Authors: R. K. Ryals
“Tansy—”
“I love you, Jet. We’re here if you need us,
and now I’m going to hang up because I know how much you like to
talk me out of stuff. We’ve got a good plan going, you know?”
Jet’s breathing sounded rough over the line,
like he was choking on it. Maybe he was. Maybe the girl he was with
had gotten tired of waiting and was going down on him.
“I love you, too, Tansy,” he replied.
Okay, so no going down after all. Resignation
filled his voice, and I hoped, a little pride, too. I wanted him to
quit hiding. Maybe, just maybe, knowing we were moving forward,
would help him do it, too.
When I hung up the phone, I glanced up to
find Deena watching me from the hallway and Nana watching me from
the kitchen table, her usual stack of paperwork in front of
her.
“He’s doing okay, I think,” I told them.
Nana nodded. “You girls want some tea?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Okay,” Deena agreed.
Nana had an old teapot, the kind that sat on
the stove and whistled when it was done. I made a mental note to
buy myself one of those someday. I liked the way it whistled.
Better yet, I liked the idea of having a
place of my own with a table to sit at while waiting on the teapot
whistle. My table. My teapot. No one to take care of but myself,
and a family I knew loved me. A family who looked forward to my
visits without expecting anything from me.
Eli
For three days, I didn’t see Tansy. She
didn’t come to the orchard, and I didn’t reach out to her. It took
everything I had not to. As much as I wanted to get involved in her
family’s business, I held back. Which frustrated me. Because, in
all honesty, I was afraid she’d choose her family over being with
me.
And she should.
Staring at the two words she’d written on my
punching bag—love and death—reminded me that she didn’t need to
choose between us. There was room enough in her life for both.
If she wanted both.
It was the third night, following a
tension-filled dinner where my unusually quiet mother ignored
everyone and glared at her plate, that my cell phone rang.
I was in the cottage guest room, throwing
punches at my punching bag, rap music blaring, when the call came
through.
Peeling my gloves off, I stared at the
screen. A number I didn’t recognize flashed.
I started to decline it, but then answered it
instead. “Hello?”
“And here I figured you wouldn’t answer.”
Her voice threw me, catching me off guard.
“Tansy?”
Overwhelming relief crashed over me.
“That hard to tell over the phone, huh?” she
asked. “You sound out of breath.”
“I was working out. Whose phone are you
using?”
“Mine. I got it yesterday. Nothing fancy. One
of those free ones that comes with the contract, but it’s
something.” She paused. “You okay?”
“I should be asking you that.”
“I’m good.”
“No more cutting?”
Silence, and then, “Some. Small cuts, but I’m
getting better at finding ways to distract myself. It’s the pain.
It started out as this emotional thing, you know? But now, it’s
like I’m into the adrenaline. My head … I think too much. I start
seeing a shrink tomorrow.”
Her words all ran together, which made me
smile even though her confession was nothing to smile about. “The
garden misses you.”
I was an idiot. Who said things like
that?
She laughed. “Just the garden?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I heard about your
grandmother. About you being kicked out.”
More silence.
“I haven’t been kicked out,” she said
finally. “I’ve been given a second chance. At being a
grown-up.”
I sat on the edge of the guest room bed.
“That sounds fun. Want to come be a grown-up with me?”
“Tease,” she accused, her voice full of
warmth. “I may have found a job.”
My fingers tightened on the phone.
“Really?”
“With a landscaping company. Which is a fancy
way of saying I’ll be cutting grass and planting things. I could
start soon if I get it. It’s not much, but I want it.”
“Good deal,” I murmured. “I have no doubt
it’ll be yours.”
“I plan to finish the work at the orchard,
too.”
The conversation fell into a black hole.
“Tansy …” My words trailed off, swallowed by
the abyss.
“Have you added anything new to the punching
bag?” she asked.
“No … but I did talk to my mother.”
“What?” Her voice rose, filling with
enthusiasm and anxiety. For me.
“It’s not as exciting as it sounds. She
admitted a lot of things I already suspected.”
I didn’t say anything else, and she didn’t
ask questions. The silence that followed was long and painful.
