Chapter 8 #3
It very easily could. You really, really shouldn’t have gone into what seemed to be an empty cave in the wilderness. I opened my mouth to explain that but Theo kept talking.
“You have a big family that loves you, which is wonderful. They wouldn’t let you live in a cave.”
Because of his intelligence, he had already understood about the bears. “I don’t want to do that to them anymore,” I said. “I don’t want to be their issue because they have other people to take care of now, their own kids and partners and friends. There’s a group chat about me.”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I got invited to be in it.”
“No, you couldn’t have, because they’re talking about you, too,” I said.
“Really? There must be more than one, then.” He didn’t seem perturbed, but I was.
“Exactly,” I replied. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Before, it didn’t mean anything that I was a person who needed multiple group chats devoted to her problems, but now it’s bothering me. That’s why I had to be careful about Christmas, because I don’t want to hear about the box of leaves again.”
“That was what Brenna said when she thought you picked her name for the gift exchange…holy hell.” Theo frowned. “I have to get something for the gift exchange.”
“Check with Regina. If you put it in your calendar, she might have done it already. I’m done now, too, because Dion helped me today. Brenna is very hard to buy for and everyone moans and groans when they get her name, but he had ideas. We got her a necklace that he swears she’ll like.”
“She does seem opinionated, but I spotted that trait in several of your siblings,” he noted, and I nodded hard. That was dead-on accurate. “Why was she talking about a box of leaves? Was she afraid that you might give her poison ivy vines for Christmas?”
“You know as well as I do that those plants are deciduous and I would be giving her bare stalks.”
“But urushiol oil is always a problem,” he added, glancing down at my legs. I had put on sweatpants, though.
“Brenna was talking about something I did when I was a kid, something I gave Juliet. Not poison ivy, but a box of laurel leaves because that’s her middle name.
Laurel, not Leaves,” I specified, and he nodded like he’d already understood, the smarty pants.
“Addie has always liked plants a lot and she was saying how she was sorry that her middle name was Carolyn and not Laurel because that’s from nature, and I didn’t have any money.
Those two things aren’t really related except that they gave me an idea for a present. ”
“A box of laurel?”
“I looked up the plant and I also found out that they gave wreaths made of the leaves to old-time Olympic winners. And Juliet was so good at swimming and always winning,” I explained.
“So I walked around until I found a laurel bush, and I picked the leaves. When I got home, I tried to make a wreath but Brenna is the crafty one. I’m crafty like sneaky, but she’s crafty like crafts. ”
“How far did you have to go to find the plant?” he asked and I had to think. While I did, he asked another question. “How old were you?”
“I was eight, because it was the first Christmas without Nicola in the house. She had always helped me figure out gifts before but she had college and important things to think about that year. I remember going a long way, because you couldn’t see the Renaissance Center from our house but you could at the house where I found the bush. ”
“In December, when you were eight, you walked through the city looking for a plant.”
“Yes. And I found it but you know, people don’t like you denuding their shrubbery. They get mad and they might turn a dog onto you so that you have to run. I’ve always had an affinity with animals but not that day. It would have been better for me if they’d had fish instead of a Rottweiler.”
“Does your family know this whole story? About the miles and the dog chasing you?” he asked. His voice sounded louder. “Because they were acting like the leaves were a joke but it doesn’t sound that way to me.”
“I don’t think I ever told the whole thing,” I answered. “I definitely didn’t tell Nicola because I think she would have made me get rabies shots. People can mistreat a kid they see wandering around alone, and I never wanted her to know.”
His voice got quiet. “Are you still talking about the dog?”
“Not just the dog,” I admitted. I’d been thinking about it today, and I blamed Dion because he’d made me consider how I thought about sex.
The problem had started that same year, when I was eight and wandering around on my own.
“Some things happened back then and that was why I wanted to take martial arts,” I said now. “I wanted to be able to fight back.”
“What…Grace, that’s awful.”
“And that’s exactly what I mean,” I said.
