by Leddy Harper
Although, it did serve a purpose. Everything that had happened on Saturday, all the pain and anguish that I’d spilt on Sunday, and the silent slap in the face he’d given to me on Monday made me realize something.
Axel had come clean about his feeling for me. He’d confessed and told the truth about how, to him, we weren’t just friends, that he’d fallen for me. I’d maintained what I’d always said—to myself and to him. We were friends, nothing more. I didn’t have a crush on him, because that would be absurd. I didn’t care for him any more than, say, Jill cared for Rebecca. I’d told myself that so many times at the beginning until I’d eventually believed it. I had somehow convinced myself, and apparently Axel as well, that I had no romantic interest in him.
But it’d all been a lie.
How cruel is the universe that I’d fall for someone, for the first time in my life, only to have it ripped away before I ever had a chance to realize my own feelings? Axel was lucky. He had me for however long, knowing how he felt about me, enjoying what little time he had with that small piece of information.
Me? I was delusional.
I’d fallen for a man, only to realize it too late.
They say everything gets better with time. Wine supposedly is better after it matures, hearts are supposed to heal with distance, and for some reason, people enjoy aged cheese. However, I find this all to be utter crap.
I’m sure my mom could get just as drunk on ten-year-old wine as she did on the cheap boxed stuff she bought. The only difference was, she’d have less money.
Distance will never heal a heart. Some doctors can’t even perform this kind of miracle. Give it time? How does that make sense? Every day that passes, you’re one day closer to the end of your life. That doesn’t seem to make anything better.
And as for aged cheese? I think it’s a gimmick like Hallmark, except it’s aimed for the rich instead of lovesick fools. Somehow, people with money have been convinced that it’s a good idea to spend more on old cheese to spread on stale crackers while mingling and discussing how wealthy they are. Give me a Ritz and a slice of Kraft Singles and I’ll tell them where to shove their checkbooks.
Am I bitter? Hell yes, I am. Every morning, I have to see the man that ripped my heart out. I have to listen to him drone on and on about dead people and our founding principles that no longer seemed to matter, all while being expected to pay attention. If his attitude was anything to go on, I’d bet time wasn’t on his side, either. He appeared just as disheveled, acted just as sad, and sounded—if at all possible—even more distraught than he had two weeks earlier on that very first day back to school after our “break up.”
It was obvious that his suffering hadn’t let up. And I knew without a doubt that mine hadn’t eased an ounce. Yet there wasn’t anything either of us could do about it. His mind had been made up. His decision practically etched in stone.
But one thing time did manage to accomplish was shutting Rebecca and Jill up. Their snide comments and muttered assumptions had finally stopped. Took them about a week, but thankfully, it had ended. The very last thing I wanted to happen was for Axel to get into trouble for befriending me in the first place. We had enough to deal with regarding that decision. He didn’t deserve more.
It’d been fifteen days since he’d last spoken to me, and those final words weren’t ones I wanted to carry around with me. He hadn’t uttered a word in my general direction since leaving me alone in his back yard. I didn’t exactly make it hard for him. When he’d ask a question in class, whether I knew the answer or not, I never raised my hand. It would’ve been pointless to, because he only ever called on people that sat on the opposite side of the room as me. I guess that made it easier not to look my way. I was fine with it, because most of the time, I kept my head down and took notes anyway, not bothering to turn my attention to the front of the class.
Every morning when I’d come in, he’d be at the chalkboard, or his podium. In fact, he never sat at his desk during class anymore. Even during a test, he remained up front. At the beginning, it killed me to be that far away from him. But over the last two weeks, I’d discovered that it was easier for me that way. Being too close to him, such as the times I had to walk past him before and after class, made it hurt worse. A dulled knife straight to my heart would’ve hurt less than smelling his cologne. And I’d probably freeze to death if I had to be in such close proximity to his icy-cold attitude for longer than two seconds each day.
