You're Still the One (13 page)

It began with a scavenger hunt. Imagine Rebecca Ryan, a junior, invited on the senior trip by Allison, Cathy, and Grace (ACG!), the most popular girls in school. For the first time in her life, Rebecca wished her long, dark hair looked more like their light, fringed bobs. And what was she thinking, bringing her fanciest clothes? The other girls were dressed casually, yet somehow still looked runway ready. Rebecca was a phony. She just wasn’t like them. They were skinny; she was curvy. They were loud and carefree; she was reserved and shy. They wore designer clothes and drove to school in shiny new cars; she trolled thrift stores and took the bus. They summered in Europe, pierced their ears, and never missed a salon appointment. They were girls who up until now hadn’t said so much as hi to Rebecca in the halls.

Normally she liked trolling thrift stores for clothes, watching their town go by from the window of the bus, and she truly enjoyed her yearly trips to Miami to see her grandparents, (anywhere warm was better than Buffalo in the winter time!), or trips to Gettysburg to see ancient cannons. Of course she was dying to go to London, or Paris, or Rome. But there was time. She would tour Europe when she graduated college. Or so she thought.

But here she was, in New Orleans, with ACG. She felt a rush of joy that buoyed her to a whole new level of happy. Why not take crazy risks for your new best friends? Perhaps she had always wanted to be popular, but since it never seemed remotely possible, she shoved the desire into a secret room in her heart and locked the door. Now the lock had been sprung and she was free. It was surprising how easy it had been to pull off.

She told her parents it was a school-sponsored band trip. Rebecca had grudgingly played the clarinet for years. She even forged a fake permission slip and watched guiltily as her mother lovingly applied tags to her suitcase and peppered her with questions about the trip. She vowed she would never lie to them again; she didn’t have the stomach for it. It wouldn’t be long before the Ryans found out that no one else in the band had gone to New Orleans, but by that time Rebecca would be back to face her punishment.

And now here they were, just hours off the plane from Buffalo, and Bourbon Street was already spinning under the influence of apple-green and berry-red drinks appropriately named Hurricanes and Hand Grenades. The four beauties linked arms and danced down the street, laughing loudly, exposing a breast here and there even though it wasn’t Mardi Gras. And perhaps the rebelling would have ended with the three of them passing out in the Friends Motel, waking up with a wicked hangover and watery recollections of the phone numbers stuffed in their purses, had it not been for the scavenger hunt.

The first two items on Rebecca’s list looked harmless enough:

The third item stopped Rebecca in her tracks.
Make out with a stranger in a cemetery
. Like she would. Like she could. Were the other girls really going to do that? Making out with a total stranger was worrisome enough. But a cemetery? At night? There was absolutely no way. As Rebecca made her way to a little jazz club she read about in a local paper, she obsessed about how she was going to fake that one. And maybe the creepy graveyard wasn’t the worst bit. Rebecca was sweet sixteen and never been kissed. Juvenile games of spin the bottle didn’t count. Neither did Joey Garden sticking his tongue in her ear. But really, really kissed? She’d dreamt of it, of course, but guys didn’t look twice at girls like her. She didn’t want to do the scavenger hunt anymore. This wasn’t why she came on the trip. She didn’t want her first real kiss to be some kind of silly game. And why was she suddenly all alone? That hadn’t been part of the plan. It struck her that it probably wasn’t particularly safe for a sixteen-year-old to be roaming tipsy and alone through the streets of the French Quarter. If her mother knew, she would be out of her mind. Here she was, a trusted daughter, Reliable Rebecca, doing something incredibly stupid. She’d never even had so much as an overdue library book. She was suddenly ashamed. If anything happened to her, her parents’ lives would be ruined forever. All because of her lies. All because she wanted to be liked and win a scavenger hunt. She didn’t even ask what the prize was. How crazy was that? Should she turn around? Try to find them? Go back to the hotel? No. She was here, wasn’t she? She had to at least listen to some local music. After all, that’s what the band would have done if they really had come on a school trip.

