Chapter 26
26
Kayla
Meyer lemons, what the fuck are Meyer lemons? I think, staring at a display of identical-looking lemons in Kentwood’s slightly fancier grocery store. Hungry Hearts is this evening, and Meg is losing her mind. She’s convinced one of her dips needs more pizzazz, but not in the form of a “vulgar” regular lemon but rather a “refined” Meyer lemon. Whatever. I pick some lemons that look weirder and oranger and smaller than “vulgar” lemons and stride angrily toward the checkout.
I’ve been in a foul mood ever since Gabe more or less moved in with me after Super Bowl Sunday. Not when I’m with Gabe—when I’m with him there are lots and lots of jokes and snuggles and orgasms that act as powerful antidepressants. When I’m with him, I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been. But when we’re apart, an ugly black rain cloud settles over my head.
I haven’t been searching for jobs as much as I’d hoped (because of all the jokes and snuggles and orgasms). I haven’t been planning my future. I haven’t even been working on my writing, and I’m furious at myself that everything is happening exactly the way I feared. Sure, it’s only been six days, but I already feel that I’ve completely lost sight of my goals and am one inevitable break-up away from being a waitress forever.
All day at the library or café, I work myself into such a lather that I’m ready to call it quits with him that night. But then he comes over, smiles that best-friend smile, takes me into his arms, and I just can’t. It would be like running over a puppy. Bending my own knee backwards. Sleeping at the foot of the bed. It would be against nature in some profound way. I am completely, utterly doomed.
Such are my thoughts when I hear an unfamiliar voice behind me in the checkout line.
“Well, well, well. Jesus fucking Christ. If it isn’t Kayla fucking Johnson.”
I turn around slowly, totally baffled, and, to be honest, a little scared. I find myself face to face with none other than Gretchen Meier. I haven’t seen her since high school and probably wouldn’t have recognized her if I hadn’t so recently combed through her Instagram account. We’re the same height—Gabe must like tall women—and she’s dressed with a kind of effortless elegance. Her dark hair is pulled back in a claw clip and her white puffer coat is so immaculately clean that it looks like it’s never been worn outside. I, however, am sporting my usual jeans and beat-up sneakers and a coat that wasn’t particularly nice when I bought it secondhand five years ago.
“Um, hi, Gretchen,” I say, for lack of anything better.
“Kayla Johnson,” she says again. “Heartbreaker. Homewrecker. I hope you’re happy.” She’s glaring at me, a tight, angry smile on her lips, and her delivery is so theatrical that I wonder if she’s secretly live-streaming this.
“Yeah, I’m doing all right,” I say, feeling like we’re having two different conversations. The cashier rings up my purchase, then hers, looking back and forth between us like this is the most exciting thing that’s happened to her all day. Gretchen follows me as I walk past the floral department towards the door.
“And, um, how are you, Gretchen? Are you in town for Hungry Hearts?” I ask, trying, again, to behave like a normal person.
“How am I? How am I ? How can you ask me that? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Look, I’m sorry about what happened with Gabe, but I really had nothing?—”
“ Bullshit !” she shrieks, getting in my face. I worry suddenly that she’s going to hit me. Shoppers slow down to look at us in the same way they’d rubberneck a car crash. “He was obsessed with you. He spent our entire relationship scouring social media for you, perving out over an ancient LinkedIn profile, which was totally pathetic, by the way?—”
“How on earth would you even know that?”
“How do you think? I looked at his fucking browser history!”
I try to maintain focus on her, to keep her car keys and six-pack of organic low-sodium elderflower tonic water where I can see them, but my mind is spinning. Gabe was obsessed with me? He looked for me online? This information ought to terrify me, but instead I feel a weird giddiness, like when your teacher is announcing the winner of a school essay contest and you know you’re going to win. Or like when the editor of certain online science fiction magazine tells you he’s going to publish your story, not that I would know.
But this isn’t a D.A.R.E. essay contest or a magazine publication. I know Gretchen is trying to attack me, but instead of feeling chagrined, I feel… flattered. Chosen . This is Gabe Wilson , the sweetest, sexiest, funniest guy I’ve ever met, and he wants me . Has always wanted me. Even when I was a pretentious high school student insisting on reading books I didn’t understand. Even when I was sweaty and smelled like french fry grease. Even though I’ve been keeping him at arm’s length ever since we got together.
