to sleep I came face to face with what had almost been.
Before I started tackling the boxes in the kitchen, I changed into shorts and a tank top. I was in need of some comfort, so I threw my old black hoodie on top of it all.
I wondered what Nan would have said if she could have seen all of the changes her little house had been through. I was sad to see the old avocado appliances and white cabinets were gone, but I wasn’t about to complain about the stainless steel and cherry wood that had taken their place. The stained and ripped linoleum floors had also been replaced with a dark hard wood in varying shades. Nan’s home, even in its new and improved state with its landscaping overhaul and new coat of paint, still looked like Nan’s house…just mixed with an ad from Island Home Magazine.
I slipped out of the house through the back sliding glass doors. The investor had torn out the old screened in lanai and built a new outdoor kitchen area, complete with a brick paver deck, state of the art grill, mini-fridge, sink area, and granite counter tops. But the view was as spectacular as ever, with the mangroves floating over the dark blue waters of the Coral Pines River. It seemed to be the only thing left completely unchanged.
I opened the grill and felt around for the key I had taped to the inside of the hood. I used it to open the lock on the drawer below the grill meant to house cooking tools.
I had no such tools.
I retrieved the old tin pencil box I hid the day we moved in. The box had been doodled on and taped together more times than I could remember. It contained a small yellow glass pipe, a lighter, and a dime bag. I’d tried to be one of those women who had a glass of wine at the end of the day.
I’d never developed a taste for it.
I’d bought a couple of plastic reclining chairs from a garage sale to use on the patio. Those chairs, plus a twin bed and mattress for Georgia and a mattress and box-spring for my room, were all the furniture we had. I had planned on buying myself a real bed, along with a couch and table for the living room by perusing the weekend flea market and swap meet the week before.
My plans for more furniture had been derailed when Frank died.
I’d been calling him all throughout that day to tell him about having rented Nan’s house, and to tell him I would be by with his groceries a little later than normal. After two hours with no call back, I had a sick feeling that something was wrong.
I pulled up to his house and banged on the front door. When he didn’t answer, I tried the door...which was already unlocked. As soon as I had entered the house, I knew he was dead. It seemed to radiate a chill throughout the space.
The smell only reinforced that.
I found Frank’s body upstairs in the guest bathroom. He’d been sitting, fully clothed, in a pink tiled bathtub with no water, clutching a picture frame in one hand and an empty bottle of Wild Turkey in the other. His eyes were closed and if I didn’t have that feeling of death all around me, I would have just thought he was sleeping.
I went downstairs to use the phone and called the sheriff’s station. I waited upstairs, sitting on the bathroom rug on the floor next to Frank. He’d been alone for such a long time. I didn’t want him to be alone anymore.
It felt wrong to have them come pick him up with the bottle in his hand so I worked it out of his grip and set it on the counter. For a few minutes, I troubled over what I should do with the picture frame resting on his chest, clutched in his other hand. I finally decided not to take a chance with whatever it was getting lost when they moved him. I promised him then that I would make sure the frame would be buried with him.
I lifted his elbow just slightly and wiggled the frame free. I sat back on the fuzzy rug and flipped the frame over. It was one of those split frames that held three pictures. The first was of Jake, it looked to be right after high school. He looked a little younger than I remembered him and his hair was cropped close to his head. With a carefree smile on his face he held a fishing pole in one hand, and in the other he held up the end of his fishing line with a huge sail-cat dangling from the hook. I had touched the picture and smiled to myself. I loved seeing that he’d been happy once with his family. His life hadn’t always revolved around the bad; there seemed to have been plenty of good in that house once too.
The middle picture was of Marlena and Mason, I had seen the same picture on the desk in Frank’s office.
The last picture took me by surprise.
It was me.
I was sitting on the worn leather couch of the apartment, holding a very new born Georgia. I was smiling, but you could see the genuine fear in my eyes. Frank had taken the picture with my camera on the day I brought Georgia home from the hospital. I had it printed and hung it on the refrigerator of the apartment. I had no clue Frank had a copy, or how he went about getting it. It told me all I needed to know about how important we’d been to him.
I hoped he died knowing how important he was to us.
Frank had all three pictures tucked in his suit jacket when he was buried, along with a picture Georgia drew for him. I made sure of it.
I turned on the small radio I kept on the patio to my favorite country station, keeping the volume low so I wouldn’t wake Georgia. I collapsed onto one of my new-old chairs and packed a bowl. I sat back, lit it up, and inhaled the smoke, savoring the familiar heat in my lungs. I held it inside as long as I could before exhaling it through both my nose and mouth.
I enjoyed my high, and allowed my mind to drift to the one person I tried so hard not to think about. I traced the design of the metal pendant around my neck. I’d never been able to bring myself to take the damn thing off.
