Loving Siblings: Aidan & Dionne

by Catharina Shields

  “Help me here, Helly, but did we have a date tonight that I’d forgotten about?”

  “Um, no.” He shook his head. “I just thought, maybe you’d like to take a drive to Santa Monica tonight and visit the pier? They’ve added a roller coaster.”

  “Ooh,” I recall laughing. “We both know how much I love roller coasters, don’t we?”

  He chuckled, nodding his head, knowing how I was terrified of those rides.

  “Well, I thought . . . knowing how you think the beach looks romantic by night, you’d probably like to go there tonight.”

  “This is a surprise,” I recall noting.

  “Well, there’s something I need to ask you,” he had said. There was an earnest tone there.

  I had felt my smile freeze on my face. He had smiled, seemingly oblivious, if not blind, to my astonished reaction.

  “I mean,” he had continued to say, “we’ve been going out for about three years now, Dionne. And well, I’ve gotten my internship with Loma Linda Hospital. The ER. And I was thinking—well, I’ll tell you all about it once we get to Santa Monica.”

  “I-I’d love to, Helmut, but I can’t.” I really needed a quiet evening alone at home to be with Aidan. I’d have all the time I needed to carry out my plan to convince him to take the scholarship at Rice. “Maybe another time?”

  Helmut had a heavy frown on his brow. He looked troubled. Even frustrated.

  “What’s wrong?” I had asked.

  I can still feel the fright I felt then when he answered with a question of his own. “Dee,” he began, “what exactly is your relationship with your brother?”

  “Which one? I have five, you know.”

  “You know which one I mean.” He looked cross. “Aidan.”

  “What is this about, Helly?”

  “At the moment?” He quirked blond brows. “It’s about you trying to avoid answering my question. And I have to tell you, this is making me nervous. I might be wrong here, and feel free to correct me if am—and I hope I am—but I feel we’re drifting apart. I’m wondering if it has anything to do with him. So that’s why I’m asking. I want an honest answer. I’ll take whatever you tell me as the god-honest truth.”

  “O . . . kay,” I recall saying.

  “Okay,” he had said before he took a deep breath. “Is there something going on between you and Aidan?”

  I had wanted to tell him no. I had wanted to assure him that he was the only one for me. I had even wanted to tell him I’d love to move with him to Loma Linda where he now had his internship because it would have made things so much easier on me. And I had wanted to tell him I had asked around, and I could easily get a transfer from Santa Teresita Hospital to Loma Linda Hospital anytime I wanted.

  But I never told him any of these things because I knew I didn’t want to do any of those things. He had asked me for the truth. He deserved the truth no matter how painful it would prove to be. I had looked at his handsome face, and I had looked into his worried gray eyes, and I felt my own eyes burn with tears.

  But my heart was steady and secure.

  “Helmut,” I began but paused. Then I had looked him straight in the eye. “Yes.”

  I recall how that simple, single-word answer had his gray eyes tear up. I can still see the pain flash across his face as if it were yesterday, and I recall how much I wished I could take that pain away. But I had just sat there, unable to speak. Unable to offer a comforting word.

  I recall he had nodded and he’d dropped his eyes. I can still see the tear rolling down his cheek, and I can still hear them in his trembling voice when he said, “You’re in love with him. I’ve known it for a while. I’ve seen how you looked at him for the past six months, and it’s not like you used to look at him before. I’ve seen the change.”

  “I’m sorry, Helmut,” I recall saying. And I was. Deeply. He didn’t deserve this. He’d always been such a sweet and wonderful guy . . . but my heart wasn’t with him. In retrospect, I can now safely say, it never was.

  “Well,” he had said with a weak smile. “I guess that’s that. This is it, huh?”

  “Yes,” I recall saying, and I recall feeling tears rolling down my cheeks, too.

  It had surprised me that Helmut had been so understanding. Considering. But he had told me that if I would ever need him, he’d be there for me. He had even promised to keep a room free for me in his small apartment should I change my mind.

