Blue

by Lou Aronica

  What did Miea think about her running out, though? Was she insulted? Was she confused? Becky wouldn’t be able to go back until Saturday to explain.

  Meanwhile, school seemed to drone on. Distress over Tamarisk had drained Becky and she was barely listening to her teachers—all of whom seemed to have decided that today was the perfect day to lecture endlessly about some meaningless subject. By the time she got to lunch, she was ready to call it day. Unfortunately, biology, geometry, and Spanish awaited her in the afternoon. The Nestlé Toll House Bar she’d bought from the cafeteria helped a little, but she really just wanted to put her head on the table and nap for about three days.

  “Did I miss out on the part where you mentioned taking a vow of silence?” Lonnie said from across the table.

  Becky smiled weakly and took a sip from her water bottle. “I guess I forgot to take my fun pills this morning.”

  “What’s going on? You seem like you’re on another planet today.”

  Becky chuckled. “Yeah, something like that.” She still hadn’t mentioned her trips to Tamarisk to Lonnie. She couldn’t figure out the right way to do it and she certainly wasn’t going to bring the topic up in the middle of the cafeteria. “Sorry I’m such a drag.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “About visiting another planet?”

  “About what’s going on. I can kinda tell that something’s bugging you. In the old days—you know, like, yesterday—we could talk about that kind of stuff.”

  Becky reached across the table and squeezed Lonnie’s hand. She really appreciated how well her best friend knew her—even if she didn’t know everything. “Things are a little weird with Mom.”

  “You’re kidding, right? Just at the point where you and your father are doing better you start having problems with your mom?”

  “Everything balances out, huh? Actually, they’re related, at least a little. I don’t think Mom is totally in love with the fact that I’ve reconnected with my father.”

  “Really? That doesn’t sound like her at all.”

  “Yeah, actually it does. Mom is amazing except when it comes to Dad. You just never got to see that part of her.”

  Lonnie took a little time to ponder this, her eyes angled toward the fluorescent lights. She looked back at Becky. “That really totally sucks.”

  Something about the way Lonnie said that set Becky off. The thing with Tamarisk last night had her completely preoccupied, but the last few days at home—since that little scene her mother created when Dad dropped her off—were awkward and even a little humiliating. Mom had that tightness in her voice that she had whenever she was disappointed in Becky, and every time they looked at each other, Becky felt like her mother was scolding her with her eyes. She had figured the skirmish with Dad was going to blow over in about a half hour. But it hadn’t. Mom was still making life difficult even yesterday afternoon. If Al hadn’t taken her out to dinner before Dad came— thanks for having my back, Al —Becky was certain there would have been another uproar and Becky would have flat-out freaked.

  “Yes,” Becky said sharply. “Yes, it does. It sucks big-time. Would it kill my parents to make me feel comfortable in both houses for a few days?”

  “Have you spoken to her about it?”

  “I can’t talk to her about it. It’s like she has a moat around her or something. She is being ridiculously close-minded.”

  “It’s probably a little hard for her seeing you and your dad all lovey again.”

  “Why? How does that make any sense? It’s not like having a better relationship with my father takes anything away from my relationship with her.”

  “Except for the extra time you’re spending with him.”

  “Except for the tiny bit of extra time I’m spending with him. Why are you defending her like this?”

  Lonnie put her hands up. “I’m not defending her. I just think there might be some stuff you need to see from her point of view.”

  “I get her point of view. And I still think she’s being ridiculous.”

  “So talk to her. Make her realize that she’s wrong.”

  Becky could feel her frustration rising. “I can not talk to her,” she said stiffly.

  “Beck, I love you, but it sounds like you’re being a little close-minded yourself.”

  Becky’s face got warmer. Sometimes Lonnie didn’t know when to let up. “You know what? You don’t have all the facts, so maybe you should just keep out of this.”

  Lonnie leaned closer to her. She had her “reasonable” face on. That expression often made Becky laugh to herself. Today it just ticked her off. “Beck, if I don’t have all the facts, maybe you should give them to me.”

  Becky moved forward so that their faces were as close together as possible given the presence of the table between them. “I don’t want to give them to you.”

  Just then, Becky noticed Lonnie’s expression change dramatically. She seemed frightened by something and Becky knew it had nothing to do with what she’d just said. Slowly, Lonnie wiped her hand underneath her nose. Instinctively, Becky did the same thing. When she did, she felt wetness there and she didn’t have to look at her hand to know that the wetness was blood. She quickly reached for a napkin and put it to her nose.

  “Let’s go to the bathroom,” Lonnie said softly.

  Without a word, Becky stood up and followed her.

  If Lonnie said anything to her while they walked, Becky didn’t hear it. They went into a bathroom stall together—the same one as last time—and Becky sat down with her head leaned back and wadded-up toilet paper on her nose. After a minute, she took the paper from her nose and Lonnie handed her another wad.

  “Tell me I shouldn’t be worried about this,” Lonnie said shakily.

  Becky squeezed the paper a little tighter. “See what happens when you get me worked up?”

