4.0 cont.

I paused just outside his door, stupid-looking with my insulated cups.  I heard a new voice now, feminine and articulate, professional.

“So, what do you want to happen with her?”

Her.  Me.  Talking about me.  Brief pause; I dared not breathe.

“I just wish that Staci and I were…”

“Yeah?”

“…married.”  Tyler exhaled audibly.  I didn’t.

The unfamiliar female voice again:

“You are both very young, Tyler, you know?”

“I know.  I do.  It’s just that I’m going home to my mom.  My Mom, for…cryin…out loud. “  he laughed wryly, an oddity from him.  “The staff, you know–the nurses–have been helping me, with…everything, you know?  Everything.  Like…you know…wiping my…?”

“Ok,” she said gently, “You are having anxiety about your mom seeing you unclothed, or in an embarrassing situation?”

“Well, yeah!”  I could hear, almost feel, the physical weight of Ty’s embarrassment at even speaking his own thoughts.  I felt humiliated for him.  Not for him–like towards him, but with him–on my own person.  I was at this point completely frozen in place; I hoped to petrify, to turn to salt.

“It’s just,” he was continuing, his volume slightly lower, more steady, “I wish I could go home with Staci–to the privacy of our own…house, apartment, whatever, and I wish that–for as long as someone has to take care of me, it could be her.  Not like, just, she’s the one I prefer out of all of my choices, but she’s the one I want.  Out of the world.  She’s the only one I want ever–to see me…to touch me…to help me.”

“Hmmm……”  Therapist lady was maybe hoping for petrification too.

“I just…I want, I need my life with Staci to start right now.  I need her now.  Young, yeah, I don’t know–but it can work, I don’t know.  She’s coming here later, and I don’t know what to say to her–but we’ve got to talk…”

4.1

Here’s what I did:

I slowly pivoted, mechanically, as if on a wee lazy susan out there in the Foothills Rehabilitation Center hallway.  Then I began walking the direction whence I had come, absently setting down the spicedcaramelappleciderswithloadsofwhippedcream on some sort of rolling cart.  I steered myself back down the hallway, gliding silently across the smooth tan and white tiles, through the automatic doors, past the harvest decorations, and to my car.

I drove back to school.  I sat in my car until last period, then went to my class, ART II.  I never signed in.  Nobody in that particular class knew anything about my day.  Peggy tried to call me on my cell several times, then my mom, then Peggy again, then my mom.  I never answered.  The school receptionist paged my teacher–asked her if I was in class, asked her to send me to the office.  I went back and sat in my car.  When school let out, I drove home.  On the way home, my mom passed me, flying; she was going to the school to look for me.

I arrived to an empty house.  I grabbed my nasty dog, who I’d quit paying quality attention to a long time ago, and carried him inside and upstairs and shut myself in my room and lay on my bed holding my confused and now ethereally happy lab mix, and cried, scared, fists tight, and hated myself for disappointing,  hated Tyler for wanting to turn me into his nurse, hated Ryland–this small town, hated everyone in advance for hating me for being selfish.

4.2

Afternoon turned to cold dusk.  The phone rang a lot.  The furnace kicked on, creating a sound now–warm air flowing into my room.  The trees outside my window dropped their leaves like quiet raindrops.  I watched them dance past the glass until I fell asleep.  My dog was warm beside me, the old patchwork quilt was warm under me, the air was warm around me, and for a brief time, my body relaxed and I felt peace.

I awoke after dark and started at the black outline of a figure sitting at the foot of my bed, staring at me.  The dog was gone.  I sat up.  It was Dad.  I heard some faint sound from downstairs which told me that Mom was home too.  In one instant I knew:

–I had caused them great concern.

–They’d found me asleep.

–My nasty dog was back outside.

–They’d not woken me–concern outweighed anger.

–My dad had been elected to handle this.

–He had probably been praying.

–Tyler was home now, with his parents.

–I had a crying hangover.

