Always Something There to Remind Me

by Beth Harbison

  I looked into his eyes and felt better. “I appreciate it.”

  He smiled, and everything about him was warm. “Good. You pain in the ass.”

  We both laughed and sat down on the couch, where we passed the rest of the evening companionably. No arguments, no problems, no passion, no steam … just … peace.

  And I had to wonder if I was foolish in even wondering if that was enough.

  * * *

  When I was a kid, my friends and I used to hang out at Montgomery Mall and go to Woolworth’s to buy Village Naturals beer shampoo, Maybelline Kissing Potion, Bonne Bell Lip Smackers (they were $2.50 then for the big size), and all the other products we saw advertised in Tiger Beat, Teen, and Seventeen that promised to make us more beautiful and irresistible to boys.

  The mall has changed quite a bit in the past thirty years; Woolworth’s is gone, as are Waxi Maxi’s Record Shop, Peoples Drug Store, i Natural Cosmetics, the Magic Pan, and the Roy Rogers fast food restaurant. Now there’s California Pizza Kitchen, Ann Taylor, Steve Madden, Coach, and Nordstrom. It’s gone from a typical seventies suburban hangout to a pretty high-end shopping galleria.

  And for her sixteenth birthday, Nordstrom Café was where Amy decided she wanted me to take her and Cam for lunch.

  Nordstrom Café is awesome, I’m always surprised how much I like the food there, but Amy is not a fool—she knew if she got me into Nordstrom, she would leave with a nice bagful of things from the Brass Plum area. Cam did too. Look, I can’t wear most of that stuff myself anymore, but it is fun to buy it.

  So after a small shopping extravaganza, we made our way to the café with our bags and sat down in a big round booth that had enough room for us and our purchases.

  “I’m totally wearing this blue shirt to school tomorrow,” Cam said, stirring her tomato soup with a crust of bread.

  “Wait, the blue shirt?” The blue shirt was kind of low in the front. It was for nighttime. Or maybe for someone older. Why had I allowed her to get that blue shirt? “That’s not really appropriate for school.”

  “It is if you want Mason Bindeman to notice you,” Amy said with a giggle.

  “Who? Mason who?” It sounded like a soap opera name.

  “Bindeman,” Cam said, with a touch of exaggerated patience. “He’s a senior. I have, like, two weeks to make an impression before he’s gone forever.”

  “Oh. I see. And I just purchased an incredibly low-cut shirt to help you achieve that.”

  She smiled and reached over to pat my arm. “Thank you, Mommy.”

  “You were taking advantage of my momentary lapse in maturity.”

  Cam nodded. “I’ve learned to spot those and get while the getting’s good.”

  “And you were complicit in this,” I said to Amy, remembering how she’d pointed out the cute little pastel cardigans they had hanging on a rack near the dressing room.

  Amy smiled. “Did I do something wrong?”

  I sighed. This was an argument for another day. Tomorrow, to be specific. Not now. “So who is Mason? Wasn’t it some guy named Phillip last week?”

  “Ugh, he is such a jerk.” Cam rolled her eyes. “We went out for, like, ten minutes and he expected me to totally give it up.”

  “He expected—”

  “She didn’t,” Amy said quickly, and suddenly I wished Rick were here to mediate this conversation.

  “Well, duh, that’s my point,” Cam said. “If he can’t understand why I might want to wait a little bit longer, then forget it.”

  “How much longer?” I found myself asking.

  Cam leveled a gaze of pity on me. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”

  All right, if my mother had asked the same question of me at the same age, what would I have said? At sixteen Nate and I were seriously hot and heavy together wherever we could find a little privacy. It was a wonder I’d never had a pregnancy scare. No matter what happened during the day, or even during the night, I always knew that at the end of it, there would be no stresses, no Real Life issues, no big problems—at the end of every night the only thing that was looming was the fact that we were going to have steaming hot sex.

  And it occurred to me, at this inopportune moment, that I really missed that.

