Beyond Eighteen (34 page)

My eyes misted as I ran my fingers over the
uneven edges of every card and letter. I could smell the ink, the
paper, even the rubber bands that bound them. I pulled out the
smaller cluster of three before I pulled the box off my lap. I
looked at the first envelope. White. The edges stained with age and
neglect. My name and address square in the middle. I brought my
knees up, protectively guarding my soul from what I was about to
endure. I dragged my fingers over the front, catching the rubber
band. I pulled it off and allowed the other two envelopes to rest
on my lap. I noticed the stamp under the squiggly lined postmark
had the American flag with the number 33. I looked at the circle
with the place and date it was mailed: Willits, CA, June 14, 2000.
I looked at the next postmark on the next envelope: Sept. 8, 2000.
I slid to the last envelope. It was pink with a black postmark
dated Dec. 22, 2000. I looked over at the next bunch, waiting in
the box and the postmark on the top said March 15, 2001. My heart
plunged down into my gut. I looked up at Joanie, almost forgetting
she was even sitting there.

“They’re all sorted by month and year,” I
whispered.

Joanie dipped her head before dropping her
eyes to the box. I nodded and she pushed her fingers into the
letters toward the back. That banded group was so much larger.
There must have been ten or so letters. She pulled back the top of
the last letter, dated Oct. 18, 2011. Ten days before my grandpa
died.

“It looks like she wrote you more as the
years went on,” Joanie said as she let the letter go and rubbed her
hands across her knees.

I nodded before I slipped my finger into the
edge of the first letter she’d written me and pulled it across the
crease, ripping it open. I pulled at the lined paper folded
randomly inside.

Dear Wilson,

I’m sorry I can’t do this. I am a bad mom,
you deserve better. Someday I hope you will understand my reasons.
Listen to Grams and Gramps. They can be tough, but it’s only for
your own good.

Love,

Me

I flipped the half sheet of lined paper
over.

“That’s it? Nothing more?” I said, shocked
at Candi’s words. Joanie held her hand out and I handed her the
letter.

There had to be more. An explanation,
sentences that would comfort a little girl after her mother dumped
her; but there wasn’t. All she left me were just words. Words she
wrote that drove me right back to feeling like that broken,
abandoned little girl. In the very first letter I opened from this
box, Candi managed to freshly tear every wound she’d created in my
soul. Now I had a whole box filled with letters waiting to have
their way with my heart. No, thanks. I’d spent my entire life
trying to heal the damage she caused and in a matter of a couple of
sentences I was left reeling and broken.

“I was eight years old, for Christ’s sake.
That’s all she gave me?” I said, trying to catch my breath.

“Wilson, honey, if she didn’t care she
wouldn’t have filled a box with ten years worth of letters.” Joanie
pulled another letter from a different year. “Try reading this
one,” she said as she held out a bright red envelope. “The postmark
is from 2002. Three years later.”

I grabbed the envelope, looked at the date
on the postmark, and noticed it was from December. Like before, I
pushed my finger into the corner and ripped along the scored edge.
It was a birthday card. On the front was a scary clown with red
flaming hair sticking out on either side of his bald head. His
forehead was home to a cluster of wrinkles as his light eyes with
black painted circles around them were open super wide, his face
bright white with a gigantic red nose and exaggerated red lips like
Ronald McDonald. He was dressed in a shimmery purple suit and a
pink triangle tie with white dots. He was holding a white cake with
rainbow sprinkles and a ton of burning candles. Yellow block
letters down at the bottom of the card said, “Stop clowning
around.” I opened it, and in black letters that matched the front,
it read, “Remember…make a wish before you blow out your
candles!”

Below that Candi had written:

Happy 10th Birthday. I figured you’d like
this instead of a Christmas card. Hazards of a Christmas birthday,
I guess. I can’t believe you’re already 10. Well, hope Grams and
Gramps are treating you right. Sorry no present but money is tight.
Here’s a kiss, hope that’s good enough. Love, your Mom.