  I learned much later, that he really did do this for me—for about two months. Then he met Mindy Reynolds, and she moved in with him. They married a year later, and I’ve heard they have six children now, and he’s a prominent and respected doctor with Loma Linda Hospital.

  I haven’t seen him again since that night when he quietly left my childhood home, and my adult life, and never looked back.

  After that, I sought Aidan out. He returned to his basement room, and I joined him there. We were alone in the house. We had talked, made love, had cheese and crackers, and made love again. And I began working on him, carrying out my plan to convince him to go to Rice, making him promises I knew I could never keep . . .

  “Miss?”

  I look up, and see the friendly face of the cashier across me. “What?”

  “Your pin?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” I say as I look around and realized I’d zoned out again.

  Agitated people were waiting in line behind me at the checkout. I sigh, and quickly punch in my pin, 1-8-1-8. I pause as I look at the numbers on the pin-pad, and smile. 1-8. 18. I feel my heart soar with happiness. “18” had been Aidan’s old jersey number . . . and the age he became my lover.

  I paid for my groceries and pushed the shopping cart out of the store toward my old, maroon-colored Prelude, humming, and I drive home with groceries, knowing I still had enough time for a nice, refreshing nap. As I drive, old memories faded back into the foggy recesses of my mind where soon, they’ll be gone forever . . .

  **~~**

  Waiting at the stoplight, I see an old, beat-up blue Prelude drive by. I feel a smile stretching across my lips as my mind floated back in time when I spotted another Prelude, but a wine-red one—or maroon, as she calls—driving by just like that blue one was doing now . . .

  Darren and Shawn had invited me to Lake Arrowhead that blessed Saturday. Damn, but it felt like eons ago. Shawn’s parents had a cabin up there, and I’ve always liked Lake Arrowhead. Breathtaking place. I loved it because of the fresh air and the cute shops. And, back then, it gave me an excuse not to have to go to my old childhood home.

  Those days had been hell for me. It was impossible for me to be at Mom and Dad’s without tearing up or suffering pain the likes I hope I’ll never suffer again. It had been almost five years ago, that day, since Dionne had fooled me to go to Texas with a promise to transfer to a hospital close to there to finish her internship. It had been five years since she broke my heart.

  Those were the darkest days of my life.

  Not long after I’d gone to Rice University, Dad and Mom told me on the phone Dionne had moved in with that blond gorilla. I could barely breathe. All I could think about was ditching university and coming straight home. But I didn’t. I stuck it out. My pride won over my compulsion, and I stayed and finished school.

  But my anger and disillusion had worked against me, and they had kept me away from California. In retrospect, I needed that anger. It drove me to get my credentials so I could return and not allow both that German liverworst and Dionne to see how I hurt, but to show them I was bigger than them and their lies.

  I didn’t even come home for summer breaks. I rarely saw the family, even when I got my Masters in Architecture and found a nice apartment in West L.A. with the help of Shawn’s parents. I told Dad and Mom I wanted to be close to the bureau where I got my internship as junior architect, but the truth was, I wanted to be as far away from Loma Linda as I possibly could. I knew, had I seen HelMUTT with my Dionne, I’d surely punch his lights out. Not to mention, I had been mor
e than just a little miffed with Dionne, too.

  I wasn’t planning to move out of California after I’d finished my internship. The thought of even living in the same state as Dionne while she didn’t want to be with me, was unbearable. Yeah, I was hurt. Deeply. But I came home anyway, realizing that not living in the same state as her was a worst punishment. I’d tried looking for her, but Dad and Mom kept telling me to leave her alone. She had a life of her own now, they said, and they wanted me to start on mine.

  So, I got an internship in West L.A., an own apartment, and not enough time to think about the betrayal I’d been feeling all those years. I was fast becoming a workaholic recluse when Shawn came over one evening and invited me for a weekend at Lake Arrowhead.

  I wasn’t really up to going. But because I worked at Bright Horizons Architects, Inc. as a junior architect back then, and they were really working me to the bone, I needed some time off. I needed some fresh air from the smog and pollution, too.

