What I Want

by LN Cronk

  “Oh, my gosh,” Josette gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as she stared at the screen. “That is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I thought I was going to die.

  I don’t know if Dad liked Josette or not, but he definitely had a problem with the fact that I was living with a woman. He let me know this the very second Josette and Mom took my car the first time to go shopping.

  “You’re not being smart,” he told me.

  I sighed. “Nothing is going on.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way.”

  “I love Bizzy,” I reminded him. “Nothing’s going to happen between me and Josie. She’s just a friend.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Your mom and I started out as friends too.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Look,” he said. “You may have the best of intentions here, but God designed us a certain way. We have hormones that–”

  “You did not just say the word ‘hormones’ to me,” I interrupted.

  He looked at me.

  “I am not having this conversation with you,” I cried. “I’m twenty-three years old and I know all about hormones and everything else and I’m in love with Bizzy and nothing’s going to happen between me and Josette. I know what I’m doing!”

  “I know you think you know what you’re doing–” he began, but I cut him off again.

  “I know what I’m doing,” I insisted.

  He looked at me once more.

  “Can you please not make a big deal out of this?” I begged. “I really was hoping that we could just have a nice time together while you’re here.”

  That struck a chord. A chord that’s easily struck in someone who has realized just how limited his days are. He looked at me for a moment and then nodded in silent agreement. I let out a sigh of relief.

  “But I want you to promise me something,” he said, obviously determined to get the last word in.

  “What?” I sighed.

  “Promise me that if anything does happen between the two of you that you won’t keep living together. One of you needs to move out.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen between the two of us,” I insisted.

  “Just promise me that if it does one of you will move out,” he said again. “I’ll pay more for your rent or whatever you need, but it’s not a good idea for the two of you to live together under the same roof if you’re . . . you know.”

  I didn’t bother telling him again that nothing was going to happen between me and Josette and that I loved Bizzy and that he didn’t need to worry about it. It was easier just to tell him what he wanted to hear.

  “I promise,” I nodded. “If Josie and I ever decide to start dating, I’ll kick her right out.”

  Mom and Dad slept in my room while they were visiting and I slept on the couch, which was way too short for me. I was glad to get my bed back after they left, but that was the only thing good about having them gone. I missed them the instant they checked through security.

  I think Josette knew that I was going to be feeling homesick once they left because when I got back from the airport she was making my favorite childhood meal of meatloaf and potato casserole.

  “Your mom gave me the recipe,” she explained kindly. Then she added with a wicked grin, “Muñeco.”

  I rolled my eyes and she laughed one of her rare laughs.

  “Why wouldn’t you tell me about that?” she asked, still laughing. “It’s so cute!”

  “Because it’s embarrassing!” I cried.

  “But you were their little Muñeco,” she said in a baby voice. “Their little doll.”

  I rolled my eyes again and shook my head, turning on my heel and stalking into my room.

  I came back out when Josette called me for dinner. She didn’t tease me anymore, but she still had a glint in her eye. We sat in front of the television and watched our show while we ate.

  “This tastes great,” I told her between bites of meatloaf and Wally Fletcher’s questions. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The food and the familiarity of our routine comforted me and I felt grateful. She didn’t call me Muñeco anymore, and I was grateful for that, too. By the first commercial break, I was three questions ahead of her and feeling almost happy.

  But then Josette reached for the remote and muted the television.

  “Can I talk to you about something?” she asked.

  I was immediately worried by the seriousness of her voice.

  “You’re not moving out,” I asked. “Are you?”

  “No,” she smiled.

  “Good,” I said. “Go ahead. Talk away.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Grace.”

  “Unless it’s about Grace,” I said quickly, trying to snatch the remote out of her hand. “You can talk to me about anything except you moving out or about Grace.”

  “Marco . . .” She held the remote just out of my reach.

  “Why are you trying to ruin a perfectly good meal?” I asked.

  “Because I learned a lot about both of you when your parents were here and I think maybe I have an idea about why the two of you don’t get along so well.”

  “Maybe it’s because she’s a bi–”

  Josette shot her hand out and covered my mouth before I could finish that sentence.

  “Will you just listen to me, please?” she asked.

  I crossed my arms and sat back on the couch, suddenly no longer hungry.

  “I’d rather talk about you moving out,” I said.

  “Thanks a lot!”

  I glared at her.

  “Say whatever you want to say and get it over with.” I sulked.

  “Okay.” Josette nodded. “I think the reason she’s so mean to you is because she’s jealous of you.”

  “Jealous of me?” I asked, incredulous. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life!”

  “No, it’s not,” she insisted. “I’ve put a lot of thought into this and I really think that’s what’s going on.”

  I looked at her skeptically.

