CHAPTER TWO
Teddy
When the call came I was frozen; locked inside my body like a quadriplegic. I was just …numb, and then I started to laugh. Not a little bit either, but manic, hysterical laughter that finally after minutes, maybe even the better part of an hour gave way to tears. The tears were no match for the laughter though. A few small, pathetic droplets in comparison to our history, and then that was it. I was over you. The rest of the family was another matter entirely. Honestly, they made the whole thing seem so goddamn tragic. Everyone seemed to think that I was going to be some emotional basket case, so they tip-toed around me, but that just made everything unnecessarily awful. No one talked to me about what happened, or said much to me at the funeral where I was forced into a really morbid receiving line. Mickey just kept shaking his head and mom kept patting my hand. To my utter disgust, my dad was nicer and more generous to me than he’d ever been, and Claire kept shooting me furtive glances, wringing her hands together nervously like at any moment she’d just implode.
I keep meaning to call her, but there’s always an excuse not to. She’s grieving, I thought. Give it time. But a week became two and then three and now it's been six. She'll be going to work, today. I'll find some time to call her later. I wasn’t even fooling myself, really.
I’m trying to make coffee with the last of the fancy shit you’d left over here. Expensive and tastes like cat piss; I’d rather have Folgers, but I ran out and I’m in a hurry. I make a mental note to pick some up on the way home from work. Then, my phone rings, which makes me jump and spill the remaining grounds all over the counter. Dammit! I’m going to just let it ring when I think it could be her. . I’ve been obsessing over whether or not to call her when she could just as easily pick up the phone and call me. Again, I’m not even convincing to myself, but I can’t ignore her no matter how bad I want to, so I succumb to the compulsion to answer. I pick it up right before voice mail does.
"Yello?"
"Teddy, this is Iris. Charley's mother.” My breath hitches. I always am surprised by how similar they sound on the phone, and even though she’s announced herself, it takes my brain a moment to catch up. It’s not her. I breathe a small sigh of relief at that. Even though I know if Iris is calling it’s only to talk about her.
"Hey Mrs. Feinman,” I say distractedly while dumping coffee grounds into the trash.
"Teddy, we've known each other long enough. Please address me as Iris." All I can do is laugh nervously in response. "So, how are you holding up?"
"Fine. Thank you, ma'am."
"That's wonderful. More than I can say for Charley, I'm afraid."
"Oh?" After all these years. All the time I’d seen Mrs. Feinman in passing we’d deliberately not talked about Charley. And now she’s calling me with information about her? All kinds of scenarios run through my mind, but I need to play it cool so she’ll give me something. Anything about how she is.
"Yes. Collette called me. You know, her friend, Collette?” I don’t know. Not officially, anyway. Just things I’ve heard through the grapevine over the years. “Anyway, she’s worried. We’re all worried.” High time, I think, but don’t say.
"Oh?" Is all I can manage to get out, though the ball of tension is tightening in the bottom of my stomach.
“She hasn't left the house Teddy. Not even to get groceries.” Which even I know, remembering her rapacious appetite, is unlike her. “To tell you the truth, I don't know what to do. I’m trying but she's not listening to me."
I don’t really understand why she is surprised by this, but I’m trying to be polite so I ask: "Is there a reason you're calling, Mrs. F.?"
"Iris."
"Iris? What are you asking?"
"Well, given your history, I was hoping you'd reach out to her. Perhaps you can assist her with this. You seem to be adjusting better."
"All due respect Mrs....Iris, I don't see how anything I say will help."
"Well, you've shared a very profound experience. Perhaps knowing she's not alone...I don’t know. Would you just try anyway?"
"I don't know if it's a good idea--"
"Teddy, please. I know you still have your reservations about me, as you should. But it's not a favor to me. It's for Charley. You were friendly once, and you go way back. Please. We--she has no one else.”
It would be nice to forget. If I forgot, then I wouldn’t hurt so damn much for her, but now, in part because of you, we're linked by and invisible tether. I can’t ever get free of her.
