The Death of Me (6 page)

I went over to the swing, smile still on my face, and gave the tire a gentle push. I found myself wondering if Scott had been on this swing at any point in his life, just once, and it made me turn away. It made me climb the stairs to my grandparents' house and ring the doorbell. There was a reason Grandma wanted me to come over today and I wondered if it had anything to do with him.

I waited patiently until I heard the sound of Grandma's cane making thudding noises across the floor. She peeked through the old curtains on the small side window and smiled when she saw me. A few seconds later, the front door was pulled open and she was holding an arm out toward me.

"Hi Grandma," I greeted, with a gentle hug.

"Oh Zaydee. My darling Zaydee," she said happily. "I'm so glad you came."

"I never could say no to you," I replied, pulling away. "Garrett came with me; I hope that's okay."

"Of course it is!" she exclaimed looking past me. "Come here and give me a hug, young man."

Garrett's face turned slightly red as he stepped forward and hugged Grandma. I smiled when I saw her hand grip the back of his shirt, before she pulled away and told us to come in. I waited until he walked past me so I could close and lock her door. Grandma and Grandpa always insisted that the deadbolt be locked first then the doorknob. They said that way, if they ever forgot to lock the bottom one, the stronger of the two would always be set in place.

"Young man," I teased him quietly, as I caught up to them.

Garrett shook his head, an embarrassed grin spreading across his face as we sat down in living room. I watched as he helped Grandma get comfortably into her chair before he came over and sat down next to me.

"Thank you," she said to him with a nod. "I put the tea kettle on, so hopefully it'll be ready soon."

"Thanks Grandma," I said, clasping my hands on my lap. She smiled at me and set her cane next to her chair. I waited to see if she would say anything else, but she didn't. She just sat there smiling happily at me, stealing glances at Garrett when she thought he wasn't looking. I shook my head in amusement and decided to bring up the subject at hand.

"So, what's up, Grandma? Why did you want me to come by today?"

"Garrett, would you mind bringing me that box next to you?" Grandma asked him.

I glanced past him curiously as he grabbed a small, square wooden box and handed it to Grandma. She asked him to wait while she opened it. I watched her pull out a few envelopes that were tied together, and told him to hand them to me. I held my hands out eagerly and began to untie the envelopes when her voice stopped me.

"Not now, Zaydee. When you're ready to go leave again; that's when you open those," she said, in the sternest tone she could muster.

"Yes, Grandma."

I gave the envelopes to Garrett. If I held them, there would be more than a slight chance that I would wander off to open them and see what was inside.

"That was a brave thing you did yesterday," Grandma said, glancing at Garrett. "Larry may not have thought so, but I know that Frances would be proud of you and that's all that matters."

"I thought he was going to die!" I exclaimed.

Garrett shrugged and leaned forward in his chair. "That secret would come out eventually, but I wanted to honor his wishes of not telling anyone while he was alive."

"You know, I was a young girl too when I met Frances. That man was the greatest and only love of my life. I miss him every day," she said, her voice cracking slightly.

The tea kettle started to whistle loudly as the water boiled. I got to my feet and went into the kitchen. I didn't want her to have to get up more than she had too, and I also didn't want her to see the tears that were starting to stream down my face. I used a dish towel to wipe my face clean then used it to pick the kettle up off of the burner.

I wasn’t crying because Grandma was;  I had lost the empathy part of humanity a long time ago. I was crying because even though she had suffered such a devastating loss, she was trying to find the silver lining in the cloud. Her telling us that she met Grandpa when she was young wasn’t a random fact that was thrown out lightly, and it wasn’t trivia to hold on to for another day. It was her way to try to make us comfortable with whatever decision we made.

Goddamn it, Greta,
I thought as I filled three small china cups with hot water and dropped tea bags into each one.

If anything really was out in the universe, I could only hope that it would hear me begging for this visit to be as short as possible.

