by Claire Cain
Something about that—the way he’d touched my hair so gently—made my breath catch, and all of my senses focused in on the feeling of his warm hand on my back as we walked. I couldn’t stop myself from looking over at him, searching for some kind of… something. I wasn’t sure what I thought I’d see, but there was nothing. He walked next to me and looked ahead, his hand steady and secure on my back. He had his typical bearing, that determination that was rooted and locked into his spine, like no one could set him off course, even on this casual stroll.
This was another one of those moments. It was a mixed signal, wasn’t it? Or was it? I supposed it wasn’t unusual to walk with a friend this way. But it felt significant, this physical contact in an otherwise entirely physically sterile relationship. Other than the time he’d touched my face in the rain, which was charged and highly memorable, I’d had no physical contact with him other than a handshake and then just now, when I put my hand on his shoulder. Oh, and the touching knees.
So this? This very strong, large hand on my back, and the hair thing! Yeah, that made me all tingly and nervous.
He walked with me right up to the driver’s side door of my car, and I saw his Jeep parked a few spaces down. He let his hand drop away from my back when we stopped.
“Thanks for letting me crash your evening,” he said, his voice rich and a little rough from talking loudly in the restaurant.
“Oh. Uh, sure. Anytime. Thanks for the beer and nachos and… yeah. Thanks,” I said, finding my keys in my purse and feeling ridiculously unnerved by his proximity and the tone of his voice and basically everything about him in that moment.
“I’ll see you soon, Elizabeth,” he said, and stepped back, and away toward his own car, but turned back and put his hand on the hood of my car. “Actually, are you going home? Why don’t we have another drink?”
I was standing in my open door, and my pulse kicked up again. “Sure, sounds good.” See how casual and cool I am, since this is no big deal? —I tried to convince myself. “But you bought here, so you have to come to me. I have Sam Adams, I think, or wine. I’ll meet you on the patio.”
“Perfect,” he said with a nod and walked to his car.
I got in my car and shut the door. I wanted to sit there and stare at the pink and purple sunset and think about how close I’d been to grabbing his hand, how much I wanted him to kiss me, and how much I needed to shut all of those thoughts down, but I worried he might still be watching, or at least be aware of me, since he was only a few spots down in the row of cars.
I started the car and made my way home, relieved to find he wasn’t right behind me so we wouldn’t see each other again in the parking lot for what would be an even more charged version of a very date-like doorstep scene, even though having him in my space would probably make me crazy. It was a nice night, so we could sit on the patio—a safe zone.
As I drove, my parents called, and rather than having the guilt of avoiding their call on my conscience, I made the fatal error of answering.
“Ellie, good,” my mom said, short and direct, as always.
“Hi Mom. I have some good news, so this is great timing. I have an agent interested in my book. She’s reading my revised draft and should be contacting me in the next week or so about representing me,” and with that, I felt my belly swirl and drop. Fortunately, I pulled into my parking spot—while I knew I’d be nervous sharing this news, my whole body was sending me the flight signal.
“Oh? Congratulations,” my mom offered.
“Yes, well done,” Dad chimed.
“So when will you be teaching again?” Without a beat, there it was.
“This was a one semester deal, right Ellie? I’m sure you’re ready to be back in the city,” Dad suggested.
“I don’t plan to go back to New York—not any time soon. I’m focusing on writing and the TESS project for now.” My voice was shaky, and I hated that I might sound unsure to them. I closed the front door and set down my keys, my purse.
“Well… ok. But what about your career? You don’t want to be out of academia for too long. Gaps on your curriculum vitae will not be helpful for your tenure prospects.” I could picture them sitting together, holding hands, worrying about my future.
“That’s not my biggest concern right now,” I said in a low, steady voice. I wasn’t ready to lay it out, to explain that I wanted to be done teaching. I certainly wasn’t ready to force them to be proud of my writing when it was such an afterthought.
“A school there in Tennessee, then? Maybe Vanderbilt?” Dad suggested.
“I don’t think so…”
I could practically hear my mom smile sympathetically, like she thought I was a misguided child. “Well honey, you know we think what you’re doing there is great, but—”
“You know what? I have someone coming over, so I better go. Thanks for calling, guys. Talk to you soon.”
“You all right?” I heard the voice and blinked my eyes back into focus. After I hung up with my parents, I’d slumped into a chair there on my patio, staring off.
“Oh, yeah, of course,” I said, sitting up from my slouched position as Jake approached. He sat down in the chair next to me. It had only been thirty or forty minutes since I’d seen him last, but I felt a little lurch at having him there, like I’d missed him.
“You don’t look it,” he said in a low, calm voice.
“I just got off the phone with my parents.”
“And how’d that go?”
“I told them about the book.” My voice sounded small and thin.
I could feel him watching me, waiting for me to say more as I picked at a small thread hanging from the hem of my dress resting just above my knee.
“It went about as well as I expected.” My voice broke on the word expected, and I felt a familiar sense of shame rush through me. Why had I expected them to be excited for me? Why had I tricked myself into believing they’d understand me, finally?
