by Suzie Carr
“I may do that.”
“I’ve got lavender bubble bath under the sink if you like.” She leaned against the door frame, one hip forward, chest perked. “I’m about to make some pancakes before I go. Interested?”
“You bet.” I jumped out of the bed.
“Sore, huh?” She winked and led the way.
~
Two mornings later, while the rest of the gang had already up and vacated, I practiced a little of the piano. Halfway through “This Land is Your Land,” Ralph walked past me and laughed. “Stick to marketing.”
I stuck out my tongue at him and continued bumbling over the notes. Soon after, I met him in the kitchen. His mini blender whirred with his typical soy milk, yogurt, banana and wheat grass concoction. He blended that thing until the mini blender practically smoked. He gulped down the green drink in one long swallow, grunting the whole time.
“Why bother?” I asked him.
“This drink has every amino acid necessary for healthy cell production. What’s a little dirt taste?”
“That a way to sell it to me.” I moved in around him to fill up on coffee instead.
“Do you realize how important wheat grass is? This stuff detoxifies the liver, the blood and the intestinal tract. It basically neutralizes toxins.” He vibrated to life, reaching for a fresh glass and scooping green powder into it. “You’ve got to try it.”
Ralph operated best when talking anything fitness or nutrition. Talk to him about anything else and he glazed over.
“Well, that’s a little better. Keep going.”
He measured a cup of milk and poured it in. “The enzymes and amino acids in here are going to protect your body from carcinogens and free radicals, and not that you have to worry, but if you ever find yourself feeling a little pudgy, this stimulates the metabolism.” He fastened the screw top on the glass, flipped it upside down and fastened it into the blender. The blender whined real loud, filling the kitchen with the unmistakable burning scent of an overworked, cheap mini-blender.
“Do your clients drink this crap?”
“I wish. People whine all the time ‘Why can’t I lose weight? Why am I so fat? Why am I always so sleepy?’ And I tell them it’s because you’re not willing to put down the cigarette and the alcohol and the sugar. They just don’t listen. So, I take their money and watch them grow fatter and listen to them whine like children.”
He unfastened the top and handed me the green drink.
“Well, there’s obviously a disconnect if you can’t get them to listen to you. Maybe you intimidate them. Or maybe they don’t like you.”
He smirked and forced the glass up to my mouth before I could disagree. “Drink.”
I sipped it. It tasted like a summer garden. I tilted my head back and swigged the entire glass down. The aftertaste lingered, planting a blend of dirt and fresh cut grass on my taste buds. Ralph waited with his eyes cranked open, hands pressed firmly against the granite, and arms bulging from the pressure.
“You’re going to expect me to drink this every day now?”
“We could go halves on it.” He said, insinuating I had crossed some honorable rite of passage that few were privy to stand before.
“I guess it’s better for me than a donut.”
He scoffed and backed away. “You’re just like the rest of them.”
“And, you’re nuts.” I punched his arm. “And you’re also really cut. How many hours do you spend in the gym carving this arm?”
“Apparently still not enough.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re the only girl who has noticed.”
“Out with it,” I said, feeding him the rope to our first real conversation. “There’s obviously more in there.”
He paused, then reflected up to the ceiling and back at me. “My ex wanted more muscle, apparently.” His eyes filled with pain, hurt, and years of churning grief. “She left me for a man with twice the muscle mass and half the brain. I trusted that woman, and she shit all over me. She didn’t have the common decency to break it off with me. Instead she slept with us both until I caught her in a lie and did some investigating. She screwed him in our bed with our kids in the house. The kids thought he was a television repairman that whole time.”
I breathed in the raw grit that he spewed out to me. It stirred inside, scraping against my throat and finally settling into my lungs like soot. I thought of Ryan and how he must talk of me to others. “I’m sorry. That must’ve been hard.”
“Did you leave your husband because of another girl?”
Tears cut through, stinging my eyes like an erosive chemical.
