Chapter 3
Alex
A s per usual, after rowing I checked in with Steve when I got to the office. He had probably already been in for an hour. It seemed like all he did was work.
“You look better,” was the first thing out of his mouth. Scratch what I said: it really seemed like all he did was work and worry about me.
“I rowed. I slept well,” I explained. I didn’t feel I needed to tell him why I had slept so well.
“Dad called yesterday after you left.” Steve paused for a minute in case I wanted to explain why I had taken off early, but I did not. “He wanted to talk about selling the house up north. He wants to put it on the market soon, get someone to take it before the summer.”
Our father had moved to Arizona with wife #3 (our mom had been #1). He was living on a golf course with my stepmother Courtney (who was Steve’s age) and our stepsisters, both under the age of five. We rarely saw any of them, but Courtney did always send a beautiful Christmas card. Seemed like my dad had a good thing going with them down there.
“I told him I’d take care of selling it,” Steve continued. “I don’t think we have much personal stuff there anymore, but it probably needs to be spruced up, checked to see if we need to do any repairs. Not a big deal. Maybe I’ll drive up this weekend.”
“Why don’t I do it?” I heard myself saying, then realized I did want to get away.
Steve immediately went into concerned brother mode. “Have you driven that far alone since the accident? I don’t think you have. Do you think you’d be all right there on your own? Could you handle taking care of everything? It could be a big job.”
“You just finished saying it wouldn’t be a big deal. I’m not going to fall apart up there, ok?” He thought I would sit alone and drink again, probably. I paused. “Maybe I’ll bring a friend.”
That kicked off more alarms for him. “A friend? Do I know him? Someone from college?”
“You know I don’t hang out with those guys anymore.” A few of my college friends had pulled themselves together and led productive lives, but most of them were still just partiers. Pretty “toxic,” as I’d learned in rehab. Really, we had never been friends. Just partners in getting wasted.
Steve was the picture of anxiety, pulling his lip between his finger and thumb, shifting in his chair. “Maybe we could go together. ”
“Maybe you could trust me a little.” I stared at him. “Eight years on Monday, right? I haven’t slipped, not once.”
“It’s not the drinking,” he said, and I snorted. “Ok,” he amended, “it’s not just the drinking. I worry about you physically driving so far, with your headaches, and sometimes you don’t seem to focus.”
“All true. So I’ll bring a friend.”
Steve fidgeted. “Well, maybe we should talk about it a little more. Maybe this weekend wouldn’t be good anyway.”
“Fine. Let me know when you want me to go.” I turned and walked out of his office, calling over my shoulder, “And tell Dad that I’ll take care of it.”
∞
Cecilia wasn’t at work when I went down in the afternoon, and I asked the guy at the counter about her.
He got a huge grin on his face. “She was only here until two today. Want to leave a message?” The other girl quickly walked over, and both of them waited hopefully.
“No, no message. Just black coffee, please.” They looked very disappointed.
While the guy got my coffee, the other girl watched me. “What’s going on with you and Cecilia?” she asked me.
“Nothing really.” How slowly could someone fill a cup?
“She’s our good friend. She’s like my big sister.”
I nodded. The counter guy was slowly putting on a lid .
“Jason and I think she’s awesome, right, Jase?”
Finally, the coffee. I put a five on the counter. “Keep the change,” I told them as I took off. I swore I could feel their eyes burning holes into my skull.
I wondered what Cecilia did with her days when she wasn’t at the coffee shop. She had mentioned the Y. Growing up on a boat, she was probably a good swimmer. Her childhood sounded crazy. She talked about her mom in such a loving way, but the woman sounded like a deadbeat to me. If I read between the lines, Cecilia had been the one in charge when she got old enough—probably well before she was old enough. Her mom hadn’t even bothered to educate her only child.
I walked over the Y and checked out the pool, and ended up joining. I wasn’t looking for Cecilia, I told myself. Just checking to make sure it was safe. Looked pretty good to me, so I went back to the office.
At five on the dot I cut out of work, and left the garage door open when I got home. I had stopped at the market again and bought a huge amount of food, which led to a text from Steve checking to see why I needed to spend $200 there and then another $50 at the health food store next door. I told him I was getting ready for the trip.