Dad didn’t say anything at first.  It had been a long time since he’d sat on my bed like this.

I fidgeted, laid my aching head in my hands.  “I don’t know what to do,” I said in the darkness.

“I know, Staci.”

We sat there silently a few moments longer then dad said something that absolutely shocked me.  Two things, actually, preceded by a shaky sigh.

“Any chance your pregnant?”

I whipped my head up and stared at him, jaw dropped.  “What ?!?”

“Right, well, right.  Forgive me, but your mother had that thought…right.”  I still stared.

“Staci, as I’m sitting here, as I’m watching you, thinking about you, praying…”

I knew it!

“…I am having this thought–this thought, I don’t know…ah…”

“What?”

“I’m thinking Staci should drop out of school.”

Round two:  “What !?!” My eyes bugged out again; my jaw dropped again.

“Why not?” he said, “Get your GED instead.  Your grades are good–but you’re not at the head of your class.  It’s not like you have huge scholarships waiting for you.  You’re going to have to work and get loans just like everyone else next year.”

I was so hurt.  “Why?  So I can marry Tyler and take care of him?”

Now it was my dad’s turn to be shocked.  “What?  No!  No, Stace, no.  I didn’t mean that.”

“Then why?

He sighed, long and tired in the darkness, the light in the hallway illuminating the small bald spot on his head.

“Staci,” he finally said, “what you are experiencing right now in your young life is…too much.”

“I thought you always said that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”

“Well, now, let me finish.  God also gave you to Mom and I to take care of.  We’re watching you, Stace, watching you, watching you.  You’re all we’ve got.  Mom is up crying for you, praying for you, worried this is all just too much for you.  You’re already tiny.  Your mom thinks you’ve lost weight…”

He paused, waiting for a response?  I couldn’t generate words, thought of pulling my size 2 jeans up, like, 500 times the day before, but never really thinking about why I was lately having to do that.

“And you’re not sleeping soundly.  We can hear you in here all night, flipping around in your sleep, and I think…I think…you have been forgetting to shower.”

“I shower, dad!!”  Whap! Righteous indignation.  Then:  Shoot.  Showering, showering….hmmm…Not…able…to…recall…Shoot.

“But that’s minor comparatively. I think it would actually be more comforting, somehow, if you were floundering in other ways, like if your grades were slipping, or you started fighting with us, or isolated yourself from everybody.  But instead you’re actually trying to keep up with everything, until today, and your body’s been paying for it.  And we don’t talk about it, like the future–you and Tyler–gosh!  Staci!  I don’t want to think about you and anybody!  And we love Tyler!  We do!  But it’s like you’re being forced into this foxhole–and maybe you just need some breathing room.”

I stared at nothing.  This was all making me very sad.  But something else, too, something else.

“We just want to offer you a little breathing room.  So you don’t have to play this out in front of every friend and acquaintance and teacher and neighbor and busybody in this town.  You’re eighteen!  You don’t have to be Tyler’s nursemaid!  His life has changed drastically, but that doesn’t mean yours has to.  That’s your decision.  And you should get to make that decision with a clear head, with no pressure.”

Wow.  My dad.

I felt, though, like he was talking in code, and I told him so.

“OK, yeah.  Yeah.  I can get plainer.  This whole town is watching you, Stace, you and Tyler.  But mainly you, and I think you know that.  What will she do?  Will she stick with him?  Will they get married? And they’re ready to judge you either way.  They’re ready to vilify you if you choose to not be with Tyler.  We just want you to have the chance to think before you act.  And we want you to know we love you no matter what.”

“So…I drop out of school and get my GED and…then…I have time to think?”

“And you go spend the rest of the school year in Colorado with Uncle Jim and Aunt Gail, and help Jim at his office…”

Bomb.  Drop.

Dad got up suddenly and headed out of my room.  He spoke, and there were tears in his voice.

“Just think about it, Stace.  And go tell your mom you’re sorry about this afternoon.”

