Beyond Eighteen (32 page)

“Oh my God, I’ll never forget how mad Grams
was at him for scaring us. I think it was the first time you’d been
here. He spent a couple of nights on the couch for that one,” I
laughed.
Of course I could laugh now, but in the moment…it
wasn’t funny.

“Wasn’t it a tree branch rubbing on the
house?” Joanie asked.

“Yeah, Grams made him prune it back the next
day. She stood out there and made sure he cut back every branch
that touched the house,” I answered.

We both laughed. It was refreshing to talk
about old times spent with my grandparents. In some ways, it made
me feel like they were still here.

“What about the time we huffed it all the
way to Highway 1 to sell lemonade?” Joanie said as she laid back
and looked up at the ceiling.

“Yeah, Gramps wasn’t too happy when the cops
brought us home…without the wagon and the card table,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Dang, that
was a lot of work to get all that stuff up to the highway. He was
fuming when he took us back up there and everything was gone,”
Joanie said, trying to hold back a laugh.

“Except for that crappy sign…it was the only
thing—” I said, trying to swallow the giggle that was creeping up
through my chest. I laid there trying to mimic my grandfather
frantically tearing up the sign.

Joanie’s face lit up at the memory of the
lemonade incident. She started laughing, the type of laugh that was
contagious. I felt my face tense and a smile broke wide as an
uncontrollable laugh began to take over my entire body. My eyes
narrowed and my nostrils flared as tears rolled down my cheeks. I
physically couldn’t say the last word to finish my sentence as my
body surrendered to a hysterical laugh. I tried to look away from
J, hoping I could stop laughing, but every time I tried, the vision
of my grandpa chasing down the crawling sign along the highway as
cars sped by and kicked up the wind flooded my mind. He looked so
crazy running, trying to catch it as the two of us cheered him on
from the back seat of his car. And the look on his face once he
finally caught it; he was so pissed.

I was laughing so hard that the only sound
that came out of my mouth was from the gasps I had to take to
breathe. I pulled the front collar of my pajamas into my eyes,
trying to soak up the lake of tears that spilled into the corners
of my eyes. Finally I took a huge, refreshing breath, trying to
return the oxygen that my laughing stole from my lungs as Joanie
mirrored my actions and we both sighed. Suddenly, we were those
nine-year-old girls in the back of my grandpa’s car, comfortably in
love with the collection of memories that scared the shit out of us
back then.

“Oh, J, I sure do miss them.” I felt a
pressure build in my chest.

“I know,” she said as she rolled over and we
faced each other.

“I just can’t stop thinking…I don’t have the
security of them being here for me anymore,” I said as the energy
in the room became solemn.

Joanie listened as words began to flow from
my mouth. “I don’t have the ability to call Gramps and ask him
stupid questions about random things. And I miss hearing Grams’s
voice in the background telling him to ask me if I’d been eating
right. I’ll never have that simple comfort, ever again,” I
sighed.

“Not that anyone can ever take your
grandparents’ place, but…you have…Max. He loves you, and his mom
seems really nice,” Joanie said, delicately dancing on each
word.

“Nancy is amazing. I really do love her. She
is the epitome of the perfect mom. You look up mother in the
dictionary, you’ll find Nancy’s picture there.” I felt warmth flood
my chest.

“Yeah, she seemed really put together, even
through the death of her husband,” Joanie whispered.

The words
put together
hung in my
mind. I felt the blood drain from my face as my heart hammered
against my sternum. That’s what I wanted my whole life, I wanted a
mom
put together
, not the broken fucked-up druggie I got
saddled with. I couldn’t help seeing the visions of where I’d find
Candi’s picture in the dictionary. Maybe I’d look under the words
Fucked-up Druggie, Ninth-Grade Egg Donor.
Yeah, well guess what,
Wilson? That’s not an actual word.
The profane words to
epitomize the woman who birthed me, well, they’d probably incite
massive book-burning rallies. But of course as thoughts of Candi
filled my head, so did the idea that there was a letter I refused
to open downstairs from her in my hideaway drawer in the china
cabinet.

