I'll Be Here (2 page)

I’ll never understand why I have to ask but I need to know.  “Is there someone else?”

Dustin’s breath catches.

Minutes hang from the moon.

I could climb up them like a ladder and bury myself in stars. 

I let myself look into his hazel eyes and now I know the truth. 

I know it all without the words. 

There is someone else and he doesn’t have to say it to make it true.  There it is.  And I’m hurt and bled dry but in some ways I guess it’s better to be left for something than left for nothing. 

“Thanks for dinner,” I say robotically as I let myself out of the car. 

Dustin says something else but I don’t hear it.  I am already halfway to the house and my heart is in my ears.  I stumble on something but I find my balance and keep moving.  My muscles ache and my eyes sting but I just go forward because I need to. 

This is me, Willow James, broken and crying. 

This is me, Willow James, at the beginning. 

I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening.  But this wasn’t it.

~Groucho Marx

CHAPTER TWO

I’ve swallowed a thousand bricks.

At least, that’s how I feel as I lean the solid weight of my head against the closed door.

Gracelessly, I drop my purse on a narrow table beside the ceramic blue elephant that guards the front hall and stumble out of my high heels.  Have I mentioned how much they’ve been hurting my feet?

“What in the world?”  My mom is bent over at the hip with her arms stretched above her at an impossible angle. 

She straightens, settling her limbs back into all the proper places and shakes her short blonde hair out of her eyes. 

My mother can be found doing yoga on a purple mat in the open space between the living room and the dining room at all kinds of odd hours.  Once, I woke up to use the bathroom at three in the morning and she was doing a feathered peacock pose against the wall.  She says that it relieves her stress when she’s tense.  I say that it’s weird.  

Mom tucks her hair behind her ear and I catch this look on her face like she’s annoyed at my obnoxiously loud entrance.  But then she sees my expression and the way that I’m clutching my chest. 

The world slips away. 

She reaches me faster than I expect and she wraps me into her bony arms and her soft musical voice.  A part of me wants to move past her to the safety of my room where I can languish in my sudden aloneness
alone
, but she won’t allow it and for once I’m too tired to fight.

Her hands push tangled, mermaid hair from my tearstained face and she is looking at me with that special expectant expression she gets sometimes.  Her voice and her touch carry me into the kitchen.  It smells like rosemary. 

She guides me to the wooden chair with the scrolly arms and the springy seat that I claimed as mine long ago.  A minute later a glass of tangy white wine is pushed underneath my nose.  I look up and she raises her eyebrows at me. 

“What?  You’re almost eighteen, you’ve just been dumped and you’re not driving anywhere tonight.”   

I’m stung by the word
dumped. 

Dumped.

Dumped.

Is that what I’ve been?  It sounds so base.  So low. 

You
dump
trash.  You dump yard waste and old ripped couches that smell like body odor and forgetfulness.  You dump cigarette butts and banana peels and hazardous waste.  But people? 

I take a tentative sip of the wine.  It’s tangy and the slight burn it makes sliding down my throat feels good. 

Moonlight filters in through the window above the sink and makes bizarre shadows of the appliances on the counter—like the microwave is about to eat the toaster and the coffeemaker and the soap dispenser are holding hands.

We are seated at our kitchen table.  It’s a low-slung table that is really an old door that my mom found propped in the alley behind an antique store years ago.  I remember watching from the backseat of the crappy green car we had in those days as she haggled with a goateed man about the price of the thing.  Since that day, the table has been three colors: mustard, a crackly reddish-brown, and its current shade
Calypso Breeze
, which is really just a fancy way of saying blue.

Mom watches me carefully.  Her eyes are wide-set and unusually large for her small face giving her a constantly surprised expression.  Right now her thin lips are pursed into an oval shape.  Her elbows rest on the table and as she leans forward she makes a hammock for her chin out of her palms. 

I can guess what she is thinking.  She never liked Dustin.  She says he “stifled” me or some crap. 

