Authors: Kristen Kehoe
Chapter Twenty-One
Jake
“Tell me about your family. You’ve already said you don’t have a mom, but you’ve mentioned your dad a few times. Tell me about him.”
Cora’s question brings me out of my reverie of the street scene beneath me. It’s been forty-eight hours since we went to bed together, forty-eight hours since I felt what it’s truly like to be consumed by someone, and I’ve relished every minute of it. We’ve talked, laughed, loved, messed around, all of those things you do when you’re first with someone. Only this time it’s different, because we’re living together, and because for the first time I understand what it means to be powerless. She holds the power here, whether or not she knows it.
Now, we’re both done with our work days (a work day she was late for thanks to yours truly and my skills in the shower), and we’re sitting on our small balcony enjoying the dying early spring sunshine and an after-workout drink. I don’t know how to answer the question she’s asked, so I shrug and settle down deeper into the glider, my feet kicked out in front of me and crossed at the ankles as I rock us back and forth. She’s sitting next to me, a water bottle in one hand while her other taps out a light rhythm on the seat. Her hair is pulled back from her face to spill in a long line down her back and her shoulders are bare in her running tank top. Her legs are crossed under her Indian style, and I take a minute to appreciate that her small running shorts are made even smaller when she sits like this.
It’s crazy how beautiful she is, how much I can just look at her and get lost in everything she is and let it all go until the only thing I think about is her. I’ve known this girl just over four months and already she’s done what even baseball couldn’t, and she’s taught me to simply live where I am right now, without looking forward or backward.
This thought shakes me a little, enough that I give her a grin I’m not really feeling and ease away from whatever emotion is creeping its way toward me. However deep my feelings, however much I want her to know that what we have is special, I’m not ready to acknowledge just how much I feel for her. Not yet. When she raises her brow, I shrug.
“There’s not much to tell. He raised me, fed me, taught me about baseball. When I graduated, I went south and he stayed in Montana. We talk every month or so, I tell him where I am and how things are going, he tells me to call again soon, and we hang up.”
“What does he do?”
“Not a whole lot of anything.”
She sighs and I know I’m making this difficult on her, but shit, I don’t want to have this conversation. Everything between us is great — better than great, and I don’t want to ruin any moment we have together with talk about something I can’t change. But she asked, and we’ve talked about her parents, which reminds me why this conversation we’re having now isn’t out of the blue. Feeling like an asshole because I can remember her breaking when she told me about her own parents a few days ago — something I pushed her to do, goddammit — I gulp down a little bit of my beer and think of how to begin.
“Like I said, I never knew my mom. People told me she walked out on us before I was even a month old, so it’s always just been me and Dad. He was a good guy —
is
a good guy. He taught me everything I know about baseball since he was a pitcher, too. Signed straight out of high school, moved his way up to Triple A pretty quick, made a name for himself.”
“And then what?”
“And then, he did what the majority of ball players do while trying to make it to the big leagues and got stuck. Just couldn’t get out, couldn’t get his big break, became a spot filler. When my mom got pregnant, he decided that it was happening that year or he was done. The money isn’t great in the minors, and the travel schedule is murder. When I was born and she took off, his decision was made for him.”
I take another drink, knowing I need to finish and wishing there were a way to avoid it. Since there’s not, and I’ve grown accustomed to uncomfortable things in the past few months, I bite the bullet and lay it all out there. “Now, he’s a part time mechanic and a full time alcoholic. He’s been on the wagon three times,” I say, though she doesn’t ask. “And all three times he’s fallen off with a pretty heavy crash. He works during the day when he’s sober enough, or the demand for money is great enough, and he drinks his nights away, suffers for it in the morning, and is a mildly content person. I let him be because it’s easier to see him like that than to watch him be devastated each time he tries to quit and fails.”
I wonder for a second if I should have admitted to her that he’s an alcoholic, one that doesn’t appear to have the ability to quit. I sit in the quiet and worry that she’s going to tell me I’m a bad son, that in excusing his drinking, I’m only taking the easy way out for myself. They’re all things I’ve said to myself, but now faced with Blue and the knowledge that she
did
pull herself out of the pit, I wonder how much more shame I can feel. She has the same weakness he does, yet in Cora I see nothing but determination to be something other than a label, and in my father… well, I don’t see anything, because I try not to look too hard.
“Did he ever see you play in college?” she asks after a minute and I come back from my thoughts to shake my head.