  “Right, I knew this was my fault.” Lonnie leaned a little closer and examined her face, for what, Becky couldn’t imagine. “How many of these have you had lately, Beck?”

  “I only have them when you’re around. Maybe it really is your fault.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Becky pulled the paper back again. There was less blood on this one. Lonnie handed her some more toilet paper. “I’m serious, too. Not about it being your fault, but about this being only the second one. They both happened in the cafeteria and they both happened when I was excited.” She rolled her eyes and tried on a grin. “This is gonna make me a really hot date in the future, huh?”

  Becky’s attempt to lighten things up didn’t seem to have any impact on Lonnie. “When are you going to the doctor?”

  “I don’t remember saying anything about going to the doctor.”

  “Beck, you have to find out.”

  “It’s not what you think it is.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I would know.”

  “Did you know the last time?”

  “I was practically an infant the last time. I didn’t know anything.” She lifted the paper and saw very little blood. This was passing. Lonnie handed her another wad and Becky indicated that she didn’t need it.

  Lonnie tossed the wad in the toilet. “What’s the downside of going to the doctor and confirming that there’s nothing to these nosebleeds?”

  What’s the downside? You’re kidding, Lonnie, right? “My doctor invades my personal space.”

  “Almost a good enough excuse, but not quite.”

  A part of Becky still believed she could make this go away. A part of her even believed that there really wasn’t anything to worry about. She sat forward and dabbed her nose with the toilet paper a few times. No new blood. “If it happens again, I’ll go to the doctor. I promise.”

  “If it happens again, I’m dragging you there myself.”

  “You won’t have to drag me; I’ll go.” Becky touched her best friend on the arm and summoned the resolve to look her directly in the eye. “But unless that happens, you don�
��t mention this to anyone, okay? Especially not my mother.”

  Lonnie’s eyes misted over instantly and she looked away for a moment. When she looked back at her, she shook her head slowly. “Okay.”

  They stood up together and exited the stall.

  “Beck, you have to stay around for me, you know,” Lonnie said softly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “I’d be a wreck if you weren’t here.”

  Becky leaned her head against Lonnie’s. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said with all the conviction she felt. Which wasn’t much.

  Not that he ever looked forward to them, but this blind date was about the last thing Chris wanted to do tonight. He’d been edgy since the confrontation with Polly, he was in the middle of budget projections at the office (which was about as satisfying as eating air), and Becky had looked crestfallen when she’d told him this morning that their story hadn’t cured Tamarisk. When he’d talked to her about an hour ago, she actually sounded worse. This blight thing was really getting to her. It would have been a great night for a high-carb dinner followed by falling asleep on the couch, but that wasn’t what was on the agenda. Instead, his schedule called for a woman named Kyra.

  The fact that Kyra was now more than fifteen minutes late didn’t fill him with great expectation. Maybe she was going stand him up. It wouldn’t be the first time. He wouldn’t have minded at all.

  A few minutes later, he decided to order a glass of wine. The wine and Kyra arrived at the same time. His first impression of Kyra was that she was stunning, but the waiter distracted him. He turned to thank the waiter for his drink and then looked back at the woman. She was still stunning. She was easily the most beautiful woman Lisa had ever set him up with. In fact, she was easily one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. What on earth was she doing here?

  Kyra ordered a glass of Chianti and then turned to him. “I am so sorry I’m late. I’m working on a merger and it seems the parties are moving farther apart by the day. I just spent a half hour holding the hand of the CEO of the smaller company. If the guy was getting paid for his neuroses, he’d be a billionaire.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Chris said sarcastically.

  “I love it,” Kyra said, her eyes widening. “The easy ones bore me. The challenges really get my blood going. The only problem is I have this tendency to lose track of time. Again, sorry.”

  “Totally okay.” Kyra’s hair actually shimmered. Romance novelists would call it flaxen. He was tempted to touch it to see if it emitted an electrical charge, but he restrained himself. Her drink arrived and she took a sip of it, which drew his attention to her eyes. He couldn’t think of what romance novelists would call their color, but they were an almost-unearthly blue. Oh my god, Lisa set me up with a gorgeous alien. She probably figured I’d never connect with a human woman, so she broadened her search. “You should never have to apologize for loving anything. Even your job.”

  “Nicely said. And you’re right; loving is a very, very good thing.” She tipped her glass in his direction and took another sip.

  For the next hour, the time with Kyra followed the structure of the typical blind date—light conversation, slightly probing personal question, more light conversation, slightly more probing personal question, comment about the meal, nonthreatening embarrassing admission, and more light conversation. But it didn’t have the substance of one. Kyra intrigued him for any number of reasons and she had the rare ability to get him to talk about himself without his feeling self-conscious. She even mentioned that she was an avid gardener, which got him talking about plants, horticulture, and some of the work he’d done when he was an active scientist.

  Had the date ended when the waiter took away their dinner plates, this would have ranked as one of the best first dates of Chris’s life. Unfortunately, it didn’t. The turn in the conversation began, innocuously enough, with the mention of her children.

  “Oh, you have kids?” Chris said. “How old are they?”

  “My son is nine and my daughter is six. They’re with their father tonight.”

