All You Get Is Me

by Yvonne Prinz

  “No.”

  “Oh my GOD! They’re gorgeous: Kelly green leather Mary Janes with three-inch stacked heels.”

  “They sound fabulous.”

  “And they are.” She looks out the diner window. “Hey, isn’t that your dad?”

  It is my dad. I’m about to knock on the glass when I realize that he’s not alone. He’s walking next to a woman. It takes me a minute to figure out that the woman is Forest’s mom.

  “Isn’t that Connie Gilwood?” asks Storm. “Wow, what happened to her?”

  It seems that something did happen to her. Her hair is pulled back into a thin ponytail, revealing an unmade-up face and glasses. Glasses? She’s wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt and her torpedo boobs seem to have lost their oomph. She’s about half the size I remember her being at the farmers’ market that day. Forest never mentioned that his mom had changed so much physically. There’s a delicate sadness in her face that I never noticed before. Maybe it wasn’t even there before.

  “What do you suppose she’s doing with my dad?”

  As they head up the street, Storm cranes her neck to watch. “Um, hugging him.”

  We watch in disbelief. I grab my camera off the seat and snap a photo of it. They don’t hug like they’re in love but it’s like they know each other pretty well. Connie gets into a car and pulls away from the curb, and my dad gives her a little wave and walks the other way. I’m stunned.

  Storm turns back around in her seat. “Well, that was interesting. Looks like you can tell your dad about Forest now. Hey, maybe the four of you could double-date!”

  I glare at her.

  After I choke down my grilled cheese and try unsuccessfully to rush Storm through her burger, she drops me off at the end of the driveway and I walk up the road to the house. My dad’s truck is gone. Miguel and Steve are working far enough out that all I have to do is wave, which is lucky because I’d hate for them to see the look on my face. I stomp up the stairs to my dad’s room and start pulling open drawers and digging through his stuff. I have no idea what I’m looking for or if I’m even looking for anything. I might just be vandalizing the place. After I’ve rifled through all his dresser drawers I yank open his closet door. There’s a shoebox on the top shelf that I have to stand on my tiptoes to reach. I still can’t quite get it so I jump up and wiggle it forward a bit at a time. Suddenly the whole box comes down on my head, spilling its contents onto the floor around me. The first thing I grab off the floor is a photo. It’s my mom and some guy with a beard. They’re standing barefoot on a sandy beach in front of a palm tree, smiling. They look tan and happy. My mom looks like her old self. She’s wearing a white cotton sundress and she’s holding a plump little baby girl with wavy black hair and blue eyes who looks a lot like me, but it’s not me. I turn it over. My mom’s handwriting says: Me and Buddy with our daughter, Deirdre, Key West, Christmas. She didn’t write the year; is that because she knows that my dad would know it and add it to the other Christmas photos from other years? I sink to the floor, staring at the photo of my mom in her shiny new life with her new boyfriend and her new daughter. Well, what was I thinking would happen? Did I think she’d just arrive home and start being my mom again? What a stupid, stupid girl I’ve been.

  I dig through the papers on the floor around me. I find several opened letters addressed to my dad with a return address in Key West, Florida. I arrange them in order of the dates on the postmarks and pull open the first one. In my mom’s handwriting, she asks how he’s doing and she says that she found him through our old neighbors in San Francisco. She tells him that she’s clean and sober and she’s started a new life in Florida. She asks about me and she includes a phone number where she can be reached.

  In the second letter she gets right to the point. She says that she wants to remarry and she asks why my dad won’t sign the divorce papers that her lawyers in Florida sent. I dig around and find a big envelope with a Florida law firm on the return address. The postmark is dated a year ago.

  The letters from my mom start to sound a little insistent. She wants to know why he won’t let her get on with her life. She doesn’t mention me in any of these letters. Why would she? She wants to move on. She’s started a new life. Why would she want me around to remind her of the mess she made of her old one? There are a few smaller envelopes from her Florida lawyers referring to my dad’s “cavalier” attitude and urging him to take this matter seriously.

  Among the business-size envelopes, there’s a square unopened envelope addressed to me. I tear it open. It’s a birthday card with a painting of a bouquet of flowers on the front. The kind that you buy in big boxes so you’re ready for any occasion, the kind of card you send to someone who lives in a nursing home. Inside it says:

  Warmest Wishes for a Happy Birthday!

  It’s signed: Love, Mom

  I grab all the letters off the floor and stuff them back into the box. I replace the lid and carry the box downstairs. I dial Forest’s cell. When he picks up I collapse in tears.

  Forest picks me up at the house a few minutes later. There’s no point in keeping things between us a secret anymore. My dad’s the king of secrets. We drive to the tar pits and I dump the box of letters out onto the seat of Forest’s car. I show him everything. My cheeks are streaked with tears. He pulls me across the seat to him and I cry on his shoulder, not caring that his T-shirt is getting soaked in tears and snot, not caring that I’m squashing all the letters. He doesn’t say a word. He just holds me like that for a long time, running his hand over my hair, while I sob.

  After a while I just can’t cry anymore. I stop and look up at Forest.

