Arizona Allspice

by Lewin, Renee

  “Why?” I asked. I studied her face. Impossibly long lashes fan out around her exotic eyes. Her lips are, of course, painted pink and as always their artificial sheen reflect all glimmers of light. Rich caramel skin covers her from her toes to her neck and then, covered in that powder that girls use, her face is too many shades lighter. It makes her skin seem lifeless, unreal, resembling a cappuccino colored porcelain doll. I realized I had never seen Denise without makeup on. Anytime I came to her rescue at some ridiculous hour of the night her eyes were dramatically lined and her lips carefully glossed. Maybe she sleeps with it on.

  “He was my little confidence booster. He’d come around and I would feel like myself again,” she grinned, “Like somebody special.”

  I knew that’s what she would say, though I had hoped to hear about how she appreciated Manny treating her with respect seeing as few men in her life do that. Little did I know I would soon be one of those men. Denise saw Manny as a perpetual admirer and an unconditional friend. She could slap him around or ignore him completely and know he would still be around. That is what Elaine thought of me. Her perpetual admirer, I would always stick around and be her “little confidence booster.” I wish Manny would give me a phone call or something. “I miss Manny, too,” I said.

  “I know you do.” She turned onto her side to face me. “But I know you don’t miss him enough to crawl into my bed and sulk with that furrow between your eyebrows.” I feel the space between my eyebrows. I didn’t know I did that. She leans closer to me and traces her finger along my jaw line, down to my chin, and settled onto my bottom lip. “Who is she, Joey?” She taps her manicured finger onto my lip to coax me into talking. Denise has always been the star of her own saucy soap opera. Today I allowed myself to join the cast.

  “She’s the girl of my dreams and I woke up.”

  “Awww, pobrecito,” she cooed. “Well, we are just two lonely people. A girl and guy, both abandoned, both wanting some affection.” She snuggled even closer to me. Her chest was pressed up against my arm and I couldn’t help that I enjoyed it. “We don’t have to be lonely, you know,” she whispered.

  That is when the kiss happened. She looked so beautiful and she felt so warm against me. I wanted her. When our lips met it was sad, cold, and I knew I didn’t really want her. We both laughed, slightly embarrassed of ourselves. And now, we lay silently on her small bed. After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling I let my eyes close. Why am I so calm for someone who just had their heart put through a grinder? Me, El Fuego with the hot temper? I wasn’t calm at the moment my own journal was handed back to me, but that was only two hours ago. Why don’t I feel like this is the end of the world? I’ve been telling myself for years that I couldn’t live without her and here I am doing just fine. How anticlimactic. Seems a new defense mechanism has sprung into action to save me from what I imagined would be sudden death.

  It’s a thought process called rationalization. See, what you do is you tell yourself that you knew all along that you were wasting time and energy. That it was never that important to you and, in the end, no big deal. Could Elaine have…? When I asked her if she caredI can’t believe I got up in her face like I didshe didn’t answer me. However, she did object when I claimed she didn’t care about me at all. So, could Elaine have been rationalizing her true feelings away? Just like I’m doing?

  I told her she was callous. She was just being strong. It’s one of the qualities I liked so much about her. Most likely she knew that I wouldn’t want to talk to her anymore. Her composure came off as frigidness because I was weak. She was being strong, or perhaps defensive, knowing I would blow up at her and leave her…like everybody else has done.

  I want to be there with her so badly but she doesn’t want me to be there. Why can’t I get that through my skull? I always care too much.

  “Denise, I have something to tell you.” I sit up.

  “Hmm?” I pull her hand to signal her to sit up as well. “What is it?” she asks as she fixes her hair with her fingers. I talk to her about the changes I am making in my life and watch her continuously wipe under her eyes to keep her tears from washing her mascara and eyeliner away. I don’t know which is worse: Watching Denise shudder and cry as I tell her I cannot be the life preserver for her and her father anymore, or seeing hardly any emotion in Elaine’s eyes when I screamed at her.

  ******

  Once I am sure the coast is clear, I leave my bedroom to sit with Uncle Frank as he watches television. I don’t want to be alone. I plop down beside him wordlessly. He glances at me a few times until finally he can’t stay quiet.

  “Are you sure you and Amelia’s son aren’t dating?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “You’d think so, the amount of drama we go through.”

  “You looked sort of shaken when you walked back into the house this afternoon. I figured I’d give you some space and some time for things to make sense.”

  You didn’t check on me because you were busy with your girlfriend.

  “So that I’m clear, you’re not dating Joey?”

  “Correct.”

  “I’m guessing you two had a fight.”

  “Yeah.”

  Uncle Frank turns off the local nightly news then tosses the remote control onto the empty space between us on the couch. “Elaborate.”

