Max announces he has something to do tomorrow so he won’t be going to school or staying with me tonight. We’re sitting in his grandmother’s living room, my mom included, watching an Alfred Hitchcock marathon. I’m disappointed but don’t press the issue with my mom and his grandmother here. My mom and I leave around eleven since it’s a school night. The heat wave is still in effect so we’re both sweating about two seconds after exiting Mrs. Anderson’s home.
“How’d you meet my dad,” I ask my mom breaking the silence we walk down the street in.
Mrs. Anderson’s love story has been with me since she shared it. With each passing second I know I’m in love with Max. It makes no sense at all. None. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
I’ve never been a prying child when it came to my father. My mother offers information if I ask but I’ve never met the man and my life is complete. He’s like a mythological creature to me.
“I met him in middle school. He asked me to be his girlfriend two weeks after starting school,” she answers. I can tell she didn’t want to talk about it.
“And...” I say to get her to go on.
“And nothing, we dated until I got pregnant with you and then he left.”
“Did he say anything before he left,” I ask not wanting to drop the subject.
“No, I told him I was pregnant. He was excited and happy. We made plans to tell our parents. The next day he was gone.”
A robot couldn’t have done any better.
My father’s parents are dead. They died in a car accident. “Did you talk to his parents any after he left?”
“Of course I did,” she snaps at me, “I waited a week for your father to come back. I’d locked myself in my room and refused to come out, even for school. When I realized he wasn’t coming back I told our parents.”
“What did they say,” I ask. We’re standing in front of our house and instead of going to the front door, my mom goes to sit on the lawn furniture. She takes out a cigarette before continuing.
“It was raining. I went after school. I think they were surprised to see me. Mrs. Wilson answered the door and we joined Mr. Wilson in the front room. I sat in an armchair facing them, the words just kind of fell out of my mouth.
“I remember most how differently both of them reacted. Mrs. Wilson looked sick to her stomach, or like I’d punched her in it, but Mr. Wilson looked angry. He scared me,” my mother says taking another puff from her cigarette. She’s looking down the street. The light in the back yard has been replaced so I can see her expression. It’s sad. It hurts her to talk about it and I’m sorry that I’ve press the issue.
“Mr. Wilson had always scared me a little. He was a very quiet man, and even with Julian and me dating for almost six years, I never felt he warmed up to me. I stood up to leave and asked if they had heard anything from Julian. Mr. Wilson said no, but I thought he was lying.”
Whoa. I stare at my mom with my mouth hanging open. This is beyond disturbing. My mom keeps going.
“Mrs. Wilson didn’t say any different so I left. I didn’t tell my parents that night. By the next day I was sure they would know. I figured the Wilson’s would have called, but they hadn’t. I had made up my mind to go back over to see them but they died the next day while I was in school in a car accident. I told my parents that I was pregnant the day of their funeral.” My mother finishes and looks at me and sighs heavily.
“What did Grandma and Grandpa say?”
“They took it in stride. It’s not as if anything could be done. Momma was disappointed I’m sure, but she never said anything. Daddy was never anything but supportive. He took to you like a fish to water the moment I brought you home.”
My grandfather died when I was three but there were tons of photos of us together. We’re both smiling in the pictures, even the ones when I was little more than an arm baby. If he’d lived long enough I wonder if my grandmother would have been my favorite. I pushed the thought out of my head. I would have loved them both equally.
My mom stands up and stretches. “Come on its late,” she says and heads for our front door without looking back. She goes straight to her room and doesn’t even say goodnight. I don’t bother her after putting on my pajamas and brushing my teeth. I’m climbing in bed when I realize my mother still loves my father. That was the look I saw on her face as she told the story. God, it’s like everyone in the neighborhood had been bitten by a love bug whose poison was everlasting. In Mrs. Anderson’s and my grandmother’s case it was sweet. Not so much for my mother. Eighteen years of loving someone who left you when you needed him the most, seemed more like torture than love. But she loves him, I’m sure of it. It makes me think of Max. I love him. Can he do something to make me not love him?
My mom has already left for work. I dress, smoke a cigarette and miss Max. Mom left a note on the fridge saying she’s going out with a co-worker and will be home late and that I am to call her if Max is not able to come over after school. I make the trek to school alone. We’ve only known each other a few weeks, but I feel like half of me is missing.
