I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway (17 page)

“Wow! Who gave you this phone number?”

This is about what kind of girl you want to be. What kind of boy you want to attract. And how you want to be treated. It’s all up to you, sweets.

“What are you, my mom?”

You don’t have a mom. Remember?

“Nice.”

That’s why you have me.

“What are you trying to say? Just say it. Because if I keep listening to you instead of acting like I’m super-duper into making out,
he’s going to think I’m boring. And I like him. He wants to be my boyfriend. Even though he already has a girlfriend. But, whatever.”

Here’s the deal: You’re already a little too goofy, a little too black, a little too poor. What you
don’t
need now is to be a little too slutty. So keep him out of your pants, for now.

“Do I always have to think so much about everything?”

Only if you want to stay off Section 8.

“That’s a really mean thing to say.”

You’re gonna thank me later.

“Good-bye.”

Peace out, sister. Oh, and you’ll be hearing from me again.

“Good-bye.”

STANLEY PARK FEELS LIKE
the greenest, quietest, most amazing sacred space I’ve ever been in—a kind of nature church. Paul and I have spent the day walking all over Vancouver, and we’ve ended up here, in the jewel of the city, surrounded by acres of evergreens. We aren’t saying much as we walk, which is unusual for us. Normally we keep up a steady stream of patter about politics, movies, art, architecture, economics, pop culture, ourselves, the past, and/or the future. We don’t really debate the topics as much as we each take turns making observations that the other one then riffs off of.

Sometimes I notice that Paul doesn’t really ask me much about my deepest interior life, and I notice he doesn’t really talk about his, either. He tends to gambol along on the surface of things. (The three exceptions to this are the topics of his baby’s mama, his first wife, and his dad, which get him all riled up.) This worries me sometimes, but in the scheme of things, it doesn’t seem like all that big a deal, so I don’t bother to question it. To be honest, I don’t want to rock the boat. This is a good boat. I like it. I want to keep it afloat.

Besides, here, in the middle of this forest, there are no words. What we are and what we have is distilled down to its very essence.

“I love you,” he says to me.

“I love you, too,” I say back. Actually, it goes way beyond love. I feel like he is my karma, my destiny. I know how that sounds, but maybe because I’m a mom now and I believe in miracles because I gave birth to one, or maybe because I’m getting older, or maybe just because I feel more comfortable living in my truth instead of needing to be taken “seriously” all the time, I dare to say what I’m really thinking: “You know what?”

“What?”

“I feel like I came across time to meet you.” It’s true. I’ve been wanting to say that for a while but didn’t find the courage until right this moment.

“Really?” Paul likes this. He likes that I am willing to be vulnerable, that I don’t live in my defenses. I love that he doesn’t think I’m weird.

We stop in the middle of this fantastical clearing—really, it’s like something out of
The Lord of the Rings
—and we kiss, no, we kiss, and in my mind there is one of those cameras that reels around in circles, enveloping us in the moment, blurring everything out but this kiss, in this moment, in this forest.

And that’s when I know:
I’m going to marry this man
.

It is done like pi. There may be a thousand million places after the decimal point still to be discovered, and those places may be surprising or difficult or happy or wonderful. But the numbers are already there waiting for us. We are going to be together.

A WEEK BEFORE MY HIGH SCHOOL
graduation, I get a call from Daddy. It’s a surprise, because I haven’t talked to him in maybe eighteen months. I’m not sure exactly when his phone calls stopped coming. Probably after I told him I considered him nothing more than a sire.

Teenagers.

Daddy has two reasons for calling. 1) He’s out of prison again. 2) He wants to come to my high school graduation.

My responses are 1) Oh. 2) Fuck no.

“Absolutely not.” I say firmly. “I do not want you there.”

I know it is selfish. But I just cannot imagine spending the final two hours of my high school career taking my dad around to meet my friends, their parents, and my teachers. Not after all this time. Not after successfully convincing them that I am a girl who only barely knows her dad, the guy who divorced her “stepmom” when I was three. They all think he works in a barbershop in northern Minnesota. They’ve never stopped to wonder aloud whether there are anywhere near enough black men north of the forty-fourth parallel to warrant a whole career in African-American hair care, and it’s way too late to start explaining all that now.