“Wilson? Hellllloooo?” Joanie sang as she
waved her hands in front of my eyes. I didn’t realize I’d spaced
out.

“Yeah, well, Candi has
nothing
on
Nancy. She couldn’t even hold a match in the same vicinity as
Nancy,” I spat.

“What? When did we start talking about
her
?”

“We didn’t,” I answered.

Joanie lay there, silently studying my face,
her eyes grazing every line, every curve, every blink I forced my
eyes to make and every twitch I tried to stop my lips from making.
She read me like a book.

“It’s that letter, isn’t it?” Joanie
asked.

I shook my head. I couldn’t lie there any
longer and pretend that I wasn’t pained by not knowing what she
wrote.

“Maybe it’s time to move away from being so
angry to discovering some type of closure,” Joanie said in a very
delicate manner.

I knew she was right. It was time to grow up
and face the one obstacle in my life. She was like a thorn in my
foot. How was I going to move forward in my life while dragging all
the crap from my past? Even though I wanted to keep it in the
drawer, suddenly I needed the closure more than the anger I held
for Candi. I looked over at the clock—9:45 p.m.

“Maybe it’s time,” I mumbled as I flung back
the covers and stretched out of bed.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll going to get the letter.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” Joanie
pulled the covers back.

“No, I’ll be right back,” I said as I
shuffled out across the cold oak floors. The creaking floorboards
whispered, trying to convince me to go back to bed.

The room was dark, but the familiarity of
spending my summers here and the glow of the moon helped to spare
my toes the pain of the dining room table and matching chairs. I
made my way to the china cabinet, pulled open the drawer, and saw
the letter shift across the silver. My heart thrashed and my skin
broadcasted every fear I had from the moment I discovered I’d never
see my mother again.

I pulled the letter out quickly, as if there
was someone waiting to catch my hand and pull me into the drawer.
Every movement seemed deliberate, and yet at the same time, I felt
like my soul had unintentionally floated outside my body. What was
it going to take to pull me back into my existence? My fucked-up
memories of Candi, or the physical act of walking away? With the
first step I took toward the stairs, my body secured my mind and my
out-of-body experience collided with the edges of my reality. I
could feel my skin, muscles, and bones regain their purpose. I ran
upstairs, feeling vulnerable and unprotected, as if my soul may
decide to stay downstairs if I didn’t hurry.

I hadn’t realized how weighty the letter
was, and how it appeared thicker than a usual card or how the color
of the envelope seemed to glow in the gleam of the moonlight,
giving my name a place to show up. I pushed the door shut behind
me, as if I was keeping the haunting memories out of my
grandparents’ bedroom.

“That’s the letter?” Joanie asked, sitting
up.

“Yeah,” I answered as I climbed in bed next
to her. I flipped the envelope over and brushed my fingers over the
embossed swirl and the hurriedly hand-drawn heart above the return
address. I paused a moment, working up the courage to push my
finger into the top corner of the paper and pull.

~ Max ~

I tossed my jacket across
my desk chair, pulled at the knot of my tie, and released the top
button of my shirt. My hands were actually aching, I was that
exhausted. My mind had reached a level of saturation to where I
stopped processing what I was supposed to do. I needed sleep. I sat
on the edge of the bed and stripped
every
piece of clothing off, first
my shirt, last my boxers.

I wanted to take a shower and rinse off the
remains of the day, but when my body won the argument with my
befuddled mind, I decided to use the last bit of the energy I had
to slip into my bed. Soft as Wilson’s fingers stroking my skin, my
sheets collected every chill I brought home and replaced it with a
familiar warmth.

I closed my eyes, trying to silence the
conversations in my head from earlier. The disappointment I knew
I’d hear in Wilson’s voice when I had to tell her it was going to
be a little longer than I thought weighed heavily on my mind. My
‘three days’ promise was nothing more than a wishful thought that
turned out to be a problematic reality. I just wanted my mind to
dissolve into a silent space of black.

