“Would you like grated cheese on top?” asked the woman.
Claire nodded enthusiastically.
When the woman left, Claire said, “I do believe that woman has saved both of us now.”
“I’ve always liked your frankness. Glad to see that hasn’t changed.”
“What has changed about me?”
I flinched, not expecting her to put me on the spot, and I was slightly upset that I left myself wide open. Cora had trained me better and, even though this wasn’t a business lunch, I was pretty sure if Cora was here she would have whacked the back of my head, muttering, “Idiot.”
“N-nothing,” I stuttered.
“Then why did you say it like that. ‘Glad to see that hasn’t changed’ meaning something has changed.” She was enjoying this.
“I don’t believe I emphasized the word that,” I stalled, knowing it wouldn’t work. I focused on twisting the dark green napkin around my hand and smiled as I imagined a noose tightening around my neck.
Claire didn’t speak, but she had a way of forcing me to speak with just a glare.
“Okay, okay. For one, you have a child now. That’s a big change.”
“And?” Claire prodded.
“You work in advertising, even though you swore up and down that you never would. I remember when I told you my father lined up a job for me in advertising and … well, you made it clear you thought I was settling. Selling out, even.”
The hurt in Claire’s false smile made me wince. I shouldn’t have said that.
Claire shrugged it off. “Life happened.” She tore off a piece of breadstick. “What about you? You’re the big cheese now. What happened to my idealist who’d never wear a suit and wouldn’t answer to the man?” She made quotation marks to the best of her ability since she was holding chunks of breadstick in each hand. “You wanted to be like Upton Sinclair.” She smiled before popping some of the bread into her mouth and chewing menacingly.
“Same here. Life.” My words sounded heavy with regret and disappointment.
She nodded knowingly and was silent for a moment. “College really didn’t prepare us for the real world, did it?” Claire’s eyes softened once again.
I laughed. “Not one bit.”
“What brought you back to Denver? Was it just for work?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer this question, and I sensed a lot depended on my response. “I’ve always wanted to come back, but work never allowed for it.” This was partly true. Work always demanded a lot, yet I usually sought out work opportunities to keep me busy. “I didn’t find out about this role until a week prior to boarding a plane.”
Claire whistled. “Wow. Is it always like that?”
“Yes. I go where they send me.”
“You always had one foot out the door, even back then.” She smiled, but it didn’t take the sting out of her words.
“Ah, yes. But this time, they want me to stay.”
“Do you?”
“It depends, really.”
“On what?”
“What I find here.”
She tilted her head, inquisitive about what I meant, but she seemed hesitant to push. Would I be honest if she did?
Chapter Four
“Hello!” I shouted, after entering my parents’ home.
“In the front room,” Pops hollered back.
Pops had called and said if I didn’t come over for dinner, Mom would hunt me down, lasso me, and drag me home. I’d been in town for a couple of weeks and besides meeting them for dinner my first night back, I hadn’t seen them. They wanted their daughter back now that we were living in the same state.
Family dinners in my home were laid-back affairs. My dad usually would be sitting in front of the television watching sports. This hadn’t changed since his retirement as a sportswriter. Three TV trays were set up, and Mom was already bringing the plates out. She knew I would be right on time.
“Who’s playing?” I kissed Mom on the cheek before she scurried back to grab the rest. I would have offered to help, but she would just shush me. She was the uber-mom taking care of Pops and me, and her seventy-one years had been kind to her.
“The Nuggs versus the Jazz.”
I took my seat. Try as I might, I could never get into sports. My father had taken me to games until he realized that I didn’t enjoy them. I never told him, but he told me years later that during a Broncos game I spent more time chatting with the fans and workers than watching the game. “It was like you were conducting interviews on how people related to sports and why they went to a game in the middle of November,” he had said. I didn’t remember the incident, but he beamed when he relayed it. “I knew then that newspapers were in your blood. Not sports.”
The newspaper line was one of his favorites that he repeated whenever the opportunity arose.
Mom rushed into the room with her plate. “Let’s eat.”
Mom and I talked, while Pops watched the game. He still dribbled food onto the front of his shirt on occasion, since his eyes were glued to the action, not on eating. Mom still chatted about her friends, the children and grandchildren of her friends, and movies she and Pops saw. Every Friday night, ever since I could remember, they went to the movies. No matter what.
It was always easy being around them. Quiet, simple, and loving. I longed for a relationship like theirs, but it eluded me. While they were content, I was always in action. Always wanting more. Pushing.
The game ended, and Pops and I headed to the kitchen. Ever since I could remember, we were in charge of dishes. I always washed, and he dried. They had a dishwasher, but Mom didn’t like us using it. I think it was her way of getting us together. My father was pretty quiet, and I was always going Mach speed. Doing dishes each night forced us to have a daily conversation.
“Make sure you don’t leave dry chunks,” Mom yelled. “I’ll make you do them again.”
Once, Pops and I came up with a plan for her to allow us to use the dishwasher. We intentionally did a crappy job. Mom saw through our ploy and woke us both up in the middle of the night to redo all the dishes. It was the first and last time we tried getting out of our nightly chore.