Rebecca had wanted Allison, Cathy, and Grace to join her, but they insisted they each had to work on their own list. Rebecca got the feeling they couldn’t care less about listening to a live jazz band. But this was New Orleans, the city of jazz—how could they not want to go hear the local talent?
Because they aren’t like you
, her little voice said. So why had they invited her?

And why was she suddenly so ashamed of herself? When Allison asked her why on earth she wanted to go to a stinky old jazz club, Rebecca said she needed to have a story for her parents. That was true, but she would have gone anyway.

“Yeah,” Grace had said. “Who are you going to find to make out with there? Some fat old trombone player?” Then the threesome laughed as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever heard. All Rebecca could manage was a pained smile.

Then Rebecca had insisted she wouldn’t be there long, just long enough to tell her parents she saw some local jazz. The truth was, she couldn’t wait to see where the locals played, where the true musicians hung out, tucked far enough away that they weren’t burdened with entertaining tourists. For even though she wasn’t very good on the clarinet (all right, she stunk—no matter how she pursed her lips, the darn thing always squealed when she least expected it), she absolutely loved listening to jazz. Something about the freewheeling brass instruments struck Rebecca as one of the sexiest things in the world. What she didn’t tell the girls was that she probably
would
make out with a fat trombone player as long as he could play. Yes, good jazz made Rebecca feel alive.

And looks-wise, despite her desire to be more like her new friends, Rebecca Ryan certainly fit in with the sexy music. With a height of five feet eight inches, wavy jet-black hair, and blue eyes that turned aqua in certain lights, she almost personified jazz. Despite the lack of attention from high school boys, Rebecca Ryan was a beautiful woman.

It was a small bar, dim and dive-y, but lively and packed. A group of five men were playing on a little stage. As the brass and drums infused her with life, she made her way to an empty table just off center stage. She wished something farther back and more discreet were available, but since everyone seemed to be looking at her, she couldn’t turn back now. Most of the patrons were older, and black, including the musicians. If they thought it was odd that a young white girl was in their midst, they didn’t show it. She was greeted with huge grins—and not the kind that made her feel sick to her stomach—but the kind that made her smile back.

After establishing herself at the table, Rebecca went to the bar. She showed her ID to the bartender, then ordered a Coke.

“A Coke?” he said. “Sugar, why you bother with a fake ID if all you want is a Coke?”

He had a point there. Besides, the other drinks were wearing off a little. “Put some Jack in it,” Rebecca said.

“You sure?” He leaned over. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-one,” she said.

The bartender shook his head. “If you say so.”

She felt guilty for lying again, but she knew she could pass for twenty-one and she had the fake ID to prove it.

“Can I get it in a Hurricane glass?” Why not try to fake part of the scavenger hunt, just in case?

“Not unless you’re drinking a Hurricane. You think you can handle one?”

“I’ve already handled two.”

“Well, be careful. They don’t call it a Hurricane for nothing.” He winked and held out his hand as if pointing to a distant storm on the horizon. “One minute it’s all peaceful and quiet, real still. The next minute—there it is.” He shrunk back theatrically as he talked. “Coming to suck up all the cows and houses in the hood!” When his little “storm” was over, he straightened up and laughed. “You get me?”

“I get you. I’ll take one.”

He whistled low and shook his head, then to show her he was teasing flashed her a smile. He had a gold tooth in the front. She smiled back. She dared to lean on the bar, even though she knew the neckline of the blue silk dress she was wearing was already low-cut enough without the counter tugging it down any farther, but if she was going to get anywhere in the scavenger hunt, she knew she was going to have to use a few feminine wiles.

“I’m on a scavenger hunt,” she said as he slid the tall hourglass drink in front of her. “And I’m supposed to drink three of those.”

“Oh boy. You shouldn’t do that. This is your third already.”

“I know, I know. I just need to show three empty glasses and have some nice bartender sign a napkin saying he saw me drink all three.”

