Chapter Twenty-Eight - Lisa
“You’ve got to get ahold of yourself, sis,” Jenny told me one day, after about a week of moping and crying.
“You just don’t know what it’s like,” I said bleakly, hugging my knees while we sat on my bed.
“Yeah. . . actually I do. Believe me, you’re not the first girl who ever had a broken heart, and I’m pretty sure you won’t be the last one, either,” Jenny said.
“But-“ I said.
“No buts, sister. You can’t keep wallowing like this. It’s not healthy, and besides that it doesn’t help. Cry over him for a few days, sure, and then let him go,” Jenny said.
She didn’t understand, of course; it was absolutely impossible that she’d ever felt anything like this. How could she possibly know what I was going through?
“You don’t understand,” I repeated.
“What do I not understand?” Jenny asked, and I hesitated. There was no way I could explain things to her, even if I’d wanted to.
“Let it alone, sis. I’ll be all right,” I told her, making an effort to smile. Jenny looked at me doubtfully, and then nodded.
“All right, then. But if I ever see that scumbag again, I’m giving him a piece of my mind!” she said, and in spite of everything I almost had to laugh. Jenny would probably do it, too, and Cody would probably listen respectfully with his hat in his hand and then never pay it another bit of attention.
“Whatever you say,” I told her.
“What you need to do is get up out of this bed, get gussied up a little bit, and go out on the town tonight,” Jenny declared.
“Go out on the town? In Ore City?” I asked skeptically.
“Sure, why not? It doesn’t matter where, as long as you get out of this stuffy house and live a little. Even if all we do is go to the Dairy Dip and have a double chocolate sundae,” she suggested.
The thought was appalling; I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to set foot in the Dairy Dip again.
“No, not there,” I said quickly.
“Yeah, you’re right. Over-rated, anyway. We’ll go to the soda fountain at the drug store in Gilmer instead,” she said.
I considered it, and decided maybe Jenny was right. I had to stop wallowing, and maybe getting out a little bit would help take my mind off Cody for a while. Heaven knows I was ready to think about something else for a change. And honestly, how often does a good excuse for eating a double chocolate sundae come along?
I took a deep breath and got up from the bed.
“Atta girl!” Jenny said approvingly.
I took a shower for the first time in days and fixed my hair, and decided I really did feel better. Then we told Mama where we were going and headed downtown.
We had our sundae, and then took a walk downtown and browsed in some of the shops for a while. It was a sunny, breezy day, not nearly as chilly as usual, and a good day for outdoorsy things. I found a pair of silver spangled shoes that looked very nice, I thought, and a bracelet that matched them perfectly.
For a little while, I really did manage to forget about Cody, or at least to think about him less. That is, till I saw a young man with his girlfriend on the sidewalk in front of us, wearing a white straw hat just like the one Cody liked to wear. That undid me. I started crying again, and had to get Jenny to take me home.
I gradually got better over the next two or three weeks, but now and then little things like that white straw hat kept tripping me up. I’d see a boy with a horsehair belt, or pass some place where I’d talked to Cody on the phone, or some other trivial thing like that, and it would set me off again. It was awful.
And even though I slowly seemed to be getting better on the surface, down deep I really wasn’t. True enough, I finally got to the point that I didn’t cry anymore, and I could go to work and function pretty normally for a change. I could pass by the table at the Dairy Dip where he’d carved our names and not fall to pieces, for example. So yeah, things went back to normal in some ways. But way down deep, in the very heart of my heart so to speak, Cody was still there just as much as he always had been. I was beginning to think he always would be.
I made an effort to go out with Marcus once in a while and be seen in public, but that was fake and empty and I hated the pretense.
Jenny knew I still had Cody on my mind, and I think she found the whole situation incomprehensible. She kept telling me I ought to be happy with Marcus, or if not him then I ought to go out and meet some new guys till I found one ten times better than Cody ever was. She kept telling me there are plenty of fish in the sea. And maybe there were, for her. Maybe even for most people. But for me, there’d never be anyone at all but Cody McGrath. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name.
Maybe I would end up an eccentric old spinster who talked to her tomato plants, I thought to myself. It was supposed to be a joke, but it wasn’t funny. I still clung tenaciously to the forlorn hope that somehow, someday we’d find a way to be together and put this whole horrible experience behind us, however unlikely that seemed. Tristan the Brave may have gotten his princess sooner or later, but I wasn’t at all sure my own Tristan would ever get his.
