by Nia Anderson
"It’s okay. We all have people in our past that we’re embarrassed to have dated. I know I have my share of them."
Ryan stopped twiddling with his phone then. "Sophia, right now the only person who is an embarrassment to me is you."
***
Grace drove in an angry daze all the way back to her apartment. If it weren’t for the term paper she had to finish she probably would have turned the car around and went back to give Ryan a piece of her mind. How dare he misrepresent the adoptive parents like that! Just because he was trying to forget they ever existed, it didn’t mean they weren’t acknowledging him.
Grace came to a stop at a red light. She pulled down her sun visor and removed a picture she kept hidden there. It was a picture of her with Ryan the summer before their senior year. That had been the happiest time of her life. Grace crumpled up the picture and threw it on the floor behind her.
Chapter nine
Ryan was fiddling with the video camera when Sophia came out of his kitchen and sat down in front of him.
"I changed my mind. I don’t think you should make the documentary," Sophia said as she watched him.
"Why not?" Ryan didn’t look up from what he was doing.
"Because this is over. You’re not a donor, Grace has gone back to wherever it is she dwells, and…" Sophia stopped talking when she saw the effect her words were having on Ryan.
Ryan and Sophia had been arguing non-stop ever since he’d had lunch with Grace almost two weeks ago. Sophia had accused Ryan of lying to her and making up reasons why he had to spend time alone with Grace. Ryan had explained, until he was blue in the face, that this situation with Matthew and Grace was a sensitive one and that there was no reason for Sophia to be involved.
To that, Sophia had said that she was involved in everything that Ryan was involved in because he was a part of her and she a part of him.
That statement had caused Ryan to begin to assess his relationship with Sophia. Truth was, he didn’t feel as invested in her life as she obviously felt invested in his. The only family of hers that he’d met was her brother Derek, who always had one made up crisis after another. Sophia seemed to thrive on the drama in Derek’s life, and when there wasn’t any, the two happily created it.
Sophia, on the other hand, had made it her sole mission in life to find out as much about Ryan as possible. After dating for less than three weeks, she had phoned his mother to get his life story. Being the old-fashioned woman that she was, Ms. Stewart did not divulge any information about Grace or Matthew. She felt that it was Ryan’s place to tell.
And Ryan had told Sophia about Matthew. It was prior to them starting a serious relationship. Sophia had made a snide remark about teenagers with babies and Ryan had said that he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant when he was sixteen.
Sophia had been in shock, but she quickly stated that her remarks mainly related to teen mothers – that they often got pregnant to trap guys into staying with them. Ryan had told her that wasn’t the case in his situation but Sophia clearly didn't want to believe it.
Sophia could see Ryan beginning to distance himself from her. Last night she’d brought up the issue of them moving in together. Again, Ryan had avoided giving an answer.
"What are you doing today?" Sophia snuggled up close to Ryan. He shook her off of him and began cleaning the lens on his camera.
"Working on this documentary,” he answered.
"Well why don’t you wait on that. Let’s do something together. Just the two of us."
"Can’t."
"Why not? We haven’t done anything fun in a really long time, Ryan."
"Because I already called my mom and I have plans with her."
"Oh…what are you going to do with her?"
"Have lunch."
"Well can’t I come? Your mom loves me, and I haven’t seen her in so long."
"Not this time. She needs to talk to me about something. I think she’d feel better if it were just me."
"Is something wrong?"
"I don’t think so."
Ryan offered as little information as possible. He knew he was technically lying by omission, but it would have been impossible to get out of the house if he’d told Sophia what he was really up to.
Ryan was appreciative of the reprieve his mother’s retirement apartment offered him from Sophia. To say that she had been suffocating for the last few days would have been an understatement. He knew the issue of Grace made her uncomfortable, but that was her own problem.
Grace was a sizable part of Ryan’s past and if Sophia wanted to play a part in Ryan’s future, then she would just have to accept that. Grace would always be the mother of his first child…nothing could change that.
A warm feeling crept over Ryan as he had that last thought. He shook it off as he pulled into a vacant parking space near his mother’s black sedan.
Ryan knocked but didn’t wait for his mother to answer the door before he walked in. It was just something he did to alert her to his presence so she wouldn’t be startled when he entered the house.
"Hi, Mom,” Ryan greeted her with a hug and a kiss.
Ms. Stewart looked behind Ryan as if waiting for Sophia to leap out. "Where’s Sophia?"
"She couldn’t come this time," Ryan fabricated. "It’s just me. Is that okay?"
"Of course." Ryan’s mom gave him a sly grin. It was no secret between her and Ryan that she didn’t care much for Sophia. "So what’s this all about? You said you needed to film me for something? Is this going to be on television?"
