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“Yeah, okay.” I shook my head, wondering how I was going to proceed with this “talk.” I had to remind myself that she was twenty-five, hadn’t ever had a real boyfriend, hadn’t even been in a true relationship. I hadn’t pursued the emotional aspect of a relationship with any of the women before Rakell. In a sense, we were making this shit up together as we went along. But I was at an advantage. I’d been watching my parents over the years, and I knew how a man who loved a woman acted; how he would put her before himself. I’d seen my dad doing just that, over and over and over.
“Hope you’re happy, mate, spoiling such a raunchy, sex-filled night,” she sneered, punctuating the word raunchy as she marched into the living room scowling, reminding me of Cassie when she was five and was forced to put her PJs on before bed. The red lipstick had been wiped away, and she was now wearing a baggy sweatshirt and leggings.
I smirked, loving how much this girl was loaded with sass. “Still look hot.”
“Guess not hot enough,” she groaned sarcastically under her breath.
I motioned for her to sit beside me on the couch, but she shook her head and dropped into the chair facing me from an angle.
“Rae-kale…well, I’m sorry”—I began, reining in my emotions—“I’m sorry about your dad. I was a little shocked, mainly ‘cause I had no idea. I didn’t know, well…” Scouring my experiential library of past relationships to find the right way to assure her I was a safe person, but I came up short, so I sought once again to channel my father.
She stood, moving slowly, almost catatonically, toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. “We rode horses together, and he let me help work cattle with the crew. My mom didn’t like that. She didn’t think it was good for a teenage girl. Horses were his thing, not hers, but I think she liked having alone time when we went on our long trail rides. They would last for hours.”
Staring at her back, I said, “I’m sure you must miss him.”
As if it were just her in the room, she started uttering memories about her dad, like she was watching a slide show playing on the glass. “We used to watch the Iowa Tornadoes play, eating this gross, cheesy corn dip he liked to make. My mom refused to eat it because, as she said, it was ‘like dog food.’ Dad would just say, ‘It’s American football food,’ and Mom would reply, ‘That’s the same thing.’” Twisting her torso to look at me, a choked laugh left her mouth.
I’d moved to the edge of the couch, resting my elbows on my knees, ready to spring up any minute to enfold her in my arms. “It was truly nasty. I mean, only Americans could shove so much processed shit together and call it food.” I saw the sheen in her eyes opposing the stiff smile she forced to her lips. “You know that Velveeta stuff you like? It was that, plus cans of drained corn, beans from a can, peppers from a can—nothing was fresh.” She adjusted her feet as though her legs were shaky or weak.
I stood, wanting to go to her, but forced myself to halt. Nothing in her watery voice or her body language invited me to approach her. Beyond her, I could see the blurry baubles of light from the cityscape. A pre-summer haze had settled into the air, muting the man-made bulbs of light that usually accentuated the Austin skyline. “Sounds like my kinda food.”
“Oh God, my mom would say you’re an unsophisticated bloke if she heard that. I guess, unlike my dad, my mom, well, she ate healthy all the time.”
It struck me that she talked about her mom in the past, as if she was gone, too.
“Anyway, she was kind of a snob. She’d been a model in London before I was born. My dad came from a family without money but he did okay after LSE.”
“LSE?” I inquired, slowly sitting back down.
“London School of Economics. He met my mom when he was going to school in London, and then I came along,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Anyway”—she turned back toward the windows—“I was closer to him than to her, and I think that bothered her. I mean, I didn’t try to love him more. He was just easy and funny, and Mom was always pushing me and she was critical…but Dad, well, to him, I was enough.”
“Enough?” tripped from my mouth. Even when I disappointed my parents, I always instinctively knew I was enough. That’s how they made me feel. Isn’t that the job of parents?
“He just didn’t want me to limit myself by staying there on the ranch. I always knew I would go away to college, but once he was gone, I had to, I had to get out…” With that declaration, she applied the brakes, as if she had to let the memories cross the road.
I heard her mumble to herself, something about nothing left. But what about her mom? “Rae-kale,” I drawled softly, siphoning any emotion from my voice. “What happened to your dad?”
Turning toward me, her jaw hard in defiance, at odds with the tears brimming in her eyes waiting to spill, she replied, “He died, okay, Jake, he died.”
“Rae-kale, come sit, or…” I muttered, shifting forward to stand.
“No, stay, I’ll sit.” She slid into the chair, squeezing her eyes shut, forcing the tears back. She opened them quickly, narrowing her gaze on me. “Okay, Jake, I’m just going to tell you what happened, but I don’t want to get all emotional about this, and it’s not anything that affects me today. That’s what you Americans do…”
“Huh, what do we do?” I uttered, not able to conceal my confusion. Her comment was seemingly out of place in this conversation.
“You use your childhood experiences to explain maladaptive adult behavior, then take years to figure all that shit out in counseling. Then when it’s finally figured out, you go on Instagram and talk about your self-discovery journey, inviting the world to see how strong you are because you’ve healed yourself from a fucked-up childhood, but not ‘til your adult life has been riddled with mistakes. No one says they made a mistake, or that they did it because at the time it made sense to them.”
“Wow, that pretty much sums it up for all of us Americans,” I replied, a twinge of humor surfacing in my tone. “Not sure what my excuse is then, for my less than mature adult behavior.” I let out a sigh, laughing lightly. “My parents were pretty great.” Shit, I wished I hadn’t said that.
“You’re lucky,” shot out of her mouth.
I nodded, acknowledging her comment but not addressing her biting tone, as if I didn’t deserve my family somehow. Who deserves or does not deserve their parents? Family is so important, but you get no say on who is in charge of your body, your brain, or your heart at the beginning of your life, and it impacts you so much. “I think you may have a point, but some people may refer to it as self-reflection, so you could position this positively and say Americans are self-reflective.”
“Really? But then you people write books and start podcasts as though you have the roadmap for becoming psychologically whole. This country is so bizarre. I’ve never seen so many people so fixated on their journey and then, with no education, think they’re equipped to help other people heal…like everyone in America is a psychologist. Life coaches, right? That’s what you call them. How about a friend? Just be a friend.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying not to chuckle at that statement—it was so her, her dry way of seeing people—some would call it black and white, but I liked the matter-of-fact way she summed up the shit people could spend hours dwelling on and discussing. “So, your dad?” My voice was soft yet unwilling to let go of this thread.
“In an instant, the life we were living was gone. It was as if all the years spent being a family evaporated all at once, almost as if I’d never had the past. The memories I have are all part of the same bucket that includes my dad dying, so it’s a chunk of my life I don’t like to revisit.” She gulped her wine, peering at me over the glass. Her face was blank—she was clearly resolved not to let this moment become anything more than facts, unwilling to share the emotional turmoil contained in that bucket.