But that still didn’t mean I believed in distance making things better. Did it make it easier to have the width of the room between us every morning? Yes. It saved my sanity. However, it didn’t heal anything. It didn’t succeed in making anything better. Only slightly easier. Yet there were still days when I found myself yearning to be close to him, the space between us becoming too much, too hard. My heart ached either way.
I’d never been in a real relationship before—the only one I could even remotely consider as one was Axel for those few weeks. And even then, I never considered it a real relationship until it was over. So I’d never experienced Valentine’s Day the way other people did. To me, it was no different than February thirteenth, or even the fifteenth. Just another day. But for some reason, this Valentine’s Day, I felt as if I’d missed something.
It was on a Saturday, which saved me from having to see Axel at school, but I still found myself wishing for a small glimpse of him. I’d gone out back and waited in the trees for hours, hoping Lassie would show up and haul me away to her owner again. But she never came. When I went to bed that night, I held onto the phone he’d given to me, as if it were a life preserver saving me from a rip current, praying with all my might for it to ring or beep with a message from him. With every day that passed, I lost more and more hope that he’d change his mind. But for some naïve reason, I had it in my head that if he’d reach out to me, it would be that day. The one day set aside, designated to show someone that you care.
He said he cared. So where was he?
I finally fell asleep, clutching the phone to my chest, my face buried into my wet pillow as I cried alone. The first week of his silence, I’d cried myself to sleep every night. But after that, I may have tossed and turned, stared at the shadows on my ceiling, or closed my eyes and thought back to the time before the rug had been ripped out from beneath me, but I hadn’t cried. Reverting back to the flood of tears after days of dry eyes and hardened emotions seemed like regression.
I blamed it on the fat baby that shot me in the heart with his stupid arrow.
Waking up the next morning sucked. My dad used to wake me up the day after Valentine’s Day with a cupcake when I was little. He’d come in and I’d pretend to be asleep until he started singing Happy Birthday to me. The last year he did it was for my sixth birthday. I’d accidentally dropped the cupcake and the red icing stained the carpet. Mom put an end to our birthday morning celebrations. Two years later, instead of waking up to a song, I woke up to the sounds of glass breaking. I never knew what their fight had been about, but whatever it was had my dad in a bad mood for the rest of the day. I only had three more birthdays with him after that one. And each one grew more depressing than the last.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, I’d actually looked forward to my birthday this year—until Axel shattered my heart. The thought of sharing my day with someone I cared about had excited me. Which is why waking up this morning sucked even worse than normal. Had I never been ecstatic about it, or remotely looked forward to it, I wouldn’t have been so let down. And I’d worked hard over the years to lessen my expectations in order to protect myself from being disappointed.
After forcing myself out of bed and putting clothes on, I made my way downstairs. My mom sat at the kitchen table with her cup of coffee and the newspaper. Much like any other morning when we were both home at the same time, I walked around her on my way to the fridge for a glass of juice, paying her no mind at all. Only this time, she lowered the paper and spoke to me. I had to
question myself if I’d actually woken up or not.
“Do you have any plans for your birthday today?”
I slowly spun around, verifying that it was, in fact, my mother sitting there and not some nice imposter. “Um…no. Why?”
“Oh, I was just wondering,” she said, waving her hand as if brushing off my concern over my mom being nice to me. “It’s almost eleven. When the phone rings, make sure you answer it. If you don’t, it’ll go to voicemail. I have no desire to talk to your father.”
“I know, Mom. His phone calls on my birthday have been consistent for the past five years. This year should be no different. But I’ll make sure to answer it on the first ring.”
“His gift hasn’t arrived yet. It’ll probably come Tuesday because of the holiday tomorrow.” She picked the paper back up and began scanning it again. I couldn’t do anything other than stand in the middle of the kitchen and gawk at her. I would’ve questioned her motives for breaking the silent treatment she’d given me over the past five weeks, but I didn’t dare give her a reason to either go back to ignoring me, or worse, back to treating me like shit.