  “Look,” she said patiently. “Which one of you was adopted first?”

  “She was.”

  “And how old was she when your parents brought you home?”

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I guess about four months old.”

  “How old were you when you had your surgery?”

  “I had a lot of surgeries,” I told her.

  “Well, how old were you when you had them?”

  I shrugged again. “I guess I had my first one when I was about six months old and I know I had one around the time I was about a year old.”

  “So she was about sixteen months old,” Josette clarified. “And was that it?”

  “No,” I said. “I had to have surgery on my pharynx when I was in kindergarten and a bone graft when I was in fourth grade.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Unless you count my moustache surgery,” I said sheepishly.

  “I count it,” she replied seriously. “Grace might not have known exactly what you were having done, but she knew you were having another surgery.”

  “So, she’s jealous because I got to have lots and lots of surgeries?”

  “Not because of the surgeries,” Josette said, “because of all the time your parents spent with you. Didn’t at least one of them fly to the States with you for every one of your surgeries?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “And wasn’t there other stuff?” she asked.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “Like therapy or something?”

  “I had speech therapy,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “And a couple sets of braces . . .”

  “See?” She nodded again. “Your parents spent a bunch of time with you while you were growing up. Grace probably felt like they were spending all their time with you instead of her.”

 
“I don’t think so.”

  “Plus,” Josette went on, ignoring me, “I know you don’t believe this, but you were incredibly cute.”

  I rolled my eyes at her.

  “You were, Marco,” she insisted. “I can’t even imagine the amount of attention you got when you were young, with everyone oohing and ahhhing over their little Muñeco and going on and on about how great your latest surgery went or how well you were enunciating your words . . .”

  “And meanwhile,” she went on, “there sat little Grace, watching everybody fawn all over you like you were the only cute kid in the room.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said again. “I think my parents did a good job of making all of us feel special and loved.”

  “I’m sure they did,” she nodded. “But did your dad ever fly to Boston with Grace and take her to a Red Sox game?”

  “You know what?” I asked, real anger welling up inside. “I don’t feel one bit sorry for Grace just because she didn’t get to spend a bunch of ‘extra time’ with my parents. I gladly would have given up every single one of those trips.”

  “Your mom told me all about why they adopted you,” she said, undeterred by my rant.

  “So?”

  “She said your dad took one look at you on your first day in the orphanage and fell in love with you right then and there. He just had to have you. Your mom said she couldn’t have kept the two of you apart if she’d tried.”

  “So?” I asked again.

  “So,” she answered, “what about Grace’s adoption story?”

  “What about it?”

  “Why did they get her?”

  I had a sneaking suspicion that she already knew exactly why Mom and Dad had adopted Grace, but I reluctantly went ahead and told her.

  “My dad wanted Amber,” I said. “They had to take her little sisters too or they couldn’t get her.”

  She looked at me with a self-satisfied expression on her face, and I felt my anger grow.

  “I don’t feel sorry for her!” I said again, my voice rising. “My mom and dad love her every bit as much as they love me!”

  “But maybe she doesn’t realize that–” Josette began before I cut her off.

  “If she doesn’t realize that, then that’s her problem,” I yelled. “She has had everything I’ve ever had and more.”

  I had never yelled at Josette before and her eyes widened in surprise, but I was so mad right then that I didn’t care.

  “She never had to deal with this,” I went on, still yelling, shoving my hands in Josette’s face. “Things were bad enough without her doing everything she could to make me even more miserable than I already was.”

  Josette pulled back with a hurt look on her face as I continued on in a bitter voice. “I would trade places with her in a heartbeat.”

  She sat back even further, looking at me, and I knew that I had gone too far . . . that I should apologize. Instead, however, I just looked right back at her until she said, very quietly, “I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat,” and then she got up off the couch and walked to her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  After Josette left, I sat and stared at the spot where she had been for a moment before turning off the television right in the middle of our show and clearing the coffee table. I put away the meatloaf and the potatoes and I did the dishes all by myself, fully aware that I needed to go apologize to Josette but still feeling too angry to do it. Instead, I went to my room, closed the door, and stretched out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about everything she had said. I’d been in there for about ten minutes when I heard the sound of her door opening, followed by a light knock on my own.

  “Marco?” she called softly.

  By now my anger had been replaced by complete embarrassment at how I’d yelled her and I was quite ready to apologize.

  “It’s open,” I answered, propping myself up on my elbows.

  She opened the door slowly and looked in at me.

  “May I come in?” she asked tentatively.

  I nodded and she stepped into the room.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “Me too,” I replied sincerely.

  We looked at each other for a moment.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked.

  “About Grace?” I asked, raising my eyebrow.

  She shook her head and gave me a little smile.