  Amy must have misinterpreted the look on my face, because she gave a shout of laughter and said, “Ohmigod, Erin, she’s totally kidding!”

  I looked at Cam and could tell, I knew right down in my heart, that that was the truth. She wasn’t anywhere near the same place I’d been at her age. My daughter—and Amy, her best friend and potentially my future stepdaughter—was not emotionally and physically entangled with anyone, much less one guy who, two years into a seriously intense relationship, could dump her and leave her to twist herself into some damaged version of herself. A version that would take years to make right.

  If, indeed, she could ever do it.

  Fortunately, Cam and Amy were on such a shopping and eating high that they didn’t pay much attention to my lagging reaction, so I was able to sit back and watch them, incredibly glad for the knowledge that they were going to be all right in a way I never would be.

  To tell the truth, I envied them more than a little bit. They were so pure, it was obvious just looking into their eyes that they had never known even an inkling of the agony of that particular heartbreak.

  Someday they would, of course. Everyone goes through it, at least to a certain extent, don’t they? But watching these children talk a mile a minute and laugh so hard they couldn’t breathe filled me with both happiness and melancholy.

  How different would I be, if I’d never met Nate? Might I have had a normal dating life like Cam and Amy did, flitting from one guy to the next, never getting too serious or too invested in one while I was still so young? Who would I be if I hadn’t endured the heartbreak of losing Nate and losing that part of myself that was built around him?

  There are philosophical people out there—Jordan probably among them—who would argue that it was all important to making me the person I am today. And I guess that’s true; what I went through definitely did contribute to who I am today.

  But the thing no one understands when they say that is that I honestly think I might be a better person if I hadn’t gone through that. Less neurotic, less afraid, more open to both people and experiences.

  “Mom!”

  I don’t know how long she’d been trying to get my attention. That was probably just the second time she’d called me, but I’d been so lost in my melancholy that it really felt like I was being sucked back into my body from some weird astral travel. “Sorry, what?”

  “Where were you?” Cam asked, and the look in her eye told me she’d picked up on the fact that it was more than just your usual run-of-the-mill distraction.

  “Actually,” I said, remembering something I’d heard a long time ago about telling as much truth as possible rather than telling a flat-out lie, “I was thinking about when I used to come to this mall as a kid. Just about your age, in fact.” There was a rainy afternoon Nate and I had come—I can’t remember why now—but later that night his friend had died in a car accident after they’d all gone to a party. I tried to push the thought out of my head. “It was pretty different here then,” I concluded lamely.

  “It’s so weird that we’re hanging out in the same mall you used to come to,” Cam said, if not oblivious then at least losing interest in my nostalgia. Thank God.

  “My grandmother is always talking about how different the town my dad grew up in is,” Amy said, taking a crunch of her garlic bread. “All I know is that if that dinky Maine town was as boring today as it was when he grew up there, I’d go crazy every time I had to visit!”

  “You know,” I said, seizing the opportunity to keep us on a new subject, “you’re probably right. Rick’s told me about it. No malls, just a little drugstore and an outpost of Sears. You’d definitely hate that now.”

  “There wasn’t even a traffic light,” Amy said to
Cam. “You know how the joke is that a town’s so small there’s just one light?” She shook her head. “There wasn’t even that.”

  At the moment, that little lakeside town in Maine sounded idyllic to me, but there would be no point in saying that to the girls. Instead I just nodded and sipped my Pellegrino.

  Soon they were off on another subject, and I tried to keep my attention on the conversation, even though part of me was lost in the past.

  That’s when I realized that part of me would probably always be lost in the past. That just seemed to be my personality: I was the one who couldn’t stand change, who could miss something as innocuous as a bedspread if it was suddenly gone after a year of use. No wonder I was thinking of Nate so much now—someone was offering to put a new bedspread on me and it was making me think of the ones that had been there before.

  Particularly that first one. Maybe with a pale blue gingham pattern that was soft and neat and homey and orderly all at the same time.

