I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway
Page 6
He’s back in a jiffy, toting a glass jar. I have no idea where he got it. Maybe he just drives around with old jars in his big car. Probably it had something disgusting in it that he likes to eat, like pickled pigs’ feet or some other nasty Southern food.
“Go ahead and catch one,” he says encouragingly. He gives the jar a quick rinse by swishing cold, clear Shingle Creek water around inside of it. “You can put it in this,” he says, tossing me the jar.
Ghetto aquarium in hand, I run along the creek’s edge, stopping every so often to scoop up a jarful of water and checking to see if there are any wriggling little fishes in there. My dad runs along behind me.
“Did you get one?” he asks. He’s almost as excited as I am.
“No,” I say, submerging the jar again. I pull it up to eye level to see if there’s a minnow in there. Nothing. Except leaves, and sticks, and dirt. I am bereft. “I’m never gonna catch a minnow!”
Freddie laughs at how emotional I am. “Just try again,” he says.
I do try again, and again, but each time, I come up empty. “I can’t,” I wail.
I’m not a little girl with a lot of perseverance. I think if I don’t get something the first couple of times I try for it, it means the gods have chosen some other little girl for the honor of catching a minnow in a jar. Like maybe Buffy from the TV show Family Affair. She (and her ilk) seem to have been chosen for most of the honors.
“Keep trying,” my dad offers. “You’ll get one.” He seems so certain.
But every attempt is coming up empty, and it’s starting to feel personal. “They won’t let me catch them!” I’m frustrated now and getting near tears. My feet are soaking wet, and the watermark on my jeans is hitting somewhere around the knee. I’m cold, too. Spring in Minnesota is like winter everywhere else.
“Tracy Renee,” he says, sounding almost impatient, “put that jar in the water and catch a minnow.” He’s really firm about it, which takes me by surprise. Catch the damn minnow; that’s the tone of voice he just used. I find it scary and liberating to be expected to succeed and not allowed to fail, simultaneously. It gives me permission to let go of my well-worn view of myself as the helpless little foster child who can’t get what she wants and fully commit to the idea of having the minnow.
Of owning the minnow. I rent everything. Even parents. (And later, husbands.)
I don’t know how to get what I need, much less take what I want. And the Ericsons can’t teach me—they’re much too Swedish for that sort of thing. But my dad knows how. In fact, he’s so sure he deserves what he wants that he’s even willing to steal it (which I don’t condone). In a strange way, his willingness is exactly what I’m going to need to survive the life he has, through his choices, tossed me into. It’s not that I need to be willing to steal, it’s that I need to be willing to go for it, to want something and to think I deserve it.
“There they are!” I spot the school of minnows again and pitch myself forward, almost falling in as I bail a full jar of water out of Shingle Creek. Like a desperate forty-niner panning for gold, I hold the jar up and there, swimming contentedly in the murky water, is a tiny little minnow.
“You got it, baby!” My dad’s jubilant. “You got one!” Freddie’s gotten a little messy in all the excitement: his green leather shoes have a ring of water damage, and there are specks of gray water spots on his polyester pants. “Bring it here. Show it to your dad.”
He peers into the jar. “There he is! Your minnow.” He claps and takes a big swig of air that makes a deep resonant sound of glee in his throat. He obviously approves. “A good-lookin’ son of a gun, too.” Freddie laughs big. “What are you going to name him?”
Name him? I never thought of giving him a name. But it only takes me a second to come up with something. “How about Mrs. Jones?”
Freddie looks like he’s going to fall over with fatherly pride. From the expression on his face, I’m the smartest, most amazing girl on the planet. “Mrs. Jones it is, then,” he says, without mentioning anything about gender reassignment. He gives me the cover to the jar and I screw it on, so I can take my trophy home. June and Gene are going to be so impressed. On the way home we listen to Stevie Wonder sing about the sunshine in his life and I think to myself that I got one.
It might be the first time in my short little life that I got one.