I
t was two o’clock in the afternoon by the time we left Grandma’s. She sat in her chair and told us the story of her and Grandpa while we listened, drinking our tea.

Apparently, she had met him when she was fourteen years old and he was eighteen, but times were different then, as she put it. Also, she said she knew she wanted to marry him from the moment she saw him so no one could really tell her to stay away from him. I snuck glances at Garrett who had been smiling pleasantly as Grandma took us down memory lane, and I could only hope that he didn’t think it was the same with us.

I had a moment of weakness earlier today and I honestly didn’t think I would repeat the mistake. It was what had gotten me into this clusterfuck of moving all the way to the other side of the United States to begin with.

It was also the reason I was an absentee mother, a recluse, a self loather, and had such hatred for humanity. But as he drove me back to my hotel, I couldn’t find it in me to crush his high spirits.

“I think we should go to Phoenix,” Garrett said when he pulled into the hotel parking lot.

“For what?” I asked in confusion.

“To meet our son,” he said giving me a pointed look.

“Oh.”

Oh! How could I forget already that he was in Phoenix?

“No,” I replied thoughtfully running my hands through my hair. “I’ve fucked up enough lives, I don’t think it would do him any good for me to show up and shit on everything he knows. You should go, though! I think it would do you some good to meet him.”

“Zaydee, you need to stop. You didn’t fuck up anything or ruin anything that wasn’t already meant to be ruined,” he said as patiently as he could.

Truer words were never spoken,
I thought with a soft chuckle.

“Let me know how he’s doing, okay?” I said softly, as I leaned over and kissed him on his cheek. I reached into the back seat and retrieved the envelopes that Grandma had given to me in her home and pushed the door open.

I hopped out of his car and practically ran to the front door of the hotel, Garrett calling my name from the driver’s side window. I didn’t turn around and I didn’t stop. It would’ve made me weak enough to go with him to Phoenix and I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to do that to a kid that probably didn’t know anything about me anyway.

I walked past the front desk and took the stairs up to my room. I didn’t feel like waiting for the elevator today either. I wanted to get to my room and make a very important phone call. Even though I wouldn’t be going to actually
see
Scott, it didn’t mean that I couldn’t call and check on him.

When I got to my room it dawned on me that I didn’t know Uncle Bill and Aunt Rose’s phone number, so I would have to make a phone call I didn’t want to in order to get the information.

Fuck. I’m really not in the mood for the third degree,
I thought as I unhappily dialed my parents’ phone number.

“Hello?”

It was Dad.
I knew I should have hung up after the second ring.

“Hey,” I said timidly.

He stayed quiet for a moment before pulling the phone away from his mouth and called out to my mother.

“Your daughter is on the phone!”

That stung. Like I had tripped a bee’s nest and was being relentlessly attacked. But I took a deep breath and waited for Mom to come to the phone.

“Zaydee?”

“I was wondering if you had Uncle Bill’s phone number,” I said quietly.

Mom rattled off the number and I told her to wait so I could find a pen and piece of paper. When I was ready, I told her to go ahead. She gave it to me again and then was silent for a moment.

“Why are you calling Bill?” she asked curiously.

“Garrett and Grandma told me, Mom. I just ... I just want to make sure he’s doing okay,” I explained hesitantly.

“Send him our love.”

Click.

The line went dead and I listened to the sound of the buzzing until it dropped off into silence. I sighed unhappily and thought of how much more damage had been done to my parents after they found out that Garrett was the one that had gotten me pregnant at such a young age.

I hung up the phone and looked down at the number I had scrawled onto the back of the envelope stack that Grandma had given me. I put the pen and the packet next to the phone and laid down to face the window. I wouldn’t be able to call and check on him if I felt like a failure, so I decided to take a nap instead. Maybe by the time I woke up, I’d be brave enough to make that phone call.