  “How long have the two of you been split?”

  “Nearly five years now. The second kid really did us in, though we were wobbling even before George was born.”

  “Yeah, that’s tough. What’s it like dealing with your ex now?”

  “Actually, we’ve gotten along considerably better since the divorce than we did during the last half-dozen years of our marriage. Parenting was just about the only thing we agreed on and we’ve managed to build a platonic relationship from that.”

  Chris chuckled cynically. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that in English, I didn’t understand what you were saying.”

  Kyra paused as she brought her water glass to her lips. “What do you mean?”

  Chris waved a hand. “Forget it; I’m just being a jerk. Let’s just say I haven’t had the same experience with my ex as you’ve had with yours.”

  “You have kids?”

  “Kid. A fourteen-year-old daughter. She’s wonderful and my former wife hates the fact that I think so.”

  Kyra rolled her eyes. “I find that a little hard to believe.”

  “No, really. I think if I had been distant to her, or distracted, or even borderline abusive, my marriage would have survived it. But loving her unconditionally and giving her every bit of my soul—that was too much for my ex to take.”

  Kyra’s expression darkened. “That’s unfortunate.”

  Chris felt a surge of adrenaline. After what had happened over the weekend, the very thought of Polly kicked him into fight-or-flight mode. “Yeah, it is definitely unfortunate. A household gets blown up and I lose years with my daughter not because I was a bad guy but because—catch the irony here—I was too much of a good guy. It gets better, though. Now that I’ve finally recaptured some of what I had with Becky, after all of that horrible time feeling tossed out onto the side of the road, Polly is trying to find a way to split us up again. It’s like divorcing me once wasn’t good enough.”

  “Wow,” Kyra said thinly. “That’s tough.”

  A part of Chris’s brain registered the can we change the subject message Kyra was sending. It wasn’t, however, the part that controlled his speech. “You know what? It’s probably just as well. I mean, if it weren’t Becky, something else would have killed my marriage eventually. I don’t know, career issues, money issues, issues about wallpaper or pasta sauces or sitcoms. Something would have gotten us. It was preordained. Do you know why? Because romantic love always dies. Absolutely one hundred percent of the time.”

  Kyra seemed genuinely stunned by this statement. “Certainly not all marriages end in divorce. Some people do stay together.”

  “Together? Yes. In love? Absolutely not. You show me two people who have been together for any length of time and still claim to be in love and I’ll show you two people who are faking it.”

  Kyra had the water glass in her hand through this entire tirade. Now she put it down. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  Did he really believe it? Chris gave himself a moment to consider the thought. “Yes, I do really believe it.”

  Kyra raised her eyebrows. “Then what are we doing here?” she said softly, clearly hurt.

  Chris realized, too late, how absurd this all must have sounded to Kyra. She didn’t know him well enough to know where this eruption was coming from. She didn’t know any part of his story beyond what he’d spat out in the last couple of minutes. He also realized—again, too late—that that his message wasn’t the kind of thing a blind date—or any kind of date for that matter—would be interested in hearing.

  “I’m sorry; I’ve had a bad few days. I didn’t mean to go off like that.”

  Kyra took her napkin from her lap and placed it on the table. “It sounds like this has been in your head for a little more than a couple of days.”

  Chris wanted to argue the point, but then realized he was just putting off the inevitable. There was nothing in his limite
d collection of dating skills that would help him fix this, and even if he did, things would just fall apart on the next date.

  “I was having a really nice time tonight,” he said, resigned. “Sorry I went postal on you.”

  Kyra pushed back her chair. “Feel what you’re feeling, Chris. I’m just afraid that what you’re feeling doesn’t connect with where I’m going right now.”

  She stood and left the restaurant. Chris stayed, declining coffee and dessert, but ordering another glass of wine. It was a little incredible that he was capable of finding new ways to blow it with women.

  Things really would have been so much better—for Kyra as well as himself—if he’d spent the night asleep on the couch instead.

  15

  “So, Dad, even though you don’t do genetic engineering anymore, you still keep up-to-date with what’s going on, right? I mean, you still read scientific journals and all that stuff, don’t you?”

  Chris and Becky were washing pots and pans after dinner. Feeling the need to conjure up something festive to reverse their moods, Chris had decided they would make an elaborate Mexican meal together. The food was delicious, though Becky didn’t eat all that much. The downside was that it left a mountain of pots and pans.

  “Yeah, of course I do. You know how I love that stuff.”

  Becky dried the tortilla press and put it back in the cupboard. “That means you’re still pretty sharp and upto-date and could probably call your scientific skills right back up if you had to, right?”

  Chris washed a cast-iron skillet and handed it to his daughter. “Yeah, why? Have you found a new job for me?”

  “Sorta.”

  Chris turned off the faucet and cocked an eyebrow toward Becky. He’d never discussed his unhappiness with his job with her. “Sorta?”

  “Don’t think I’m insane, but what would you think about coming to Tamarisk with me tonight?”

  Chris’s stomach fluttered. “Come to Tamarisk?”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. They’re having a problem with plants and you’re a plant expert. Makes sense to try, doesn’t it?”