When I open my locker there’s a note from Max. He must have slipped it in the locker Friday before we left. I smile as I open the folded piece of paper and then frown as I read it. With each sentence it’s harder to breathe. Like something binding my midsection getting tighter and tighter with each word.
Josette,
I’m sorry that I was not strong enough to tell you this in person but the thought of saying goodbye was too painful. I know leaving a letter must seem unkind and insensitive and I apologize. I wanted you to know that the real answer to your question is yes. I do love you. I’ve loved you since the first moment I laid eyes on you and I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you that when you asked. I know it’s too late now but it was important that you know. The short time that we spent together I will never forget.
I’m sorry.
Max
I stand there looking at the letter thinking its some type of joke. There’s no way he could have left it Friday, he would have had to put it in my locker this morning. I slam the door and look around expecting to see him smiling at me from some corner. In my panic I drop my books, but I hardly notice. I look back at the letter and then shove it in my back pocket heading for the front door. My head is spinning, I’m so confused. Why would he leave so suddenly and why did he feel like he couldn’t at least say good bye. AND HE LOVES ME! I walk as fast as I can, sometimes even run. None of this makes any sense and I mean to get some answers. I’m headed straight for Mrs. Anderson’s. I will not leave her house until I know why Max has left me this way.
I round the corner entering our neighborhood and start running again when I catch sight of her house. I knock on the door trying not to display the panic that is racking my body. No one answers. I pound on the door thinking maybe she isn’t up yet knowing the thought is ridiculous Mrs. Anderson is like my grandmother. Old people get up early, even with nowhere to go. They may take naps, but there is no way Mrs. Anderson is not up and for some reason this makes me angry. The thought of her hiding inside.
“I know you’re in there Mrs. Anderson and I don’t intend of leaving this porch until you talk to me,” I yell. I beat on the door again. “I mean it Mrs. Anderson! Someone is going to tell me what is going on.”
I’m being completely mental. I’m beating on an old woman’s door after leaving my books on the ground in front of my locker because my boyfriend of a couple of weeks left me a Dear John letter. And I’m screaming.
Even though I am prepared to stand at the door for eternity I’m shocked when she actually answers. She’s dressed and she looks both sad and annoyed. What the hell did she have to be annoyed about? She opens the screen door a crack and I take a step back.
“There’s nothing to be told Josette, Max decided to go back to live with his aunt. He left this morning.” Her flip response makes me see red. I ordinarily love old people but in my current state it takes everything in me not to be
at Mrs. Anderson senseless.
“Would you please give me his number in Michigan?” I ask.
“He asked me not to do that,” she says and the sadness in her voice and in her face dissolves my feelings of anger, it’s being replaced by one of emptiness.
When you think about the phrase, “being empty inside,” if you’re like me, you think of a person with no emotions, no feelings, an empty shell of a person sitting around in a almost comatose state. That may be true. Never had I thought about how it feels when all those emotions and feelings are leaving the body. How one feels as their body becomes that empty shell. I feel like a vacuum has been attached to the pit of my stomach and turned on in reverse. Try to imagine, literally, what that feels like. It’s not painful, its pressure that pushes from behind, pushing your stomach and intestine through an imaginary hole in your front. I look down to make sure I’m not spilling them on Mrs. Anderson’s porch the feeling is so real. The lungs come next and then the heart. The heart’s the hardest; it steals your breath, not the lungs, but that muscle that keeps you alive. The one that is your own until “the one” comes alone.
“I don’t understand.” My voice is low. I’m confused and I rack my brain trying to make sense of it all.
“I’m really sorry. I’ll tell Max you came by when he calls me.”
She’s lying I think to myself. It’s just like Max’s story of how he ended up at my house when Pops was attacking me. I don’t know how or why, but I know Ms. Anderson is lying. Is she lying about telling Max that I’d come by? That seems like a weird lie to tell, unless she knows that Max is hurt by having to leave and she thinks it would be too painful to bring me up in conversation.
“Will you tell him that I really need to talk to him please?” I say giving up. I bite my bottom lip in a vain attempt to stop myself from crying, my vision is already blurry.