Here’s the thing about my mother: she’s a bit bohemian, hence the name Willow, and the yoga, and the dream-catchers hanging in our bedroom windows, the flowing crocheted tops that fill her closet, and the compost bins out front.  She fancies herself an artist.  The reality is that she manages a gym downtown. 

Mom was born in Georgia to a conservative family of gun owners and during her tumultuous teen years she rebelled by becoming a peace-loving humanitarian who migrated to the beach with plans to sell jewelry and paint watercolors. 

Dustin is (or
was
) a little too “square” for her liking.  Most mothers would be thrilled with a sports-coat-wearing young man, but Julie Beagle is not most moms.  She tolerated Dustin just
barely
.  My mom admires people that push boundaries and inspire “movement,” whatever the hell that means.  Dustin’s favorite pastime is killing zombies in a post-apocalyptic video game. 

Mom would prefer for me to hang out with people that stage sit-ins or strap themselves to tree trunks in the face of bulldozers rather than the crowd that hits the mall on Saturday afternoons. 

Last year she dragged me nearly eighty miles to a bookstore to get a copy of a hardback book signed by a man that served sixty months in an Asian prison because he disrupted a government function by running across a room naked, waving a sign over his head.  Mom thought he was “amazing,” but all I could think about was how shitty that time in prison must have been and whether or not he had to go to the bathroom in his cell.  When I told Dustin about it, he shook his head and said that although he meant no offense, it was perverse that my mother was encouraging me to model after someone that had served hard time.  In prison.  I could see where he was coming from.

“I know you’re disappointed Willow but give this some time to sink in and you’ll see that it’s really for the best.”  She frowns.  “He wasn’t the right boy for you.”

I straighten my posture and cock my head to one side. 

“Oh really?”  This is me being sarcastic.

Mom sits back and scans my face.  I hate when she does that—when she thinks that she can read my thoughts through my expression.  It makes me want to scream.

“Yes… really.”  She sighs and then holds up her hand.  “For one,” she lifts a finger, “Dustin is a Capricorn.  A
Capricorn.
”

Jesus.  I don’t know why I even tried to talk to her about this.  My mother and I clearly do not operate on the same wavelength.  Or live on the same planet for that matter.

I have only myself to blame.  I should have expected this crap.  The bottom line is that my mother doesn’t get me and that’s okay because I don’t get her.  This conversation is just par for the course.  

With my head still angled to one side I give her what she calls
the look
.  “So you’re telling me that I should base my love life on an astrological chart?”

Her thin mouth tightens.  “I didn’t say that exactly, but if we’re being honest, I’ll just point out that it couldn’t hurt.  You need to find a good Libra or even an Aquarius.  That boy that came by here with flowers—”

“Who?  Jason Knopp?  That was when I was in the sixth grade!”

She leans back.  “Well, what about Alex?  He’s—”

“
Not
who we’re talking about!”  We are
so
not going there.  I’m depressed enough.

Mom looks exasperated.  “Honey, you didn’t even let me finish!”

“The second reason,” she raises another finger, “is that you could never have been a part of Dustin’s family.  His father—the
venture capitalist
,” she says this in a disgusted rush as if it’s a curse word, “donated money last year to Ned Miller’s campaign, and you remember perfectly well Jake telling us that Miller was deep in someone’s pockets and was ready to sell our sand to the highest bidder.” 

Yes.  Selling sand is a real thing, and if you live on the coast and your mother is married to a marine biologist this is the kind of thing that gets discussed at the dinner table.

“And the third?”

She flicks her ring finger upright.  “The third reason that I know that it never could have worked between you and Dustin Rant is because I’m your mother and I can see these things.  You are just like me when I was your age.  You can try to—”

I don’t even wait for her to finish the thought before interrupting.  I’m sure that it will be something like “you changed for him, blah, blah, blah,” or something along those lines.  I don’t care.  My mother used the five magical words that can effectively ruin any conversation between us.  You.  Are.  Just.  Like.  Me. 

“God!  Can you just stop with the judgment and be supportive for like five whole minutes?  Is that really so hard?  My boyfriend of
two
years just—as you so eloquently put it—
dumped
me—and I’m destroyed and all you can do is tell me what a bad match we made and throw politics at me?  Why don’t you try out being my mom and stop pretending to be my psychiatrist?”