Soon enough, I heard the ugly van thunder into the garage, then Cecilia’s light feet on the stairs. “I’m home!” she called when she came in. “Alex?”
That sounded nice. “In here,” I answered from the kitchen, where I had been putting away the food.
“Wow!” she commented when she came in. “Did you leave anything on the shelves at the store?” She started to help me put away groceries, and in the small condo kitchen we bumped into each other at almost every step. Cecilia started to laugh. “May I have this dance?” She put her hand on my shoulder, reaching up high, and held out the other one.
All I could look at was her mouth. Her beautiful smile with her soft, pink lips. The smile that was slowly fading as I didn’t respond, and then she let her hand slide from my shoulder. I shook myself. “What did you do today? I went in to get a coffee, and the guy there said you were done early.”
“That’s my friend Jason, isn’t he nice?” She was arranging the new boxes of pasta in the pantry. “I’m only there until two on Wednesdays.” I noticed that she hadn’t answered my question, but as someone who had his movements pretty well scrutinized, I left her alone. “What about you? Tell me exactly what you do at work!”
So I talked to her about Whitaker Enterprises, and my miniscule role there. “My dad started the company,” I explained, “but he stepped back about five years ago and sold out his interest to my brother and me. Stephen, my brother, is the CEO/CFO, and I’m an employee.”
“I thought you said your dad sold it to your brother and you too,” Cecilia said. “So don’t you have an equity stake?”
My eyes widened. “What do you know about equity stakes?”
She shrugged. “I took a business class at a community college when I lived in Nashville.”
“Well, to answer your question, Whitaker Enterprises is an LLC, a limited liability company. My brother is the general partner, and I’m the limited partner. But I’m not really a partner in the business, in any real sense. ”
Cecilia looked at me. “Why not?”
I stopped folding up the paper grocery bags. “It’s a long story.”
“I have nothing but time,” she said, and started to take out things that I had just put away. “I’ll make steaks! I haven’t had red meat in so long, my mouth is watering thinking about it. Sit down on the barstool and tell me.”
I gave her an abbreviated version. Car accident, head injury. I was in a rehab hospital for months, then in intensive occupational, physical, and speech therapy for more than a year after that. I couldn’t handle going back to classes, the stress of all the reading and test taking. That meant no more college, no MBA. I looked at my hands while I told her, wondering if the left one would shake, and when I glanced up, I saw that she had tears running down her face.
“Alex!” she said, then ran around through the door to hug me.
With me sitting on the barstool, we fit together perfectly. I was immobile at first, but gradually I relaxed until my chin was resting on her shoulder, my arms loosely encircling her tiny waist. How long had it been since I had physical contact like this? I had to admit, it felt good.
She was rubbing my back. “So that’s why you get headaches and don’t like reading! Oh, I’m so glad you’re ok! I’m so glad!” She hugged me tighter.
Cecilia smelled so good, but there was something else—“I think the steaks are burning,” I said, and she leaped away.
“Shit!”
Despite a slight char on the meat, the dinner was delicious. Cecilia ate every bite on her plate: steak, salad, and bread. She even popped open the top button on her jeans to fit more in, after asking if I minded. It was truly an amazing thing to watch it all disappearing into her small body. Finally she was done, and when I looked down at my own plate, I realized I had cleaned it too.
“Deeelicious,” Cecilia pronounced. “I’ve heard that in some cultures, it’s polite to burp to show your appreciation.” She looked at me expectantly.
“Not in the culture of this condo,” I told her. I got up to clear the table. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“In the galley on the Essex ,” she answered. “It was really a great learning experience, because it was so small and most of the time at least one appliance was broken. And my mom wasn’t much into meal planning, so until I took over buying our food, opening the cupboards was always a crapshoot. Cooking in here is awesome!” She gestured around the small kitchen. “Especially when you do the shopping and cleaning up!”
I finished loading the dishwasher and turned to find her rooting through the bag from the health food store. “Wow, this is a lot!” she marveled. “Are you going to use all of this? Did you get the valerian to help you sleep? Do you have insomnia?”
I took the bottle from her and lined it up with the other products. “How do you know about all this gear, essential oils and valerian?”
“Well, my mom doesn’t really believe in western medicine. I’m pretty lucky I was born in a hospital! We did a lot of holistic stuff instead of, you know… ”
“Scientific stuff?”