“Tracy Renee,” my dad says, trying to reason with me, “this is a very important day in your life. You’re starting down the road to adulthood.”

“Exactly,” I counter. “Which is why you won’t be there. You can’t just show up at the end of a thirteen-year journey and clap! You’ve never even been to a parent-teacher conference! Yvonne might be a meanie sometimes, but at least she’s done that much.”

Daddy’s not giving up easily though. “I should be there to see my baby gyurl in her cap and gown, getting her diploma.” He says it sweetly, trying to prevail upon me in a fatherly, sentimental way. I’m not giving an inch.

“No.” I say. “No way.”

If this conversation were a piece of film, like a preview in a movie theater, and if you were able to slow the film all the way down, super-duper slow, you would see—subliminally inserted in between the frames, like the words “buy popcorn,” “eat hot dogs”—that this is actually the first time in my life I have been in a position of power with my dad, the first time I’ve ever been able to deny him what he wants. And I’m running with it.

“Tracy Renee”—he’s impatient now—“come on.”

“Don’t beg. You’re not coming.” (Like many young women, I sometimes have
no idea
how bitchy I sound. I think I sound smart. And authoritative.) Then I add, just to make myself perfectly clear: “And by the way, I really don’t want you calling me. I gotta go.”

I hang up. I feel good. Like I’m not going to let him push me around. Like I’m doing “what’s best for me”—even though it will be years of therapy before I learn that verbiage—instead of making Daddy happy. I’m downright proud of myself.

For all I know he came anyway. There must have been a thousand people there. He could easily have chilled out way in the back and gone unseen. And it’s not as though, as I walked up to the podium to accept my little piece of paper, I was wondering if my dad was out there, watching.

No. Sitting in that chair, listening to all the good kids imagine their very bright futures, I had the same feeling I always have at this kind of thing.

This whole charade is for normal people.

PAUL IS AT THE WHEEL.
His elderly hound is hunkered down in the backseat of the Land Rover. I am riding shotgun, white paper coffee cup in my hand. It’s one of those crystalline Los Angeles mornings—bright, bright blue and thriving yellow—the kind half the world moves here for. We’re on our way to the dog park. It’s a magnificent day, and it just started.

I fish around in the center console, looking for a piece of gum. There isn’t any, but I do come across an innocent-looking ticket stub from my favorite movie theater in Los Angeles, the Arclight. The movie is
Van Helsing
. Dated a little over a month ago, 5/7/04. An afternoon show. Four o’clock in the afternoon. It’s not a movie we saw together—I’m not the
Van Helsing
type—but I don’t really think much of it.

(You go looking for A and find B.)

Until later. I am driving on the 134 freeway again (I take that freeway a
lot
), actually on my way to Paul’s loft, when it hits me.

May 7.
. Wait.
May 7??!

Paul was supposedly out of town that weekend, visiting his young son in another state. In fact, he called me from that state. To say how much he loved me!

BEGIN FLASHBACK

INT. NEWSROOM—DAY

Tracy is supposed to be writing news, but Paul, her boyfriend of two months, is calling for the fourth time that morning. He sounds especially ardent.

PAUL

I miss you.

TRACY

I miss you, too.

PAUL

I love you sooooo much.

TRACY

(giggles, embarrassed)
I love you, too.

PAUL

I can’t wait to see you.

TRACY

When are you back?

PAUL

Uh, late Saturday night. But you won’t see me until Sunday. Because I’ll be really late. But then when I do see you…

TRACY

(giggle)

PAUL

I can’t wait.

TRACY

Me neither.

END FLASHBACK

So, wait. That was, let’s see, a Friday. I remember specifically, because I work on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. And Friday was May 6. And he was supposedly calling from Texas. And he wasn’t going to be home until “late Saturday night…”

Random clues start springing out of the recesses of my mind, fast and furious. Like:

• He had a new haircut when I saw him on Sunday.
  
• Who would get a British rocker haircut in Texas?
  
• No one. That’s who.
  

My heart starts beating like I’ve just happened upon a dead body.
I need to see that ticket stub again
. Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe it didn’t say May 7. Maybe it said May 17!
I have got to see that ticket stub again
. I can’t even begin to think about what that ticket stub means, I can only think about confirming what it says.

