by Jane Porter
I nod once, bite the inside of my lip, and will the stinging sensation out of my eyes. This is so many years ago, so long ago, it’s not even news of this century.
Shey reaches out, touches one long, dark strand of my hair, and then tugs it gently. “You’d be over him if you had someone else in your life.”
“I am over him.”
“You need someone else—”
“No. I’m not—” I stop myself, shake my head, my jaw beginning to ache. “No. Not like that. Never again.”
“Marta, it’s been ten years.”
“I’m happier now than I’ve ever been.”
“Ten years and no sex, no men?”
“I have great toys, sweetheart, and they give tremendous satisfaction for a very small investment.”
“They’re plastic dildos.”
“Yeah, and the only tenderness they need is a battery change now and then.”
“You’re saying a battery-operated toy is better than a man?”
“Yeah.” I ignore Shey’s guffaw of laughter. “Vibrators don’t have wives.”
For a moment Shey says nothing, and she sits, long legs out, ankles crossed, her green eyes narrowed, expression catlike. “You told him to go back to her.”
I shake my head slowly. It feels as if she’s yanking out my fingernails one by one. “Let’s not talk about it.”
But Shey isn’t ready to drop it. “He asked about you.”
I swing around toward her, my hand shaking so much that I wildly slosh wine onto the ugly college plaid couch. “You talked to him?”
Her gaze is calm. “If it’s any comfort, I’m pretty sure Scott still has feelings for you.”
Just hearing his name jolts me all over again, and unsteadily I put the wineglass on the coffee table. I get to my feet under the pretense of getting a damp towel to mop the sofa, but in reality I’ve got to move, got to put distance between Shey and me.
She’s killing me.
And no, it’s not a comfort knowing he might have feelings for me. It’s no comfort at all.
I didn’t just love Scott, I craved him, the way you’d crave a drug like cocaine.
I knew from the beginning, too, that wanting anyone that much couldn’t be good, feelings that intense had to be bad.
I was twenty-five when I first met him, and we were together a year, and I fell hard right away. When I wasn’t with him, I missed him. When I’d be on long business trips, I’d begin to miss him so much that I felt ill, as though I were lacking warmth, light, oxygen.
But when we were together, it was heaven. When we were together, it was perfect. He seemed close to perfect, and that was good enough for me despite my crazy, passion-infused addiction for him, his smile, his voice, his skin.
But then I discovered he had a wife, who he was merely separated from, not yet divorced, when we first met, and two young kids, the youngest only eighteen months. Scott had told me he’d been married, and we’d discussed his divorce, but I’d never really gotten the whole picture until his wife showed up at my office and spread pictures of their babies on my desk.
I didn’t even look at the pictures of the kids. I just stared at her. Karen was small, slim, with a blond pageboy bob and the saddest blue eyes that watered constantly. As she talked, tears kept falling and she kept wiping them away as she told me anecdotes about baby Jordan and big boy Jason, who was all of three and a half.
Three and a half. Is that when little boys become men?
I ended it with Scott less than a week later. I actually asked him to leave after we’d had the best sex ever, and maybe the sex was so good because I knew it was the last time we’d be together.
But just because I ended it didn’t make it easy. Like an addict, I had to get him out of my system. I went through complete withdrawal. It was hell.
Those first few weeks were so bad, so unbelievably difficult, that I didn’t think I’d survive to get to the other side. The loss was so real, so intense, it felt as though I’d amputated part of myself.
I never called Scott, although I wanted to. I couldn’t let him know I missed him or wanted him, couldn’t give him an opportunity to run from Karen, the kids, and his responsibilities.
About two months after our relationship ended, I was finally able to eat and keep food from sticking in my throat. Finally able to sleep without waking up in tears. Finally able to work without feeling as though my legs were about to give way.
And when I recovered sufficiently to function, and even halfway smile again, I vowed to never, ever love anyone like that again.
And I haven’t. I won’t.