“Well, how about you drink that one and we’ll cheat a little on the other two?”

“Perfect,” Rebecca said with a smile and a wink. She swayed a little as she walked back to her seat. What was she doing? Who was she fooling? She had just finished her sophomore year of high school. She should not be here. What if the bartender got in trouble for serving someone underage? She was going to drink this one Hurricane, listen to some music, then call a cab home. And even if she did find someone she wouldn’t mind kissing, there was no way she was going to a freaking cemetery at this time of night.

She was halfway through her stormy drink when he was called onstage. And although he looked completely out of place with his white skin, tousled chestnut hair, and blue eyes, he certainly didn’t act it. He stood in the spotlight cradling a trumpet and grinning as the older musicians treated him to pats on the back.

“Miles Davis, move on over,” a sax player yelled out. “We’ve got Grant Dodge right here. He may be young and white, but he plays like he’s old and black.” The crowd roared with laughter. “Folks, let’s hear it for Grant Dodge.”

He was the handsomest young man Rebecca had ever seen. And then he put that shiny trumpet up to his beautiful lips and blew.

Rebecca froze in midair, like a giant storm being put on pause. Grant Dodge played the trumpet like he’d been born with it glued to his lips. For a few seconds Rebecca couldn’t move or even breathe. The feeling that washed over her as he played transcended everything she had ever known. This was madness, this was passion—this was love at first sound.

When he finished, she leapt to her feet with everyone else, screaming his name, and the sound of her voice must have made its way through the air thick with cigarette smoke, and the sounds of clinking glasses and blaring instruments, for every cell in her body recorded the moment when he heard her, when his head slowly turned, and his eyes met hers in the crowd. She felt a jolt as his eyes locked on hers, and stayed locked as the rest of the bar disappeared. Holding his trumpet across his chest like an easy, extra appendage, he first regarded her with open curiosity, and then, because she spontaneously smiled, he smiled back and there they stood for what felt like eternity, complete strangers grinning at each other across the room. Rebecca Ryan knew right then and there that he was going to profoundly change her life, but in that instant she just assumed it was because she knew two things without a single, solitary doubt. One: he was going to be the stranger she kissed before midnight. And, two: she was never going to play the freaking clarinet ever again.

Rebecca Ryan leaned back in her seat and gazed out the window of the plane.
Prepare for landing
, she thought.
You’re here. You’re really here
. Twenty-one years, yet she remembered every single thing about that night. How could she not? How many people could say they lost their virginity in an ancient New Orleans graveyard beneath an engorged yellow moon? Although innocent probably wasn’t quite the right word for her that evening. In fact, it was as if she was possessed. Oh, what a night.

 

 

It was humid and the sultry night air clung to their bare skin. Headstones, statues of virgins and angels—neither of which she would be after that night—rose protectively around them. Someone must have mowed that morning; the air still smelled of fresh-cut grass. Grant bought her a rose on Bourbon Street and it lay beside them on the soft grass. Every time she turned her head, its petals brushed like velvet against her nose, cheek, and lips. And then there was that moon. In her whole life, she had never seen such a huge, glowing moon. Complete with a statue of a kneeling maiden reaching out her arms, Rebecca never knew a cemetery could be so hauntingly beautiful.

Sometimes when she replayed that night, she added stars. You could do that with memories. Play with them, caress them, mold them. Microscopic little changes. Who remembers everything exactly the way it happened? So sometimes she remembered stars. Millions of them, glittering, spinning, and softly singing just to them. She imagined it was the last night on earth and they were the only two lovers left in the world. A handsome older boy. He was twenty-one, she was sixteen. How easily the lies tripped off her tongue that weekend. She told him she was nineteen.

The sounds, she didn’t need to mold; they played like an orchestra when she closed her eyes. Zippers, and buttons, and soft kisses, and sighs, and all the little things they whispered to each other. Even when she cried out, it was only because it felt so good. She never imagined it could feel so good. Oh, the sounds they made that night. They should have woken the dead.

