Finally the conversation drifted back into the mundane—our favorite classes over the years, our best memories, our worst teachers, and so on—and the bill was settled, so we got up to go back out to our cars.
As permanent as my state of suspended teenage-hood felt, I knew that I probably wouldn’t be here for long, so when we walked outside onto the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, I gave Suzanne a big hug. “Thank you so much for everything,” I said, close to her ear. She had always been good to me, even after Brendan and I had broken up. She was one of those adults you could count on to always be normal, and pretty sane, if not super-wise and all-knowing. “You’ll never know how grateful I am for you.”
“We love having you around,” she said, giving me a squeeze. “Thank you for celebrating your birthday with us.”
We drew back, and I turned to Brendan’s dad. “Thank you,” I said to him. “It was a lovely dinner. I’m totally stuffed.”
“The sign of a good meal. Glad you enjoyed it!”
“I did! Almost as much as I enjoyed the company. And remember”—I lowered my voice but hardened it meaningfully—“Microsoft. It’s on NASDAQ.” The shares were probably under three dollars right now. “Trust me.”
He gave a hearty laugh. He didn’t trust me at all. Who could blame him? “I’ll look into it.”
I wondered if he’d remember this moment in the future and look back on it with regret, or maybe wonder at my “psychic abilities.” If I’d pushed the Google or Apple points, he could have made a fortune, but I knew those stories would only make me seem fanciful or, in the case of a name like “Google,” maybe like I was making stuff up entirely. Plus, he wasn’t going to hear that name for another few years and trust his memory enough to overinvest.
I kissed him good-bye on the cheek and we waved them up Old Georgetown Road until they turned into the garage where their car was parked.
Only then did Brendan and I head back to his car and talk to each other, alone, for the first time in what suddenly felt like ages.
“So now you’re a real financier,” he commented, hooking his arm lazily over my shoulder. “A financial whiz kid.”
“Actually, yes. And a very good one.”
He laughed. “I think Dad got a real kick out of that.”
“He also got some really good advice.”
“Okay.” He turned the corners of his mouth down and shrugged. “We’ll see.”
I stopped on the sidewalk. “Excuse me, are you saying you don’t have faith in my opinion?”
He was unfazed. “I’m saying you were completely not yourself tonight, so I don’t know what to believe.”
That was reasonable. He was right, I wasn’t myself. Or at least I wasn’t the self he’d expected to see. Why on earth should I be giving him grief for not taking my teenage professional advice seriously?
I needed to get a grip. I know it sounds crazy, but it was as if my teen hormones were mingling with my adult sense of pride, and the result was a real mess.
I tried to find a way to soften this and make it more reasonable. Or less hysterical-seeming. “Well, Dad and I were going over some new long-range options yesterday, so I happened to be thinking about that stuff anyway.”
Brendan nodded. “What’s this about going to London?” he asked. “Last I heard, you were going to Flagler in Florida to study art. What happened to that?”
It was true, I did my first year at Flagler, thinking I’d study art, but the more fun I had, the more I worried that I was pursuing a major that would be too challenging to make into a career. If there was one thing Dad had taught me, and taught me well, it was to eliminate risk, particularly when it came to finances. So I’d gone to Wake Forest for my undergrad work, then taken a year at the London School of Economics and finished my master’s back at the University of Maryland. Sincerely, to this day, one of my favorite reads is the Financial Times. I may be a geek, but it’s to a good end.
Brendan and I got into his old station wagon, and he started the engine. My Marti Jones mix tape started blasting out over the speakers. It was the chance of a lifetime … Yes, it was. Whatever it was, this was the chance of a lifetime. I sang along with abandon. What a weird feeling: with no job to go to in the morning, nothing I did mattered right now, at least not in a losing-your-job sense.
Brendan turned the dial to lower the volume.
Then he leaned across the seat and kissed me.
This was routine for us, I realized. My body remembered it, even while my mind lagged a little behind, asking questions I didn’t want to ask, and giving warnings I didn’t want to heed. I shouldn’t! I’m so much older! This hormonally driven eighteen-year-old body could get pregnant so easily! All of that warred with, This feels incredible.
Try and guess which impulse was stronger.
The kiss was delicious. There is something about making out as a teenager that absolutely beats every other experience. Nothing feels better. Sex isn’t far behind, of course, if the kissing compels it, but I’d still have to say that the best part of it all is the kissing.
This was where I’d learned that.
This was bliss.
Chalk it up to those teenage hormones my body was feeling. I sank into it, willfully feeling every bit of the experience. It had never occurred to me how much I missed this, but I did. I had. I loved this. I could do it all night.
And that was the best part, I could do it all night.
Why had I been so determined to grow up when I was a kid? I just couldn’t wait to be twenty-one, to be legal, to be finishing school, to be moving out into the real world and starting my life properly. Why hadn’t I enjoyed these halcyon days of carefree, jobless, stress-free heaven a lot more?
