“Come here for a second, do some with me,” she said as if some were an obvious subject.
“Do what? Yoga?”
She nodded, her eyes closed as she seemingly breathed herself into another pose.
“No thanks.” I shrugged, prying my hands into the pockets of my too-tight shorts. “I’m not all skinny like you are. I’d hurt myself.”
Ember stood straight, breaking her flow, and looked at me. “It’s not about being skinny, Georgia. It’s about getting out of here,” she pointed to her head, “and getting into here,” she patted her bared belly button.”
“Thanks, but I’ve clearly been here enough.” I pointed to the softer skin around the bottom of my shirt.
She rolled her eyes, approached me and took my hand. “Good lord, come with me.”
I had to give her credit. Not only did she not stand there in her slender glory and try to tell me she wasn’t skinny, which is the single most annoying thing about some skinny girls, she also didn’t try to lie to my face and say in a chipper kill-me-now voice, oh Georgia, you’re skinny, too. Annoying skinny-girl habit number two.
Based on those two things alone, I allowed Ember to drag me to her sacred spot in the cool sand.
“Loosen up. Just shake everything out and hang like this.” Ember folded forward and let her upper body hang as if draped over her own waist. “Make sure you keep your neck loose.”
Uh, okay.
“Come on,” she urged when I stood there for a few seconds longer than it should have taken me.
I did as instructed. “Just ... hang here?”
“Yes. Let your upper body surrender to gravity. You don’t have to hold yourself to the Earth. Gravity does a fine job all by itself and doesn’t need our help.”
Something in the words she said brought more tears. They dotted the sand before I knew what was happening and could try to stop it. The Earth didn’t, in fact, need my help. An overpowering sense of humility pushed me to the sand and I sat there, my knees digging into the cool silk of it.
Ember kept her head down, but spoke as though she’d seen the whole thing. “It’s a hard thing to get used to, sometimes. Not doing everything ourselves.”
She had no idea. None.
“Bo and I have had to work on that with each other. Me, because I’m an only child of recklessly fantastic parents,” she giggled before taking a breath and sitting next to me, “and Bo because, well, when his parents died—”
“Wait,” I cut in, “his parents are dead, too?”
Ember nodded. “They died a few years ago. Before I met him. Car accident,” she added quickly, as if anticipating my next question.
Okay, maybe she had some idea.
“Since you said too, I assume you know about Rae, his sister?” Ember’s lips tightened to a close.
I nodded, looking over my shoulder.
“Did Regan tell you? Or CJ?” She took the elastic out of her hair and let the wild beauty of it fall all around her.
I didn’t know why it mattered who told me, but I answered. “Regan.”
She gave a side smile that made my insides hurt. “He doesn’t talk about her much. With anyone.”
Piecing together fairly quickly that Ember likely didn’t know about the nuclear letter that showed up on his doorstep, I thought better about bringing it up.
“He must trust you,” she continued, grabbing small fistfuls of sand and letting it drain between her fingers like an hourglass.
“Yeah,” I stood, brushing the sand from my shorts, “I think I screwed that up royally this morning.”
Ember stood, and though she was a few inches taller than me, she didn’t make me feel that way with her smile. “Not likely. Regan’s all brood, no bite.”
“It was kind of big...”
Ember shrugged, looking unimpressed.
I tilted my head, scrunching my forehead. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
She sighed. “Because you deserve it. Everyone does. Kind of like innocent until proven guilty? We should all be nice, I guess, no conditions around it. I was a bitch to you before. And, I’m sorry. I just—”
“It’s okay,” I put my hand up, “I know all about the pregnancy scare and Willow trying to plant herself directly over your boyfriend.”
Ember let out a fantastically airy laugh. “Do you know Willow?”
“I ... let’s just say I know how she operates.”
A grey look passed through her eyes. Seeming to force a grin, she hitched her thumb over her shoulder. “He’s probably that way. There are fewer houses down there, and a nice rock wall.”
“Thank you.” I smiled, put my head down, and made my way along the edge of the water.
I didn’t have to walk very far before I saw him. Shirtless and shaking water from his hair, Regan walked over to the rock wall Ember had assured me was there, and picked up his towel. Before drying off, he tossed the towel over his shoulder and leaned forward and picked up an envelope. I knew it was the card from Rae based on the shape, and the reverence with which he was handling it, dutifully setting it back on the rocks before drying off.
Thank God he didn’t toss the letter.
I hate being startled—life holds enough surprises—so I decided I should clear my throat, or something equally as juvenile to announce my presence.
I sniffed.
Of course, as intended, he looked in my direction, though I was embarrassed at my choice of greeting.
“Hi.” My voice was shaky and I braced for his retreat. Certainly there was some hole behind that rock he could heave himself down.
“Hey,” he mumbled back, wrapping the towel around his waist and sitting on the flat ledge of sea-bathed stone.
I made my way to the edge of the wall, keeping a five foot space of uncertainty between us
“I just wanted to say,” I started, wanting to get out as much as possible before he decided he’d heard enough, “that I’m sorry about this morning. I wasn’t ... I wasn’t all the way honest with you, and that wasn’t fair. I’m ... just ... that’s all I can say.”