A
few hours later, the sound of the phone ringing incessantly woke me from my sleep. My body was completely stiff causing me to flinch when I stretched. I closed my eyes tightly for a moment before turning onto my back and looking up at the ceiling. I draped an arm across my forehead and turned my head slightly to the right, waiting for the ringing to stop. But since it didn't, I blindly started reaching toward it in frustration. I sighed heavily when I accidentally knocked the receiver onto the floor from its cradle and had to roll over the side of the bed to retrieve it.

"Hello?" I asked tiredly, when I finally put it to my ear.

"It's about goddamn time! I've been calling you for days," Garrett barked into the phone.

"What? I took a nap, don't be so dramatic," I said, rolling onto my back again.

"Zaydee, its Sunday. How long did you plan on sleeping? Forever?" he asked angrily.

My eyes flew open and I sat up straight. There was no way in hell I had slept for two days. I had trouble sleeping full nights, let alone days at a time. I glanced around the room uneasily wondering what it was that had allowed me to sleep so peacefully. Whatever it was, I needed to buy one as soon as I got home, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that I could notice.

"Are you there?" Garrett asked, a little calmer.

"Yeah, sorry. What's up?" I asked, scooting myself back against the headboard. I reached for one of the large, fluffy pillows and put it behind me. I wanted to be comfortable enough, but not too comfortable. Falling asleep on the phone probably wouldn't impress him much.

"I'm calling to make sure you didn't change your mind. I told the school board that a family emergency came up and that I needed to take the week off. I'm leaving for Phoenix tomorrow morning."

I sighed. I understood his persistence, but he would just have to accept the fact that I wasn't going to bend on this. "No. Thank you. Just let me know how he is doing. That will be plenty for me."

"Alright. I'll call you as soon as I get there, okay?"

"Sure. Chances are I won't be leaving this room anyway," I replied with a tired chuckle.

He didn't hang up right away and neither did I. We were having that awkward listening to each other breathe moment again.

"I really did miss you," he said softly. "And I never stopped loving you. I couldn't; no matter how hard I tried to push you out of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to erase the memory of you in my heart, something inside of me wouldn't allow me to."

"Thanks," I replied quietly as I hung up the phone.

I wasn't used to "I love yous" and genuine heart felt emotion. I was used to twenty minute phone calls home to Grandpa Frances and nothing more. And even though he would end every phone call with an "I love you, Zay", I never had it said to me the way that Garrett was saying it. I knew it was in a completely different way than Grandpa had always meant it and somehow, it held almost as much meaning.

But I didn't have time for love. I didn't have time for much of anything these days that involved other people. I took a deep breath and slid down onto my back again and closed my eyes. I wasn't tired, but I needed a moment to detach myself from the feelings that were starting to grow inside of me for Garrett.

So as I lay there I did my best to crush the seed that was threatening to grow. I pushed it into the dark place that my parents had spent years in. I would refuse to let it blossom and because of it, I would be a better person.

Garrett

I
was sitting in the middle seat of the three row center on the 747. I never cared for flying, because of this very reason, but I wasn't going to make a fuss about it. I was already nervous enough with what I was doing and I didn't need to think about anything else. My focus was on Scott and Zaydee possibly having a phone conversation at the very least, but she seemed as stubborn as she was the day she first walked into my classroom.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I hated thinking about that first time because it always made me hard, and it shouldn’t. Something like that shouldn’t excite me.

I waited until the sign giving the okay to remove our seat belts flashed and I excused myself from where I was sitting. The people on either side of me sighed as I got up, but I paid them no mind. The only thing I could think about was that first time with Zaydee and I was going to need some privacy.

I walked to the back of the airplane and opened one of the bathroom doors. Putting my hands on either side of the aluminum sink, I looked at myself in the mirror. What the fuck was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I ever shake the memory? No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, nothing would ever quell it.

I turned around and unzipped my jeans and pulled out my hard cock. I spit in my palm and closed my eyes, gripping it firmly in my hand as the memory flooded my mind again.

I sighed as I graded Matt’s paper. I couldn’t understand how some of my brightest students did so horribly on their homework.