Through the Heart (16 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You probably think I’m going to tell you that it was a total surprise when he came back. But it wasn’t. Or maybe it was and I’m just rewriting the story in hindsight. But I’ll tell you how I remember it.

I was standing behind the counter. I had a cranberry muffin stashed away on a lower shelf, and I was picking at it. I had a piece of it in my mouth—a piece that had a cranberry, so it was both tangy and sweet at the same time—when I got a picture of Timothy. I could see him walking down the street outside, headed toward the store. I closed my eyes to see it more clearly. In my mind I could see him approaching the store. I could see him reaching out for the door, and even as I saw it in my mind, I felt the rush of cold air as the door opened. When I opened my eyes, he was there standing in front of me.

Did that actually happen? Or did it happen in one of the dreams I had about him, and I just rearranged it in my head? I don’t think so, but I can’t know for sure. Dreams and memory blur together for me now, so I can’t really tell them apart. Can you tell the difference? Are you sure?

When I opened my eyes, he wasn’t smiling. He seemed almost angry. But a different kind of angry than the last time I’d seen him. Before he’d been a cold sort of angry. This was more agitated angry. Upset maybe.

“Well,” he demanded. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

I smiled at him. “What can I get you?” I asked.

He didn’t smile back. “This,” he said, and he reached over the counter and cupped the back of my head with his hand. I could feel his fingers twining into my hair. When he leaned over, there was no way I could have escaped. But I didn’t want to. His lips were softer than I could have imagined. All he did was gently touch them to mine. He left them there for a lingering second, but just as I started to lean forward into him for more, he pulled back. Then he was smiling. And he turned around and walked out again.

Oh, did I mention that Neil was there?

As Timothy walked out, he gave Neil a little nod.

After the door closed behind him, Neil looked over at me and shook his head. He said, “I’ve always wished I could do something like that.”

“Neil!”

“What?” he said, as if he had no idea why I was angry. Then he made it even worse. He said, “Do you think he’s coming back?”

Timothy did come back, but he took his time. He waited until almost the end of the day. I was just locking up to leave when he came sauntering up.

“Hello,” he said.

I was so angry I almost couldn’t speak. But I managed to get something out. “Where have you been?”

He kissed me again. Then he pulled back and looked at me intently. “Now I know why I couldn’t forget about you.”

“Why?” I asked.

He shook his head at me silently, and I knew it wasn’t going to be that kind of relationship. It wasn’t going to be something logical. Women like to talk about it, to try to figure it out, to pin it down and capture it with words. He wasn’t going to do that. He didn’t even try.

“Come on.” He took my hand and led me to his car. It was another BMW rental, but not a convertible this time.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Back to my hotel.”

I stopped.

“Come on,” he said.

I shook my head. “It’s a small town.”

“And it’s a short life,” he countered.

I still hesitated.

“Do you want to?” he asked.

That was a question I didn’t usually ask myself. I asked what other peopled wanted. I asked what I should do. What I shouldn’t do. But what I wanted?

The answer was surprising.

“No. I want to go have a cup of coffee, and I want you to tell me what your last name is.”

“Coffee and my last name. That’s what you want?”

“Yes. I haven’t seen Jeanette in a while. Don’t you want to say hello?”

It wasn’t until much later that I found out he’d already been to say hello to Jeanette. That was where he had been most of the day. So he said no to going to Joe’s. At the time I assumed it was because he was scared of Jeanette, and I remember thinking it was sweet and funny. Our conclusions are based on nothing: partial truths and assumptions.

We agreed to go for a drive instead. I unlocked the door to Starbox, made us two large lattes, and we got into his car and drove out of town. It was getting dark already as we left, and soon we couldn’t even see anything, but he kept driving. And we talked. At first we talked about his life in New York, and his work, and then he started telling me about his family. He started off by describing their family dinners. He told me about the color themes: the matching food and outfits that his mother liked to coordinate. Then he told me how, at a recent one, his mother had made his sister, who had been battling anorexia for years, get on a scale in front of everybody to prove she hadn’t lost more weight.

So I told him how, before we went to dinner last time, I’d put on jeans and a coat over my dress to sneak out of the house to meet him. And how it totally hadn’t worked, my mother had known anyway, and it felt like this elaborate game of unspoken things that everyone knew but no one talked about.

He was silent for a bit after I said that. At first I thought he was thinking about the fact that I still lived at home with my mother. Because in telling that story, I had to admit that detail—but I didn’t tell him that I’d been at school and that she got sick and that that was why I’d come home. I didn’t tell him that I was working at the coffee shop because I needed to pay the bills and in our tiny town that was the only job I could get. I felt like it would sound like excuses, and I didn’t want to make excuses. I knew it wouldn’t matter anyway. It wasn’t like he was going to move to Kansas, and I certainly couldn’t pick up and move to New York.

But when he spoke, it was clear he hadn’t actually been thinking about me at all. He had been thinking about the phrase I said: “unspoken things that everyone knows.” He told me that there were unspoken things in his family, and not everyone knew about them. He paused again for a long time. Then, with the hesitation of confession, he told me the story of how his sister had come in to see him and spilled all these secrets about the family that he didn’t have any idea about. He admitted that he didn’t even know his sister well enough to know if she was lying.

