So yes I had been terrified of repeating Mommy’s life. However, the pregnancy test at the free clinic had been negative. Nerves had most likely screwed up my period. After all I had been a virgin, frightened and eager at the same time. And a perhaps a little guilty too. Maybe love did cover a multitude of sins like the Bible said, but was that still true when the love itself was the sin?
It was supposed to have been a dream-come-true, making love to Luke, in my own room while Mommy had been working a double shift at the hospital. I had been a college graduate, it must be time. But maybe I had been afraid too, afraid of Luke being older and needing more than an adoring sidekick. His parents had been pressing him to go to graduate school, and he had already entered the professional world. Pretty soon we might not have anything in common anymore.
Besides it had been my turn to have what I heard about for years, and from Luke. It was to have been a new beginning for me, and for us. Instead it had become the end. Perhaps Seinfeld’s Elaine had been right. Sex could ruin the friendship.
I had yearned for Luke’s beautiful naked body glowing in the warm soft light of a candle; and in my bed, so that I could dream about his presence even after he was gone. Because even then I had known that the day would come when he would be gone. Then, like all the rest, I could take my place among the rejected.
So now Christina was among us too. In the end, as he had done to the rest of us, he had simply given her what she had wanted too only to take it away. I wondered if she were grateful anyway. I was. Although it had taken me a while to get there. To decide that it had been my fault because I had known better. In the reception line, on Luke’s wedding day, as he had been embracing Mommy but looking into my eyes over her shoulder, I had realized it. I lived with it still, a permanent mark of recrimination. I had asked for too much.
“Things didn’t work out for Robert and me,” I offered his mother as an explanation for my childlessness.
“Oh,” replied Mrs. Sterling. “You too? I’m so sorry, Rachel. It is the times I guess. But don’t worry, you’ll find happiness I’m sure.”
Assuming I hadn’t already, I thought defensively. I might still be in love with her son, I might always be, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t happy. Betty Sterling did not need to feel sorry for me.
“Do you have a business card?” Mrs. Sterling asked. “Maybe Luke could give you a call. You could have a little reunion. You two were such good friends, and he needs his friends now.”
TWO
Back at work, the rest of the afternoon I was in a kind of daze. Every time the telephone rang on my desk I was afraid it would be Luke, and when it wasn’t, every time I was disappointed, until I was on the edge of despair. Which was stupid really. He must be at work too. Mrs. Sterling might have a million errands to do. If Luke took the time to make a personal telephone call at all while he was at work, it would be to his girlfriend. I assumed he must have one. The Luke Sterling I remembered was kind of a ladies’ man, a real player truth be told, but not in a bad way. He had always had a conscience that was equal to his good looks.
Besides what could we have to say to each other beyond hello, how have you been? When people asked that question they usually didn’t mean it. The Luke I remembered also wasn’t much for small talk and neither was I. It had been more than twenty years. There was a reason why reunions were generally one-weekend events. Living in the past became pathological if you did it too long.
Somehow I managed to make it through the rest of my appointments for the day, but it was a struggle, and the clients who came to see me didn’t get their just due. Five o’clock could not come soon enough, and when it finally did I was dashing to my car before the long-hand on the office clock could make it to 5:01 or before Corrine could drop by for a chat.
I had made up my mind not to tell Corrine anything because she would surely make too much of it. Underneath her hard-ass-leave-them-on-the-battlefield exterior, my best friend harbored a fairytale romantic heart which she had no qualms about breaking as long as the sex was worth it. She’d have me looking Luke up on the Internet and friending him on Facebook.
When I got home I fed Tony-the-Tiger (T-T for short) and Agatha, my two cats, and then I made myself a cup of tea. I had no appetite for food. Luke Sterling had that kind of effect on me. In the first six months that I had known him I had lost fifteen pounds without even trying. Too constantly excited to eat, all kinds of food had gone to waste on my plate, including desserts. Luke had labeled me a picky eater, but I had simply been preoccupied. Hunger was no match for secret infatuation, and adoration, and love. But all of that silliness should be over and done with. I was too old for it. Even so, the tea cooled in my cup as I watched the telephone, waiting for it to ring. It didn’t.
I turned on the television and focused on the news. Traffic was backed up on I-30. A reporter flying over the freeway in a helicopter shouted his report over the whirling chopper blades. Somebody had been killed. Tonight somebody wouldn’t go home, and a typical day would now be a tragedy. Life was so random, unpredictable. Bad. Good. Grief. Happiness. Anytime anywhere. You couldn’t know the harvest, no matter what the season. Trend lines were more like wild roller coasters or rough jagged edges. They either made you throw-up or cut yourself.
Feeling a frenzy coming on I decided I had better make myself eat, so I made myself scrambled eggs and the food eventually helped. Why should Luke call me tonight, I asked myself again. Why should he call at all? I would probably never run into Mrs. Sterling again. I could find myself another Bath & Body Works to buy my Juniper Breeze.
When the telephone finally did ring it was Mommy calling for our nightly check-in chat. At first I suppressed the news about running into Mrs. Sterling and Luke’s divorce, opting to let her go first with her own news of the day. She gossiped about the hospital and I made all of the obligatory sounds of an involved listener.
