The Girl He Used to Know (Page 23)

My dad and I shared a stiff hug. He wasn’t big on physical affection, but I never doubted his love for me. From the time I was old enough to understand what the word meant, my mom had been telling me how much my dad loved me. He was a systems engineer and when he wasn’t at work, he was either reading or building something for Will or me in the garage. He spent one whole summer building us that tree house in the towering oak in the backyard. Will eventually grew tired of it and ran off to ride bicycles with his neighborhood friends, but my dad and I used to stretch out on the smooth pine floor and read for hours. The two of us were kindred spirits; at least, that’s what people had been saying about us all my life.

“Hello,” my mom said, extending her hand to Jonathan. “I’m Linda.”

I’d completely forgotten Jonathan was there. My dad must not have noticed him either, but when my mom said, “Ron, aren’t you going to say hello to Annika’s friend?” my dad stuck out his hand. “Hello.” He shuffled off into the house after that.

“I hope you can spend some time with us before the two of you have to head back for the tournament,” my mother said. The chess team had earned a spot in the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, which would be held in downtown Chicago and begin a couple of days after Christmas. The Pan-Am was a six-round fixed roster with teams of four players and two alternates. I would be filling one of the alternate roles, which meant there was a good chance I would not see any playtime, barring something disastrous happening to one of the other four.

“I could come back the day after Christmas,” Jonathan said. “Then I thought I’d take Annika home to meet my mother on our way to join the rest of the team at the hotel.”

“That would be lovely. Maybe you could have lunch with us? Annika’s brother will be home then, too.”

“Okay. I’ll plan on that.”

“Would you like to come in?”

“Sure.” Jonathan picked up my suitcase and we followed my mother into the house.

Once inside, I plopped down on the living room floor to play with my cat, Mr. Bojangles, whom I’d missed terribly, and became engrossed in our favorite game, which consisted of him batting at a ball that would have had a bell inside it except I’d removed it because I found the jingle incredibly grating. Will said the bell was probably Mr. Bojangles’s favorite part of the toy, but I just couldn’t handle it. Jonathan and my mom stood nearby talking. It amazed me that they could converse so effortlessly after only just meeting each other.

“Well, I should probably head out,” Jonathan said. “My mom’s waiting for me.”

“Why don’t you walk Jonathan out, Annika?”

“Okay.” I rolled the ball toward Mr. Bojangles and he sent it shooting across the floor. As soon as Jonathan left, I would return to the cat and likely spend the next hour playing this game.

“I’ll call you,” Jonathan said when we reached his truck.

I wasn’t a big fan of talking on the phone, but it would be the only way for Jonathan and me to stay in touch over the break. “Okay.”

He reached into the bed of the truck, lifted the tarp that had protected our suitcases, and retrieved something from his. “I bought this for you. But you have to promise not to open it until Christmas.”

It was a small rectangular box wrapped in red paper and tied with a gold ribbon.

I remembered Janice reminding me to buy Jonathan a gift a few weeks ago, and I told her I was going to buy him a sweater, because I’d seen a dark blue one at the mall and I’d thought to myself, Jonathan looks really good in blue. I’d forgotten my wallet at home that day so I told myself to come back and buy it, but then I’d completely forgotten to do it. “I didn’t get you anything.”

“That’s okay. It’s just something small I thought you might like.”

I still felt stupid, but then Jonathan kissed me, and it didn’t seem like he minded that I’d forgotten. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

He glanced toward the house and kissed me again. We had slept together almost every day since the first time we had sex, and it was hard for me to describe the feelings I currently had for him. I thought about him all the time. I’d discovered that I did like cuddling with Jonathan once I got used to it, and that the feel of his arms around me was something I never got tired of. I felt anxious when he wasn’t around and at peace when he was near. I’d talked to Janice about it, and she said it meant I was falling in love with Jonathan. I had to take her word for it, because I had no frame of reference for such a thing.