Just below her writing was a smeared kiss in
red lipstick.

I felt the words strangle my throat. My
heart felt like it had stopped beating and suddenly I was somewhere
else. I just started to grab letter after letter, ripping them
open, reading about her life without me. I could feel my heart
ache, my tailbone becoming sore from sitting through each one. I
continued to read as the letters from Candi evolved from a
desperate kid to a self-sustaining woman. I know it’s strange,
maybe even unbelievable, but I could
smell
her. Every place
she’d been, every experience she wrote about. Every moment I wasn’t
with her, spread across cardstock and lined paper. Events she
experienced that were supposed to be for her and me as a family.
She wrote about how hard it had been without me, how it took her
three tries to get clean. She told me she never stopped thinking
about me, how she met someone and was married, how she wished I was
there. She told me that she went to school and is now working with
young addicts, counseling them, trying to save even one girl from
going through what she had. Letter after letter, the words
methodically pulled her back into my life. She told me that I have
a brother, Connor. That he looks just like me, and every day with
him is like having me back. I kept reading for hours, the words she
wrote intended for me at different stages of my life. Words that
tore me apart while at the same time, somehow, finding a way to
piece me back together.

J sat with me the entire time, taking each
letter after I read it and putting it back into the envelope it
came out of. She was a rock. When I would stop and cry, she’d take
the letter and read it out loud. She could sense when I was about
to lose it; that’s when she would nudge against me and rub my back.
She didn’t have to say a word. All she had to do was sit there and
be with me. Three hours later, we had read through all the letters
and cards. My life without my mom chronicled perfectly in a
shoebox. I was exhausted, like I’d been run through a washing
machine on heavy duty.

I sat for a moment, silent, staring at the
box.

“You okay?” Joanie asked. A gap of
reflection, thick with what I’d just experienced, lay between
us.

“I think so,” I answered.

“You know what this means, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” I whispered.

“Your mom never gave up on you. All those
years,” Joanie said.

“Yeah. Changes things a bit,” I sighed. I
stared at my grandfather’s button-up shirts and dress pants, my
eyes burning from not blinking, my head searching, swimming toward
some reasoning behind my grandparents keeping the letters from
me.

“What are you going to do?” Joanie asked
before chewing on the corner of her bottom lip.

“I really don’t know yet.”

I saw images of my grandparents tiptoeing
into their closet and hiding the letters from me.
Why? Why would
they take that from me?
I guess, deep down, I knew the answer.
They were only trying to protect me. Keep me safe.

“Do you think your grandpa intended on
giving you these letters?”

“I have to believe that they were going to
give them to me once I turned eighteen. There is no other reason
why they would keep them and go to all that effort to sort them by
year. I really think I was meant to see them, J.”

Joanie stood up and held out her hand. I
took it and she lifted me off the floor. Without having to relive
the journey into my nonexistent childhood relationship with my
birth mom, I gave her a hug for being my best friend in the whole
world. In that moment, we both knew this was only part one of my
new adult life. Tomorrow, part two…meeting with the lawyers of my
grandparents’ estate.

~ Max ~

Morning came faster than I
expected. When I looked over at the clock, 7:55 glared at
me.
Shit.
It felt
like I had just closed my eyes. I wanted to get into the office
before 8:00 so I could get as much done as possible and make my way
to California to be with Wilson.

I tossed the blankets back and let the cold
morning air rake across my bare skin. Normally I sleep with boxers
on, but last night, well I didn’t…besides, when the chilly morning
air found its way to my erection, I gave it a moment’s thought
before I decided to get up and get my ass in the shower.

A shower was the perfect answer to
jump-starting my day. It was quick, and of course productive when I
soaped up my lower half.