“Nope, but he taught me to play, so I figure that ought to be enough.”
“Is it?”
It’s the first time she’s asked what I would consider a truly personal question. Asking about my dad, my family, even baseball, that’s all basic inquiry for people who are doing the dance we are — getting to know someone because they’ve
become
someone to you. But that question is personal, one that requires a feeling rather than a story.
I shake my head, my fingers tightening briefly on the bottle they hold before easing off. “No, it wasn’t. But then, his life never really gave him what he needed, either, so I can’t really blame him.”
She nods like she understands, but doesn’t say anything for a minute. I’m awed at how quiet she can be, how still, when I know inside she’s processing, thinking, always adjusting her attitude, responses, feelings until she’s satisfied with them. It makes me want the quiet too, but there’s also a part of me that wants to find out what her response is like when she doesn’t process it, doesn’t filter it.
Sitting here with her, I’m suddenly very aware of the fact that I want to find out who Cora is when she’s unfiltered. Like she was in the bedroom the other night, a dark haired siren above me, her own hands in her hair as she rocked us both to madness until I could see and feel nothing but her. When we’re together like that, when I’m touching her, inside of her, I know I have Cora, the one who can’t hold her responses back, who doesn’t have time to think and process her response. I touch her and she becomes mine. Now, I want that outside of the bedroom too.
“What’s wrong with us that we don’t want to save everyone around us?” she asks and I raise my brow.
“What do you mean?”
“Me with my mother, you with your father. Countless kids have fucked up families and the majority of them work day and night to be the adult, the savior, the one who keeps everyone together. I thought it was just me, but listening to you say that you’re okay with your dad how he is, even if it’s destroying his life, I understand because that’s how I am with my mom. She’s losing her mind a little more each day and I go and paint her nails once a week, and I really only started doing that because it was part of my recovery program, a step I needed to complete. I’m not looking to become a nurse or her personal savior. I’m doing what I want, just like before she got sick. Even when she had her health, I let her do what she wanted, even when it was harmful, even when I hated her and wanted her to be someone else. I never tried to stop her, save her, understand her. I still don’t. Half the time I’m with her neither of us says anything.”
She finally looks at me and I can see that though her voice isn’t sad, there’s sadness lurking just beneath the surface. I want to gather her close and tell her I’d save her if I could, but that’s a lie because I already know I need her more than she needs me, and in a way, she’s already saved me. Instead, I keep my voice casual with the hope it will lighten whatever fear she’s carrying around.
“Not everyone’s made to be a hero, Blue, or we’d all be off fighting wars or diseases or fires, and then most of us would probably just end up dead.”
“Jesus, that’s an awful outlook.”
I shrug and tip my bottle back. “The trouble with being a hero is that there’s always someone who needs to be saved and, eventually, you just get sucked dry until you can’t fight anymore and you fail. You and me, we know this already, so we don’t try and jump in when it’s obvious that if someone wanted to, they could save themselves.”
Or that it’s too late.
I don’t say this, but I know from a glance that it went through her mind too.
“I’m not sure if you believe that, but I think you want to.”
I slant my eyes to her and see that she’s angled toward me now, her head cocked slightly as she studies me. For whatever reason, her stare has me opening my mouth again. “I tried to save my dad once, but he didn’t want my help and it made me realize that being disappointed sucks, so instead of being disappointed I accept who he is and we both live our lives in relative peace.”
“And you battle his demons for him each and every time you get on the mound.”
There’s a little clutch in the bottom of my belly when she says it, partly because I don’t want to acknowledge anything that has to do with what I used to be, and partly because for the first time I feel like someone gets it. I ignore it, focusing instead on the scent of her that’s wrapping around me and filling me, taking me to that place that makes me want to believe in anything as long as she’s there. “I used to. Now we both battle our own demons.”
We’re locked on one another, our drinks forgotten and gazes unblinking as the air between us becomes palpable. “Blue,” I say and lean toward her. She doesn’t hesitate to meet me halfway, and soon I hear her water bottle thud to the ground, my beer bottle clanking after it. Neither of us pauses. Instead, she shifts until her knees are bent and on either side of my hips and her hands are in my hair. And her lips, Jesus, her lips are pressed to mine as our tongues tangle together and I can’t breathe without inhaling her.
“How can it be like this?” she asks as we break apart and my lips go to her neck. “How can it be better each time?”
“Because it matters,” I say and stand, keeping a firm grip on her as I walk toward the slider, shouldering the door open as her legs lock around my back and her lips find my ear.