“I think there’s a place for both,” she told me.
I thought of all the amazing things that western medicine had done from me. Basically, it had brought me back from the dead. “What if you got really sick? What did you do then?”
“Oh, I hardly ever get sick,” she declared. “Once I broke my arm, but it was when I lived with Carolina in Costa Rica, and she took me right to the doctor. The medical doctor. And when I lived in Miami, I got myself all vaccinated. I’m good to go!”
“Where does your mom live? Is she still sailing around?”
“No, no, not anymore. I think she’s in California.”
“You think? You’re not in contact anymore?” It made me think of my own mom.
“She’s really a free spirit. She’s always moving around. But if something goes wrong, she’ll call her friend Paulo in New York. And he has my cell number, so he’ll call me.”
That pissed me off. A lot. “And what if something goes wrong with you? How are you supposed to get a hold of her?”
Cecilia paused, then tilted her head and said, “Nothing ever happens to me. I’m very self-sufficient.”
That was a load of crap, a total load of crap. Her mom sounded like a real piece of work.
“Want to hear more of the book?” she asked, leading the way into the living room. She arranged herself on the couch, then leapt back up. “Wait a minute. If you’re having trouble sleeping, I’m going to bring up my lavender pillow! It’s not very fragrant anymore, but I still think it will help.” A minute later she had me laid out on the coach with my head resting on a small, pokey pillow. It made a scratchy noise that sounded loud in its proximity to my ears. “Do you smell it?” she asked.
“Is my head going to reek like a flower patch or something?”
“You’ll smell delicious!” Cecilia told me.
It did smell pretty nice. Faint, but nice. I let my mind drift as I listened to her voice instead of focusing on the words and the story. I was really loving the sound of it. When she paused to yawn, I told her to get to bed. “Thanks for reading to me. I’m getting up early to row tomorrow, so let yourself out when you need to. I’ll write down the garage code for you.” She nodded at me, her big brown eyes watching me as I stood.
“Goodnight, Alex. Take the pillow, ok?”
It was only later, as I lay with my head on her scratchy pillow, that I realized I was planning on leaving Cecilia alone in my house in the morning, giving her the code to get back into the garage. That I planned to see her the next day, the next night. I had known her name for what, for two days? What did that say about my judgement? If I told Steve, he would go crazy. I comforted myself with the knowledge that there was very little to steal in my condo. And she didn’t seem like a thief to me.
∞
Before my accident, and in ironic contrast to my penchant for destroying my liver, I had loved to exercise. I skied, I biked. I played every sport I could. After the crash in the rehab hospital, when putting one foot in front of the other had been an issue, I had dreamed of getting out and running for miles.
I had been a rower in high school, and that was what I had decided to go back to. At least four times a week, I got up early, and went down to the Detroit River to scull. I had skipped on the anniversary of my crash, and that had been a mistake. I almost always felt better after being out on the water. Once in the boat I could let go, my mind drifting as I focused only on the physical exertion. It was when I was on my way to work afterwards that I realized I had felt the same way, relaxed and calm, when I was listening to Cecilia read to me. I wondered what she was up to, and then told myself that I was not going to get coffee that morning. I needed a little space to figure out what I was doing.
I was concerned, really concerned, that I wasn’t being rational in how I was behaving. I wasn’t being normal. It made me feel better, in a way, that I was questioning myself—if my judgment was really that poor, would I wonder if it was? It sounded like an issue for Intro to Philosophy. I thought that maybe I should use someone as a sounding board to talk about this, though. Steve, with his tendency to go ape-shit, was not the person. When I got back to my office, showered and changed, I thought it over a little more and called Dr. Mavromatis, and his receptionist fit me in at one. He was at least an impartial observer. I got next to nothing done; once, after a phone call, I looked down and realized I had been sketching the shape of Cecilia’s face without even thinking about it. Going to the doctor seemed like an even better idea.
I had to tell Steve that I was taking off. It didn’t seem fair to skip out early twice in a week, and this time I told him why.
He swelled with concern. “Are you doing ok? Did something happen? ”
“You should look at this as a positive,” I told him. “This is the first time I’ve made a therapy appointment of my own free will.”
“But why?” he asked, then held up his hands in surrender. “Boundaries. Right.”