“He’s such a pervert,” Mommy complained about one of the other lab techs who was having sex with another female lab tech and a hospital nurse too.
“Having two girlfriends doesn’t make him a pervert, Mommy,” I replied.
“It does if he’s married. And who said they were girlfriends?”
Mommy had matured into quite the good Christian woman with all that that entailed. Plus she had never seemed to trust men very much, and this male coworker of hers was not helping the Y-chromosome case. She had never married and no longer seemed inclined to even though there had been boyfriends. A couple of them had been in her life for long periods of time. One of them I had even called uncle. But I couldn’t recall any of them spending the night, and sooner or later the relationships had ended for one reason or another, which Mommy generally refused to talk about—at least to her daughter.
Mommy had also been really fond of Robert. She liked having him around to handle such things as home repair jobs and negotiating with auto mechanics. She had kept one of our wedding pictures hanging in her lab station at work until the divorce had been final. Fundamentally she believed in marriage, and she really didn’t want me to have a baby without a husband first, although as my reproductive clock continued to wind down Mommy was beginning to change her mind about even that. “Times have changed,” she had begun to say. “Women have more choices.” Sisters were doing it for themselves so the song went, and they were not ashamed to admit it, or to show it. Perhaps it was out of necessity.
“Guess who I saw today,” I started with my news when there was finally a lull in Mommy’s reports.
“Who?” she asked.
“Mrs. Sterling.”
“Betty Sterling?”
“Uh-huh. At Northside Mall.”
“Hmm. How long has it been?” she asked as if she really might be counting the time.
“Twenty years at least,” I supplied.
“Did she talk to you?” asked Mommy skeptically.
“Yes, Mommy, of course.”
“I’m surprised.”
“I was too. There she wa
s at the Bath & Body Works, with one of those little red baskets just like me.”
“Maybe she thought you were a clerk,” said Mommy.
“Oh Mommy,” I sighed.
“I’m serious. She wouldn’t be surprised at all to see you working in the mall. Did you tell her you’re a family counselor?”
“Mommy.”
“Some people don’t change.”
“She can be a little aloof sometimes,” I conceded.
“Sometimes?” exclaimed Mommy. “That nose of hers might as well be a balcony the way she looks down on people.”
One year Luke had invited (pleaded with) Mommy and me to the Sterlings’ Christmas party. Finally persuaded to go, Mommy had splurged for the occasion, buying both of us new dresses at Dillard’s Department Store, and a pretty crystal bowl as our gift to the Sterlings. When we had arrived at their house, Mommy had been embarrassed to park our Ford Escort out front, and the evening had slid downhill from there.
“Don’t you both look nice,” Mrs. Sterling had granted graciously in their gorgeous foyer with the marble floor. “Not everybody can wear that shade of red, Sally. You look just like a piece of candy. And Rachel, it’s so nice to see you in heels, dear. Good for you! High heels slim the calves.”
For the two hours that we had endured at the party, Mommy and I had clung to a corner together, feeling out of place, awkward, and embarrassed, in short miserable. All Mommy had done was fret over her dress.
“I knew I should have gotten the black one,” she had complained. “Everybody knows you’re supposed to wear basic black to these things.”
“It’s Christmas, Mommy,” I had attempted to console her. “Red is perfect.”
“Not this red. And it’s too short for a woman my age.”
“I think you look nice.”
“Like you would know,” Mommy had snapped. “I look like a piece of candy. And I can’t believe she talked about your legs like that. What does she think—that everybody wants to look starved to death?”
Luke had tried to make us feel welcomed and Mr. Sterling too, but the party had been large and they had had other guests to attend to. As we had been getting our coats, Luke had made his way back to us.
“You’re not leaving already, are you?” he had asked anxiously.
“I gotta to be at the hospital early in the morning,” Mommy had lied.
“But you don’t, Rachel,” Luke had replied. “Stay. I’ll take you home.”
Of course there had been no way I would stay and send Mommy home alone. And for us there had never been another Sterling Christmas party. Mommy still brought it up sometimes. She was not one to let things go.
“Mrs. Sterling told me to tell you hello,” I said to Mommy.
She was quiet.
“And she gave me some news about Luke,” I added.
“Oh?” Mommy perked up. “How’s he doing? He must have a dozen kids by now.”
Luke’s four children had come in rapid succession.
“They have just the four,” I answered Mommy now. “Luke’s divorced.”
“Divorced?”
“Yeah.”
“Humph. Mr. Right married wrong. Well I can’t believe that. Guess you can’t trust anything these days.”
“Lots of people do, Mommy. Get divorced, I mean.”
“Lots of people might. But according to his dear, sweet mama her only child is better than just people. And you used to think he was mister special yourself. They must have spent a million dollars on that wedding. Remember that ice sculpture of the dolphins. It was so over the top.”
“He moved back to Dallas,” I said.
“Oh? Do they still live in that big house on Swanson Street?”
I wasn’t really surprised that she still remembered their street.
“I don’t know,” I answered.” I guess. I didn’t ask.”