“I should go,” she breathed some time
later.
“I miss you.” The words spilled free, coming
out of nowhere, taking me back. The line went quiet, and I glanced
at the screen to see if the call dropped. “Tansy?”
“If you could pick any movie
in the world to watch, what would it be?” she asked. It was a
terrible, random question, and I loved it because I took it for
what it was—a reason to stay on the phone. “And you’re not allowed
to say
Rocky
just
because you’re a boxer.”
Lying on the bed, I stared
at the ceiling. “
Tombstone
.”
“Oh, wow! A western?”
“I’m full of surprises. Are we playing a
hundred questions?”
“No, just feeling you out a little.”
“Like a test? Did I pass?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “What do you
miss the most? From your life, I mean. Your life before this
summer.”
“That’s a trick question,” I replied.
“Why?”
“Because right now I’m not missing anything
about it. You?”
“I’m not missing anything either. I guess if
there was something to miss I would.” She got quiet, and then in a
rush said, “I miss you, too.”
The cottage seemed too quiet suddenly. Too
empty. “Will you be at the orchard tomorrow?”
“Yeah. After the shrink appointment.”
I had boxing lessons with Deena’s class, but
afterward … “Maybe I’ll see you then.”
“Maybe so.”
“Go out with me,” I said abruptly. “You, me,
and no drama.”
“Really?” She sounded uncertain.
“What surprises you more? Me asking you out
or the no drama?”
“So you don’t like the idea of jumping off of
rooftops?” she asked, sounding playfully hurt.
“With a bungee cord attached maybe … which is
always a date option.”
“Uh … no. Drama free and tame sounds
great.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“Okay,” she answered brightly, her voice full
of anticipation.
It lightened my heart. Which was good because
her heart and mine had been too dark lately.
“This weekend?” I asked.
“You’re on,” she answered.
“I’ll bring the bungee cord.”
She laughed, the sound racing through the
line, lifting my spirits.
Tansy
There’s a myth that says cats have nine
lives. In reality, they have the same amount of lives the rest of
us do—one. They are, however, good at cheating death. They are
genius escape artists and incredibly stealth acrobats.
I admit, I googled the whole nine lives
thing, mainly because my mother and I watched a man throw a cat
from the window of a high rise building once.
It was terrible. I cried. Big alligator
tears.
Mom called and reported the man because
that’s what you did when you saw someone throw a live creature out
of a window. You called and reported the son of a bitch.
I don’t know what happened to the man, but to
our disbelief and obvious relief, Mom and I saw the cat slink away
from the building unscathed with only a slight limp.
“Wonder what life that one was?” Mom
asked.
The experience stayed with me.
No human had nine lives, but we had shitloads
of chances. Plenty of do-overs. As long as we didn’t die first.
I had no intention of screwing up my
do-over.
After hanging up with Eli, I stared at my
cell. It was a cheap flip phone; black, simple, and … magic.
Eli talked to his mom. He talked to her!
Whether it went badly or not, talking to her
meant he was moving forward.
My heart did a little flip inside my
chest.
The past few days had been drenched in
changes: a new phone, a job search, and an interview. Nana was a
pro at paperwork, and she helped me comb through grant applications
for school, over admission qualifications for a two-year college in
Atlanta, and through job postings I may have missed otherwise.
She wanted me to succeed. Because of that, I
found myself softening toward her.
Now this … Eli talking to his mom.
Having walked outside to call Eli, I returned
to the house and found Deena and Nana sitting together, their eyes
glued to the television.
“Want to watch?” Deena asked. “It’s a standup
comedy sketch. This guy is freaking hilarious.”
“I have a date,” I blurted.
Nana frowned. “Tonight?”
“This weekend.”
Deena turned the volume down on the TV. “With
Eli?”
I nodded.
“You’re driving, right?” Nana asked.
“We thought we’d rocket it. Turns out Eli’s
grandfather knows someone at NASA, and—”
“Smartass Tansy.” Deena laughed. “I haven’t
seen her in a while.”
We looked at each other.
