Not Anything (19 page)

i don’t wait long to go to marisol. nine hours and fourteen
minutes to be exact. It’s enough time to get my head together and debate exactly what my opening line should be. I think it has to be funny—something to break the tension. As silly as it sounds, I practice in front of the mirror. I try to find a thousand ways to say I’m sorry. Like with a British accent: “I came around to apologize for being such an utter cow. All right then, I’m glad we got that out of the way. Carry on.”

And…

“What I meant to say was ‘God bless you,’ not ‘I hate you.’ Clearly, you can see how I could get those two sentences confused.”

And…

“Of course, when you stand there and block the door to your house, I get the feeling that you don’t want me here, but that would be me just being self-conscious, right? Right?”

And then…

“I’m sorry.”

I settle on
I’m sorry.
Even so, it takes me two hours of twitchy hands and four anxiety-fueled bathroom breaks before I can force myself to leave for Marisol’s.

The walk there is slow. I count each square of concrete sidewalk. I think about Danny. I think about Danny kissing me in the library. I think about how I would apologize to him. For some reason, thinking about Danny makes it easier to get to square number three hundred five—the one right in front of Marisol’s house.

Okay, deep breath.

I ring the doorbell, try not to faint, and say a little prayer that Leslie will not answer the door.

She does. Of course.

“Susie?”

“Hi, Leslie.” I have a hard time looking her in the eyes.

“Hey…” She smiles. It seems pretty genuine. “How have you been? We’ve missed you around here.”

“I’m okay. Thanks.” I wonder if I can slide under the doormat and hide there forever. I can be the invisible human skin that falls to the floor and gets trapped under her shoe. It’d be a lot easier than standing here.

“So…” Leslie says.

“So…”

And it’s obvious that this is the point in the conversation where I explain to her why I walked three hundred five concrete blocks to land on her doorstep. But I don’t. I stand there as an awkward pause turns into an awkward silence, and I tell myself that I can outlast her, totally forgetting that Leslie stays quiet for a living.

“Is Marisol home?” I ask finally.

“No. She’s visiting her dad until tomorrow. He and his new wife wanted to spend some time with her.”

“Steve got remarried? Wow.” Marisol must be going crazy locked up in a three-bedroom condo on the beach with her dad and Barbie the inflatable stepmonster.

“Christmas Eve.” Leslie shakes her head. “You know Steve. Every holiday has to be about him.”

“Oh…Well…Can you tell her I stopped by?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Thanks, well, I should go.” I turn on my heel, regretting the fact that I hadn’t worn my running shoes.

“Susie?”

“Yeah?” I turn back even though I want to go, go, go.

“Would you mind if we talked for a minute?”

“Okay…” I say, but all I can think is,
How many seconds are in a minute?

“Why don’t you come inside and we can talk?”

“Okay.” I move through the doorway and stand stoically on the doormat.

“The couch, maybe?”

“Okay,” I say. Again.

“You can sit, really. I won’t change my mind.” She nudges me down onto the couch.

“Sure.” I laugh nervously. “Leslie—”

“Susie.”

We stop, neither sure who should go first.

“Me first?” Leslie says.

“Okay.”

“I know you loved your mother very much—”

“I
love
my mother very much,” I interject.

“Yes, I’m sorry. You love your mother very much,” she amends and nods before continuing. “And I know you love your father very much, too.” She pauses to consider her words. “I don’t want any of that to change. Is it possible that some part of you thinks that I do?”

She waits for me to answer, but I don’t know what to say. The obvious response to that question would be no.

“No,” I say.

“Good, because I don’t.”

“Okay…”
I respond.

“I know it’s hard to see your father interested in someone else romantically. I know that can be…difficult. And we can both agree that it’s been a little difficult for you. Wouldn’t you say that is true?”

She is good at her job. Obviously. She basically has me agreeing to everything she says. Still, I don’t want to give in to this point. I don’t know why. I just don’t.

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I haven’t given it a lot of thought.”

“Okay.” She leans back a little and tilts her head. Her eyes dart back and forth like she’s considering changing her tactics. “Do you know what it’s like to be in love?” She leans forward and smiles at me.

“I don’t know.” I mean, I liked Danny a lot, but love? How can I know if I’ve been in love if I have nothing to compare it to?

“Well, do you know what it’s like to get that bubble in your stomach when you’re around a boy? Or to feel like you could burst into a hundred giggles after he speaks to you because you can’t believe that you got to share five minutes of his time? Or do you know what it’s like to think about that other person every minute of the day and wonder what he’s doing, or what he’s thinking about, or if he might, even for a second, be thinking about you?” She sighs deeply before continuing. “Well, that’s love—more or less. There are other elements that are involved, like trust, fidelity, commitment, but that is the bare-bones definition of what love feels like.”

