Unteachable(41)
Author: Leah Raeder

I stayed with Siobhan after her kids left. We made Manhattans with maraschino cherries and sat on the back deck, talking long after sunset. She planned to travel now that Wesley had left home. She wanted to see Europe, write a novel, date a young Italian (“At least three times younger than me,” she said, “to get even with Jack.”), live for a while in a villa by the sea. She knew I was waiting for an answer from Evan.

“I am not the wise woman you think,” she said, tilting her glass. Starlight skimmed off the rim and shot into her eyes, sparkling. “But I will tell you this: don’t put your life on hold for someone, or you’ll wake up at forty-two with an empty house and a terrifying sense of freedom and no energy or innocence left to enjoy it.”

I wanted to hug her so much. “If Wesley doesn’t call you every week, I’ll beat the shit out of him.”

“Perhaps you should do that anyway, as a preventive measure.”

I laughed, she cackled, and we got drunk under the leaves and stars.

When I got home, I discovered two shocking things.

One: Mom was gone.

She’d scrawled a note on the back of an envelope and left it on the kitchen table. Her childish, blocky handwriting: Checking in to clinic. Sorry I’m a shit mom & no good with words. This letter came for you.

I blinked the sudden tears out of my eyes—I was drunk, that was the only explanation—and turned the envelope over. My name in florid, scrolling letters. Return address: Ahmad Farhoudi.

Shocking thing number two: a letter from Hiyam’s dad.

I opened it, my heart going at lightspeed. A smaller slip of paper fluttered out. I focused on the larger one.

My deepest gratitude for your discretion and concern regarding my daughter. You have given both of us a second chance. I hope this small gift helps you transition to an exciting new period in your life.

The smaller slip of paper was a check.

For ten thousand dollars.

I started laughing, breathless, crazy laughter, and then I jumped up and did a sort of whirling dervish dance around the kitchen, saying, “Thank you, sweet Jesus, I f**king love you,” and could not stop laughing with hysterical joy and relief.

And then the only thing left was him.

We spent that last week in St. Louis. Summer was in full bloom now, the city wild and drenched with color, the sidewalks breathing warmly beneath my sandals. I tried my best to live in the moment. To not think about the fact that there were only five more days before we might part for the last time. Then four. Then three. But the tension was always there, a wire tightening in me, pulling my limbs and neck taut like a puppet, and when I looked up at the Arch I thought, That’s how I feel. A terrifying upward pull, away from terra firma.

One night in the loft, Evan was pouring a drink in the kitchen when he suddenly put the bottle down and walked over to me, sinking to his knees. He clutched my legs, his face pressing to my shins, stubble grinding against smoothness. I was bewildered, and when he said, “God, what am I doing?” my confusion became fear. I stroked his hair tentatively, asked what was wrong. He looked up, his face full of panic, and said, “I can’t do this to you. You don’t know what you’re doing, Maise. You have a life to live, not a broken man to fix.” I stared at him, horrified, starting to cry as I realized what he was saying, and that quickly he flipped a switch and became the one comforting me, apologizing, soothing me with promises that he was just tired, stressed, not thinking clearly. But that night we both lay awake, staring at the ceiling, silent. I thought, Who fixes broken people? Is it only other broken people, ones who’ve already been ruined? And do we need to be fixed? It was the messiness and hurt in our pasts that drove us, and that same hurt connected us at a subdermal level, the kind of scars written so deeply in your cells that you can’t even see them anymore, only recognize them in someone else.

Two days.

The wires finally snapped at lunch.

I sat on a patio in front of a plate of something I couldn’t even process as food. The sunlight ricocheting off the concrete was blinding. Silverware flashed, all sharp edges. Everything was bright and incomprehensible.

My fork clattered to the plate, catching Evan’s attention. His skin had tanned slightly, and in the sun his eyes were so vividly blue it didn’t seem the right word anymore—they were azul, the color of the Mexican Pacific, so pure it almost hurt to look at. He put his fork down. He looked so beautiful sitting there, a fine scatter of sand on his cheeks, the sun drizzling his hair with light, gold on gold.

“Stop acting,” I said quietly. “Stop pretending you’re not scared.”

“I’m scared,” he said, his voice also soft.

“We made it through the worst, Evan. School’s over. This should be the easy part.” The summer sun was in my blood, shining through my skin. “Why can’t you let yourself do what makes you happy?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It really is. You drop the bullshit and tell me yes or no.”

His gaze broke away from me, his eyes tightening. “Just because it’s complicated doesn’t mean it’s bullshit.”

“That’s exactly what it means.”

“You know,” he said, focusing on me again, “you talk like you’re so jaded and wise, but sometimes you’re pretty naive.”

My mouth dropped. I felt like he’d punched me. I swallowed, and said, “I’m eighteen f**king years old. Excuse me for being naive.”