  “And did you know that I saw my dad with your mom today? Did you even know that they knew each other?”

  “No. I mean, I heard her on the phone once and I knew she was talking to some man I didn’t know. I sure didn’t think it was your dad, though.”

  “Do you think they’re . . . ? You know.”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “What am I going to do?” I ask him.

  “Well. Don’t you think you should go talk to him?”

  “Yeah. I guess. Can’t we just run away? Please ask me right now and I’ll go. I mean it. Ask me. If you love me you’ll ask me.”

  He looks at me and I know that he’s taking me seriously. “Okay, I’ll ask you. I’ll ask you after you talk to him.”

  I sigh. “Okay.” He’s right. If I left like that I’d be doing exactly what my mom did.

  Forest drops me off after assuring me over and over again that I just have to call and he’ll be right over. He wasn’t too specific about what he would do once he got here but I think he’d do anything, including letting me cry on his sleeve some more.

  My dad’s truck is sitting in the driveway looking as guilty as an old truck can look.

  I climb the porch stairs indignantly and yank the screen door open. The incriminating shoebox is tucked firmly under my arm. My dad is on the phone in the kitchen.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  He signals at me to wait and then he sees the box. “Ned, I’ll call you back,” he says. He hangs up the phone.

  “Honey. I was going to talk to you about that.”

  “Don’t ‘honey’ me! You know that you weren’t.”

  “Yes, I was. I just wanted you to get to a place where you could understand it a little better.”

  “I understand, all right. In case you hadn’t noticed. I lost my MOM! You could have at least confirmed that for me, let me know that NO, she isn’t coming back . . . EVER! Instead of moving me to this godforsaken place and forcing me to be a stupid farmer and keeping me in the dark about everything! None of this stupid life we live was my idea. Have you ever considered that? Have you ever once even asked me if I’m happy? The answer to that is NO. You have not. You just run around like some new-age hippie revolutionary, trying to save the world! Well, I’m your daughter! How come you never tried to save me?”

  My dad sits
there and watches as I break down into sobs again. Then he stands up and lurches for me, partly to hug me and partly to keep me from falling. We stay like that for a while.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He whispers it into my ear and holds on to me. This is only the second time he’s hugged me since we moved out here and the other time was only a few days ago. He says sorry a thousand times. Then he slowly lets go of me and looks into my swollen eyes.

  “I’ve been a jerk. I got so caught up in my own loneliness that I forgot about yours.”

  “Did you divorce her?” I ask, wiping my nose on my forearm.

  “Yes. She wanted it. I couldn’t put her off anymore.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  He looks away.

  “Yes.” His eyes fill with tears. “I’m okay, though. I really am.” He wipes his eyes.

  “I know.”

  “Your mom . . .” He starts and then falters. “Your mom was wonderful, you know that, but, well, she has problems. She has a habit of making a mess of things and then moving on without considering the people she’s left behind. Maybe she has things sorted out now, maybe not.”

  I think about that baby girl in the photo who looks like me. Will she end up, years from now, in the same place I am right now?

  “Roar, I don’t think she meant to hurt us. It’s all part of her sickness, the depression, the drinking, everything. It’s something she couldn’t control. I hope you can forgive her someday.”

  “We’ll see.” I stick out my chin defiantly.

  “You know, it was even harder for me when you started looking just like her.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “I know. You’re as beautiful as she was the day I met her.”

  I ignore that. I don’t want to look like her. I’m nothing like her.

  “Speaking of meeting people. What were you doing with Connie Gilwood today?”

  He looks like I just punched him in the stomach. He inhales and sits down again.

  “A couple of weeks ago, Connie called me. She wanted to see me. She wanted me to understand her side of what happened that day. She said that if she didn’t tell someone she would go crazy.”

  “And do you understand?”

  “I don’t know. I know that the woman we saw that day isn’t who she is. I think she was in a lot of pain. She still is. She’s getting better, though.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be archenemies? I thought you hated development people.”

  “No. I guess I just hate developments.”

  “So you’re friends?”

  “I suppose we are, in a strange way. I’ve seen her a couple of times and I’ve talked to her on the phone. She wants to meet Tomás and tell him how sorry she is.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said we should wait until Tomás has had a bit of time to heal.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think I could expect you to understand.”

  “How is this whole lawsuit thing going to work without a villain?”

  “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of villains left in this lawsuit. We’re dealing with an insurance company . . . and lawyers, remember?”

  “Dad, I have to tell you something.”

  I sit down at the table and my dad pours me a glass of water. I’m dehydrated from crying gallons of tears. I tell him all about Forest. I watch his face go from shock to anger to acceptance. He calmly proposes that we stop sneaking around behind each other’s backs like we’re in some sort of weird television drama. He tells me that he wants to meet him, this boy I’ve told him so much about.

  Chapter 18

  I punch the numbers carefully into the phone. I try not to hear my heart thudding all the way into my temples. I sit there flicking toast crumbs across the kitchen table as the phone lines do their thing and the other end starts ringing. My heart thuds louder in my head. A man picks up. His voice is gruff, a bit salty-doggish. Buddy, I presume. Maybe he’s a pirate. No, there are no pirates named Buddy.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. Is Gabriella there?” This is the first time I’ve ever called my mother by her name. I realize that I’m not really prepared for her to be there. For some reason I thought that this would be a message-on-voice-mail thing and then the ball would be in her court.

