You Make Me (13 page)

“Oh. Sorry.” She looked contrite as she sat down on my bed.

I shrugged. “I’m sure you’re angry with me too, like Ethan is. I wasn’t trying to be deceptive, Aub. The past is just really hard to talk about. My family is a hot mess.”

“I understand that. But you could have just said, ‘hey, they’re whacky, I don’t really want to talk about it, but my brother is a mother effer.’ I would have respected that. But you didn’t tell us
anything
.”

I crammed clothes in my bag. My head was throbbing and my heart was aching. I felt swollen and numb. “When you spend your whole life being that girl that everyone knows and everyone talks about, when you get to be anonymous, it’s addictive. That’s my only excuse. I wanted to be seen and judged on me, just me, as a person, and then it just didn’t seem to matter anymore. I didn’t want to lose what I had gained.”

“But lying so you wouldn’t lose everything, you lost everything.” She had tears in her eyes.

I paused. “Have I lost you too, as a friend? I understand if I have. I do. I don’t want that to be what happens, but I do totally understand. You’ve been a best friend and a sister to me.” But my voice broke and I couldn’t continue. “All I ever wanted was to be a decent person and to love and be loved. Was that so much to ask for, honestly?”

She shook her head, but she sounded angry. “Don’t be melodramatic. I love you, too, Caitlyn. I don’t want our friendship ruined. But I feel like we need to have a bunch of conversations all over again. And when you get back you’d better fucking be honest with me or I can’t be in your life. It’s already hard enough because you broke my brother’s heart. You know me. I’m sarcastic and I have a huge wall in front of my emotions. But I can be hurt too, and this hurt. It really hurt.”

“I don’t know what to say other than that I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me. I don’t…” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to have friendships I guess. Growing up, I never really had real friends. And when you have dozens of angry foster siblings coming through your life you learn to protect yourself. You don’t share.”

“I guess I can see that,” she conceded. “But at some point you have to learn to trust the people who love you.” Aubrey wiped at the corner of her eye. “Ethan is… destroyed. There’s no other word for it.”

My own vision blurred. I had cried more in the last two weeks than in the last four years. “He broke up with me. I begged him to stay.”

“He uh, wants the ring back.” Aubrey picked at imaginary lint on her jeans.

“Are you shitting me?” Oh, my God. Why didn’t he just drive the knife deeper into my heart with a mallet? “Like right now? He couldn’t have waited a week?”

“He’s just reacting. He’s hurting.”

“Well, so am I!” I wasn’t sure when I had become such a villain. Ethan had asked me to cut Heath out of my life and I had. Was this really about my stupid brother? I didn’t think it was hard to understand that if your alcoholic brother makes a scene at your father’s funeral you don’t really want to talk to him.

But if I begged, if I went to Ethan and convinced him to stay with me, then I would always be afraid. I would wait for the day he decided to leave anyway and it would never, ever be the way it had been. I would get clingy and needy and weird, just like he had after Heath had gotten to Orono, and like I had pulled away from him, he would pull away from me. That easy place of mutual comfort where we just enjoyed other each and felt safe and secure was gone. Forever.

So I tugged the ring off in a hard, angry jerk, like a Band-aid. It was going to hurt no matter what, might as well make it quick. I’d gotten used to the weight and my finger felt light, naked, without it. I winced as I looked down at my bare finger. I’d been happy, truly happy, with Ethan, but a year was just a tease. Just when I’d thought maybe it could be forever, it was gone. I held the ring out to Aubrey.

She looked stricken. “I’m sorry, boo.”

“Yeah. Well. I hope he can return it.” I meant it. I had no idea how much he’d paid for it, but I didn’t want him in debt because of me.

When she took the ring from me, I had a Gollum moment. I wanted to snatch it back and clutch it to me greedily. My precious. But instead, I swallowed hard, nausea suddenly crawling up my throat.

“I have to catch the bus,” I managed to say. “I have to go.” It wasn’t like they ran every ten minutes.

“You’re taking the bus?” She looked horrified.

I shrugged. “I don’t have a car.” I didn’t have anything. Just a bunch of student loans and determination, and at the moment, the determination had evaporated. I felt beat up, defeated.

