines of the hot black parking lot, with just enough to buy some horrid Laffy Taffy.)

  As I grew older, I learned even more the power of retail therapy, hitting the department stores for good makeup when things went bad, and then—glory be!—Sephora opened.

  It was hard to feel like anything was wrong in my world when I was sitting on the sofa with a bunch of new products to try out.

  But, as anyone knows or could guess, they weren’t actually all that fulfilling. I’d had real tragedy in my life and I’d decided very early on that it wasn’t worth it to suffer and anguish over things. Much better to skim along the surface, enjoying the simple pleasures.

  “You seem down,” Sammy said. And for once he wasn’t on the edge of a punch line. There wasn’t a joke in his eyes, ready to come out and lighten the mood. He was just serious. And very, very correct. “Really down,” he added with a sobriety I wasn’t in the mood to face.

  “Oh.” I gave a laugh. “I’m just trying to picture Lisa as a mother. All the little Kate Spade purses she’s going to have to find.” Annnnnd, truth be told, I was picturing me as a mother. If there was a Kate Spade diaper bag to be had—and there probably was—sure, I’d probably want that as well. But when I thought about babies, I thought about chubby cheeks, and hands, and feet, and gummy smiles, and bright eyes, and the promise of love forever. The promise to love forever. That’s one part people don’t often think about, though it’s important: those who have been disappointed, or even fickle, in love aren’t necessarily happy for their solitary existence. When you feel like the world has let you down time and again, and at the end of the day your friends all return to their own lives, a life without love can be devastatingly lonely.

  I’m not sure that every childless person feels that way. I suspect that that is the feeling that separates those who know they don’t want children from those who say they don’t want children.

  I was, more than likely, in the latter group. Though I was trying like hell to convince the world I was in the former.

  Sammy wasn’t buying it. “You were like this before her big announcement. Though I definitely take your meaning on the little Kate Spades and Ralph Laurens. Though they’d be pretty damn cute.”

  “I know.”

  “Not that you want that.”

  “Of course not.” Our eyes met.

  A moment passed. “Seriously”—he put his hand on mine—“what’s up, Tiger Lily?”

  It was impossible to answer. I’d been feeling down lately, no question about it. No explanation either. The Dark had come over me unexpectedly, without obvious explanation or reason. Was thirty-eight too young to be going through perimenopause, in my family? I needed to ask my mother. I hadn’t spoken to her in about a month anyway, so it was a good excuse for me to call. It would give us something to talk about, since normally all we did was not talk about her jerk of a husband or my lack of a husband.

  I was glad she’d found someone, finally, after my dad died so young, but did the guy really have to be such a domineering asshole?

  “Who’s a domineering asshole?” Sammy asked.

  “What?”

  “Who are you talking about?” He poured more champagne into my glass. “Jeffrey?”

  “I didn’t realize I said that out loud.”

  Sammy lowered his chin and raised his brows, lifting the champagne bottle pointedly. “Have you had enough to drink?”

  “Not today.” I took a big gulp and held the glass out for more. “Fill me up, buttercup.”

  He hesitated, then poured. “So…? Who is the domineering asshole in question today?”

  “I was thinking about my mother’s husband.”

  “Your … father?”

  “No, no, her current husband. Jonathan.”

  “You know, it’s weird, you almost never talk about your pare
nts.”

  “Mother. My father’s dead.” There was that twinge I always had. The coil of nerves that ran from my heart and never let me fully get used to the fact that my father was gone.

  “That’s right,” Sammy said. “I did know that. I’m sorry. I gather you’re not a huge fan of her second husband.”

  I shrugged. There wasn’t a lot to say about Jonathan. Not Jon, by the way—woe be unto he who called him that!—just Jonathan. Yes, I thought he was a jerk. I knew he was bossy and domineering. But he wasn’t abusive in any technical sense, so if Mom was happy, there was no reason for me to be miserable about him. But, man, I had such a hard time acting like a grown person when she brought him up in conversation.

