If I Could Turn Back Time (3 page)

He hesitated, then poured. “So…? Who is the domineering asshole in question today?”

“I was thinking about my mother’s husband.”

“Your … father?”

“No, no, her current husband. Jonathan.”

“You know, it’s weird, you almost never talk about your parents.”

“Mother. My father’s dead.” There was that twinge I always had. The coil of nerves that ran from my heart and never let me fully get used to the fact that my father was gone.

“That’s right,” Sammy said. “I did know that. I’m sorry. I gather you’re not a huge fan of her second husband.”

I shrugged. There wasn’t a lot to say about Jonathan. Not
Jon
, by the way—woe be unto he who called him that!—just
Jonathan.
Yes, I thought he was a jerk. I knew he was bossy and domineering. But he wasn’t abusive in any technical sense, so if Mom was happy, there was no reason for me to be miserable about him. But, man, I had such a hard time acting like a grown person when she brought him up in conversation.

“I’m just being a baby,” I said, and meant it more sincerely than I wanted to let on. “I don’t like him, probably mostly because he’s not my dad, so I’m being a twelve-year-old about it instead of an adult.”

Sammy nodded, but I could tell he didn’t understand.

I barely understood, myself.

I was not just an adult. I was an Adult with Issues.

“If he’d lived, my dad would be sixty-five this year,” I went on, floundering a little because I didn’t have a firm grasp on my feelings. “
Sixty-five
. That’s still young by today’s standards. It’s not even retirement age anymore! I know—I just
know—
he’d have held off on collecting Social Security because it made more sense to draw more later.” How like me to move off into a tangent instead of elaborating on the important point at hand. “But he’s been gone eighteen years now.”

I pictured him, as I often did, in the ground, all these years on. It was a game I played with myself even though I hated it. To my mind, that was the best argument there was for cremation; no one could picture you rotting. Or, thanks to embalming, maybe
not
rotting. Maybe just lying under six feet of dirt in a suspended lack of animation forever.

Sammy looked at me carefully for a moment, reading into my expression and gestures every bit as much as he was reading into my words. “So this news of Lisa’s, starting a new family, fired those thoughts right on up.”

“No!” Yes, of course. But how bitter and small that was of me, taking her good news and twisting it into my own angst, so strongly that I was yards away from her, getting drunk and feeling sorry for myself, rather than putting my palm on her belly and talking about baby names and nursery d
é
cor.

“No…?” Sammy prompted.

“Okay, yes. I guess so.” Involuntarily, I pictured Lisa’s next few months: growing bigger daily, the bloom in her cheeks, the small—superior—maternal smile. I pictured the baby shower, the birth, the first visits, the over-the-top first birthday party.… And, more poignantly than that, I pictured the baby aisle at the grocery store, a place I’d had to cut through now and then and which always gave me pause.

Did I do the right thing, not having kids?

Did I make the right choice?

Or did I make the wrong choice so long ago now that there’s no way to rectify it?

These were torturous thoughts. Questions I didn’t have the answers to. Pains I didn’t have the medication for. A person can spend a good percentage of their early life playing with the angst of,
Did I do it right?—
because there was still time to rectify the wrongs. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty, even thirty-five—and all the many years in between—were still young enough to change directions.

Then suddenly you’re looking forty in the face and realizing that some of those choices you had forever to make are gone, or at least going so rapidly that you can’t possibly have enough time to make a good and trustworthy decision about them.

So Lisa’s news, rather than making me happy for her (though to be
totally honest
I wasn’t at all sure this wasn’t simply another acquisition for them), had made me feel stupidly sorry for myself and for all of my lost opportunities, crushed chances, and wilted dreams. Regardless of anyone else’s character, I was a jerk.

I held my glass out again and Sammy refilled it wordlessly, but this time there was a new darkness in his expression.

“Tod and I have talked about having a baby,” he said, then quickly added, “Adopting, you know.”

