Sid and Teddy
H. D. Knightley
Contents
Part 1
1. Sid
2. Sid
3. Sid
4. Mary, Queen of Scots
5. Teddy
6. Sid
7. Teddy
8. Sid
9. Mary
10. Teddy
11. Sid
12. Sid
13. Mary (Sid, a year earlier)
14. Teddy
15. Sid
16. Hospital Diary
17. Teddy
18. Hospital Diary
19. Sid
20. Hospital Diary
21. Sid
22. Texts
23. Hospital Diary
24. Sid
25. Mary
26. Teddy
27. Sid
28. Teddy
29. Texts
30. Teddy
31. Instagram
32. Sid
33. Sid
34. Mary
35. Teddy
36. Hospice Diary
37. Sid
38. Sid
39. Teddy
40. Sid
41. Texts
42. Sid
43. Sid
44. Sid
45. Texts
46. Sid
47. Teddy
48. Teddy (about a year earlier)
49. Teddy
50. Texts
51. Sid
52. Mary
53. Sid
Part 2
54. Sid
55. Sid
56. Sid
57. Texts
58. Sid
59. Texts
60. Sid
61. Mary
62. Sid
63. Sid (Two years earlier)
64. Texts
65. Sid
66. Mary
67. Teddy
68. This is what I knew
69. Sid
70. Teddy
71. Sid
72. Teddy
73. Sid
74. Notes and Texts
75. Sid
76. Teddy
77. Sid
78. Sid
79. Teddy
80. Teddy
81. Sid
82. Sid
83. Teddy
84. Sid
85. Sid
86. Teddy
87. Sid
88. Teddy
89. Sid
90. Teddy
91. Sid
92. Texts
93. Sid
94. Sid
95. Lori calls Sid
96. Teddy texted
97. Sid
98. Mary
99. Sid
100. Sid
101. Sid
102. Sid
103. Sid
104. Sid
105. Cassie
Part 3
106. Teddy
107. Teddy
108. Teddy
109. Sid
110. Sid
111. How far Teddy traveled
112. Teddy
113. Sid
114. Teddy
115. For instance
116. Teddy
117. Sid
118. Sid Texts Her Own Phone
119. Sid
120. Teddy
121. Teddy
122. Sid
123. Sid
124. Mary
125. Sid
126. Teddy
127. Sid
128. Teddy
129. Sid
130. Sid
131. This happened
132. Sid
133. Sid Skyped her dad
134. Teddy
135. Sid
136. Teddy
137. Sid
138. Texts
139. Teddy
140. Sid
141. Teddy
142. Sid
143. Teddy
144. Sid
145. Teddy
146. Sid
147. Teddy
148. Mary
149. Mary Screenplay. Int shot. B and B
150. Sid
Afterword
Acknowledgments
My beta-readers rock!
About the Author
Copyright © 2017 by H. D. Knightley
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
To the Moms, for sharing your dreams, hopes, and wishes with me.
(You know who you are.)
Part One
One
Sid
My chair was freaking cold and hard. How long had I been sitting here, staring at this bed, the machines, the steel table with two cards, a bouquet of flowers, and that sink—oh yeah and my mom. I tried not to look at her too often though because of what might happen. Collapse. But not in the good Lack-of-Feeling way. When I looked at her face, quiet, sleeping, unconscious, blood rushed to my head and the surge of pain that came with it was so awful, so frightening, I wanted to fall down and cower. To buckle under. Oh, and my ears hurt. Really badly.
I pulled a bottle of aspirin out of my bag’s side pocket and took out two and swallowed them down. I shoved the bottle in my bag.
I was clutching my phone in my hand, had been for hours. I opened messenger and read Teddy’s latest texts again:
What’s happening Sid?
Do you know anything?
Call me
Did I know anything? Dad and I had been waiting for the doctor for hours. I knew nothing except the diagnosis: liver failure. When I Googled it, there was a chance of recovery. Also, a chance of non-recovery. Google was pretty vague with their predictions.
I kind of figured a lot of survival depended on mom wanting to survive, and that didn’t seem—
I wrote a text:
I don’t know anything yet.
Can you come?
Please?
I really
. . .
He couldn’t come. He wasn’t family. He could only come during visiting hours and what time was it even? I deleted the text.
I wrote another:
Can you come?
To the waiting room?
I need to talk to
. . .
I deleted that one too.
I couldn’t leave. Even if he came, even if he stood in the waiting room and held me while I cried, I couldn’t leave long enough for that. Could I ask Teddy to drive to the hospital to hug me for two minutes? I couldn’t. And my ears hurt. Trying to figure this out sucked.
I wrote:
I need you.
And then I deleted it, pulled my chair to the foot of my mother’s hospital bed and put my head down right beside the lump that was her feet and cried.