"No, this is for me, Mom. I’m going to interview you, but I don’t want you to tell me what you think I want to hear. I want you to tell me the truth…about how you feel…how you felt."
"About what?"
Ryan didn’t answer. Instead he readied the camera and sat down across from his mother.
"Don’t sit on my coffee table!" she admonished him.
Ryan moved over to a chair and pulled it in front of his mother. He turned on the camera and pointed the microphone at her.
"Okay, Mom, tell me what you were thinking the day I told you Grace was pregnant."
Ms. Stewart frowned at the question for a moment. She wasn’t expecting that this was what Ryan wanted to talk about, especially since she’d had such a hard time getting him to discuss it in the past.
"Oh…well…I was scared and disappointed…very disappointed. I didn’t want to see you become a statistic…or Grace…that girl was…she had a lot going for her. I didn’t want to see a baby ruin her future…or yours."
"That explains the disappointment…what was the fear about?" Ryan asked.
"Well, it was the same. I wanted you to have a future. And…" His mother hesitated.
"What?" Ryan prompted her.
"You and Grace…she brought out the best in you. Your grades were up, I got way fewer calls from the principal, and you were involved in things at school…I stopped worrying about you so much. I knew the stress of a baby might be too much for you…and it was."
"Mom, I was seventeen years old, and you said you weren’t going to help me. What was I supposed to do? Grace said her dad was going to kick her out."
"I said I didn’t want to help you. I didn’t say I wouldn’t."
"No. You said you wouldn’t."
"So it was my fault that you began drinking and almost killed yourself?"
This wasn’t what Ryan had in mind when he’d started this project. He thought his mother would give him the warm and fuzzies about what it was like for her and then he’d move on to the present. He didn’t intend to re-open old wounds.
"Forget it. Maybe this was a mistake." Ryan got up to shut off the camera.
"Ryan, sit,” his mother commanded him before he got a chance. "You always do this. When things get a little rough, you run."
"I’m not running. I just didn’t come here to argue with you."
"So what if we argue. What’s it going to hurt? You still love me, I still love you, right?"
"I know, Mom, but…"
"But nothing. We haven’t talked about this for years and I think it’s time. Don’t you?"
Ryan sighed in defeat and sat back down. He knew the tables had turned. Now his mother would be interviewing him.
"Of course I would have helped you, Ryan. I wouldn’t have made you live on the street. You know that. How could you have thought that?"
"Honestly, I was more concerned with what Grace’s dad was going to do to me. I thought that if I showed him I could hold down a job, and school, and taking care of Grace…that maybe he wouldn’t think that we were such screw-ups. That’s all Grace really wanted: for her dad to be proud of her…I ruined that for her so I was just trying to fix it."
"Ryan, this was something that you and Grace got yourselves into together. You can’t accept all the blame yourself."
"Mom, I’m a big boy now, you said it yourself. I can’t sit here and pretend that it wasn’t mostly my fault. You know all that stuff you said about Grace bringing out the best in me? Well that was all at her expense. She took time out of her schedule to study with me. If there was one thing Grace didn’t need, it was a study partner…especially one with half her GPA. And I was involved at school because her dad hated me and it was a way to spend time together without him giving us a hard time."
"And you didn’t like it at all?"
"Of course I did, but I never would have known that if it hadn’t been for Grace. Hell…sorry, I mean, heck, she’s the one that got me interested in pursuing television and production as more than a hobby. Before her I wanted to be a musician."
Ryan and his mother both laughed at that statement. Ryan attempted to take control of the interview.
"So if you had it all to do over again, it’s 2007 and I’m telling you for the first time that Grace and I are going to be parents…what would you do?"
"You know what," Ms. Stewart began as if she hadn’t heard Ryan’s question. "The day you guys told me Grace was pregnant, you told me that you loved each other. Do you think that was true?"
"I thought we did, yeah."
"You thought you did or you did? Which is it?"
"The problem wasn’t me loving Grace, Mom. The problem was Grace loving me. She didn’t after all."
Ms. Stewart sat back as the realization hit her. "Oh…and all this time I thought it was you who ended everything."
"Nope."
"Why didn’t you tell me?"
"Because it was high school and that’s where I left it."
Suddenly the entire idea of the documentary seemed ludicrous and Ryan didn’t want to do it anymore. What was the point? There was no way he’d ever sit through watching it and he certainly didn’t want anyone else to see it. Maybe its only purpose was to clear the air with his mother, after all these years. He could handle that.
"I’ve got to get going, Mom." Ryan started to get up.
"Wait, I have one more question for you,” she urged.
"I’m the one who was supposed to be interviewing you."
