Thinking of You

by Rachel Kane

  “What was I right about?”

  “About me. About Charlie. Fated to fail.”

  “Well, no,” said Theo, setting his cup down. “I thought Charlie was after your money. The fact that he was afraid of your money is a new twist to me. So I don’t think I was right.”

  “Then you were right about your larger point, which is that I should be alone forever.”

  Now he sighed. “Good god, did you wake me up this early just to throw self-pity at me? This is as bad as when you called me to tell me about the ravioli.”

  I knew he was trying to make a joke to lighten the mood, but all it did was bring yet another mistake to mind. All those boxes.

  I was never going to get anything right.

  I wanted to. I did. I wanted to do good things, I wanted to help. Those letters of Charlie’s, for example, the ones from the children. My heart broke for them. I wanted to help them, too.

  God knows how I’d screw that one up. Accidentally set an orphanage on fire or something.

  “It’s not self-pity,” I said finally. “It’s facing the truth, the objective reality. Some people are meant to find their true loves. Others are meant to be alone. I had my little fling. I lost my virginity—”

  “Jeez, Val, you don’t have to tell me that part.”

  “—and now I can settle back into spinsterhood. Or whatever the word is, when it’s a man.”

  In the end, Theo couldn’t help me feel better. How could he? He had everything he wanted. A happy life with Micah. A blossoming career far outside the realm of our family’s company. Friends and warmth and a knack for picking out just the right decorations.

  And I had a hundred cases of spaghetti and some new mops.

  Oh, and a bicycle I didn’t know how to ride. Mustn’t forget that.

  “Are you leaving? C’mon, stay. We’ll have cookies and put more lights up—”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I think I just need to be alone. I’m sorry for interrupting your morning.”

  “Val, seriously—”

  But I never heard what else he said.

  25

  Charlie

  Nothing focuses the mind like the cold. Charlie is freezing. The rain would’ve been barely a mist normally, but the cold air turns it into tiny shards of icy glass, patting against his face.

  It’s the perfect weather to feel like shit.

  Now that he’s away from Val, he’s wondering if he made the biggest mistake of his entire life.

  No. It was going down the same path as always. Eventually, someday, Val was going to want to be paid back for that bike, for the offer of his apartment, for everything.

  “You couldn’t have offered me a fucking winter coat?” Charlie mutters, his breath white. He’s kicking himself for not taking the bike, though. He could’ve been home by now. That was a serious machine. It would’ve raced over these streets, he could have made it back to the bus in record time.

  The bus. What a fucking joke. Everything about his life was a joke. Who lives in an abandoned bus? Only someone who can’t handle normal life.

  It’s not my fault, he says to himself.

  That part is true. He never asked for people to keep pushing and pushing…they just did. Charlie was what they wanted, and his opinions, his needs, his desires, had no bearing on it.

  It’s confusing, the whole thing. Val isn’t that kind of guy. He’s not violent. He’s not mean. There were so many things he could have said during that fight, nasty things that would’ve cut Charlie to the bone, but he didn’t.

  That’s the sad part, he thinks. It would’ve been easier if he’d gotten mean. It would have made more sense. Instead, he’ll just never understand what happened.

  You can’t talk about this stuff. You can’t tell someone you’ve been a victim, without feeling like you’re making yourself even more of a victim, dragging out all the lurid, morbid details. Impaling yourself on the horrors of your past. Who needs that? Would it have made anything better, if Charlie had detailed every single blow, every shove, every…well, every painful, nasty, abusive thing anyone had ever done to him?

  Or would Val have sat there shocked, unable to look at Charlie?

  That’s why these things never worked. There were only two kinds of people in the world. Abusers, and people who hated you for being the victim of an abuser. People could pretend to have sympathy for you, but in the end, they’d just see you as weak. And how do you love someone you see as weak?

  “God damn it’s cold,” he says.