All I knew as I watched him drive away was that I started missing him before he’d made it halfway down the driveway.

* * *

“What is that?” my mother asked when I came back inside the house.

“It’s a Christmas present from Jonathan. He said I have to wait until Christmas to open it.”

“Oh, Annika. That was so sweet of him. He seems like such a nice young man.”

“He has never been mean to me, Mom. Not even once.”

My mom didn’t say anything right away. But she blinked several times as if there was something in her eye, and then hugged me again. I wriggled away as soon as I could, because this one was so tight I could barely breathe.

I had my parents to myself for almost two weeks before my brother flew in from New York to join us. Will worked on Wall Street and was always trying to regale my parents and me with his accounts of living and working in the big city as if we couldn’t possibly fathom it on our own. I found it hard to pay attention, because I barely knew my brother. For most of my life, Will had ignored me. He left home for good as soon as he graduated from college, and I overheard my mother complaining that the only way she could get him back here at all was by playing the holiday card, which had something to do with guilt and nothing to do with the actual cards she sent out to our family and friends.

Now that I was home, I fell into old, familiar patterns of staying up late and sleeping until noon. I puttered around the house and played with Mr. Bojangles. My dad and I spent hours in the den reading our books in companionable silence while my mom baked and wrapped gifts. My dad and I trimmed the tree and we decided to place the lights vertically instead of wrapping them around it, and we grouped the ornaments by category, with all the balls on the top half of the tree, and anything that wasn’t a ball on the bottom. When Will walked into the living room two days before Christmas, the first thing he said was, “What the hell happened to the tree?”

My mom answered him. “I think it looks very unique and if you don’t like it, you can come home earlier next year and help Dad and Annika trim it.” Then she offered him a frosted sugar cookie and a beer, and he stopped complaining. I nearly gagged thinking about what that combination would taste like.

On Christmas Eve, after our extended family members had gathered up their gifts, said their good-byes, and gone home, I sat down next to the tree to open Jonathan’s gift. My mom joined me. “I think I’m more excited than you are, Annika.”

I was more curious than excited, because I’d been playing a game with myself where I had to come up with a different guess every night before I went to sleep for what was inside the box. I wrote them all down in an old notebook I found in my room. What if it was full of tiny white seashells from Tahiti? Or forest-green sea glass from the Atlantic Ocean? My favorite guess was that he’d bought me a fossilized flower in burnt-orange amber.

I tore off the wrapping paper, but it was not a fossilized flower in amber, or seashells, or sea glass.

It was a bottle of Dune perfume by Christian Dior, and though Janice squealed when I told her about it later, the brand meant nothing to me, because I would never wear it. Perfume felt like a cloud of poison when it settled on my skin. One day at the mall, when I was twelve, a woman had squirted me with perfume as I walked by with my mother. It had sent me into a tailspin of whimpering tears, and once my mother got me out of the mall and into her car, I ripped off most of my clothing. At home, I threw myself into the shower and didn’t come out for almost forty-five minutes.

“What a pretty bottle,” my mom said. It was light pink with a shiny cap. I ran my fingers over the smooth glass but did not uncap it or spritz a tiny bit into the air to see what it smelled like. “It’s the thought that counts,” she said. “Make sure you tell Jonathan thank you.”

“I will,” I said.

Although the gift was something I would never use, I loved the ribbon he’d used to wrap around the gift, and I spent the rest of the evening absently running my fingers across the curling strands. My mom was right, though. The bottle really was pretty, and the perfume ended up in a special spot on my dresser where it would remain, capped and unused, for the entirety of the winter break.

22

Annika

THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

1991

Jonathan arrived the day after Christmas. My mom spent the morning in the kitchen making a whole new meal even though my dad wanted to know why we couldn’t just eat the leftovers from the day before. It sounded like a logical plan to me, but my mom insisted that it would be wrong to do that even though we could barely get the refrigerator door shut because there was so much food in there already.