What We Leave Behind (13 page)

I got in the car, making my heroic escape, and tried not to stall out in case he was watching through the window. I refused to turn on the music, knowing that Elton was in the cassette player and the combination right now would be lethal.

Thinking back to when Jonas and I first met, those first few days of innocent conversation, neither of us had any idea we’d be on the cusp of something larger than both of us. We didn’t go searching for it. It found us. And now that it was here, what were we supposed to do with it?

I didn’t see the road in front of me. I saw Jonas’s face, the question in his eyes.

I whispered, “Yes.” Then I repeated it again and again, nodding my head as if the word alone was not enough.

“This will be enough,” I said out loud. “This will have to be enough.”

“He has a girlfriend. Do you know what they call people like you?" my mother said to me when she walked in the door that afternoon. “Not to mention the fact that you’re sixteen and he’s, what, twenty-one?”

“Twenty-two,” I mumbled from the couch, legs propped up in the air along the cushions.

“That’s statutory rape in California,” she remarked.

“If we ever touched, it might be that. Does exchanging bodily fluids count?”

She didn’t think I was funny. “Where did you go in my car?”

My legs now fell across the couch. “How’d you know?” I asked.

“You didn’t show up for work today and you left this on the seat.”

The sweatshirt I had taken to wrapping around my waist every day, I had forgotten in her car. She flung it at me, covering my face with the word
University
.

“It’s not what you think,” I said to her, tossing the hoodie aside. “He’s sick. I went to see how he’s doing.”

She pulled a chair next to me where I had minutes before been watching an episode of Mason Capwell and Julia Wainright going at it on
Santa Barbara
, my now-favorite soap opera. “You know that he and the long-term girlfriend are planning to work together in Boston after they graduate,” she said, her head bobbing in front of the television in such a way I had no choice but to zap my favorite characters off the screen with a touch of the remote. “Where do you fit into the pretty picture?”

“I guess there were exceptions, minor details that everyone overlooked.”

“Yes, and what would those be?” she asked, rubbing her tired eyes as if she could wipe out what was happening inside of her daughter.

“Me,” I said with a half smile.

She took a minute to filter through my sarcasm.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” she asked.

I don’t think I knew what I was about to say until the words were out of my mouth, part of my speaking-before-thinking problem.

“I’ve never felt this way before.”

My mother sighed the sigh of a woman who wasn’t prepared for this conversation for another five years. “You’ve always been special, you know that, Jess.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant.

“You’ve always been this strong, courageous girl, so independent, so mysterious. People have always been drawn to you. People have always liked you. Even if you never let them close. I’ve seen it, I’ve watched. There will be a hundred Jonases before it’s your turn to settle down. I promise.”

“One love was enough for you,” I said. “Hasn’t your track record proven that?” It was mean and hurtful, but in my need to defend myself, I was unwilling to accept the person she described. And she, being used to my remarks, ignored the slam, letting it float through the air and land against the wall beside us. I think I even heard it thud.

“Mom, I know I have nothing to compare it to, and I’m young, and there’s the age difference, but I can’t change what’s inside. I can’t just make this thing between us disappear or pretend that it’s not there.”

She stared at me, not trusting a word I said. So I tried again. “There’s an energy that runs between us; Jonas feels it too. When we’re apart in a crowded room, I can feel him there next to me. When I will him to be near, he walks through the hospital doors as if he heard my thoughts. When I look into his eyes, I know that he can read my mind and heart, and see things there that no one else can. It’s like the moon and the earth. They don’t touch, but they rely upon each other’s presence. Just knowing he’s somewhere, I’m less afraid, less alone.”

“You’ve isolated yourself,” she said.

“Let me finish, please.” I was really on a roll here. Dr. Norton would have been impressed.

“I’ve thought about this, believe me, I have. Jonas isn’t some cocky, thick-headed guy who plays on the high school football team and taunts the cheerleaders. He’s always respected me and been honest, and I made the decision that I’ll have to accept what he can give—whatever that may be.”