  So maybe it wasn’t Nate I missed at all, so much as the firstness of him, and the sad fact that I’d never gotten a chance to say good-bye before he was hauled off to Goodwill.

  I missed the idea of him more than he himself.

  That was probably it.

  Or at least I felt fractionally more comfortable when I told myself that.

  Chapter 9

  October 1986

  “Pete Hagar has the hots for you,” Theresa said to Erin at lunch.

  Erin looked up from her food. They called it “Benson Hash” and she wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Some sort of chopped mystery meat. Possibly with onions involved. “Says who?”

  “Says him,” Theresa said triumphantly. “I asked him during history.”

  “Oh, my God, did you tell him I said he was cute?” Color flooded hotly into Erin’s cheeks. Yeah, she thought Pete was cute. Everyone did. He was new and seemed normal and drove a cool car. All three of those things were rare at Benson Prep.

  “Relax, no.” She looked like she was lying. “I just asked him, hypothetically, if he’d like to go to the park with us on Sunday. And at first he said no, so then I said, ‘Well, do you want to go to the park with us on Sunday if Erin is going?’ and he was, like, ‘Yes, I love the park’ so…”

  “Really?” Erin looked across the room to where Pete was eating. For a moment their eyes met, then she looked down. “Shit, he just caught me looking at him.”

  “Good.”

  “Good what?” Jordan asked, slipping up to the table behind them. She’d just had a conversation with the headmaster about why she didn’t think she should be forced to say a prayer aloud before lunch, since every day one person was asked to lead grace and all the prayers were specific to God and Jesus, whom Jordan was just not that into. “What’s going on?”

  “Pete Hagar,” Theresa said.

  “Oh.” Jordan nodded and sat down in front of her plate of meat. “This is gross.”

  “The mashed potatoes are okay,” Erin volunteered, adding more butter. “And the rolls.”

  “I wish we could bring our own lunch,” Jordan said.

  “If you can’t bring your own God, you can’t bring your own lunch.” Erin laughed. “But maybe you should have a talk with the headmaster about that anyway. Did you get anywhere?”

  Jordan shook her head. “He just said it was only symbolic and that I shouldn’t worry so much about it.” She rolled her eyes. “Really helpful. But I don’t have to recite it anymore.”

  “Well, that’s pretty much what you wanted, right?” Theresa asked.

  “It works.”

  “So he asked for your number,” Theresa said to Erin.

  “Who?”

  “Pete,” Jordan supplied. “Come on, you know how Theresa works. She doesn’t do things halfway.”

  “He did?” Erin’s stomach went on edge. “Seriously?”

  “Yes!”

  “But … Nate!” She just couldn’t bear to think about Nate. Pete was cute, she was kind of interested, but she didn’t want to hurt Nate or give him up. And, unfortunately, there was no way she could just put him on hold—freeze him like some scene from Bewitched—and come back if she wanted to.

  This could be the end for them.

  “Nate will get over it!” Theresa waved a forkful of mashed potatoes, then popped them in her mouth.

  “I don’t know.…” Jordan looked concerned. “Poor Nate.”

  “Ugh, don’t say that!” Erin objected.

  “You just did!”

  Guilt tightened around her chest. She didn’t want to make Nate feel bad. But, jeez, they never went anywhere anymore, never did anything in particular apart from hanging out at houses (hers, his, Theresa’s, Jordan’s). She was only going to be a teenager once, right? She wanted to know what it was like to be a normal teenage girl, with dates and everything, particularly since she was going to such a tiny, weird private school.

  She had to grab normality wherever it presented itself.

  And if Nate wasn’t interested enough to try and keep her by treating her like he valued her, why should she just sit around and give up her youth on him?

  “So did you give it to him?” she asked Theresa, determined to ignore Jordan’s concerned looks. “My number, I mean.”

  “Of course!”

  Erin met Pete’s eyes again, and this time she smiled. He smiled back.