  I explain it to him the way I have explained it to myself a thousand times today. “We both realized that a strained friendship was as good as it was ever gonna get.”

  Uncle Frank blinked at me, confused. “What about all the tough times that you, your brother, and Joey pulled through together? Plus, add the fact that I’m dating his mother. We are all too braided together to separate. He’s practically family now. Don’t you agree? He’s family. You two can’t opt out.”

  “I didn’t walk away. Joey did. He gladly turned his back on me.”

  “Laney, please tell me what happened. I want to make sure you two aren’t just being plain old oversensitive, trivial twenty-year-olds. No offense,” he adds.

  “You remember how I had Joey’s journal with me that day? I told you Miss Amelia gave it to me.” He nods. “Well, I kept that a secret from Joey because I didn’t want to embarrass him. Until I found out he read mine.”

  “How?”

  “Manny was letting him read it without my permission for who knows how long.”

  “Oh, Manny,” Uncle Frank shakes his head with a smirk, knowing his nephew would never hear the end of it from me. “Why would he do that?”

  “Joey asked to read it because Manny kept yakking on and on about it.”

  “When do I get to read your stories?”

  “I’ll let you read it soon. I need to edit them some more. They need a ton of work before I am truly comfortable with the quality. They just aren’t right yet,” I explain. My uncle frowns. “I’m sorry. Soon, I promise.”

  He sighs loudly. “If you say so.”

  “I felt so violated. I felt like a joke. I keep imagining Joey and Manny having a ball as they drink beers and comment on my journal. This isn’t the first time Manny has done this. He told Joey about my love life. Personal information, Uncle Frank. Sharing my journal was the last straw. So I came home, got Joey’s journal out of my room, and handed it back to him. Of course, he was shocked.”

  “That’s why you breezed through here earlier. I’m sure Joey felt pretty bamboozled. Did you apologize?”

  “Yeah, I….” I pause. I did tell him I was sorry, didn’t I?

  “You never apologized?”

  The more I try to deny my memory of it, the more my heart starts to pound. “I can’t believe I didn’t tell him.” Joey’s voice replays in my head: “I can’t believe you.”

  “Maybe that’s all he needs to hear.”

  “The damage is already done.” My eyes sting with salt from the beginning of tears that I will not let fall. “He was going to hate me, one way or the other.” Expressions of shock and disappointment wrinkle his face. I stare down at my hands a
nd I feel him rub my shoulder gently with his knuckles.

  “You ever hear about self-fulfilling prophecy, niece?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you did exactly that today.”

  “Maybe,” I exhale.

  There’s no ‘maybe’ about it. Regretful, remorseful, unworthy, guilty was all I felt, yet the words never left my mouth when I stood in front of Joey. What I wanted to do was cry and say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m all the bad names you’re calling me but don’t worry I’ll be out of your life soon enough.” My pride wouldn’t allow that. I just gave him the cold truth and braced myself for his reaction which I predicted would be a hot tempered lashing. I wanted him to hurry up and hate me. Get it over with. And when I didn’t think he was quite angry enough, I egged him on. I prophesized Joey would react just as I did when Raul broke my heart; with anger, disgust, and rejection. I made my expectations come true because, though I remembered how I reacted when Raul broke my heart, I’d forgotten I would have forgiven Raul that night if he had just apologized from the start.

  On top of telling him sorry, I should have given him so many thank you’s for so many years of being a shoulder I could’ve leaned on, someone who would have embraced me, no questions asked, and a sentinel for my entire family, even Daddy. Maybe he would forgive me for reading his truth if he knew I wanted to make up for lost time plus more time.

  “Does it finally make sense, Laney?”

  I nod. “Thanks, Uncle Frank.” I leave the couch and enter Manny’s room where I rest in his bed, silently wiping my tears while rehearsing my words.

  ******

  Evening came quickly. The air is still warm from the afternoon sun, making my skin slightly damp with perspiration even though it is dark enough for the street lights to be on. Just to mock me, those ugly, blood sucking insects we call Kissing Bugs decided to come out tonight, buzzing from one light to another and flying all around me, threatening to “kiss” me as I walk home.

  I shouldn’t have kissed Denise. I couldn’t have done anything dumber than kiss Denise! The suspicions Manny had about her and I was what started the crazy domino effect that scattered us either to jail or to a hospital. God? Please let Manny get over that girl while he’s serving his sentence. She’s not good for him. She’s not good for anyone right now, not even her.