Regan stared straight ahead, watching the water, maybe, or the space above it. He nodded once, no change in his face to tell me if he accepted my apology or was just acknowledging that I spoke.
After a few seconds of silence, I figured it was the latter, and decided I should leave. Leave him alone with the grief of that still unopened letter splattered all over his face. He didn’t want me, a liar, there to help him deal with what was the loss of a true love.
I took a few steps backward, sketching his silhouette into my memory so I could have a happy place to call upon in the days and months ahead. A friend. Even if it was all over. Finally, I turned, unable to keep my head up as a heroine might do in the movies, looking down at my chipping pedicure as I walked away.
“Georgia,” he called out, sounding as tired as I felt, “wait.”
Regan
Georgia stopped mid-stride, but didn’t turn around. It was as if she were waiting to see if she’d heard me correctly.
“Georgia,” I called again.
She turned around this time, her face caked in a shame I wanted to take away. It didn’t belong there.
“Come. Sit.” I moved over, patting the place next to me.
She tilted her head to the side, like she couldn’t understand me, but she walked anyway. When she reached the wall, she put her palms behind her on the ledge and lifted herself so she was sitting next to me.
“I’m sor—” we spoke at the same time, both snickering nervously.
She put her hand on my leg. “Me first. I’m sorry about this morning.”
“What are you sorry for?” I wasn’t testing her. I just needed to make sure we were on the same page.
“Well ... you met my mom. Because she’s alive.”
“You never told me she was dead.” I’d come to that conclusion somewhere during my swim, but that was all just a technicality.
Georgia crossed her legs in front
of her. “We both know that’s bullshit, Regan. I don’t know why you’re being so decent about it.”
“So, what’s ... the deal there?” I tucked my hair behind my ears and leaned back.
“Did you open your letter?”
“Uh-uh. We’ll talk about that later, though. I think we can agree that I’ve shared a bit more than you have in recent weeks.”
Her shoulders sank as she sighed. A long, thoughtful sigh.
“Schizophrenia.”
She paused, looking up at me and squinting the sun away from her eyes. I didn’t react. Not a twitch of a muscle or a blink of an eye. She expected me to, maybe wanted me to by the challenging look on her face, but I wasn’t going to. She wasn’t getting away without giving me some actual information.
I lifted my eyebrows, urging her to continue.
“My mother has schizophrenia, and she’s spent the last few weeks at Breezy Pointe, an inpatient psychiatric facility north of La Jolla.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I replied stupidly. Of course I didn’t know.
“That was by design.” She seemed to echo my thoughts.
“Why?”
Georgia shifted so she was facing me, her bent knee resting warmly against my outer thigh. “Why what? Why she was at the Pointe or why I didn’t tell you?”
“Both, I guess.”
She cleared her throat. “My mother has catatonic schizophrenia. With the right blend of meds and therapy, she can function just as well as you and me. If something gets out of balance with the therapies or in her brain, everything goes haywire.”
“She didn’t look catatonic,” I interjected.
“I was getting to that. It’s kind of on a spectrum, erratic behavior on one end, and catatonia, like you’re probably thinking, on the other. It’s rare she has episodes like you’re thinking, but when that happens she needs medical intervention. She’s completely unable to take care of herself. Feeding, bathing, all of it.”
Georgia’s cheeks reddened as she spoke. I reached my hand over and touched her knee, but she bounced it, indicating she didn’t want me to touch her. I pulled away before she did.
“Anyway, that’s what sent her in a few weeks ago, then the weekend that I met you guys, I went to visit her and she had kind of a mental flare, you know, like a solar flare. She grabbed my wrist and had to be restrained, and that earned her another week and a half...” She trailed off and looked skyward, taking a deep breath.”
“Shit...” I sighed on instinct. Then, I put it together. “Fuck, all the commotion about the bruise on your wrist. That wasn’t about Dex at all.”
She shrugged. “He’s totally innocent.”
“But,” I started with further revelation, “you never actually said he did anything.”
“Fancy, huh?” She gave a wry grin, but I didn’t buy it.
“Why do you lie?”
“I don’t fucking lie,” she snapped.
“Then why do you ... I don’t know ... craft a different reality?”
My words seemed to strike somewhere deep. Her eyes filled with thick tears and she slid off the wall and walked toward the water.
“Georgia!” I shouted, “I’m sorry, don’t go.”
“No, it’s okay,” she called over her shoulder. “Just walk with me.”
I caught up to her and put my hands in my pockets. “So...”
“When I was little,” she started after a quiet sniffle, “my mom was really honest with me about the schizophrenia. She was diagnosed when I was four, and left my dad when I was ten.”
“Because of the schizophrenia?”
She stopped to pick up a seashell then kept walking. “Yes. Her father had it, too. Schizophrenia. Blew his head off in front of my grandmother when my mom was in elementary school.”
My mouth opened but less than nothing came out.
“He didn’t know he had it, though. My mom didn’t figure that out until she was in college in an Intro to Psychology class. That’s when she learned the symptoms and the epidemiology, and pieced together what she remembered of her dad with the stories she’d heard after he was gone. So, she changed her major so she could help people like him.”