*****
When I saw her on the beach I had to know her. She wasn't what I would've considered my "type" by any stretch. She didn't look like she belonged in Maxim or Sports Illustrated. She was thin, but to an extreme. Way too skinny for my taste, just a fragile slip of a girl. Even through the bathing suit and long wrap I could see her hip bones jutting out. Hell, she wasn't really showing any skin except for her arms and shoulders and we were on the beach for Christ's sake. She wasn't hot. Not on first glance anyway, but she was beautiful. Her skin was a breathtaking brown. Like honey or toasted almonds, I wanted to know if she tasted as sweet. She had the thickest, curliest hair I'd ever seen and it cascaded all the way down to her hips. Despite her angular and even severe look in a lot of ways, she was vulnerable. Like a glass figurine that’d been broken and put together with the jagged edges on the outside. Still, there was something in the way that she moved that turned me on instantly, much to my embarrassment. Thankfully, my friends didn't seem to notice me or her.
If I'm telling the truth, yeah, I noticed her body which wasn’t really much, but what did it to me, was her eyes. They were nothing like yours, Lace: sharp emerald green with delicate blond lashes that scream "I'm sweet" when in actuality were vicious and brutal. No, this girl's were a severe brown, almost black. It was difficult to distinguish the iris from the pupil unless the sun was in the right place, but they weren't dead like a doe's eye. They were intense, smoldering. Like a sable colored tempest. I swear I could physically see her mind turning. There was a profound, solitary sadness in them that made her seem like an ancient statue of a Greek goddess or a lone wolf. Even from a distance, I needed her.
It wasn’t my typical kind of ‘need” either. I talked to her and all of a sudden wanted her for more than a meaningless fuck. I wanted to know her. The girl was an enigma. She was smart: I knew it from her appraisal of Jane Austen, whom I too loathed. She was sensitive: her reaction to the end of Jane Eyre (which, embarrassingly enough I'd never read). She was tight lipped and guarded most of the time except when she was being witty and refreshingly obstinate: as her little joke about me being gay like Oscar Wilde revealed. The best part was that she didn’t know me, my name or my family, so she wasn't trying to manipulate me or get in my pants. She wasn't afraid to bust my balls and didn't cower when I gave it right back to her.
I know that at twenty-three, I should not have been enjoying Ultimate Frisbee as much as I did, and that coercing my friends to play nearer to her so I could get a better view, and subsequently hit her with the hard plastic disk to get her attention isn’t exactly “acting your age” but I had to do it. I had to, Lace. After our first meeting, I was contented just to be near her; to hear her breathing and to take in her scent. God, her scent! It wasn't an overpowering type of smell like perfume, I doubt she even know she smelled like that, but I was so acutely aware of the sweet, buttery scent I swear I could’ve gotten high on it. Sweet, warm, citrusy; it reminded me of days as a kid when I’d eat overripe peaches with whipped cream, letting the sticky nectar drip down my chin and over my fingers. She was intoxicating and I spent days lazily reading in the presence of her. It was mid-June before I realized how much time I’d been spending with her not doing anything but appreciating her company. When she wasn't at the beach I would fantasize about her. When she was, I would moon over her like a starry eyed teen aged girl. The place where her neck met her shoulders; I wanted to know that place. I would long to touch the skin covering her bony shoulder
. One day while we were sitting on our embankment, she up against the rock with her knees bent, face buried in a book, I watched a drop of sweat slide from her temple down her sugared-peach colored cheek to her neck and down, down, down the butterscotch slopes of her skin into her bathing suit and nestle between her breast before disappearing. It was the sexiest thing I'd ever seen and I felt my heartbeat quicken. She had to have heard it or sensed it or something because she turned to me with those dark chocolate eyes.
"What's with you today?"
"Why do you cover up so much?" She seemed thrown by the question and immediately self-conscious. She clutched at the knot in her wrap near her navel her brown knuckles turning red with the strain.
"Why do you care?"
"I don't," Lie, "just curious. I mean, look around; no one really cares what they wear to the beach, Charley."