  “I’m just being a baby,” I said, and meant it more sincerely than I wanted to let on. “I don’t like him, probably mostly because he’s not my dad, so I’m being a twelve-year-old about it instead of an adult.”

  Sammy nodded, but I could tell he didn’t understand.

  I barely understood, myself.

  I was not just an adult. I was an Adult with Issues.

  “If he’d lived, my dad would be sixty-five this year,” I went on, floundering a little because I didn’t have a firm grasp on my feelings. “Sixty-five. That’s still young by today’s standards. It’s not even retirement age anymore! I know—I just know—he’d have held off on collecting Social Security because it made more sense to draw more later.” How like me to move off into a tangent instead of elaborating on the important point at hand. “But he’s been gone eighteen years now.”

  I pictured him, as I often did, in the ground, all these years on. It was a game I played with myself even though I hated it. To my mind, that was the best argument there was for cremation; no one could picture you rotting. Or, thanks to embalming, maybe not rotting. Maybe just lying under six feet of dirt in a suspended lack of animation forever.

  Sammy looked at me carefully for a moment, reading into my expression and gestures every bit as much as he was reading into my words. “So this news of Lisa’s, starting a new family, fired those thoughts right on up.”

  “No!” Yes, of course. But how bitter and small that was of me, taking her good news and twisting it into my own angst, so strongly that I was yards away from her, getting drunk and feeling sorry for myself, rather than putting my palm on her belly and talking about baby names and nursery décor.

  “No…?” Sammy prompted.

  “Okay, yes. I guess so.” Involuntarily, I pictured Lisa’s next few months: growing bigger daily, the bloom in her cheeks, the small—superior—maternal smile. I pictured the baby shower, the birth, the first visits, the over-the-top first birthday party.… And, more poignantly than that, I pictured the baby aisle at the grocery store, a place I’d had to cut through now and then and which always gave me pause.

  Did I do the right thing, not having kids?

  Did I make the right choice?

  Or did I make the wrong choice so long ago now that there’s no way to rectify it?

  These were torturous thoughts. Questions I didn’t have the answers to. Pains I didn’t have the medication for. A person can spend a good percentage of their early life playing with the angst of, Did I do it right?—because there was still time to rectify the wrongs. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty, even thirty-five—and all the many years in between—were still young enough to change directions.

  Then suddenly you’re looking forty in the face and realizing that some of those choices you had forever to make are gone, or at least going so rapidly that you can’t possibly have enough time to make a good and trustworthy decision about them.

  So Lisa’s news, rather than making me happy for her (though to be totally honest I wasn’t at all sure this wasn’t simply another acquisition for them), had made me feel stupidly sorry for myself and for all of my lost opportunities, crushed chances, and wilted dreams. Regardless of anyone else’s character, I was a jerk.

  I held my glass out again and Sammy refilled it wordlessly, but this time there was a new darkness in his expression.

  “Tod and I have talked about having a baby,” he said, then quickly added, “Adopting, you know.”

  I looked at him, agog. Was everyone doing this? Was the whole wide world coupling off and starting families now? Did this really have to come down like a big old waterfall on me now? “Since when?”

  He pressed his lips together, considering, then said, “We talked about it on and off for a couple of years.”

  I was shocked. I mean, really, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. “You never told me.” Had I been such a crummy friend that I hadn’t even seen that he was headed toward this? Had I just expected him to be my little gay sidekick forever, the second half of my act, without taking into serious consideration his real life?

  “Eh.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand, a gesture that would normally be reassuring. “You’re not into that kind of thing.”

  And there it was. I’d been so selfish and blind that I hadn’t even realized anything like this was going on. Truth be told, I often forgot he and Tod were married, because he was always available to be my plus-one at events, so I kind of thought he was mine. But no, I’d completely missed this whole other life of his. I was such a jerk! “Why would you feel you couldn’t share that with me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know … you know.”

  It was a vague nonanswer, yet I did know. And it wasn’t even just him. No one wanted to talk about this stuff with me. I’d even seen the little glint of nervousness in Lisa’s eyes when she’d made her announcement. Everyone seemed to think I was cold to warm, fuzzy stuff.