Just because I wear combat boots and black eyeliner and have a small, well-inked tattoo high on my right shoulder doesn’t mean I know how to cope with my feelings.
In the minuscule kitchen, I grab some paper towels and dampen them at the sink before attempting to clean the red wine, but the plaid is so dark, and the couch is so old, I can find only a couple of burgundy dots. But I scrub the hell out of them anyway, creating grayish brownish fuzz on the paper towel.
Shey just watches me go at the couch, and eventually I give up on scrubbing. Squeezing the damp towel into a ball in my fist, I exhale. “I’m glad they’re still together. It would have sucked to send him back to her to discover that they parted ways a few years later.”
“You never hoped he’d come back to you?”
“No.”
Shey’s voice softens. “You’d only be human if you did.”
My heart hardens. Everything is so tight in my chest, I can barely breathe.
I knew what it was like as a child to long for your father’s time, your father’s attention. I couldn’t come between Scott and his kids. I’ve got enough guilt as it is.
“I had Eva,” I say, going to the kitchen to throw away the paper towel. But it takes me a moment to locate the garbage can, which has been hidden in a skinny pantry between the oven and the wall. “I made Eva. And he had children who needed him.”
“You did the right thing. You created good karma.”
I stand up, cross my arms over my chest. “I didn’t do it for the karma. I did it for myself.” My voice is too high, too sharp. And for a moment, the old pain returns and it feels almost alive.
Shey shrugs. “The fact is, he would have stayed with you forever if you’d let him. You were the grown-up. You did the mature thing.”
Did I?
I broke up with the man I loved most. I told my soul mate to take a hike and never come back. Then I went out and got pregnant on my own.
Back in the small living room, I pick up my wineglass and, ignoring how my hand still shakes, take an unsteady sip.
I swallow and then laugh. A small, rough laugh. “Damn, girl,” I say, my voice as unsteady as my hand, “but you sure know how to throw a punch.”
Chapter Six
Shey and Eva sleep, but I can’t and I’m miserable lying in bed wide awake. Eventually, I get up and make a cup of tea and go outside to curl up in one of the Adirondack chairs on the cabin’s front porch.
The big trees cast shadows around the cabin and on the beach, but the water itself is dappled with moonlight. Leaning back in the chair, I stare up at the glittering, starlit sky and listen to the breeze rustle and whisper through the pine boughs.
I feel as though I’m losing control. And it’s not just Shey’s mention of Scott, but the morning run where I saw that guy and I felt absolutely rocked, as though everything in me suddenly wanted something different from the life I’ve planned. And then there was the afternoon meeting at Taylor’s as well as the fight with Eva in the truck. Eva seems to be changing right before my very eyes, and I want to be such a good mom and yet sometimes I don’t know how.
But even as panic bubbles, I squash it back down. I don’t want or need a man. I don’t have to be like Taylor to be a good mom. Eva’s a child, and she’s fine.
The point is, there’s no quitting, and being negative solves nothing. I’ll just keep moving forward, st
icking with the game plan, and everything will be fine. I can do this. I’ve faced tougher challenges.
Like when I nearly miscarried Eva and had to go on bed rest. And then going into labor early, in the middle of a meeting, so I had to rush in a cab through traffic-snarled Manhattan, trying desperately not to give birth there on the backseat while the foreign-born driver screamed at me, “No, lady, no baby here! No baby here!”
My lips twist. Did the driver really think I wanted to have my baby on his backseat?
But thank God, Eva hung in there, held off until I could be plopped on a gurney and wheeled into a delivery room.
Eva might be a handful, but she also has impeccable timing. If she hadn’t come early, she probably wouldn’t have made it, as she arrived with the umbilical cord wrapped dangerously tight around her neck. My obstetrician said if Eva had stayed in the womb much longer, it would have been too late.
I go back inside and lock the front door, and before I climb into bed, I lean over and lightly kiss my daughter.
This is how it’s always been with Eva. Great drama and excitement, lots of emotion and passion, and honestly, I wouldn’t have her any other way. I love my girl. I do.