PAUL WRITES BACK RIGHT AWAY. “Could you be more gorgeous?” That’s what he writes.
Could.
You.
Be.
More.
Gorgeous.
Um, yeah. I probably could be. Or at least I could have been, until this moment. Now I’m suddenly feeling pretty gorgeous. The rest of his note is short and sweet and to the point: “I would like to take you to coffee.”
And so you shall. Take me to coffee.
I meet him in the Art and Architecture stacks at Borders. His idea. Which I think is inspired, romantic, and creative. I don’t think it means he prefers fantasy over real life. It also has the added advantage of being a relatively discreet place since I’m pretty mortified to actually be hooking up with someone I met online.
I’m careful to get there just a few minutes late. For my outfit, I’ve managed the neither-here-nor-there, not-too-much-or-too-little, not-too-sexy-or-too-prim, not-too-high-of-heels-in-case-he’s-short blind date outfit conundrum so well, I will not even remember what I was wearing a week later.
“You’re beautiful,” he says sometime in the first minute. He’s gazing at me.
I blush. “Really?” I think this is such a charming and vulnerable thing to say. I don’t think it’s seductive or calculating.
“Yeah, really.” He’s still gazing. “Really,” he repeats. That awkward date feeling descends upon us, but he, thankfully, breaks the silence. “Would you like to get a cup of coffee?”
“Sure!” I’m grateful for the distraction of being able to walk and talk.
We head for the café, which gives me a chance to check out his outfit. There’s a green vintage dress shirt, which I’m liking, topped with a corduroy vintage casual overcoat. Nice start. His bottom half could use some work, though. He’s wearing “designer” jeans, which (unfairly) I have a terrible prejudice against, even though I own a dozen pairs. I’m partial to slightly oversize Levis 501s on men. Anything else seems vain. Like they succumbed to a Diesel ad, unconsciously hoping they would get that Amazonian Brigitte Bardot–lookalike chick if they wore those jeans. And his shoes—a zip-up ankle boot with a little too much heel—are also a bit suspect. But the rest of him is pretty cute, so I decide to let it go.
At the café, there’s a line, so we stand in it.
He starts telling me about his four-year-old son and the “great” relationship he has with his baby-mama, who is also “really great.” I’m not thinking that if it was really that “great” a relationship they’d still be in it. Nor do I know yet that he would regularly like to murder his ex and that she would like to murder him right back. I won’t find that out for a while, and by the time I do, I’m pretty sure that, since my love is so awesome, it will all get resolved.
We get our coffees and sit down at a table near the window. He’s jabbering—literally—about the presidential election, John Kerry, and the primary, but I don’t think this is because he’s obsessive. To be honest, I’m not really listening. I have a borderline hand fetish, which means I’m paying an inordinate amount of attention to his fingers, which are long and slim (but not pointy), the kind I like, maybe because mine are thicker and more square. His nails are dirt free and clipped to the quick, which I’m also partial to. I can just tell he has good handwriting.
The “discussion,” quite frankly, is one-sided and boring, and he hasn’t really asked me anything about me yet, but I don’t think this is because he’s narcissistic. He also has a strange quirk—he punctuates his conversation with cartoon noises, like woo-hoo! or hee-hee, said in the manner of Dudley Do-Right on a day when he was doing wrong. It’s kind of anno
ying, but I don’t think it’s part of what noted psychologist Donald Winnicott would say is an overdeveloped false self. Or in this case, possibly underdeveloped.
It’s time to do something else, so we walk over to Amoeba Records, one of the world’s biggest (and noisiest) record stores. It’s much too loud for conversation, but we do wander around the store for a little while. I buy the new Cat Power record, and then he walks me back to my car. Absolutely nothing eventful happens—standing in the long line at the record store doesn’t count—but on the way back to the parking lot, I do notice that I kind of like the way he walks. There is a jauntiness and certainty to his gait—like he knows where he’s going and he’s determined to get there.
That said, the date is a disappointment, really. I mean, for a guy I fell in love with at first sight, online.