I looked at him, agog. Was everyone doing this? Was the whole wide world coupling off and starting families
now
? Did this really have to come down like a big old waterfall on me
now
? “Since when?”

He pressed his lips together, considering, then said, “We talked about it on and off for a couple of years.”

I was shocked. I mean, really, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. “You never told me.” Had I been such a crummy friend that I hadn’t even seen that he was headed toward this? Had I just expected him to be my little gay sidekick forever, the second half of my
act
, without taking into serious consideration his
real
life?

“Eh.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand, a gesture that would normally be reassuring. “You’re not into that kind of thing.”

And there it was. I’d been so selfish and blind that I hadn’t even realized anything like this was going on. Truth be told, I often forgot he and Tod were married, because he was always available to be my plus-one at events, so I kind of thought he was
mine
. But no, I’d completely missed this whole other life of his. I was
such
a jerk! “Why would you feel you couldn’t share that with me?”

“Oh, I don’t know … you know.”

It was a vague nonanswer, yet I
did
know. And it wasn’t even just him. No one wanted to talk about this stuff with me. I’d even seen the little glint of nervousness in Lisa’s eyes when she’d made her announcement. Everyone seemed to think I was cold to warm, fuzzy stuff.

And, actually, I was.

Now that I thought about it, they were right. I
was.

I’d traded the warm, fuzzy home stuff for success. It had served me well, because I almost never had moods or undefined depression.

But was that really working for me? “Sammy, you know you can always talk to me about anything.”

“I know.” He looked a little doubtful. Maybe that was a trick of my imagination. “But … do you know you can always talk to
me
?”

“Sure!” I said it quickly, with certainty, but the truth was I didn’t talk much about my inner self. I didn’t like to face that stuff, think about it. What was past was past, and I never saw much point in reexamining it, as there was no changing it.

“How come you never do?” he asked. “You hardly ever talk about yourself.”

“What do you mean? I talk to you all the time!”

He gave me a look that called bullshit on me. “You
never
talk about deep, emotional stuff.”

“I don’t have any!”

His look called me out. “Everyone has some. Listen, girlfriend, I don’t even know if you’ve ever been in love.”

“Oh, come on, I—” I stopped.

“Yes…?”

A rush of feelings came to me, memories, thoughts, longings I hadn’t had in so many years. It was the champagne. I held my glass out for him to top me off. “I don’t know, honestly. Which I guess you’d take as a no. But I remember thinking I was. Way, way back with my first boyfriend. I remember
wanting
that and believing that I would grow up to have the gleaming suburban life I thought my mom had.”

I remembered the warmth I felt when envisioning that future.

It was a stark contrast to the cold I felt right now in the blazing Florida sun—I who had everything.

Yet nothing.

Sammy snorted. “The past is rough enough. But first boyfriends are killer.”

“
All
boyfriends are killer,” I said, erasing the discomfort of my thoughts. “That’s why I prefer to avoid them altogether.” I stood up, a bit unsteadily.

“You say that now, but when the next Hottie McDreamy comes along, you’ll give in.”

“No, I won’t.”

“You will. I’ve seen it before.”

“No!” I threw my hands in the air dramatically, then laughed. “I take that as a personal challenge. I will
not
fall in love!” I started walking unsteadily toward the diving board off the side of the yacht. “I will
not
start thinking about knitting baby booties!” I felt the eyes of my friends on me and knew I shouldn’t have said that. “Sorry!”

“Ramie,” Sammy said. “You don’t mean what you’re saying. And, believe me, if you keep talking, you’re going to regret it.”

“I
never
talk,” I said. “
That’s
what I regret!” I could have gone on, but didn’t. But I thought it. I thought about how often I wanted to say some truth or other, but held it in because I couldn’t let people get the wrong impression of me. Or I couldn’t let them get the
right
impression of me. Hard to define which. I just had to be careful, neutral, all the time, so that people would take my financial advice without a feeling of prejudice.

But I didn’t have to say all that for Sammy to get the gist.

