Single Player: Humor, Love, Breast Cancer and a Gaming Girl... (12 page)

“Just tell me one thing? And please be honest okay?”  Here goes.

“Of course. Anything for you sweet cheeks.” Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

“How old are you?” I whisper the words out of fear because I am one hundred percent desperate for him to answer with a number over the age of eighteen, and that’s just to keep me from vomiting. Something over twenty-one would be preferable, my age or above, ideal.

“Thirty.”

“YES! Oh, thank sweet baby Jesus. How about Mrnotso?  Is he also thirty?” Please say yes, momma needs an older man!

“Yeah, actually we graduated the same year, then he went on to med school but it’s been a while since we’ve hung out.”

HOLY HELL! MED SCHOOL! I’ve landed myself a doctor! WHOOP! WHOOP! Maybe he can fix me and our love story will read something like this: One day there was a man who played video games. He met a girl who loved them too. They met online, he fixed her mind and now they will forever live in love and be fine! (We’re in a judgment-free zone here, people and I’m not a poet and I know it.  Sorry.  Humor me.)

“Well, I guess a doctor is okay if you’re into that sort of thing,” I AM! And now I must do a silent victory lap around the living room. “Don’t say anything to him, okay?  That’ll just make things weird and I was just curious.”  Then I hear something in the background and suddenly come to the horrible realization that we’re not alone anymore. Oh please... please… please… oh merciful game gods of the universe make that be PaulGayman.

“PrettyPanties? Were you just asking Games about me?” He sounds either annoyed or flattered. I so don’t understand his inflections enough yet to figure this out.  His character, I can do, but not the human person it’s attached to! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! Ouch, now I’ve stubbed my big toe from all my jumping about and I can’t hold back the holler that shoots from my big, stupid, trouble-making mouth. Great, just great! Now, not only do I sound guilty but also needy. Awesome.

I’m destroying my cool-girl gaming rep as we speak and there’s absolutely no way to come back from this and remain in the cool-zone! What do I do? You guessed it. I yank the sparkly headset from my head and throw it across the room like it’s about to give me the flu (the real flu is no joke people, you’d totally throw that headset off too) and run to my room to hide under the covers. How will I ever face my true love again?

Seeing that it’s the middle of the night and my go-to habit of gaming is indefinitely cancelled, I am forced to do the only thing I can to pass the time. Work. 

For me work is a means to an end, nothing more. I am not under the delusion that you must be fulfilled by your job to be happy. Are you going to tell me that the drive-thru girl who brings you those greasy nuggets is fulfilled?  Okay then. Lucky for me, I have my inheritance so I will never be forced to work outside of my home if I don’t feel the need to and quite clearly I do NOT feel the need.  Keeping in mind I don’t feel the need to love my job I chose to write for two reasons and two reasons alone.  First, and most importantly, it’s an indoor activity and second, I learned early on that it came naturally to me so that’s why I do it, it’s indoors and its easy, not love.

Every day of my life, from the time I was twelve until today I’ve done what one of my first therapist suggested and journaled. Her words were, “Cecilia, journaling will provide you with a positive, healthy release of your feelings in a safe and private place.” Having no motherly wisdom to follow and a father desperate to help me deal with the struggles of having my only parent stuck in the armpit of chemo, I took her advice and I journaled. Not once have I regretted the time I’ve spent writing out my thoughts. Every time I put pen to paper I begin to feel my stress melt down from a tight ball of wax into a large, warm puddle where I find myself much more relaxed.  Because of its success I should probably amend my previous comments about therapy being a joke and add journaling as the only other positive thing I received apart from the breathing/counting thing that I use so often.

Now that I’ve decided to work I need to  check to see if the author I’m ghost writing for received the last note I sent her explaining that I’d like to add a chapter on Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Seeing as my inbox appears to be pretty empty tonight this should only take a sec.

In order to remain focused I continually mutter, “Do not look at the Victoria Secrets sales ads, do not look at the Victoria Secrets sales ads...” And then, as if I’ve somehow summoned it, I see a notification that causes me intense joy. I immediately start to jump up and down on my bed as I read the reminder about the upcoming Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. That’s my Super Bowl, people!  Master and I will have an awesome party! Be jealous because it will be Off. The. Hook! 

After I’ve allotted a week’s worth of energy into jumping on my bed I’m rewarded when the email I was waiting for dings through. Thankfully it’s from the author I’m writing for giving me the final go ahead on writing that chapter I wanted to delve further into.

Once my Yahoo! account is opened, it is a mandatory rule of mine to clean out and sort all of the unopened emails (Shocking, I know). As I’m finishing up I see one last unopened reference line roll onto the screen and groan in frustration as  I notice that it’s from the not so funny author of the aforementioned, This is Your Mother... PLEASE OPEN THIS Letter that I keep receiving.