  “Hang on, I’ll get her,” says Buddy. I hear his footsteps and then his voice calling her and then my mother’s voice in the background just as I remember it and also the voice of a small child. I close my eyes and picture palm trees and sand. Sometimes when one day started to look like another out here on the farm, I imagined that there was another me living with my mom all this time. I imagined us going to galleries and thrift stores and having adventures together. I never pictured us in Florida. I always pictured us at our old house in the city.

  After a few seconds my mom comes on the line just like she’s always been waiting there, ten digits away.

  “Hello?” Her voice is a bit tentative, the way it is when you have a past.

  “Hi. It’s Roar.” My heart picks up speed.

  Silence. I wasn’t expecting silence but there it is. Dead air.

  “Roar, honey! Hi! It’s so good to hear your voice. What a nice surprise!”

  I want to believe that this is the way a mother talks to a daughter she hasn’t seen in two years but it sounds so much more like the way you would talk to someone who was in your high school graduating class, who’s just passing through town and wants to catch up.

  “So, how are you doing?” she asks.

  “Um, I’m good. How about you?”

  “Well, we’re good. Great, actually.”

  She said “we’re good” as in a unit, a family.

  “So, what’s Florida like?” I ask.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful here, just beautiful. Buddy has a sport fishing boat that he takes the tourists out on. It’s a good little business and I do the books and chase after our little girl, Deirdre. She just started walking the other day.”

  But I’m your little girl, remember?

  “Well, that sounds great,” I say, as phony as can be.

  “It is. It’s so great. Well, except for the odd hurricane, but every place has its hazards, isn’t that right? San Francisco had earthquakes.”

  And us. San Francisco had us.

  “Did your dad tell you to call?” she asks.

  “No, he doesn’t know I’m calling.”

  “Is he doing all right?”

  “He’s fine. We’re farmers now.” That came out weird, like I’m announcing that we’re Quakers or something. Somehow, the deeper I get into this conversation, the less I want to tell her.

  “I just can’t imagine your dad farming.”

  That’s funny, I can’t imagine you as the wife of a fisherman named Buddy.

  “Well, he’s actually pretty good at it,” I say, perhaps a hair more defensively than necessary. She seems not to have heard me, though.

  “Hang on a second. I want you to say hi to someone.”

  “Um, okay.”

  “Sweetie?” calls my mom, and I start to answer her until I realize that she isn’t talking to me.

  “Come here, sweetie,” she coaxes. “Say hi to your big sister.”

  “No!” says a little voice.

  “Come on, sweetie. Say HI!”

  “HI!” says the little voice.

  God, why do people do that?

  “Hi.” I feel like an idiot.

  “Say bye-bye!” says my mom.

  “BYE-BYE!” yells the little voice.

  “Bye.” But she’s already gone. I can hear her yelling in the background.

  My mom comes back on the phone. “You two really should meet. Wouldn’t that be great?”

  “Yeah, great.”

  “You know, I should really get going. This monster’s got to go down for a nap or there’ll be hell to pay later.”

  “Yeah, o
kay, me too. I have to go.”

  “Wow. It’s sure been nice talking to you. I’m so glad you called. You just call me anytime you like, okay?”

  “Okay, sure,” I say, knowing that I’ll never call again.

  “Oh, and Roar?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have a wonderful birthday.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Bye, now.”

  “Bye.” I click the phone off and sit in my chair, feeling numb and wondering what just happened. I think back to before I dialed the phone and try to recall what I was expecting to happen. Was I thinking that my mom would beg me to come live with her and her new family in Florida? I guess not, but maybe I wanted to believe that she’d been waiting a long time for that call and my dad was the only thing preventing it and now that we were back in touch, she could resume her role as my mother somehow. Not only is she not interested in that job, I think she would have been happier if the call had never happened at all and she’d never had to deal with the dregs of her old life.

  I feel another wave of tears coming on, but even though my bottom lip starts to quiver and I feel pinpricks behind my eyes, the tears never arrive. I guess I must be all cried out.

  I dial Forest’s cell and, because he’s on twenty-four-hour alert, he picks up immediately.

  “Hi,” I say quietly.

  “So, how did it go?” he asks.

  “Um, well, I think I got what they call ‘closure.’”

  “Oh, Roar. I’m sorry.”

  “Well. It appears that she’s moved on and so should I. I suppose it’s just as well. It would have been nice just to hear her say ‘I’ve missed you,’ though.”

  “I’m sure she’s missed you, but if she says it she has to acknowledge all the guilt she’s felt for the past two years and she probably doesn’t want to go there. It’s messy.”

  “You’re probably right.” I sigh.

  “Hey, let’s do something. I’ll come get you, okay?”

  “No, I’m all icky. I think I want to be alone.”

  “Okay.”

  In a movie of the week, this would be the part of the story where the lead character:

  A) Runs away to the nearest dangerous city, where trouble lurks around every corner.