Christ
. I stumble when Yogi darts in front of me, silently swearing to extract revenge from him later, but Blue only laughs as she tightens her legs and continues nibbling on my neck. In an impressive show of multitasking, she wiggles out of her tank top until there’s only a thin, electric pink athletic bra between me and that gorgeous rack of hers.
I stop and stare at her, noting the flush of her cheeks and the challenge in her eyes. “We’re not making it to a bed,” I tell her.
“Why do you think I got such a big couch?”
“God, you’re perfect.” And then I’m sinking down over her, searching a condom out of the pocket of my jeans before we’re a tangle of limbs and mouths, each racing toward the peak again and again until we fall into an exhausted heap.
Sometime later, I’m on my back with Blue sprawled across the top of me, her head nuzzled into the nook between my ear and shoulder, her arms tucked between our bodies. Her breathing is deep, but every now and then she arches slightly under the stroke of my hand over her back.
“You were wrong earlier,” I say. I keep my hand moving over her back, and though she doesn’t respond, I know she’s listening so I continue. “You are a hero, Blue — every day you get up and battle your demons, every time you go and see your mother even though it would be easier to let her forget, or to let her blame you for not seeing her; those are the actions of someone strong, someone heroic, and your mom knows it. Just because she doesn’t know how to react to it doesn’t mean you should quit.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I don’t expect her to. After a second, I feel her lips at my throat and her arms snake out and around my neck before she settles more securely so we’re now holding each other. Kissing the top of her head, I hold her close as the sun sets and the night falls around us.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cora
When I knock on the door to my parent’s house on Monday, my father shocks me when he opens the door during a time that he’s normally at work. We stand there, staring awkwardly at one another until he clears his throat and steps back.
“I’m glad to see you, Cora. I didn’t, uh, know if you’d be returning after last week.”
I step past him and stand inside of the entryway as he closes the door. I watch him for a second, floating back in time as I recognize he’s in what he considers his casual-wear of crisply pleated khakis and a polo shirt, this one a light blue. He’s wearing a belt and the matching loafers, and his hair is parted and combed in his original gentlemen’s cut. If my father wasn’t in a three piece suit when I was growing up, he was in this outfit right here. Even Christmas morning, he wore a rendition of this with a sweater thrown over the polo.
I can see my reflection from the large foyer mirror behind him — my camouflaged half shirt paired with high waist black jeans and black stiletto sandals and a leather jacket — and I wonder how I’ve never noticed that I’m so much more my mother than my father. He’s the steady one, the tidy architect who keeps himself as professional at home as he does at the office, never losing his temper, never overreacting, just always there. He’s cleaned up so many messes over the years, some made by me, some by her, some by both of us, and I suddenly wonder if he’s tired of it. But then I remember the other day when he walked in and saw us together, the joy on his face before he realized exactly what was going on, and I know that he’d do anything to see her happy again. He loves her, almost blindly, and though I know he cares for me, I’ve never pushed for more because it’s always been obvious that she needs him more. I wonder if he knows just how much I need him too, or even if I knew just how much his affection mattered before this moment.
“Cora,” he says and I flick my gaze to him. “I said, I didn’t know if you’d be back.”
“Neither did I,” I tell him and watch him nod in understanding. “I know she hates me, Dad.”
He shakes his head, a small sigh escaping him. “She doesn’t hate you, Cora, she just doesn’t know how to deal with you. She never has,” he admits and slides his hands into his pockets. “Now, she doesn’t know how to deal with any of it.”
I watch him handle the grief that washes over him, and I understand. We both love the same woman who can’t love us back, not like we need, but where I spent my early years revolting against her and trying to make her mad enough to show me she cared, he’s spent their entire marriage holding her up and giving her whatever she needed in order to be happy. Only now, he can’t give her what she wants, because he can’t fix what’s happened to her, and neither can I. Maybe it’s time we both start recognizing that.
“I know you love her,” I say and his eyes find mine. “Believe it or not, I love her too, or I want to. I don’t really know how, like her I guess, but I do know I’m trying. You have to try too, Dad.” He goes to say something but I shake my head. Right now, there are words that I need to say and that he needs to hear. “You can’t just let her stay in this house, silently hating the world and everyone in it. You have to try to make her go out, talk to someone, anyone, and try to live, because this isn’t helping her and it’s not helping us. Sometimes the only way to help someone is to tell them what they don’t want to hear,” I say, thinking back to Rafe, and then to Mia, to the Scientist and now to Jake, the people who wouldn’t let me wallow in my shit and anger and resentment because they cared too much to let me.