Nana scooted over and patted the cushion, and
I joined them on the couch, reveling in the laughter that filled
the house. It had been too long.
Deena was right. the comedian was good.
***
The next morning found me sitting inside a
cobalt blue waiting room, large pots of fake fern-like plants
resting in each corner of the square space. Near the ceiling, a
mounted television played the cooking network, and a smiling woman
held up two eggs while telling the audience a story about how her
grandmother taught her how to crack them. All nostalgic-like. She
even teared up.
Here I thought cracking eggs was just
cracking eggs. Tap them against the side of a bowl or a counter,
pull the pieces apart, and pray none of the shell falls into the
mix.
Simple, right?
Not according to the woman on television.
Grandma had this whole precise way of doing it: crack the egg
against a bowl, pull the pieces apart, and drop the contents into
the recipe.
See the irony here?
I’d never been more interested in eggs than I
was at the moment, my leg rapidly jumping against the floor, my
fingers clenching the waiting room chair.
A door opened, and I jumped.
“Tansy Griffin?”
A pretty middle-aged woman with black bobbed
hair, smooth olive skin, a loose, mint-colored pant suit, and an
easy smile motioned me toward the back.
Everything smelled new, like the inside of a
car dealership.
“I’m Rosa Gomez.” Circling a couch in a cozy
room full of soft greens and browns, she took a seat in an arm
chair facing the sofa.
I sat, my hands shaking and my foot
tapping.
Tap, tap, tap.
The sound was swallowed by thick carpet,
vacuumed so that the lines showed in the fibers.
Rosa’s gaze studied me. “Can I see the cuts,
Tansy?”
Tap, tap, tap.
Carefully, and because my fingers shook too
much to be graceful, I tugged up the hem of my shorts. The worst
gashes were healing. Newer, small nicks rode under the older,
larger ones.
“Let’s talk about these,” Rosa coaxed, not
once flinching at the sight of my legs.
If I were Deena, I would have taken this
moment to glare at Rosa, spouting off something like, “I don’t have
to fucking tell you anything.”
I wasn’t Deena, and three years had worn me
down. Rosa was a stranger, and where that would have bothered some,
it comforted me.
We talked for over an hour, my heart seizing
over the memories, over the roads I’d traveled.
“Dads are supposed to love you, you know?” I
found myself saying. “It wasn’t that he walked away, but he left.
Looking back, he’d always been that way. Aloof and distant. Mom was
always the one who talked, the one who sat on the floor with us and
played games, and the one who sat at the kitchen table helping us
with homework. Dad pampered Mom, but he never looked beyond her.
Fathers shouldn’t be like that, right?”
To my horror, tears sprang to my eyes.
Rosa’s gaze softened. “What do you
think?”
“They shouldn’t be like that. I want more for
my children one day. I don’t ever want them to question themselves,
their actions … their existence.” Tears rolled down my cheeks.
“Kids shouldn’t feel worthless.”
Rosa nodded. “No, they shouldn’t.”
Cutting, she told me, was about control, a
way to manage pain when a person feels like they’ve lost control of
other things in their lives.
I’d been there with Dad, Mom’s death pushing
me into the managerial role in the house. When Dad died, he left me
anchor-less, adrift and out-of-control—the life I’d learned to
survive ripped away and placed in my grandmother’s hands, a woman
who had become a virtual stranger to us.
“I want to do something with my life,” I
said, chin rising.
“Good,” Rosa replied, a genuine smile on her
face.
At the end of the appointment, Rosa handed me
a rubber band. “Put this on your wrist.”
Rolling it on, I looked up at her.
“Snap it,” she told me, nodding gently.
Pulling it away from my wrist, I let go of
it, the pain sharp when it smacked against my skin. It felt
good.
“This isn’t going to stop the cutting, Tansy,
especially at first, but it will help. When you feel anxious or
out-of-control, snap the band.” She handed me a card with two phone
numbers on it. “Call me whenever you feel the need. If I’m with a
client, I promise to return the call. This was a good start, Tansy.
You opened up on your first try, which tells me you find it easier
talking to strangers. It tells me you’re ready. You’re a strong
young woman.”