I sat on my bed for a long time.  My teeth began to chatter, a nervous, strange reaction I had sometimes.  When my soul felt cold.  And I can definitely identify what that faint secondary emotion was that I had felt minutes earlier, when Dad had said I needed some breathing room.  It was relief.

5.0

Tyler

From an early age, I wondered if I was going to die young.  This probably stemmed from my never having an answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?”–which is pelted at us from, like, the time we can give an answer.  I never knew.  In kindergarten I just hung back and watched as my little friends wore firefighter hats and chef aprons and doctor uniforms.  Then when I was an older elementary school-er, and police officers and veterinarians and pilots came to talk to us on career day and such, I zoned out.  This…this…future stuff just wasn’t for me.  It felt irrelevant before I even understood relevance.  When I got to be middle school age and my dad started taking me to his auto shop with him, I was glad to be hanging out with my old man, happy to listen to shop-talk and learn a thing or two–but it never felt like my destiny.  Nothing did.  Until I found Staci.

I had known her for a long time, but I didn’t really find her until high school.  That’s the way it goes, though, right?  Her real name is Anastacia.  It’s no secret.  I’ve been listening to teachers call roll on the first day of class for years now–saying, “Anastacia North?”–and then this dynamite-quick “Staci!” from the wee girl a few rows behind me.  You only called her Anastacia once.

Unless you’re me.  What me does is whispers her full name into her ear when I’m trying to wake her up after she’s fallen back asleep while watching Saturday morning cartoons during Spring Break at my house.  Because she had to be over at 6am, and yes, high school boys do wish their girlfriends could spend the night, and they do think bedhead is cute on the right girl, and they do like flipping Trix across the room–trying to get them into the right girl’s mouth. *

*{But they don’t like vacuuming the Trix up later when their moms freak out over the cereal all over the carpet.  Whatever.}

Sometimes I just said her name when her little head was leaning against my chest.  How was it she could be so small?  5′1, and I don’t think she’s going to grow anymore.  I think she’s going to have to quit making me check her height against the Sesame Street growth chart in her bedroom closet.  I couldn’t do that now anyway, couldn’t go up her stairs.  And she’s gone.

I walked past her a hundred times at school, at church, at the ballfields, who knows where.

And then I walked past her again.  And found her eyes, the fawn ones, and saw the way her short brown hair covered her sprite face so perfectly.  Acorn.  Slightly upturned nose, popsicle-red lips.  She was glowing like a little nightlight, and it was like

“Who dat?”

That was her.  And I knew I couldn’t afford her, had no idea how I’d save up for her, would fight anyone else who tried to get her, wanted to touch her.  Wanted her mine.

This was the first time I really, really prayed.  I asked God to give me a way to talk to her–an opportunity.  Then a date.  Then a taste of her lips.  Then time.  And then a future, and two other requests I shall not name here.  Three out of six ain’t bad, right?  I’ll try to live on the face of the coin, and try not to wonder what was on the other side.

5.1

I would’ve killed those kids, you know.  Coming up over that hill in the truck, one hand on the wheel.  If you’ve never driven one of those 70’s-era pickups, man, it’s a thing unto itself.  Springy bench seats, massive dash, vast expanse of hood that you cannot see over while driving.  At ignition I always felt like:  Here goes.

My dad bought it for me when I was fourteen, and it was supposed to be our bonding experience–him and I, out back, past dusk, spending two tinkering, puttering, painting years getting it ready for me to drive.  Ideally, all the effort we’d put into it, all the time, would make me appreciate it more, make me slow down, take less risks  with it, and just generally make getting my license as anticlimactis as possible.

It worked.  Driving was boring before it began.  I just wanted to run.  At sixteen, any day–any day, brother, offer me: A souped up V-6 or higher, skid plates, 4 x4, fog lights, whatever VS a semi-new pair of New Balance running shoes, crisp-but-not-frigid weather, a level dirt trail, and 45 minutes…

…and I’d go off-roading in my legs every time.