This was what people dreamed of when they looked back at their lost youth. All that possibility ahead, everything seeming like a good idea, every road well paved and open. There was so little fear of the unknown back then because I, at least, had absolute confidence that no matter what I did, I’d succeed wildly.
And I had, I guess, but I’d learned pretty quickly that it took a lot of work and a lot of worry and a lot, a lot, a lot of setbacks and knockouts and getting back up again, to finally make it.
Right this moment I was reliving the time right before I had to find out all those hard lessons for myself.
On top of everything else, I got to enjoy free, unbridled passion. I had never known how really good I’d had it.
We drew together, ever closer even though that didn’t even seem possible. And soon we were peeling our clothes off, first my shirt, after which he spent a long time and a lot of attention on my breasts. No one did that anymore. Not like this.
He moved down, pushing my pants out of his way and moving his mouth down where everything inside of me wanted him to be. I closed my eyes and just let it all happen, felt it all, enjoyed it all, every second, until finally he moved on top of me and entered me.
We both moaned with the relief of it.
I arched against him, meeting him move for move. God, this was awesome. I hadn’t even remembered just how good this was. When Brendan and I had broken up, I’d moved on so determinedly that I don’t think I allowed myself to think about him until I’d all but forgotten the details. Certainly I had taken my time before I got involved with anyone else, and then romance was all mixed up with overloaded college schedules, early morning exams, part-time jobs, and all the things that were the first steps toward the unforgiving schedule I was setting myself up to have for my career.
If I could have had this all those years, would that have been enough? Would I have forgone some of that intense career determination?
For so long I’d been proud of the fact that I’d never needed a man to take care of me, I’d never needed a man’s income, I’d never needed anything from a man. Or, to be less specific, I’d never really needed anything from another human being at all as far as personal relationships went.
Now I wondered if I’d totally missed the most importan
t mark.
Now I wondered if all those years I’d needed the one thing I had so casually pushed away: love.
CHAPTER TEN
When I got in, around midnight, my father was up, as usual, watching TV from the sofa in the living room. His left arm was in a sling and his posture suggested his back was not quite up to par either. Just as I’d recalled.
“Hi, Daddy.”
He pushed the mute button on the old Zenith remote and struggled to sit up straighter and turn to see me. “Hey, princess, how did your night go?” His voice was thick with pain, from the car accident and maybe a little bit of bourbon for pain control.
I sat down on the end of the sofa by his feet. “Weird. It was really weird.”
He picked up the remote again and committed to off, then turned back to me. “Weird? How so?”
I sighed dramatically. “You wouldn’t understand. I can’t even understand. It’s crazy.”
“I understand a lot more than you think,” he said, and when I looked at him, he went on: “There isn’t that much that separates us, you know. A few years seems like everything when you’re young, but when time moves on and you see what it really is, it’s meaningless. I was a kid just like you not too long ago.” He hesitated, then shook his head and added, “Not too long ago, and way too long ago.”
I knew what he meant, though he couldn’t have realized it. This throwback was all too familiar, all too easy and tempting to dive into, but at the same time, it felt like so long ago that it might have been someone else’s life.
“Daddy,” I began, then paused. How could I ask him all the things I wanted to without freaking him out about either my sanity or his own death? Could I possibly just be subtle and get answers without indicating my fear/dread/certainty about the future?
Then, as if reading my mind, he took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it with his old gold lighter. I’d thrown that thing away when he died. Never wanted to see it again.
Now it almost looked like an old friend.
Almost.
I watched him take a long drag and hold it in for a moment before blowing it out, bluish smoke surrounding us both. I hated it. “How come you keep smoking, even though you know it’s terrible for your health? Even though you know it’s dangerous.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Because it is a stupid choice I made a long time ago and at this point it makes no difference.”
“But it does!” Something like hope surged in me. Did I have the chance to get him to stop right here and right now? If I did, could I save his life? Was that why I was here? “If you’d stop and get into shape, you could live a long and happy life.”
He shook his head, and I could tell by the resignation in that small movement that there was no way he was going to change one damn thing. “It takes years to reverse the damage,” he said, and I thought he sounded regretful. “I know that. Don’t you?” Yes, I did. Unfortunately. “I don’t have that kind of time.”
He was right.
Tears filled my eyes immediately, and burned like they were acid. He was giving a nod to his own death sentence. Did he know? Had he already had pangs that indicated he was on his way out? “Why are you saying that?” I asked, verging on an ugly echo of hysteria. “You’re not even fifty years old!”
“Ramie.” He sat up and reached for my hand. His was cool. A little rough. “Is this really what you want to talk about right now?”
“Yes. This is about the most important thing we possibly could talk about.” Obviously. “Isn’t it?”
He looked me in the eye for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. Sometimes things are written in the stars. And we don’t like them. You know, when I started smoking, it was prescribed as an antidote to stress?”
Stupid stupid stupid medical community. How had minds trained in any sort of health care ever thought it made good sense to draw smoke into your lungs? Lucky Strike will calm your nerves. Doctors prescribe a good smoke after a bad day. Did those same doctors think it a good idea for a person to remain inside a burning building? “I know, but we’ve known for a long time that wasn’t true. It’s all bad.”
