by Tasha Fawkes
"Anything else?"
"What do you mean," I said, knowing perfectly well what she meant.
"You've been moping for the past few weeks. Spill."
I said nothing but turned to glance back out the window, not wanting to confront the truth.
"You know, Karen, you have to know, that money only goes so far. Yes, we enjoy ourselves and my parents were rich so I don't have to worry about things like putting a roof over my head or buying food or things like that. And you haven't either, even though your parents are supposedly in dire financial straits. They're probably still a lot better off than a lot of people. Right?"
I turned toward her, nodding. Where was she going with this? "I'm sure they've still got property they could quietly sell off, but I know they don't have nearly as much as they used to."
"Okay." Courtney shrugged, gesturing around. "How much does this place cost every month?"
"I don't know, a couple of grand a month."
"And why don't you know? Exactly."
She repositioned herself on the sofa, sitting cross-legged on the cushion, facing me. What was she doing? What was all this about? I frowned. "What difference does it make?"
"Have you ever made a budget, Karen? Figured out how much money you spend in any given month?"
"No, why?"
"I have," she said. "Actually, I found it a bit embarrassing, but I'm not going to apologize for it. This is my life. I like it just the way it is."
I was growing perturbed. "And?"
"Do you like your life? Do you like the way it is?"
I felt myself go hollow inside. Did I like my life? Did I like the fact that I had parents who looked at me as nothing more than a negotiable asset? That they didn't seem to truly care about who I was, about my dreams, or what I wanted out of life? Did I like the fact that in a terribly short amount of time, I would be marrying a man I didn't love, all to keep my parents happy?
"I didn't think so."
"Courtney, what are you getting at?" I snapped. "What is it you want from me?"
Courtney grinned with a shrug. "Between us? Honesty would be nice."
I swallowed. Hard. "All right then. I miss Ben. I've… I fell in love with him, Courtney… I fell in love with him."
"But?"
But what indeed?
"You want to know something?"
I said nothing.
"I never told you where my parents got their money, did I? They weren't always rich, not like your family. They weren't Mayflower descendants, nor did they have 'old' money from an ancestor who struck it rich as a steel magnet, a railroad builder, or anything like that."
I turned her, giving her my full attention. She'd never told me any of this. So why now?
"My heritage, Karen, was the oil fields of southern Texas. My family came from a long line of laborers. First farmers, then oil workers. Turns out that my grandfather had a small parcel of property along the Gulf, not far from Houston. It was bequeathed to my dad when he died. Then some oil company came and offered to buy him out."
"Why?" I asked, interested.
"Because based on their projections, there was oil beneath his land. And he knew it too. Had known it for a long time." She shrugged. "My dad might've been just a laborer, but he was no slouch. He was canny. He made the oil company buy him out for an outrageous price, and then he also made them sign a contract that he would get twenty percent of all the revenues off the oil they pulled out of the ground – in perpetuity."
"Well," I murmured. That was impressive. But why was she telling me this? I asked her that very question.
"Karen, it's nice to have money. I'll admit it. But before my parents got rich and we moved up here and then they ended up dying in a car crash a few years ago, they weren't rich. Even though my dad was literally sitting on a gold mine, he was content with his life. He loved my mom. She loved him. He had family around him that loved and cared about him and vice versa."
She paused. I didn't say anything, waiting for her to continue.
"I know that among us, we all manage to put up pretty good face on things, or should I say, a fake face on things. You know what? I think that all of us have let ourselves down by not having the courage to just be ourselves."
I wasn't sure I wanted to hear this. It only reaffirmed everything that I felt like I had gained when I was with Ben. I think that I was just beginning to find out more about me for the first time in my life. All these years, I was beginning to realize, I had just been existing. Not really living, nor enjoying life, other than very superficially. And now, I did want more. I didn't know how to express it.
"You know what?" Courtney asked again.
"What?" My own thoughts grew more somber by the second.
"I would give anything to experience true love… a true commitment like what my parents shared." She paused, the sheen of tears appearing in her eyes before she brusquely swiped them away. "I never really appreciated what they had until they were gone," she continued, her voice soft and tremulous. "They weren't happy all the time, and they did argue on occasion, but they loved each other. Even when they were angry, you could tell that they loved each other and that neither one of them would've ever done anything to purposely hurt the other."
I said nothing.
"That's what I want, Karen. And I think it's what you want too. It's something that we all deserve, don't you think?"
I nodded, but my stomach felt hollow.
"I just don't want you to end up making a big mistake, marrying Ryan. He seems like a nice guy and everything, but I know you don't love him." She swung her legs down and sat straighter, then turned to look out the window. "I think there comes a point in all our lives that we need to stand up and be courageous, to confront the things in our lives that we don't like, that we want to change. Don't you?"