“Well, thank you for the coffee,” I say, a little relieved to be getting into my car. “I had fun.” I did have fun, I think. But I’m honestly not sure I want to see him again.
“You’re welcome,” he replies with a slight bow. “So, does that mean that I may have another date with you?” He slips into a purposeful formality (hello, Freddie? Is that you?), which I don’t think is a tad manipulative.
Something about me wants to say yes. (Maybe it’s just that he asked?) “Sure,” I say, hesitant to disappoint.
“Great,” he says, beaming. “I’ll call you.”
Later, after I put my kid to bed, I spend the evening on the phone with my various girlfriends, telling them that I’m not sure I want to date this guy. “He was kind of weird,” I reason.
“Oh, he was just nervous.”
“But he didn’t ask me about me at all!”
“Guys talk about themselves on first dates; that’s just what they do.”
“He wouldn’t stop talking about the presidential primary.”
“Then he was definitely nervous.”
“He made strange cartoon noises.”
“He’s quirky! Were you attracted to him?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Just see what happens.”
Okay, I’ll just see what happens. No rush, either. Now that my son is older, his dad has fifty-fifty custody. I have two days before it’s even possible for me to see Paul again. And knowing me, that’s a good thing.
JUNE HAS CALLED ME INTO her room. She’s got a super-serious expression on her face, one I can’t quite figure out. “What is it?” I ask as I follow her up the stairs and down the hall to the master bedroom. I’m a little worried that I’m in trouble.
“Honey, I need to talk to you.”
As a foster child, and a misbehavin’ foster child at that, I learned early on to distinguish between various tones of voice for their likelihood of leading to a punishment. And I’ve had lots of practice, since in the four years I’ve been living with June and Gene, I have wreaked all kinds of havoc.
Here is just a partial list of things I have done:
dismantled an entire sewing machine during Saturday-morning cartoons
unscrewed a water main, flooding the basement with several inches of water
set a medium-size fire inside a cupboard
picked up and smoked cigarettes left behind in public ashtrays
deconstructed the arm on a brand-new console stereo
broke the refrigerator
tried to get hit by a car so I could ride in an ambulance
picked every single baby apple off Pastor Ericson’s beloved apple tree
This is in addition to the normal juvenile-delinquent-in-training-type stuff, like playing doctor during naptime at my fundamentalist Christian kindergarten; compulsively shoplifting candy from the corner store; stealing ice cream bars in the middle of the night, eating one, and hoarding the rest under my bed, only for them to be discovered days, weeks, or months later; stashing my shoes in another kid’s lunch box—forcing me to go home on the bus stocking-footed, (in Minnesota); “secretly” unwrapping my Christmas gifts and putting them back under the tree; getting left behind at a truck stop in Arizona; and much, much more!
No wonder they called me Racy Tracy. And put me on Ritalin.
No wonder it worked.
June and Gene are stern traditionalists, and spankings are a normal consequence for misdeeds, but this voice is different. This isn’t a spanking voice. It’s not a Naughty Chair voice, either. This is something else entirely. At the same time, I’m picking up an energy that seems oddly, faintly familiar.
I trail June into the master suite, a place I only rarely visit. Lavender is June’s favorite color, and her bedroom is an homage to its dulcet coolness. Late afternoon light filters through the sheer curtains, giving everything a purply, shadowed glow. If it were a photograph it would be underexposed. In a beautiful way.
June sits down on her flowered bedspread. “Come here, Tracy,” she says, patting her lap. I plop into her, almost but not quite too lanky for June’s five-foot three-inch frame. Everything is incredibly still.
“Honey…” June’s lungs have been troubling her lately; when she draws a breath, they fill only halfway with air. It gives her speech a halting, labored quality. “Your daddy wants you to come live with him.” She leaves the sentence just dangling there, like it’s too painful to finish.
I know what this is about. And it’s something I am unwilling to experience. Again. So I’m casual. I retreat into my formidable little intellect.
