If You Loved Me

by Marilyn Reynolds

  “I was right there,” Coach Terry says. “Lauren was minding her own business when Shawna came looking for trouble.”

  Dr. Ogden shakes his head sadly as he thumbs through Shawna’s file, looking at referral after referral.

  “Well . . . Harry, will you sit with Shawna in the office for a few minutes, until I’m finished here with Lauren?”

  They leave. Then Dr. Ogden gives Coach Terry and the other security guy each forms to fill out, and they leave. Dr. Ogden opens my folder and leafs through the pages, stopping now and then to read more thoroughly.

  “Now, Lauren, I can see from your permanent record that you are not a trouble maker. But anytime there’s an event of violence, all parties must have at least a one-day suspension. So you’ll stay home from school tomorrow, even though you obviously were not the aggressor. ”

  I could tell him I’d treated Shawna’s head like a volleyball, but I don’t.

  “Shawna will be transferred to a more appropriate placement, since this is just one of a long string of difficulties she’s had here.”

  I tuck my hands under my legs, trying to control the trembling.

  “I’m only telling you what will happen with Shawna because I don’t want you to be afraid to return,” Dr. Ogden says.

  He and Coach Terry have totally misinterpreted the whole thing. But that’s what happens a lot with the adults around here. They don’t quite get it.

  But what does it matter? Nothing matters. I half listen to Dr. Ogden’s advice while I pay more attention to the pain in my hand. I’m glad my hand hurts. It’s a distraction from the deeper hurts inside me.

  I’m only about three blocks from school, walking home, when I think I get a glimpse of the red Honda. I don’t care, I just keep walking. Then, about halfway home, I hear the familiar sound of Tyler’s car. I don’t turn to look. The car stops, engine shuts off. I keep walking, faster, head down.

  “Lauren! Lauren!”

  I don’t answer him.

  “I’ve got to talk with you. You don’t understand!”

  I’m running now, Tyler close behind me. He catches me by my arm, pulls me around to face him.

  “You’ve got to listen!”

  I jerk free and run ahead. Again he catches me, this time holding me with both arms. I pull away, hard, but he hangs on harder. His face is troubled, intent.

  “It’s not . . . ”

  The red Honda slams to a stop on the sidewalk right in front of us. The driver jumps out of the car and hurls himself at Tyler.

  “Leave her alone!” he demands, grabbing Tyler and throwing him to the sidewalk.

  “Come on,” he says, trying to pull me into his car.

  “No!” I scream.

  Tyler is up again, pulling with all his might at the man’s large, hard-muscled arms, freeing me.

  “Run, Lauren! Run!”

  For one paralyzed moment I look at Tyler, see the man effortlessly free himself, hear the thud of Tyler’s body slam into the sidewalk as the man again starts toward me. Fear rushes through me and I run for all I’m worth. Footsteps are behind me, not the light fleet footsteps of Tyler Bronson, but the heavy, pounding footsteps of the red Honda man, gaining.

  “Rennie! Rennie!” he says, his grip so hard on my arm I feel it all the way up to my shoulder and down to my wrist.

  “You’re all right. I won’t let him hurt you.”

  He’s looking straight into my eyes. “You ’re safe now, Rennie,” he says softly, his eyes brimming with tears.

  Rennie, Rennie, Rennie, Rennie, Rennie . . . echoes in my head, a chant, like a drum beat from some ancient time.

  Tyler runs up, shoving at the hunk of a man. I watch as if it were far away, on some old-time tiny television screen, the picture small and blurred. The man shoves Tyler’s arm behind his back, pushing upward. Tyler cries out in pain.

  “I’m taking you to the police station,” the man says. His voice sounding distant, bubbly and waterlogged, barely understand­able. But louder and clearer in my head rings RENNIE, RENNIE, RENNIE . . .

  “Hurt her and I’ll kill you!” Tyler yells.

  “Hey! I’m not the guy who’s hurting her! You’re the one who grabbed onto her and wouldn’t let her go!”

  RENNIE, RENNIE . . . bouncing around in my head, in my heart, until . . .

