She makes it sound easy, but the path looks so shadowy to me. “I’m not capable though. I’m not fixed. I’m not healed. I can’t even tell what a healthy relationship is.”
“You are capable, sweetie,” she says, reaching for my hand, resting hers on mine. It’s not a motherly gesture, but maybe it’s a sisterly one, and I don’t mind it. It feels warm, comforting. It also feels appropriate. “You just let go of the past.”
Let go.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe, just maybe, if I try letting go of the past, at least one way it chains me, I can move forward.
“Is it really that easy?”
“Yes, it is. It is easy to let go. But to do so you have to take ownership of your behavior. Your choices,” she adds, and now her voice is firmer now.
“But I do take ownership of them,” I protest, but then I find myself wondering. Do I blame my mom for everything?
“I think you’re getting there. And I’m not saying you need to beat yourself up. But I think the key to healing is to acknowledge that while you might have had reasons that led you down the path of love and sex addiction, you also need to accept that you made those choices. You made them, you own them, you are accountable for them.”
“But what does it mean to be accountable for them?” I say, pressing her. I want to understand her advice, I want to be like her, I want to be happy on the other side.
“It can mean being honest about them. Talking to the people who might have been hurt, or shut out by your choices.”
With a sharp pang, I think of Kristen. Of my total lack of honesty with her. Of how I haven’t let her in. When you’re an addict, there’s a divide between you and your normal friends and that divide is their not knowing. The divide is alive, pulsing with its own secret heartbeat only you can hear every time you hang out with them, talk to them. It’s as if a ghost is in the room, chattering constantly, and you’re the only one who can see it or hear it.
Am I ready to banish that ghost?
“Does that make sense?” Joanne adds. “That’s my wish for you.”
I nod. “It does make sense,” I say, nerves jumping as I picture myself holding a chisel, banging it on the brick wall between Kristen and me. But what happens when the wall crumbles? Does the friendship fall to rubble too?
Joanne tucks her needles and sweater-to-be away, reaches into her white leather oversized shoulder bag and pulls out a book. There’s a stick drawing of a girl on the front carrying an oversize, misshapen heart. The caption says “Carry the heart.”
Is she carrying her own heart? Or someone else’s?
Joanne hands me the notebook. The white pages inside are empty. “It’s for you. If you ever want to write down any thoughts. Or not. Maybe it’s just a pretty picture on the front and you write grocery lists in it,” she says with a shrug. “It’s whatever you want it to be. All I hope is that you can someday know that love doesn’t have to be a brutal, bitter, power game. Love can be the ugly beautiful.”
The ugly beautiful.
I’ve never heard the saying before, but it resonates deep in my bones.
It’s an oxymoron. But like many oxymorons, it makes sense.
Like this malformed heart drawing. Like my lack of mascara, like my telling off of Neil, like the kitten hanging in there, like the arrow that’s coming or going.
I don’t know if the arrow is coming or going. I don’t even know where I belong. But the arrow is real, it exists, and it’s in my misshapen heart.
“Is that what you have with your fiancé now? The Ugly Beautiful?”
She nods. “I think so. He knows me. I know him. I am flawed and I made mistakes, and I did things that were horrible. But I learned to forgive myself. Because I learned how to change. I don’t have to be the person I was. I know she was sick. And she was hurt. And she was terribly flawed. But I own up to it. And now I try to live a different life. I try to make some good out of it by helping others.”
“By helping the ugly become beautiful?”
“Yeah. I believe that’s possible.”
“Thank you,” I say to Joanne and I mean it.
Because I don’t want to be stuck in the past anymore. I don’t know what my future holds, but I know I need to start moving forward.
I leave, feeling a surge of adrenaline as I run up the steps in my Converse. I dial Trey’s number again. I want to tell him my plan. I want to tell him what I’m going to do. I want to share this moment with him. Even if he’s vague, even if he’s hot or cold, even if he’s messing with my head.
He doesn’t answer, but that’s okay. I’ll find him soon, but for now I don’t need him. I don’t need Cam right now. All I need is myself, and the one thing I’ve been doing my whole life over.
