I Never Knew

1900 words

I Never Knew

Will you be okay tonight?

I’ll be fine, why wouldn’t I be?

I just don’t want you to be melancholy on your birthday.

You always use the funniest words. Melancholy.

You know what I mean. Call me when you start feeling down.

I’m sitting atop my duvet with a glass of red wine, a blue scrapbook on my lap. Brian left an hour ago, leaving me to wash the dishes in peace. It left me a lot of time to think--to be melancholy.

I’ve just turned thirty, and I’m in the mood for memories. My cat curls up next to my leg, lazily swatting the flicks of sunset light that bounce off the shiny pages as I open the scrapbook. I run my fingers over the sharp edges of the pictures, remembering.

            I open to a grainy old photo. It’s me--skinny, leggy, gap-toothed, my hair in tight pigtails that stick straight out above my ears. I’m clutching a puppy so tightly I can almost see its eyes bugging out. I close my eyes.

****

            I hear his car pulling up in the driveway and I run for the door, eager for him to grab me off my feet and swing me above his head until my wispy hair touches the doorframe. I remember the smell of the sunshine and the hot glare of the pavement outside--it must be July or August. Daddy has his hands behind his back. Suddenly nervous, I stop short.

            “Jamie,” he says, and I hear something in his voice I haven’t heard before. “Jamie--”

            I wait. My mother puts her arms around me from behind. They are cold and her skin is damp from washing. “Jamie,” she says into my ear. “We brought you something. But you have to be very careful with it and take good care of it yourself.”

My father slowly brings his hands out from behind his back. In them sits a squirming puppy, round-bellied and soft, pink skin showing through the fine hair. I open my mouth and squeal so high I stop making noise. I lunge for the puppy and wrap it in my arms, not caring that it squirms. It licks my face and I think I might faint with happiness.      

            My father kneels down, looking straight into my eyes. His eyes are wet as he watches me cuddle the puppy. “Now you’re big enough to have this responsibility. You have to take care of it.”

            “Yes!” I squeal. “She can have a pink collar!”

            Daddy tries to explain to me that Natasha is a boy. But all I remember is Mommy sinking onto the couch, watching us and crying. The sound of her sobs is as real to me as the warm, soft fur on the puppy’s belly. I remember falling asleep that night to soft puppy breaths on my cheek and Mommy’s sobs in the next room.

****

            Before I met Brian, I didn’t know that parents often give their children gifts to cover up the rifts that are growing between them. I never realized that Mom and Dad were moving apart, even then. To me, they were just two proud parents who’d made their little girl very happy.

****

My fingers brush over another picture, bringing back a sharp smell of disinfectant and white tile. People are everywhere--tall, gangly kids in braces and graphic tees and too-short pants, short, childish kids in braces with spiky hair. Puffs of perfume and cologne assault my nose. I hold my two thin spiral notebooks close to my chest, trying to hide the growing sweat stains I feel under my arms, as I search the endless progression of tiny metal plaques for my room number.

            I find it. The teacher is tall and has his hair slicked back, wearing a tee shirt and jeans with sneakers. He smiles at me as I walk in and I feel myself blushing. I smile back and make my way to a desk in the back. Everyone else in the room is head and shoulders taller than me and already talking in small groups. They look at me sideways. I move toward my desk and, like a shark swimming through a shoal of fish, I clear a path through the 6th-grade science class of Room 554, leaving me alone in a pocket with the teacher smiling at everyone but me.

            I drop my books on the floor when I try to put them in my desk and everyone stares at me as I pick them up, hundreds of fish eyes staring right at me, unblinking. They don’t make a sound but I can hear their laughter beneath their unsmiling faces.

****

            I pull out the picture, grimacing, and tuck it away toward the front of the book. Middle school was a difficult time. It was difficult for everyone, I supposed. I always thought that I’d just forgotten my deodorant that day. Before I met Brian, I didn’t know that I must have been experiencing a developmental delay in my growth and coordination.

I pull a picture out of the binding of the album. It must have fallen and gotten tucked away. It shows the perfect summer day, the grass a vivid shade of green.

****

I’m barefoot and I can feel the sponginess of the ground beneath the thick grass. We’re all wearing white and Mommy is holding onto me, trying to keep me from running off and spoiling my dress. She doesn’t have to hold on to me. The dress is the prettiest thing I’ve ever worn and if I stain it, Mommy will be upset. She’s been crying a lot recently and she’s gotten angry too. Natasha sits down a few yards ahead of us and starts pulling at the white ribbon around her collar. I call her back and she comes obediently.

