Arizona Allspice (42 page)

“He was my little confidence booster. He’d come around and I would feel like myself again,” she grinned, “Like somebody special.”

I knew that’s what she would say, though I had hoped to hear about how she appreciated Manny treating her with respect seeing as few men in her life do that. Little did I know I would soon be one of those
men.
Denise saw Manny as a perpetual admirer and an unconditional friend. She could slap him around or ignore him completely and know he would still be around. That is what Elaine thought of me. Her perpetual admirer, I would always stick around and be her “little confidence booster.” I wish Manny would give me a phone call or something. “I miss Manny, too,” I said.

“I know you do.” She turned onto her side to face me. “But I know you don’t miss him enough to crawl into my bed and sulk with that furrow between your eyebrows.” I feel the space between my eyebrows. I didn’t know I did that. She leans closer to me and traces her finger along my jaw line, down to my chin, and settled onto my bottom lip. “Who is she, Joey?” She taps her manicured finger onto my lip to coax me into talking. Denise has always been the star of her own saucy soap opera. Today I allowed myself to join the cast.

“She’s the girl of my dreams and I woke up.”

“
Awww
,
pobrecito
,” she cooed. “Well, we are just two lonely people. A girl and guy, both abandoned, both wanting some affection.” She snuggled even closer to me. Her chest was pressed up against my arm and I couldn’t help that I enjoyed it.  “We don’t have to be lonely, you know,” she whispered.

That is when the kiss happened. She looked so beautiful and she felt so warm against me. I wanted her. When our lips met it was sad, cold, and I knew I didn’t really want her. We both laughed, slightly embarrassed of ourselves. And now, we lay silently on her small bed. After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling I let my eyes close. Why am I so calm for someone who just had their heart put through a grinder?
Me,
El Fuego
with the hot temper?
I wasn’t calm at the moment my own journal was handed back to me, but that was only two hours ago. Why don’t I feel like this is the end of the world? I’ve been telling myself for years that I couldn’t live without her and here I am doing just fine. How anticlimactic. Seems a new defense mechanism has sprung into action to save me from what I imagined would be sudden death.

It’s a thought process called
rationalization
. See, what you do is you tell yourself that you knew all along that you were wasting time and energy.  That it was never that important to you and, in the end,
no big deal
. Could Elaine have…? When I asked her if she caredI can’t believe I got up in her face like I didshe didn’t answer me. However, she did object when I claimed she didn’t care about me at all. So, could Elaine have been rationalizing her true feelings away? Just like I’m doing?

I told her she was callous. She was just being strong. It’s one of the qualities I liked so much about her. Most likely she knew that I wouldn’t want to talk to her anymore. Her composure came off as frigidness because I was weak. She was being strong, or perhaps defensive, knowing I would blow up at her and
leave
her…like everybody else has done.

 I want to be there with her so badly but she doesn’t want me to be there. Why can’t I get that through my skull? I always care too much.  

“Denise, I have something to tell you.” I sit up.

“Hmm?”
I pull her hand to signal her to sit up as well. “What is it?” she asks as she fixes her hair with her fingers. I talk to her about the changes I am making in my life and watch her continuously wipe under her eyes to keep her tears from washing her mascara and eyeliner away. I don’t know which is worse: Watching Denise shudder and cry as I tell her I cannot be the life preserver for her and her father anymore, or seeing hardly any emotion in Elaine’s eyes when I screamed at her.

******

Once I am sure the coast is clear, I leave my bedroom to sit with Uncle Frank as he watches television. I don’t want to be alone. I plop down beside him wordlessly. He glances at me a few times until finally he can’t stay quiet.

“Are you sure you and Amelia’s son aren’t dating?”

I raise my eyebrows. “You’d think so, the amount of drama we go through.”

“You looked sort of shaken when you walked back into the house this afternoon. I figured I’d give you some space and some time for things to make sense.”

You didn’t check on me because you were busy with your girlfriend.

“So that I’m clear, you’re
not
dating Joey?”

“Correct.”

“I’m guessing you two had a fight.”

“Yeah.”

Uncle Frank turns off the local nightly news then tosses the remote control onto the empty space between us on the couch. “Elaborate.”

I explain it to him the way I have explained it to myself a thousand times today. “We both realized that a strained friendship was as good as it was ever gonna
get
.”

Uncle Frank blinked at me, confused. “What about all the tough times that you, your brother, and Joey pulled through together? Plus, add the fact that I’m dating his mother. We are all too braided together to separate. He’s practically
family
now. Don’t you agree? He’s family. You two can’t opt out.”

“I didn’t walk away. Joey did. He gladly turned his back on me.”

“Laney, please tell me what happened. I want to make sure you two aren’t just being plain old oversensitive, trivial twenty-year-olds. No offense,” he adds.