“You’re shortchanging yourself.”

“Maybe I am,” I said, the hypocrisy growing by the minute, “but if we’re just friends, I won’t get hurt.”

“You’re smarter than that, Jess. That's just semantics and you know it.
You’re the Earth and he’s the moon
, that’s not friendship to me, nor is it to you. Call it what you want. Just because you haven’t fooled around or kissed doesn’t mean that what’s happening between the two of you is right. Feelings are as real as actions, and their consequences can be just as dangerous. He’s not single, and let’s not forget that he’s a lot older than you and goes to school thousands of miles away. There are more things wrong about this relationship and friendship than are right. It’s hard to see it when you’re standing in the picture, and Jonas Levy seems to be a nice person, but he’s not for you, Jess. You deserve a lot more than he can give you.”

Holding onto the term “friendship” made the evolution of whatever we became much easier. Jonas could justify the relationship without guilt, and I could conceal my disappointment through a foolish understanding of his limitations. “I’ll never give up on Jonas,” I said. “If friendship is all we’ll ever have, I’ll take it.” Beth always said to be strong in your conviction and no one would ever doubt you. If I could verbalize conviction, maybe it would leak into my brain and other parts of me.

“I think you’re scared to let anyone close, so you’ve accepted this as a way to protect yourself from getting hurt. I bet if Jonas gave you everything, you’d run the other direction.”

I mulled over her words. I would never believe this ridiculous notion of my mother’s. Jonas was in my heart. I felt him there every time I took a breath.

But my resistance was weakening. I was on the verge of attack when I remembered what Dr. Norton told me when I got in trouble for mouthing off to one of the kids at school. She said that when we argue with people, sometimes we get so stuck in our own heads, we can’t be objective in our responses. She recommended that I take a deep breath and consider where the other person was coming from, what baggage he carries around with him. I looked at my beautiful mother and considered where she’d been.

“Mom,” I said, “You didn’t hear anything I said, did you? He could be on one end of the world, and I could be on the other, and we could have other people in our lives, but we’d still be connected. Do you understand that?
We’d still be a part of each other
. The bond is real. No words can change or minimize it. Call it anything you want and call me anything you want, and tell me how I’ll act under certain circumstances and how I’m motivated by defense mechanisms, but none of it, none of it, is going to change what’s real to me. None of it’s going to change the way I feel about Jonas.”

“You really need to cut out some of the television watching,” she said. “I would love to be able to believe everything you’re saying, and I want it all to be true for you, but age and experience have given me insights into things I just don’t think you’re able to grasp.”

She took my hands into hers, and I noticed for the first time, we had the same hands, hands I’d always been able to count on for strength. “You speak like such a grown-up sometimes, but you’re not. You barely know yourself.  How can you be so sure of someone else? You deserve the same level of respect you give Jonas. I want that for you. You know that, don’t you?”

A tear was forming in my mother’s eye, and I think we were having our first
moment
together. I nodded my head, knowing she wanted the best for me, truly.

“I want you to have it all,” she continued. “The crumbs and morsels he’s giving you won’t ever satisfy you. You’re a beautiful, young girl turning into a beautiful, passionate woman. You’ll have needs and desires, both physical and emotional, to be fulfilled. And about us settling, how we settled when Daddy died, it’s entirely different. We had no choice. But you have a choice, and I can’t help thinking that the wrong decision will leave you brokenhearted. There’s someone out there for you who will give you everything, no sharing him with another. You’ll fill up his life, not just part of it, and he won't need anyone else, because you’ll be everything he wants.”

I didn’t think about what my mother said until I crawled into bed that night, and the sounds of her voice vocalized what my heart had been ignoring for weeks…
bread crumbs, selfish, uncompromising
. I was grossly misguided and I knew it, but I’d made the decision to turn a cheek and accept terms that would in no way satisfy me. It never occurred to me to ask Jonas why we couldn’t be more. It never occurred to me to question the fact that he didn’t choose me or what I might have been lacking. In some bizarre, distorted way, his devotion to Emily impressed me; here was this guy with morals and unwavering loyalty.