  I look at his face, look into his eyes, hear the reassurance, “. . . safe now, Rennie.” Something resounds within me.

  “Jack? . . .” I am shaking from head to toe.

  He releases Tyler and turns to me.

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

  He stands, still as a statue, his eyes on mine, moist and searching. I know he is telling the truth. He is familiar to me, not from this life, but from some other life.

  “It’s me, Rennie, Daddy Jack.”

  He takes a step toward me, his arms open. I back away. He stops, drops his arms to his side. We stand, eyes locked on one another.

  “I’ve wanted for so long to see you again,” he says.

  Tyler stands rubbing his arm, watching us.

  “You know this guy?” Tyler asks.

  “My father,” I tell him, my voice sounding whispery and unsure.

  “You know him?” Jack asks, nodding in Tyler’s direction.

  “He used to be my boyfriend.”

  “God, Lauren . . .” Tyler starts.

  “Is he bothering you?” my father says, looking at Tyler as if he could tear him apart.

  “I just don’t want to talk to him,” I say, not meeting Tyler’s eyes.

  “Give me a chance, please,” Tyler says, his voice shaky with emotion.

  “I don’t want to talk to you!”

  Tyler looks from me to Jack and back again.

  “Whatever,” he says, and walks slowly to his car.

  The promise ring shines in the sun as he rubs at a skinned place on his forehead. I look away.

  Jack and I stand close, not talking. I look for something of me in him. His hair. His eyes. His lips. He reaches up and touches my hair.

  “On you it looks good,” he says.

  A mail carrier walks by and looks curiously at the Honda parked halfway up on the sidewalk. He gives us a funny look, then walks on.

  “Let’s go somewhere and talk. Do you drink coffee, Rennie?” he asks.

  His voice is deep and resonant, making music of my long- forgotten nickname.

  “I only drink cappuccino,” I tell him.

  “Well, let’s go find one.”

  He opens the passenger door for me, and I get into his car.

  He walks to the other side and squeezes into the Honda behind the steering wheel. He’s way too big for this car.

  As if he’s read my mind, he laughs.

  “It’s the best I can do when I’m making an honest living.”

  Then, suddenly, he turns serious.

  “That’s the only kind of living I’m ever going to make again, Rennie. I’m through with all that other stuff.”

  I remember how Marcia swore she was through with drugs, too. But she wasn’t. Only death could stop her drug use. I don’t trust any promises about drugs.

  Chapter

  20

  I call Grams from Stark’s Coffee, so she won’t worry. I don’t tell her who I’m with because it’s way too complicated to talk about on the phone.

  “A Dr. Ogden from the school called,” she says. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.”

  “I hope so,” she says. “I don’t like the silence that’s been between us the past few days. It worries me.”

  “I’m trying to make sense of things, Grams. That’s all.”

  “Well . . . I love you. I’ll see you in an hour or so?”

  “Sure.”

  Jack and I sit across from one another in a corner booth, sipping our drinks. He has a double shot espresso and I have my cappuccino. Two chocolate/raisin bagels sit on a plate in the middle of the table. Even tho
ugh the past few hours have been wild, fighting with Shawna, seeing Tyler, I feel almost calm, sitting across from Jack.

  “This is my only drug now,” he says, tapping on his cup, then lifting it for a long swallow.

  “I’ve prayed for you every day of your life, no matter how strung out I was.”

  Sweet, I guess. But a girl needs a lot more than prayers from her father.

  “When I left you in that car in the church parking lot, with your grandmother’s name and address pinned to your shirt, I told myself I’d come for you in a month, when I was clean.”

  He takes another long drink of coffee, then continues. “Once, when you were seven, I was clean for two months. I wrote a letter to Frances, saying I wanted to come for you.”

  “You did? She didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t mail it. I read it over and over again, and I saw how little I had to offer you, and how uncertain my sobriety was, and I tore the letter up. I told myself if I could last six months, then maybe I’d have earned the right to see you again. But in six months I was back in jail.”

  He shakes his head sadly. “I’ve wasted so much of my life.”

  He looks up at me, a faint smile on his lips.

