Monsoon Season (5 page)

‘No.’ He picked up his crayon. ‘I used to. When I was in school and kids would talk about their dads. Even when my friends would complain about their dads, like, for making them help around the house or whatever. I couldn’t help feeling a little jealous.’

‘Sure.’

‘I had my mom. She filled in pretty good.’ He stopped drawing, looked up. ‘It’s kind of like I had no father but twice the mother.’

I nodded.

‘What about your dad?’ he asked. ‘You don’t really talk about him either.’

‘No?’ I drew two green hills that met at the root of the tulip. ‘He’s kind of more like background, I guess.’

‘Background?’

‘Yeah, quiet. Not that interested in me.’ I put my crayons away and looked over at his side of the table for the first time.

I gasped. He had drawn me. Even upside-down, I could tell. I got up and stood over his shoulder. It wasn’t exactly like me, and yet, at the same time, it was. It was something about the eyes, the facial expression.

‘Not as good as the original.’ He grinned.

I’d been on the pill since I was nineteen. That was the moment I decided to tell him.

Donna picked up on the third ring.

‘Riley, I’m so glad you called. I miss you already. How are you doing?’

I pressed the phone against my ear and closed my eyes. ‘I miss you, too. So much.’

‘You left your cell phone here.’

‘I know. It was kinda on purpose.’

‘I figured. What’s it like being home?’

‘It’s okay. It’s sort of nice. I’m pretty sure my mom knows something’s up, but she’s not bugging me about it.’

‘Well, that’s good.’

‘Yeah. The fire made the news here. What’s the latest?’ Tucson was in the midst of a huge forest fire.

Donna sighed. ‘It’s dramatic. Yesterday they were reporting that they had it sixty per cent contained. Today it’s flared up again. And still no rain.’

‘Crazy. It’s nice here. I can actually lie outside in the middle of the day without bursting into flames.’

‘I should come visit.’

‘You should! That would be so great.’

‘Yeah. Maybe in a few weeks. I can look at flights. I’m due a vacation.’

‘We could go to the beach. You could meet Laura. We’d have so much fun.’ Somehow, even as I spoke, I knew it wasn’t going to happen.

‘Mmm,’ Donna agreed, and I wondered if she knew it too. ‘Look, Riley, I’ve been debating whether to tell you this but I think I have to.’

I sat up straight. ‘Okay. What is it?’

‘He came by the other day.’

‘Ben?’

‘Yeah. He was looking for you.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Nothing. Riley, he was acting nuts. I mean, Dave was here and the two of them almost got into a fight.’

‘Oh, God. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t apologize for him. Riley, the thing is, as much as I miss you and I hate that you aren’t here any more . . . I’m so glad he can’t get to you. He scared me.’

I fought the urge to tell her not to worry, that he would never really hurt me. I chewed my lower lip. ‘So he doesn’t know where I am?’

‘No. But it’s probably only a matter of time, right? I mean, where else would you go?’

‘I guess.’

‘Have you decided what you’re going to do?’

I held my breath for a moment. Let it out through my nose. ‘Not yet.’

‘Well, there’s no rush. The important thing is that you’re safe now. Everything else will work itself out.’

‘You think?’

‘I know.’

I longed for that kind of certainty.

After I’d moved back in with Donna, I avoided Ben for long enough to think I was over him. I remembered what I liked about being single. I took baths, read books and rediscovered channels on cable I’d been too embarrassed to admit watching. I never worried whether my bra matched my undies. That May, I sat in the apartment complex’s laundry room, on a counter meant for folding, as I reread
The Bluest Eye
, remembering why it was my favourite book of all time. Every few pages I’d look up to see how many minutes were left on my dryer. An old Hispanic woman shuffled in with a blue plastic laundry basket. We exchanged smiles and commiserated about the heat. It was over a hundred degrees outside and hotter in, the heat from the washers and dryers, running in a room without air-conditioning, making it seem like a sauna.