I knew that day was going to be my day. I
had to believe everything that needed to happen was going to
happen. I pulled open my closet and found my most expensive black
Armani suit and white Charvet dress shirt. It was going to be a
pull out all the stops kind of day. I was going to attempt to
convince one of GP’s biggest accounts to not only meet with me
today instead of Saturday, but I was going to persuade both Holtz
and Glück that staying with GP would be the best business move
ever. The hard part was going to be proving that I could be just as
committed to GP as my father was. I pulled out my good luck dijon
mustard yellow silk tie and slipped it around my collar, untied,
before pulling on my jacket and my most expensive pair of dress
shoes. Was this what I wanted? Walking around wearing clothes worth
more than some people’s entire week of wages? Not really, but I was
being forced to play the part. Would I wear something like this to
meet with Mr. Langley? Hell, no. But I wasn’t meeting someone who
was emotionally tied to GP; I was meeting with corporations that
shifted loyalties with quarter profit margins and bottom lines. One
thing was for sure, if I lost Holtz Oil and Glück Petroleum right
now, it would be a devastating blow, and quite possibly the end of
Goldstein Petroleum forever.

I called Dan, Calvin, and
Gary, and told them to meet me at the office. I wanted to go over
some files before I convinced Holtz and Glück that GP was where
they belonged. I looked up at the clock, it was 8:45.
Damn! I wanted to call Wilson before I left. I’ll
have to call between meetings. Right now I have to save my company
from total devastation. Hmmm, my company…I don’t know about how I
feel about that yet.

I hustled downstairs and into the kitchen.
My mom was shuffling around collecting everything she needed to
make herself some coffee. She saw me and pulled another cup from
the cupboard.

“
Hey, honey, you look
handsome. You flying out to see Wilson today?” she asked, her eyes
twinkling with anticipation. Her lips pulled into a hopeful smile
before she poured two cups of coffee.

“
Ahhh, no, not right now.
Something came up at GP and I have to take care of it today. This
for me?” I pointed to the cup of coffee before snatching the
vanilla creamer from the fridge.

I noticed the look on her face. It was the
same one she’d give my dad when he would whirlwind around the
kitchen before leaving for the office.

“
Maxi, we talked about
this yesterday. Your brother and Dan can handle Gary for a couple
of days. You should be with Wilson, she needs you,” she said as she
stirred half and half into her coffee.

“
Come on, Mom,
don’t
should
on
me this morning. I know, and I haven’t forgotten what we talked
about yesterday,” I answered.

“
You called me asking for
help…Well, this is me helping you. I don’t want to see you make the
same mistakes your father made,” she sighed before she took a sip
of her coffee. Her words covered me like honey and suddenly I
wasn’t moving with the same intention as before.

“
Mistakes? Dad didn’t make
mistakes,” I stated.

“
Oh, sure he did. He was
young and ambitious, willing to sacrifice to make GP the best
company it could be. You know, your father was just about your age
when your grandfather started grooming him to take over GP. He
wasn’t much older than you when your grandfather became sick and
had to retire, leaving your father in the same predicament that
you’re in now.” She took another sip from the coffee mug she had
clutched between both hands. She leaned back against the counter,
ready to tell me whatever I was willing to ask.

“
Yeah, but Grandpa was
still alive and was able to help Dad,” I mumbled.

“
Not really, Maxi, your
grandfather had a stroke. It was months before he was able to talk
again. So your father had to do everything. That was the hardest
couple of years of our marriage. Long days at the office, meetings,
and emergency business trips every other week. I was left on my
own…a lot. I was a new mom, at home with a toddler and seven months
pregnant…with you.” She set down her coffee, snatched my tie, and
started to flip, tuck, and tie it.

“
Your father loved his
family. We were the most important thing in his life, and even
though he was gone a lot, his commitment to giving us the best life
he could was his legacy. Maxi, you don’t have to make that your
legacy. If what you told me yesterday is true, and Wilson is the
one, then learn from your father’s mistakes. Learn to balance your
life with your career. GP will survive, it always has. What you
have with that girl…make that your legacy.”