Arizona Allspice (54 page)

 I get up from the small dining table and walk out the front door. I have no jacket, hat, poncho or umbrella to shield me from the whipping rain that meets me once I open it. My entire body is burning with shame and misery and longing. Once I step out into it, I savor how the icy rain feels against my skin. I just keep walking through the cold rain, fighting against the wind. Before I know it I’m halfway home, on the other side of the trailer park, and in the middle of this monster of a storm. My boots are heavy with water, my clothes stick to my skin. My warm breath is a puff of fog. My hair is matted to my scalp and my tears mix with the rain.

Denise’s words from high school echo in my mind:
You don’t have a heart!
That’s not true. Just because I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve, doesn’t mean I don’t have one. If I don’t have a heart, what is this inside my chest ripping apart? “Make me numb,” I plead the rain, but the rain can’t wash away what’s inside of me.

******

I stand inside my room not knowing what to do with myself or if I’ll slip into madness or rage. I grasp some handfuls of my hair and try to forget the sensation of Elaine’s fingers moving through it. I imagine striking a match to my house so that I won’t be reminded of all the moments we shared in its rooms. My heart feels like it’s in a bear trap, but…I can’t help wondering if Elaine is okay right now. I told her she was killing me. It’s not her fault that I love her. I shouldn’t have made her feel guilty about that.
Shit, Joey! Have a backbone.
But I don’t have a backbone when it comes to her.

 I run out of my bedroom to apologize. She’s already gone. I notice her glasses sitting on the table. I glance at the window and see the dark outline of her truck outside. I could catch her before she leaves. I grab the glasses and run full speed out into the rain. I run to the passenger side of her truck. Once I’m inches in front of the window I realize the truck is empty. In disbelief, I try the door and it opens. I stick my head in. The truck is empty. I shut the door and stand stupidly in the rain.
She’s still in the house?

A bolt of lightning makes contact with the ground nearby. The sound is so loud that
goosebumps
rise up on every inch of skin on my body. “Holy…” I whisper. I hurry back inside the house. “Elaine!” I yell. I search all across the small trailer, tracking mud across the floor. She’s absolutely nowhere. Maybe she ran to a friend’s house. Which of our friends lives closest to me?
Think, Joey!
It takes me half a minute to figure it out because I’m still spooked from the lightning.  

I call Denise.
Then Marisol.
Then Brittany, then Tia, then
Morghan
.
Elaine’s not with any of them. Finally, desperately, I call her house. Her uncle answers.

“Frank? It’s Joey. Did Elaine get home yet?”

“No. Is everything okay?”

“She left my house and I’ve called all her friends and they haven’t seen her. Her truck is still sitting in front of my house, but I can’t find her. She must have ran out into the rain and gone some place. That was five minutes ago. Are you sure she’s not at home?”

“You’re kidding. She ran out in
this
?” There’s a pause and then the sound of window blinds rattling. “I can barely see a foot past the window. Oh my God…I think I see her. She’s
walking
towards the house!”

My stomach drops. She walked all the way home in this storm?

“What in the world has gotten into her?” Frank says, his voice sounding far away. He must have been setting the phone down in its cradle because next the line goes dead. I give Elaine and her uncle two minutes to talk to each other and then I pick up the phone and call their number again. Frank answers. I ask to speak to Elaine.

“Now’s not a good time, Joe. She hurt her knee real bad coming up the front steps and she’s really upset. I’ll tell her you called.”

“Thanks,” I answer weakly.

******

By the time my house is in view, I am shivering violently. My fingertips and toes are completely numb. I jog the last couple of yards as I visualize the inside of my warm house and warm bed. I reach the aluminum steps to the door and on the second step I lose my footing. My boot slips to the
right,
my ankle goes to the left. I grab for the railing to steady myself but it is slick with water and I can’t hold on. I fall down and my left knee slams into the edge of the step. I hiss from the pain and close my eyes. Exhausted, I just stay down, on all fours, sobbing. Then two strong hands wrap around my upper arms and try to lift me. I peer through the water dripping down my face. It’s not Joey helping me up. It’s Uncle Frank. What made me think Joey would rescue me? He’s tired of fixing all my problems when I have nothing to offer in return.

“What were you thinking, sweetheart? Let’s get you inside quick.”

“My knee,” I cry, “I slipped on the stairs.”

Uncle Frank helps me to a chair, runs to the bathroom for a towel and runs back to wrap me up in it. “What’s going on? Did the truck break down?”

“No.”

“Did, did Joey hurt you? Did he put his hands on you?”

“Of course not,” I sputter. Uncle Frank gives me a look that says he wants a real explanation. “I wanted to come home and the rain felt nice at first. I just wasn’t thinking, Uncle Frankie. I’m sorry,” I sniffle and try to breathe. I can’t stop crying and it’s making me panic.

 “You’ve gotta get out of those wet clothes quick. I don’t want you getting sick.” He helps me limp into my bedroom. The phone starts to ring. “Get into some warm clothes and get under the covers,” he instructs. “I’m gonna get you an ice pack for your knee and some coffee to warm you up. I’ll get the phone.”