  He’s on a familiar street at least. There’s the Lantern. He could go in for a quick warming drink. Except he’s broke. And Wendy might be there, or god, even worse, Val might be there. He doesn’t want to see anybody.

  The memories are so painful. Val had seemed so unusual, so interesting, booming out with that Eureka! Charlie had known even then that there was something between them, some kind of possible connection. Too bad he’d fucked it up.

  And the diner. Where was the diner from here? A ways away, too far to walk, surely. Realizing Val had been staring at his reflection in the window. What a moment that had been. And the cafe, with the espresso…

  One way to look at all this was, a series of Val buying him things. Okay, sure, he hadn’t paid for the espresso, but Charlie had made kind of a big deal about that. Val was always trying, though. Trying to give him things.

  The other way to look at it was, that Val was just trying to include him in this journey of self-discovery he was on. Several times, he’d thought that Val was having a kind of personal crisis going on, trying to figure himself out, and he’d wanted Charlie to come along.

  Yeah. That was basically the big price Val was asking for. I’ll buy you hashbrowns, if you come with me while I sort my life out.

  Fuck, it didn’t seem like that bad a deal if you thought about it that way, did it?

  “What’s wrong with me?” he asks.

  Why can’t he tell the difference between Val, and guys like Rumson? Why do they all seem so dangerous? Val was probably the safest guy he’d ever met, and yet something primal, deep down, was so terrified of being in an uneven relationship, so scared of being hurt, that Val might as well have been a kidnapper in a white panel van.

  It’s hard to see people for what they really are, when you’re so busy looking out for threats.

  If he’d expected the cold to clear his head, he was disappointed. It’s only making him more confused. His nose has that weird burning feeling that skin gets when it’s exposed to too much freezing air. He isn’t sure that walking is really the best idea…or even a possible idea, at this point.

  He could call Val right now. Sure he could. Ask for a favor. He knows Val would come running.

  But there it would be, all over again. More gifts. More emotional debt.

  Still, there’s at least one other person he could call, as much as he doesn’t want to. In a way, it’s really the last thing he wants to do.

  But he doesn’t have a coat, and it’s freezing, and he is out of options.

  “Hey, Tag, it’s me,” he says into his phone. “I need a favor.”

  Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig. It looks different by looking relentlessly the same, ripping away the accretions and curlicues of memory. A red-brick ranch, two and a half baths, low-sloping roof that required someone to come out every few years to fix a leak. Same cars in the driveway, Mom’s Buick and Dad’s F150.

  It’s like Charlie’s leaving has changed nothing in their lives. Like they got on fine without him. When he says this to Taggart, his older brother shakes his head.

  “You got it all wrong,” he says. “It’s more like, since you left, they’ve been frozen in time. They miss you, Charlie.”

  He hasn’t explained much to Tag. Didn’t seem necessary, a lot of extra talk that would have led to more questions. I broke up with a guy, that’s all.

  It felt like a lie in his mouth, but Tag had accepted it. He was a good brother. He knew when not to intrud
e.

  “Charlie!” was all they heard for the next few minutes, as Mom rushed out before they even made it to the front porch. She wrapped him in her arms and kissed his cheeks and forehead. Dad stayed by the door, always a little more reserved, but offered Charlie a big handshake as he walked inside. Son, he said with an accompanying nod, like that was all the greeting required from the masculine side of the family.

  “I’m making cookies and fruitcake and pie—three pies,” said Mom. “You come into the kitchen and tell me what you’ve been up to! Taggart says you’re remodeling a school bus?”

  The brothers share a look. You weren’t supposed to tell them anything, Tag. Tag just shrugs and grins. What do you expect me to do? They ask, I answer.

  True to her word, Mom has turned the kitchen into a bakery. There are gingerbread men and little trees that still need decorating, four cakes, and now a pie-plate surrounded by cans of pumpkin and jars of spices, a couple of brown eggs. It’s not the sight that gets him, though. It’s the scent. An ocean of spice and warmth floods over him. It’s instant nostalgia, back when life was good, when he was little and would sit on the stool next to the counter and decorate the gingerbread men, trying to get their buttons just right.