“Of course dear,” Ms. Anderson says but she doesn’t close the door, she just stands there looking at me. I turn to go home and half way up the walkway I turn back. Mrs. Anderson is still standing in the door.
“Will you tell him that I love him?”
Ms. Anderson comes out onto the porch and I think she’s going to explain all this buffoonery to me, but she only nods her head.
I let myself into the empty house and go straight to my room. I sit down on my bed and wait for the tears that are stuck. My eyes are watery, my vision blurred, but that’s as far as they’ve gotten. I pull the letter out of my pocket and read it again before taking my lighter out and burning it, putting it in the ashtray next to my bed.
I’m getting ready to lay down when I notice a small gold ring on my pillow; a band of gold with filigree work around it. It only confuses me more. Max had gotten up and gone to the school and left a note in my locker and then come back to my locked house and left a ring on my pillow. I put the ring on and lie down, pick a spot on the wall, focus all my attention on it, and fall asleep thinking of Max. The tears come in my sleep.
My mother came home to find me still in bed. She has called a couple of times but I didn’t get out of bed to answer the phone. I figure she must have eventually called Mrs. Anderson because she didn’t rush home to check on me. My mom is a smart woman, even with Max gone she still needed a job.
“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry,” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Did you know?” I ask.
“No, of course not.” I know that she isn’t lying.
I wonder if this was how my mom felt when my dad just up and left. I feel so completely loss and empty. I just want to be left alone so I close my eyes hoping my mom gets the hint. She does, and she leaves me, closing the door on her way out.
I stay in bed for the rest of the evening but the next morning I’m up at six-thirty. My door is both closed and locked. My mom has protected me the best she could before leaving. That would have been sweet under different circumstance, but given the reason, it really sucks.
It takes about three seconds for me to remember that Max has left me and depression hits, sucks the air right out of my lungs. I roll over and go back to sleep.
For three days I don’t smoke or eat. I don’t even drink water. I only get up to go to the bathroom and from lack of food or liquid by the third day that’s seldom. My mom leaves me alone for the most part. She understands what I’m going through.
The ring that Max left me is a constant reminder of him and every time I look at it my heart breaks all over again but I can’t take it off. I’ve tried and it only makes me feel worst. I cry most of my waking hours which isn’t much. My soul is in shock and needs to repair itself. When I’m awake I try to figure you why Max would have left me this way. I want to go to Mrs. Anderson to find out if Max has called, but I know she won’t tell. She saw me on the first day and I know my mom has spoken to her, so there is no way she doesn’t know how much pain I’m in.
Our phone hardly ever rings but when it does I run to the phone snatching it off the cradle. Of course it’s never him and most time I’m so filled with sadness I don’t even manage to acknowledge the person on the other end. Sometimes I just hang up. My mom is worried about me. Every day when she comes home she peeks into my bedroom. I can sense the relief that she has in seeing me safe but also the pain in seeing me this hurt.
On the fourth day I wake up and decide to rejoin the land of the living. As much as it hurts I know I can’t just lay in the bed forever. My mom has a late shift at her AM job so she’s still at home. When I come out of the bedroom she quickly gets up from her seat at the kitchen table.
“Good morning,” she says smiling at me.
My hair is a knotted mess on my head and my eyes are swollen from crying, I have four-day-old yuck mouth and I’m sure I don’t smell that great either. I walk straight in the bathroom. My reflection doesn’t surprise me. My eyes are dull, the hurt reflected in them. I try to run my hands through my hair but can’t. I turn on the shower and stand in the bathroom while the water runs hot and then get in.
Standing in the shower I let the water run over my head and I start to cry all over again. Every waking moment is filled with thoughts of Max. Was it really just four days ago that he was here? Was it just four days ago that I had a boyfriend that had come to my rescue when I needed him; and then stayed with me keeping me safe? I reached down and touched the place that he had kissed. With the water from the shower mixing with my tears, I sob soul shaking loud wails that plead for him to come back. I want to tear my hair out, I can’t breathe and I sit down in the tub afraid that I’ll fall down if I don’t. Realizing that maybe the day isn’t going to go quite as planned, I get out of the shower. I grab a towel, wrap it around myself and open the bathroom door to go back to my room. My mom is standing right there. Right outside the door, but I can’t look at her. I walk past her on my way back to bed.