Twenty-one years since that fateful night. At times it was impossible to believe it had been that long. Other times it felt as if it were someone else’s life entirely. It was a night filled with the promise of magic. She’d never felt anything like it before and she’d certainly never come close to it since. It was the night she lied to her parents, the night she was betrayed by the three most popular girls in school, the night she quit the clarinet, the night she was cursed, the night she not only kissed a boy for the first time, but made love to him as well, the night Rebecca Ryan’s son, Miles, was conceived underneath that fat, glowing moon.

It was the night that swallowed her whole. And here she was, daring to go back. What was she so afraid of? Did she really think Grant Dodge would be waiting for her at the airport with an accusatory glare and a handheld sign that cried out:
WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME I HAVE A SON
?

She deserved that and more. And ironically, it was because of their son that she was here in the first place. His gift for her thirty-seventh birthday: a trip to New Orleans. Even her birthday card was an artist’s rendition of the French Quarter featuring a trumpet player raising his instrument beneath an old-fashioned street lamp.

That was her Miles. And what a feat—convincing her parents to chip in for this trip, for there was no way her strapped college kid could have afforded this on his own.

“You’re always talking about New Orleans, Mom,” Miles had said with an excited grin when she opened the card and held up the itinerary tucked inside. “You’ve got to go back while you’re still youngish.”

Always talking about New Orleans. Little did he know why. He’d been told a much more discreet story of his conception: a long-term boyfriend who passed away in a car accident shortly after he was born. It was a hideous story, made up by her father. At the time, Rebecca hadn’t been in any position to argue about it. She was an unwed teenage mother who needed the support of her parents.

But giving him that decent upbringing came at a price. She hated lying to Miles. Over the years he gently questioned her about his father. Where were his grandparents? Did he have aunts and uncles? Why didn’t his father’s family stick around to meet him?

It was a scandal, he was told, and that was true. Teenage pregnancies were shameful back then.
True, true, true.
Sometimes Rebecca did this with her lies, culled through them to sift out bits of the truth, as if that could mitigate some of her guilt. So Miles was told that his grandparents were so devastated by the loss of their son, Chris—this name was supplied by her mother, but he was never given a last name in case Miles wanted to go hunting—that they moved far away and never wanted anything to do with their grandson. It was too painful, Miles was told over and over again. Too painful. This, too, was partial truth.

But the minute Rebecca saw the card in Miles’s sloppy handwriting encouraging her to go for it, she knew what she had to do. She was going to confront her past once and for all. If Grant Dodge was here, she would find him. If he wasn’t, she was going to tell Miles the truth anyway, and if he wanted, he could try to find his father. It was high time she swept clean the lies that dirtied her life. She
was
still youngish, and for the first time in her life she was on her own. Miles was in college, and in order to pay for it, she’d sold her small house in Buffalo. Her parents, who had been saving for his college fund, lost a bulk of their retirement to a shady hedge-fund manager. Rebecca refused to let them drain the rest.

She missed her little home, but it was worth it. Not that she’d be able to pay for all four years with the money, but at least his first year was taken care of. He was an amazing trumpet player, so she had no doubt that he’d be able to get scholarships to see him through. If nothing else, he’d definitely inherited his father’s musical ability. If she did find Grant Dodge, she couldn’t wait to tell him this. Or would their conversations never get past
Why didn’t you tell me I have a son?

Tell you? How could I tell you?
What a state his phone number was in when she had pulled it from her purse. Smeared and torn and illegible. It was really no surprise. Her purse had been lying on the damp grass beside them, or perhaps she was lying on top of it, sinking it farther into the ground each time he thrust into her, a memory which still turned her on so much she could only visit it in private. God, what a night. She couldn’t remember ever surrendering to anyone or anything the way she did to Grant Dodge that night.

He’d even tried to talk her out of it. Was it too soon? Was she too tipsy? But a thousand stampeding horses couldn’t have stopped her. It was silly to say, and so of course she’d never told this to a soul, but the way she felt that night, it was almost as if she were possessed. She had to have him, she was filled with this overpowering need. And it had been everything she wanted and more. It was quite simply one of the best nights of her life. But it came with a price, as everything did.

