Curtain Call (5 page)

 

 

“You
are
coming, right?”

Hayley came into my room, a brush in one hand and her unplugged hair dryer in the other. I put a bracelet on and asked, “Why wouldn't I?”

“Oh come on, you haven't been in a while,” she said. “I'll be ready to leave in fifteen minutes.”

I watched her leave as I mentally calculated the last time I had been to my parents' house for dinner. Obviously I had been home for Christmas. Then we had dinner on New Year's Day. That had been the last time because Josh had been there. Ever since our break I had been avoiding family because I just couldn't deal with the disappointed looks like I had done something wrong. Josh had been a part of my family, and that made this break all the harder.

I added a ring Josh had given me for Christmas. At the time I had thought it was a promise ring. Looking at it now, I knew that's what he had had in mind. Yet he'd never said anything. If he had wanted to marry me so badly why hadn't he talked about it more? My fear was that it had everything to do with our physical relationship. Maybe he just thought it was the next logical step and decided to go through the motions.

Heaving a soul- deep sigh, I turned and grabbed my purse off the hook near my door. I had mentioned to my mom that Josh and I were taking a break. Her response had been quiet and confused. She had asked a few questions, but hadn't gone so far as to pry for the reason. I didn't know if she had told my dad or not, but he wasn't really a concern. He'd support me no matter what. My older sister, Harlow, and Grandma were the ones who really made my stomach knot.

And I was sure they would be there tonight.

Fifteen minutes later, Hayley and I waited downstairs for our dad to pick us up. We shivered in the entryway to our apartment building.

“I wish I still had a car,” I said, stuffing my hands deeper into my pockets.

“That piece of crap wouldn't have helped in this cold anyway,” Hayley grumbled.

I knew better than to argue with her, so I pressed my face against the glass. Thankfully my dad's car slid up to the curb minutes later. We dashed through the cold to the warmth of the car. Hayley got to the car first, so she claimed the front seat. I slipped gratefully into the backseat. Hayley began to chatter immediately about some fundraiser her sorority was doing.

“Hi, sweetheart.” My dad greeted me and gave Hayley a playful ruffle of the hair.

With a weak smile, I returned his greeting. The concern on his face told me he knew about the situation with Josh. Who knew what Mom had told him?

I closed my eyes as we drove across town. Ever since my fight with Josh at the club, we hadn't talked. The week had been one of extreme emotions, and every night without fail, I reached for my phone to call him as I curled up in bed. And each night I held off. A break meant that I needed to give myself time to grow and fix what was broken. The only problem was I had no idea where to start. And yet, I needed to be fair to Josh too. I was ashamed to admit that until Twisters I had been so wrapped up in my own emotions that I hadn't really thought about Josh's feelings. Thinking of Josh hurting made everything all the harder. Even though this break between us was
for
me, I couldn't make it all
about
me.

Mom greeted us at the door, handing our coats to Dad before he had his off. She shooed us into the living room where our two-year-old niece Britney sat coloring. She had two fat crayons gripped in her chubby little hands, and she was creating her masterpiece on Mom's coffee table. The coloring book lay long forgotten on the floor.

“Hi Britty-brit,” Hayley said in a singsong voice, scooping the little girl into her arms and making her giggle.

I sank down onto the sofa then leaned over to see the thick wax lines running helter-skelter along the top of the pretty nut colored wood. “Wow, Britty, that's a pretty picture. Did you show your mama?” I asked.

Hayley set Britney down on her feet as the little girl giggled. “Mama!” she called. “Mama!”

A moment later, Harlow appeared from the kitchen looking very much herself in a tight dress, but as she collected her daughter into her arms for a big hug, she transformed into someone I still didn't recognize. Her eyes glowed as she gazed down at the little girl.

“Mama, look,” Britney said, pride coloring her voice as she pointed to the coffee table.

“Oh, pretty,” Harlow cooed. “But Britty, we don't draw on Grandma's table, do we?”

Britney tipped her head to one side as she looked up at Harlow. “No-no.”

“That's right, no-no,” Harlow said. “Let's color a picture of Elmo for Grandma. Look, here he is in the coloring book. Maybe Auntie Hannah can help you while I clean up this table.”