And with that story, I got a peak underneath the facade. Before I had seen him as good-looking, confident, magnetic, and a bit of a jerk. I have to admit I was attracted to that man, but I didn’t trust him at all. But then I caught a glimpse of the man underneath that facade—the uncertainty, the insecurity, the questioning, the honesty—and that man . . . That man I knew I could fall for. And in the moment that I realized I could fall for him, I knew I already had.

We drove all night, and we told each other stories. A lot of them were stories about our families. I told him how diabolical my mother had been in punishing us when we were very young. My sister was claustrophobic, and, knowing this, my mother would lock her in the closet. But it was also a punishment for me at the same time; I would have been fine in the closet, but having my sister in there screaming and not being able to help her, that had been the perfect brand of torture for me. And my mother knew it. When I was bad, my mother didn’t threaten to do anything to me, she threatened to lock my sister in the closet. And she even did it once when I lied about having done my homework. My mother found out I had lied, and she locked my sister in the closet for three hours. I never missed a homework assignment again after that. It was probably why I’d done so well in school.

Timothy’s stories were like something out of another world, like something I’d seen on a TV show, with money and fancy schools and fancy clothes and alcohol and drugs and no parents in sight.

When it got really late, and I realized we weren’t going to be getting back anytime soon, I borrowed his cell phone to call my mother. She didn’t pick up, so I just left her a message that I was staying over with Tammy.

I don’t know how, but we got back exactly when I was supposed to be at work. I hadn’t slept, I was in the same clothes, but luckily it was a uniform (a black polo shirt and khakis) and I wore it every day, so there was no real way to tell that I hadn’t changed.

Still, when Neil walked into the store, he took one look at me and said, “You didn’t go home last night.”

“What do you mean, I didn’t go home last night?” I said.

“Which word didn’t you understand?” he asked.

“I just don’t understand why you’d think that,” I said, still trying to evade.

“Because you’re wearing the same clothes.” Then he added, after a moment, “And your mother called me at three o’clock in the morning.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“Neil, I’m really sorry.”

“I didn’t tell her anything.” He answered the question I’d thought but hadn’t asked.

“Thank you.”

“I mean, other than the fact that a stranger came into the store and kissed you,” he said. He saw my face and he said, “I’m kidding. I told her I wasn’t here when you closed up yesterday. But are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Nope,” I said. “No idea.”

“Well that’s good. At least we’re clear on that.”

“No offense, Neil, but look where my plans have gotten me so far.”

That’s when I saw Tammy’s car pull up across the street. She got out and hurried across the street, but she spotted me through the windows. She glared furiously at me through the glass till she was inside and could say, “Okay, what the hell?”

“Hi, Tammy,” Neil said.

As usual, she barely glanced at him.

“Let me guess,” I said. “My mother called you.”

“What were you thinking? You’re mom’s not well, and you go and disappear on her? Just never go home? I’m sorry, but what is that?”

“It’s called being selfish,” I said.

“Yeah, I know,” she shot back.

“So why did you ask?”

She stared at me.

“Joking. Anyway, I did call her. She just never checks the stupid machine. But what’s the deal? Why are you so upset? I don’t understand.”

“You think I understand getting a hysterical call from your mother at three o’clock in the morning?” Abruptly Tammy turned toward Neil. “Would you understand that, Neil?”

“As a matter of fact—” Neil started to say, but Tammy cut him off.

“Oh my God,” Tammy turned back to me, “You weren’t out last night with him, were you?”

“Him? . . . What, you mean Neil?”

“I’m sitting right here,” Neil interjected. “Please remember that when you speak.”

“Then who?” Tammy demanded. “Please not Dan.”

“Dan . . . Dan Marker?” Neil said. “But he’s married.”

Tammy gave me a look that said, do you believe this guy?

What I couldn’t believe was that she couldn’t figure out who I’d stayed out the whole night for.

“Timothy,” I told her. “Timothy came back.”

For a second Tammy didn’t even remember; I could see the blankness on her face. Then it hit.

“You mean the guy. The one . . .” I could see her mind filling in all the blanks. Of course Tammy jumped straight to the thing she was most interested in. She said, “Oh no, you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said.

“Well, for God’s sake, why not? You waiting for the engraved invitations to go out? What on earth did you do all night then?”

“We went for a drive.”

At that point, Neil inserted himself back into the conversation. “All night?” he said, obviously not believing me.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, all night.”

Tammy and Neil exchanged looks.

“Okay, fine. Discuss amongst yourselves, but leave me out of it.”

And I heard the door, and my first thought was relief that a customer was coming in and that would break it up. But when I looked over at the door, I saw my mother.

“Mom,” I said. I didn’t even feel panic right away. There was just surprise. She’d never once come to visit me in the three years I had worked there. I think it was because she was ashamed. Her daughter with a degree from Kansas State, and who came so close to a PhD in economics at Chicago, spent her days making lattes.

I haven’t really mentioned the degrees, have I? That’s because for three years I’ve done my best to forget about them. Early on, after I moved home, I discovered that it was my past that made my present situation so hard to live with. If I didn’t have the degrees and all those years spent studying so hard, then—other than the fact that I didn’t make enough money to cover all the expenses—it seemed like there was nothing wrong with working at Starbox. It was only when I thought of all that work, the studying, the expectations, and I looked at where I should have ended up, and where I was now, that I got depressed. When I let go of the past—when I let go of the fact that life hadn’t turned out the way I had expected—life became bearable.