“She still hasn’t forgotten,” I mumbled.
“Memory of an elephant. I can’t get away with anything.” He blushed at the thought.
I wondered what my sweet father would try to get away with. He didn’t drink, smoke, or cheat. As far as I knew, he had never been pulled over for a speeding ticket or ever received a parking fine. Neither had my mom. God, they would cringe if they knew all the stuff I had done. I was honest with my parents to a point.
With towel in hand, Pops asked, “How’s the paper?”
I groaned. The warm water in the sink felt good. Scrubbing a plate, I said, “I’m not sure I can save it.”
He grunted. “It’s a shame. I know you’ll do your best.” I looked over my shoulder and saw his eyes were misty. “I have so many fond memories working there.”
“I want to save it, Pops.”
He stopped drying the plate and eyed me with his sincere look. “I know, sweetheart. And if anyone can, you can.”
I waited for the dreaded Miracle Girl label, bracing for my reaction. Instead he said, “Newspapers are in your blood.”
I laughed. “How do I infect the rest of Colorado?”
“Easy. Bite them!” He mimicked a vicious dog.
“I hear too much talking, not enough washing,” said my mother. “Hurry up. I want to go out for pie.”
That got our attention. There was a diner around the corner they’d been frequenting for over four decades.
Dinner in front of the television and then pie at the local diner. So simple and satisfying. Why did I complicate the hell out of my life?
“Sounds good, Mom. We should be done in a jiffy.”
Chapter Five
It was Friday night and I, per usual, didn’t have any plans. My parents invite
d me to a movie, but I knew that Fridays were their date night and didn’t want to intrude. Also, I didn’t want to admit that I had no plans. They worried about me being alone.
Massaging my temples in hopes of easing the pain, I realized I was a bore. Here I was on a Friday night, having a glass of ice water on the balcony of a five-star hotel, brooding about what used to be.
Staring at my empty hotel room, I thought back to the days when I always had plans. A time when I barely slept alone. But those days, when I woke the next morning, there was a good chance I didn’t know the woman’s name or it was a woman I swore I would never sleep with again. Each morning I rushed the woman out of my apartment, cursing myself for being so stupid yet again. The drugs and alcohol had played a large part, but I think the biggest issue was my fear of being alone. I hated being alone. It scared the crap out of me.
These days I felt alone, even when among others. I was back then as well, but now I appreciated the feeling. I had to learn to like myself, and that wasn’t an easy task.
Right after I kicked the booze and coke, I still had a hard time admitting I was an addict and that I needed to cut most of my ties. I tried going to parties sober, but not many want a sober person at a party. I didn’t quit my friends; they quit me. Women no longer wanted to stay the night.
Outside of work, I didn’t matter to anyone anymore. I knew my employees had to listen to my stories, the true and made-up ones. They had to ooh and ahh in all the right places. Some of the oohs and ahhs may have been real, but that didn’t matter. I still craved that feeling. Even if most of it was all pretend.
I sighed heavily, knowing I still yearned for it. I needed to stop it, but I wasn’t sure how. I was the Miracle Girl with all the amazing travel stories. On one hand, the image helped me foster relationships with people at work since it was an automatic conversation starter. On the other, I was using them to feed my need, and since moving back to Denver, the need was growing. The void I was always so desperate to fill was growing at an exponential and alarming rate. This terrified me.
My watch read 9:00 p.m. That was late enough to go to bed. Before tucking in for the night, I requested a 6:00 a.m. wake-up call so I could go for a run before heading into work on a Saturday. The higher-ups admired my work ethic and loved that I worked six to seven days a week. Most didn’t know I did that to stay sober.
Not that I would ever really admit that completely, I thought. I convinced myself ninety percent of the time that I loved my job.
That was the only thing that made me feel happy.
Complete.
My life was built on lies. When would it all come crashing down?
* * *
“Shit,” I muttered when I opened my eyes the following morning. As soon as I woke, I knew it was going to be a bad day.
It was nearly impossible to lift my head off the pillow without excruciating pain. Every so often, usually during stressful times, my neck paralyzed me. Not only was the soreness unbearable, but it became so stiff and heavy it felt like my shoulders fused into the bottom of my skull during the night, leaving my upper body with little to no mobility.
Slowly I eased off the bed and carefully walked to where my purse sat on the desk by the window. I cradled my neck with one hand, holding it firmly so it wouldn’t snap in half. Not that it could, but it felt like a stiff twig that would crack with any sudden movement, no matter how slight.
The sun hadn’t appeared over the horizon yet, but daylight was already stretching its fingers across the landscape. I rummaged through my bag, looking for Advil.
“Fuck!” Failing to find my emergency stash, I suddenly remembered taking the pills out of my bag at work yesterday, and I didn’t remember putting them back in my purse. The nagging headache I had all day yesterday was a warning sign that my neck was about to go on strike. I should have seen this coming and should have been prepared. Great, just great, JJ, I cursed my carelessness.
Ignoring the stiffness wasn’t possible. I looked down at my PJs—a T-shirt and boxers. I would have to put on a pair of jeans, but I said no to wearing a bra. I wasn’t that large, and odds were no one would notice the girls jiggling around. This thought made me smile since they didn’t jiggle all that much even when unfettered.