He brushed the air. “You don’t have to answer.”
“I’m not a bad person.” I still didn’t believe myself.
He considered my words, nodding, thumping his knuckles against the counter. “You’re not. I know that now. The circumstances are totally different.”
“Totally,” I said, stamping my seal on this defense with force.
He relaxed his pose, even smiled. “So that means you didn’t cheat on him?”
Afraid to get burned again in the firestorm of judgment, I lied. “I wouldn’t do that.”
He sighed and tapped his knuckles good and hard again. “I just assumed you cheated on him. I’m sorry I was such an ass all this time.”
I shrugged off his apology like he really owed me one, like a nice girl shaking the whole misunderstanding off. “Forget about it. It’s no big deal.”
“So, how come you’re not out there having some fun?”
“I’m not ready,” I said, satisfied this answer would cement my good girl posture into place without a further question. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t start a relationship and feel justified. Not just yet.
“I hear you. There’s a lot of garbage out there.”
“Yes.” And just for shits and giggles, I added, “Not everyone can be as lucky as Adam and Lucy and strike that gold.”
“Oh, no. You’ve got that all wrong.”
Of course I did. “How so?”
“Adam is too preoccupied. Lucy is bored. In fact, I’d be careful around her. You don’t see it, but I do. I think she’s got a crush on you.”
“Pfff.” I whisked this observation away with a flick, even though it sent a surge of electricity through my veins. “Please. All she does is talk about Adam this and Adam that.” I wanted to hear more.
“Adam’s not her type.”
“Nonsense. They’re cute together.”
“They’re like an old married couple. When was the last time you saw them flirt or give each other a nice pat on the butt?”
“They’re just conservative.”
“Conservative my ass. Lucy puts out this aura of being the good girl, but I see her checking you out when you’re not looking.”
“Bullshit.” My face flushed. “You do not.”
“I do, indeed.” His eyes sparkled. “You like that bit of information, don’t you?”
“Of course not.” I punched his arm again. “Stop talking like that. The last thing Lucy needs is for this silliness to get back to Adam.”
“Fair enough.” He stole the glass from my hand and turned his back on me to wash it.
“Hey, for what it’s worth, I kind of liked the green drink. Count me in.”
He nodded and scrubbed my glass. I took this as my cue to leave while amicability was high.
~
The day rose to a sunny, brilliant one. Could I thank Ralph’s magic drink or his joking actions towards me? Things were falling into place for me. I spent the good part of my Saturday morning rearranging my room, placing books on shelves, repotting a plant and hanging it from my boxed window, and I spruced up my closet by organizing the hangers to all face inward.
Around eleven, I ventured out to the grocery store and filled my cart with all sorts of healthy food—granola, yogurt, string cheese, apples, grapes, a carton of eggs, and some almonds. I pushed my cart down the cereal aisle, scanning each box carefully,
confused to what all the unpronounceable words meant, when I recognized a friend of Rachel’s pushing her cart in my direction.
She pretended not to notice me. She pushed right on past me fixated on jars of olives as though they were reverent, all-powerful and worthy of her praise. Now, I could’ve watched her pass me by, avoiding her just as well with my trek through cereal land, but I hated that she craned her neck to avoid me. “Jacky?” I said.
Jacky turned to me, and with perfect balance, as if she performed this surprise act all the time, beamed. “Hope! Wow, I didn’t recognize you without PJ and Rachel. How funny!”
“Yes,” I said, raising my voice to match her shrill, “Hysterical.”
“Have you seen the girls lately?”
“From time to time,” I lied.
“Isn’t it something how they’re going to be parents next month?” She raked her hand through her wild and wavy hair. “Those two have incredible luck. Stacy and I waited on a list for five years before we got a call.”
I gripped my cart. “Yeah, it sure is something.”
“Well, listen it’s been great seeing you. I’ve got to get going. I’ve got to pick up Michael from his friend’s house.”