Lately I’ve received this email more and more frequently and I’ve had just about enough. It’s high time for me to bite back. Before I can change my mind I quickly click it open and start browsing the page. The first thing that hits me is that this appears to have come from a state prison somewhere in Louisiana. Then I’m totally creeped out because that means some inmate in Louisiana has my personal email address. I’m overcome with gratitude when I see that there aren’t any naked pictures attached, that would’ve been too much for me to handle today. 

There is only one brief paragraph on the page and so far I’ve read it about, I don’t know, a zillion times. I’m quite certain that if I keep reading it that eventually it will decide to say something different, something that may make sense because, no way in HELL is my MOTHER some filthy inmate and not a LOVELY women in PRETTY PANTIES! UN… AC… CEPT… ABLE! You’d have guessed correct if you thought that maybe I was freaking out now. Yep, that’s happening. 

This woman/prisoner in PRISON is claiming to be one Charlotte St. May, formally from West Palm Beach, Florida, where she is the mother (HA!) of one Conner Caldwell St. May and one Cecilia St. May, Ex-wife of one Mr. Caldwell St. May. She goes on to ask about my father (THE NERVE) and to tell me she is coming back to Florida after her release (FROM PRISON PEOPLE… PRISON!)  Immediately I start counting aloud and somewhere around breath seventy-five one-thousand I fall into a deep and fitful sleep. 

Startling awake hours later I panic when I remember the reason I fell asleep counting. I pick up the phone and text my brother this message:

Come.

Mom is jail-bird, true story. 

Found me.  

Need u.

C

“Cee, it’s me, where are you? CEE! Cecilia!” I can hear Connor walking in and out of my bedroom, bathroom and living room trying to find me but I can’t make my mouth move for the giant fear I have of vomiting or crying or worse still, both in tandem. 

“CEE!? GOD DAMNIT! ANSWER ME!” He’s frantic by the time he throws my closet door open and finds me curled up on the floor, wrapped in my comforter like a baby in swaddling.

“Cee? Come here.” He’s never seen me like this, this was Ashton’s territory. He’d have known right where to find me and then he’d do the thing where he holds me or plays me music or kisses my hair but it would have been easy for him. This? This is not easy for my brother. My behavior has him shook up, close to tears and maybe like he’s about to call the looney police to come and collect me. 

“How long have you been in here?” 

“I don’t know. Ever since I opened that email from the prisoner I guess and, I really have to pee pretty badly.”

“You guess? And when was that? And why haven’t you peed?” I look at the bottom right of the computer monitor and see it says 2:00 pm and I remember that I opened the email at about 2:15 am. I’ve been in here for a solid twelve hours in some kind of shocked, sleepy, stupor unable to figure out how to fit an underwear model into the algorithm for inmate/prisoner. Do they even get to wear underwear?

“Um, sometime last night?” I’ll play dumb.

“When last night?” He’s going to make me say it, he’s one of those deal with things head-on kind of people. He says that’s why he can go outside. I say whatever.

“Two-ish?”             

“Get up. Get up now. We’re going to get food and coffee in you. You’re going to shower and then I’m going to look into this. Give me your laptop.” NO WAY!

“NO WAY! Everything is on here. No one touches this but me.” I say while clutching the computer to my chest like he’s some kind of computer thief.

“Okay. Let’s just do all the other stuff I mentioned first and then we’ll both deal with this. Together, okay?”

“Okay.” He pulls me and my laptop into a cumbersome hug doing his best to give me the comfort I’m after, but he’s no Ashton. With the memory of his easy reassurance assaulting me I pull back and end this futile attempt at intimacy. It’s not the same, nevertheless it is sweet that he’s trying.

“I’ll hop in the shower if you make the coffee for us.  Give me ten.” I jump across the room unwilling to drop my comforter until I reach the confines of my bathroom. I fold it up and set it on the counter where it will remain clean and dry. Then take the quickest shower of my adult life eager to see what my brother and I can find out about this “mother” person.

***

The day goes by in a blur of fact checking. Liddy joins the research committee and bonus, brings over Chinese food for dinner. It’s from a place I’ve never been to before and that’s when it dawns on me that there are probably a lot of new places that I don’t even know exist. 

For example, this place we just had, Hi-Nu’s, before this we always got Chinese from Bamboo Empire, which was an awesome place right around the corner from our dad’s house. Since Dad passed however, I haven’t had Chinese food for many reasons, the biggest being that Ashton refused to bring it over on account of my complaining about the high salt content and forthright refusal to eat “that garbage”. If I’ve not been clear, my health concerns are ever changing and growing rapidly. So, now I have a mom in prison and a new Chinese restaurant to learn about. What’s the universe going to throw at me next I wonder? Oh… My… Gosh!  What if Victoria Secret’s is ugly inside now!?!?!?