“Moved back in with his mama and daddy, huh? So he must be broke. That’s a lot of child support, I don’t care how rich you are, and they make them pay according to lifestyle. Judges can take everything. I’m not surprised Luke didn’t look us up. He’s probably embarrassed.”
I—we were a part of his past. It was probably best that he should remain a part of ours.
“Well Mommy, for all he knows I’m married after all.”
“So?”
“I’m just saying. It could be awkward.”
“Robert never tried to keep you from having friends, including male friends,” replied Mommy leaping to Robert’s defense as usual.
“I know,” I agreed.
“Luke could have gotten in touch with you if he wanted to. He knows where I work.”
That was true too, I thought as I rode the trend line downwards. It was a dose of reality, but it was only a dose, and tonight not enough for a cure. I could still hope.
After I said goodnight to Mommy and hung up the phone, I resumed the pointless vigil and practiced sounding sympathetic and supportive when—if—Luke told me about his divorce. It was important to sound reconciled about mine too. Regardless of what he said about Christina, I must not say anything bitter about Robert, which should be easy enough because I wasn’t bitter. I wanted Luke to believe that I had moved on, especially from him. Bruce Springsteen’s song about Glory Days was basically depressing.
Still it was permissible to be nostalgic within reason. So when I eventually began playing old CD’s that seemed okay. I would do it just for tonight. Tomorrow I would get myself together and get back to normal. And stay out of Northside Mall for a while.
With Lionel Richie’s greatest hits playing in the background, and T-T nestled in my lap purring contentedly, I allowed myself to remember. The way Luke had loved Richard Pryor, the way he could laugh so hard he would cry. The way his brow would crinkle when a text intrigued him or a professor fascinated him. The way he would dance with every girl at a party but always walk me back to my dorm first before he would do anything else. It had showed that he cared, even if it had stung a little being always left behind.
Choosing to be even more morose, I went into my bedroom closet and dug out my old Sony Walkman. In the same box I also kept a cassette tape that Luke had made for me, a tape he had labeled, Rachel’s Favorites, declaring it was for our road trips between Austin and Dallas. For these trips, Luke would drive and I would be assigned radio duty, which included deciding which cassette tapes to play, because he had had one of those fancy radio/tape decks installed in his apple red Trans Am.
“I wish you had something besides shake-yo’-booty stuff,” I had complained. “You, Lucas Sterling, lack the soul of a poet.”
“Hey!” Luke had replied. “I like poetry. I just want it to a beat.”
Josephine Garner “Lyrics, Luke,” I had schooled him. “The words have to stand on their own. Without a synthesizer.”
Rachel’s Favorites was ninety minutes of lyric-driven songs by the Isley Brothers and Dan Fogelberg, Anita Baker and Joan Baez, The Commodores and Barbara Streisand, LTD and Simon and Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder and Madonna, in other words just about every love song he had concluded that I had liked. I still liked them, even now, as Barry Manilow sang into my ears through headphones crumbling with age. I should buy a pair of ear buds for the player. Did they even make cassette tapes anymore? Or Sony Walkmen?
The telephone rang again and I reluctantly shut-off the player. How dare this caller interrupt my trip down memory lane I thought resentfully. The caller-id showed an area code and number that I didn’t recognize. Well at least it wasn’t Robert.
“Hello,” I answered, expecting some telemarketer to launch into a script word-for-word.
“Hello, Rachel.”
Luke.
THREE
St. Ives appeared to be one of those locations typically frequented by successful sophisticated urban professionals, the kind of place where they brewed their own beer and served bison burgers with sliced avocados and black beans. The kind of place Corrine would love. The kind of place Luke would
choose. I couldn’t begin to count all the new things, food, films, and people he had introduced me to. Being with him had always been a little intimidating, scary even. Were my clothes okay? What fork should I use? Remember the bread roll goes on the smallest plate. Don’t applaud in the middle of a symphony piece. Leave your politics at the door.
“Your mother thinks I’m ignorant,” I had once lamented to Luke.
“I think you’re great,” he had replied.
“You think I’m funny.”
“That too.”
But I had wanted to be more than his funny little sister, entertaining him, his family, and his friends with my working-class ways. Although I had never resented his many successes because there had been no reason to. He had never lorded it over me or anybody and merely taken it for granted that everybody was capable, everybody had potential. Discipline, determination could fix anything. In Luke’s world the playing field was always level. Everything worked out. Such was his world. He had probably worked hard on his marriage. He wouldn’t like being apart from his children.
“Hard work won’t fix everything, Luke,” I recalled telling him once.
“You don’t believe that,” he had replied.
Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap seemed simple enough except when it didn’t work out that way and somebody got screwed. And I had certainly seen a decent share of screwing.
The St. Ives’ large, curvy bar was built of exquisitely polished wood. Cozy leather booths, each with their own overhead light fixtures, lined the walls. Luke had also never pretended to prefer noble poverty to privileged prosperity. He was indeed his mother’s son. Mr. Sterling was the social climber in their family, having risen above a humble rural working class background by first becoming a teacher, then a prominent businessman and respected politician. Luke, coming late to his doting parents, had been expected to follow the abundant path they had levelly laid before him.
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