by Carr, Suzie
“Happy is the only way I know how to live,” she said. “I don’t allow in guilt, remorse, fear or anything that misaligns my sense of place in this world. I love being happy. I never want to give that up. I certainly don’t want to get in the way of your marriage. So, we have a choice. We can view this as the perfect arrangement or not.” She shrugged, arched her eye, and walked away.
I caught up to her and kissed her hard. I pushed us towards the bed and pressed against her, bearing all my weight and bearing no stops to my passion, to my desire for her, to this new intoxicating freedom to express myself without regret.
* *
The next morning, I drove us back to Rhode Island. Shawna sat shotgun and Grampa and Ruby sat in the backseat. When we crossed over to the Rhode Island border Grampa said to Ruby, “I’m glad we came.”
“Me, too.” She smiled and looked over at him.
A trace of serenity blanketed him.
“How are you feeling?” she asked him.
He stretched his gaze out over the trees edging the interstate. “I feel healed.”
“Healed?” she asked.
He rolled his eyes down to his lap, scrunched up his mouth. “I didn’t want to come. I vowed I would never return here. The place holds so many memories. First your grandma, and then Grace. I thought by leaving it all behind, I could find happiness elsewhere, beyond the wooden walls and the rolling fields. Then life just got dull. I feared going back and being stabbed with that fresh pain of them both leaving me again. Comfort swaddled me when I entered that warm foyer and ate that scrumptious breakfast and smelled the roaring fire. All of these years I ran away from the one source that could heal me, blaming it for my troubles.”
He reflected on the trees again.
“That was beautiful,” Ruby said. “I didn’t think it was possible, but I admire you even more now.”
“I missed out on a lot in life, because I refused to let go of these hurtful memories of losing Grace,” Grampa said.
“You’ve lived such a rich life.”
“I have. Though, I stopped just short of fantastic.”
“How so?” she asked.
“I couldn’t bear to sit in that living room, to cook in that kitchen, to greet one more guest without her there by my side. It hurt to smile. It killed me to mow the grass that at one time we used to sit upon and stare out with love and dreams as we looked beyond the maple trees and to the deep blue sky behind them. I couldn’t stand to sleep alone in that big empty bedroom anymore or sit and read a book. She permeated everything. So, I ran. Of course, that just caused the bruises in my soul to deepen and worsen. Over time, it just scarred over, and every once in a while it still itches, hurts, and aches. It’s a constant reminder of what I’d sold out on and hadn’t ever regained back. Girls take it from me. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t be afraid to live your lives.”
I looked back over to Shawna. She stared out the window and sniffled.
“Are you okay?”
She turned to me. “Just full of emotions right now,” she whispered.
Chapter Fifteen
Ruby
For the months that followed that special weekend, we had a blast together. We went hiking on the Cliff Walk in Newport, golfed at Fairlawn golf course, pigged out at Wright’s Dairy Farm, and made love to each other in the most curious of places. One time we did it in a broom closet at a restaurant. Another time, we did it in the back row of the movie theater to the background noise of Will Ferrell acting goofy. Once we stopped alongside a busy interstate and did it right there in the backseat of her CRV.
We cemented down a good routine. Nadia spent two weeks in Rhode Island, then she’d go back to visit her wife for three days and come right back to me. On the days she’d leave for Connecticut, I’d take off work and go travel to escape routine and keep myself in this healthy mindset. Sometimes, I’d end up in the mountains of New Hampshire, climbing the Lafayette Trail, other times, I’d take a train to New York City for the day to go shopping at Barney’s, and once in a while, I’d even venture to Canada and sit in a café in Quebec and listen to French Canadians speak with a pretty lisp to their voices. The nights before Nadia would return, I’d pace my condo searching for something to keep me occupied until the next day arrived when she would once again pull me into her arms under my warm blankets and tell me all about pottery and gardening and flowers. Her eyes would sparkle when she started telling me about the magic process of growing something out of nothing. She’d hold me tighter. She’d kiss my forehead more. She’d twirl her finger around my hair and talk about perennials and annuals and the power of plants in healing and well-being. Nadia was so smart.
I loved our arrangement. It worked. We indulged in a noncommittal relationship filled with sex and freedom. I dreamed up this girl. I asked the universe for someone just like her, down to the green eyes and smooth confidence at separation time.
She was unhappily married. I was single. We had great sex. Too perfect for words. Change any of that equation, and I’d end up a nauseous girl seeking an escape from the confines of what so many others spent their entire lives trying to force.
“Do you ever grow tired of hearing me speak?” Nadia asked one night after we just indulged in strawberry shortcakes and extra-large helpings of milk—the pure stuff, and not that watered-down skim crap.
I cuddled up to her bare chest and laid my head just above her breasts, resting my chin against her right nipple. “Sometimes words get in the way. But, not in your case. I could listen to you for years.”
“Well, how about you?” She kissed the top of my head and ran her fingers through my tangled bedhead. “Tell me about your secret passion.”
“I don’t have secrets. I live life right out in the clear. What you see is what you get.”