I spent the next three days in bed; in and out of sleep, in and out of pain. I barely ate and barely spoke. I cried whenever I had the privacy to do so. My sore knee and slight cold came in handy as excuses for my pitiful condition. Miss Amelia dropped by on the first day with homemade chicken soup and a hug. I apologized for the way I disrespected her. She also gave me my glasses back. “Joey wanted to make sure you got those,” she said and that was all that was said about him. But I thought about him endlessly, so much I thought I might descend into madness.

All my fairytale hopes for romance that I had when I was a little girl had been dismissed, pushed down inside of me and forgotten about for so long. My hopes were in a neglected dusty jar, on the very back shelf in my heart. My connection with Joey gave the jar a little shove towards the edge. When Joey gave up on me, severed me from him, it knocked the jar right off the shelf. I thought that the hopes, expectations and desires in that old jar had rotted away by now but…the jar shattered and out flutters every last one of them, as alive as the day they were formed. I’m
in love
with Joey. I’ve loved him from the beginning. That’s why Manny asked me all those questions about Joey on visiting day. My twin knows me better than I know myself.

But just because I want him doesn’t mean I’m ready for him. There’s still a lot of anxiety surrounding the idea. The same anxiety that had me so distressed I couldn’t even give Joey the chance to prove we could work.

On the fourth day without Joey, I finally had the energy to get out of bed. Uncle Frank had driven my truck back from Auntie Amelia’s house the day after I left it there, but I didn’t have any desire to use it. The rest of the week I kept myself busy by cleaning the house, trying out new recipes, organizing family photo albums, writing comforting letters to Dad and reading. I even dug up an old paint set from the depths of my closet and started sitting in the backyard and painting the desert landscape. They weren’t half bad. I just painted the sky the color of his eyes, the soil the color of his hair, and the stones scattered across the ground were his freckles.

The high point of the week was when Marisol and Brittany visited. It was truly unexpected. I didn’t think they would bother to see me once they realized Joey wanted nothing to do with me.  Not that I think Joey would ever tell them to ostracize me. I just figured my life would go back to “normal,” with everybody keeping their distance from me. Brittany got me caught up on all the town gossip and upcoming parties. She assured me Joey was going with them to the party on Friday and suggested I come. I declined.

Marisol delivered my copies of the photos Denise took at Cesar’s house party. Two of them were of Joey and me. One was silly, with us flashing the camera devil horns like we were rock stars, and the other was a picture Denise secretly snapped of us dancing and smiling at one another. I tucked them into the journal Joey bought for me. Marisol suggested I come to her house for dinner, but I wanted to spend some time alone. They understood.

Though I made myself busy, filling every hour with some new activity or chore, the days dragged by.
Maybe it was because in the back of my mind I couldn’t wait for Manny to come home. June 2
^nd
is the big day.
Six more days to go.

******

“What’s this I hear about you leaving my sister in tears? Uncle Frank told me she’s moping around the house.”

“
Now
you
wanna
call me? I’ve
been needing
to talk to my best friend for weeks and you decide to call after I’ve already screwed everything up?” I almost yell at him but I’m still too emotionally exhausted to do so.

“It’s not easy for me to call you, Joey. You’re not in my situation, alright? It’s hard to explain.”

“Look, I’m not putting myself out there anymore.” I pause, remembering the day at the mall when I encouraged Elaine to ‘put herself out there’ to make friends.
Good
ol
’ reliable friends, like me
, I mutter in my head. “I’m done.”

“Ha!” Manny laughs. “Who do you and Elaine think you’re
foolin
’? Plus, you can’t back out now. We had a deal. You are
going
to keep your end of it, man. I know she wants to be with you.”

  I roll my eyes. I’m starting to realize that all this ‘She
does
love you’ crap that I’m hearing from family and friends is just their way of keeping my hopes up so I won’t commit suicide or something. I am one more ‘Don’t give up, Joey’ from telling someone to go play in traffic.

Frank has become my ride to and from physical therapy. He’s not as good company as Elaine was, but he’s a nice guy. I might just give the relationship he has with Mom my blessing. At my latest therapy session, my therapist Gerard directs me through the usual exercises that lately have become more boring than annoying or painful.

“
A
capite
ad
calcum
…” he begins in an official sounding baritone voice and waves his hands over my head and then my legs. I raise an eyebrow. When did incantations become part of my therapy? “It means ‘from head to heel’ in Latin,” he explains and starts again.
“A
capite
ad
calcum
,
I now pronounce you…fit for the field.”

“Are you serious?” I grin.  I jump up, give him a quick hug and race out of his office.

“Don’t forget to warm up!” Gerard shouts after me.

With my mesh bag of soccer balls and plastic cones slung over my shoulder, I jog onto the empty soccer field. I yank a ball out of the bag, throw the bag down and drop the ball in front of me. Smiling, I freestyle across the whole field: dribbling, popping the ball up and doing knee juggles, bouncing it up to my head, doing a head stall and then letting it drop back down to my legs to do some shin rolls. Finally, I start dribbling it straight down the field like my life depends on it. I’m running towards the goal full speed. My blood is really flowing and I start feeling an adrenaline high, even though I have no audience and this isn’t a match. I take into account the things I learned in therapy about my vision, focus on the ball, and I don’t let myself hesitate because if I doubt myself the ball won’t respect me and go where I want it to. With a powerful kick, I drive it right into the back of the goal. I howl victoriously and generally make a bunch of animal noises.
  Man, I love this sport!
I laugh to myself and then start setting up a drill.