“Oh,” is all I can muster because I’m thinking. I’m thinking about Danny and that moment after Halloween. I’m thinking about Marc and those minutes on my mother’s bed. It all seems very confusing to me—to pinpoint whether either experience could have amounted to love. Still, with Danny it seemed like there was a strong possibility.

“Well.” Leslie’s voice lures me back to the now. “Your father was in love with your mother—very much so. I can remember them at their ten-year anniversary party. He was so good to her—telling the story of how they met, their wedding day…when they found out that they were going to be parents. You could see it. You could see it in his eyes.” Leslie’s voice is soft. “He loved her.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I remember.” And I do. I remember that party. I was only six, but I remember.

“Good. It’s important that you never forget that.” She takes a moment to collect her thoughts and then begins again. “But can you imagine feeling all of that…love…and then when that love is taken from you so abruptly…having to live with not only the loss of that love, but the knowledge that you will never feel it again? Can you imagine?”

Leslie waits for me to respond, but I can’t because I’m imagining what that would mean. What would it mean to love someone the way my father loved my mother and then lose that? How does it feel to lose your wife—the person with whom you’d shared the last fifteen years of your life? I can’t imagine. Suddenly, I realize that I have absolutely no clue as to the depth of my father’s sorrow.

“Can you imagine?” Leslie repeats to my silence.

I know what it’s like to lose my mother—that missing, that ache, that anger. All of those feelings, I know. But maybe, on some level, there is a greater pain. I saw how my father looked day after day. I saw the way he walked back and forth from his study. I saw how he wasn’t really much for talking. He’s a storyteller, but he never wants to tell his stories aloud—at least, not anymore. When my mother was alive, she used to beg him for a moment of silence. Now all we have is silence. Well, before New Year’s Eve.

Why didn’t I see this bigger picture? My father—a widower, a single parent, a person all alone with no one to talk to, no Marisol to confide in—with nothing but his writing and me. And then he almost had Leslie, and I had to take that away.

“No.” I shake my head, defeated. “I can’t imagine.”

“No,” she says after a few seconds of silence, “I doubt many of us can. I know that on many levels I certainly cannot.”

“I really do want him to be happy,” I tell Leslie, a searing pain suddenly gripping my chest. I don’t want my father to sit around night after night stuck in his study, writing about a life that he used to have. I want him to live outside in the real world.

“I know,” she tells me. Her hand pushes its way into mine. “I do, too.”

a few hours later, i leave leslie’s. we had an honest-to-
goodness talk and it took quite a bit of time and a whole lot of tears, but as I count my way back home, I’m glad we had it.

Being in Leslie’s house—I suddenly realize how much I miss it. I miss my Friday nights with Marisol, and my Saturday morning breakfasts as part of their family. I miss what we all used to have together. It’s funny that I didn’t miss it before, but I guess it was because I never realized that I had it before.

I used to think that my life sucked, but, now, after being excluded from the routine of my life, I realize that my life is pretty darn good. I have my father—as flawed as he is, but so am I. I have Leslie, and for a long time I had Marisol. She was the best friend I ever had.

“You tried to call Marisol?” Leslie asked before I left.

“Yeah.” I called Marisol, but I never left a message. I didn’t know what to say.

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but it’s been very hard for her not to call you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Now are you sure you don’t want a ride home? It’s dark, and your father might get worried.”

“Just call him and tell him that I’m on the way.”

“Okay,” Leslie says, “I’ll call him.”

It was a good feeling to push Leslie back in my father’s direction. As much as it will twist my insides to see my dad with someone other than my mother, I know that Leslie’s good for him and me. He has to have an adult life, too.

Still, the thought of my dad and Leslie one day becoming…and Marisol living in my house…as much as I used to fantasize about that actually happening in some alternate universe, I never really wanted it to become true. And maybe it won’t…if I’m lucky.

“You need a ride?”

I hear the
clunkity-clunk
of my father’s car long before I hear his voice. I turn to look at him and smile through the dark. It’s nice to see him caring, even if it was a long time coming.

“I’m okay. It’s just a block away.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, Dad. But you can follow me home,” I yell over my shoulder.

“Okay,” he says. And he does. He follows me the entire block home.

at precisely eleven fifty-five p.m. that night the phone starts
ringing, and it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop ringing, despite the fact that no one’s picking it up. It doesn’t stop ringing, despite the fact that I try really hard to ignore it by turning the TV volume up and snuggling farther into the fluffy cushions of my family room sofa.

No matter what I do, the phone does not stop ringing.

“Dad,” I moan, but he doesn’t hear me. He’s passed out next to me on the sofa with his mouth dangling open. Mogley’s going to town on him, licking cookie crumbs off his unsuspecting face.