I eased back onto the bed and tried to wrangle a pair of jeans on to no avail. My arms weren’t long enough, and I couldn’t bend my upper body. After a short rest, I stood and held the jeans in front of me. After several failed attempts, I managed to get one leg in. Again I needed to take a break. Standing there with one leg in, I felt like the world’s worst mime mimicking getting dressed in Central Park.
Taking a deep breath, I got the left leg in. The simple act of getting dressed was exhausting, and my sweaty T-shirt clung to my body to reveal I wasn’t wearing a bra. But the thought of lifting my shirt off, putting on a bra, and then replacing my shirt made me cringe. Instead, I yanked a scarf off the desk to conceal my erect nipples and threw a jacket over my shoulders. I grabbed my wallet out of my purse, knowing I wouldn’t be able to sling the purse over my shoulders, and marched out of the hotel room, resembling Frankenstein. The grimaces and low moans I couldn’t stop added to the effect.
At Walgreens, three blocks from the hotel, I stocked up on Advil and Bengay. For some reason, this store placed all the heating pads on the top shelf. I was barely above five foot three, and even on my best days I always struggled reaching the top shelf in most stores. Briefly, I considered not trying. There was no way I would ask a clerk for help. I never liked to ask for help.
But I knew the pad would ease the pain. Holding my neck with one hand to stabilize it as much as possible, I extended my other arm slowly, likely resembling a drunk person reaching for something that didn’t exist.
“JJ?” Footsteps came closer. “Are you okay?”
I lowered my arm and slowly turned my entire body to face Claire. I smiled shyly, knowing I was busted. “Yeah, I just—”
“What’s wrong with you?” Claire interrupted. “You’re standing funny. Why are you holding your neck like that? Are you drunk?” She whispered the last question and looked around nervously like police officers would rush in and arrest us both.
Even though the action hurt like hell, I couldn’t stifle the laughter that forced its way out. “You never could wait for an answer and always jumped to conclusions.”
Claire smiled bashfully, turning pink. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you here so early?”
“I popped in here before going to the office to take care of some stuff.” She waved a hand in the direction of the office, which was one block away. “Now, will you tell me what’s wrong?”
I still held my neck while massaging the pain away from laughing. “It’s my neck. It’s … well, it’s hard to explain really. I get this pain—”
“You always were a pain in the neck,” Claire butted in again.
I started shaking my head at the joke and winced. “Are you going to mock me or help me?”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. What are you trying to reach, Dr. J?” Claire’s face didn’t show any trace that she just called me the nickname she’d given me in college the first time we met. She hadn’t been the first to mock my stature, but she had been the first to do so in a way that didn’t feel insulting. Instead it had created an instant bond. I always thought after we became close friends, when she called me Dr. J it was the closest she ever came to saying I love you. And using the nickname in Walgreens felt like it erased the twenty-odd years we’d been apart and like we’d never said good-bye.
Snapping back to reality, I pointed to the heating pad. “That, my Jolly Green Giant.”
Claire’s eyes settled onto mine for a brief second, and I thought she was going to reach out and touch my cheek. Instead, she reached for the heating pad. “No one has called me the Jolly Green Giant—”
“Since school?” I wanted to say “since me” but didn’t feel bold enough. Claire wa
sn’t that much taller, but when you were only five-three, everyone seemed like a giant.
“Here,” Claire motioned to the small basket near my feet. “Let me carry this for you. Do you need anything else?”
I wanted to shout, “You. I need you! I’ve always wanted you.” Instead I uttered a weak no.
Claire walked me to the front of the store.
“Wait,” I said, motioning to her empty hands with my free hand. “Don’t you need anything?”
Claire’s face shot up in flames. “Uh … it’s okay. I’ll come back later.”
I turned and marched for the aisle I was certain Claire needed. Momentarily, the pain in my body had ceased. Claire followed reluctantly.
I pointed to the maxi pads. “You never could talk about anything private.”
“Oh, you think you know me so well, do you?” Claire’s eyes showed she was teasing. “I no longer use these, but these.” Claire pulled a box of tampons off the shelf.
“Really? You finally graduated?” All throughout college, Claire rejected the idea of tampons. She thought them undignified—sticking something inside her. I never could wrap my head around her stubbornness and couldn’t fathom why a grown woman would want to wear a bloody diaper. That seemed undignified to me.
She wandered to the aspirin aisle and grabbed a box of children’s aspirin. “This is the real reason I’m here. I have a feeling Ian will need some after this weekend. Come on, Dr. J.”
We each paid for our things and left the store.
In the parking lot, Claire pointed to her Prius. “Do you need a lift to your hotel?”
“Thanks, but it’s a short walk from here.”
Claire nodded, but I sensed a bit of disappointment.
“Would you like to go to breakfast? It’s the least I can do after you rescued me.” Then I remembered. “Or do you need to get back home to Ian …?”
“Oh no, Ian and his father are skiing today. Or attempting to, I imagine.” She smiled. “That’s why I’m up so early. I had to drop … them off.” Claire looked flustered.
The Miracle Girl Page 5
