The One That I Want (31 page)

I watch him sleeping, just like I have so many times before. His flawless skin, his hearty, ruddy cheeks, his thick swell of espresso hair. Yes, he looks just like he did when we were seventeen. Maybe that’s part of the problem now. Not that time has changed him, but that it hasn’t.

I can envision his future without even having to see it. I don’t need to peer into a photo, catapult myself ahead in time. There he is, in a stadium, coaching that star freshman, honing his swing, the way he taps home plate three times for good luck, the way his body uncorks like a spring. I can taste the stale smell of hot dogs from the stadium, feel the resonating rays of the sun against my cheeks. Tyler is there, discovering who he is without me, without this town, and as clear as any of my visions, I know this now. I open my eyes, staring at my husband on our couch, on
my
couch, and I know that also, this isn’t a vision to flee from.

I grab for a pen and paper from the desk and start to scribble a note but rest the pen as quickly as I reached for it. No, after a decade and a half, after nearly a lifetime together, I won’t do it this way, not the way that he did. Not without real words, real emotion, real understanding of the crevasse that split us in two.

“Tyler.” I shake both of his shoulders. “Tyler, wake up. I need to talk to you.”

“Blegh,” he manages, pushing my hands away.

“No, Tyler, get up.” My voice is firmer now, more sure.

“What, what, what happened, what is it? An emergency?” He jolts upright, head spinning every which way, at once completely
alert and still totally cloudy, convinced that he has slept through another catastrophe.

“Nothing, it’s nothing like that,” I say, then reconsider and sit down on the tiny space on the edge of the couch that his legs don’t swallow up. “Actually, maybe it is.” I take his hand, and he wipes the gunk out of his eyes with his other. “Listen, I have to go to the hospital to bring Darcy home.”

“Okay.” His voice comes out croaky, like he’d rather be asleep. I’m sure that he would be. “I’ll be here, no problem.”

“No, that’s not it.” I shake my head and exhale, because this is both easier and harder than I anticipated. I wish I’d thought it through, hadn’t acted quite so on impulse, if only so I could have the right words, the perfect words to honor him, to honor us, to honor myself and what I’m about to do. “When I get home … you don’t have to be here. You can go back to Seattle. It’s okay. You can leave.”

“No, no, what are you talking about? Of course I’ll stay.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” I answer. “I’m saying that maybe you should go. That I was wrong before when I accused you of not knowing what happiness was.” He scrunches his face, unsure, confused, wondering if this is some sort of trap. “I think you do know what happiness is, and it’s not here, not for you. And I don’t think that you being here is what my happiness is either.”

He nods, then shakes his head, then nods again, trying to digest this.

“But I thought that this is what you wanted. I thought that
this
would make you happy.”

I shrug and offer a flimsy smile. “Turns out that maybe I didn’t understand what happiness was either.” In this moment, I let my smile run wider, truer, because Tyler Farmer is all I have ever known, and I have loved him so fiercely that I can’t believe I’m willing to give him up. And yet, I can also believe that now,
with everything, I might be brave enough to try. I run my hands over his sleepy eyes, his satin cheeks. “I have loved you since before I even knew it was possible to love someone this way, Tyler Farmer. That won’t change. But let’s go now, away from each other, and see what other sorts of happiness we might find on our own. Because we tried together, and it’s just not here anymore.”

Two slippery tears coast down his perfect face, and then, down my own. He kisses me fully, for the gift I have given him—not just him, myself too—and then I rise, let my hands ebb from his, and slide out away from the shadows.

“I don’t know who I am without you.”
My car door slams and I race down the road toward Darcy. Maybe, actually, now I do.

A
shley and Susanna gather in my kitchen the next afternoon. Darcy is asleep in the guest room, which isn’t much of a guest room anymore, more likely her permanent room, at least as permanent as she’ll ever allow something to be. Tyler is gone, was gone when I got home from the hospital late last night. He left me a note saying he’d call when he reached Seattle, and he probably will, and that will be fine. But I won’t hover near the phone, won’t frantically check my e-mail if he doesn’t. That will be fine too. There is life out there, both after and before, and it’s time to embrace that.

Ashley pulls a towel over my neck and shoulders, securing it in the back, as I perch on my mother’s old dining chair.