She turned to me, her gaze assessing. "Come what may?" I asked with a sigh. "And so the moral to this story is…?" I regretted the snarky tone of my voice, but I finally understood where she was going. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like that. I'm glad your parents loved each other, Courtney. But I don't even think I know what love is. Not really anyway. I think I love Ben. At least I feel like something is missing in my life now that I didn't notice before." I shook my head. "I don't think my parents do either – know what love is. They've lived their lives this way for so long… they've got to think it's natural. If neither one of them has been in love, how can I expect them to understand anything about what I want?" That brought a lump to my throat. I looked up my friend with a frown. "To be honest, Courtney, I don't even think they love me… oh, at least not the way I wish they did. They may feel some affection for me, but…" I stopped talking, because I felt myself going round and round in my head, and my heart was following. "It's too late now anyway," I said.
"There are worse things than being poor," she said softly.
I turned from Courtney and stared again out the window. Sure, my future financial security was once again restored, but I found, surprisingly, that it just didn't seem to be enough anymore. I wanted more. The thought of spending an untold amount of years staring at Ryan Delaney across the table, enduring his touch, bearing his children, for the sake of what? A nice house? A bunch of things?
"So what am I supposed to do?" I asked, my voice strained as I turned to my best friend. "Tell me, Courtney, what am I supposed to do?"
"I think you know, Karen," she said, standing to leave. "I think you know."
Two days later I was knocking on Ben’s apartment door. Nobody answered. Maybe I should've called Ben at work, but I didn't want to do that. That seemed too much like… like stalking. It was after ten o'clock in the morning, so if he wasn't at work, and he wasn't at his apartment, where would he be? I needed to talk to him. What good it would do, I don't know, but I couldn't get past this urge to tell him the truth. That I had fallen in love with him. Then again, should I really bother? What good would it do him? It might serve to air my feelings, but it certainly would
n't solve anything, would it? In fact, it might even make things worse.
How do you tell someone that you love them, but you're marrying someone else? It didn't make sense, not even to me.
"Who are you looking for?"
I turned at the sharp voice and found myself looking at a man wearing bib overalls. A tool belt strapped around his waist emphasized the bulging belly and his T-shirt barely stretched over his protruding man boobs. His brownish hair, what was left of it, went every which way, reminding me of a photograph of Albert Einstein. A short, unlit stub of a cigar protruded from his lips, surrounded by a stubbly beard.
"And who are you?" I asked, the epitome of politeness.
"The landlord. Now, who are you looking for?"
"I'm looking for Ben Reynolds," I said, gesturing to his apartment door. "He lives here."
"Not anymore he don't."
My heart thumped. "What?"
The man reached up with grease stained fingers and plucked the cigar stub from his mouth. "He moved out, 'bout two weeks ago."
I stood dumbfounded. He moved out? I felt a brief surge of panic. Where? Why? Why didn't he tell me? "Do you know where? Did he leave a forwarding address?"
"And what are you to him, young lady? I don't give out my tenant's information just to anybody who asks, you know."
"I'm… I'm a friend," I said, a cold chill surging upward through my body. I could explain my reaction by the headache I felt coming on, stabbing me right between the eyes, accompanied by an intense sense of unease and disquiet.
"Not good enough. Sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I'm getting the apartment ready for a new tenant."
With that, the landlord approached me and reached for the door. I got a whiff of body odor and cigar and quickly stepped back. Ben was gone? Where? My heart thumping, I realized that there was only one place where I would get the answer. His parents.
Knowing very well that my visit might prove disastrous, I nevertheless hailed a taxi and made my way to the train station. There, I examined the chart on the wall, gave up trying to decipher it, and walked to a nearby ticketing counter. The woman manning it gazed at me impatiently.
"Yes?" she asked, none too friendly.
"I need to know which train to take to New Haven, Connecticut." The middle-aged, tired-looking woman gazed at me for a moment, then pointedly glanced over her shoulder, gesturing with her chin. "The routes are right there, ma'am."
Despite my anxiety, I felt the heat of a flush warm my cheeks. "I know, but I can't… I can't make sense of it. Can you help me please?"
The woman sighed as if I had just asked her to do her the biggest favor in the world. Finally, she reached for a tri-fold brochure off to the side of her computer, opened it up, and gave me the information I needed.
"Can I buy a ticket here? Round-trip?"
"Of course you can," the woman said, frowning. "Haven't you ever ridden the train before?"
I shrugged. "Only once, and I didn't make any of the arrangements." As the woman handled the transaction, I realized just how much I didn't know about living life. Everyday life. I'd lived in New York City all my life and had never ridden the train anywhere outside the city.
Finally, tickets in hand and with directions on how to get to the right train platform, and the woman telling me exactly which number the train would be displaying above its window, I made my way to the platform, waiting anxiously for it arrive.
I boarded, found a seat by myself, and stared out the window as it shot northward. I remembered the last time I had ridden this train, with Ben, and wished again that things had turned out differently. Once again, I asked myself what possible good this trip up to his parent's house would do. More than likely, I would get nothing but disapproval and quite possibly a scolding. Did they know about me? Did they know about the arrangement? Did they know why I had called it off with Ben?
They might not. Then what? I sighed, my insides roiling with turmoil, realizing that I might have to expose myself as nothing more than a fraud, one who had taken advantage of their son. I was willing to take the chance. I hoped that I could convince them to either give me Ben's phone number or let me know where he'd gone so that I could talk to him, explain myself. Maybe they could give him my number – stupid… he already had it. If he wanted to call, he would have. Perhaps I could write him a letter…?