Two
Sid
Sid. That’s what she named me, thinking it was cool to give me a boy’s name (the runner-up was George) and I’m pretty sure the Sex Pistols were part of her reason. My mom was a lot punk rock. And she loved anything British. But not Australian, she took offense when people assumed I had been named after their city. She would say, “Not a shortened Sydney with a y, Sid with an i.” Come to find out my name was French, anyway. But whatever. My mom’s gone. I can’t ask her what in the world she was thinking.
My mother died hard.
Really hard. The way most women die, laid low by the Ache of Tears Behind the Eyes. Not physical pain, but that emotional crap. The tears you stuff down, the fear, the anguish, the loss, the meanness of the world.
; All that pressure and pain you stuff into that spot right behind the eyes, the place of suppression and oppression, the emotional dam. That hidden place that feels tight and heavy and threatens to burden you to the ground. That heavy place.
All women have it and if you don’t care for the spot with tenderness and consideration that dam will break and once it does—oh man, you’ll feel it—the Ache.
That burden, that heaviness, those stuffed feelings, that spot behind the eyes, it’s all menacing is what it is. The Ache grows with stealth, patience, and a particular brutality, the kind that takes your breath, then your strength, then your life. With a crush. And a crash.
That’s how my mother died. She was a spectacular, singular, independent and innovative force, and she died a very sad woman. Soul crushed. It would be heartbreaking if it wasn’t so common, so expected. So damned woman-like.
And broken hearts are exactly the point, don’t feel it dear friends, gulp it down, laugh it off, ignore it, lest the Ache comes.
But then and also, I hate to say it, but I must. You can’t hide from it. So there. The sadness first then the Ache will come and after, everyone who ever loved you will have the tears to prove it.
And so it goes. The Ache runs in families. Because: love.
Three
Sid
Teddy was on his way to pick me up to go surfing. We had been living three miles from each other for years and years and three miles is close in Los Angeles, practically next door. To live that close to your best friend in LA was a miracle and Teddy had been my best friend since we were two. Earlier if babies in the same Mommy and Me playgroup can be friends. Teddy’s mom liked to tell a story about how one day, I was screaming my head off in the back seat, in my turned around car seat, a literal baby, and Teddy, whose car seat had turned to the front already, put his hand out and held mine. While I cried. Apparently we had chubby little fingers and it was so cute that both our moms will never forget how cute it was.
It means something, how cute it was. Or so our moms said. All the time.
Our mothers were close, and Teddy and I had always been together. All the time.
Our interest in being friends hit a low point though, when he was seven years old. He learned to despise me because Lou Daniels predicted we would be married someday and Letitia Sanders sang a song about how much we loved each other. Teddy hated to have his romantic interest predicted and definitely not five years before puberty. He scowled. Sometimes he screamed. Once he cried. Then he got smart and played exclusively with the boys, shunning me, sometimes with name-calling.
My mom would ask, “Does it bother you?” No, it didn’t. His interests in those days included Nerf guns, Lego, and Super Smash Brothers on his PlayStation, and don’t get me wrong, those things were cool, but he had a serious obsession with them, culminating in costume wearing—All. The. Time. We barely tolerated being in the same room together
That period must have been a tough time for our moms. Teddy and I were homeschooled so getting us together was a priority. For socialization’s sake, but mostly because the Moms wanted to socialize too.
So when we were nine years old, the Moms created a twice-a-week Project Club, gathering all the crafting supplies, wacky recipes, and games they found or invented and forcing us to comply. Urging us to enjoy. And soon we became friends again.
By the age of ten we were inseparable.
By twelve he was like my brother.
Around that time I became fascinated, kind of obsessed with Mary, Queen of Scots, and you know what Teddy did? He listened. He asked questions. Maybe he pretended, but he was interested enough.
Because we were so close I needed to show an interest in something he liked, and Teddy loved surfing. So I learned how to join him in the lineup. After that our moms met twice a week at the beach break near Teddy’s house, El Porto. A lovely beach, with a consistent surf break and easy parking (sometimes), Southern California style, in the shadow of industrial towers and oil tanks.
Between the beach days and Projects Club we spent most of every week together. And any other chance we got.
No one joked us about dating or love or marriage anymore. It was clear to anyone who met us we were that better thing, best friends. We joked and laughed and teased and behaved in a way so familiar and comfortable that love was out of the question. It’s hard to love someone you grew up with. Complicated.
So that’s why, when I turned thirteen, I let Jason hold my hand. And when I turned fifteen, I let Marcus, in all his sweaty-palmed, nervous glory go to third base. And when I turned seventeen, I let Cameron go all the way. Because he was hot and made my heart go pitter-patter when he looked at me, and Mom and Dad let him sleep over. So we did stuff, lots of stuff, under the covers, fumbling and awkward, but it was fun.