I still had his high school ring. He’d forgotten to ask for it back. I took it off my finger and put it on a chain around my neck instead, so it would always rest right next to my heart. I didn’t think that was too over-the-top; it’s not like anyone could see it there. No one even knew about it except me. And maybe it was stupid, but every night before I went to sleep I kissed that ring and blew it toward the window, and imagined my kiss traveling all the way up there to Alaska, and slipping through his window, and landing right on his lips while he slept. And when it did, I hoped he thought of me, and smiled in his sleep.
Yeah, fantasy life big-time. I knew it even then. But that was all right, because I kept it all to myself and didn’t breathe a word of how I really felt to anyone. It was simply my own little private sorrow.
I tried to keep busy. I took refuge in painting or gardening or writing poetry or anything else I could think of; anything to keep me from brooding too much. It helped a little, at least as much as anything did.
Which is to say, not much at all.
I did talk to Brandon sometimes, since nobody else seemed to understand. I had to go out there to Goliad occasionally for appearances’ sake, ostensibly to visit Marcus. But there were times when I couldn’t bear to actually see him, let alone Miss Josie. So on days like that I’d sit with Bran in the barn to keep him company while he did his chores after school. He was the only one who didn’t make me feel guilty. Not that the others did it on purpose, you know; it was just the way I felt.
We never talked about Cody very much, but he knew at least part of what was going on, even if he didn’t understand exactly why. We were sitting in the hayloft one day when he finally said something to me about it. The window faced north across the pasture, and somewhere many thousands of miles away that’s where Cody was. I guess Bran must have noticed my glances in that direction, however surreptitious I thought they were.
“Everything will be fine. Don’t worry,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m sure it will. But when you love somebody then your heart is wherever they are, no matter what. That’s the way it works. You’ll meet somebody special one of these days and then you’ll know what I mean,” I said. I could say all that to Bran because I knew he wouldn’t repeat it, but the thought made me sad.
“Lana’s pretty special,” he said, and that was a welcome distraction from thinking about Cody.
“So tell me about her, then,” I said.
“She’s really smart. She got a scholarship to come here because she did such a good job in school where she’s from,” he said.
“Where is she from, anyway?” I asked.
“Vyborg. Close to Saint Petersburg. That’s where she grew up all her life,” he said.
“Really? What do her parents do
?” I asked.
“Her dad’s a dentist and her mom is a secretary, and she’s got one brother and one sister but she’s the oldest,” he said.
“Sounds nice. How long will she be here? Just a year, right?” I asked.
“Maybe two. She said she might convince her dad to pay for another year so she can learn English better, ‘cause he thinks it’ll help her get into a better college and find a better job someday. He’s got plenty of money so it’s all good,” he said.
“Maybe so,” I agreed.
“I hope she gets to stay another year. I really like her,” he said.
“It sounds like it,” I said.
“She said she likes my muscles,” he confided, striking a pose to show me his biceps. I couldn’t help laughing.
“I’m sure she does, Bran. You’re an awfully good-looking boy,” I said, still smiling.
“Yup,” he agreed, smiling himself.
“Hey, now, you’re not supposed to agree with that. You’re supposed to blow it off and mumble something under your breath about why it’s not really true,” I said.
“Why should I lie, though?” he asked. He was joking, of course, but I was glad to see it. When he first came here, Bran never smiled or laughed at all. Ever. Even now it’s like a ray of sunshine in some gray and overcast land where the clouds never fade. But when he does, you can’t help but smile back.
“Aw, shut up before you get yourself slapped, boy,” I said. He could be a pain sometimes, but I was really glad to have him around at times like that.
It crossed my mind that he wouldn’t have been, if Daddy hadn’t abandoned my mother and Jenny and me. That was the worst thing that ever happened in my whole life, I think. But now I was getting an unexpected reminder that God can and will turn even the most hurtful things into a blessing. I had living proof of it, sitting right there beside me.
God is good that way; sometimes His love brushes your cheek like a gentle caress, at times when you need it desperately and in ways you never would have guessed. It gave me hope that even this whole horrible mess with Cody would turn out well, even if I couldn’t see how.
I hoped I could manage to remember that.