“Why?” I ask. This is the only safe thing to say right now. Reasons are safe. Explanations are safe. They’re like watching news video of a terrible snowstorm when you live in California. You’re kind of like, Huh, that doesn’t look too good. You can see it, but you can’t feel it.
“I guess your daddy just can’t live without ya, sweetheart.” June says this in her customary wry yet upbeat manner. Her joyous Christian love is made better and more interesting by a fat dash of sardonic humor. Like Dr Pepper, a combination of two things, one sweet and the other unexpected. She says it again: “He just can’t live without ya.”
June doesn’t say how Gene, Faith, Sue Ann, Elin, my big brother, his new wife, Missy, and their almost-born baby are going to live without me. I already know how Connie’s going to do it—happily. She’s probably had just about enough of Pippi Longstocking in her bedroom.
“Where am I going to live?” I’m not really sure why it matters right now where I’m going to live. Maybe I’m just practicing for my future in journalism, where it’s all about the Five Ws.
“With your dad and his girlfriend Yvonne. She has a house in South Minneapolis. Near Lake Harriet.” Lake Harriet is a definite draw. It’s nice over there. “You remember Yvonne?”
Of course I remember Yvonne. She wraps birthday gifts with felt ribbon, the kind I used for my ponytails before my curls got too complicated and June chopped them off. Yvonne’s also tall and thin and pretty—no, striking—and wears fantastic clothes. How could I forget her?
I look closely at June. She’s holding me tight, and she looks like she’s crying, which I don’t get at all. If I play my cards right, this could actually be really good news.
“Maybe they’ll let me get my ears pierced!”
This has been a point of contention for some time. June thinks I have to be thirteen to pierce my ears, but I’m ready now. Daddy’s a total pushover. He’ll definitely consent. I’m stoked. It’s just like me to look on the bright side. That’s what you get with a Sagittarius moon. “That would be so cool!”
June’s kind of surprised by my reaction, but she goes along with it. “Maybe they will, Tracy. Maybe they will.”
I scramble down out of her lap. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“That was it,” June says with some tragicomic amusement at my Well, what’s the big deal? reaction to this news. Maybe she’s a bit confounded by this unpredictable child the Lord brought to her and is now taking away. But she knows children well enough to index her emotional reaction to mine, not the other way around.
“Yayyyy! Dairy Queen!” I am jumping up and down. There’s not much a vanilla ice cream cone dipped in chocolate can’t make you forget.
At least temporarily.
WHAT HAPPENED WAS, Paul asked me out again. We had a long talk on the phone last night and I don’t know exactly what changed, or when, but I decided I like him. A lot.
Now I have this feeling of intense anticipation, like someone’s gone to get the drugs and they are due back any minute. It’s almost painful, in a hurts-so-good kind of way.
Paul is waiting downstairs when I arrive. He takes me to a sushi spot where the fish rolls by on a conveyor belt and you just grab what you want. Again, there’s not a lot of conversation, but for some reason I’m okay with it. He tells me I’m beautiful, and we make light conversation about current events, and that’s enough for me for right now.
We go to hear my friend’s band. He seems totally smitten. With me. “You’re the most beautiful girl in the room,” he says again. I’ve never had a guy say cheesy stuff like that to me. Especially not over and over. If I had, maybe I would know to watch out. Instead, I’m kind of like that girl in the horror film who’s innocently wandering around the house, looking for the source of the strange noise.
Paul pulls out a tiny digital camera. “Let me take your picture,” he says playfully. I hate having my picture taken. I feel like pictures of me always turn out badly. People with expressive faces don’t tend to photograph well, and I’m one of them. But I don’t want to be disagreeable. What to do?
I let him take my picture but cover my face.
“It’s good!” He shows me the picture, and we laugh. “Look”—he flips through the other photos on the camera—“you want to see my mom’s car?”
It’s kind of a non sequitur, but I say sure.
He hands me the camera. There’s a photo of a 1950s Mercedes convertible. Black with caramel interior. It’s beautiful.