"Teddy, it's obvious you know nothing about girls."
"Enlighten me."
"Despite what you think you know I'm going to give it to you straight and it may alter your perception of us as a gender. Girls are SNIVVELL.” She counted down on her fingers as she listed: “Selfish. Needy. Immature. Vicious. Vindictive. Evil. Lascivious. Liars. They will slice your heart out and feed it to the dogs before thinking twice."
I wanted to laugh. Partly because she was right, and partly because I felt a like Mr. Darcy. Are you so severe on your own sex? I wanted to ask. But she was looking square in my eyes, unblinking. She was serious.
"Are you SNIVVELL?"
"I can be. Yes."
"There are exceptions, no?"
"Name one."
She got me. I couldn't. Every woman I'd ever met fit into that category at some time or another. "Mother Theresa."
"Saints don't count."
"Fine, but you still haven't answered my question." She sighed, exasperated with me but I had to know. I wanted to see her body so badly, okay so I didn’t want her for a meaningless fuck but that didn’t leave fucking off the table entirely. Besides that, somewhere deep inside of me there was this niggling sense of dread about it. It was clearly more than just a fashion choice for her since whenever I brought it up she got all shifty, but I couldn’t get a grasp on it.
"Seriously?"
"Look if it's because of some complex given to you by your mother then just let it go. No one cares."
"You don't know me like that, Teddy. You need to drop this." she was pulsating with anger now, her normally steady brown eyes dancing, but I didn't stop.
"So it is a mommy thing!" I knew that I was goading her into an argument but she looked so cute when she was all riled up. Maybe if I nicked her pride enough she'd strip for me, I thought.
"Teddy, not every girl has a flawed relationship with her mother. And even if that were the case, not every relationship results in a crushed self-esteem or negative body image or whateverthefuck they're telling girls these days. Furthermore, I don't wear pasties and a string up my ass because I'm quite aware I have nothing to show off, so I don't. I would rather not expose myself to ridicule from my mother or any other person for that matter, least of all you. I dress in what is comfortable for me. What's more, I don't think you're some kind of oracle because you can regurgitate a mother archetype you learned in Lit one-oh-one at the community college. I'm not impressed."
I could see the hives spreading underneath her collar bone. She was actively controlling her breathing; her chest heaving from the force of it, but none of it showed on her face except for that solitary sadness in her eyes. It looked almost as if she may cry. Shit. Please don't cry.
"I'm sorry, Charley. I'm not trying to impress you," Shit. Please don't cry. What do I do? Flattery. She loved it when I complimented her, I thought. "I think you're the one trying to impress. ‘Archetype'? Excuse me Miss Smarty Pants." I tried poking her lightly in her willowy arm but she waved me off and gave me another hard look.
"Are you intimidated by intelligence, Teddy?"
"Never."
"Let me rephrase: are you intimidated by intelligent women?" Even though her look was fierce she was almost smiling. The words slipped out before I could stop them.
"Not until now." No girl had ever done that to me before. Especially not you, Lacey. And this girl, of all girls, so mysterious and yet somehow I knew had more baggage than a British Airways terminal at Heathrow at the height of the holiday season.
CHAPTER THREE
Charley
Is he complimenting me again? I wanted to run away but I couldn't back down so I cleared my throat and turned back to my book, though I had to place a hand on my chest to stop the sound of my pounding heart from escaping.
"May I point out the irony here?" he added, his voice a bit too loud for our proximity, "When you're showing off what's in your head you're a 'woman' and when we're talking about what's on it you're a 'girl'. If that doesn't scream mommy issues..."
"Just drop it, Teddy." Then my stomach pitched and growled so loud and long that I thought I was Sigourney Weaver from Alien. When it subsided, Teddy was rolling on his back, laughing and snorting like a child. In between hysterical breaths he sputtered "What. The. Hell. Was. That?" So much for making my point, I thought.
“Oh, I didn’t tell you? I ate my twin in the womb,” that really got him going to the point I was getting irritated, so I picked up his trashy paperback and threw it at him. “Shut up, okay. I'm hungry. I didn't eat before I left." Crap. Too much information.
