Collide (32 page)

“I’ll go get it.” I tossed the rest of the clothes I was sorting onto the bed and grabbed her keys.

The boxes she’d brought were the kind with lids and handles, easily lifted, though whatever was inside made them heavy. I took them all into my living room and left my front door open so the fresh evening air could blow through the screen door. By that time my mom had changed into her own clothes and come downstairs.

“What is all this stuff?” I took the lid off one box and found a pile of papers, books, small toys.

“Oh, things you left behind.”

I looked at her. “Did you think maybe I left it behind because I didn’t want it?”

She gave me a “Mom” face. “So throw it away. I don’t need your junk any more than you do.”

I knew she didn’t mean it like that, but the words stung and I felt my face twist. My mom saw it, too, because she sat down beside me right away. She took the lid from my hands.

“Emm, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“No. Look at me.”

I didn’t want to; I knew I’d start to cry the second I did. There’s something only mothers and daughters can trigger in each other, that bursting-into-tears reaction to emotion. Hallmark card commercials ain’t got nothing on moms and daughters.

“Oh, honey.” My mom hugged me, stroking my hair. “What’s wrong? Have you been feeling sick again? Is it something with that man?”

Funny how she’d been calling him Johnny all these weeks but at the first hint he might be making me cry she called him
that man.
“It’s not him. He’s great. I mean, I know you and dad aren’t sure about Johnny, but it isn’t that.”

“It’s not that I’m unsure about him,” my mom said. “I’m just wondering about having a son-in-law who’s old enough to be my husband.”

I laughed through my tears. “We’re not really talking about getting married, Mom. Don’t worry.”

She gave me a familiar snort that told me she knew better. “We’ll see.”

“It’s not him. And I haven’t had any problems lately. The opposite, in fact. Nothing for a month. Dr. Gordon took another CAT scan, but even that was just for the records. She doesn’t expect to see anything new.”

“Then what, honey? Your junk?”

“I just…” I sighed, plucking at the faded knees of my jeans. “I don’t want to move back home ever again, but I don’t really like knowing you’re glad I’m gone, you know? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why—”

“Emm!” My mom cried, shocked. “How could you think something like that? Glad you’re gone? I should smack you for that.”

I flinched exaggeratedly, though I knew she wasn’t going to hit me. “C’mon, Mom. You know it’s true.”

She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Emmaline, I am happy you’ve been able to move out on your own, have the life you deserve. I’m happy you’ve grown into a lovely, independent young woman who is capable of living her own life. But I could never be happy you’re gone. And if you ever had to move back home, you’d hate it way more than I ever could.”

We both cried a little then, until our tears turned to soggy laughter.

“If you don’t want the stuff in the boxes, throw it in the garbage,” she told me again. “Most of it’s from so long ago you might not even remember it, but I didn’t want to just toss it without letting you see it. That’s all.”

I nodded and sifted through the papers. Old report cards, construction-paper valentines, that sort of thing. A lot of fast-food toys I couldn’t believe she’d kept. And then, at the bottom of the first box, a book.

“Oh, my goodness,” my mom said when I pulled it out. “I haven’t seen that in years.”

I hefted the thick paperback, pages yellowed but not falling out of the binding. I flipped through it, noting the dog-eared corners where someone had marked favorite pages. My fingers felt gritty from touching it, and I tasted grit, too.

“This was…mine?”

“Well, it was mine. Everyone had a copy of that book, it seemed. I read it a lot when I was pregnant with you,” my mom said fondly, and lifted it from my hands. “Ed D’Onofrio’s poetry was really popular for a while, though I really only liked a few of his poems. Well, just the one, of course.”

I looked at her. “Of course? Which one?”

My mom smiled. “‘In Night She Walks,’ silly. You’ve read it, haven’t you? You must’ve, Emm.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it was ever assigned in school or anything like that.”

She laughed and flipped to one of the most worn sections of the book. “No, honey. See? ‘In Night She Walks.’ It’s where I first heard your name. It’s why I named you that.”

My stomach twisted, then lurched, my lunch burning in my throat. I stood so fast the book fell, and I didn’t pick it up. My mom looked immediately concerned and stood.

“Emm, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I forced myself to sit and pick up the book, to scan the page. The poem on the page was different than the one Ed had spoken during my fugue, but it was close enough that there could be no mistaking the similarities. “I just didn’t know. I mean, I was surprised.”

“I thought you knew,” she said. “I was sure I’d told you. But it must’ve been so long ago, maybe you don’t remember. I read that book aloud over and over again when I was pregnant with you, sitting in that old rocker Gran gave me. And I read it to you when you were in the hospital. I guess…well, now that I think about it, after that I didn’t read it aloud to you anymore. Maybe we never talked about it.”

“It’s kind of a strange poem to read your kid, isn’t it?” I ran a finger down the lines, then looked at her. “Not like ‘Humpty Dumpty.’”

My mom tilted her head. “Honey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I forced a smile. “I’m okay, really. Tired, though. That’s really neat about the poem, Mom, thanks.”

“He was very popular when I was younger,” my mom said almost dreamily. “I wonder whatever happened to him? You could probably look him up on the internet. I wonder if he had any other books published?”

Only after he was dead. He’d been dead, in fact, when this book was published, if I remembered correctly. I didn’t tell her that, or about the fugues, or the “coincidence” that Johnny had been one of Ed D’Onofrio’s best friends way back when.

“Your dad never liked the other poems,” she confided suddenly. “Just that one. It was his idea to name you Emmaline, actually. We couldn’t agree on a name, and, oh, we argued and argued. He wanted something trendy and different, and I thought a more old-fashioned name would work better. We compromised. You were always the only Emmaline in your class.”