I couldn’t help but think about how great a father Jake would have been to Georgia. If he’d stayed that day, I doubt I’d have decided to keep her after all. The thought caused my heart to seize in my chest. I was definitely not going to let myself go there. Georgia was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I refused to think about a world without her in it.
I was lifted out of the comfort of my high by the sound of heavy steps in the grass beside the house. The small patio light only lit the immediate space I occupied, but it cast shadows over everything else.
“Who’s there?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew the answer.
He stood as still as stone, just a few steps from the patio. I heard the familiar sound of his Zippo lighter and saw the red glow from the end of his cigarette. I was frozen in my chair. I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out.
“Hey,” he said. His familiar voice washing over me like comfort I hadn’t known since he left.
I breathed deeply and gathered enough brain power to speak. “Hey,” I responded, trying my best to keep my voice level. “You don’t have to creep up on me in the dark, you know. You could get yourself hurt.” I mustered as much false confidence as I could, but inside I was shaking like a paint mixer.
Jake stepped out of the dark shadows and into the light. The picture above Georgia’s wall was nothing compared to the real thing. He was still dressed all in black, but the muscles beneath his tight t-shirt were larger than I remembered. They strained against the thin material. “Oh yeah?” he asked. “How you gonna hurt me?”
He flinched when he realized what he’d said. I pretended not to notice.
“With this,” I said as I pulled my .22 from my beach bag.
“Wow. You’re packing now?” He looked amused. “Let me see that thing.” I handed it over to him, and he inspected it carefully, turning it over in his hand. “Nice. You do know you shouldn’t hand your pistol over to someone just because they ask, right? You could be the one who gets hurt.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, using his words. “How you gonna hurt me?”
He laughed.
His hair was longer than it had been when he left. His face was harder and looked older than four years should have made it. But his eyes were as blue and amazing as ever. I had to squeeze my legs together to rid myself of the tingle that was happening all over me. “Maybe
handing over my gun is part of my whole plan of defense. I just give it to people and ask them to hold it for me. It distracts them while I run away.”
For the first time in over four years, the smile I’d been seeing in my dreams was now right in front of me.
I almost fell over.
I was seventeen all over again.
“I would probably come up with a plan B if I were you,” he said, pushing his hair behind his ear.
I liked the longer hair. It was hot... and I was getting hot. Too hot. I took off my hoodie and threw it on the chair next to me. The night breeze kissed my skin, and I sighed in relief. “That’s better,” I muttered.
“Bee!” Jake exclaimed. His eyes went wide.
My heart fluttered when I heard him say my nickname again.
“What?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t dropped my pipe.
“Your arm. Holy shit, you did it.” He reached out to me and right before he was about to touch me he pulled back. “It’s fucking amazing,” he said softly.
My tattoos. He was gawking at my tattoos. After Georgia was born, I’d decided to get the sleeve Jake and I had talked about. It started at my shoulder and went down my right arm, ending at my wrist. I’d spent endless hours in the tattoo chair, starting with a recreation of one of my favorite sunset pictures I’d taken myself on my shoulder, followed by the angel of death riding a motorcycle down my bicep. Underneath that was the scar painting I loved so much, and on my forearm was The Hellen Keller quote I’d used to describe how I felt about Jake. Its winding script stopped just short of my wrist. Each line and mark offered by my scars had been used as part of the design. When people looked at me, they were looking at the marks I’d chosen for myself, not the marks others had forced upon me. It’d been liberating.
I wished Jake had been there to see what I’d done.
“Why didn’t you ring the bell?” I asked as he handed me my gun. I checked to make sure the safety was on before placing it back in the pocket of my bag.
He was still gawking at my ink. “You’re just…fuck.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth and goatee, glancing toward the house and turning serious. “Oh, I didn’t want to wake up…”
“Georgia,” I finished for him.
“Georgia,” he repeated. “Like your Nan.” I nodded, happy he remembered Nan’s name. “She’s cute.” He didn’t look mad or angry when he said it. He just looked tired.
“Yeah, she sure is,” I said proudly. It was thoughtful of him not to ring the bell and wake her up. I was surprised his bike hadn’t already done that, though I hadn’t heard it, either. “Did you ride here?”
“Nah,” he said. “Bike’s at the apartment. I walked.”
“You walked all that way?”
Jake shrugged his shoulders and took a long drag of his cigarette. He shifted from one foot to the other, blowing the smoke out through his nose.
“Sit.” I patted the empty chair next to me. “You wanna hit?” I handed him the pipe as he sat down. He hesitated at first, searching my face for something. I had no doubt he was wondering how civil we could be. The man had just lost his father, after all. It was the least we could be to each other.
Jake dropped into the chair, lit the bowl, and took a hit. I reached over to the mini-fridge and pulled out two Coronas, handing him one.
And just like that, it was back.
The silence.
