Story Girl (16 page)

“Maybe your emotions have more to do with what you’re going through,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m just saying that it’s something you might want to consider.”

The phone rang and I knew it was Jenny, eager to enact her top-secret, screwball festivities. The cruel part of me wanted to shout into the phone that her stupid cover had already been destroyed, but we all stared at the phone without answering it.

My father handed my mother his handkerchief, “Happy Anniversary, Joanne.”

It seemed like the weirdest, most out of place statement ever uttered. Now I felt that someone really did have to warn her. She was in no way ready to receive a bingo hall full of relatives.

“Did it ever occur to you that I might want grandchildren?” she asked.

I didn’t answer her, trying very hard to contain my anger.

“Did you hear what I just said, Tracy?”

I wanted to throw my scrambled eggs across the room and scream “Duh!” at the top of my lungs.

“So, it’s all about you then?” I asked. “You already have a grandchild and yet you’d have me copulate with the used appliance prince in order to give some meaning to your life, a reason to live?”

“That is enough!” my father boomed.

It was a shock to have such a trusted ally turn on me, so I knew I’d ventured too close to the truth. In fact, I had landed smack in the bulls-eye.

“You don’t need to be vulgar and you don’t need to talk to your mother that way.”

I looked at him as if he were the worst kind of traitor, one that sells you out to avoid exposing his own misdeeds, “I didn’t realize I had been
vulgar
.”

In the center of my hand was what looked like a large mosquito bite – white raised flesh on the inside surrounded by a circle of dark pink.

A hive
.

It almost looked like a ghoulish little egg, sunny side up. The center of my bottom lip was on the verge of birthing a second.

“Your mother’s just concerned, that’s all. She just wants you to think about a family, that’s all. She doesn’t want you to miss out on your own fulfillment.”

Gee, that’s all?

I could not believe my father had taken over as her spokesperson, carefully regurgitating all the right talking points. It struck me as intensely cowardly, and I could no longer remain the target of their projections. I stayed quiet for a calculated amount of time – as if I were truly considering all of their helpful warnings – and then fixed my gaze solely on my father.

“So where exactly are you sleeping now?”

He looked at me as if I’d shot him.

“When I was changing into my dinner costume yesterday, I noticed that not ONE of your things was in the bedroom.”

My mother immediately sprang to life, “Oh sweetie, your father snores something terrible. I just couldn’t take it anymore, being up all hours of the night. He’s in Jenny’s old bedroom – downstairs.”

“I know exactly where Jenny’s old bedroom is.”

“I tried the snore guards and the nose strips and the liquid solution,” my father said. “We even had me checked for sleep apnea. I don’t have it – thank gosh. You should see the masks people have to wear. Looks like a horror prop.”

“Not very sexy,” my mother added.

“I bet not,” I said. “Not sexy
at all
.”

They both tittered a little but my face did not move.

“Yes – I remember, Dad. You’ve always snored. I used to ask Mom how she could stand it, and she said that it put her to sleep – that it was oddly soothing.”

“Did I really say such a thing?” she asked.

I could not even believe these two, forcing on me what they themselves could no longer do.

“Besides, many couples move into separate rooms as they get older. It’s a very common occurrence. Nothing at all shocking, Tracy.”

“Who said I was shocked?”

She turned away from me, and my father took over, “Your mother always wanted more closet space. And now I can put my license plates up, you remember them? Mommy never wanted them upstairs.”

Mommy?

“She never wanted them messing up her doilies and crochets. Right, hon?”

My mother nodded, “I never wanted grease on the wall.”

They clasped hands to show me their love was secure, but it looked exactly like a false move made under duress. I felt like an immigration officer interviewing a very conniving couple – they were
not going to scam me into signing off on some sort of happily-ever-after.

“What are you doing?” I asked them.

They both wrinkled up their faces like they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.

“What game are you two playing?”

And then, as if they had planned it, the phone rang again. This time I yanked it out of its wall cradle, “Yes, Jenny, what!”

My parents each scrambled off in opposite directions.

“Tracy?”

It was barely a whisper, but I knew it was James. And now was definitely not a good time, but I would’ve rather died than hang up the phone.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

A vivid scene unfolded before me – I was spitting dirt at my love interest, the one so intent on loping his way out of my life.

“How did you get my number?” I asked.

“I just tried your cell phone but you didn’t answer.”

“It’s upstairs. How did you get my parents’ number?”

I could hear him sigh as if the jig was up. “It was listed on the front of your script, along with their address, your cell number, and two email addresses.”

“Script?”

“You forgot to add your social security number and bra size.”

“Script?”

“I figured you wouldn’t notice if I took Space Boy. And you didn’t.”

“You took Space Boy?”

“I just really wanted to read it. And I wasn’t sure you’d let me.”

“When?”

“The boxes. I’m sorry. I haven’t read it yet. I feel really bad and so I’m calling for permission.”

“Calling for permission to read the script you stole? How decent of you.”

“I’m sorry. You have multiple copies.”

“You dumped me in the park like a broken dresser.”

“I know – it was a really bad night for me.”

The tears were coming fast, but there was no way I could allow him access to such vulnerability on this particular day.

“So can I read it?”

“James – I really have to go.”

“Tracy – ”

“It’s just not a good time.”

I hung up the phone and cried for a pilfered script that was only half completed, and for a boy who was more than I could’ve ever hoped for. But mostly I cried for my old house, for it had surely become a place of broken dreams.

chapter
22

T
HE BINGO HALL
had been decorated twice.