Writing.
Because I am going to take care of one thing at a time. I will figure out how to say goodbye to Cam, how to let Kristen in, and how to be honest with Trey.
But first, I will pay off my debt to Miranda. I will stay up all night tonight and keep going all day tomorrow and I will be done. I will finish and I will be free of her. I will finish ahead of schedule.
I need to get the bitch off my back.
Chapter Fifteen
Trey
Beads of sweat form on my upper lip and I lick them away.
Another drop falls and lands on my tongue. Salty.
The needle is hitting every nerve ending in my body, frying them. My ribs rattle and shake, and I am queasy. I swear I’m about to revisit this afternoon’s turkey sandwich if this isn’t over soon because I can taste the bile rising in my throat. I draw a sharp breath, like that can center me. But nothing changes. A thousand bees still sting my ribs, my sides, my hip. I grip the edge of the chair, digging my fingers hard into the vinyl, as if I can relocate the pain, send it elsewhere, deliver it to this inanimate object I’m sitting in.
Then, like a rainstorm ending in a snap and the sun appearing, the pain ends. It doesn’t drift off, it doesn’t fade away. Nope. It’s like electricity. On. Then off when Hector removes the needle from my skin.
He steps back, a master artist appraising his work. “It’s beautiful,” he says.
“Thanks, man. It’s all you.”
He shakes his head. “You gave me a beautiful drawing. All I did was bring that drawing to your skin.”
“We were a team then. I couldn’t have gotten this sucker on my flesh without you.”
He hands me the vaseline and I apply it to the new ink, smoothing it over. Then he gives me a bandage and I wrap it over the tattoo and tape it down. I’ll leave it there for a few hours.
“You know the drill. It’ll scab over tomorrow,” he says.
“Like a sunburn.”
“It looks good, man. I want a picture of it. Those trees are works of art.”
A tree is the symbol of strength. Of healing. Of remembrance. Of understanding. But most of all a tree is the the symbol of regeneration, of new life. And it’s the record on my body of the trees I planted myself in a park one night when my parents were out on a call.
They are my trees. They belong to me.
Harley
I spend the next twenty-four hours running on Diet Coke and determination. I churn out page after page for Miranda, more than she asked for, more than she expects. I am a machine. I am a turbo-charged robot on meth. I am an elite athlete jacked up on performance drugs. I ride faster, climb harder, run further than anyone. Kristen knocks on my door a few times, asks if I’m okay, if I need anything. I tell her I’m working on an epic history paper for my final assignment of the year.
I only hate myself slightly for the lie. Because I am so accustomed to lies they feel true now.
“Want something to eat?” She offers. “I’m making myself a peanut butter and honey sandwich. It’s kind of awesome. Especially with a cup of milk.”
“Sure.”
I eat the peanut butter and honey sandwich, but not the milk. There will be time for calcium later. Besides, Diet Coke makes my bones stronger. I briefly consider ordering in a triple espresso too, but the coffee shop around the corner doesn’t deliver. Bastards.
I crumple up can after can as I down them. Sounds of crushing, followed by sounds of typing are the soundtrack of finishing. I give Miranda everything she wants. I satisfy her every salacious demand with more, more, more. Shame, shame, shame. Whore, whore, whore.
It’s what she wants. Even though she’ll never know the whole truth of how I got into the tangled mess.
I write more, stopping a few times to text Trey to check in, but I don’t hear back from him. My mother writes though. She tells me things with Neil are growing stronger, and that she’s even starting to forget about Phil. Isn’t that great?
I want to say: We should all forget about Phil.
Instead, as I do for Miranda, I give my mom what she wants. I am so happy for you, Barb.
Another lie. But soon the lying will be over.
At ten-thirty-five p.m. on Sunday evening I am done.
I should be exhausted. I should collapse. I don’t. I feel victorious instead. I want to kiss the moon, I want to tango with the fattest, brightest star in the sky.
I snatch the thumb drive from my purse and save the file on the tiny silver drive for safekeeping. Then I email it to Miranda. “Dear Miranda: I believe I have satisfied the terms of our agreement. Good bye.”