I can’t say it was as comfortable as it’d always been. But it was as close to comfortable as it could be under the circumstances. His face softened after a few minutes, and I knew he could feel it, too.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I said, taking the pipe from him and lighting it for my next hit. My hands shook. I was almost as nervous as the first time we were alone. I needed to be much higher to be this close to him.
Jake shook his head. “Seems like I should be saying that to you about him. Your words gave me a closure I didn’t think I’d be finding. Ever.”
I guess he’d heard my eulogy.
“Yeah, well... he helped me out when no one else would, and I honestly don’t know where I would be now without him.” I heard myself and hoped he wouldn’t take that as an insult. I certainly hadn’t meant it that way.
“How long have you been back here?” He gestured to the house.
“Just a few days.”
“And before that, you were...?” His questions were cautious, like he was trying to figure something out.
“The apartment at the shop. Your dad let me stay there when he found out I had been sleeping in the truck.” The words slipped out, and I instantly regretted them.
Jake bent over and put his face to his knees, his hands cupping the back of his head. “Why the fuck were you in the truck again?” he asked. When he lifted up his face, he looked enraged.
“I had nowhere else to go,” I said firmly. But, Jake seemed tortured in a way I didn’t remember him being all those years ago.
“When I...” He halted, as if he were thinking these things for the first time as he said them now. His tone softened. “When I took off, I didn’t mean you had to leave the apartment. You could’ve stayed there forever, for all the fuck I cared.”
“Yeah, well, it was only a few days. And nobody blew anyone else on the hood this time.” That broke the tension a little, and we both laughed. “Then, your dad left me a note, in the truck. He called me a hobo, and left me a huge set of janitor’s keys for the apartment and for your truck.”
Jake looked comforted by that. He relaxed and let his head fall back against the chair. “I saw your postcards.”
For the past couple years, I’d been selling my landscape pictures as postcards in the gift shops around town. They were selling well, and recently one of my better-selling cards had been chosen for a state calendar. It wasn’t going to make me rich. But with that in addition to my job at the shop, I could take care of my baby and myself. That was all that mattered.
“Where did you see them?”
“Reggie.” He turned to face me. “He sent me a socket I needed to fix my bike. When I opened the box, there were your cards. He stuck ten or twelve of them in there. I didn’t even need to see the signature in the corner to know they were yours.”
“Oh.”
“They’re fucking beautiful, Bee.”
I didn’t know what to think of that. “Thanks.” I could almost feel my heart beating back to life with each word he spoke. Soon, I would be back to where I was four years ago, melting in his hands. I couldn’t listen to him be nice to me. I wanted him to yell at me, be cruel to me— scream at me if he had to. It would have been so much easier to let him go all over again if I’d hated him, if he hated me. Instead, his kind words caused so much conflict within.
I was so distracted with Jake I didn’t hear the sliding glass door open. When Jake’s gaze widened and focused past my chair, I knew someone was behind me. I turned to see Georgia, standing on the patio, rubbing her eyes with her fists. Her night shirt was tucked into her underwear, and her favorite Raggedy Ann doll was being strangled in the crook of her arm.
“Georgia, baby, what are you doing up?”
She came over and crawled onto my lap, almost knocking me over as she did. I was glad I’d already put the pipe back in its hiding place. I may not have been June Cleaver, but I did my best to keep up appearances.
“I couldn’t sleep.” She shifted around in my lap until she was facing away from me. She didn’t even notice our guest until she’d stopped squirming. “Mama?” She tugged at my shirt and pointed to Jake.
“Georgia, this is an old friend of Mama’s. This is Jake.” To my surprise, Jake held out his hand, and she immediately took it.
“Pleased to meet you, Georgia.” He looked her over cautiously. Neither of them took their hands away from the other. They were both smiling, like they were sharing a secret I wasn’t in on.
Knowing about the pretending we’d done with his picture, I was nervous about what would happen next. She left my lap and crawled r
ight into Jake’s, as if she had done it a hundred times before. He didn’t seem to mind. He studied her like she was a puzzle he was trying to figure out while she climbed all over him.
Georgia was comfortably snuggled onto Jake’s chest with her head nestled in the crook of his arm before I could stop her. “Baby girl, why don’t you let our guest relax on his chair by himself, and I’ll tuck you back into bed,” I said carefully. “You need to go back to sleep.”
“But, Mama,” she said as her eyes lit up. “I can’t go to sleep now. Daddy’s here!”
Fuck my life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I TUCKED GEORGIA BACK INTO HER BED and sang her to sleep. Lullabies? Not for my kid. The song of the evening, per her request, had been “Bennie and the Jets” by Elton John. That was definitely Frank’s fault. He had given her an iPod for Christmas last year, pre-loaded with her favorite songs from his record collection.
I did my best, but I was no Elton.
Wherever Frank was now, I knew he was laughing at me.