            Mommy has not said a word to Daddy the whole day. She looks like she’s been crying. I don’t want to ask her about it because she spent two hours in the bathroom doing her makeup and if I make her cry again she’ll smudge it. So I don’t ask. Last time, she cried and then she yelled at me. Just a little; she was very upset. I don’t want to upset her--today is our family picture day!

            It’s hard to keep my eyes open because the sun is shining into them. But the photographer is nice and takes a thousand pictures. She gives me a sucker when she’s done.

            “We’re bound to have gotten one nice one,” she says as my parents give her a tip.

It takes forever to walk back to the car. I’m hungry and I wish my parents would hurry. They don’t, though. They just look at the ground when I tell them to hurry up.

            Daddy doesn’t open the car door for me like I’m a princess, bowing and helping me up with his hand. He just opens the door. I get in and buckle myself into my car seat. When I look up, Mommy is crying and there’s a streak of black makeup on her hand.

            “Mommy,” I say softly, waiting for her to get upset at whoever made her cry.

            “Might as well tell her now,” Daddy says. He’s holding the steering wheel with both hands and he doesn’t make vrooming noises when he starts driving.

            Daddy always makes vrooming noises when we pull away. Something is wrong. My stomach hurts and I feel like crying, but I try hard not to. Mommy needs me to listen. Natasha puts her head in my lap.

            “Baby,” Mommy says. “I have to move away. I can’t live with Daddy anymore.”

            For a second I think I might throw up. “Why?” I ask.

            “Daddy has done some very bad things.”

            Daddy’s hands hold tight to the steering wheel. I try not to cry but the tears hurt my throat. They buy me ice cream and I pet Natasha’s head, but it doesn’t help. I’m sick for days. A few days later, Mommy gives me the picture as she kisses me good-bye. It’s the most perfect picture of our family we’ve ever taken.

****

            Mom told me later that Dad cheated on her with a lot of other women. But I never knew that he probably cheated to relieve the stress of raising me while they both worked. I never knew...until I met Brian. It explained so much.

I hold the family picture as I turn the page. I pause over one on the second-to-last page of the album, touching it with my fingertips.

****

I’m standing outside, in front of a cluster of vines loaded with flowers. My hair is blowing in the warm breeze, covering my face. I’m laughing, a corner of a neon sign poking out from behind my head. I’m blissfully unaware of how much that coffee shop will change my life.

I step inside, hit with the warm, grassy smell of coffee and tea and essential oils. My friend heads to the restroom and I study a menu, scrawled in messy chalk calligraphy on a dusty board. I’m frowning over an iced or hot drink when he walks in and sits down at the counter, talking easily with the barista. He’s eye-catching, cute, with thick brown hair and a beard and a ratty, colorful sweater. His smile is a mile wide. My friend comes back and catches me staring and we laugh together, self-consciously smoothing our hair behind our ears.

It doesn’t take long for him to notice us. He orders another coffee and drums his fingertips on the counter while he waits. He winks over his shoulder at us.

As the barista hands him his coffee, her hand bumps the register. A little coffee sloshes out onto his hand. He jerks his hand away and slaps the counter, spitting profanity. My friend looks at me and giggles. “That must have hurt,” she says, swirling her own drink and taking another sip.

When I look back at him, he’s smiling, showing the barista all his teeth as he helps her mop up the puddle. He drops a dollar bill in the tip jar as he walks away.

“Hey,” he says, stopping by our table. “You look like new friends to me.”

He buys another coffee and sits down with us and smiles and laughs and chats. He’s charming, sweet, caring. He asks questions and listens genuinely to us, and he puts us right at our ease. When he leaves, he asks very politely for my number.

****

I pull the picture out of the album and smile at myself. If I’d known I’d meet him when I stepped inside, would I have looked different? Less carefree, more nervous? More relieved?

Meeting Brian has changed me. I hold the picture and look at it as the light fades and my wine gets warm on the table beside me. He helped me talk. He opened up my past. I’d always thought I got away with a pretty good life. But no one really understands how much childhood events affect adult behaviors. I’d thought I had a couple of sad things happen in my life, but I didn’t realize how much they’d really happened to me. How much they really hurt me.

I sigh and put the picture away, a faint shiver going through me.

Call me if you start feeling down, he said.

I run my fingers over the pictures. Their brilliance has faded a little. The feel of them beneath my fingertips fills me with...melancholy. I pick up the phone.

Before I met Brian, I never knew how much I never knew.