We sleep in late the next morning, and when we finally wake, we go in search of breakfast, stumbling on a local coffee shop that serves enormous slices of warm homemade blueberry coffee cake with good strong coffee and hot chocolate for Eva.
After breakfast, we hike along an island trail, Eva’s long, thin legs taking long, efficient strides. When she walks she looks as if she’s attacking the trail, black ponytail swinging, brow creased, expression focused, determined.
The hike is followed by a swim, and then we all work together on a jigsaw puzzle we find tucked on a shelf inside the cabin before Eva reminds us we haven’t had lunch yet and it’s already three o’clock. Heading to town, Shey discovers a place where we order sandwiches piled high with tomatoes, avocado, sprouts, and more. Shey loves sprouts so much, Eva and I give her ours.
Wandering through the shops in Eastsound, we get ice cream and buy two freshly caught and cooked crab, a huge loaf of still warm cracked-wheat sourdough bread, grape soda for Eva, and a bottle of chilled white wine for us. It’s while I’m waiting for the crab to be wrapped up that I see a very tall man with an enormous pair of shoulders, and my heart does a crazy leap, and I think it’s that man, the one from my morning run.
Breathlessly I watch him, waiting for him to turn, waiting to see if he’ll recognize me, but when he finally does turn around, my heart falls. The man’s old, with a thin, weathered face and no chin to speak of.
I’m surprised by the depth of my disappointment, and as I take the paper-wrapped crab and tuck it into my basket, I give myself a hard talking-to. The guy I saw during my run probably doesn’t even exist, or if he does, he’s probably not half as gorgeous or interesting as I’m imagining. He’s probably dull and vapid. Slow, thick, and not at all charming.
Besides, I don’t want a man. I don’t need a man. I’m a single mom. End of story.
At the cabin, we work on the puzzle again before we can’t resist the crab. We all eat until we’re stuffed—Eva eating nearly as much as Shey, as she’s a crab and shrimp girl, has been since she was born—and then we collapse on chairs on the porch and talk until we can’t talk anymore.
It’s Eva who convinces us that since it’s our last night we have to sleep outside, beneath the stars. We carry out all our bedding, set it up on the porch, and try. Shey—the girl who grew up on a Texas cattle ranch—gives up after an hour, complaining she heard a mosquito.
Eva and I make fun of her as she leaves, and we vow to tough it out. We even come up with a pledge:
I, ——— Zinsser, am not a wuss and refuse to be afraid of the dark. I will not let other people’s fears and cowardly actions chase me back into the cabin.
We take turns reciting our pledge before we shake on it.
Eva falls asleep immediately. I lie awake and look at the sky, reminded of a book I loved when I was Eva’s age. The book was about a white pioneer girl kidnapped by Indians and taken captive. The girl grew up and married the son of the chief.
I used to want to be adopted by a Native American family, too, and I pretended I had animal spirits to protect me. My spirits were the eagle, the wolf, and the sacred buffalo.
Looking up at the immense sky with its sheath of stars, I like to think the eagle, wolf, and buffalo still protect me today.
The next morning while I start breakfast, Shey’s in her room doing yoga and then emerges in her swimsuit to go to the lake for a swim.
Eva quickly changes into her suit and tags along after Shey. Fifteen minutes later, Eva and Shey return to the cabin, shower, and change. Now they take their places at the small dining table, their wet hair still drippy but their faces glowing pink.
“That was great,” Shey says cheerfully, chomping on a strip of bacon. “What do you think, Eva? Did you have a good swim?”
“Great,” Eva echoes, matching Shey bacon for bacon.
“Get going on the pancakes,” I say, still standing at the stove and flipping the final batch. “Don’t let them get cold.”
Neither needs any encouragement, and by the time I pull the last pancakes off the griddle, Shey looks as if she’s ready for more.
“It’s not fair that you can eat so much,” I complain, passing her the platter after I’ve taken my three.