“You remember how I had Joey’s journal with me that day? I told you Miss Amelia gave it to me.” He nods. “Well, I kept that a secret from Joey because I didn’t want to embarrass him. Until I found out he read mine.”

“How?”

“Manny was letting him read it without my permission for who knows how long.”

“Oh, Manny,” Uncle Frank shakes his head with a smirk, knowing his nephew would never hear the end of it from me. “Why would he do that?”

“Joey asked to read it because Manny kept yakking on and on about it.”

“When do
I
get to read your stories?”

“I’ll let you read it soon. I need to edit them some more. They need a ton of work before I am truly comfortable with the quality. They just aren’t right yet,” I explain. My uncle frowns. “I’m sorry. Soon, I promise.”

He sighs loudly.
“If you say so.”

“I felt so violated. I felt like a joke. I keep imagining Joey and Manny having a ball as they drink beers and comment on
my
journal. This isn’t the first time Manny has done this. He told Joey about my love life.
Personal
information, Uncle Frank.
Sharing my journal was the last straw. So I came home, got Joey’s journal out of my room, and handed it back to him. Of course, he was shocked.”

“That’s why you breezed through here earlier. I’m sure Joey felt pretty bamboozled. Did you apologize?”

“Yeah, I….” I pause. I did tell him I was sorry, didn’t I?

“You never apologized?”

 The more I try to deny my memory of it, the more my heart starts to pound. “I can’t believe I didn’t tell him.” Joey’s voice replays in my head:
 “I can’t believe you.”

“Maybe that’s all he needs to hear.”

“The damage is already done.” My eyes sting with salt from the beginning of tears that I will not let fall. “He was going to hate me, one way or the other.” Expressions of shock and disappointment wrinkle his face. I stare down at my hands and I feel him rub my shoulder gently with his knuckles.

“You ever hear about self-fulfilling prophecy, niece?”

“Yes.”

“I think you did exactly that today.”

“Maybe,” I exhale.

There’s no ‘maybe’ about it. Regretful, remorseful, unworthy, guilty was
all
I felt, yet the words never left my mouth when I stood in front of Joey. What I wanted to do was cry and say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m all the bad names you’re calling me but don’t worry I’ll be out of your life soon enough.” My pride wouldn’t allow that. I just gave him the cold truth and braced myself for his reaction which I predicted would be a hot tempered lashing. I wanted him to hurry up and hate me. Get it over with. And when I didn’t think he was quite angry enough, I egged him on. I prophesized Joey would react just as I did when Raul broke my heart; with anger, disgust, and rejection. I made my expectations come true because, though I remembered how I reacted when Raul broke my heart, I’d forgotten I would have forgiven Raul that night if he had just apologized from the start.

On top of telling him sorry, I should have given him so many thank
you’s
for so many years of being a shoulder I could’ve leaned on, someone who would have embraced me, no questions asked, and a sentinel for my entire family, even Daddy. Maybe he would forgive me for reading his truth if he knew I wanted to make up for lost time plus more time.  

“Does it finally make sense, Laney?”

I nod. “Thanks, Uncle Frank.” I leave the couch and enter Manny’s room where I rest in his bed, silently wiping my tears while rehearsing my words.

******

Evening came quickly. The air is still warm from the afternoon sun, making my skin slightly damp with perspiration even though it is dark enough for the street lights to be on. Just to mock me, those ugly, blood sucking insects we call Kissing Bugs decided to come out tonight, buzzing from one light to another and flying all around me, threatening to “kiss” me as I walk home.

I shouldn’t have kissed Denise. I couldn’t have done anything dumber than kiss Denise! The suspicions Manny had about her and I was what started the crazy domino effect that scattered us either to jail or to a hospital.
God?
Please let Manny get over that girl while he’s serving his sentence. She’s not good for him. She’s not good for anyone right now, not even her.
 

 I saunter into the house.
“Mom?”
I call out. No answer. If she’s not home in an hour I’m going to call Mr. Jeremy. Sometimes she goes up there to his bar. If he hasn’t seen her, then I’m calling the police. I’m not kidding. She told me she was going for a walk and that was five hours ago. I go into the kitchen to find something to eat or drink, whatever will catch my eye. As I walk to our new refrigerator I glance at my journal sitting on the kitchen counter where I’d left it. A few of its off-white pages stick out haphazardly between its black leather covers. I turn my attention back to the contents of the fridge. I find some cranberry-pomegranate juice. I pour a glass as I eye that little black book of secrets.

As I drink, I consider throwing the journal away, an idea Elaine unintentionally put in my head. Why not? There’s nothing in there that I want to remember. I grab the journal from off of the counter. It’s so light in my hands, but it holds the burdens of my life. I walk towards the trash bin in the corner of the kitchen. I raise my hand to fling it into the bin with the rest of the garbage, but my eyes catch Elaine’s mother’s name on one of the torn pages sticking out. Goosebumps spring up along my arms as I remember.