“Right,” I told him.
Dr. Mavromatis didn’t seem surprised to see me again so soon. It shocked the hell out of me that I had voluntarily gone to his office for the second time in a week, but he had a great poker face. “Ok,” I began, “I want to present a scenario to you, and I’d like your opinion. I don’t want to do some Socratic Method thing, I just want an answer.”
“So, you don’t want me to respond with a question?” he asked.
My mouth dropped a little. “Is that a joke?”
“It was. I couldn’t help myself. Please, go ahead with your scenario.”
“Let’s say someone—me, I—met a woman. She works at a place I’ve gone to a lot, not a strip club or anything, a coffee shop.” I rubbed my forehead. I was getting bogged down in the details. “Anyway, she needed a place to stay. She didn’t ask me for a place, I just offered it to her.” I paused. Hearing it out loud, I sounded like an idiot who had been scammed.
“Was this to have a sexual encounter? I’m not judging, I just want to understand.”
I reeled back. “No! No, I wasn’t trying to have sex. And I’m sure she doesn’t want to have sex with me. Anyway, then I invited her to stay a second night. She cooked dinner and she read to me. Again, no sex. And I gave her my garage code. I need to drive up north soon and I’m thinking of asking her to come.”
“Platonically?”
“I thought no questions? But yes, platonically,” I concluded, and waited for his response.
He grimaced. “I’m sorry, I’m going to need to ask a few more things. Has she abused your trust in any way? Taken advantage of staying with you?”
“No, not that I know of. I don’t think she’s like that. I guess she could be at my house cleaning it out as we speak, but I don’t think so.”
“So, what are you asking me?” Dr. Mavromatis said.
I signed impatiently. “I just want to know if I should go with my gut or not.”
“And your gut is saying what?”
“That Cecilia and I…that she’s a good person. That we get along, I don’t know.”
“That you could be friends, in other words.”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Have you retained many friends from before your accident?” he asked. I shook my head no. “And have you made many since?”
“I have lunch sometimes with some of the guys I row with. But no, I wouldn’t say we were friends. ”
“How about your brother? Although, from what you’ve said, he takes a somewhat paternal role.”
I laughed a little. “Yeah, somewhat.” I thought. “I guess I don’t have any friends. Am I grasping at straws with her? Because I’m lonely?”
“Are you lonely?” he asked.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. I was totally, crushingly lonely. I took a deep breath.
Dr. Mavromatis was watching me. “Let me ask you this: do you think your accident was a result of your poor judgment?”
“Absolutely,” I told him.
“How many poor decisions have you made since then?” he asked.
I thought. “Nothing big. Nothing sticks out to me. But I also haven’t put myself in a position to make a lot of big decisions. Steve is that guy for me.”
“That’s a profound thing to recognize about yourself and your brother,” Dr. Mavromatis said. He looked at me for a moment. “You want to trust yourself here.”
I nodded. “I’m just not sure if I should. If I talk to Steve, he’ll say no. But she’s…” I trailed off. “So what should I do?”
“Sometimes when making a decision, it’s helpful to look at the worst possible outcomes.”
I thought about it. She could be a serial killer, but there were no indicators, like an excess of bumper stickers. “I guess the worst possible outcome is that she’s actually a jerk, and then I’d tell her to fuck off, I guess. Sorry for swearing. ”
“I’ve heard it before. Well, if you’re asking me—that’s another joke, sorry—then I would say, try to take things slowly, as you’re just stepping back into forming relationships. But I think you can trust your gut.”
I was shocked. “Really?”
He nodded.“Really.”
I went back to work, avoiding Steve and his anxious attitude, and stopped to get a cup of coffee too, but Cecilia wasn’t there. Her two curious co-workers actually handed me a pen and paper to get me to leave a note for her, but again, I declined. I would see her for dinner.
I left right at five, hurrying home. When I got back to my condo, the garage was closed, and the van wasn’t parked in it. She didn’t come back that night, and the lavender pillow did nothing to help me sleep as I worried about her in her stupid van, Nina, parked in some bad neighborhood. When I finally nodded off, I had a nightmare about someone setting the van on fire, with her inside. Maybe this was the worst possible outcome that Dr. Mavromatis was talking about. You cared about someone, and she got hurt.