“Take my car, seriously. I can live without it for a few days. You’ll need it once you get there.”

That really touched me. “Oh, Aub. Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She dug her keys out of her bag and held them out for me. “Here. Just stay in touch, okay?”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“Ethan’s not a bad guy,” she murmured. “He’s just processing.”

“I know he’s not a bad guy. That’s why I said I would marry him.”

Marriage. What a joke. Happy endings weren’t for girls like me. Hadn’t I learned that already? There was no sweetheart neckline ball gown to wear at the yacht club reception in my future.

I didn’t know what my future was without Ethan.

So I went home.

“How is she?” I asked the nurse as I followed her down the hall to my mother’s room.

“She’s calm.” The nurse was in her fifties, matter of fact, but she had a kind smile. I could see she felt sympathy for me.

That wasn’t comforting. Not really. If there was sympathy then there was a reason she felt sorry for me.

When I walked into my mom’s room, I saw why. She was rail thin and looked way older than her actual age of fifty-one. Her dark hair was shot with gray and there was a bald spot on the base of her crown that I knew came from her twisting and tugging the hair there. She’d been doing that since I was a kid. She looked over at me, but it was with disinterest. I could tell she didn’t recognize me.

She just sat in a chair by the window, like she was used to no privacy and was expecting the nurse and me to do what we needed to do and leave again.

“Hi Mom,” I said. I leaned towards her and tried to hug her but she flinched.

“I don’t know you,” she said, studying me with fear.

Normally I wouldn’t get upset. But I was vulnerable, raw. It was just too much. I bit back a sob. “I’m your daughter. Caitlyn. Kitty Cat.”

“I don’t have a daughter.” She looked around me to the nurse. “Why is she here? Make her go away.”

The nurse gave me a shake of her head. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Maybe you should come back later.”

“It’s okay.” I swiped at my eyes. “I figured she would do this. But it sucks, ya know?”

“It does. How long will you be in town?”

“Just a couple of days. Thank you.” I squeezed my mom’s shoulder. “Bye, Mom.” She gave me no reaction.

“She was better when your brother was here a few weeks ago,” the nurse told me, reaching out and rubbing my back in a maternal gesture of comfort.

“My brother was here?” I asked, amazed. Maybe Brian wasn’t such a douche after all.

“Yes. He said he’s only been back from Afghanistan for a few weeks, bless his heart. You must be so relieved he’s home safe.”

So it had been Heath visiting her, not Brian. That made more sense. It made my heart swell with gratitude. I nodded. “Very glad he’s home safe.”

What would I have done if I had found out at some point that Heath had been killed in combat? The very thought made me shudder.

I had told myself two days before that it was enough to know that Heath was somewhere in the world and that he loved me. It was enough, even if I never saw him or spoke to him. But I knew now that wasn’t true. It wouldn’t have been enough. I wouldn’t have been able to resist communicating with him at some point, and as devastated as I was by Ethan’s defection, maybe it had saved me from doing something eventually that I would despise myself for.

“I’ll stop back in a few days,” I said. “Thank you.”

It wasn’t a bad nursing facility, but it was what it was. A place for the mentally ill to subsist until they died. It was oppressive and depressing and I was amazed that any of the staff chose to work there. They were better people than me, that was for sure. Once outside, I sucked in deep breathes. My phone had been silent the entire way to Rockland.

When I’d left the house, I had heard some of my sorority sisters whispering about me behind their hands. A few had offered condolences, but I heard words like “Ethan cheated on her” and “Her old boyfriend showed up.” But the worst was, “Oh, my God, I feel so bad for her.”

If I had a dollar…

People had been feeling sorry for me as long as I was conscious of being different. I could remember being so damn excited to go to school finally and getting there and having a total stranger, a mother I’d never seen, hand me a used backpack with donated school supplies inside it. I hadn’t even realized you needed stuff to take to school, but suddenly there I was, all eyes on me, watching, as she handed me a Pikachu backpack, one eye missing, a dark smudge across the vibrant yellow. The other girls all had pretty princess packs, but I had a used boy backpack.

