Chapter 38
There was a fire that ravaged San Diego when I was a teen. The Santa Ana winds propelled the flames from the inland mountains and threatened coastal towns, sending residents scurrying to evacuate. The hillside was left charred, seemingly dead.
But that spring, Dad and I stayed at a cabin in the eastern mountains, and I was transfixed by the emerald shoots and confetti of wildflowers already pushing through the seared earth. The original landscape was gone. But in its place was a new promise.
After kerosene burns down my life, I decide to be the shoots of grass, the lupines, and poppies too stubborn to die away.
I will be my own promise. Because I’ve made a huge mess of my life so far, with a lot of help from the people closest to me.
I figure I might have better luck cleaning it up on my own.
After I wake in Dad’s house for the last time, I slip out and drive away without looking back. I go home to my apartment to find that my plant has died and the cobwebs have flourished. Over the next few weeks, I clean. I purge everything that does not spark joy. Marie Kondo has nothing on me.
I practice making decisions. Easy decisions. Tough decisions. Bad decisions. Good decisions.
Either way, I’m not going to let things happen to me anymore.
I go back to therapy. The first therapist I find intimidates me. She reminds me of my fourth-grade teacher, whose disapproving scowl was legendary. So I try another therapist. She has a full sleeve of inked wildflowers and an eyebrow ring. She reminds me of my hairdresser and makes me feel at ease.
And I start at the beginning.
I rescue the ugliest dog from the local shelter and name him Adonis.
He is of indiscriminate breed with bald patches, one pointy and one floppy ear, and a snaggletooth protruding from the right side of his mouth.
But he has kind eyes and was so grateful to be rescued that he’s like Velcro against my heels.
On the rare times I leave him, he celebrates my homecoming with a sneezing fit and cries of joy.
He also dragged my new potted plant onto my bed and tore it to shreds, smearing mud all over my white bedding (one of the few possessions that did spark joy), and I worried he might wind up in the bad-decisions column.
But then he bowed into a chastened posture as if he were my humble subject, and I, his queen.
And I forgave him. He’s the best decision, surely.
He may never win a dog show or pass obedience school.
But well-behaved dogs seldom make history.
I also try some fitness classes. First, I attempt goat yoga.
I figured I like yoga. I like goats. It’ll be perfect for me.
But within the first five minutes, a goat pees on my mat.
Two thumbs down. Do not recommend. Then I try pole dancing—inspired by the athleticism of the women at Pandora’s Box.
I’m even more impressed after trying to spin upside down on a chrome bar. The skin burn is real.
Within a month, I’ve signed five new clients and hired a part-time assistant to take on simple tasks so I can handle complex projects at a higher billable rate.
Aiming to separate my work and home life, and force myself out of my PJs, I move into a coworking space.
It comes with free coffee, snacks, and Wi-Fi and allows me to work beside other professionals.
They consider me an entrepreneur rather than someone who couldn’t figure out what the hell she was good at.
I cut my hair past my shoulders, and for the first time, I go natural. My hair is more honey than the platinum of my youth. My natural color deepened, darkened, while I was busy disguising it with every bold hue on the color wheel.
Six weeks after I return home, I receive a package from Jackson County, Oregon.
It contains all ten pages of the legal document that changed my life twice.
Once when it was filed. Once when I found it.
It confirms the whole, harsh, ugly truth of my early years and the mother who didn’t raise me.
I read through it three times but toss it in the trash.
Of all the mementos of my childhood, this is not one I wish to keep.
I make decisions. Brave. Minor. Definitive.
I practice not being fine. Some days, the grief creeps in like an arctic freeze, and my body aches, deep in my joints and muscles, and it’s all I can do to get out of bed.
On those days, I drive to the beach and toss sticks into the waves for Adonis to retrieve.
I eat vegetables and drink water. I absorb sunlight and go for long walks.
Or I curl up on my couch under an afghan and read the book Serena gave me.