  And, actually, I was.

  Now that I thought about it, they were right. I was.

  I’d traded the warm, fuzzy home stuff for success. It had served me well, because I almost never had moods or undefined depression.

  But was that really working for me? “Sammy, you know you can always talk to me about anything.”

  “I know.” He looked a little doubtful. Maybe that was a trick of my imagination. “But … do you know you can always talk to me?”

  “Sure!” I said it quickly, with certainty, but the truth was I didn’t talk much about my inner self. I didn’t like to face that stuff, think about it. What was past was past, and I never saw much point in reexamining it, as there was no changing it.

  “How come you never do?” he asked. “You hardly ever talk about yourself.”

  “What do you mean? I talk to you all the time!”

  He gave me a look that called bullshit on me. “You never talk about deep, emotional stuff.”

  “I don’t have any!”

  His look called me out. “Everyone has some. Listen, girlfriend, I don’t even know if you’ve ever been in love.”

  “Oh, come on, I—” I stopped.

  “Yes…?”

  A rush of feelings came to me, memories, thoughts, longings I hadn’t had in so many years. It was the champagne. I held my glass out for him to top me off. “I don’t know, honestly. Which I guess you’d take as a no. But I remember thinking I was. Way, way back with my first boyfriend. I remember wanting that and believing that I would grow up to have the gleaming suburban life I thought my mom had.”

  I remembered the warmth I felt when envisioning that future.

  It was a stark contrast to the cold I felt right now in the blazing Florida sun—I who had everything.

  Yet nothing.

  Sammy snorted. “The past is rough enough. But first boyfriends are killer.”

  “All boyfriends are killer,” I said, erasing the discomfort of my thoughts. “That’s why I prefer to avoid them altogether.” I stood up, a bit unsteadily.

  “You say that now, but when the next Hottie McDreamy comes along, you’ll give in.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “You will. I’ve seen it before.”

  “No!” I threw my hands in the air dramatically, then laughed. “I take that as a personal challenge. I wi
ll not fall in love!” I started walking unsteadily toward the diving board off the side of the yacht. “I will not start thinking about knitting baby booties!” I felt the eyes of my friends on me and knew I shouldn’t have said that. “Sorry!”

  “Ramie,” Sammy said. “You don’t mean what you’re saying. And, believe me, if you keep talking, you’re going to regret it.”

  “I never talk,” I said. “That’s what I regret!” I could have gone on, but didn’t. But I thought it. I thought about how often I wanted to say some truth or other, but held it in because I couldn’t let people get the wrong impression of me. Or I couldn’t let them get the right impression of me. Hard to define which. I just had to be careful, neutral, all the time, so that people would take my financial advice without a feeling of prejudice.

  But I didn’t have to say all that for Sammy to get the gist.

  He sobered quickly. “Ramie, come back. I don’t think you’re in any condition to—”

  “I will not need anyone else, ever!” I stepped onto the rough surface of the diving board and walked out, one foot in front of the other, as if I were on a balance beam. I used to do that, you know. Gymnastics. I was damn good on the balance beam, as a matter of fact. My body remembered exactly what it felt like to tip over into a cartwheel and land perfectly at the end of the beam, then do a backflip off.

  And before I knew it, I was doing it. Even though it had been twenty-five years, I didn’t even stop and think; I just planted my right foot, dove down onto the board, right hand, left hand, then made a perfect landing with my left foot, then right foot. I stopped and put my hands up and laughed at the amazed face of Sammy; then—habit? drunkenness? just plain thoughtless idiocy?—I went to flip into the water, but I didn’t even glance at the board, the clearance, anything. I just threw back like the drunk moron I was.

  The last thing I remember was the impact against my head (the board? the boat? I’m not even sure), and the split second of, Oh, shit, and pain that surrendered instantly to oblivion.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The beeping was driving me crazy.

  It cut through the thickest part of sleep, leaving about one blissful second for me to drift back away into oblivion before beep! again. Funny how sleep can be like that. So delicious, so comfortable, so necessary that even one and a half more seconds of it feel like heaven.