Luz, Rebound

by Jeania Kimbrough

  “Oh, no. Don’t worry. It’s nice. Different.”

  “So, how’ve you been?” He smiled, our eyes still sort of inspecting each other.

  “Okay. You?” I hugged my arms to my chest. My boobs had gotten bigger, too. I wondered if he noticed them.

  “Good.” He laughed.

  “So, this is a conference you’re going to?”

  “Yeah.” He started to tell me what he was doing professionally again. He’d told me some of it before on the phone, so I let myself zone out a bit to concentrate on the way the words flowed out between his lips and teeth. I felt myself blush as I remembered our first kiss. I couldn’t believe he was finally here, and I felt a little guilty over the thrill it gave me.

  He asked me questions about school: how many people attended Trinity, dorm life, what subjects I was taking, etcetera. As I responded, I started to feel anxiety creep into my thoughts again. Our conversation was skimming too much around the banalities of our everyday lives. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate his interest in how many girls were in the dorm, what my daily schedule was like, or whether my family was doing okay. Nor did I mind the chance to anchor him to a story or two about his colleagues and what sort of things he did when he wasn’t working in Broome. It just seemed that our conversation points were for people who were just getting to know each other, not us. Time was ticking away, and it was precious time spent on mundane items. If I could only talk, really talk, to him, like we used to when we had more time together before. I longed to confess how hard it had been to readjust to being back sometimes, and ask him if it was the same for him when he had come back from an exchange in high school. I wanted to tell him about Christie’s attempted suicide and all the weird feelings it brought up, but I agonized over how it would all sound if I didn’t have enough time to explain it. Then he would only worry about me, and I didn’t want him to do that. I was better than he’d ever known me to be, and I wanted to explain that as well. But…time was not on our side today. Soon three quarters of an hour flew by.

  “Would you like to go for a walk?” I asked, thinking in the back of my mind my dorm mates would soon be wandering in from dinner. I didn’t want them to see him, and most of all I didn’t want to waste a minute introducing him to anyone.

  “Sure.” He checked his watch.

  I went quickly to my room and grabbed my coat, confused about how carefully polite our conversation was with each other.

  Back out of the dorm I randomly pointed out Encanto Park and the student center from a distance, places kids usually frequented after dinner. Some would even come to the salon we were in to watch TV.

  “I would introduce you to some of my friends, and I will if we run into them, but since you only have two hours…” I let my voice trail off.

  “I am here to see you, Kara. Whatever you want to do.”

  I directed us toward the sports fields. Hardly anyone went there this late, plus it was still cold at night outside. Ben put on his sweater.

  “This is different from the school I went to an exchange on in Michigan back when I was in high school.”

  “How?”

  “It’s like a little village here. And your dorm mom seems like a busybody.”

  “Kinda, yeah.” I laughed. “She’s new this year. I don’t know her that well, but I am sure it is part of her job description.”

  We walked toward the football field.

  “Want to watch the sunset?” he asked. It was starting to come down.

  “Sure.”

  We climbed up the bleachers to the highest seats and sat down. The metal bench was cold and uncomfortable. I repositioned my jacket so I could sit more on its tail and put my hands in my pockets. Pink-and-orange swatches of sky painted the horizon line in front of us.

  “The sunset in the in this part of the world is so beautiful.”

  “It’s all the dust in the air that makes them that way.”

  He smiled.

  “So, Kara’s back in New Mexico. This is your life,” he said. “I’ve always tried to picture you here. Now I can.”

  I didn’t know if that was good or bad. I decided it all probably looked a little quaint to him. “It’s hard to imagine where you are in the world now, except on a remote beach riding a camel or something,” I said, referring to his postcard he’d sent.

  “Hah!” He laughed. “Mostly windowless rooms, or rooms with curtains drawn in antiseptic institutions, lately.” He meant to be ironic, but the darkness of the image made me do a double take.

  “Are you happy?”

  “Sure.” He paused. “Actually, I really don’t have much time to think about being happy. I guess I like it that way. I like my patients. I like my work. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to help people, especially those who really don’t have access to many doctors. There aren’t a lot of us in the bush.” A small smile played across his lips. “Are you happy?” He looked directly into my eyes.

  I couldn’t hold mine to his. His answer seemed so noble. Like Kelli, analyzing my own issues next to those he dealt with made me feel a little shallow. “I have a lot of reasons to be. My friend just found out recently she has MS, though.”

  We talked about Kelli for a while. It wasn’t his specialty, but Ben went over some of the symptoms of the patients he’d come across with the disease. “Really, people have varying degrees of severity of the disease, and she might not know for a while how progressive it is.”

  Ben checked his watch again, and I dug my fingernails into the skin of my palm. I knew deep down he was watching the time because of his taxi, but time was flying by and I still felt we had only nicked the surface of what was going on in our heads. Or was it just my head?

  No, no. Ben always took deliberate action, though he didn’t always easily share his reasons for doing the things he did.

  “Why’d you come here, Ben?” I asked. Perhaps this question would lead us somewhere.