He loves me , I think in an ecstatic rush. I feel elated and terrified, like I’m poised at the top of a roller coaster. Gretchen and the grocery store immediately fade into the background. All I can think about is Gabe.
Gretchen is going on and on—I catch phrases like disinterested lover and emotionally detached —but I’m not listening. I turn from her abruptly and make a beeline to the exit.
“I was jealous before I saw you,” she’s snarling at my back, “but no one would pick drab little you if they could have me . He’ll come to his senses soon enough. And I’ll be waiting.”
I pause between the open automatic doors—unafraid, for once, that they will automatically crush me—and turn to stare into her furious eyes.
“Is that a threat?” I ask, forcing my voice to stay steady.
“You better believe it, bitch,” she replies. I sweep the store again for hidden cameras, then walk away.
He loves me. Gabe Wilson loves ME.
As soon as I get home, I slump into an armchair without bothering to take off my coat, bag of Meyer lemons still clutched in my hand. I stare in a daze at the opposite wall as if Gretchen really did clock me with elderflower tonic water. Mom looks up from the afghan she’s crocheting and says, mildly, “Everything okay, sweetie?”
“I ran into Gabe’s ex at the grocery store,” I begin. “She… she basically blames me for their breakup. She acted like he was never sufficiently into her because he couldn’t stop thinking about me .” Saying the words aloud intensifies that belly-deep squirm of excitement and terror.
Mom rests her work on her lap and pushes her reading glasses up to her forehead. “Do you think that’s true?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. I can’t keep a tremor out of my voice. “But I think… I think he might…” I can’t say the word love yet. Instead I simply burst out, “Oh, Mom, what am I going to do ?” My heart starts hammering in my chest, sending vibrations up my throat that make me want to scream and throw up at the same time. Only a maniac would turn down Gabe Wilson. Gretchen knows exactly what she lost. But if Gabe and I stay together, then what will happen to me ?
I turn to look at my mother, desperate for guidance. At first her eyebrows tilt up sympathetically, then her expression hardens.
“Kayla, do you love this boy?” she asks bluntly.
“I don’t know !” I whine petulantly. I slump even further into the chair, letting my coat bunch up around my ears.
“I don’t believe you,” she replies. “I think you know how you feel and you’re scared. Your father was scared too.”
My eyes widen. She almost never talks about my father. She certainly has never compared us.
“We met in college. You know that,” she says, and I nod slowly. “He was a writer like you. Not stories,” she replies to my unspoken question. “Articles. He was a journalism major and editor of the student newspaper. Sharp as a tack and funny as hell. He could make me laugh without saying a word.” She smiles now, likely remembering some ancient inside joke.
“I thought he worked at the meat-processing plant,” I interject.
“He did, when you knew him. He went to college on a football scholarship. But he got injured our junior year and went on painkillers and, well, that was the end of that. He got addicted and eventually needed more and more just to get through the day.”
“I never knew that,” I say quietly. “I mean, I knew he slept a lot, and was sick a lot, but I didn’t know it was because…” I trail off. I try to recall him, but he’s mostly an indistinct blur hovering at the borders of my childhood. Except, of course, when he would read to me at bedtime. That’s when he would come alive: he could do any voice, from Gandalf to Ma Ingalls, explain any joke that went over my head or any technology a 21st-century kid couldn’t grasp. It’s thanks to him that I know what port and starboard mean, even though I live in land-locked Missouri, and that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe. And then he was gone.
“He was scared to get married. Scared to have you. He was afraid that he would end up letting us down because of the drugs. For a while I managed to convince him that we should face his problems together, but in the end he thought he knew what was best.”
“Well…” I start carefully, working to process this new information. For as long as I can remember, the only emotion I felt towards my father was anger. Not for my sake—I barely knew him—but for my mom’s. And I always assumed that she was mad at him too, though she never said so. But now I can hear her affection for him in every word she says. I try to tread lightly.
“He was right, though, wasn’t he?” I ask as gently as I can. “You might wish he was here now, but wouldn’t it have been best if you had never met him to begin with? It would have spared you so much pain. And you could have been the artist you were meant to be.”