“Sure, yeah.”
She scooted on down the aisle with her head raised high, shouldering all sorts of information that I had cut myself off from receiving.
I left my cart sitting in the cereal aisle and somehow walked to my car without getting run over. Back in my car, I sat, hands gripping the steering wheel, engine idling, envy and hurt pricking at me. I caved and called PJ.
She picked up on the third ring. I said, “I just ran into Jacky.”
“Jacky? Oh.” She rolled out this letter like it was the red carpet to her new life. “She told you?”
“Can I at least hear it from you now?”
We sat silent for a moment, then, she said, “She only knows because she was here when we got the call from the birth mother.”
“A birth mother called you?”
“Yes. She answered our ad.”
“You placed an ad?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“We didn’t want to tell anyone yet just in case things fell through.”
I fell from best friend to anyone status. “Okay, well, congratulations.” The weight of my head crushed my shoulders and bore down on my chest. She let go of me in a snap. How good of friends were we? Didn’t I at least get a longer, more drawn out reach?
“Thanks. We’re excited as you can imagine.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“We should catch up soon, so I can fill you in on everything,” she said. “Maybe grab some dinner. Are you free anytime this week? We could go to get some burgers at Mama’s Grill. Like old times.”
“This week is kind of busy for me.”
“Hope.”
I braced for some awkward questioning. “Yeah?”
“There’s something else I need to tell you while I have you on the phone.”
I steadied for the punch. “Okay. Spill.”
“Ryan came over for dinner last week.” Then, she said with a touch of pity, “I’m sorry. He just sort of invited himself over.”
I toiled with comebacks that would satisfy me long after the call ended, like ‘I see your conversation all over Facebook, so I’m no fool,’ but I voiced none of them. I wouldn’t chastise her with my jealousy. Instead, I told her it didn’t matter and that I needed to go.
I ended the call on the higher plane.
LUCY
One week following my yoga session with Hope, everything changed.
I stood in the kitchen prepping for the day when Hana asked me, “Is this yours?” She lifted up a wallet from the edge of the counter. I recognized it instantly.
“It’s Hope’s. Ralph rushed her out of here this morning to go with him to that Health Expo downtown.”
I swept up a pile of crumbs and dumped them into the trash.
Hana placed Hope’s wallet back down and shrugged. “I’m glad they’re getting along now.” She circled backwards into the hall and trekked down to her room.
On my way out of the kitchen, I picked up her wallet and brought it up to her room. When I opened her door, a cool breeze blew across me. The curtains danced with the crisp fall wind. Her bed remained tousled from the night. Her pajama bottoms, thin cotton with dainty flowers, lied in a soft mound on the floor near her running sneakers. The Secret Garden perched on her bedside table, a bookmark dangled from its midway point.
I placed her wallet on her bureau and noticed a pretty sapphire watch on top of a velvet-covered spiral notebook. I loved sapphires. It was my birthstone. The watch glistened just like her. I couldn’t resist. I picked it up to get a closer look, and when I did, her notebook fell. It landed belly up, exposing its contents. Don’t ask me how this happened, but my eye latched right onto my name. There it was, LUCY, spelled out amongst a sea of other blurred words.
My curiosity got the best of me, admittedly. I scooped that spiral mass of paper up so fast, my heart almost leapt out of my chest. There in my hands were Hope’s inner thoughts. My holding it so close to my curious eyes was wrong on so many levels. But, I just had to know what she wrote about me. So, I set about on my journey into temptation and read the passage it had fatefully opened to on its own.
October 15
Dear Journal, why does this have to be so wrong?
Lucy’s adorable. She’s got the cutest wiggle when she walks around this place. She made me pancakes this morning, and I’m sure I’m just imagining all of this, but I swear one resembled the shape of a heart. I’m not saying I think she set out to bake me a heart pancake. Just that maybe there’s something to this whole theory on the law of attraction. Maybe she unknowingly created it because she’s secretly just as attracted to me as I am to her. That would be a terrible thing, the two of us attracted to each other. I will not go down that road. In fact, I really should just stop writing right now and not let her enter my mind.
