A Life More Complete(10)
“It’s lessened over the last few years. Hardly noticeable. If at all now.” I can’t gauge his emotions from his voice or body, but he quickly changes the subject. “So, tell me about your sisters,” he says smiling.
“My sisters and I are all very close in age, Irish triplets, I guess. Rachel was born almost exactly one year after I was and Courtney, who we call Maizey, eleven months after Rachel. My relationship with Rachel is the best it’s ever been now that we’re adults, but it’s nothing compared to some. When you grow up in a house void of love, you don’t really develop close sibling relationships. We had the fact that we hated our mother in common, but once that was gone there wasn’t much left. Rachel lives in Santa Barbara, works as a massage therapist at the Four Seasons. She’s three hours away and I see her maybe once a year. It’s sad.” I shrug my shoulders as if I’m not sure what to say. “Courtney is the baby. My poor sister Courtney was tagged with too many nicknames to count. She became Corny, which turned to Corn, and after a watching an old movie on cable about Indians she became Maizey, like maize, like corn. She’s been Maizey as long as I can remember. She’s the one who I guess has fallen the hardest. She lives with her drug dealer boyfriend and although she won’t admit it, she’s a drug addict. Cocaine, just like our father. It’s ruined her life. I haven’t spoken to her in three years. I don’t have any idea where she is or where she could possibly be.”
“Do you have any good memories of your sisters?” Ben asks and seems intrigued by my openness.
“Of course I do. Not everything in my life was a mess. I shared a room with them until I was twelve. Something funny happened almost every night. One summer we broke my mom’s desk chair spinning each other around in it. We didn’t tell her, we just left it like nothing happened. And that night when she sat down to finish up some work, she leaned back and the chair collapsed. It took everything in us not to burst out laughing. That night when we were in bed we laughed so hard we cried, all three of us. Rachel continued laughing long after Maizey and I stopped. She was quiet about it, but I knew she was because the bunk bed was shaking and every once in a while she’d giggle.” I laugh again as I recall the memory.
I fill the silence of the night with all kinds of stories from my childhood as Ben sits with his legs crossed, facing me and taking it all in. He smiles and laughs with me.
“How’d you end up here?” he asks, eager for more information. I’ve always been a private person. It’s hard to share your life when you don’t even know where to begin. Ben is one of the only people in my life that I’m this honest with. Melinda and Bob know my story, but they allow me to leave it behind. They understand the pain and take it for what it’s worth. It doesn’t define me and I hope someday it will stop burdening my future so entirely. “I’ve known you for six years and I have no idea how you ended up in California.”
I smile at him. “Obviously, my mother. I couldn’t get far enough away from her. But it really all came back to a boy. My high school boyfriend, Tyler McCarthy. I applied to colleges with absolutely no frame of reference, but knowing it was my only out. I picked mostly based on their remote proximity to my mother. The University of Washington, because of the movie Singles, Arizona State because I love the heat, The University of Hawaii Maui because my mother was exceptionally awful that day and California State University Long Beach because of a boy.”
I remember at the time thinking my decision wasn’t all that odd, but looking back it changed my life. It’s the only choice I ever made that was off kilter and strange even for me. I’m not that girl who does things just because of a boy and yet I applied to college just because of a boy. My relationship with Tyler McCarthy was tumultuous and obsessive the way young love is, but I didn’t think for a second that we would last forever. He was my first love and when things ended, they ended badly. I still have a hard time talking about Tyler.
“In the end I ran from my mother. But, I also picked CSULB and so did Tyler. The kicker is that we broke up before our senior year of high school ended. Unfortunately for me, he was hard to avoid and we ended up back together near the end of our freshman year in college. So, really, I guess you could say a boy led me here.”
“Well, I don’t really care who led you here or who came before me. I’m just glad it happened,” Ben says smiling as I lean into him.
It’s well after midnight and I’m exhausted. I finish my second beer, my body pressed against Ben’s. I still need to go home and as if he can hear my thoughts, he whispers, “Stay with me tonight?” He has asked many times, too many to count and each time the answer is the same. But tonight I will.