“I don’t want to be the girl with a box of leaves running from a dog and a perverted neighbor.
I don’t want to lose my shoes trying to get someone a Christmas present or by falling into a creek, which you can find if you leave your driveway and walk into the woods for just a little way.
If you do find it, you might look for a pair of tennis shoes, size eight. ”
“Why were you in the woods? Is that what happened when you showed up here barefoot all those months ago?”
“It wasn’t that long ago,” I said. “It feels like I’ve been living here forever, like I dropped in and fit into things, but that’s not true. I just got here and now I’ll go again. I’ll go and be the woman who’s not collecting leaves.”
“But where? Where will you go?”
That was such a good question.
“And how do you have any money? That keeps coming up in the group chat and your siblings have some wild theories,” he told me. “I have to keep explaining that I’m not paying you, although I should be. You won’t ever take it.”
“I’m being paid in room and board.” He already knew that I didn’t mean lumber, so I didn’t have to explain any further. “I have savings, too. I’m careful with that and I want it to grow.”
Theo sighed, long and hard. “Your brother and sisters agree that you’re crafty in the sneaky way. They say that you’re the cagiest Curran.”
“They do?” I brightened. “Wow!”
“They don’t mean it as a compliment. They mean that when they’re trying to get information from you, they want to claw out their own eyes in frustration.”
“I tell people what I want them to know, when I’m ready for them to hear it.”
“Do you want to tell me more about what happened when you were a kid, the reason you wanted to learn to fight?”
I shook my head.
“And you’re not ready to tell me where you’re planning to move next?”
Nowhere with him, obviously, but why would I?
He wouldn’t want me in his furnished, corporate apartment, because he wouldn’t need my help to pay the rent and it wouldn’t need to be emptied out.
In fact, that would be theft. He wouldn’t want me around for company, since he couldn’t be bothered to sit at the table with me to eat the dinner I’d made.
He also didn’t want me for sex, no matter what everyone in the group chat (the one both he and I were excluded from) might have thought.
“I don’t know exactly what I’m doing yet,” I told him.
“I’m not sure, but I do know that I’m going to make a better decision this time.
I’m not going to put all my belongings into my trunk and drive as far as my car will take me, then just stop and make that my new home. Because I’m done with this.”
“With…me?” he asked slowly.
“There’s nothing with me and you,” I reminded him. “And I mean that I’m done with me. I’m done with Nicola having to remind me to use soap on the dishes, and running out of gas, and boxes of leaves. I’m over it.”
Theo squinted at me and rubbed his jaws, something he hadn’t done in a while.
Even with all the stress of the house, he hadn’t seemed to be grinding as much and I had been glad.
“I wish I knew what you were thinking,” he said.
“I wish you had a more concrete plan of action, because the thought of you driving until you run out of gas and then just staying there…honestly, it scares the hell out of me.”
“Remember that I’m scrappy. In the years since I quit martial arts, I learned how to defend myself for real.”
“I don’t want you to get into a position that you have to fight,” he said next. “It makes me worry a lot.” He rubbed more.
“This is exactly what I don’t want,” I responded. “Would it be better if I thought it all through, very thoroughly, and then told you—”
“Yes,” he said immediately. “Get a plan together with lots of details, write it all down, and share it with me. Share it with Regina and Pinar, share it with your sisters and brothers. If you really don’t want people to worry, then you have to act in a way that’s predictable and mature.”
“Predictable and mature.” I nodded. “Ok, I know you’re right. I can do that.”
Theo seemed unconvinced.
“In high school, I was sometimes a theater kid. I was in a play where I portrayed a child from Austria who had to escape the horrors of World War Two by climbing over a mountain.” It had been a natural fit for me, as part of a family of seven kids myself, although not a German-speaking one.
“Addie saw and she said that I was very convincing. I can also act the part of a predictable and mature woman.”
“The problem is becoming one, not just pretending,” he said, and yes.
Yes, that was a problem.