But, it’s so hard. I love being around her. The air around her just seems fresh and lively, like it’s smiling. Yeah, I’ve got to stop obsessing about this. I can’t have the object of my affection be some straight girl who’s hooked up with a great guy. Adam is so sweet. I overheard him counseling Hana the other day on ways she could get her students to listen to her more. Hana turned from depressed to empowered in a matter of minutes. Who wouldn’t adore such a guy?
Okay, I’m rambling. I need to get ready for bed. But first I need some tea. God, I hope I run into Lucy in the kitchen. WTF is wrong with me?!
My hands trembled so hard, I almost dropped the notebook again. I closed it, placed it back where I think it belonged, and placed the sapphire watch back without even studying it.
Where to place her wallet? I couldn’t very well place it next to her journal. She might freak out and think the unthinkable—that I actually snooped in it.
I tossed it on her bed and whisked out of the room, fueled by an enormous amount of adrenaline.
~
I was mush for the rest of the afternoon after reading Hope’s journal. I opened the fridge to get a snack and my belly tickled. I showered and my body arched under the stream, wishing it was Hope’s tongue instead of water. Then, I did something I’d never done before. I rode on the stationary bike in the basement gym daydreaming about her, about touching her skin, about kissing her lips, kissing her neck, and traveling down further to the soft curve of her breast. Before I knew it, I was panting and grinding against the bike seat, climbing to that place of ecstasy, of unbridled passion, imaging my mouth around her nipples, and then I came like I’d never come before.
All day, my body trembled and swam in a sea of longing and desire for her.
~
Later that night, I tried to study, but couldn’t focus. So, I drew a bath. Hope kept slipping into my mind. I kept burying her in the bubbles. I settled on though
ts of school, and on how far I’d come in such a short time. This got me focused on my sister, my nemesis really, and how she was my motivator in disguise. My success one day would be all her doing. I still didn’t understand why one-upping her covered me in a sticky layer of guilt, especially since she enjoyed toiling in my affairs so much.
Julie and I really had only one important conversation back when I was an undeclared major in college, and it opened my eyes. Adam and I had visited her and her family for one hell of a weekend in Virginia. Most visits, she badgered me with brag after brag about how great a life she lived. Typically, I could ignore most of the bragging by stocking up on much wine. That particular weekend, she decided it best if we drank soda and lemonade because she was training for a marathon and didn’t need the extra calories lying around the house. Well, one dry talk led to another and before long I told her I had finally enrolled in public speaking as my undergraduate major. Well, she choked on her lemonade. I further explained that I wanted to become a trainer one day, and I thought mastering the art of speaking in front of a group of people would be a great start. She suggested that I should think about becoming an accountant or something behind the scenes instead.
Of course, I, being the passive aggressive soul I am, graduated with a 4.0 in public speaking a couple of years later. I couldn’t stop there. I loved the jealous twitch this caused her. So, I launched my career as a trainer to learn the ins and outs of commanding an audience, not stopping until I earned prime roles.
I could tell my success drove her nuts.
When I suffered my first layoff, she dove into a protector role telling me everything would be alright and that maybe I should go back to school to be that accountant. “It’s stable and less stressful.” And, then, when I suffered my second layoff, she offered me her cold shoulder.
When I told her I was applying to graduate school, I thought her fake eyelashes were going to fall right off her eyes. I expected naysaying, but received a couple of well-executed shrugs instead. These shrugs fueled me, and kept me going through the application process, through the interviewing, and through the restless nights wondering if they would accept me into the program and then accept me as a teacher’s assistant. When I finally got word of my achievement, even though the timing sucked because I finally found a training job I loved, I bragged to my sister about it. She brushed it off like I told her I got a job at the convenience store working third shift.