  It was a very nice smile. Good, white teeth.

  She was all about good teeth in guys. A great smile could make up for a lot of other flaws.

  “Good,” she said, raising her chin defiantly. She could do whatever she wanted. She didn’t need to feel guilty! She was only sixteen, for God’s sake!

  Suddenly some small part of her felt an uncomfortable question wedge its way into her mind. Was she stupid to be spending so much time during these, her prime teen years, with just one guy? Yes, she loved Nate, but how could she know if it was real love, the kind that was supposed to last forever? She had nothing to compare it to. Things with Nate were so comfortable—wasn’t “in love” supposed to be a constant thrill, pounding heart, quickening of the breath?

  Maybe she wasn’t “in love” so much as she “loved.”

  Because that was one thing she knew for sure: she loved Nate.

  For just a moment she sank into that feeling. She loved him. He did make her heart pound a lot of the time. She did catch her breath still when she saw him. Sometimes. She didn’t ever want things to be any different than they were now. But maybe that was just the problem—maybe she really needed to get out and see what else was out there so she didn’t someday have regrets that would last forever.

  Maybe the only way she could have forever with Nate was if she had now with a few other dates.

  “Then I hope he calls.” And she would ignore the nagging guilt and apprehension that already played at her psyche.

  * * *

  They dated for exactly a month.

  She did have the decency to be honest with Nate about it in advance. She told him she wanted to date someone else, though the feeling she really had was that she wanted to be able to date someone else and see if it was good while still having the same thing going with Nate. There was no way to phrase it that way, of course, but they were so close that, in truth, she couldn’t imagine not being close to him no matter what happened.

  Nate was a constant in her life.

  Surely he’d always be a constant in her life. Though it had been hard to ignore the deep pain in his eyes. He might have understood her need to try something else, but he didn’t like it. It hurt him.

  She didn’t want to hurt him.

  But she needed to get out there and date a little, didn’t she? How could she say she wanted to marry Nate if she never even knew what it was like to be with someone else?

  She couldn’t!

  And Pete was a perfectly nice guy. Yes, she had to pretend to like heavy metal at first and she couldn’t really play her mix tapes in his car like she could in Nate’s be
cause his tastes ran more toward hard rock. But mostly she struggled with a matter of him never quite feeling familiar, the way Nate did.

  She gave him a chance, she thought. A month was long enough to start to get used to someone. Or, alternatively, to see if you started to feel weirder with him.

  In this case, she began to feel weirder with him.

  Plus, she was in constant touch with Nate. It was like they were still together, really, but he was turning away and pretending not to notice when she went out with Pete.

  As a result, she felt like Nate was still her boyfriend and Pete was, increasingly, a kind of boring friend with a cool car who paid for her dinner out and movies and stuff.

  Finally one night after they went to see a movie, she faced the fact that what she was doing wasn’t fair to him or Nate, and she wasn’t really having any fun at it herself. So she had A Talk with Pete in the car when he brought her home.

  “I don’t think we should go out anymore,” she said, when he pulled the car to a stop in front of her house.

  He looked shocked. “Why?”

  How could he be shocked? At first she’d let him kiss her, but she hadn’t even done that for almost two weeks! “Well”—she couldn’t tell him there was someone else, especially the Someone Else who had been there first, because that was just too insulting—“I just don’t really want to go out with anyone right now.” It was a limp lie, but not the first one she’d told and it wouldn’t be the last. She could only hope he’d let her off the hook with it.

  “Is there another guy?” he asked. Bingo! “Are you going to go out with Bennett?”

  Bennett Laraby was the school Bad Boy and, yes, cute, but not someone Erin would ever go out with. “Absolutely not!” she said with complete conviction. “No way. It’s really just me. Don’t take it personally.”

  He gave a little scoff. “Kind of hard not to.”

  Of course. She’d feel the same way, in his shoes.

  “It’s that other guy, isn’t it?” he said suddenly. “That guy you went out with before.”