My hair was tied in a messy knot on top of my head, the wisps clinging to my damp face. My bare legs dangled off the counter, punctuated by flip-flops. Every couple of minutes, a droplet of sweat slid down my back. I’d peel the fabric away from my skin, pulling it back and forth, creating my own little breeze. I didn’t really mind the heat. There was something honest about it, something reliable. On a day like today, an ice cube on cement would disappear into the air in seconds, and I knew it. I had been out here for a year now and that made me feel like I was a legitimate Arizonan. This was what the last days of May in Arizona felt like. I was letting myself feel it.

Ben came in and bumped into the old woman as she was leaving. She shot him a nasty look; he seemed oblivious. I hadn’t seen him in three weeks, if you counted the last time he’d perched on Donna’s doorstep. I’d glimpsed him through the blinds, then returned to the couch and turned up the television volume.

What struck me immediately was how pale he looked. He stood in front of me, not speaking, his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes darted around the room, never seeming to settle on me. He swayed a bit, shuffled his feet, cleared his throat several times.

I thought maybe he was waiting for me to say something. I opened my mouth, without any idea what it would be.

Before I had to decide, he spoke: ‘My dad’s dead.’

I pushed my book out of my lap.

‘I know I shouldn’t be here,’ he said, moving away from me, facing the row of dryers. ‘I just didn’t know where to go.’

I stood up.

‘I should go. I’m sorry.’ He turned to leave but I caught his wrist. I wrapped my arms around him and his hands rested limply on my hips. I held him tightly, in spite of the heat, for silent sweaty minutes. I listened to his breathing, trying to figure out if he was crying. When he started kissing my neck, I didn’t feel like I could pull away. He was so fragile. At least, that was what I told myself to make it okay. It felt so good to have his lips on me, to feel his tongue against mine. It made sense. Kissing him felt like the most normal thing I’d done in weeks.

Later that afternoon, we made love at our apartment. It was ours again. We lay in bed, naked, with the sheets kicked off. He told me a story about the day his father had put his bicycle together and taught him how to ride. It was one of the only good memories he had of him.

He traced a finger along my lips, in circles around my eyes, down the bridge of my nose.

The second time Ben told me he loved me, he looked right into my eyes.

My father dying was about the only good thing he ever did for me. He and my mother split up when I was six. When he was home, my dad would sit on the couch with his feet on the coffee-table. That is the image I have of him. He’d blow air across the top of his empty beer bottle. My mother would jump at the sound and get him another. People used to think it was cute.

My brother Matt was four years older than me. He used to pick fights with my dad the moment he stepped in the door. It didn’t take a lot to set him off and I know Matt figured he could take the heat off our mom. Sometimes it worked.

I just stayed out of his way whenever he was home. My sister Amy was only three when he left. I’m not even sure she remembers how it was. My mother turning the pages of
Goodnight Moon
with her wrist in a beige Velcro cast. Learning to hug her gently. Sitting quietly in the back seat as the lady next door drove us all to the emergency room. Matt and I would sit next to each other in the waiting room, talking about He-Man. Amy would sit on Matt’s lap with her face buried in his shirt.

There were some nights when my father didn’t come home at all and my mother used to cry . I never understood that. Those were the only nights I felt like I could breathe.

After he left, I didn’t see him again until I was eighteen. He’d moved to Casa Grande and remarried. During study hall, my senior year of high school, I found his number on the Internet
Yellow Pages
, wrote it on an index card and carried it around in my wallet all summer, behind my fake ID. I didn’t really plan on calling him, but one night, after walking home from a party the cops had broken up, I did.

I met him for lunch three days later and we sat across from each other at a diner full of orange vinyl booths. I ordered a bacon cheeseburger with curly fries that came in a basket lined with paper and spotted with oil. He talked to me like we were old buddies, equals. He told me dirty jokes and charmed the waitress. He seemed to think we were there to shoot the shit. He had no idea that I was waiting for an apology, an explanation.

He asked if my mom still had a ‘flair for the dramatic’, said he hoped I knew better than to believe everything she said. He didn’t think I could remember.

I thought about maybe kicking his ass now that I was grown. I sat across the counter from him, sizing him up, counting the cigarettes he smoked, only half listening to his stories. Even with his hair greying, his gut spilling over his belt buckle, there was something about him that still intimidated me. It made me sick to my stomach.

We split the check and I never called him again.