  “I heard you were working at the mall,” she says, breaking the eggs.

  “I…was,” he says. He thinks for a split-second about lying. After all, Elf Season didn’t go on forever, and the job would’ve soon been over anyway. They didn’t need to know he’d gotten fired.

  But Charlie’s not good with lying, he really isn’t, especially not here among his own people. And they are his own people, even if he’s a little wary of them, even if knows that sooner or later the topic will turn back to Charlie’s Future, as it always does. With the added discomfort of Look At How Well Your Brother Is Doing.

  “Are you all done with the job? There’s still a little while till Christmas,” she says. She likes to whip the egg whites up into a frothy meringue before adding the pumpkin. The sound of the mixer keeps their conversation private; Dad and Tag are in the front room, probably watching football. Charlie’s got to thank Tag for that. Dealing with one parent at a time is always easier than getting both at the same time.

  He sighs. The truth, always the truth, even if it gets him in trouble. “I got fired,” he says.

  “Charlie. Fired from being an elf? What did you do?” Because this is Mom, she doesn’t glare at him, but her mixing bowl gets a firm, steady looking-at.

  For all that he couldn’t live up to their expectations; for all that their expectations were such a constant refrain that it was necessary to his own sanity that he escape and live far away; for all that, he had never wanted to puff himself up, seem more important than he was, or make situations sound more dramatic. He knew plenty of drama queens who would have told the story of their firing as an adventuresome tragic tale where they were the absolute heroes.

  Not Charlie. He tells her the story. It doesn’t take long. She scowls when he talks about Rumson reaching under his desk to adjust himself, when he describes Rumson putting an arm over his shoulder, pinning him to the wall. When he gets to the part about the HR department, she just sighs.

  “Charlie, you can’t give them reasons to fire you.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “Being late? Letting people take free pictures? That’s just the sort of thing they look for. Even if it’s not fair. They want that power over you.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s why I always hoped you would get something better. Something where you had the power, where no one could bother you like that.”

  He pulls one of the undecorated gingerbread men off the parchment paper and takes a bite of its arm. It’s so rich and spicy, the memory of that flavor is so strong, suddenly he’s six years old again, a shy little boy always next to his Mom, holding on to her apron, hiding behind it if people came by.

  “I don’t want to talk about future prospects,” he says. “Please?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Taggart made us promise. No talk about going back to college, no talk about trade school. Nothing that will make you run off again.”

  Why is Charlie nearly in tears?

  He can’t figure it out. Is it having to admit he got fired, that he’s just as much of a failure as his parents feared? Or is that his mom seems to have some sympathy for his position, that she’s not judging him for it?

  There are tears running down his cheeks and he can’t seem to stop them.

  “Charlie…dear, it’s okay! There are other jobs! A boy like you won’t have any trouble—”

  “It’s not just that,” he said.

  “Do tell.”

  “There’s no point, it’s a long and stupid story.”

  Just because he ran away from home, and spent long, long months not seeing his parents, didn’t mean they didn’t know him deep-down to his core. They’d raised him, they’d been with him every single day. So when his mother looked up from her mixer, there was compassion in her eyes when she said, “Is it about a boy?”

  Why did that do it? Why did that open the floodgates? “It’s so stupid,” he says.

  “Taggart told me not to ask about it. He said I’d stress you out.”

  He’s breaking off the head of the gingerbread man. They’ve known him forever, but they don’t know everything about him. Not the history of violence he’s been through. Not the black eyes and hand-shaped bruises on his arms and the more delicate pains caused by the men who would never touch him, but whose evil words were like surgical knives in his mind. You need to face the fact that you’re crazy, Charlie. You’re unstable. That’s why I’m treating you like this, you’re bringing it on yourself.