I opened the freezer door once I got over the shock of my morning conversation. “What do you feel like for dinner?” I asked, scanning over the frozen meats we had on the shelf.
“Pick whatever you want, it’s your birthday,” she said through the paper, not bothering to lower it in order to answer me. At least she hadn’t changed that much.
I pulled out hamburger meat and set it aside to thaw. But before any other idle chitchat could begin, the phone rang. My mom set the paper down, pushed her chair away from the table, and grabbed her mug before walking out of the room. She apparently hated my father so much that she couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as his voice over a phone.
“Hello?” I answered, already knowing it was my dad.
“Happy birthday, Aubs.” He was the only one who ever called me that. Mom hated it. She said it made me sound like a dog. But it was special to me, because no one else used it.
I grabbed a blanket off the couch and took the phone outside to the chair on the front porch. “Thanks, Dad,” I said in the most unenthusiastic voice known to man.
“Doing anything fun today? It’s the weekend, and you don’t have school tomorrow, right?”
I hated his small talk. It was like he refused to accept my pathetic life and used it to make him feel better about his decisions. If you talk about nothing important, then you don’t have to deal with anything real.
“No, Dad. Nothing fun. That would require friends, or a life outside my house. Even if I wanted to do something fun, and I was okay with being completely alone doing it, I can’t. Because I don’t have a car.”
The other end of the line became quiet for a moment before he cleared his throat. “Aubrey…I don’t know what you want me to say. We don’t get to talk that often, and it’s your birthday. I don’t want to waste this time discussing your mother.”
“Okay, fine, Dad. Let’s not discuss her.” I never spoke to my father that way, usually keeping our conversations light and free of attitude. But something in me was broken, aside from my heart.
After Axel destroyed me, I couldn’t seem to find my inner happiness again. That voice within me that kept me going day in and day out. It’s what kept me sane when everything around me became suffocating and hard. Some might call it optimism. I simply referred to it as my body’s own source of Prozac. Whatever it was, I didn’t have it anymore.
“Let’s discuss you instead. You say we never get much time to talk, as if you’re in jail and only allotted a certain amount of time to call me. But that’s not the case, is it? You were relieved of your sentence when you left here. I’m the one in prison. I’m the one suffering while you’re in your new house with your new family, sitting pretty and getting high on life. Guess what, Dad? You know if I’m not at school, then I’m at home. You know the phone number. You can call anytime you want. But you choose not to. It’s okay if you don’t have time for me, or you don’t want me in your life anymore. Just tell me. Stop dragging this on longer than it needs to be.”
“Aubrey. Please stop.” His voice sounded broken as he begged me to quit talking. I’d never heard him sound like that before, and it halted my emotional lecture. “You are my daughter. It doesn’t matter who I’m married to or how many other children she has. You’re the only one that matters to me. I’m sorry if I have a hard time showing it, or that I’ve made you feel, even for a second, that I don’t want you.”
“What else am I supposed to think? You packed up your things and disappeared. You left me here. You know how she is, what she’s capable of, and yet you left me here to deal with it all by myself. At eleven years old. You never even came back. I haven’t seen you in five years. You call once a month and we talk for maybe fifteen minutes each time, never about anything important. So, I’m sorry if I don’t believe you when you say I’m the only thing that matters to you. Because if that’s the truth, then I’d hate to see how you treat your new family.” I must’ve cried out all my tears the night before, because not one drop formed. Maybe it was because I’d had that speech bottled up for so long that instead of the words causing me pain, I only felt anger.
His heavy breathing came through the line, and I could tell I’d gotten to him. But I continued to wait until he gave me some kind of response, not letting him off the hook that easily. “I…” He cleared his throat again, sounding as if his emotions choked him. “I didn’t have a choice, Aubrey.”