“I know,” he says after a second and I nod once then turn to walk to the stairs, but when I reach them, I rest my hand on the banister and turn back.
“I’ve been here for three months and you haven’t called me once to go to dinner. I guess it’s because I haven’t called you either, and I don’t know why except that I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me.”
His eyes widen and his mouth opens, but it takes him a minute to form words. “Of course I want to see you, Cora. You’re my daughter.”
“And she’s your wife. Neither of us are easy to be around, but I’m trying. I need you to try too. Stop being so scared of me, of her, of what you think might happen if you rock the boat, and stop thinking that leaving things as they are is what’s best. Things need to change, for all of us, or we should just give up now.”
I’m halfway up the stairs when he says my name. I stop and neither of us speaks for a second. “I have to go out of town for business. Two weeks, maybe three. Can we have dinner when I get back? Maybe at Ricardos, like we used to?”
My throat closes and I nod my head without looking at him, finishing my assent and heading toward my mother’s quarters. Sassy meets me at the door to her suite and one look at my face has her opening her arms wide and taking me in. I don’t wrap my arms around her, but I do close my eyes and rest my head on her shoulder.
“
Cara
, I heard about last week. I’m sorry, I should have known it was coming. She was agitated all the day before from a phone call.”
I shake my head back and forth and talk into her shoulder. “I guess it needed to happen. At least she finally spoke to me,” I say with an attempt at humor, but neither of us laugh.
Instead, Sassy pulls back and cups my face. “You’re a good daughter, Cora.”
I close my eyes again before taking a deep, cleansing breath and opening them. “I wasn’t always, Sassy, but I’m trying. And I’m going to keep trying, whether she likes it or not. I’m not ready to give up,” I say, thinking of my father.
She raises her brow at me and then steps back to let me in. I straighten my shoulders and stride through, walking straight to the vanity where I begin to set up. I watch my mother come in wearing her robe, which lets me know that she was expecting me and, without looking up, I speak.
“I’m going to put a toner on your hair because it doesn’t need new color. Your brows need to be done, and so do your nails. I’ll give you a facial after your brows and the mask can sit while I do your nails and toes.” I look up now and meet her hollow gaze straight on, ignoring her blank stare and hunched shoulders. “And I’m going to talk to you while I’m here, because I know you can hear me. I don’t care if you respond, but you should know I’m just going to keep talking, because I want you to get to know me and I really want to get to know you.”
One arm moves from its clenched position at her waist so she can reach up and grip the lapels of her robe and squeeze them together. “I don’t want to talk to you. What’s the point? It’s not like I’m going to remember it anyway.”
Irate with her for being so goddamn stubborn, sad because I understand more than she knows, I walk over to her and watch her eyes widen and flood with shock, an emotion so opposite from the blank indifference that I want to crow in triumph, but I don’t. Instead, I stop so I’m standing right in front of her, looking down and waiting until she sees exactly what I’m about to say.
“We’re the point, Mother. Right now is the point.” Gentling my tone because I can see panic starting to sneak in with the shock, I reach out and lay my hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry for last time, but I’m not sorry I’m here, and I’m not leaving, Mom, so let me talk to you. Let me try,” I finish and I see her eyes fill with something else.
She swallows several times and I wait, almost missing the way her head nods lightly. And then we’re walking toward her vanity and I can see Sassy’s grin a mile wide in the mirror. I respond with a determined one of my own before throwing a cape over my mother’s robe and getting out my bottles. My hands tremble but I ignore them, determined to see this through.
“So, Mia’s wedding. Are you ready to hear about it? Aunt Shannon, you know, the tall ginger from Uncle Thomas’s side? She fell down drunk and took a table with her. I thought Auntie Mags was going to combust she was so mad.”
I stop talking and fussing when her hand reaches over her shoulder and grips mine, so hesitantly, but there nonetheless. I stare at it, and then into the mirror, where our eyes meet again and hers aren’t empty anymore. They’re full of things I don’t understand but things I feel.