He sobered quickly. “Ramie, come back. I don’t think you’re in any condition to—”

“I will
not
need anyone else,
ever
!” I stepped onto the rough surface of the diving board and walked out, one foot in front of the other, as if I were on a balance beam. I used to do that, you know. Gymnastics. I was damn good on the balance beam, as a matter of fact. My body remembered exactly what it felt like to tip over into a cartwheel and land perfectly at the end of the beam, then do a backflip off.

And before I knew it, I was doing it. Even though it had been twenty-five years, I didn’t even stop and think; I just planted my right foot, dove down onto the board, right hand, left hand, then made a perfect landing with my left foot, then right foot. I stopped and put my hands up and laughed at the amazed face of Sammy; then—habit? drunkenness? just plain thoughtless idiocy?—I went to flip into the water, but I didn’t even glance at the board, the clearance, anything. I just threw back like the drunk moron I was.

The last thing I remember was the impact against my head (the board? the boat? I’m not even sure), and the split second of,
Oh, shit
, and pain that surrendered instantly to oblivion.

CHAPTER THREE

The beeping was driving me crazy.

It cut through the thickest part of sleep, leaving about one blissful second for me to drift back away into oblivion before
beep!
again. Funny how sleep can be like that. So delicious, so comfortable, so
necessary
that even one and a half more seconds of it feel like heaven.

I would have given anything, absolutely
anything
, to stay in that deep, black unconscious state.

If that was what death was, bring it on.

But no—
beep … beep … beep …

I batted my hand out in the direction of the sound—break it! stop it!—but the movement felt heavy and went without contact or landing.

Wait, where was I? This didn’t make sense; the puzzle pieces were slow to slide toward each other. Alarm clock? I didn’t even
have
an alarm clock! I used my phone now, a gentle piano trill to pull me back into the world, not some old-school LCD alarm.

I tried to open my eyes. God, it was hard. Like they were glued shut with Krazy Glue. That happened to me once. I was trying to put a mug handle back on and got a sudden, violent eye itch and went to touch my eye without thinking of the glue on my fingertips. You think it’s annoying when you glue your thumb and index finger together? Try your eyelids! Nightmare!

I tried again, and slowly light and color filtered into my brain. My head was pounding. God almighty, I hadn’t been this hung over in
years
. My head hurt, everything was achy to the point where I felt like I couldn’t move, my mouth was as dry as cotton, even
the top of my hand
hurt—what did I
do
? How do you hurt the top of your hand?

Drunk. I’d gotten drunk. Anything can happen when you’re drunk. All kinds of dumb, embarrassing things, in fact,
do
happen when you’re drunk. So … what? I’d been on the boat. Now I was in someone’s bedroom somewhere—please, god, their guest bedroom—and someone had set an alarm. Great. Thanks a lot.

The beeping started to fade. Thank god. Got to love an alarm clock that gives up.

I blinked and squinched my eyes and the room began to come into focus. There was a red LED readout across the room that read 7:04. The room was light, so it must have been 7:04
A.M.
But where the hell was I, that I—or
somebody
—needed to set an
alarm
?

My eyes rested on the door.

I knew this place.

The beige door. The familiar full-length mirror on the back of it, reflecting the familiar dresser, with many instantly familiar colors and patterns on T-shirts and clothes that were hanging haphazardly out of the drawers.

I blinked again. And again.

What?
This wasn’t possible. A dream. A drunken dream? It seemed too sharp to be ethanol-induced, but maybe my brain had energy where my body did not.

I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, tried to quiet my pounding heart, and took another deep breath before opening my eyes again. I looked to the left. I was expecting—fully expecting—to see the red walls, the black accent paint, the simple lines of the hotel room I’d left before going out on the boat with my friends—but instead I saw the little rose-print Laura Ashley wallpaper of my youth.

And there on the bed next to me was the achingly familiar, sleeping, gray-muzzled face of my long-gone golden retriever Zuzu.