  “Every birthday I’ve bought you a card. I’ve always loved you. Always.”

  Anger grows within me.

  “Love? You think buying some kiddie birthday card means you loved me? If you loved me, you’d have quit drugs!”

  The rage at Marcia, Shawna, Tyler, comes spewing out.

  “Where were you when my so-called mother was pregnant, pumping her body and mine full of crack, or speed, or who knows what—getting me addicted before I was even born! I bet you were right there with her, smoking it or shooting up or whatever it was you were doing! You call that love?”

  “Rennie . . .”

  The name that was so pleasing to me a few minutes ago, grates on me now.

  “Your mother, she loved you too, in her way,” he says.

  “Yeah! Sure! You both loved me so much I was all undernour­ished and full of lice when I got to Grams’ house.”

  Jack takes a deep breath.

  “We were going to quit after we made the last batch of crystal meth. We just needed a stake. I know, I know, it all sounds ridiculous now, but we were working on getting out of there, getting you out of there.”

  “RIGHT! AND YOU COULDN’T BOTHER TO FEED ME IN THE MEANTIME!”

  People turn to look, then turn away. I don’t care.

  Jack gets up and comes over to my side of the booth and slides in beside me. Our shoulders are touching. I move closer to the wall, putting space between us.

  “I don’t blame you, Rennie. I . . . we always had cereal for you, and bananas usually. It’s just . . .”

  Jack takes a deep sigh and closes his eyes.

  “We didn’t have much room in the refrigerator for food—all the ingredients in there for meth . . .”

  “How disgusting,” I say, not even looking at him.

  I rub my hand again, feeling the warmth from where my palm connected with Shawna’s cheek.

  “All I want is for us to know each other. I can’t change the past, but I’d like to start now getting to know you. Showing I love you.”

  I’m quiet for a while, thinking. Then I tell him how the only person in the world who’s ever really loved me is Grams.

  “She didn’t just say prayers and buy birthday cards. She got the lice out of my hair, and fed me, and took care of me when I was sick. She gave me a safe place to live. I don’t even remember anything about Marcia. I don’t even want to remember Marcia. I only remembered you ’cause you called me Rennie and I couldn’t help it. Why should I remember either one of you when you couldn’t ever bother to take care of me?”

  “Because we’re your parents. Like it or not, we’re part of you.”

  “You make me want to puke!” I tell him.

  “You seemed nicer from a distance,” he says.

  I push at him, wanting to get out of the booth, to get away. He sits there, like a mountain. I know how it looks, an older black man with a teenaged girl cornered in a booth. A girl who appears to be white. There’s already a complaint related to his car. He has a record.

  “I could yell for help. You’d be in way big trouble.”

  “You could,” he says, all calm. “I hope we can talk for a while, but if you want to yell for help, go ahead. I’ve been in big trouble before—you ever been in big trouble?”

  “Not really,” I say, remembering the smack of Shawna’s cheek beneath my hand.

  After a long silence, Jack starts talking, not looking at me, like he’s talking to the bagels that still sit uneaten in the middle of the table.

  “It was no life for a child, we both knew that. And we’d talk, a thousand miles a minute like people do when they’re on speed, about how we were going to make things better for you—get a house, white picket fence, all that American dream crap. And then we’d come down, and all we could think about was the next hit. In those brief times when I wasn’t so high I was spinning, or so low I was desperate, I’d see you, clutching your filthy, friendly blanket, watching silently out of those wide, wary eyes, and I would think ‘God help us. What will become of this child?’ And I’d pick you up, and hold you, and make promises I couldn’t keep.”

  “You knew Grams’d take care of me. Why didn’t you send me back to her?”

  “We talked about it, but we always thought we’d do better the next day. High, the world was ours. Low, we were too low to move.”

  “Why did you even want to keep me there?”

  Jack lets out a long sigh and turns to face me.

  “This sounds ridiculous, but addicts are ridiculous. I guess we thought we could be normal with you—you know, Mommy, Daddy, and the beautiful child.”

  “What a joke! I saw what I looked like when I left Texas. I was far from beautiful!”