 She is quiet for a few beats and then says, “Willow, this
is
me being a mom.  I know that you think that you were in love with—”

“Mom, I don’t
think
I’m in love with Dustin.  I
am
in love with him.” 

Love.  My brain registers the present tense even as I’m speaking and my voice cracks on the word
love. 
Fresh tears gloss my eyes.  “And after all this time for you to act like I should just shrug it off is insulting.”

We stare at each other.  My cheeks are wet.  My nose is full of sad. 

Finally, she sighs and her face relaxes.  She says, “You’re right, Willow.  You’re right.” 

And then she reaches across the table and pulls my hand to her breast.  Her skin is warm and glossy like the outside of a lemon that’s been resting in the sun.  Her fingernails brush the middle of my palms. 

“You are absolutely right and I’m sorry.  It was unfair for me to say what I said.  I know it hurts and I was trying to make it better by highlighting the negatives but I guess that was a failed strategy, huh?” 

I bite my lip and nod.  “Definitely.”

“Okay, so let’s start over.”  She smiles crookedly as she sits back and studies me.  “How do you feel about shock and sympathy?” 

“Hmmm… I think that shock and sympathy could work for me.”

“Okay.”  She lifts her thin arms theatrically.  “Dustin broke up with you?!  Say it isn’t so!”

I sniffle and shake my head trying not to give into her attempt at humor.  “I’m afraid it’s true.”

She feigns horror and magnifies her southern accent to a slow drawl.  “Oh Willow James, that’s just the most terrible news.  Dustin Rant was such a wonderfully well-bred young man with so much potential and I was counting on him to marry you.  Why, your eighteenth birthday is fast approaching and if we don’t get you married off to an appropriate suitor in the very near future, you’re sure to become an old maid.” 

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Truly a promising candidate.  He’s other-worldly intelligent—I would go as far as to say he can count all the way to one hundred—and with his in-depth knowledge of football and beer-guzzling he was sure to make a fabulous husband for you.”

Just as I start to laugh Aaron walks into the kitchen in his favorite pajamas.  Monkeys dressed like astronauts climb his arms and legs and the words SPACE MONKEY are emblazoned across his chest.  Sleep crawls across his features.  He stumbles. 

This is my little brother. 

He’s four and a half and somehow finds a way to be sticky ALL of the time.  Aaron escaped the curse of a loony name because Jake (that’s my step-father), insisted on naming him after a favorite cousin that died as a teenager or something.  I would have settled with being named after great-aunt Vera, who I am told was a royal pain in the ass but made a mean corn casserole.  Instead I got stuck with the moniker Willow Josephina (yes, really) James.  So basically, I was named after a tree.  Mom says it was a spur-of-the-moment decision.  I like to think that she was delirious after a fifteen hour labor and that my dad went along with it because he was high (those were his pre-lawyering days).  I haven’t been able to come up with another decent excuse for them.   

Occasionally it catches me off-guard how much my little brother looks like our mother—same exact pointy nose, over-large ears, and a mouth and chin combination so similar that if you take pictures of them at the same age and cover up the top half of their faces you can’t tell who is who.  I remember the first time I saw Aaron in the hospital and he was bundled up in a pale blue blanket with only his swollen pink face and one tight-clenched fist sticking out.   I just looked at Jake and we laughed because we couldn’t believe the similarities even then.

It is way past Aaron’s bedtime but he must have heard us and now he is using the excuse of needing water to join the action.  His soft blonde hair is pushed flat in the back from where his head was on the pillow and it sticks up near his face like a rooster’s crest.  There’s dried toothpaste on the side of his mouth that he missed.  He’s trying to bargain for a midnight snack when he spies the glass of wine in front of me.  His eyes open wide and his eyebrows disappear into his bangs.

“Is that al-co-hol?”  Aaron emphasizes the syllables slowly and deliberately like he’s speaking to a group of non English speakers.