He was quiet, still, maybe because he didn’t know what to say, or maybe because he could tell I needed to talk it through. I cleared my throat, forcing the emotion back. “I told them I had an interested agent and was waiting on details. They asked me if I’d applied to any teaching jobs in the area or if I was going back to New York for fall semester. They said ‘Congratulations’ and launched right into what job prospects I had. I think they would have had a stronger reaction if I’d told them I got a great deal on avocados at the store yesterday.”
“Do they know how much it means to you? Your writing?” he asked.
I kept my eyes on the line of trees bordering the apartment complex’s property, now turning into a dark barrier against the twilight sky.
“I don’t know how they couldn’t.”
“Have you told them?”
“Have I said outright ‘I want to be a writer and I don’t want to teach anymore’? No. No, I haven’t. I don’t think I can.” I felt the frustration growing in me, a little seed had been watered that evening, and now here he was, fertilizing it, unsuspectingly prodding at the most sensitive parts of me.
“You can.”
“You don’t even know me Jake, you can’t say that.” I frowned.
“Maybe not, but—”
“There’s no ‘but’ here—” I started.
“I know enough to know you’re brave enough to tell your parents what matters to you.”
“No, listen to me. You don’t understand,” I said, starting to feel genuinely frustrated. Some small part of me realized my frustration wasn’t with him, but that didn’t stop me. “They paid for my college. They supported me. I’m their only child. They put all their eggs in my basket, and I’m supposed to call them up and say, ‘Hey guys, thanks for all the love and encouragement, not to mention your significant financial investment in my education, but I’d rather write stories’?” I clamped my mouth shut and squeezed my arms tight around my middle.
“Do you believe they’ll only be happy if you’re teaching?”
&n
bsp; I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to expel some of my rising tension. “I think part of me feels like they are never going to be happy because I am the wrong kind of doctor.” I felt hollow after saying it—something I’d felt for years but never said out loud.
“The wrong kind?”
“Yeah, I’m Piled Higher and Deeper. I’m a PhD, not an MD. They’re both medical doctors. And while I know they said they embraced the truth years ago when I made clear I wasn’t going to go to med school, I can’t help but feel like I’m this perpetual disappointment. And then I go and basically throw away that education in favor of trying to do this thing that doesn’t even require all the years of ridiculous school I’ve had.”
“Do you believe being a writer is the same as throwing away your education?” His questions kept coming. He wasn’t letting me wallow, and I had been doing fine wallowing on my own without his prodding me to think.
“No! Well, part of me does, yes, but I also know it wasn’t right for me. I felt dead last year, Jake. I hated going to work, I hated departmental meetings, I dreaded checking my email. What kind of life is that? I spent all of last year mourning the loss of the life I thought I wanted—I tried to talk myself into it. I spent the five years of my PhD program willing myself to want that life, and when it came time to live it, I was miserable. So even if it does mean throwing it away, I can’t be upset about that because the alternative… I’m not cut out for it.” There it was again, the shame. All the hours, sacrifice, and effort I’d given. All of the tears and late nights and missed opportunities for something else. All of the energy and the tamping down of the other parts of me, and here I was.
“That doesn’t sound like you’re throwing it away. It sounds like a hard, sort of crap lesson to have to learn, but it sounds like you did everything you could to make that life work.” He leaned forward on his knees and looked up at me.
“I suspect my parents would disagree with you.” I could hear the bitterness in my voice.
“Why?”
“Because. Writing is impractical. Yes, everyone has to write. But writing fiction? Something that’s purely for pleasure? Writing something that doesn’t necessarily educate or ameliorate a problem? That’s worthless to them.”
“It’s hard to imagine that’s true, but sometimes you have to part ways with what your parents wanted for you.”
“Did you? Part ways?”
“You know my dad was a soldier. He was an officer. Very successful career. He expected me to go to West Point—The Academy, like he did, and then commission as an officer, just like he did.” He was sitting facing me and looked down at my knee in front of him. He reached out his index finger and painted a circle on my kneecap, then looked back up at me. “It’s why I enlisted.”
This distracted me from my own frustrations for a minute—both his touch on my bare knee, which meant I had to remember to exhale now that he’d stopped touching me, and his admission. I cleared my throat so I wouldn’t sound as breathless as I felt. “I’ve always wondered why you enlisted. With your degrees, why not… you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So you enlisted to stick it to the man, literally,” I said.
He looked at me and gave me a small smile. “I did. I hated his absentee-father guts in high school but wanted to be in the Army. I always had, even though I hated what our lives were like in some ways, especially after my mom was gone. So, I enlisted, and then just to piss him off even more, I made a point to get my bachelor’s and master’s degrees so there was no disparity of education between us. I could have gotten a commission if I wanted, but I made a point not to.”
“So that’s the other reason for the master’s. You mentioned two reasons in the intake interview. I’ve wondered about that.” I leaned over and rested my elbows on my knees, which brought our faces close—inches apart.