Riley went with me to my dad’s funeral. She wore a sleeveless black dress, her hair tied in a ponytail at the base of her neck. She just held my hand the whole time. I don’t think I could have gone without her there.

The first time Riley and I had broken up, I really had gone to see a shrink, like I told her. I saw him three times. Dr Nelson. He wore short-sleeved dress shirts and dress pants that didn’t seem to fit him quite right. I could see his hairy legs above his black socks whenever he was sitting down. He seemed nice enough – struck me as someone who’d been picked on a lot as a kid.

He didn’t have a couch for me to lie on. We sat three feet away from each other, face to face, in the corner of his office. He occasionally scribbled things on a notepad. He told me not to feel self-conscious about it – it was just for his own memory. I hadn’t felt anything at all about it until he told me that.

Dr Nelson would tap his pencil against the side of his glasses as I spoke. His eyebrows knitted together in concentration and he nodded so slightly that I wondered if he had the beginnings of Parkinson’s. He didn’t really say much during our sessions. He asked a lot of questions – about my father, my childhood. How had it made me feel when my father hit my mother? How did I think it had affected me? What had it meant to me to live most of my life without a male role model? What had I learned about men, about anger, about love?

He asked a lot of questions but didn’t give me many answers. He did give me a prescription for Zoloft. A month without Riley, and I was a wreck.

Riley had seemed comforted by the fact that I was on medication. She seemed to think that explained away my temper, as though it was proof that things would be better now. That wasn’t exactly what Dr Nelson had said, but I didn’t tell Riley that. I let her believe what she needed to so she’d come back to me. I think people believe what they want to believe about most things.

I couldn’t answer the phone any more. Its ringing paralysed me. Four rings. Not knowing what I’d do if it was her. Not knowing whether I even wanted it to be her. If I’d have the nerve to pick it up or whether I would just listen to her voice. It always made my heart skip a beat when it was Riley saying, ‘Sorry we’re not here right now. Leave a message and we’ll call you back as soon as we can.’

She would too. She was always really good about that.

I hadn’t returned any of the phone calls.

Beep
.

‘Hi, Ben. It’s Mom. Umm, I was just calling to invite you and Riley to dinner some time next week and I wanted to know which night was best for you. So call me. Okay? Okay. Buh-bye.’

Beep
.

‘This message is for Riley Thomas? This is Joan from Dr Rosenberg’s office calling to confirm your two-ten appointment on July tenth.’

Beep
.

‘Ben. This is Doug. Where were you today? Call me.’

Beep
.

‘Ben? This is your mother calling. Are you there? . . . Hmm, I guess I missed you again. Well, I still need to know your schedule so I can plan that dinner. I’m inviting Matt. It’s been a while since I had all my kids together at the same time. So, just let me know if you have a preference. Otherwise we’ll have to go by Matt’s schedule. Call me! Love you, baby. Buh-bye.’

Beep
.

‘Doug again. You’d better call me if you have a good reason for this disappearing act. Otherwise, consider yourself fired.’

Beep
.

‘Hey, Ben. Mom says you’re MIA. Call me back.’

‘Matt?’ My voice cracked a bit from lack of use. A moment passed and I thought he had hung up.

‘Hey. You are there.’

‘Yeah, I’m here.’

‘Screening calls?’

‘Sort of.’

‘I guess I should feel honoured that you picked up for me, eh?’ Matt chuckled.

‘Yeah.’ I tried to chuckle back. It hurt my ribs and came out like a cough.

‘So Mom’s bugging me ’cause you don’t call her back. What’s that about?’

‘Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting. She’s planning a dinner or something?’

‘Yeah. She’s decided it’s been too long since we had dinner as a family. She’s making lasagne, I think. We’re supposed to agree on a night.’

‘You and me?’ I was stalling.

‘Yeah. I guess Amy doesn’t get a vote. So when are you free?’

‘Umm, I don’t know.’

‘Need to check with Riley?’

I hesitated. ‘Uh, yeah, I’ll check with Riley and call Mom tonight.’

Sometimes it was just easier to lie.

‘Okay, well, you do that. I told Mom any night except Saturday. I have a blind date.’

‘Oh?’ I tried to sound interested.

‘Yeah, don’t ask.’

‘Okay.’ I was relieved.