It’s been a strange New Year’s Eve. After I got home from Leslie’s, my father and I grabbed just about everything sugary from the kitchen cabinets and proceeded to eat it all as quickly as we could. Then we fell into a sugar coma on the sofa—half sleeping, half watching TV, half fighting to keep Mogley from making us his sofa bitch—and we haven’t moved since. So far, it’s been a night of pure bliss.

“Dad,” I moan again, but I think he’s gone for good, because Mogley’s French-kissing him, and he’s not even stirring.

“Fine.” I stretch my body over the coffee table, grab the phone by the cord, and clumsily toss it to my ear, all the while bracing myself for Aunt Emily’s irritating, high-pitched shriek.

But I don’t get Aunt Emily’s “Happy New Year!” Instead, I get this: “Susie, why haven’t you called me? Do you know what a nightmare I’m living? Do you have any freaking idea?”

“Marisol?” I think the sugar may have glued my mouth shut, because it’s hard to get it open, and once I do get it open, I can barely squeak out her name. “Marisol? Is that you?”

“
Hello?
Who’d you think it was? Aunt Emily?”

“Well, yeah.” I struggle to sit up. My head’s pretty foggy. “Why are you calling me?”

“Why am
I
calling
you?
” She’s still screaming, and I have to hold the phone away from my ear just so I don’t go deaf. “Why aren’t
you
calling
me?
”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I—” I shake my head clear so that I can remember everything that I want to say to her to make things better. I take so long that Marisol starts singing, “Hello? Hello?” on the other side of the line.

“I’m here.”

“Well?” Marisol snaps.

“I wanted to call you the minute I got home from talking to your mom, but I didn’t have your dad’s phone number, and I didn’t know how to get ahold of you, and then I thought, well, maybe it’s better if we talk in person, and I knew you were coming home tomorrow…” My voice trails off, even though I don’t mean for it to.

“And?” Marisol says, although she’s no longer yelling or snapping.

“And—” And now that I’m going, the words start flying out of my mouth. “What I meant to say is
why
would you call me after all the terrible things that I said to you? I was horrible. I was really, really mean.”

“Yeah.” Marisol sighs loudly. “I know. I was there.”

“So…” I’m not sure if I should ask it, but I do anyway. “Why are
you
calling
me?
”

There’s a long lull, and I wonder if Marisol’s hung up on me. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked the question again, maybe I should have gone straight to the begging part of the conversation, maybe I should have—

“Susie—”

Oh, good. She’s still there.

“Susie, I talked to my mom, and she told me what you said to her, and I want you to know that I’m sorry, too. I never…” She trails off for a second. “I never knew what you were going through, and I’m sorry that I didn’t try harder to understand.”

She was apologizing to me? She was sorry?

“But I’m the bitch,” I say, without thinking. “You never have fun because of me!”

“I have fun with you!” Marisol practically shouts. “I have so much fun with you. I have fun watching movies and pigging out and having slumber parties.
What, are you crazy?
But I
also
want to go out on dates and see concerts and do other stuff, outside the house. Don’t you want to try that stuff, too?”

If Marisol had asked me this same question a few months ago, I would have definitely said,
No, absolutely not, NEVER.
But now I wanted to try to change. I wanted to try to be different. I wanted to try to be better.

“Yeah, I do want that stuff, too.”

“You do?” Marisol sounds surprised. “Really? Seriously? ’Cause I want to do stuff like that with you, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to do stuff like that with me just so we can be friends—”

“Marisol, I’m serious. I want to, and not for you, for me. I don’t want to live my life in a box anymore.”

We’re quiet. My eyes wander over to sleepy Dad, only he’s not sleeping anymore, and I nearly drop the phone, when I see that he’s watching me, smiling.

“So, can I call you tomorrow?” I ask Marisol.

“No,” Marisol says, but she doesn’t sound mean.

“No?” And even though she doesn’t sound mean, and I think she’s joking, my voice still quivers.

“No, don’t call me,” Marisol laughs. “Come over. I’ll be home by three, and bring your stuff. You’re spending the night. You will not believe the stories I have to tell you. I’ll give you two clues: Inflatable stepmonster from hell and stripper pole.”

“Oh, Marisol—” I can’t help it, I giggle.

“You have no idea. So, tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I smile, “tomorrow.”

“And Susie—”

“Yeah?”

“Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year to you, too, Marisol.”

After I hang up the phone, I look back at my dad and he’s grinning like a goofball.

“What?” I give him a look. Just how much of the conversation did he hear?

“Nothing.” He shakes his head and wipes at his face. I wonder if he knows that Mogley just finished making out with him. “I’m just proud of you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, hugging me. “I really am.”