But, of course, it didn’t.
I just couldn’t stop thinking about how desolate my bed felt
without Wilson in it. I started wondering how she was handling
everything back in California without me. My mind was flooded with
thoughts of Wilson and how she was forced to face Dean McCallous on
her own. I wondered if she was scared or confused.
Maybe Joanie went into the office with her so she
didn’t have to be alone? Oh, I hope Joanie went in with her.
As rapidly as my thoughts volleyed around my
mind, I started to think about Wesley and how unconcerned I was
about not going back after winter break. I wasn’t worried about
Wesley’s executive board finding a sub or replacing me. It was
strange, all I felt was relief; like a hefty weight had been lifted
off my shoulders and the chain around my neck didn’t exist anymore.
After months of hiding our feelings in public and sneaking around,
we would finally have some type of normalcy. We’d just be a couple
making a life for themselves. Wherever we ended up, whether it be
Colorado or somewhere else, one thing I knew for sure, I didn’t
want to stay in the Bay Area.

I just wanted to push up against Wilson,
protect her, be her everything. I wanted to make my way to her,
continue building a life together. I wanted to share everything
with her. Every decision I’d made for our future. I wanted her to
know I’d answered the responsibility my father laid at my feet, and
that I didn’t blame him for the choices he made. I wanted to tell
her that I was planning on spending the rest of my life with
her.

My mind exploded with images of her and how
beautiful she was when I saw her for the very first time—her skin
smooth as creamy satin, her lips deliciously juicy as she spoke her
words and laughed her responses, and her eyes visceral and
hauntingly sophisticated as they revealed lifetimes of experience
most people her age didn’t have. I started visualizing that first
day back at school when she walked into my classroom. The
exaggerated sway of her hips against the vacancy of the room and
the captivating curve of her hair as it brushed every care off her
shoulders when she was finding a seat in the front row.
Immediately, I felt my body react. Everything below my belt
shifted, I lost my words, my eyes burned dry, and my heart battered
my lungs as the air I would normally breathe in deeply…disappeared.
That was one of the hardest fifty-five minutes of my life, almost
unbearable. I remember, all I kept thinking was that the most
beautiful girl I’d ever seen just walked into my room, and all I
wanted to do was make her forget who I was supposed to be. I ached
to discover what made her so tempting, so different from anyone I’d
seen before. I had to come up with ways to hide the evidence of my
feelings—standing behind my desk, facing the whiteboard, even
thinking of Margaret Thatcher with dead puppies—anything that would
loosen the pressure in my pants.

Even though I was completely exhausted, I
was all wound up from thinking about Wilson. My pulse kept time
with a race horse, my skin sensitive to the weight of my blankets,
and my muscles tightened, reacting to the memories of my naked
girlfriend flashing in my head. I needed to fall asleep, let go of
everything building in my body. But I couldn’t go to sleep when I
was that hard. I dug my heels into my bed and pressed my upper body
heavily against my pillow as I thrust my hand below my navel, using
the vision of Wilson being on top of me. Faster and faster I
imagined her tightening around me, keeping me needing her. The
swell of her breasts, the panting moans as she rolled her hips
against me as the force of my grip sped. I felt the push and pull
of my need to explode as sweat built and cooled my skin. My
breathing broke to a pant as every muscle in my body stretched to
the intense length of cruel agony before euphoric peace washed over
me. My breath caught, my shoulders rounded, and my hips locked as
every muscle in my body quaked, tightened, and released. I felt
both frozen and thawed as I exploded. Every release and fulfillment
I needed coursed from my body. I felt the physical surge push me to
its limits before exhaustion flooded every cell of my being.
Finally I was truly and completely exhausted. Spent, I rolled over,
still shivering as my breathing returned to the natural ebb and
flow of an acquired relief. It took no time at all to fall
asleep.

~ Wilson ~

I felt my skin pinch between the envelope
and the flap that was keeping the contents sealed. I heard the
fibrous paper tear along the fold of the envelope and felt the firm
edge of the card dig at the cuticle of my nail bed. My eyes stung
from not blinking in the attempt to find the smallest of clues that
maybe this card wasn’t from Candi after all.