“I’m the only one I know,” I told her.

“You’re the only you,” my mom said, and hugged me again.

Later, after we’d said our goodbyes and she made me promise to call her soon, my mom left and Johnny arrived. He brought Thai food, fragrant and still steaming, and he set it out on my kitchen island while I grabbed plates and chopsticks. I poured us both hot tea and warmed my hands on it while I watched him open the cartons of food.

He caught me staring. “What’s up?”

“Just looking.”

He smiled and came around the island to kiss me. “Like what you see?”

“Oh, very much.” I squeezed his butt. “Feel, too.”

He looked over his shoulder at the food, then at me. “How hungry are you?”

“Depends on what you’re planning on feeding me.”

Johnny took my hand and moved it around to the front to cup his crotch. “How about some of this?”

“I’m so glad to know,” I said, “that even after several months of fucking me, you still can be so romantic.”

He rubbed my hand around in a little circle while we both laughed and kissed and parted with shining eyes and wet mouths. I hugged him then, tight against me. The day had been strange. Being with Johnny made it somehow better.

“What’s going on?” he said into my hair.

I squeezed him harder, then pushed him back so I could look at his face. “Am I too young?”

His brows went up, the corners of his mouth went down. “Kimmy been after you again?”

“No. It’s not her. I want to know what you think.”

Johnny let out a breath and let go of me to lean against the island directly across from me. “You’re young. Yeah. Or maybe I’m just old.”

“But does it still bother you?”

He looked at me very seriously. “Why? Is it bothering you?”

“No.” I wasn’t really sure what was bothering me. I wanted to kiss him, maybe unzip his jeans right then and there, take him in my mouth and make us both forget I’d ever started this conversation.

“Emm. Talk to me, please.”

I loved that he’d insist on talking about this, whatever it was. That it was important to him not to just shove awkward silences under a rug woven of mutual pretense. I loved him for so many reasons, but they were tangled and wouldn’t lay smooth.

“Does it bother you that I knew so much about you before we met?”

He laughed. “You mean does it bother me that you saw me naked before you ever saw me naked?”

“That, yes. But everything else.” He knew I’d seen his movies, looked him up on the Net, but we’d never talked about it. “Do you ever worry that I just weaseled my way into your life because of who you are?”

Johnny laughed again and moved forward to kiss me. “Emm, I
want
you to want to be with me because of who I am.”

“But not who you were,” I murmured.

“Same person,” Johnny said against my mouth, then stroked a hand over my hair and looked into my eyes. “Do you want to know how many lovesick girls…and boys, have tried getting in my pants because of something I did thirty years ago?”

I frowned, hard. “Not really.”

“A lot,” Johnny said, anyway. “Are you like them?”

“No!”

He shrugged and traced my lower lip with his thumb before kissing me again. He tasted good. Felt good against me. I closed my eyes and let him try to distract me, but it wasn’t working.

“I love you,” I said to him. “But…honestly, all that other stuff—the movies, the pictures, the interviews…”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“That’s not why I love you now,” I said.

“It wasn’t why you loved me then, either,” Johnny said.

I froze. I stared at him, searching his expression for any sign he was teasing. Anything. “What do you mean?”

“When you saw me in the coffee shop that first time,” he said, “you didn’t know all the rest of that shit, did you? So let’s face it. It was my ass, wasn’t it?”

It wasn’t the answer I expected, not that I knew what I expected, but I burst into laughter. “Yeah. That was definitely it. Your epic fucking ass.”

This time, his kiss really did distract me. It wasn’t until later that I thought about what he’d said. He hadn’t hesitated in his answer, hadn’t looked like he was trying to hide something.

So why, then, did I feel like he was?

Chapter 26

“C
’mon, you know I don’t know anything about art.” I ducked away from Johnny’s reaching hand and stepped back, almost knocking over a statue displayed on a pedestal. I caught it before it could fall. “See? I’m a menace.”

“You have a good eye, and I want your opinion,” he said seriously. “And this is your friend’s work, so maybe you could just give me a hand here, huh?”

“I think it looks great!” I pointed at the plain white wall where he’d already hung three of Jen’s pieces. “There’s plenty of room there for at least four more.”

“Yeah, but which ones?” Johnny sounded annoyed.

“How am I supposed to know? You pick.” I looked over the framed photos laid out on the gallery floor. I didn’t even want to come any closer, in case I accidentally stepped on one.

Johnny pointed at one of Jared taken in soft light. “That one?”

“It’s nice. It’s good, I mean.”

He pointed at another. “This one?”

“That one’s good, too! They’re all good!”

He started laughing, shaking his head. “Jesus, babe, you really don’t know art, huh?”

I feigned insult. “I told you.”

“You just think you don’t,” Johnny said. “If you let yourself go, you’d have great instincts. See a lot. But hey, it’s okay, I can do this myself. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Now you’re being a turd.”

Johnny scoffed and put up his hands. “Ooh, wow, that hurts.”

He bent back to arranging the frames. I watched him. A few days had passed since our conversation in the kitchen, and something was still niggling at my brain.

“Johnny.”

He didn’t look up. “Yeah, babe.”

“What made you decide to become an artist?”

His hands, moving over the prints, slowed. He sat back on his heels. He didn’t look up at me for a few seconds, but then did, expression guarded.

“What do you mean?”

“Well…you started off in the movies and stuff, and I know you took a break before you started doing art—”

“I was always doing art,” he said quietly. “I just didn’t show it. I didn’t try to make anyone else think I was an artist. There’s a difference between deciding to be an artist and just accepting who you are.”