“You sure you want to do this?” Susanna asks. It’s only three o’clock, but we are drinking cabernet because, though it flies in the face of logic, I feel like celebrating. Ashley gamely came when I called; she had spent the better part of the past week sifting through her mother’s belongings and with the task nearly finished, she didn’t know how to spend her time.

“I mean, what am I supposed to do now?” she says, scissors in
one hand, wineglass in the other. “I’ve spent so long taking care of her that I feel like it’s all I know how to do.”

“You’ll figure it out,” I say, both because I can relate and because I know that she will. Ashley Simmons has been a lot of things, but a defeatist in the face of adversity was never one of them. This I see now; this I admire.

“I haven’t done this in a while,” she admits, placing the glass on the table, running her fingers through my silky yellow hair. “Are you sure?”

“I am.” I nod. “I’d like to try something new, you know? Why not? It can always grow back.” I think of Darcy’s two toes, and how they won’t, and then remember that she has already forgiven me, didn’t even think that I was accountable, even though I knew that I was. But I also know I can’t hold on to this for always. Because guilt, I realize, is nothing more than a prison to keep us trapped from doing what we really want. What will really bring us happiness. So I am trying to let go of that, release a few other boulders from my past.

“Okay, here we go. Don’t blame me if you don’t like it,” Ashley says. “I got my beautician certificate, like, three years after high school.” We all laugh because,
oh God
, does that feel like so long ago.

“It’s something I have to do,” I say, because it is something I have to do. I have realized that though I can’t change the future, that doesn’t mean that I can’t change my circumstances to fit that future, to reach for the promise of what I’m hoping for. I sat in the bleachers and yearned to be that woman who swayed with Eli under the spinning dim lights of the prom, and by God, who’s to say that it couldn’t be me?

Ashley starts in the back, snipping and snipping, and layering and cutting, parsing exactly, like an artist carving a sculpture. I
stare down at my kitchen floor, the strands amassing, amazed already at how much lighter I feel, how long I’ve been that blond cheerleader with her star shortstop husband, and how desperately I’d like to resemble something else now.

I’ve tasked Susanna with the Nikon—she’s not a pro but is certainly capable enough of pointing and clicking—because I want this documented, down on record, captured forever, the day that I shed my skin.

When Ashley’s done, I smooth my fingers over my naked neck, feeling exposed, self-conscious but excited too, exhilarated, probably how Darcy feels when she takes the stage or when someone lingers a little too long on her beauty. I feel like someone else entirely. Which, I consider, when I finally have the nerve to peek in the mirror, shifting from angle to angle, in awe of the transition that I have made, is likely the whole point.

Luanne knocks on my door later that evening, her winter coat bursting, reminding me of the Pillsbury doughboy, and gasps, a good gasp, when she sees me.

“Oh my God!” she says, filtering her fingers through my hair without asking, the familiarity that only siblings can have. “I didn’t even recognize you.”

I don’t tell her that I’ll take this as a compliment and simply usher her inside with a grin.

“Dad’s in the car,” she says, refusing a seat when I offer it. “He’d like to come in, explain himself. Then I’m taking him to the treatment center.”

“What treatment center?”

“Darcy didn’t tell you?” I shake my head
no
. “We spoke to him,” Lulu says. “He came by the hospital the other day before you checked her out …”

“I didn’t see him there,” I interrupt.

“No, you wouldn’t have.” She purses her lips together, as resolute as I’ve ever seen her. “He’s been coordinating it with me so you wouldn’t have to see him.”

I’m momentarily grateful that even though there are a million reasons to find my father despicable, he at least has the grace to let me mourn my shattered vision of our family without interference.

“So anyway,” she says, jangling her keys. “Darcy and I confronted him, said we could no longer have contact if he didn’t heal himself completely. Not half-assed, not on his own.” Her fingers fold into a fist, swallowing up the noise. “He balked at first, but he saw how serious we were, so he agreed. He’s going back.”

I try to find words but have none, so I stare at the floor, then raise my eyes to my middle sister, amazed that she, the one who always coasted, and Darcy, the one who was too angry to care in the first place, have been able to do what I have never been. Force my father’s hand, insist that he do right by us, climb the mountain even under threat of an avalanche.