“Everyone has secrets.”
“Not this girl anymore. Secrets just keep us from moving forward and enjoying life, like with not telling my grampa about my feelings towards my mother. Now that we spoke, everything is so much better for me.”
Nadia kissed the tip of my nose. “Tell me what you loved most about growing up at The Rafters.”
“I loved meeting the new guests. Some traveled in from different countries. I could sit there for hours listening to them tell me stories about their lives in faraway places. Maybe my passion is travel. Maybe I should become a world traveler, doing massages in Milan and Paris and Sicily. Then I could take naps in the afternoon while others slaved away at their desk jobs. I could eat all sorts of foods. Imagine? Hmmm. Pasta in Italy, arepas in Colombia, dal in India. I love culture.”
“So we must travel one day.”
Nadia’s plan for a future we’d never have pricked me. “Yeah, definitely.”
“Where would you like to go first?”
“You’re such a dreamer.” I circled her belly button, sucked into its supple swirl, suddenly wishing I could kiss it. I began to move towards it, and she stopped me.
“You know I wish that could happen, don’t you?”
I continued on my journey around her skin. “Yeah, yeah. I told you, words get in the way. Let’s just have this moment together.”
Nadia pushed me away. “I have to tell you something.”
Her tone scared me. I met her eyes. “You secretly hate to travel?”
She groaned. “I have to meet with the lawyer tomorrow. He has news on her parole.”
I panicked. Neurons fired off in all directions. “It’ll be fine,” I said, being the supportive mistress. “Everything will be just fine.”
* *
The next day, off she went to her wife. She didn’t return for almost a week. When she did return, something had changed. She stiffened under my gaze.
“You’re different,” I said to her.
“I might’ve been wrong about Robby and Jessica.”
“Why?”
“I found out that Robby’s her AA sponsor. He’s also married, and he and his wife are both on the visiting list.”
Nadia tilted her head. “I thought she cheated on me.”
The blood drained cold through my veins. I saw our moments fleeting, ebbing away. Ringing echoed in my head. “So was I just a return volley on that one?”
She shook her head. “Of course not.”
I pined after her like a needy, whiny sap. “So what then?”
She gulped her Merlot. “I don’t know.”
I pulled at her. “Are you telling me we’re over?”
Nadia hugged herself and looked away. “These past few months I lived in ignorance about whether she was cheating, and I enjoyed the bliss of it. Now that I know the truth, I feel guilty.”
Her guilt caged me, backed into the corner. “I’m not here to complicate your life. I’d never do that to you.”
Nadia raised up her glass. “I know you wouldn’t.” She gulped it back again. “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
Don’t worry? How did I end up in this position? When did I allow her to turn me into someone who would worry? I gulped my Merlot, seeking its dark and mysterious power, willing it to come back to me. “You have to do what you have to do.”
“She rested her hand on mine. “Thank you for being so supportive. You are something incredible. I hope you know that.”
I just nodded.
We sat like two lost souls that night getting drunk at the lounge. I kissed her cheek and left her at the lobby entrance.
Nadia called me later on and apologized, citing the Merlot added to her sad mood. She promised the next day she’d be back to normal.
Normal didn’t come again.
She distanced from me emotionally and withdrew from sex, stating the guilt consumed her. She seemed fine with falling back into our friendship status. But me? No way. Somewhere between falling in love with her and sipping Merlot, I had turned into a sap who couldn’t tune into any other show but hers.
How did this happen?
I found myself suddenly waiting on her late night ‘friendly’ calls, and tossing and turning when they didn’t come. I found myself asking her when she’d travel back to Rhode Island and whether she’d have time to visit with me for a ‘friendly’ chat. She would answer vague in her sultry manner, keeping me guessing until the very hour.
The loneliness in this new unsettling freedom Nadia tossed at me hurt like a stab to the chest.
I started to question her more about Jessica. I tossed out questions about their future and what that future meant for our ‘friendship.’ She flung flimsy answers back at me, like let’s not worry about that until it happens.
I worried. I worried all the time. I feared the day she would stop calling, stop visiting, stop joining me, Shawna, and Grampa for pottery lessons, and stop being there for future overnight trips to The Rafters.
Then, one cold, snowy day, Nadia stopped by my massage oasis, popped her head in, and told me, “Jessica’s parole was approved. She’s coming home.”
We both stood there, jaws dropped, pale skinned and sad.
Just like that, discomfort took over, replacing the freedom I pretended to enjoy. A silent mourning now wedged itself between us for a loss for what would never come. A sinking gloom hit me, the likes that dragged me to my knees and stomped on my back. “I hate that you’re married.”
“I have to go and pack.” Nadia bowed her head and walked away.
I paced my massage room. Its potted-tree ‘walls’ closed in on me, clung to me, cut off my air. A man walked up and asked for a massage. I couldn’t even respond. I tore off out of the oasis and charged towards the elevators. I couldn’t let her go like this.
When Nadia opened her hotel door, I threw myself into her arms like some loving fool.