  “I’ve really missed you. I just wanted to see an old friend. I wanted to make sure you’re okay. You’re not upset I came, are you?”

  “No.” But I was confused. He said he missed me, but everything else just sounded platonic, like we were just friends, which I guess we were. But I expected him to have more to say. To open up. Why would he come all this way and not say something romantic and grand that he wanted me to remember? What about “I love you?” Would he say that to my face? Or would he wait to slide something like that at the end of our talk like in our strange phone conversations? In a self-validating way, I knew deep down I wanted him to say it, to say he’d never forget me, and that he sometimes thought about what might have been for us. I couldn’t stand it. “You know this place may look idyllic, but last week someone in this school tried to kill themselves over a guy. What do you think about that?”

  “Oh, no! I’m sorry to hear that. Did you know her?”

  “I know everyone here!” I said impatiently. “I’ve got like fifty people in my graduating class.”

  “Hmm.” Ben shook his head in sympathy, but also acceptance. “Well, is she okay?”

  “Yes.” I pressed my lips together, unsure about saying more. He didn’t ask. We sat in silence for a few moments. He glanced at the time.

  My breath grew heavy in my chest and my stomach knotted up. I could feel something bad building. I was getting angry. I was angry he came all this way for seemingly no particular reason other than to just be nice and keep in touch. What was he trying to do to me? Didn’t he know how seeing him again would bring up these unresolved feelings? He came all this way just to say hi? Really?

  “Ben, I wish you wouldn’t have come. You shouldn’t write, either,” I blurted out.

  He was quiet for an instant. “Why would you say that?” he asked finally, like he didn’t understand.

  “Because we aren’t together anymore. Be
cause we have other lives, in different countries, even.” I sighed.

  He reached for my hand. “It doesn’t mean we can’t keep in touch. Maybe we’ll see each other again sometime.”

  “No.” I snatched my hand back. I had heard him say this before. I had put hope in these words before for months, when we planned to see each other more even after I was transferred to Sydney. I didn’t want promises he probably wouldn’t be able to keep of something that might happen. In the end all of those plans then were thwarted by the exchange program anyway, and some maybe just by fate. We couldn’t even talk about them now. “I want to live in the present.”

  I sat in stony silence willing myself not to cry. Ben sat quietly too, as if he were thinking. He didn’t know me anymore, I told myself, or he would know what to do now. My nails clenched down into my flesh, and I pressed harder, pushing the sensation up my wrists and forearms as this last thought exploded in my head. We’d know what to do now if we were meant to be together. We are not meant to be together.

  The sun went down, and I walked Ben back to the front of the administration building in a penumbra, under dusk and dim campus lights.

  “Got any big plans after high school?” he asked, leaning into a column framing the large stone steps that led into the entrance of the main building. It was as if he had blown off what I said earlier in the bleachers—pretended I didn’t say those words, and asked me again about the future to boot.

  His politic ease in the face of everything I tried, everything I wanted to tell him this afternoon, had completely unnerved me. If he checked his watch one more time, I thought I might lose it. So what if all this buildup came to nothing? At least I knew now it wasn’t the same between us as I remembered.

  I threw my hands up and rolled my eyes. “College?” I shook my head.

  Maybe my blasé reply finally pissed him off. His jaw muscle seemed to twitch. Whatever. It was too late. His taxi drove up around the circular driveway.

  “Oh, hey, I almost forgot—I brought something for you.” He fumbled in his bag and lifted out a small, unwrapped soapstone carving of a platypus. “I saw this and thought of you. I know you like them.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and let him draw me toward him for a hug. I stood stiffly but was finally able to stare back at him eye to eye, and then in a little shock as at last he bent down. I felt his lips quickly pass over mine before he got into the backseat of the cab.

  And then he was gone.

  I ran back to the dorm clutching the platypus in my hand and slid down against my locked door, deflated. I guess he still kind of knew me.

  Chapter 23

  Talisman

  “Was that Ben?” Kelli asked. She’d come to my room with Nic when study hall ended. They had asked Mrs. Bentley if she had seen me after dinner and she told them that a man with an Australia accent had come to visit.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you know he was coming?” Nic wasn’t smiling. She probably wondered if I was keeping more things from them, like how long I had been seeing Ryan until we made it clear in Mexico.

  “He called after what happened to Christie. So much was happening, I didn’t want to bring it up. I didn’t even fully believe he was coming until I saw him with my own eyes.” I glanced at the platypus I had set on the windowsill. “It still doesn’t seem real that he was here and now gone already.” Kelli regarded me as a friend who looks at another when they almost expect them to cry. I knew I wouldn’t. Even though I was sad, it was a sadness that was solemn beyond tears. “I guess I just didn’t want to deal with it after everything that happened—or at least, not out loud.”

  She sat down on my bed that was covered in a peach quilt with windmill designs.“Why did he come?” she asked, smoothing her hand over the texture of the stitching.

  “He was en route to some conference in Chicago. It wasn’t just to see me or anything.” I slumped down on the other side of the bed, and Nic took my desk chair.