Shey smiles her dazzlingly white smile. “It’s payback for everyone making fun of me in sixth grade.”
Eva looks up, intrigued. “People made fun of you, Aunt Shey?”
“Heck, yeah. Stilts. Grasshopper. Giraffe legs.” Shey leans forward, elbows on the table, and whispers conspiratorially, “And Eva, it wasn’t just the girls making fun of me, it was the boys, too. You see, by fifth grade, I was the tallest kid in my class. By sixth, I was taller than nearly all the teachers. I hated how tall I was. I hated being so skinny and ugly.”
“You’re not ugly. You’re beautiful,” Eva protests indignantly.
“But I didn’t look the way I do now, back then. I was just plain skinny then, and awkward, and uncomfortable.”
I watch Eva’s face. She’s staring at Shey hard, as though she hoped to see something else, see something new. “Didn’t everyone know you were going to be a famous model?”
Shey chuckles, and it’s southern and comforting. “No, darling. I didn’t even know I was going to be a famous model. It just kind of happened.”
“How?”
Shey’s brows furrow, and she looks at Eva and then at me and then back to Eva. “I got confident,” she says. “And I learned to trust myself.”
Eva’s puzzled again. “But what does that mean?”
Shey’s lips curve. “It means I stopped listening to what other people said about me and started listening to myself.”
We take the ferry back to Seattle early afternoon. By walking on, we avoid the lines that have been queued up for hours.
One of my happiest memories of being a kid living in Seattle was taking the ferry. It didn’t even matter where we went or if we even got off at Bremerton or one of the islands. I just liked cruising around the sound in the big white-and-green boat.
Eva wants to stand outside at the rail and watch the cars board, so Shey and I take a bench against the side and let Eva watch the loading of the cars while we finish catching up. And now that I know Shey will be leaving soon—she’ll be catching a flight back to New York tonight—there’s suddenly so much to say.
Shey looks at me. “She’s going to be fine, Ta. She’s smart and kind. Sweet and sensitive—”
“And that’s what’s getting her hurt,” I grouse, leaning against the bench. “She’s too sensitive.”
“She’s stronger than you think. Stronger than you were.”
“No.”
“Yes. That’s why she wants to be in the in crowd, she thinks she can handle the in crowd. And you know, I think she can, too.”
&nbs
p; “But why this desire to be popular? What’s that about?”
Shey shrugs. “It’s about power. Dominance. Eva is confident enough, she wants to compete—”
“But on whose terms?”
“Her terms.”
“No.”
“Yes.” Her shoulders lift, fall, and in the sunlight I see a smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. “Eva can handle this. She’s not going to crash and burn. The person I’m worried about is you.”
“Me?”
“Running my own business has taught me that we don’t exist in a vacuum. We’re part of a community, something larger than ourselves, and we need to be involved in the community. Not just Eva, but you, too.”
“It’s not easy to make friends here. They’re not like you, Shey—”
“You don’t know that, though. You don’t really know who they are or what they think because you’re not giving them a chance.”
It dawns on me that my daughter has been talking to my best friend. “What did Eva say?” I ask grimly.
Shey just grins. “You can’t dislike women on the basis on their having nice things.”
“I’m not.”
“Just like they can’t dislike you for owning a motorcycle and an old truck.”
I adore Shey, but right now she seems more like a turncoat than a best friend. “Your point being?”
“You need to reach out more, find the people you have things in common with. They do exist, Ta. They’re out there.”
But I don’t know about that, and I fear I’ll have to slice off the best parts of me to fit in.
When I was growing up, Mom was always correcting me, criticizing me. Marta, not so loud. Marta, cover your mouth when you laugh. Marta, that’s not proper. Marta, behave. Marta, think of what others would say.
I hated it then, and I hate it still. I won’t be stuffed in someone else’s mold of good and proper woman. I’m good because I am. And that’s what I want Eva to learn. That she’s good and beautiful because she exists, not because she’s succeeded in earning someone else’s approval.