Evan leaned across the table, lowering his voice. “That’s right. You’re eighteen. I’m thirty-three. I’m a grown man, Maise. Fifteen years older than you, fifteen years’ worth of problems, and bitterness, and second-guessing myself. You don’t need that. Not when you can have a clean slate in California.”

Adrenaline pumped through me, turning me cold, my hands and feet tingling. Finally. This was finally all coming into the open.

“Like I don’t have my own problems?” I shot back. “How about my junkie mother and deadbeat dad? And the guys I was with before you, who I just wanted to be nice to me?” My voice cracked; I swallowed again. “And Wesley stalking me, and Hiyam blackmailing me, and every crazy thing that’s happened this year?”

“What happened with Hiyam?” he said, frowning.

God, stupid slip-up. I hadn’t told him about the blackmail, knowing he’d use it as another example of how he was ruining my life. It was a story for another time.

“The point is, I don’t have a clean slate. All of that shit comes with me. It’s part of who I am. Your problems have always been part of you, and I accepted them. That doesn’t change now.”

“You’re young, Maise,” he said gently, giving me that mournful look that took me apart inside. “You don’t know any better.”

I could not believe this. I could not believe, after everything, he was playing the f**king age card. Reducing me to a number.

“Fuck you,” I said.

I stood up. The lion in me wanted to flip the table over, listen to the glass and china shattering, see the shocked faces, but it would only prove his point about my age. I turned around and walked out. I had no idea where I was going, no idea where or who I was, just a meaningless blur of blood cells floating over white-hot concrete. I knew what he was doing. Trying to piss me off, make me leave him. You f**king coward, I thought. If you think you’re so wrong for me, own it, and let me decide. Don’t try to do what’s best for me. Don’t try to teach me.

I ended up in one of those urban parks that were everywhere downtown, this one all swathes of velvet green grass and trees centering on a plaza with a huge pool. In the center, a bronze Olympian runner stood frozen midstride, plumes of white water pulsing to either side of him. Behind the statue you could see the Old Courthouse and the Arch, a visual timeline of history. I sat on the coping, dipping a hand into the cool water and pressing it to my neck. Breathe, I told myself. I smelled wet metal. I watched the sun chip shards of light into the pool’s surface.

Evan eventually found me. He stopped a few feet away, his hands hanging loosely, his pale short-sleeved Oxford glowing with sunlight. He stood there while I stared into the pool.

“You look so beautiful,” he said. “So beautiful and far away.”

Do something, I thought. Jump in the water, propose to me, tell me you’re moving to South Africa. Don’t just let me go.

But he only stood there, breaking my heart.

I got up. Headed toward his car, across a street bordering the park, my sundress snapping at my legs as I walked fast. Evan caught me before I crossed and touched my shoulder and I stopped right in the middle of the street.

“Don’t leave like this,” he said.

The muscles of my throat were tight as a noose. “This is it, Evan. This is how it’s going to end. Not on some romantic runway at midnight. It’s going to end in broad daylight, on a crowded street, with people—shut up!” I snapped when a car honked behind me, “—with people hurrying us so they can go pick up their laundry. Is this how you imagined it? Is this really how you want it to end?”

He looked at me miserably, his voice thick. “I don’t want it to end.”

“That’s not good enough,” I said. The car veered around us and zoomed away. I started to cry. “If you’re not on that plane with me, it’s over. And I’m not holding my breath a minute longer to find out. Are you coming with me or not?”

This is what he said:

Nothing.

Not a word to stop me, to explain himself, no matter how futile it would be.

He just gave me that aching, tender look that ripped me to shreds.

“Give me your keys,” I said. “Give me your f**king keys.”

He did.

Autopilot engaged. I opened the trunk, pulled my bags out. Some of my clothes were still in the loft, trivial things, toothbrush, lotion. Nothing I cared about. Not that I cared about anything anymore.

“Maise,” Evan said, “please.”

I dropped my bags into the street. Cars were honking again, edging around us. I ignored them. I knelt to unzip one of the bags and yanked out that f**king stuffed pony I’d won almost a year ago and hurled it at him. Goodbye, Louis. Then I bounced to my feet, flagging down a taxi.

“Maise,” Evan said again.

I didn’t look at him. The cab coasted over, popped the trunk, and I shoved my bags in. Threw myself into the backseat and slammed the door. I couldn’t feel anything. My brain registered the hot sun-baked leather, but my body was numb.

“Where you headed?” the cabbie said.

“Just drive,” I said, refusing to wipe the tears off my face. “Drive around for a while, please.”

He pulled away, and I lasted all of eight seconds before I started crying again, openly, horribly, lowering my head and shrouding myself in the dark curtain of my hair. The hem of my dress turned transparent with tears.

Mr. Driver didn’t say a word.

The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it’s piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it’s ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero f**ks whether it’ll ever see it. On the day I die, it’ll be calculating what to have for dinner as it bombards itself with pain signals from my amputated legs or my clocked-out heart. And so, when I stopped crying, I wiped the snot off my upper lip and took out my phone.