Her father, an attorney, went on a warpath to find and punish “the man who forced himself on my innocent daughter.” Oh, the shame that went through her whenever she heard him say this to anyone. So she refused to say anything about Grant. She wouldn’t give so much as a name or the color of a single hair on his head. Even after her father threatened to disown her and Miles, she remained resolute. And thankfully, since she complied with every other demand he ever gave, she and Miles continued to have her parents’ support. She was grateful, yet resentful.

If her father had acted like a normal human being, maybe Grant could have been a part of their lives. They would never know. What’s done was done. And in many ways, she’d paid her dues. She’d been ostracized by almost everyone in school, except Cathy. It turned out the scavenger hunt was a prank on Rebecca. The other three went dancing that night instead. The only reason she’d been invited on the trip was to get back at her. Allison thought Rebecca was the one who told her mother she saw Allison kissing her history teacher in the mall. It was actually Renee Rogers. But when the rumor mill started grinding, people began saying it was “RR” who told Allison’s mom. Rebecca was simply a victim of her initials.

But Cathy, the only one of ACG who felt guilty about what they did to Rebecca, stepped up and did the right thing. She ditched A & G and stood by Rebecca during the darkest time of her life. They were friends to this day, and Cathy would be arriving on Saturday to spend a portion of the weekend. She was the only one in the world who knew all about Grant. She was a busy wife and mom, so she couldn’t take the entire weekend off, but Rebecca was grateful she was on the way. Otherwise, she was afraid she might crack.

Because, sixteen or not, drunk or not, rebellious or not, Rebecca was pretty sure she got one thing right. Grant Dodge, at least then, had been a remarkable person. Was he still? Was he even in New Orleans? If she told him about Miles, would either he or her son ever forgive her?

And what if he wasn’t remarkable anymore? What if he was married with a dozen kids of his own? Maybe he was fat and bald. Not that he couldn’t be a nice, fat, bald man, but it would still be hard to see him that way. In her mind, he epitomized sexy. Maybe he was dead. Rebecca crossed herself even though she wasn’t a regular churchgoer. Or maybe he was a drunk on the street playing his trumpet for booze.

But what if he was still sexy and single? What if he traveled all over the world mesmerizing people with his trumpet? What if he had everything he’d ever wanted, except her? Maybe he felt a hole inside him and he didn’t know why. Maybe every once in a while, he visited the cemetery where they made love, stood under a full moon, gazed at the soft, dark grass and wondered if he would ever see her again. But whoever and wherever he was, one thing was certain. He had never tried to contact her, either. It was the only thing that gave her any relief from her guilt. She had given him her phone number, but he never once called.

As the plane descended, Rebecca leaned her head back and tried to clear her mind of worry. She was here to celebrate her birthday: enjoy some good Creole cooking, tour the mansions in the Garden District, listen to some good jazz, stroll the shops in the French Quarter, and definitely check out a few jewelry shops. Maybe she’d even bring some of her own pieces to show them. She’d been making jewelry ever since her first trip to New Orleans.

Her very first creation was a locket that housed a tiny petal from the rose Grant gave her. She wore it all through her pregnancy and the delivery. It astounded her how comforting a piece of jewelry could be. It almost kept her sane. And she still had it, was even wearing it now. Making jewelry was her passion in life. And most of her pieces came from recycled material. For one, she thought the quality was much better. For two, she liked the idea of not wasting metals or gems. And she liked to think that some energy remained from the person who had worn it before, even if, by the time Rebecca put something together, it was a completely new creation.

Yes, all of those things would definitely make it a worthwhile trip. But there was one more thing she’d come to do, if she could summon the courage to do it. She was going to march back to that Voodoo Shop, and if that horrible old woman was still alive, she was going to do everything in her power to make her take back that ridiculous curse.