“Please don’t do this,” she whispered. “It’s hard enough.”
I looked up. Her eyes clenched onto mine and held me hostage. A sadness floated in them. The fine lines around them etched in an undeserved pain. I wanted her smiling, laughing, and enjoying herself.
I trailed the back of my hand down her cheek and jawline. She closed her eyes. Her lids fluttered. Her jaw loosened. Her shoulders relaxed. “What do you want?”
Nadia clasped her hand over mine and opened her eyes. “I want to be a good person.”
“You are a good person.”
She shook her head. “I wish things were different. I wish we would’ve met years ago. I wish I didn’t live in Connecticut and you didn’t live in Rhode Island.”
I closed in on her. I brushed her lips with mine. And the dance began. The sweet dance of two girls enjoying each other for what they could in that moment.
On her drive to Connecticut, Nadia called me. “I care about you. I hope you know that.”
I melted just like the first time she looked at me with love in her eyes. “So what happens now?”
Long pause. “Hmm,” she said.
I closed my eyes, and a rush of panic coursed through me. “Nadia?”
“I just need some time to sort all of this out. Right now I need to be there for her.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course. I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“So, you understand?” she asked.
I swallowed bitterness. “She needs you.”
“She does.” Nadia breathed heavily. “I’m so sorry.”
“No. Don’t apologize. I get it. I expected this day would come. I’m okay with it. You’re married. You have to be there with her.”
“I miss you terribly already,” she said.
I let her words sink in and swaddle my heart. “You take care,” I whispered and hung up. I spent the rest of the afternoon bawling in my massage oasis.
I hated this version of myself.
* *
Suddenly, I turned into an envious, snooping, ridiculous person, scrapping at anything that would save my future with her.
I snooped. I created a Facebook account for the first time just so I could gain access to her when I wanted to be in her arms. She friended me right away.
I snooped at every last picture of her. One of them of her at a bachelorette party dizzied me. She wore a white t-shirt, a black tie, and a garter belt. She was smoking a cigar, and her hair blew wildly as if she were sitting in front of a fan.
I refused to go into the photo album of her and Jessica. The one picture on the cover of the album freaked me out enough. Jessica was so fucking hot. They looked so happy together. Jessica’s lips rested on her smiling cheek. Nadia glowed with a bright halo bathing her in pure joy.
She knew I’d see this, and this didn’t faze her in the least bit.
I excelled at pretending that I didn’t care about anything but being carefree and flirty, in only a friendly way now of course.
I craved more from her now. I wanted to cuddle. I wanted to kiss. I wanted her to twirl my hair. I wanted to please her. I wanted her to ask me about my life. I wanted her to confess that she hated her wife. That she didn’t love her. That she was at least mad at her. But, she built her up to me, I surmised out of self-preservation, protecting her, falling victim to the very thing I had tried to avoid all of my life – a relationship.
I had become that girl.
I never thought I would be ‘that girl.’ You know, that girl who lived out of her car, borrowed money from her poor grampa, or fell in love with a married woman.
Yet, here I was, all of that and more.
That first night when I lay in my old bedroom with her, staring at the back of her head, I should’ve walked. Her hair fell in gentle waves over her tanned shoulders, spilling onto the mattress. I should’ve run away. I should’ve torn myself from her, gotten dressed, picked up my pocketbook, and gone to the other room at the other end of the hallway. Instead, I swept my leg around hers and inhaled her alluring scent. My inner voice screamed at me to back away. I ignored it. I justified that we somehow both deserved this moment, that we could control our emotions, that it was just sex between two l
onely women, and that we could fly away from this at any moment of our choosing, like two free birds in a wind tunnel.
This freedom caged me.
Chapter Sixteen
Nadia
Jessica sat on our couch for the first time in over a year and a half. She looked at me with apprehension, with sadness, with a desperate appeal to erase her mistakes so we could get back to living as we did before. Instinctively, I rushed to her side and comforted her. “You’re home now. You’re safe now. Everything’s going to get better from here on out.” I kissed the top of her head, and she fell into my embrace.
“Promise?”
I squeezed her tighter wanting to ease away her pain. “I promise.”
For her first three days, I planted myself in a pot of sunshine and happiness for her. I cooked her favorite meals, rented her favorite movies, and bought her flowers. I did everything I could to renew her spirit to what it used to be before the accident.
She was broken.
I arranged one elaborate plan after the other, trying to recapture her spirit. We shopped at Neiman Marcus. We ate caviar on a rooftop restaurant in Manhattan. We spoiled ourselves by taking in two Broadway plays. Yet, still, when she laughed something was missing. When she flirted, it didn’t seem sexy. When she passed people on the street, she didn’t flip her hair or sway her hips in the same seductive way she had before. Jail sheared off a part of her essence.
I feared I’d never get her back.
Then, one morning as we sipped coffee in the living room together, she looked up at me with that special, adoring look that always sent tingles down my spine. For a blink of a moment, hope rested in the spokes of her eyes. A monumental tingle zoomed through me. “There you are.”
The sparkle vanished. She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”