“You just need to sleep,” he said.
I frowned and rewound that, but it didn’t make sense. Was he sending me to my room for having an uncomfortable conversation? “What?”
“I said it didn’t stop me.”
“Oh.” I tried to rewind our words again, but they were gone and I knew what he was saying mattered more anyway. “Why not?”
He shrugged, but his gaze was penetrating. “Dumb, isn’t it? I heard the news, same as you, about the dangers of smoking, but I kept doing it. I made a choice. I kept making that choice for many decades, always thinking I’d quit later.”
But you didn’t and then you died from it! I wanted to say. But I couldn’t. You can’t look your loved one in the face and predict his impending death. “So you’re saying you will willingly do this until the day you die?” I asked angrily, but tears slipped down my cheeks, because there was so much more grief in me than anger.
“Yes,” he said simply. “Me and many, many others who should know better and do better. Maddening, isn’t it?” It would have been a good time to punctuate his question with a puff on the cigarette and I was glad he didn’t.
“Yes,” I said, my voice hard with the knowledge that my mother was going to be widowed, that I was going to work my way through school by myself, that my father wouldn’t be there to walk me down the aisle, though it didn’t seem likely I’d get there anyway. “It’s very maddening. And seriously selfish.”
He sighed. “This is not the time for me to sit here and lie to you, though, is it? To say I’ll stop and then have you surprised all over again by the truth?”
Given that the truth was he was going to die, I supposed he was right. But still, he didn’t know that he would die so early, so this was a bullheaded position to take when his daughter was sitting before him, crying, begging him to live.
“Why can’t you even just try?”
A long quiet stretched between us.
“You know.”
“What if something happens to you?” I asked carefully.
“None of us gets out alive.”
I frowned. “I know, but we don’t all have to die at fifty.”
He stubbed the cigarette out. Even though I hated it, the tiny crunch of the burned leaves in the ashtray was nostalgic. I watched as all the tiny orange bits of flame extinguished, then looked at him.
“What do you really want to talk about?” he asked.
I sank back against the edge of the couch and felt tears come back to my eyes, fast and hot. I wiped awkwardly with the back of my hand. “I don’t know. Something so messed up is going on and I don’t know why or how to explain it. I don’t know what to do.”
“There are a lot of times in life when you’re not going to know what to do,” he said. “We never outgrow that. What you need to remember is that, at those times especially, you need to slow down and just put one foot in front of the other. There’s no faster route to madness than to try and take everything in at once and figure out your whole path in life from one blind vantage point.”
I gave a dry laugh, without a touch of humor. “I kind of feel like I’m there right now.”
“You can always change the future,” he said. “Always. Given enough lead time,” he added, probably anticipating my retort. “I’m not so sure about the past.” He met my eyes and gave a soft laugh. “Many have tried and failed.”
We’d see about that.
We sat together in an uneasy silence.
“Do you believe there’s a heaven?” I asked at last. I don’t think we’d ever really talked about this before and I wanted to know his feelings on things like this if he really did have to go.
Once again, he stopped to consider before speaking. He reached, reflexively, for the cigarette pack in his pocket but stopped and drew his hand away. “Yes.”
“And…?”
&
nbsp; “And that’s one hell of a relief, eh?” He gave a genuine laugh, but I didn’t join in.
I’d been expecting more. Something philosophical, maybe. Some key to everything that was happening right now, even something I could read into as the reason for it all. But that one single word—that yes, he believed in heaven—was an immeasurable comfort to me.
“Listen to me,” Dad went on gently. “You’re looking for answers. We all are. That’s what we do in life, we try and find our way through every stage, day after day, year after year, and we look to others for guidance. It’s natural. But the thing is, when you come down to it, the answers are all inside of you.”
The tears came on full-force. “That scares me,” I said brokenly. “I don’t feel like a grown-up and I don’t know if I ever will at this point.” He let that slide, even though it must have sounded childish coming from my eighteen-year-old mouth. “I’m scared of being entirely in charge of my own destiny. What if I do it wrong? A bad marriage, no kids, too many kids, the wrong job, the wrong career … so many things can go wrong!”
“That depends how you define wrong. You learn something from all of that. Remember that yappy little dog we had when you were in fourth grade? The one that bit you?”
I reached up to my lip, where a faint scar still remained. “Oh, god. It was third grade. Binky. That horrible little rat. That’s a perfect example of what I’m saying—what was the point of having Binky at all when all he did was spend one miserable month pooping all over the place and then bit me so I had to get twelve stitches and a facial scar that would disfigure me forever?”
He laughed. “Disfigure.”
“Okay, maybe not disfigure, but it’s there!”
“Be that,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “as it may, what happened when we gave Binky to Aunt Pat?”
“I’m pretty sure he destroyed her house.”
“That’s her lesson.” Dad smiled. “What happened here?”
I shrugged. “We adopted Bailey, who we should have gotten in the first place! See? Binky was a mistake.”
If I Could Turn Back Time Page 8