His eyes flicked to my chest, then away and I realized he might have just gotten an eyeful if the V-neck of my dress was gaping. His brow wrinkled and he looked off at the horizon. “Well there you have it.”
“Was he mad?”
“He was. But over the last… five years or so, we made peace. I needed it as much as he did. We weren’t close, as you know,” he looked at me for a moment, and then continued, “but we made peace. In the end, I know he respected what I did and respected my career. I’m good at what I do, I’ve been recognized for that, and that helped him recognize it.”
“Hmm,” I said quietly. There was so much there to comment on.
“You can follow your own path and still be a daughter your parents are proud of.”
“I don’t know.” My voice was small again. I glanced at him and saw him watching me.
“I do,” he said with certainty. Coming from him, it was an absolute. It was like my bravery was a prime number, or something elemental, when he said it that way.
I looked at him sitting next to me, his back straight in the patio chair now, looking at me with all the focus and intensity possible in a given square mile of humanity as if to impress that truth on me. I felt a few small pieces of my cracked little heart being patched back together at that thought.
“I’m not giving them very much credit, am I?” I asked.
“Probably not enough, if they’re anything like their daughter.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever told them what I want. I’ve spent so much time trying to do what I thought they wanted me to do, to make them proud, and to be sure I was a daughter who carried on their legacy in some way, that I just… lost the ability to tell the truth about myself.” I looked down at my knees, then pushed back so I was straight in my chair, and he wouldn’t have to avoid looking in my direction. Each time he’d glanced at me since I leaned over, even once I’d placed a hand on my chest to flatten the dress to me, he’d been very deliberate about looking me in the eye. At another time, I might have felt a little thrill at how hard he seemed to be working to stay focused on me, but in that moment, I simply appreciated it.
Had I really been lying to my parents for decades? I hadn’t meant to, but saying that out loud, I felt the truth of the words drop like an anchor. I felt the disappointment in myself, the sadness for the dishonesty in my relationship with two of the most important people in my life, well up and overflow. Tears slipped quietly down my face and I rested my left cheek on my hand, now propped up by the arm rest of the patio chair, so my face was toward him, then closed my eyes.
We sat there for a few moments, me with a few more tears sliding down, and him looking out at the sky. He pulled his chair so it was next to mine and we sat shoulder to shoulder. If I wasn’t so sad, I wouldn’t have been able to sit still.
“So what is the truth about you, Elizabeth?” His voice broke through my efforts to breathe deeply and calm my heart and mind. His question sounded simple enough, but I’d spent a lot of time rehearsing the answers.
“I want to write. I don’t want to teach… at least not full time,” I said, trying that on. “Honestly, I don’t want to teach at all. I want to write. If I could write every day, I’d be living a dream.” I closed my eyes again and let my own words settle over me. That was true. That was the truth about me.
“Tell them,” he said, his voice gentle, but still sturdy. Strong.
“I don’t know if I’m that brave,” I whispered, the heat in my cheeks betraying me.
“You are,” he responded immediately in that same gentle voice, but his eyes were boring into me, willing me to believe him.
I looked up at him and studied his face from my seat. He was watching as I did, turned toward me as much as was comfortable, and apparently not fazed by my open assessment of him.
“Do you think it’s silly? My caring so much what my parents think—at this age?”
“No. I don’t think you should feel indebted to them. But I’d give anything to have my parents be a part of my life. Even my dad, which is of course messed up that I’m realizing now, months after he died.” He ran a
hand over his head and then held onto his neck with the same hand. “I don’t think you need to apologize for caring about them or for how much you value what they think of you.”
I nodded to myself, sure he was right. Whether I felt the same way or the confidence and surety of his words convinced me, I didn’t know, but I knew he was right.
“But I think, if you’re going to keep caring what they think, you have to let them know what you think, too.” He shifted his chair a bit so he was facing me.
“I agree.” My voice was quiet and small.
“I’m going to leave you alone now…” he trailed off and stood up. I felt a little spike of panic at him leaving and not just because I didn’t want to be alone. I knew I didn’t want him to leave because I liked him, and I loved talking to him and just sitting with him. He was calming, and challenging, and yes, often confusing, but I wanted him there. I let my legs slide out and stretch, and then stood up.
I grasped for something to say, but my brain was mush. I was spent on all levels, and yes, it was time for him to go, even if I didn’t want him to. As I surveyed the trees, trying to think of one last thing or some way to say thank you besides those two words, I felt his hand on my shoulder.
I startled a little, and by the time I turned to face him, he was sliding that same hand to my back, and his other hand pulled me to him, and he was hugging me.
The Earth, in that moment, ceased spinning on its axis, stopped its rotation around the sun, and all sense of time and space evaporated. All that happened in the universe was Jake holding me to him, hugging me, bodily infusing me with his comfort.
My arms wrapped around his back of their own accord, not that I would have stopped them. I tucked my face into his chest like that was where it belonged and felt his chin rest on the top of my head. I breathed in deep, deeper, and then let out a shuddering, relieved breath. His body was warm and solid, and I could hear his heart beating fast in his chest under my cheek.