Harlow handed me a box of crayons, and I took my place on the floor beside Britney and the picture of a wide-eyed and wide-mouthed Elmo. We sat coloring while Hayley went into the kitchen to help Mom, and Harlow brought in a cleaning pad and spray.

The moment felt magical to me for some reason. I paused, red crayon in mid-air, trying to place what felt so right about the moment. Looking around at my family doing such ordinary things, I couldn't figure out what was striking me right in the heart. Britney leaned her warm little body against mine, and I wanted to stop time.

Then the doorbell rang and reality shattered my mystical moment. Grandma and Duke were here. I could hear Grandma singing a made up song to Dad. She sounded manic, the lilting tone of her voice tinny and high. Duke rounded the corner, and his face lit up as he saw us.

“I love coloring!” He snagged a crayon from the box and dropped to the floor beside Britney. “Who can Great Grandpa Duke color?”

If I hadn't known better, I would have said that Britney rolled her eyes and scooted closer to me. “No-no,” she said.

Undeterred by a two-year-old's rejection, Duke turned his attention to me. “So what's new with you, Hannah Banana? How's Josh? Is he here?”

I froze. These were the very questions I wanted to avoid. Wrapping my arms around Britney, I felt her settle against me, and a calm settled over me. I ignored Duke's question and said, “How's the job? I heard you got promoted.”

Duke smiled but it seemed forced. The corners of his mouth went taut from the effort. “Not in front of the ild-chay.”

What in the world? He was speaking some hybrid of English and pig Latin because he didn't want to talk about his risqué job as manager of a strip club in front of a two-year-old. Suppressing a laugh, I said, “Would you mind coloring with Britty for a while? I think Mom needs my help in the kitchen.”

Duke's whole body relaxed. “Absolutely. Miss Britney and I love coloring, don't we, girl?”

Britney looked up at me with wide eyes. She seemed to be begging me not to leave her with her weird faux great grandfather. My heart melted.

“Actually I think I'll take her into the kitchen and let her see what we're having,” I said. “I read that it's good for kids to get acquainted with their food before it's served.”

As I picked Britney up, Duke nodded seriously. “That makes so much sense,” he said. “I think I'll just stay in here and finish this picture.”

I left Duke to finish coloring Elmo, and found Mom in the kitchen with Harlow and Grandma. When she saw me, Grandma threw her arms around me, Britney and all, and fussed with my hair. I looked to Mom for help, but she avoided my gaze.

Grandma sniffled and released me. “Why didn't you call me when you started to have trouble with Josh?”

I narrowed my eyes in my mom's general direction, and extricated myself from Grandma's arms. The silent pinch of anguish made me gasp. This was not the right time to have this conversation. I remembered again why I had been avoiding my family.

“It's my business, Grandma,” I said as politely as I could.

Grandma dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “Perhaps I could have thrown you a party at work,” she paused. “I could have taught you to pole dance. That often seems to make things livelier.”

I froze. “What is it with everyone and sex?”

Not waiting for a reply, I set a very startled Britney down on the floor, and stormed out to the family room. Anger choked me and a lump formed in my throat. The sofa creaked as I sat down hard.

My head was swimming as I tried to sort out my thoughts. Each time a partial moment of clarity surfaced, it was slammed back down by some other minute insight. Was I really angry at Grandma? Or was I mad at Mom for saying something in the first place? Should I have stayed away longer?

As if on cue to my last question, Harlow appeared at the doorway. She hovered there for a moment, and then joined me on the sofa. I noticed how…content she looked as she sank back onto the faded floral print that had clearly seen better days.

“We're glad you finally decided to come out of hiding,” Harlow said. “But if all you're going to do is snap at the people who care about you, then just go back to your cave or under your rock or whatever.”

I gritted my teeth. Typical Harlow. “Thanks for the advice, sis. I think maybe I'll take it.”

She grabbed my arm as I moved to stand, and pulled me down beside her. “Look,” she said. “Everyone's been really worried about you. Grandma doesn't mean any harm and neither do I. I'm just saying you should lighten up a little where Grandma is concerned. She's always been like this.”