“Why?” It was an innocent enough question, asked with a little too much interest. I certainly could not tell him the answer to that, so I lied.
“Because I’m on the beach and I don’t want to look bloated and gross in my bathing suit.”
“Oh so little miss feminism is a girl.”
“Not all feminists are raging bull-dykes you know. Some of us shower and wear bras and everything.” He grinned at me at the word bra and flicked his eyes to my chest. Í shoved him once in the chest so his back hit the ground. “Stop being a perv.” He hopped to his feet so quickly I thought he was just going to sprint away but instead he stood over me and reached his hand down for me to help me up.
“Let’s go."
"Where?"
"Get something to eat. I'm famished and you never bring me snacks."
"Teddy, first of all it is not the little woman’s job to bring you snacks. You’re perfectly capable of bringing your own. Second, I can't go anywhere. My, erm, ride is still here. Somewhere. I don't know when they're leaving. Could be in ten minutes, could be several hours but if I take off it'll piss them off."
"Charley, honestly? What do you owe those b—.” I cut him off with a look. “Girls,” he amended. He had a point. "You're starving; they're off making themselves cheap. If they're not here when we get back then I'll take you home." Maybe if he weren’t so damn pretty he wouldn’t be so convincing.
*****
I have woken up with a pained and angry stomach. I've just come to accept that I will never have a normal relationship with food. Hell, the fact that I refer to it as a relationship at all is disturbing, but this is a new low even for me. I should have gone to the grocery days ago, but couldn't gather the strength to get out of bed. Markus called this morning from the restaurant. I didn’t answer so he left a message: Hey honey, it’s your favorite chef! Listen, I don’t want you to worry or anything, but Brooke came by again today to ask me about you. Like I said, don’t panic. I told her you were doing some “investigating” for a new venture for us. She seemed satisfied with that, but asked me to have you give her a call when you get a chance. She didn’t say what it was about, but she seemed kind of…serious? I don’t know. Anyway, that’s all. Miss you. Love you. Call me. Muah! I miss him too, actually, but I’m still not ready to go back to work. I’m going to owe him so much when I do because he’s been covering for me a lot with Brooke. Brooke isn’t a bad boss or anything, I’ve actually gotten to know her really well over the past couple of years, but I know she wants me back and I don’t want to burn any b
ridges with her. Not when we’re doing so well. I’m just not ready to go back yet. Markus has told me over and over again not to worry about it, and to take all the time I need. God, I love Markus. I love him so much that just knowing he’s out there in the world is making this moment, today, a little less sucky.
Despite everything you ever thought, Markus is a really good and honest guy and he never had a thing for me. Even if he did, once upon a time, he most certainly doesn't now. With all of your swearing he did you never once offered a shred of evidence. If you were here, I know exactly how you'd make your case.
"He's just a friend, babe and he's my business partner. He's being nice. AND HE’S GAY!"
"Uh-huh," you'd snort in that smug way that'd make me want to smack that smuggy look off your smuggy face. “He still has a penis and can still appreciate a beautiful woman. He says all the time if he were straight he’d marry you.”
"God," I'd sigh, “not this again. I know you love me babe, and I know that I do it for you, but, I don’t exactly turn heads or whatever. So, Markus..."
Then, you'd interrupt with that smuggy, "I'm-trying-not-to-laugh-because-you're-making-my-point-for-me" face and I'd over correct sarcastically. "Mr. Potter would just not want me working in this state; I'd scare off customers or worse investors. He would want me happy so I'd come back to work because I'm the best he's got. He's nice but this is in the interest of the business!"
Then, you'd start to laugh which would really chap my rear end but you wouldn't spar with me. You'd pick up on the most random thing I'd said: "I see the way men, including Markus, gay as he is, look at you, sweetheart. You turn enough heads. "The way you'd emphasize his name would make me shudder and you'd continue, knowing you'd made a crack in the argument, "You should be flattered. Take it as a compliment.”
What Brings Me to You Page 3