“Alright” Connor starts. “After talking to the women’s prison in Louisiana these are the facts we now have: 1. They do have a Charlotte St. May in custody.  2. She is due for release in a month. And, 3. Her file names us as her only next of kin. We also know that there are visiting hours on the weekends and that there is no record of her having a single visitor over the last twenty years. We can pull up a picture of her mug shot but it’s old so I say we don’t. That will only be upsetting and besides, there’s no way she still looks the same after all of this time behind bars. “Okay, anything else?” I’m thinking,
Nope!  He’s good
.  I can’t remember my own birthday right now or tell you where the nearest McDonald’s is (That’s no exaggeration.  After the Hi-Nu incident there could be a McDonald’s on my street and I wouldn’t even know it.). 

“Should we fly up there honey? I can get us flights for this weekend?” Liddy is the best girlfriend. She sticks when the going gets weird, unlike someone else I know who I thought stuck but instead just goes and gets a whole new life. Unsticky Bastard!

“Are you sure you’d want to do that? You know?  Actually meet her? She did abandon Dad and us without ever once making any sort of contact over the years other than those vague emails from time to time.  It’s not like we ever moved and she couldn’t find us. Besides, we don’t even know if Dad knew where she was while he was still alive. Do you think he knew?”

This has been the troubling thought working its way around my mind for the last hour. Could dad have known where she was? Was he protecting us from the knowledge that maybe our mom was worse than we even could have imagined? One one-thousand… Two one-thousand… Three one-thousand…

“Make the flight arrangements would you Lid? You and me, we’re going to meet my mom.” Holy Mary Mother of Jesus, my brother’s going to meet our mom….

***

When you’re a young child you consider the age of twenty-six to be pretty old, maybe even ancient. You assume people of this advanced age are logical, level –headed thinkers, with a sensible life-strategy set in place.   In your young mind, you imagine yourself to maybe have a family started by this time, or at least a hunky guy to eat your meals with. Certainly you’ll be set in a career you love and possibly even own a home to plant a beautiful garden around, hang gorgeous clothes inside and, of course, drawers full of unimaginable underwear. You know? You have it together. But, then there’s the reality, and often times that reality is a painful thing to face. In it the sole box you’ve checked to date is the one marked unimaginable underwear. I suppose it would be possible to plant a garden around my house but we all know that I don’t go out front, and out back is the poop square. The hunky guy box is empty, no check to be seen for miles (you know the gory details to that). Job, well I’m working on that, and clothes? All I can say about that one is I’m sure I would do better if I could actually go to the store and try them on.

What you don’t think, however, is that you’ll grow up and never have a life outside your home. It’s the unimaginable for a dream-focused young mind. This thought would simply never occur in the beautiful, pure world of possibility that a child can so easily create. Why would it? Life for them is about nothing more than learning, feeling, discovering. It’s full of anything and everything other than giving up. 

Sometimes if I listen real hard I can hear the little girl inside of my mind screaming at the top of her lungs to stand up, open the front door and go meet her mother, go plant a flower, go get her boy! She’s desperate, crying and demanding in her outbursts but I’m afraid she’s fighting a losing battle. The fire breathing dragon known as anxiety has her cornered in her very own miniature castle and there will be no Shrek coming to save this Fiona from the flames. She’s bound and held captive within these impenetrable concrete walls without any chance of change or rescue.

Lately I’ve found that by keeping busy I can quiet the negative voices that are trying to hijack any of my positive thoughts. By day I research behavioral therapy techniques and by night I draw lingerie designs for the line I’m venturing into with Liddy. So far it’s working, and I’m beyond thrilled when Liddy finally sees my first set of drawings and is dumbstruck by my “flipping awesome” – her words, not mine - ideas. Her reactions are just what I was hoping for, and all of her supportive critiques are appreciated and stored away under the heading of negative-thought destroyers. 

This week she’s brought over some of her newest samples of clothing, and my own reactions have been similar. “Frigging fantastic!” is what I call them. Her eye for what makes a woman’s body beautiful is on point. She dresses for shape. Breasts, hips, butts are no problem for her. Whether you have them or not she’ll make you look your personal best. There are pieces in her collection that add shape if you’re lacking and pieces that highlight the shapes that we should all love and be proud of. Simply put, I love her work and am completely confident that the two of us can create the perfect pairing for her clothes with this new lingerie line of ours.