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“It was Bucky. He got away from me one day, and when I tracked him down, he was just sitting on the ledge, looking out over the view.”
“He’s a dog of taste,” she said, grinning.
I smiled, thinking about how it had actually been Bucky who had brought us together by walking up to her that day at the market. If not for him, I didn’t know that I ever would’ve noticed her, and then remembered her when I saw her outside my cabin. “That he is.”
I took the opportunity to relish her and how beautiful she was. Opening her eyes, she smiled, holding out the bread to me. Instead of taking it from her, I leaned in and ate it from her hand, going as far as to lick soft cheese from her fingers. I loved the way it triggered one of her easy blushes.
“I have to admit, I had no idea you had the romantic gene,” she said, pulling her fingers away from my mouth.
I had a minute to decide what to do with the prompt, and I knew that the choice would define the rest of how we related to each other.
“Yeah. It’s recessive,” I said, unable to look at her as I looked down at my feet. “I guess that’s what happens when your dad walks out on you and your mom before he shows you any affection.”
I didn’t look at her, but I could feel her pull her knees into her chest. “Do you know why he left?”
I chanced a look at her. “He and my mom were young and wayward when they met. She grew up here, but she ran off to Memphis the first chance she got. Wanted to go to Graceland and all that.”
She nodded at me, smiling invitingly for me to continue. The fact that she wasn’t interjecting anything made me feel like I had the liberty to share, as opposed to being forced to share.
“My dad was a barback for one of the blues clubs out there, and they met when my mom became a waitress. They were young and into music and the scene out there, and they didn’t have a lot of money, but they wanted to follow their dreams. And then I came along.”
I’d thought this over so many times that it had long stopped hurting, but something about opening up to her brought the tears to my eyes. I blinked them away as I told her the whole story.
“Both of them were pretty into drugs at that point—heroin, I think. That whole rocker lifestyle. But when my mom found out she was pregnant, she decided she was going to get clean, and she did. And she asked my dad to, but he mostly half-assed it, just like he half-assed being a dad.”
“Do you remember him?” They were her first words in a while, and they were quiet and gentle.
“A little. I remember that he would play guitar to get me to sleep and that he was fun. But I also remember him being asleep on the couch and not being able to wake him up. That was when he was high, I think.”
“How old were you when he left?”
“Around seven,” I said. “And the thing was, he hadn’t been present enough in my life for me to really notice the difference. My uncle Rick, who lived out here, had been more a dad to me than he ever was. But my mom…” My throat tightened, as it always did when I thought of the young woman who, even in the midst of addiction, had had eyes that shone with love and beauty for her son.
“How did you end up out here with Rick?” she asked.
“My dad’s leaving did something to my mom. She just never was able to get past it, and she relapsed pretty quickly after that. Rick came out to Memphis to try to take care of us, and he moved us from the really shitty apartment where we’d been staying to a better one. He sent us money to pay rent and got us on food stamps, but none of it was enough.” I swallowed hard. “I was the one who found her when she OD’d. I’d come home from school, and there was a pot of pasta that was overcooking on the stove, so I went to turn it off, but when I called for her, she didn’t answer. Then I found her in the bathroom.”
I practically felt her soft exhale.
“I went to the neighbor—he was this really nice older guy who would sometimes sit with me and teach me chess while my mom was at work. He was the one who called the police, and then Rick. He came out that night to bring me back to the Ridge.”
“Rick sounds like a really, really good man,” she said, her eyes soft and wide.
“He was.” I swallowed hard, and I looked up at her, unable to help my defensiveness. “But my mom was a good person too. She really loved me.”
“I never thought she didn’t,” she said, inching forward to sit next to me and slip her hand under my hands. “It sounds like she had a very loving heart, and a lot of pain.”
That had been one of the best descriptions of my mother I’d ever heard, and it made the fissure along my heart fragment. “I’ve never stopped missing her. Even after she left me all alone like that.”
She shook her head. “Nobody sets out to become addicted to drugs, and she didn’t choose to abandon you. And moreover, no one chooses to love their parents. You come into the world that way. I’d have way more concerns if you didn’t love her.”
I looked at her, my eyes wide in amazement. I didn’t know why I was so surprised, but it felt like an incredible twist that I was able to talk to her about this part of myself that I’d only told to two other people. It made me think that I might actually be able to tell her more.
I pulled her into my lap, twisting my hands into her hair and kissing her deeply, more thankful than ever that she’d come to my door.
22
MACY