  I sat up even more and patted the end of the bed, inviting her to have a seat. She did.

  She looked at me for a moment but then turned to face my closet. She was quiet for a long time.

  “When I was sixteen,” she finally began in a faraway voice, “Dad bought a house in Perth. I liked it there a lot. After being homeschooled on a yacht for so long I liked being at a big school with lots of classes and lots of kids and different sports and activities and . . .

  “It was exciting,” she said, glancing at me briefly. I nodded before she looked away again.

  “Stuart was in my biology class,” she said, smiling as she remembered. “He was a rugby player and he was really cute and popular and funny and his family had lots of money . . . I didn’t think someone like him would ever be interested in me, but for some reason he was. He asked me to go to a party with him and pretty soon we were together all the time.”

  She hesitated before going on.

  “I found out I was pregnant three days before I turned seventeen,” she said, pausing to face me again, obviously waiting to see my reaction.

  I just gave her another nod.

  “Stuart said he wanted to marry me,” she went on. “Of course Dad wasn’t upset or anything – I think he kind of viewed it as the next great adventure in our lives or whatever – but I made Stuart tell his parents by himself. I was so scared how they were going to take it.”

  “How did they?”

  “Surprisingly well,” she said, nodding. “Stuart had already been accepted at Sydney and they agreed to pay for a flat for us until he finished school.”

  I nodded one more time.

  “I finished high school just before Jamie was born. Stuart’s parents helped us move two months later, and all of a sudden I was a brand-new mom in a strange city, with no family and no friends.

  “Stuart was great,” she went on. “I was kind of worried that he’d want to be out partying or something, but he really stepped up and did what he needed to do. He played intramurals, but other than that, he did all of his studying at home and he really helped me with Jamie and he played with her all the time and . . .”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “We were happy,” she said. “It was a good life.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Stuart was the one who wanted to get her baptized,” she went on. “He’d grown up going to church and I’d hardly ever been so I didn’t really care, but he thought it was something we should do, so I said, ‘Okay’. We found a church that we liked and asked them to baptize her, but they said we had to become members first, so we did.

  “I liked going there,” she said. “I was really lonely in this big new city and the people were really nice and I liked being around them. They invited me to Bible studies and stuff and there was always a nursery so I didn’t have to worry about Jamie and it was . . . it was nice.”

  I shifted my weight on the bed to get more comfortable and then waited for her to continue.

  “And I liked church,” she said. “I never really knew all that much about God, but I started getting really interested in everything and the more I learned the more I wanted to learn, and pretty soon I was reading the Bible every day and praying and . . .”

  She shrugged slightly.

  “So,” she told me, “like I said, life was good. I probably didn’t really appreciate it at the time, you know. I wanted to be taking classes too, and I wanted a flat that was closer to the park so I could walk there with Jamie, but overall, things were really good.”

  She took a big, deep br
eath, and I looked at her, fairly sure I didn’t want hear the rest of this story.

  “What happened?” I finally asked when she remained quiet.

  She turned away from me and stared at my closet again.

  “Jamie was almost four,” she said. “Stuart had just graduated and had been accepted into the graduate program here at Melbourne. We’d already come here and picked out a flat and everything, and we were all set to move after the holidays.”

  She paused for a moment before going on.

  “There was this covered dish supper at church and the kids were going to rehearse for the Christmas pageant. Jamie was one of the animals in the manger . . . she was a cow.”

  Josette smiled, remembering.

  “But we forgot that we were supposed to take something for the supper,” she said, “so we stopped at the grocery store on our way to church.

  “Stuart pulled into a spot and left the car running. It was hot and he told me that he’d wait there while I ran in to get something. Jamie wanted to come with me, but I told her to stay with Daddy. She started crying.”

  Josette’s smile was gone.

  “Stuart said, ‘Why can’t she just go with you?’ and I said because it took twice as long when she went in with me because I had to get her in and out of her booster seat and in and out of the shopping trolley and listen to her begging for candy and stuff, and he said he didn’t really want to sit there listening to her cry the whole time I was gone.”

  She was talking more to herself now than to me.

  “So I reached into the back and got her out of her booster seat,” she said. “I told her that if she stopped crying, she could sit on Daddy’s lap and pretend to drive the car. Stuart said if I was already getting her out of her seat anyway, then why couldn’t I just take her in with me?”

  Her tone was flat now. She seemed completely detached from the story she was telling.

  “Both of us acted like it was such a burden to spend time with her . . .”

  Her voice faded off and now I knew for sure that I didn’t want to hear the rest of this story.

  “I ran into the store and got some rolls and cupcakes,” she went on, “and then I went back outside. I could see Jamie through the windshield, sitting on Stuart’s lap. She saw me coming and waved, and Stuart helped her beep the horn.