  The senior architects at Bright Horizons piled my ass up with work. It took all my spare time, even all my weekends. Since I was just starting out there, I still needed to prove myself to the other, more experienced architects who were all convinced I only got this job because the CEO of the company was a woman and she liked my looks.

  Pure bullshit, of course, but that’s what they thought. I had to work to earn their respect, and I ultimately did. Oh, and the CEO, Angie Borkstein, did have a thing for me. But that’s a different story, and one I’m not inclined to share here. Or ever.

  Shades of the movie, Disclosure, loomed in my head.

  Anyway, it’s true that in school, having looks people liked was an advantage. Being popular and riding high in your peer group was a dream. However, in the work force, it was a liability. Some of those unpopular kids you used to go to school with could be your colleagues.

  If you were really unlucky, they could turn out to be your boss.

  Some would see putting you through a wrangle before hiring you as some kind of retribution for sins you or someone like you who they used to know in school, might have or not have, committed. That was kind of how it was in my situation although I didn’t know the guy, and never went to school with him. I did learn, much later, he used to have this major crush on Candace . . .

  Anyway, that Saturday, as I drove my Cherokee Jeep behind Shawn and Darren’s blue Bronco, heading for San Bernardino on our way to the mountains for the forty-five minute drive up to Lake Arrowhead, I couldn’t have ever guessed that boring trip would be the moment my life would change.

  We had left early, at around 8:30 a.m., to beat traffic. We were cruising nicely over the freeway, too. But then I got the munchies, and I wanted to get something. I called Shawn on my cell phone to let him know I was going to stop at the Mobile gas station that had a really nice shop packed with goodies.

  “Cool thing. We’ll keep on driving, and see you up at the lake, okay?” Shawn had said.

  “Ok,”

  I took the next off ramp into Indigo City to the Mobile station there.

  At the bottom of the off ramp, as I had to wait for the stoplight, I suddenly spotted a maroon colored Prelude—a car hardly seen driving around anymore, but what was once the most popular car in the mid 1980’s. It reminded me of Dionne’s car . . .

  Then I felt as if my heart had stopped. My eyes had widened as my brain tried to absorb what I was seeing. I recalled thinking I must’ve been hallucinating, because as I watched the Prelude pass across my windshield, I saw an all too familiar profile behind the wheel.

  I hadn’t seen her in over five years. Or was it six? According to Mom and Dad, Dionne had moved in with Helmut in Loma Linda, which was still a good forty-five minute drive from where I was now.

  What that her? And if it was, what was she doing in Indigo?

  Just to satisfy my curiosity, I decided to follow the maroon Prelude, and so I did. The drive took me to one of the newer PUD home communities, one that had a security gate. Luckily, it stood open so I didn’t need to buzz someone to let me in, and as the Prelude pulled into the private neighborhood of apricot-colored two story mini homes with terracotta roof tiles and perfectly manicured green lawns, I followed.

  I had followed the Prelude through the maze of streets until I slowed to the curb when I saw the car pull up a steep concrete and brick lined drive in front of one of those apricot houses.

  Sitting dumbfounded, yet knowing I’m just killing myself again, I sat staring at her as she exited her Prelude, and I watched, as if everything was happening in slow motion, how she’d bent and took out two brown bags of groceries.

  “Fuck me,” I recall muttering. Dear god, it was her! It was Dionne! And she looked as beautiful as the day I held her in my arms. Except for the shorter do.

  She had trimmed her golden-brown hair in layers, and her locks seemed straighter as it blew softly back from her ever beautiful face. She wore a pretty, sleeveless dress of an India cotton material in a warm red and terracotta design. She was slim. Slimmer than I’d ever seen her, actually, and a pang hit me square in the chest thinking, marriage to Helgot Kraus didn’t seem to agree with her. From where I sat, I could see the sadness all around her.

  Helgut be damned, I thought with irate determination. I had to see her.