I waited, and waited some more, but he never said anything else. His silence only served to fuel my irritation. “That’s the biggest cop-out I’ve ever heard. You know what? I can’t do this. It’s becoming abundantly clear that I’m incapable of having a relationship with anyone. And maybe that’s because of you and Mom. Maybe if I had normal parents, ones that loved me, things would be different. But it doesn’t matter. Have a nice life, Dad. I guess I’ll—”
“Aubrey Ann Jacobs, don’t you dare hang up that phone.”
My mouth immediately fell open at his tone, never hearing him use it with me before. But it served its purpose, making me stop talking and listen.
Once he knew he had my attention, and I hadn’t hung up on him, he continued. “I really didn’t have a choice when it came to me leaving. Yes, I was ready to leave your mother. I’d wanted to leave her years before that, but was unable to. When I finally did move out, it was basically her call. There are a lot of things involved that you don’t know about. But I’m not lying when I say I didn’t have a choice. My hands were tied with everything. You. The house. The money. Everything.”
“Why haven’t you ever told me?”
“You were a child at the time. And now…now I guess I simply don’t want you to have a lesser opinion of me.”
“Dad, you have zero interest in my life. You haven’t been here for me in over five years, and your monthly phone calls don’t even begin to make up for anything. Are you that delusional to think it possible for me to have a lesser opinion of you than I already do?”
“Your mother really has never said anything to you about me?”
“Well, let’s see here. Our conversations typically involve her telling me how my grades aren’t good enough, how I’ve folded the sheets wrong, that I’ve over-salted the mashed potatoes or under-salted the broccoli. When she has talked about you, it’s to tell me how I’m worthless like my father, or that she can’t stand the sight of me because I remind her of the worst mistake of her life. I’m still not sure if that’s because I look like you, or if she’s referring to actually having me. Maybe the worst mistake of her life was having sex with you in the first place. I don’t know, but either way, I’m sure it’s still a jab at you. If you’re referring to what she says about why you left, she’s had a lot of colorful things to say about that, too, but they’re all pretty much the same. It was my fault. You never wanted me to begin with. You stayed out of obligation, but just couldn’t do it
anymore. You get the drift.”
“I see she hasn’t changed much. I’m sorry you have to deal with her. I tried to take you with me. I wanted to get us both out of there, but she wouldn’t let me. God, I’ve tried so many times, Aubrey. But it was always the same. I didn’t have a job, and I never finished college. In order to leave, I’d need money. And without her, I didn’t have any.” He paused, and I waited breathlessly for him to continue. “I…uh… I cheated on her a lot. It’s no secret that we were both in a loveless marriage. Why she wanted to hold on to that, I’ll never know. So, to fulfill my needs, I went elsewhere. When she found out, I thought it’d been a blessing in disguise. I thought she’d leave me. But instead of getting pissed like any normal person would do when finding out their husband is having an affair, she used that information against me.
“At the time, I was actively seeing someone. Your mother found out who it was, and threatened to take legal action against her. She couldn’t, of course, do that, but it was enough to scare her off. Your mother still wouldn’t let me go, though. She always found out about the women I slept with, and at some point, I stopped caring. She wouldn’t give me a divorce, and said if I tried, she’d bring up my infidelity and I’d get nothing. Without money, I didn’t have a place to go, therefore, I wouldn’t be able to take you with me. So I stayed.”
“I don’t get it, Dad. It was no secret that you and Mom hated each other. And I don’t blame you at all for cheating on her, but guess what? People cheat. If every adulterous husband had to walk away from their kids, no one would have fathers.”
“I did something stupid after that, Aubrey. It wasn’t about my infidelity. She constantly held over my head that she had control of the money. Without her, I wouldn’t have any. She knew where every penny went, so I couldn’t even put some aside to save. I’d reached my breaking point, not thinking about the consequences, only my need to hurt her. So, I took some money, knowing she’d find out and…I spent it. She used it against me, gave me the divorce, but made me agree to her terms.”