  “He looked handsome. I mean, from a distance. And so… mature. Did he have a beard?”

  “I think he just hasn’t shaved in a couple of days. He looks different, younger, when it’s off.” Did I really look that young in comparison? It was probably just because they knew me. If I wore other clothes—more professional ones like his—we could look closer in age.

  “Is he coming back?”

  “No.”

  After a few more questions about what he was doing and how he knew where to find me came the one that I was dreading.

  “Will you tell Ryan?”

  “Why would I? It was a one-time thing. I will never see him again. Just a fluke.”

  “That’s what you said in Mexico,” Nic reminded me.

  “There’s nothing between us. He thinks of me as an old friend. He just wanted to stop by and check on me.”

  “But we’re nowhere near Chicago, you know what I mean?”

  “I didn’t ask him to come.”

  “Did you tell him about Ryan?”

  “No. We didn’t get that deep into emotional stuff. I had almost brought it up, then didn’t. He’ll never come see me again, anyway. I was cold to him at the end. And I did think of Ryan, even with Ben. If he would have asked me, I would have told him. Do you think I should tell Ryan?” I was confused.

  “Maybe you should.” Nic said.

  I looked at Kelli. “Maybe,” she repeated.

  “It would just hurt and confuse him. It’s ghosts in the closet.”

  “Maybe he’ll be happy to know you both have them.” Nic walked over to the window, touching the carving. “Is this new?”

  “Yes, it’s from him. He knows I like them. Look, I don’t want Ryan to freak out over this.”

  “It’s nice.” She smoothed the object with her fingers and passed it over to show Kelli. “I heard Christie’s not coming back to school for a while.”

  “No,” I agreed.

  “At least drill team’s over,” Kelli said. “Thoughtful.” She handed the platypus to me. “What does it mean?”

  It felt warm in my hands, I guess from their touch. “To me it’s like beautiful chaos. Nature’s magic and power. I told you I saw one once. It was at a turning point for me that I had told Ben about. I felt happier after I saw that platypus. Like I belonged where I was.”

  They weren’t expecting such an answer. They studied the object in my hand again. I put it in my pocket.

  “People still look at me like I did something wrong,” I said.

  “You’re seeing too much into things. People don’t blame you, or even Ryan. They just don’t know what to say,” Kelli explained.

  “I mean, it’s horrible what she did to herself. The not eating until she was sick, the pills. She has to be ashamed. Someone like her needs real mental help,” Nic said.

  Inside I squirmed. I had never told Nic and Kelli about my own experience with these things. And now that Christie had done something similar, I didn’t want to admit to anyone we had this in common. I ran my hand down the length of my jeans, feeling the platypus. I needed the talisman.

  “I don’t know what to say, either.” In a month and a half we would be done with school; graduated. It didn’t seem worth it bringing this up now.

  I changed the subject. “How are you feeling these days, Kelli?” We hadn’t talked much about her MS symptoms since the trip to Mexico. They were fresh in my mind though from talking to Ben.

  “The same. Except I’m tired a lot, but I think it’s just the end of the semester. I’ve been reading too much, too. My eyes get tired and blurry easily.”

  “Really? Do the doctors say anything new?” I walked over to the bed and gave her my sham pillow to put behind her back against the wall.

  “Thanks.” She breathed what sounded like a small sigh, and her eyelids fluttered. “Well, they
asked me if I was planning on having children.”

  Nic and I exchanged a glance as I moved back toward my desk and leaned against the top of it, next to her in my chair. If she was thinking what I was, she was probably wondering if Kelli was about to tell us that having multiple sclerosis made you sterile or something. I braced myself, focusing again on Kelli.

  “Because apparently, if you have MS, sometimes the symptoms can go away and it can go into remission if you’re pregnant.”

  Nic was the first to respond. I let my mind revisit the way Kelli’s face looked that day I derisively suggested Christie could be pregnant and trying to trap Ryan into marrying her and giving her that ring. “So, what are you saying? Do they want you to get pregnant?” Nic leaned in toward her.

  “No, but my doctor knows David, and he told my parents it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if we were in love and eventually going to get married anyway.”

  I could feel Kelli studying me. It all made sense now. The talk of not going to college. The reaction to my comment about Christie’s ring. I suspected it wasn’t just the other day they brought up pregnancy. “That’s quite an option. What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. Get better, somehow.”

  I smiled at her, though I knew my smile was a little weak and unsure. “I want that for you, too.” I swallowed a huge lump forming at the base of my throat and walked over to her, putting my arms around her to give her a hug. It was simultaneously moving and painful to be around Kelli. She was so good. She deserved so much more from life than being sick, and I felt incapable of doing anything that could really help her. “I support you in whatever you choose.”

  Nic said she felt the same way, and came to sit next to her and give her a hug, too.

  “Thanks, guys. It’s not just my decision though. David hasn’t even proposed officially, though we talked about what the doctors said. I’m afraid of being a burden to him. I love him so much though for staying with me through all this.”

  “You would have done it for him,” Nic said.