"I know, but I’m curious to know, if you had it to do all over again, what would you have done differently?"
Ryan didn’t hesitate to answer, "I would have supported Grace in her decision to keep the baby…she really wanted to and now I know we probably should have."
"I don’t think you made a mistake in giving up the baby for adoption. It was a wise choice. A hard one, I’m sure, but a wise one nonetheless."
"I thought that, too, at first. But it’s been years, Mom, and I still have just as hard a time with it now as I did then. Aside from the fact that I messed everything up, back then, I have to deal with the fact that now…I don’t know, maybe Matthew wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for me. The only thing that gets me through is that I was such a screw-up that he has to be better off without me…even if it means he doesn’t have Grace either."
"Ryan, you can’t believe…"
"Mom, I have to get to work so…" Ryan cleared his throat. All of a sudden he’d gotten very emotional. "I’ll come back later to get my camera and stuff. I don’t have time to pack it up."
"Yeah, okay." Ms. Stewart tried to hug Ryan as he hustled out of the apartment but he was too quick for her. He hurried through the door and shut it behind him. His mother was left alone…with the videotape.
Chapter ten
"What are you doing?" Morgan asked as she entered Grace’s bedroom.
"Purging. There's way too much junk in here. It's driving me nuts,” Grace said as she tossed a shirt over her shoulder.
"What is all this stuff?" Morgan crinkled her nose at the out-of-date fashion that adorned the floor. "Is that a picture from prom?"
"I don’t know. I’m not actually looking at the stuff. That would take forever."
Morgan gasped when Grace said that. "You might throw something important away!" she began going through Grace’s spoils.
"See, look." She held up a picture of Grace and Ryan. They were at a restaurant and were making funny faces at the camera. "You can’t get rid of this."
"Throw that away. No, tear it up, then throw it away,” Grace ordered.
"Grace," Morgan sighed. "You love this picture."
"I do not love it. Look at me in that picture. I look horrible."
"I think you look cute."
Grace didn’t bother to respond. She simply removed the picture from Morgan’s grip and added it to her trash pile.
"I think you’re making a mistake. You’re going to regret this, Grace."
"I am not. I should have done this a long time ago. The sooner I completely purge Ryan Stewart from my life, the better. Because if I don’t, a few years from now, I’ll be going through this all over again," Grace was angry. "This always happens to me. Ryan is like a magnet that draws me back to the low points of my life. I can’t keep going there."
"If I remember correctly, you told me that Ryan was a highlight of your life."
"Morgan, please. Just…let me do this, okay? I need to do this."
"Fine, but on one condition. I want all those pictures. You’ll never have to see them again, but please don’t throw them away."
"Oh please. Like you still have pictures of your exes."
"I have a few…mostly of Dylan."
Grace knew that wasn’t true. Under no condition would Morgan have kept pictures of Dylan, her on-again-off-again boyfriend for most of her young adult life. Despite that, she didn’t argue. Instead she handed a box of photographs to Morgan and stated that she never wanted to see them again. As long as they were out of her sight that was fine with her.
"I have to ask, though," Morgan put the pictures aside, "Why’d you bother to bring all this stuff with you? It’s all, like, ten years old."
"I didn’t want to leave it at home. I thought it would be of some use to me,” Grace answered.
Morgan decided not to press for more information. She watched Grace for a little while longer before suggesting the two go out on the town. After all, Thursday night was a huge party night.
Grace surprised Morgan with her answer. "I can’t. I have a date,” Grace said.
"With who?"
"Marshall."
"The stalker?" Morgan could not believe her ears.
"He’s not a stalker. Just an oven-enthusiastic friend."
"Grace, this is the guy who bought you lingerie after your first date,” Morgan reminded her.
"He knew it was my favorite color." Grace made an excuse.
"What about that shrine he made of you? He’d been watching you for months."
"He’s an art major. He said I inspired him."
"What about the self-inflicted tattoo of your name on his forearm? He used a razor blade."
Grace stopped what she was doing and looked down at the mess she had created around her. Then she looked over at Morgan.
"I forgot about that,” she admitted.
"I need to save you from yourself. Come on. Let’s get out of here." Morgan pulled Grace out of the mire�
�literally.
Not able to talk Grace into going to a bar, Morgan and Grace decided to take in a movie and a dessert at a local bakery.
"This has to be better than a date with Marshall,” Morgan gloated after the movie.
Grace didn’t say anything. She was silent as she walked next to her friend. She watched her feet as they walked to the car. Slew-footed is what her father always called her. While she was taking in the position of her feet, she noticed her too-small ankles and her knobby knees. And of course, ever since high school, the little pooch of her belly that always threatened to dip over her the top of her jeans.