“She became a psychologist?”
“Psychiatrist. She was at the top of her field almost from the get-go thanks to her passion. She knew her symptoms right away.”
I stopped and faced Georgia. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” The thought of a daughter dedicating her life to her father’s illness, only to be stricken with the same thing was enough to almost double me over.
“Yeah. God saves his bad days for her.”
“W-what?”
She forced a smile. “Keep walking. It’s easier to process when you feel like you can walk away from it.”
I took a deep breath and tried to remember the woman I’d met in my apartment building hours before. She seemed normal, no signs of a lifetime of holy treachery staining her eyes.
“My mom wanted to make sure I wasn’t in the dark about what was going on with her. She knew that days of erratic and unexplainable behavior were ahead, and, I guess, she wanted to prepare me the best she could.”
“How do you prepare such a little kid for something like that?”
A cynical smile appeared on her velvety lips. “A different reality.”
“Ah.” I nodded, recalling the moment she fled our seated position and led me on this walk. “Explain?”
“My mom sat me down and,” Georgia cleared her throat, doing a hell of a job retaining composure, “told me that sometimes she might say or do things that didn’t make any sense, and it would feel like a fairytale.”
“Uh, not like any fairytale I know.” I twisted my lips in confusion.
“Wonderland,” she sighed.
“W—oooooh. Alice in Wonderland...” As she nodded in the corner of my vision, my first memories of Georgia flashed through my brain. Strange tattoos, riddled speech. I looked at her again and she made sense for the very first time.
“Stop staring at me.”
“I can’t.”
“What?”
“Tell me why your mother chose Alice in Wonderland.” It seemed obvious, but I doubted that I knew it all.
Georgia stopped and sat, digging her toes into the cakey wet sand. “It was my favorite movie and book when I got old enough to read. But, she just used the movie when she explained her condition. She told me that when Alice fell down the rabbit hole and landed with a thump in Wonderland, she sometimes saw things that were pretty, and sometimes things that were scary or confusing, but always at the end she woke up from her dream in the field of flowers in which she started.”
“So,” she continued, “my mom assured me that if I felt confused or scared, it was no different than Alice, and when it was all over, everything would be normal and comfortable again.”
I’d been standing as she was talking, but I sank on my heels next to her, wrapping my arm around her shoulder. She never settled into the embrace, but didn’t flinch away, either.
“So, your tattoos, the bakery, the random things you say sometimes...”
She smiled. “All a part of my life. Who I am.”
“Isn’t that kind of more who she is?” I questioned, pulling my arm away and leaning back on it.
Her face went grey. “Same thing.”
“I don’t...” I wanted to say understand, but she didn’t let me.
“That’s enough, okay? I’ll tell you more, just not right now.” Two tears rolled down her right cheek, and she just let them. They bumped into each other at the edge of her jaw and fell as one onto her shoulder.
My chest ached for her. I didn’t have all of the answers to her behavior I’d witnessed over the last several weeks, but it seemed they all lay in this story. This empty hole of a story that messed with her face and made it look older than her twenty-four years. The hostility I thought I’d observed in her eyes looked like pain in the light of personal tragedy. Maybe hostility lingered, thoug
h.
I had to touch her. To hug her. Never in my life had I seen a person who needed to be hugged as much as Georgia did. As she sat, her knees pulled to her chest, that half-assed excuse for a self-hug didn’t seem to be taking hold in her soul.
“I’ll shut up about it,” I said as I slid closer to her until our sides were touching, “if you let me hug you.”
She scrunched her eyebrows and looked at me like I’d just said the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. As ironic of a look as I’d ever seen.
“Please.” I nudged her shoulder with mine. “Just let me hug you. I can tell you need it.”
“I’ll let you hug me,” she straightened her face as she sat forward, “if you open that letter. Then maybe we’ll both need one.”
Feeling like I’d been tossed down my own rabbit hole, I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“That makes no sense. You have every body part necessary for the task.”
“You know what I mean. I ... physically can’t.”
“Why not?”
“What if it’s bad?” I’d been tossing possibilities around in my head for a week straight.
“I’d say the worst is over, isn’t it? The absolute worst thing has already happened. What the hell else could be worse?” Now her hand was on my leg, but I didn’t move. Human contact was at a premium for me these days, and I needed it.
She was right.
The absolute worst thing had already happened. Rae died, then I did, and I was wandering the earth as an emotional zombie amongst the living.
I sighed, looking to the sky for some sort of sign. It was perfect and blue. Nothing scary.
“Okay, I’ll open it.”
Georgia
“Not here, though,” Regan said of opening the letter. “Bo and Ember don’t know about it, and I don’t know if I want them to.”
I shrugged, but my heart was racing as he stood and I followed him back to the wall where the letter sat. “When I said open it, you know I meant open it and read it, right?”
He nodded, but kept walking a good five paces ahead of me.
“Okay, because I know some people get real literal under stress. I don’t happen to be one of those people...”
Sweet Forty-Two Page 16