“ No ,” she says sharply, startling me. She looks me straight in the eye. “I have no regrets. My art suffered because it wasn’t as important to me as the people I love. He needed me— you needed me—and I couldn’t ignore that.”
She pauses to let her words sink in. I think of how I’d left my job when she’d gotten sick. I missed the job and was frustrated at home, but I’d never once resented her or questioned my decision. She was more important. It was as simple as that.
“You did what you had to do,” I reply. “Given the situation. Of course. And I’m so grateful to you for raising me. And of course I’m grateful to be alive. But still, don’t you think your life would have been better if you had never—if you could go back in time and tell your nineteen-year-old self?—”
“Kayla! No . Terrible things can happen no matter what choices you make. But I loved him—I still love him—and I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Even though I know how it ends.” Tears start sliding down her face. I stare at her and try to understand, but her experience is totally beyond me. I simply can’t imagine having the courage to love someone you knew was going to break your heart.
“Have you really been trying to find him?”
She nods. “For years. I call hospitals, homeless shelters, rehab centers, halfway houses, wherever I can think of. At first I just looked in Missouri, then I started calling all over the country. But he fell off the map pretty soon after he left.”
“Is he…” I begin, struggling to formulate the obvious question.
“I don’t know. I search for a death certificate sometimes too.” She sets her mouth in a hard line.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?”
Mom looks away from me and shrugs. For the first time in a long time, I feel like a child. Totally naive and self-centered. How could I have missed the fact that she had been going through all this? Why hadn’t she asked me to help?
“I know you judge me for not putting my painting first when I was young,” she starts.
“No, I’m sorry, that isn’t what I—” She cuts me off with a glance.
“But any success I might have had would have been hollow without a person to share it with. I hope you achieve whatever you want in life. Just make sure it doesn’t come at the expense of what actually makes life worth living.”
She speaks to me more sternly than she has in years. I feel chastened. Humbled. I feel like I know fuck all about life and that my problems are absolutely nothing compared with what she’s faced. But it’s as if she’s asking my brain to do a somersault. And that sounds spectacularly uncomfortable and not a little dangerous.
“I don’t think I’m as brave as you,” I tell her frankly. “I like Gabe?—”
“I think you more than like Gabe,” she corrects me, surprising me with a smile. “You’ve been wearing that shirt of his to bed every night for eight years.” I blush furiously. Yes, okay, I kept the shirt he gave me when he pulled me out of that flooded ditch in high school. Yes, I wear it sometimes , but that’s because it’s comfortable .
“First of all, he doesn’t know that, so please don’t tell him, second of all, it isn’t every night, third of all, how do you know that?”
“I see more than you think.” She chuckles and wipes the last of her tears from her cheeks. “And I see how you’ve changed since he started coming over. I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh so much since you were five.”
“I like Gabe,” I start again, brushing this off. “But I was going to say that I really don’t know if I can give him what he wants. And I don’t know if it would be fair if I tried and then ended up making us both miserable.”
“Okay, then, answer me this,” she says, settling back on the couch and smiling more broadly now. “How would you feel if he got back together with his ex?”
My anger is swift and intense. “WHAT?” I shout, bursting out of my chair like a crocodile exploding out of the water. “He wouldn’t! I mean, she said she wants to, because why wouldn’t she, he’s—but no, he would never do that! She’s awful, she’s totally wrong for him! You should have seen her at the grocery store, who contours their cheeks to buy tonic water —” I gesticulate violently with the Meyer lemons.
“Is she going to this dance tonight?” Mom asks slyly.
“Oh, fuck, probably . Sorry,” I say quickly. I try not to curse in front of my mom. “But it’s not like these are his choices, me or Gretchen, there are lots of other women, not that I want him to date other women, or even dance with them, or—” I’m babbling, I realize, and pacing around our tiny living room with the kind of adrenaline that allows mothers to lift cars off their babies. Gabe just wouldn’t … would he?
Mom laughs at me outright. She drops the half-finished afghan on the couch and comes to put her arms around me. I stop frantically pacing and try to will my heartbeat to return to normal.
“Kayla, sweetie,” Mom says soothingly. “I wasn’t trying to upset you. I just want you to realize how lucky you are. Gabe’s a good boy. Take my advice and don’t let him slip away.”