Then again, what was there to explain?
In two hours, I stepped off the train and hailed a taxi to take me to Ben's parents' house. Luckily for me, I remembered the street name and number from when we had visited. I took a deep breath, paid the taxi driver, and stepped out, my heart thumping with increased nervousness.
I resolved that whatever his parents had to say to me, I would accept. They might not even know about our breakup, but the chances were that they did. Ben was very close to his family, and if he had moved, he certainly would have told them about it. Would they tell me to get lost? Slam the door in my face? Only one way to find out.
I strode up the steps to the front door, took another deep breath, tried to soothe my myriad of emotions, and then knocked firmly. Three times. I waited several seconds, didn't hear anything, and then raised my hand to knock one more time when I heard footsteps from the other side. The door opened and I found myself looking into the surprised face of Nancy Reynolds.
"Karen!" she exclaimed.
"Hello, Missus Reynolds," I said. She stared at me a moment, then took a step back, opening the door wider.
"Come in." She invited.
Just as I stepped onto the foyer, I heard a voice from upstairs.
"Who is it, Nancy?"
She looked upstairs. "It's Karen, Karen Queen."
Seconds later I watched as Patrick came down the stairs, gazing down at me with a half-frown, half-curious expression on his face. And then he closed it off.
"Hello, Karen," he said, reaching the bottom step. "What brings you here?"
The two stood in front of me in the foyer. All of a sudden, I felt an intense surge of emotion. Much to my embarrassment, I felt warm tears flooding my eyes. I desperately blinked them back and took a deep breath. "I'm looking for Ben," I said simply. "I went to his apartment but his landlord told me that he'd moved out almost two weeks ago."
"That's right, he did," Patrick Reynolds said.
An awkward silence ensued. Finally, I garnered the courage I needed. "Can you tell me how to get in touch with him, please? I need to talk to him."
Patrick and Nancy exchanged glances, and then Nancy turned to me.
"Come in and sit down, Karen."
I followed her into the living room where I sat on one end of the couch. She sat at the other end while Patrick leaned against the archway leading into the dining room, arms crossed over his chest, his expression neutral.
"Why do you want to get in touch with Ben?" his mother asked. "From what I understand, you two … well, you two are not seeing each other anymore."
I looked at her expression, a slight pinch to her lips, the disappointment I saw in her gaze. Oh my God. She knew. They both did. I swallowed again, the knot in my throat growing larger. Then, much to my dismay, a tear oozed out of the corner of my eye and trickled down my cheek. I didn't move. "I need to tell him... I need to tell him that I'm about to make the second-largest mistake I've ever made in my life." I managed to choke out.
Again, Nancy exchanged a glance with her husband. Her expression softened a little.
"And what mistake is that?" she asked, her voice softer now.
"Agreeing to marry Ryan Delaney because my parents want me to."
"And your first mistake?" Patrick asked, his voice not unkind.
The tears came faster now. My voice shaky, I gave them complete honesty. "Not having the courage to be with Ben. Being afraid of… everything." I impatiently brushed the tears from my eyes and then looked at Nancy. "But I love him. I need to tell Ben that I fell in love with him."
"But what good will that do Ben? You're marrying another man
."
I looked at Nancy, shaking my head, my emotions and motivations in a tumble. "I don't want to hurt him anymore, really I don't. And I know it might be… I know it's too late, but I just want him to know that he's deserving of…" my voice cracked. "That someday… he deserves a good woman in his life. A woman better than me. There's nothing wrong with Ben. He's a good, kind, wonderful guy…" I couldn't go on. To my surprise, Nancy shifted her position on the couch and placed an arm around my shoulders. That did it. I began to cry, my shoulders shaking with my guilt, my regret, my shame.
Nancy murmured soothing sounds, and I realized this had never happened to me before. I had never cared about anyone like this. I wasn't sure I liked the feeling. It felt like my heart was being ripped out. The comforting words and arm around my shoulder from Ben's mother, even after I had hurt him – hurt them? Again I realized how much I had missed out on life. Why couldn't my own mother comfort me this way?
"We know the whole story," Nancy said, straightening and extending her hand toward her husband. He seemed to read her mind, retreated into the kitchen and returned with a box of Kleenex.
She plucked one out of the box and handed it to me. I took it, dabbed my eyes and my nose, and then looked up at her. I'd never felt so embarrassed or ashamed in my life.
"Karen, I believe that you're speaking from the heart now, in that what you feel for Ben is real. But he's gone to Chicago, to start over, and we're putting our house up for sale and moving back to Oklahoma. While we appreciate you coming here, unfortunately, it's too late. The damage has been done."
I spent another twenty minutes or so at their house, but at the end, all I knew was that they were truly sorry for the way things had worked out. They didn't have to say what I knew was the ultimate truth… that it was my fault things had turned out this way. I didn't get the feeling that they were harboring any true resentment toward me, but I did get a distinct feeling that they felt sorry for me. They certainly felt bad on Ben's behalf, and I couldn't begrudge them that.