I formulate a plan. While in the parking garage, I will simply retrieve the ticket stub from his car and look at it. That way, I will know before I go into the loft, before I see him, if he has lied to me, and I will be able to confront him with facts. Exactly what I would say in such a confrontation isn’t clear. But I need facts. I know that much.

Why I would even consider speaking to Paul if the ticket stub
does
turn out to be a smoking gun isn’t quite clear, either. I can only guess that the ticket stub is part of my whole once-in-a-lifetime attempt to get my most hard-core childhood wounds to surface. A hundred-year flood of childhood trauma. Then it makes perfect sense.

How this is part of the answer to my prayer is another thing. The only thing I am sure of: I am apparently hell-bent on a healing.

I SHOULD MENTION
that we’ve moved in with Yvonne’s new boyfriend, a harmless dolt several years younger than she is. His name is Frank and he’s a plumber—far from rich, but a decent earner—whom she met during her brief-but-life-changing bowling league phase.

They’ve been together for nine months now, my entire senior year,
but poor Frank still has
no
idea what just hit him. And even if he figures it out soon—and it doesn’t look like he’s going to—it will be too late. They are planning to get married this summer.

Take, for example, this fancy apartment building we’ve moved into. We’ve already lived here—with Yvonne’s
last
boyfriend, the lawyer!

But that’s our little secret.

“Don’t you
dare
tell Frank we used to live here,” Yvonne says, mustering her best forties movie star menace.

“I
won’t
. Jeez.” I roll my eyes contemptuously. I’m bored and impatient with Yvonne’s drama. I just don’t have the energy. What am I gonna do, tell Frank that four years ago we lived on the eighth floor (we’re now on the third) with the lawyer, the one who was wonderfully sweet hearted but looked like a troll? The guy we just moved out on one day, while he was at work?

The whole chapter was so brief, I don’t think that lady in the management office even recognizes me.

There is another thing I’m not allowed to tell Frank: that Yvonne actually married my black dad before adopting me. I’m guessing this is because Frank hails from an area where miscegenation is considered quite downmarket, and Yvonne doesn’t want her new man to think less of her—or worse, reject her. I’m not sure where Frank thinks I came from. Perhaps Yvonne told him she found me in the rushes along the edge of the Mississippi River.

Whatever.

My life is too busy for me to care much about that stuff. I’m seventeen and, by some miracle, about to go off to college. All I do in this apartment is sleep, change clothes, and occasionally fuck my boyfriend on the couch late at night, after Yvonne and Frank have gone to bed. And I’m getting tired of doing even
that
.

I’ve been with Scott more than two years now—his only girlfriend for a year. His other relationship ended when the girl finally found out what the whole rest of the school already knew and forced
him to choose between the two of us. He chose me, probably because I made him.

Scott has really stabilized my life—to the point where I got almost all A’s this year. I feel better than I have since I lived with the Ericsons. Yvonne’s ups and downs don’t affect me as much, since I can always call Scott and he will immediately come whisk me away. Scott basically drives me to work, feeds me, buys me stuff, and has sex with me. If I were giving him money, he would be my pimp.

It’s also probably no coincidence that Scott’s arrival was followed closely by Frank’s. Without me around all the time, Yvonne suddenly discovered she was lonely and needed a boyfriend. Or maybe she needed someone to serve as the focal point for all the personality quirks that make it so difficult to be so close to her. Either way, I’m glad Frank’s here, because that shit is exhausting

I can’t believe I am counting the days until I’m gone.

Free at last
.

Free at last
.

I FIND PAUL’S CAR
in the parking lot, but it’s locked.
Shit
. I really want to know what’s on that ticket before facing Paul. I force myself upstairs, rubbery with adrenaline. I methodically make my way up the elevator. Down the long labyrinth of a hallway—this way, that way, this way again. Into the loft. Down the long interior hallway. All this walking is giving me time to contemplate the fact that I don’t really need to see the ticket. I already know the answer.

Paul has a big smile for me as I round the corner into the living room, but the second I come into view, his face falls. He knows instantly that something is off. Of course. Liars are wildly perceptive. It’s part of the skill set.

“Are you okay?” He stands up from behind his desk and makes his way toward me. He is wearing his short-sleeved plaid Dolce and Gabbana shirt, the one he says he wears on first dates, probably be
cause we are going to a nice dinner tonight at a French bistro in Los Feliz.