It had sucked all the joy out of that first day. Everyone else had labels on their supplies and crisp, clean pencil pouches and folders. Everything I had was slightly dinged up, faded. Like my house. Like my family.

Walking across the parking lot, I wondered why I felt like I needed to decide everything right then and there. I felt like when I got back to UMaine, I had to have the rest of my life figured out. Like it was more important to regroup than it was to grieve, to heal. Always rushing to the future, never tending to the present.

Maybe that was part of what Aubrey was talking about- I didn’t share. I didn’t allow myself to be open, vulnerable. I just swept it under the rug and moved on. Except now it was getting hard to walk, there was so much shit piled under my rug. Maybe I didn’t need to regroup or worry about two years from now. Maybe I just needed to do what people always swore they were going to do and live in the moment.

Except for the small fact that currently the moment sucked. I wanted to go back to the night of Homecoming, getting ready with Aubrey. When everything had made sense. When I had felt in control. But then I wondered if I really meant it, if I could, would I really turn the clock back. Would I give back seeing Heath again, knowing he was okay?

No.

I wouldn’t give that back.

Driving to the main street of town, I parked in front of the hardware store. I was about to go in when my phone buzzed. Heath. Always with me. I unlocked my phone and read his text.

I’m really sorry. I mean that. I don’t want you hurt.

Then another one, right after.

If you need a friend, just a friend, I’m here
.

That meant a lot. More than I could possibly verbalize. I believed he cared more about my happiness than his own.

Thanks. <3

I couldn’t say more than that. I wasn’t ready to talk. I couldn’t share my feelings about Ethan with Heath. They were too private, too separate. They had different spaces in my heart.

Pushing open the door to the hardware store, the bell rang to announce my entrance. The man behind the counter looked up, then pulled his reading glasses off his nose. “Cat?” he asked, sounding astonished.

“Hey, Billy,” I said, feeling sheepish. “How are you?” Billy had been my father’s best friend since childhood. He’d been like an uncle to me throughout my childhood. He had always lived on the mainland, like my father had until he’d married my mother.

“Good.” He came from around the counter, studying me carefully. “How are you? What brings you up here?”

There was no hug, but I didn’t expect that. Billy wasn’t one for touching. “I came to see my mother.” I wasn’t going to tell him about the breakup. It would just make him uncomfortable. He was old school and he didn’t talk about feelings.

“Yeah? How’s she getting on?”

Billy had a heavy accent, a true “Mainah.” I’d been gone from home long enough now that it seemed even more pronounced. I was used to Ethan and Aubrey and the other students, who had a more relaxed accent. For some reason, it just added to my melancholy.

“She’s fine,” I told him in response to his question about my mother. Billy wouldn’t want the truth.

“So I ran into Brian the other day,” I said, coming at the heart of what I wanted to ask in as circumspect a way as possible. “He asked me for money.”

Billy shrugged in his flannel shirt. “Doesn’t surprise me. He’s more fond of the bottle than he is showing up for work.”

I touched a display of batteries, running my fingers over the plastic coverings. “Has the house sold?” I tried to sound casual, but my heart was beating painfully in my chest. Tiffany would know if my parent’s house had sold definitively but she wouldn’t know about any offers that might be on the property. Billy was more likely to have that kind of information as executor of my father’s will.

The house had been given to Brian.

Something that I didn’t understand and I had trouble not being angry with my father about, even though I knew I shouldn’t hold that type of animosity with me in his death.

“No. The house hasn’t sold. Your brother hasn’t paid the property taxes either, Cat. He owes a fair amount of money. The house may not be worth much, but the land has a good view.”

I hoped it never sold. I would rather Brian lose it when he couldn’t pay the taxes than cash in on it and blow every cent on stupid choices. It wasn’t worth much, but Brian didn’t deserve any of it, and my father’s hard work didn’t deserve to go down Brian’s throat in the form of rum. It was hard not to feel resentful though. I would have used that money for my education. It had hurt then and it hurt now that my father had trusted his son more than the daughter who had loved him.

“It does have a good view.” I gave Billy a small smile. “And bats.”

He gave a rusty laugh. “I bet it does.”

“I’d better catch the ferry.” I tilted my head in the direction of the bay. “I’m heading over to see Tiffany.”