“I—” She clears her throat and I see her eyes twitch to Sassy, who stays where she is and nods. “I don’t like forgetting,” she finally says and I stop breathing completely. “But there are some things I don’t like remembering, either. I hate that the most — that I don’t get to pick and choose what I forget and what I don’t, like the disease is taunting me with how much power it has over me. I don’t always deal well with things,” she finishes, and her chest is moving up and down so rapidly I wonder if she’s going to hyperventilate. She doesn’t, and I don’t, we just stare at each other until I finally nod.
“Yeah, well, don’t go to therapy, it’s all about fucking remembering.” I hope I haven’t gone too far, and feel a little rewarded when a small, almost-there-smile forms on her lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sassy nod approval before settling back into her magazine.
Taking my mother’s thin hair in my hand, I begin to brush it and continue on with my story.
~
I text Mia when I’m done, just to let her know I’m doing better. I want to call her, but I know she’s getting ready to graduate and Ryan’s baseball schedule is in full swing, and regardless of what she says, I know they deserve uninterrupted time. She texts me back almost immediately and I smile, grateful that she understands why a conversation – albeit one-sided – is such a big deal. Mia’s own family suffers from silence the way mine does, though it’s gotten better in recent years thanks to Mia’s relentless pursuit to keep them together. Unlike me, Mia is the middle of five children, and instead of revolting when her parents outlined her life, she stood up and demanded they accept her as the person she wanted to be. Now, she’s living her real dream, finishing a degree for a career that she believes in, married to a man who has never wanted anything the way he wants her, and I want nothing more than to be as happy as she is.
When I get home, Jake’s on the couch reading. I stop to shed my heels and lay my bag and jacket on the chair, studying him while his eyes follow me instead of the words on the page in front of him. Whatever he’s reading, it’s bent and scratched, an actual paperback book that I forgot they made since the invention of the tablet. At this angle I can see the inside of his left arm, his pitching arm, and the words scrolled there in black ink that’s barely legible unless you’re close enough to study them as I have been lately.
Still I Rise.
It’s from a poem by a woman whose name I can’t remember, but one that spoke to him the first time he read it because it was about staying upright, always standing, no matter who tried to shove you down.
We were laying there in bed a few nights ago, our hands sliding over each other’s skin, my head on his shoulder as it always is when we wrap together, and I traced the words with my finger, wondering if ever someone had spoken to my heart like he did. I asked him about the words and he recited the poem to me from memory, his voice pitching and lowering, steady on the words as he released them into the room to curl around me.
Remembering that moment now, I know that no matter what happens in our futures, whether we ever get to be like that again or not, he’s held me up and helped me rise so that today I could walk into my mother’s house and have her start to forgive me.
I don’t say anything, I just stare while he stares right back until I walk straight to him, sinking down in his lap when he opens his arms, curling into him as he wraps me up and holds me against his chest. He’s quiet for a minute, stroking his fingers through my hair, waiting for me to explain.
“I’m going to dinner with my dad.”
He continues stroking. “That’s good.”
“And I told him he had to stop treating my mom like an invalid; that he had to stop letting her die and start fighting with her so she learns to fight back.”
I feel his lips form a smile on the crown of my head. “And then I went and told my mom I was going to talk to her, whether she wanted me to or not. She didn’t respond right away, but then, there was this moment when she did, and it hit me that she feels like I do.” I have to pause and swallow to clear the emotions blocking my throat. “She’s sorry. She didn’t say it, but after today, I know it, and it’s not just for last time. She’s sorry like I am, for all of it, everything we did, what we didn’t do. She’s sorry, and I think she wants to love me.”
That’s when I break, the thudding of my heart too much to hold in, the pressure in my chest too great to control. I sob like I haven’t since I was a little girl, everything inside of me breaking and pouring out and over. Only, Jake’s there to hold me together, scooping me closer until he’s holding me more securely, rubbing his hands up my arms and down, murmuring things in my ear so I know he’s there.
I think of my mother and all of the time we’ve lost, and I cry and cry and cry and he never lets me go.
~
We don’t talk about it, but something in our relationship has shifted again.
For the past two weeks Jake and I have shared the same bed, spending hours each night exploring one another before falling into an exhausted sleep of slick skin and tangled limbs. In the morning, we wake and do it all over again before starting the rest of the day. Our routine hasn’t changed much, I still get up and work out and sometimes he joins me, sometimes he doesn’t, saving his energy for his own workout later in the day. I go to work or my parents’, he studies and then goes to his training session in the latter half of the day, and at some point we both meet back up at home and argue over what we’re doing for dinner. The idea that we wouldn’t have dinner together never even crosses our minds.