  I had exited the Jeep and closed it off. In the reflection in the tinted glass of my vehicle, I checked my hair, and saw the reflection of my lean face sporting black Wayfare sunglasses. My clothes, although more casual for the trip to Lake Arrowhead, were crisp, clean, and not that bad. I was wearing a white, short sleeve shirt, with top button left open, and blue denims. I looked presentable, although I wished I had worn something more . . . complimentary of my physique.

  Something sexier.

  I had taken a deep breath, letting it slip from me with a gush.

  “Now or never,” I recall muttering. Then I turned and crossed the street.

  I headed up the brick walk to the front door, all the while feeling my heart slamming in my chest. I had made it to the shade of the porch, and was about to ring the bell when I glanced down to my right . . . and suddenly felt an incredible pain sear through me.

  There, against the stucco wall, I saw a small red and green Tiny Tyke children’s table. Even now, as I think about those moments when I felt as if my heart would stop forever, I get physically ill. The pain is still excruciating.

  I recall I had to close my eyes as pain tore through me, and twisted my insides, like a jagged-edged knife.

  Dionne . . . was a mother.

  That was it. That was the end. It was over for me. I couldn’t, in good conscience, go to her now she was a mother. It was then I realized my real reason for finding myself following her and finding myself at her door, was because I still hadn’t forgotten her. I still couldn’t give her up. I had come to her door to ease the throbbing pain I’d been suffering for years, but all I found was more pain that would last me my lifetime.

  The anger, the pain, the disillusion of being fooled by the one woman I will ever love for the rest of my life no matter who’ll I’ll ultimately end up with . . . it all came rushing to the fore after having been repressed all those years. I was there because I’d never given up wanting her. Even those long, five years couldn’t diminish my feelings for her. Not even an iota.

  I also realized, I would never be over her.

  I had followed her and come to her home because something inside me wanted to take her away from Hel-mutt. I was ready to pick a fight for her, fight him for her, because I’d be fighting for us.

  But seeing that red and green Tiny Tyke table changed everything.

  I didn’t want to cause any mayhem in her life. I couldn’t destroy her little family. At that moment, I believed I loved her more than she loved me. At that moment, I had realized, that had she wanted to see me, she could’ve contacted Mom and Dad many times. If she really loved me, she wouldn’t have lied to me that she would come to me in Texas.

  It was clear for m
e now. Dionne didn’t want me. She didn’t love me the way I loved her.

  I had turned away from her door with tears stinging my eyes. I can still feel the pain my body suffered those moments because it felt as if my whole world had come crashing down on me. Would I be able to survive this?

  I recall how heavy my feet felt as I walked back down the brick path, convinced my legs would give out from under me.

  And then . . . there was giggling behind me.

  Slowing my pace, I had turned my head just in time to see a black and white soccer ball bouncing down the yard before it came to a stop by my shoe. I looked up, barely able to see through the blur of my tears, and stared at a little boy by the house.

  He had sparkling brown eyes, and he was grinning at me. That grin looked familiar.

  But so did his t-shirt.

  He was dressed in a pair of small denims and a familiar blue and white soccer tee, and I noticed it had my old team logo, the Arcadia Aces, and my old jersey number, 18, on the front.

  Stunned all of a sudden, I had just stood there, watching in speechless shock as the boy came running toward me with bouncing black curls. He stopped in front of me, bent down, and picked up the ball.

  There was no doubt. I knew, with every fiber of my being, I was looking at Dionne’s son.

  “Ooooh, I tell Mama, Boyd! I tell you not stay on porch!” cried another child’s voice with a tattling tone. It was a girl’s voice.

  I turned to see a little raven-haired girl of the same age as the boy, in a soft blue dress with puffy sleeves . . . and a blue plastic hair band slipped back over those pretty curls. She looked so much like Dionne when she was around that age.

  I felt the color suck right out of my face. She had a daughter, too??

  “You, Daddy?” the tyke asked, and I looked down to see him squinting with pudgy cheeks as he smiled up at me.

  “I’m Aidan,” I had answered.

  “My name Aidan, too! I Boyd Aidan!” the tyke exclaimed with a burst of energy.