  How do you drop a bomb like that on your Mom while she’s making a Christmas pie? Life should be different than this. It should be like in the movies, snowflakes drifting against the window panes, mulled cider and a roaring fire inside, togetherness and happiness and no painful questions.

  “He bought me a bike,” sobs Charlie.

  “What an awful man.” He can’t tell whether she’s trying to be sarcastic. Her face is still. The pumpkin puree is in a separate bowl, getting sugar and spiced, everything nice, while at the other side of the counter his life is disintegrating.

  “It was awful. It was so expensive. I told him not to…at least, I’m pretty sure we’d agreed he wouldn’t buy one for me, but he did it anyway, and it had to cost more than a car, and—”

  There was that intelligent scowl again. “This is a wealthy man?”

  “Oh, sure. I thought Tag told you about that part.”

  “Your brother is eager to protect you and your secrets.”

  Charlie rubs his nose and sits back on the stool. “This won’t make any sense unless I go back to the beginning. See, I was at the front of the line to see Santa, helping the kids up on the stage…”

  It’s funny how little there was to tell, if you left off all the sex (and he did leave it off, even though he wanted to tell someone about the table covered in condoms…just not his mom).

  “He doesn’t sound bad,” she said at the end of the story. “He tried to protect you from Grabby-Hands Rumson.”

  “Yeah, but he went behind my back. I can’t have someone solving my problems for me—”

  “How were you going to solve it?” she asked. “I don’t mean to be harsh, Charlie, especially not when you are in a delicate state…but your way of solving problems in the past has been to run away from them. Do you think that would’ve worked with Rumson? It does sound like someone needed to stand up to him, and I respect this…Valentine?”

  “Valentinian. Val for short.”

  “Yes, I respect him for trying to protect you. He’s just the sort of man to deal with someone like Rumson.”

  “But I don’t need protecting!”

  “Oh, we all need a little protecting now and then. That’s why I drag your father out shopping with me, when I do one of my late-night trips. When w
e get back to the car, I make him look in the backseat, just to make sure there are no robbers hiding there.”

  Another bite, and all that is left of the man is his torso. “That’s not really the same. You and Dad are partners. You complement each other.”

  “Ohhh,” she says thoughtfully. “So that’s the real reason you broke up. You’re incompatible. Well, that does happen, dear. Fortunately there are more fish in the sea.”

  He shakes his head. “No, that’s not it either. We’re…”

  He thinks about the diner, the hashbrowns. He thinks about the Christmas lights on the floor. But what really dominates his thoughts is Val’s expression when he read the Christmas letters from the kids. The certainty crossing his brow that something must be done.

  “In a lot of ways, we’re compatible. Hell, in some ways we almost seem made for each other.”

  Now she sets down her spoon. “Then I don’t understand. You fall for a wealthy man you get along with, that you feel compatible with. And judging from those tears, he clearly meant a lot to you. Better yet, he’s willing to defend you against people bothering you. Where’s the problem in that?”

  There’s so much he simply can’t say. Mom, everyone ends up beating me up. They treat me like a toy that nobody likes anymore, that you can break before you throw it in the dumpster. You can’t tell your mother that.

  Can you?

  He takes a deep breath. “There’s more to the story.”

  The baking is forgotten, as Charlie names names. Roger, Franklin, Nick, Dalton. Her face falls with every new detail. Nick thought it would be fun to tie Charlie to the bedpost…then leave the house for a while. No safe word, no way to tell him how uncomfortable Charlie was. I tried to be good, I tried to be cheerful and not make a big deal about it but it was hours and hours with nothing to drink and no—

  Dalton didn’t like to be disagreed with, and had a way of popping Charlie’s ear with the heel of his hand, smack, that left Charlie dizzy. A fight over where they’d go to dinner left Charlie with a bleeding ear and tinnitus that lasted a week.