  I saunter into the house. “Mom?” I call out. No answer. If she’s not home in an hour I’m going to call Mr. Jeremy. Sometimes she goes up there to his bar. If he hasn’t seen her, then I’m calling the police. I’m not kidding. She told me she was going for a walk and that was five hours ago. I go into the kitchen to find something to eat or drink, whatever will catch my eye. As I walk to our new refrigerator I glance at my journal sitting on the kitchen counter where I’d left it. A few of its off-white pages stick out haphazardly between its black leather covers. I turn my attention back to the contents of the fridge. I find some cranberry-pomegranate juice. I pour a glass as I eye that little black book of secrets.

  As I drink, I consider throwing the journal away, an idea Elaine unintentionally put in my head. Why not? There’s nothing in there that I want to remember. I grab the journal from off of the counter. It’s so light in my hands, but it holds the burdens of my life. I walk towards the trash bin in the corner of the kitchen. I raise my hand to fling it into the bin with the rest of the garbage, but my eyes catch Elaine’s mother’s name on one of the torn pages sticking out. Goosebumps spring up along my arms as I remember.

  I hadn’t remembered because I was wrapped up in the fact that Elaine had read about my undying feelings for her and she couldn’t care less. There was more in my journal than just poems. I wrote about Elaine’s father hurting her mother. Elaine was never supposed to know about that. I promised she wouldn’t ever know. And the way I ignored her mother days before she passed away, she must have read about it in the journal. There’s the rent thing, too. Elaine read about how I opened my big mouth and started the whole town ganging up on her and her family…but she was still there. She took me to my appointments, she hung out with me, stood up for me, even though she knew about all of that. I quickly shuffle the torn pages around so that they are tucked neatly against the binding of the book and slide it between the mattresses of my bed like I always did.

  In the bathroom mirror I notice the black streaks of mascara on the sleeve of my white shirt. I’m a walking handkerchief and confessional. Good thing I have my mom to unload some of it onto. Otherwise I’d go crazy. Speaking of Mom, I would really like to confront her when she gets home. What was she thinking, giving Elaine my journal? As the cool water flows over my body in the shower, I think about Elaine not having someone to unload her worries onto. Manny isn’t calling her. Mr. Roberts isn’t here physically and he’s not always there mentally. Her mom is gone. She has her uncle, but he has been out of the loop for years and might not know the back stories. So, Raul had been good for something. He could listen to her. Raul is now out of the picture, too. That leaves me, the guy who called her callous and unattractive because she doesn’t love him back. Maybe she never will, Joey. When I had that dream and Miss Marna told me to take care of Elaine, it wasn’t permission to have her hand in marriage. All she said was take care of her daughter and that can be done from afar.

  Out of the shower, dry and dressed, I run my fingers through my hair. It’s grown a lot, not back to its original length, but it is definitely curly again. The curls gently grasp at my fingers when I comb them through and I feel happy about that. Mom walks in the door right before I pick up the phone to make some emergency calls.

  “Some walk,” I say sarcastically.

  She smirks as she walks into my bedroom and sits on the edge of my bed. “You could say that.” She pats the space beside her. “We need to talk, don’t we?”

  I’m the one who was supposed to initiate this conversation! I sigh and walk away from my mirror to sit beside her on my bed.

  “You and Elaine had a fight?”

  “Yes and it’s your fault. Why in the world would you give Elaine my journal to read? There is stuff in there she was never supposed to know about, Mom.”

  “You’re right. It’s my fault. I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. You were in the hospital, in a coma, and I was emotional. I missed you so much. I missed your voice and all I and your girlfriend had of you was that journal. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

  Of course, I can’t stay angry with my mom for long. I accept her apology with a nod and try to figure out if I should tell her that Elaine and I aren’t dating and never were. I decide that it was Elaine’s lie so Elaine can tell my mother herself.

  “It’s not your fault, Mom. I’m just really frustrated and I don’t know where to direct it. I can’t seem to get too mad at Elaine even though she was a total Ice Queen today out of nowhere. We were good and then this. I’ve never seen her so…blank. She just had nothing to say about it. She made me look like I was overreacting! She did everything to push me away, like she wanted me out of her life from the beginning but didn’t want to feel guilty when she made a break for it. No, she turned it around so that I would be the one responsible for us, um, breaking up.” I pause, aware of the pressure building up in my chest. I fall back onto my bed. “She thinks I’m expendable.”

  “No, Joey. Today when she came back to her house after the argument she looked dazed and, I don’t know, lost. “

  “Really? Did you talk to her?” I grab a pillow and tuck it under my head to get more comfortable.

  “No. She wanted to be alone in her room for a while. Trust me, Joey. She cares. It was all over her face. I’ve always seen it in her eyes.”

  I almost snort in disbelief. There wasn’t any emotion in her eyes today, except fear when I invaded her personal space and then disgust as she flipped me off. “I was about to send some hounds to come sniff you out.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “You saw Elaine while you were walkin’ around?”

  “
I was at her house already when she came in. Frank and I were talking.”