The collection of poems speaks to me on an elemental level—about grief, hope, joy, gratitude, and melancholy.
The poems tackle every emotion but “fine.” They sing about the extremes—agony and ecstasy coexisting in one embrace. And I listen.
And I let myself mourn Dad. He loved me and lied to me. He saved me and surrendered me to a lifetime of complex grief. I don’t think I’ll ever be “fine” again. But I hope someday I can think of his devotion without remembering his dishonesty, too.
I realize the search for answers was never about finding Mom.
It was about finding Dad. It was about understanding his deceit so I could embrace or renounce my love for him.
And I don’t know whether I understand why he made the choice he did, but it has helped me understand how his choices shaped me.
Whatever makes you happy, Princess was his mantra.
He let me get away with everything. Chose my happiness—however transient and unearned—over everything else.
He celebrated every milestone and modest achievement as if I’d climbed Everest. Whether he meant to or not, it made me feel like I wasn’t capable of more.
That I’d exceeded my modest capabilities.
But I know now that he was just relieved I wasn’t sick.
He wanted me to be happy. Not in the happily-ever-after endgame that most parents wish for their kids. He wanted my happiness immediately and always. He wanted my happiness as a security against the looming threat that I would inherit Mom’s illness.
But you can’t will someone to happiness.
You must let them find it, earn it. And whatever Dad’s motivations—good, bad, or indifferent—he shielded me from the hard truths, wrapped me in rose-colored Bubble Wrap, and convinced me to settle for fine.
Because if I reached for more, I might tumble over the cliff.
And I need to decide whether I’m willing to reach for more now that I understand why I never have.
In defiance of being “fine,” I let myself think about Beau. I allow myself to miss him. To acknowledge that there is no such thing as the whole truth, only shards that catch the light at different angles and tell assorted stories.
Beau’s first text comes when I’ve been home a week. It says simply: Can we please talk?
It tells me nothing about where his heart is, so I don’t respond.
He calls a few times, but I don’t answer.
I don’t respond when he texts me a while later letting me know he sold his book and completed the first draft, that my notes were as hilarious as they were helpful.
Actually, he says “our” book. But it feels like flattery.
Six weeks after I stormed out of his house, he sends me a text that says only: I miss you.
Please talk to me. And it takes all my emotional strength not to respond.
My phone feels like a grenade when I visit my therapist that afternoon.
I toss it onto the ottoman in front of me and collapse on the couch.
“What scares you about replying?” Dahlia asks me once I’ve told her about the offending text.
“It doesn’t scare me,” I snap.
“Okay. Why do you think replying is a bad idea?”
“Because I miss him, too. Because I miss him so much, I may overlook why I left in the first place.”
“Which was?” But she knows why. She knows the story—or my version of it anyway.
I sigh. “Because he didn’t tell me the truth.”
“Right,” she says, nodding. It’s a drawn-out “Right,” but sounds like “and ...”
“And I don’t want to get in the way of him reconciling with Bianca, if that’s what he wants.”
“And you think that’s what he wants.” All her statements sound like questions.
“I’m afraid he never would have chosen me if he weren’t beaten down by her. That I’m a consolation prize.”
“Hmm,” Dahlia says. And she is starting to remind me of my fourth-grade teacher, too.
“What’s hmm?”
“Well, you seem to give a lot of credence to his choices. But what about yours?”
She’s right. I’m doing all this work on myself—and yet, as I think about Beau, I’m still deferring to my stubborn insecurities, waiting to be chosen, waiting for proof of my value and his affection. Old habits with old friends die hard.
The next day, on our shared birthday, I wake thinking of him. Honestly, I’m never not thinking of him, but as the sun breaks through my curtains, his name is a drumbeat in my skull. I check the time. He’ll be thirty-five in a few minutes, and I’ll follow twelve hours later.
I don’t want to celebrate without him. I don’t want to spend another moment without him.
And that’s when I make my choice. Whether or not he chooses me back.