It was still plastered in
Star Trek
posters from a recent convention, and black balloons were slowly fading in dusty corners. I even found a plastic Spock ear on one of the tables. But instead of clearing out the old décor, Jenny had simply gone over it again – as she’d warned – adding light pink and peach streamers, bunches of white balloons, and a mountain of plastic dinnerware.

“Why are we
here
?” my mother had asked when we pulled in. “I hate bingo – and I hate smoky, tacky, bingo halls. I’ve always avoided this place like the plague. Where’s the lodge, where’s the lake?”

She’d only got in the car based on the pretense that we were taking her to a new lakeside lodge for lunch – and the additional fact that I was wearing another skirt, complete with full-length hosiery.

But now she was refusing to get out of the car. And standing in the middle of the empty party scene, I couldn’t say that I blamed her. I texted a 911 to Jenny, warning her that she had three minutes to be here or I was taking them home.

A vision of James and me celebrating our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary filled me with both wonder and revulsion. This very hall was a dire warning of what my life could be if I gave in to anything
too quickly – all the warmth that eventually freezes over and turns to ice.

The honking horn forced me back outside to the car. My father had been required to admit the obvious, and my mother was sobbing into her hands just as I had done earlier, “I don’t want this, Tracy. Not now. Nothing’s right. Everything is so off.”

“I tried to tell Jenny that you didn’t want a fuss, but she loves you so much and wanted you both to have a special day.” My compassion startled me – especially given the fact that I was seconds away from filing for divorce from my parents and my sister.

“No,” was all she could muster.

“Mom, it’ll be fine. Auntie Mertyl will be here.”

“Oh God, no,” she wailed. Mertyl was her older sister, someone she hadn’t seen in many years.

My father had both his arms around her shoulders in an attempt to steady the shudders. I put my head through the open passenger window, hoping to coax and coo my mother into some semblance of composure.

When my cell phone rang, I hit my head on the car ceiling and began cursing the car, the empty lot, and the entire heart-breaking scenario. I walked out of the earshot of my devastated parents, and looked through the window at Celebration Central. Never before had an impending party caused such outright and across-the-board misery.

“Jenny – where the hell are you?”

“It’s James again.”

I walked around the back of the bingo hall, and starting grinding dirt with the very pointy tip of my mother’s ill-fitting dress shoe.

“This is a really bad time, James.”

“That’s what you said the last time I called.”

“You stole my script.”

“Can we talk about it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We’re here at the bingo hall and nobody else has shown up yet.”

“What?”

“They’re sleeping in separate bedrooms on different floors of the house.”

“Your parents are?”

“It’s all crap. Plus, I’m wearing fucking panty hose to appease my mother. Oh, and she tried to hook me up with a used appliance salesman I knew from high-school.”

“Should I fly out to Minnesota?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t fix it.”

I tried to block another image of him bee-lining it out of Griffith Park, but I couldn’t, “It was cold and dark, James.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“There are cougars up in those hills. Lots of murders.”

I couldn’t believe I was acting like such a baby, but it was easier to whine than admit he’d so easily snipped at my heartstrings.

“Tracy – I’m really so sorry.”

“And you stole my script.”

“It’s just that I’m so interested in you. In your perspective on life – how you feel. I was burning with curiosity.”

“It feels like a violation.”

“I just wanted to be closer to you.”

“By stealing?”

“I know – I shouldn’t have taken it.”

Most of my mother’s right shoe was now covered with a crusty coating of mud, thanks to my progress on a rather large hole that I was hoping to fall into.

“I miss you, Tracy.”

“I’ve only been gone for a day.”

“I know. But everything here… lacks you.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

Other cars were pulling into the parking lot, but I had zero interest in greeting anyone. The whole fiasco was Jenny’s fault, so she could deal with it.

“Can I come and see you?”

“I just can’t have you here right now.”

“You’re not making me feel so good.”

I was silent as I watched my Aunt Mertyl try to exit Jenny’s SUV with a large bouquet of flowers. She’d gained at least two hundred pounds in the years since I’d last seen her.

“It’s not my job to make you feel good, James. I’m just trying to be honest.”

I thought of my parents in the parking lot, “And it’s not like we’re responsible for each other. We can walk away anytime we feel like it. Right?”

He didn’t answer.

“Well?” I asked.

“Maybe I should let you go.”

No, you jerk! You should NOT let me go – that was the problem in the first place. You should get on your knees and beg me to forgive your lame and insensitive behavior
.

I stared into the lush bushes behind the bingo hall. I could hide in them until the entire catastrophe was over – but where would I hide after that?

“Maybe you should,” I said.

I wanted to add that between him and my parents, I felt like the filling in a nervous breakdown sandwich – but he hung up the phone before I got the chance.

And there was no way I could walk back into the bingo hall – not just yet.

The verdant world behind the hall was far more inviting than the anniversary greetings, and I made my way through it until I found a small clearing that opened onto a narrow footpath. I followed the little trail to the edge of a pond, and watched a family of
ducks swim in endless circles – temporarily soothed by the small ripples that radiated from their plump little bodies. They weren’t fretting over homemade problems or tossing insecurities back and forth. The swim itself was enough. And that’s what made them so marvelous to behold.

I closed my eyes, and let my senses take in the blissful silence.