My science textbook was laying next to the bed. Flipping through the pages, I read aloud, “
Earth, which is our base from which we look into space, is constantly moving. The moon is the earth’s only natural satellite. Its revolution period around the earth is the same length and direction as its rotation period, which results in the moon always keeping one side turned toward the earth and the other side turned away from the earth. This type of motion is called synchronous rotation. The side turned away from the earth is called the moon’s dark side
.”

I knew what I felt, and now scientific evidence supported it. I had no idea I was such a genius, coming up with the perfect metaphor for our love.

“Synchronous rotation,” I repeated aloud.

That was me and Jonas.

The things Jonas taught me those first few weeks were far more significant than anything I’d learned in school, books, or movies.  I’d tackled all of those with ease, and still nothing prepared me for the splattering of emotions he left me to sort out. I’d never known that feelings alone could be so strong-minded; that like a planted seed, they can take root and grow, leaving you unprotected. Or that emotions were as equally consequential as the physical acts of touching and being touched.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it actually make a sound?
If Jonas and I feel like this and nobody sees it, does that mean that our love doesn’t exist?

Sometimes, when Jonas and I would be eating lunch in the cafeteria, our fingers would brush across the table.  When we’d be sitting with his dad, close and confined in the narrow room, I’d feel his breath on my face, a shoulder rubbing up against me, and I’d shudder to think what it would be like if he didn’t stop, if he didn’t pull away. It would be perfect. I just knew it. He’d take my face into his big, strong hands, and we’d be staring at each other, knowing what was about to happen, and I’d say, “No, we can’t do this,” of course, not meaning any of it, and he’d say, “Yes, we can. I’ve been wanting to do this since the day I met you,” and he’d pull me toward him, and his lips would touch mine, and his arms would draw me close, and I would give in to him, right there, with his tongue delicately probing the inside of my mouth.

And that’s when I would wake up, because according to my mother, the dream was always much better than the reality. “Just like those movies you watch all day,” she would say. “It’s never like that in real life.”

Well, I was determined to prove her wrong. I wanted the dream. I wanted the fairy tale. And if it existed in varying degrees, I had mine, albeit minus the white horse and a castle for Jonas to climb through the window and take me away.

Despite this realization, my summer surpassed all others before. Jonas filled my days and nights to where I needed nothing else; and with Emily frolicking around Italy, only the intermittent phone calls sent tiny cracks into our fragile exterior. On my days off, we would drive to the mountains with the wind on our faces, hair blowing in the breeze, and Bruce Springsteen crooning “Jungleland” on the radio. There were afternoons at the beach, swimming and sailing, when I clung to him for dear life after our boat capsized. Then we would go horseback riding in the hills by his house where he taught me to mount, trot, and gallop. His natural skill and unwavering patience made him an outstanding teacher. I, on the other hand, wanted to throttle my horse after five minutes on his back when all he wanted to do was fertilize the first mile of our trail. Sometimes we would picnic on the beach, watching the people, putting our detective skills to work, and then stretching our bodies along the sand, tanning ourselves. We’d go to the movies and instinctively I’d put my feet on the seat in front of me and Jonas would remind me, “You need to be a lady and take your feet down,” but I’d always forget, and he’d spend the whole two hours kicking me, something I probably did just to get him to touch me.

Jonas’s brain was an encyclopedia of information. He talked about history, he loved to predict weather, and he was obsessed with the fluctuations of the stock market. Whatever the subject, he was well-versed on the most relevant—and irrelevant—components. Take his obsession with presidential trivia. “Did you know that the Baby Ruth candy bar was named for Ruth Cleveland, President Grover Cleveland’s daughter, who died in her teens? Most people think it was named after Babe Ruth.”

Sometimes his mind astonished me in its ability to hold such a wide breadth of information. I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of envy at the life he had and the people he would share it with in the future. I thought that if I could just remember every word, every detail of our time together, I would never be without him, he’d never be without me.