  “Addicts don’t worry much about buying groceries.”

  “I guess addicts aren’t big on personal hygiene, either,” I say, all sarcastic.

  “Look, Rennie. I know it was awful. If I could make it up to you, believe me, I would.” he says, now looking back at the bagels.

  “Tell me about the explosion,” I say.

  Closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the top of the booth, he talks softly, almost in a whisper.

  “It was one of those god-awful hot, dry, west Texas days. Marcia and Gino were in the kitchen, doing the ‘lab’ work. Paul and Rex were arranging funnels and containers for the next step. The others were hanging around in the living room, in various degrees of highs and lows, watching ‘I Love Lucy.’ According to Craig, one of the TV watchers, you were in the doorway, between the kitchen and the living room, when it blew. I was in the driveway, unloading stuff from the car, and I swear, the ground shook like it was an earthquake. I knew right away, though, it was no earthquake.

  “I grabbed a tarp from the back of the car and rushed into the house, bumping into Craig and the others rushing out. I screamed for Marcia, and for you, and from somewhere in the dense smoke, I heard your cry.

  “I held the tarp in front of me and pushed through the smoke, the air growing hotter with every step I took. I was high enough not to be scared, not too high to know what I was doing. Finally I saw you and Marcia. She was holding you, trying to shield you from the smoke and fire. ‘Take her,’ she screamed, pushing you toward me. I took you and reached for Marcia’s hand but she pulled away. ‘Get her out!’ she yelled.

  “I was close enough to see that her whole left side was bare, clothes blown away, face, shoulder, arm, leg, all were raw and bleeding. “Go! Now!” she ordered in a voice stronger than I’d ever heard come from her. I threw the tarp over you and ran, low, trying to get under the smoke, out the door and into the yard. You were screaming and shaking. ‘You’re safe now, Rennie’ I said to you, and you looked at me like you knew it was true. I grabbed the tarp and ran back toward the house. Befo
re I could get there the whole thing went up. The roof, the walls—blasted to smithereens. Debris flying everywhere, then settling, leaving the most startling quiet, like the end of the world.”

  Jack has not moved since he began telling of the explosion. His face is without expression. His voice a monotone.

  “I went kicking through debris, looking for Marcia, not caring about the others . . .”

  Jack opens his eyes and turns facing me, looking intently at me, searching my face. I look away.

  “Not much was left of her,” he says, closing his eyes again. “The silence was broken by voices in the distance, and sirens. Lots of them. I ran to you. You were standing exactly as I’d left you. I picked you up and started running. ‘Blanket,’ you whim­pered once. ‘Gone,’ I told you, and you seemed to understand the scope of my answer, because you asked no more questions.

  “You know the rest, I guess. I’d been to some Narcotics Anonymous meetings at the downtown church, when I was trying to kick it. I knew there were good people there. I left you in the unlocked car. I could tell from the stuff in the car that it belonged to a family. There was a beat-up teddy bear, and one of those juice box things with a straw in it.

  “After I left you I went to the bus stop where I could watch, half out of sight. You’d only been there about ten minutes when they came. The husband and wife, and a little girl about three years old. I watched their surprise when they found you sitting in the car. Even from the distance of the bus stop, I could see that they were treating you gently. The woman helped you from the car. She seemed to be reassuring you. I watched as they walked with you back to the church office. I watched when, about thirty minutes later, the Amarillo police car drove up and two cops, a man and a woman, got out. Later, I watched as they drove away with you in the car, and as the ones who’d found you walked back to their own car, holding their daughter’s hands as she swung between them.

  “We could have had that, I thought, me and Marcia, with you swinging happily between us. 1 put my head clear down on my knees and I cried my guts out. I cried for all that would never be. I cried for your mother’s broken and burned body. I cried for you, lonely in a police station. I cried for my wasted life. But a black man can’t sit crying on an Amarillo bus bench for long without raising suspicion. When a squad car slowed to a near stop at the bench and then drove away, I knew it was time for me to leave. I walked and walked, then finally found a dark place under a bridge where I curled up for the night. I determined never to let drugs run my life again.