Grudgingly, I nodded. Grandma hadn't changed, I had. There was a time not so long ago that her blatant references to sex or her strip club act simply made me blush and stammer. That was before: before sex became routine with Josh, before I let myself get caught up in the minutiae of our relationship, and before I had lost myself to the everyday life of being someone's girlfriend.

“How is it that even my grandmother thinks that sex is no big deal?” I muttered, mainly to myself, as I stared at my hands knotted together in my lap.

From the corner of my eye I saw Harlow lean forward. The sofa springs grumbled as she moved. “Did you and Josh finally do it?” she asked. I pursed my lips, unsure if I wanted to have a sisterly bonding moment. Harlow continued, “That's it, isn't it? Why you're so mad at Grandma right now? Is that why you and Josh broke up? Did he…?”

Something about the way she trailed off, the insinuation of something dark or nasty about Josh made my skin bristle. I was allowed to be mad at him and say stupid things to him, but no one else was.

“You
know
Josh is a perfect gentleman,” I said. “We made the decision together. But…it changed everything in a lot of ways. I don't understand why I'm such a freak.”

Harlow was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “If you didn't enjoy sleeping with Josh that's one thing, but sex complicates a lot of lives, and a lot of us can't just move on.”

Britney. Britney was Harlow's complication. Of course, I'd always known that but she seemed…happy, so I guess I'd always dismissed the difficulty it had caused her.

“I love Britty more than anything, but do you really think I wanted to be a single mother at twenty-one?” Harlow asked. “I had big dreams. And I was so full of myself. Plus, I was on birth control. So what could go wrong? The day I found out I was pregnant, Christian left. Who can blame him for being freaked out, right? We'd only been dating a month. I just thought he needed some time, but he never came back. I called him when Britney was born. You know, to let him know he had a daughter. You know what he told me? Not to expect child support.”

“He's a jerk,” I said, reaching out to touch Harlow's arm.

Unshed tears made her eyes shiny and too bright. “You know what else he accused me of? Getting pregnant on purpose, so he'd stay and marry me.”

We sat in silence for a long time. Thinking about Harlow's situation made me dizzy. When I told Josh about the pregnancy scare, his immediate reaction was that he'd marry me. But then, I always pictured us married anyway. How could I have taken that for granted?

“I just…lost myself,” I said finally, helplessness settling over me and leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. “Why couldn't I have just kept enjoying things the way they were?”

“You're a lot more serious than me or Hayley. Things aren't really casual for you,” Harlow said with a shrug.

“Things have never been casual with Josh. I just didn't want to end up like…” I broke off, shocked that the words had nearly left my mouth. Shame flooded me, heating my face. I looked away.

“Like what?” Harlow asked softly. “Like me?”

“No, of course not,” I said too quickly.

Harlow snorted. “Yeah, right. It's okay. I get it, you know. But why did you guys start in the first place?”

The question still stumped me. “It seemed like the natural evolution of the relationship. We'd been together for five years. We had a future planned. Everyone else was doing it.”

I thought back on that first night with Josh and hesitated. In so many ways, it had been wonderful. He was attentive and patient with me. Afterwards, he'd held me and told me how much he loved me. He'd even given me the promise ring shortly after that.

But in other ways, it was the start of our downward spiral where sex was…expected. I had always been physically attracted to Josh. So much so that sometimes I thought we might burst into flames, but the flames had ebbed into embers over a couple of months. That was what made me think that maybe sex wasn't the best thing for us. It was suddenly our focus. Instead of playing a game of basketball together, we were in bed together. Instead of going out to dinner, we ordered delivery and never left his apartment.

One could rationalize that if we couldn't handle sex during dating, how would we sustain a marriage for fifty years? I think that the sheer idea that my sister had gotten pregnant before she was ready had me coming up short. Not to mention that we weren't anywhere close to being able to afford a baby. And it just felt wrong to be doing something I'd been raised to say no to until my wedding night. What was the purpose of marriage if I didn't wait? I loved Josh on every level and I knew he loved me. But this consuming doubt and hesitation I felt wasn't okay. And it wasn't fair to Josh.