Teddy had girlfriends too, some were mutual friends, others were Strange Girls that appeared and glommed on, like his scent said: available. He was handsome, in that athletic surfer way, wide shoulders, lean, tan, dark brown hair that was curly enough to tousle. His girlfriends probably ran their fingers through his hair, but I tried not to think about that, because they were ridiculous, too in love to get that this was My Teddy. The guy who had always been my best friend. Not their boyfriend only. Mine, mostly.
Teddy once asked, “Is it okay if I bring Sarah along surfing on Tuesday?”
And I screwed up my face. “Does she even like surfing?”
“She likes to boogie board, so it’s kind of the same thing.” Which was not true and the fact that he said it made me roll my eyes, because if he was willing to say that, to conflate boogie boarding with surfing, then he was in deep, and sorry, but no. He said, “Come on, you’ll like her once you get to know her.”
And so I tried. But here’s the thing about me and Teddy, we would paddle out together into the lineup and giggle and talk and float and surf and dream, and there was no way someone boogie boarding in the beach break could compete.
My Marcus, or My Cameron never even came to the beach. They saw my friendship with Teddy and faded away without attempting to surf, without letting me push them into the waves. Their inability to compete with Teddy’s ease on a board kept them from even trying.
Not that it was a competition. It was simply complicated and if our boyfriends and girlfriends couldn’t wrap their minds around the spiral that was me and Teddy, our wrapped lives and conjoined orbit, they spun out and away. Leaving me and Teddy to our trajectory, and that’s how our story begins.
Four
Mary, Queen of Scots
So imagine this. You’re a young girl in Scotland, not just any girl, a princess. Your father goes away to war and never returns. This changes your fortune drastically. You had castles and security and food and now your mother is worried, terrified, but also calculating and political. You are a queen. She bundles you away to live with southern relatives you’ve never met. They are richer. Their palaces are sprawling extravagant examples of their power. They plan to create in you the perfect match for their son. You are five years old and your whole life is decided.
You travel south by ship. Because, and you’re still imagining, there are no cars or trains or definitely not phones. You’ll write home, once you’ve learned to write. The letters of love and news will take weeks, or months even, then they’ll be translated, because you’re being educated in another language.
The people who accompany you are strangers and you arrive in a place that is foreign. To live forever. Imagine how scared you would be to live in a new home, among new people, in a new world? Stripped of everything and then new things piled on top. Would that pile crush you? Possibly.
Unless you learn to climb and grasp and balance. To make do. To adapt.
You remind yourself every day that the weather in France is nicer.
Five
Teddy
Today was the day with Sid. I knew it. She knew it.
I rolled up in my car in front of her house and she bounded out, because that’s how she
moved, with leaps and bounces, leggy and wild. She shoved a cooler into the trunk and flipped her hair over her shoulder and let me rescue the board under her arm. I put it on the racks and strapped the front while she strapped down the back.
When she dropped into the passenger seat, she sprawled, every limb at an angle, her knee on the center console, a foot on the door. Then she sat up straight, excited, and drummed on the glove compartment, and as I started the car, proclaimed, “Mali-BU here we come!”
I said, “Headed to the Bu!”
She slumped in her seat, strapped her belt, and in one brisk movement wrapped her hair up in a bun. She shifted to face me, a long pale, sun-kissed lock swinging loose by her cheek, and counted on her fingers. “I brought tons of sandwiches: snack sandwiches, they have a smear of mustard and ham; lunch sandwiches, smear of mayo, mustard, cheese, ham, lettuce, and avocado; afternoon snacks; and dinner sandwiches. Those are roast beef.” She grinned.
I was past knowing anything she said, because of the way the curve of her neck met her shoulder, and I only got glimpses from the corner of my eye over my driving arm. She might have said, “Liver and onions,” and I would have answered the same, “Sounds delicious.”
I rolled the car onto the highway. Sid fished a book out of her beach bag, pulled her bare feet up to the seat, and leaned on the door, the book open in front of her face.
From the corner of my eye I read the title, Bittersweet Within my Heart. “Let me guess, the poetry of the Queen of Scots?”
She said from behind the book, “I thought I’d read all the poems to you while you drive.” Then she dropped the book to her lap with a grin. “I’m kidding.” She giggled. “I’ve been planning that joke all morning.”
“Besides, you read the entire book out loud when we were twelve.”
“Yep, I see you pay attention. Seriously though, I might be obsessed, but even I get she was more a personality than a poet. Now Willy, he’s a poet.” She pulled a thin copy of Macbeth out of her bag and held that up over her face.
Sid and Teddy Page 1
