Chapter Twenty-Four #4
"No. This is Sammy's old room," she told me, sitting on the top of a lacy bedspread, a small floral pillow clutched to her chest. "I left in such a rush, I never got to bring anything of hers with me," she told me, eyes moving around the pictures, the trophies, the knick knacks lining a small white desk.
"Now, I don't know what to take," she admitted, sounding lost.
I moved over toward her, sitting down at her side.
I remembered a moment much like this. After our mom passed.
We all tried to find one thing of hers that we wanted to keep with us always.
Scotti had earrings and a necklace, Kingston had her camera, Atlas got her passport that she'd never gotten any stamps in, Rush had her old keychain.
They'd all made their decisions so easily, without needing to give it much thought.
I'd been crippled by the options, unable to decide.
Until Kingston gave me a speech that I would now give to Reagan.
"Close your eyes," I suggested, repeating myself when she didn't immediately do so. "Now, think of a time you spent with Sammy. Not just any day. A really special day. A day that still makes you smile."
"We went to the beach. Not our beach. A normal beach for normal people.
We were twelve and we'd never been to a normal beach.
We never walked a boardwalk and we never squished in between other blankets, listened to someone else's radio blaring music we hated.
We never rinsed off in a public outdoor shower that sprayed dirty sea water all over us, leaving us dry and itchy. But we loved it."
"What else did you two do?" I asked, not figuring there was much to go on with a sea water shower.
"We went to the arcade. God, it was so loud.
All the dinging and sirens and kids squealing.
It was amazing. I sucked at everything, but Sammy was amazing at skee-ball, something we never would have known if not for that day.
Sammy had her eyes on this pair of heart-shaped sunglasses at the counter.
She wanted to buy them. But, of course, they don't let you do that.
They make you spend five times the amount to earn the tickets to buy the glasses.
I was getting grumpy. I wanted to go get food, get home before our parents started to worry.
But Sammy refused to leave until she got the sunglasses.
She got them eventually. And she wore them every single day for the rest of that summer.
Then she got me ice cream on the way home to shut me up about being hungry. "
"Do you think Sammy kept the glasses?" I asked when she was done, smiling, but tears were moving down her cheeks.
"Sammy kept everything."
"Okay. Let's find them," I said, hopping off the bed, systematically working our way through the room until we found them in a box on the top shelf of the closet.
They were light pink, purple, and blue lenses with a silver heart-shaped frame. The kind of glasses that only worked on a young girl.
But Reagan slipped them on her face, beamed ear-to-ear, and turned back toward me.
"You were really good at that."
"I can't take credit. That was all Kingston. He gave me that speech once when I couldn’t decide what of my mother's to take before the rest got boxed up."
"What did you end up taking?"
I reached into my back pocket, pulling out a piece of silver, the pattern long since rubbed away.
"This was the last quarter she had to her name.
I carried it with me all those years we worked to take from the company that took her from us because she couldn't afford more treatment because they wouldn't offer her medical care.
I ran my thumb over it whenever I thought about her while on a job.
There's nothing left of it. But I keep it with me always.
I don't rub my finger over it anymore, but I think of her when I take it out of my pocket at night, when I slip it back into it in the morning. "
Reagan's hand slipped into mine, pinning the quarter between our palms, her fingers curling over mine so it couldn't get loose.
Then she looked up at me through those heart-shaped sunglasses and she said the words I'd been hoping one day she would.
"I love you, Nixon. And I know, I know. It's not that long.
I think men actually end up saying it first most of the time.
Eighty-eight days, I think I read that in an article once.
Men say it in eighty-eight days. Women in one-hundred-thirty-two.
I think that is because women are afraid of seeming clingy or needy or something.
I think it is kind of ridiculous that we have to hide our feelings because we're afraid someone is afraid of our love... "
"Babe, you done blabbering?” I asked, watching as her lips curved up slowly.
"I guess so, yeah."
"Good. Because I love you too," I told her, my arms going around her lower back, pulling her against me, sealing my lips to hers.
"Hey," she said, breaking away, eyes a little big.
"Hey what?"
"Why don't we see if we can find an earlier flight home?" she asked. "If we get back, we can make it to Sunday dinner," she added.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was a woman after my own fucking heart.