“Thank you,” I whisper finally.

“It’s nothing to thank me for,” she answers. “It’s just what had to be done. Not for you. For Dad.”

“But you did it because I couldn’t. You did it so that I didn’t have to.”

She sighs and leans back, resting her head against the cupboard, gazing toward the ceiling fan.

“You know, Till, Darcy told me what she told you. And she told me that you thought she should have confided in you about Dad’s affair so that you could have resolved it.” She looks at me now, tenderly, after thirty years of sisterhood. “But you couldn’t have. You really probably couldn’t have. You never had to do all of
this, take care of everything. She and I would have been okay shouldering some of it if you’d let us, if you’d asked.”

I shrug, because I don’t know that I believe her, and even if I did, there’s nothing to be done about it now. That’s how it was, that’s how we created and structured the hierarchy of our lives—and maybe going forward, we’ll all be a little wiser, a little more intuitive, a little quicker to nurse the bruises of the ones we call our family, even if sometimes they are the ones to inflict those very welts.

The car horn honks outside, and we both startle.

“Dad,” Lulu states. “He’s probably getting cold. I wouldn’t let him leave the engine running in case he had second thoughts.”

She wiggles the keys in the air and giggles, and so, so do I. I walk her to the door, and she says, “You sure? You don’t want to come out and say something?”

“I’m sure,” I say, because I am. Maybe sometime soon, maybe even sooner than I anticipate, but for now, I stand on the front porch and watch her go, the freezing air cutting through my pajamas, filling my lungs, invigorating the bare skin on the nape of my neck. I stay there long after their car lights have petered out down the road, and then I move to the porch swing. In all of the years that the swing has been with us, I have never once perched on it in the dead of winter. So I sit, and I admire the view, in spite of my nearly numb fingers and my cheeks aflame with cold. I rock and I rock, absorbing the still night of the only place I have ever thought to call home, reminding me that it is so sweet to be out here, sensitive, alive, peering at my old world with fresh new eyes.

T
he Arc de Triomphe is a wonder to behold. This is my first thought when I enter the gym on prom night. I have seen it before, of course, in my premonitions, which I’ve had no more of and according to Ashley may never have, now that I’ve learned to control them rather than vice versa. But in real life, the faux Arc is more regal, more gallant than I could have hoped for. The prom committee, which I’ve helmed in name only the past few months, has outdone themselves. Miniature Eiffel Towers swing from the ceiling; dancing, twinkling lights circle the edges of the walls. A city of lights. Right here in Westlake.

I stand outside the clanging gym doors before going in, before stepping over that threshold. This is the first prom I’ve ever attended alone. I considered this as I dressed this evening, pulling up my satin shoulder strap, running my fingers over my exposed collarbone, stepping back in front of the mirror that was once Tyler’s too, but that I now fill for the both of us.

I ordered a new dress off the Internet. It’s well out of my budget, but I don’t care. It’s a deep red, reminding me of the color of the fall leaves during the season that my mother died, but in a warm, comforting way, and when I surfed past it on the computer,
procrastinating on my way to look for graduate programs, I knew it would be perfect. Perfect on my skinnier frame that would soon fill out thanks to a renewed appetite and beer nights with Susie and Ashley; perfect because I didn’t know when I’d have the chance again to dress up with the excitement of a sixteen-year-old who was insightful enough to be grateful that she was sixteen no longer. Besides, I couldn’t even think of wearing one of the other dresses stuffed upstairs in my closet, one of the ones I’d worn before. Before. Everything now was either before or after. I was choosing after. The more uncertain choice, to be sure, but also the one that wedged open a new window for possibilities.

I’d popped into the guest room before leaving to show myself off to Darcy. She was sleeping when I went to twirl in front of her, a well-earned, solid rest, so I let her be.

We’d settled into a quiet pattern together. Her hands hadn’t regained full functioning yet, but they were on their way, and, in fact, so was she. The demos she and Dante had cut had nabbed the attention of a few prime producers, and though she couldn’t play for them just yet, one day soon, she would. The two of them would fly out of Westlake, together, on to brighter skies and untapped dreams, refusing to cower in the face of everything, after everything. After.