When I wake up there’s a sheet over me. I hadn’t bothered with putting on clothes when I’d gotten back in bed after my failed attempt at getting dressed, my mom must have come in before going to work. I sit up determine to get dress today, regardless of whether or not I go to school. I grab a fresh pair of pajamas and walk back to the bathroom. I’ll try a bath instead of a shower. I stay in it for two hours. Letting out and running new hot water as needed but I feel mildly better when I’m finish.
I go to the kitchen to look for something to drink. I’m still not hungry but I want something fizzy. Since my mom and I are not soda drinkers the only soda I find is an open one. It had been Max’s and I stand there looking at it for an eternity before grabbing it and closing the refrigerator door. I sit down at the kitchen table. I take a long swallow of the soda. Funny the stuff you think of. For me now, I think, Max’s lips were on this can. There’s a hitch in my breathing but no crying. Improvement if I’d ever seen it.
The house is not too dark even with all the curtains closed and of course it’s hot. I get up from the table and grab a pair of sunglasses on my way to the front door. The
neighborhood is quiet because all the kids are at school, all except one. There’s a small girl in Mrs. Denton yard. Her hair in two pigtails and she has big fat white ribbon tied around them. She has on a white dress that comes to her knees and folded ankle socks and black patent leather shoes. She’s standing in the very spot that Max, T and I had made mud pies. I can feel the tears building up at the thought of Max but I win the battle on this one and open the door and go outside.
The sound of the front door opening makes the little girl look in my direction and I see that it’s T. I have never seen her in anything other than Rolanda’s old hand me downs, no wonder I didn’t recognize her. She smiles and run over, catching me completely off guard by hugging me.
“Hey Josette, I thought I would have to leave without saying goodbye,” my neighbor says to me.
“Goodbye...where are you going?” I ask confused.
“I’m going to live with my mom in California.”
“Oh, so your mom’s got everything straighten out then.”
“Yeah, I tried to come and tell you yesterday but your mom said you weren’t feeling good. Max left.”
The words are like a stab in the empty place where my heart used to be. It stills hurts. “Yeah, I’m sure he would have wanted to say goodbye to you and wish you well T,” I say softly.
“Yeah that’s what he said,” T says and then slap her hands over her mouth.
“You spoke to Max...when?” I ask bending down so that I’m eye level with the little girl.
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you.” The girl looks at her shoes. She’s really upset at breaking her promise to Max. “Please don’t tell him that I told you okay.”
“T I won’t, did he say anything about me?” I ask holding my breath with fresh tears streaming down my face. I won the last battle, but not the war.
“Only that he missed you and loves you very much. He told me that when I asked why he’d left,” T finally looks at me and gives me a small smile trying to make me feel better.
“Yeah, I love him too T,” I say taking in a breath and letting it out slow, trying to not loss control of the fresh tears.
“Tabitha,” we hear someone call her from inside her house, “Don’t get your dress dirty, the cab will be here any minute.” It was her mother. She’s standing right inside the doorway of Mrs. Denton’s house.
“I’m really glad I had a chance to say goodbye to you.”
“Me too, T, Take care of yourself.”
I go in the house and sit on the couch. I’m surprise that the tears are not any worse, but after the last four days I’m surprise I still have any tears left. I chain smoke looking out the front door. Thinking about Max calling T to say goodbye and find myself a little mad. So T deserves a real goodbye but not me. All I got was a stupid letter left in my locker. No, that’s not all. I look at the ring that Max left on my pillow.
I’m tempted on several occasions to go to Mrs. Anderson’s house and ask about Max, but I change my mind every time. The neighborhood is quiet. No one’s dead but there’s too much lost. T and Max. I found a friend in a ten year old and a boyfriend in a stranger within days of each other and then lost them the same way. I walk around the house restless until I grab a book, one of my favorites, and sit down on the couch. Hopefully it can work its magic and I’ll be able to escape within its pages. It doesn’t. I stare out the open front door for the rest of the day, sometimes napping but most of the time just resembling that empty person stuck in a comatose state I mentioned earlier. I watch late morning become afternoon, and then that change to evening. I don’t think about anything, eventually that includes Max, T and Pops.
Lupa (Second Edition) Page 12
