A New Leash on Life (5 page)

Wrapped up in each other’s arms, we inhaled as one. I clung to her, not wanting to let this moment of innocence be trampled on by the truths that scratched at my back, reminding me of the façade behind the layer of purity. I tucked into the comfort of the façade anyway.

We hugged each other afterwards. Tears spilled down my face, and she wiped them with her healing touch. By the time the sun had circled up and around her roof and casted shadows on the wall nearest her clock, she moaned and climbed up and out of my arms.

“I’m really late for work,” she said, standing to stretch, exposing her breasts, full and firm, nipples erect and every bit delicious looking as they tasted.

I stood and kissed her again, circling her nipple with the tip of my finger. She writhed under my touch, tilting her head back, exposing her neck. I traveled along her collarbone, up towards her jawline, stopping to graze along her upper lip. “You’re already late. Just cancel the rest of the day.”

She moaned, tickling my lips. “Have you forgotten who I am?”

“True,” I pulled away, reluctant in lowering my hands.

A few minutes later, when she dropped me off at my car, she lingered on. “So?”

“So.” Dread crawled up my spine, tapping me, reminding me of the secret that loomed, the one I had yet to dismantle.

“I’m not really sure what any of this means just yet.”

“Yeah, me either.” I cupped my hand over hers.

“I’m pretty busy with veterinary school and I’m sure you’ve got to get back to New York,” she said, saddling me to her passenger seat with her smoky blue eyes. “How is New York?”

“Oh, you know, it’s New York,” I said, clunking out a vibe that sounded too bold for her small interior. A string of webs formed and spun itself around us, cocooning me to the lie I came here to end.

“Tell me about it.” She squeezed my hand.

I fidgeted, uncomfortable with this buttery layering of lies piling up in the back of my throat. “New York isn’t important.”

“Oh come on. I want to hear about it,” she said with a power in her voice I’d never heard before. “Tell me about some adventures.”

“Adventures,” I said, feeding my hot, stifled air to the car. “Let’s see. I um, learned to sail.” I really had learned.

“What else?” She searched me for more. “What about something New York-related? Did you ever, oh, I don’t know…” she reached, that much I could tell, “…did you ever sneak into the front row at a Knicks game to get an autograph? Or sing on a crowded subway?”

I clenched my jaw. “No. None of the above.”

“Ever charter a plane and head to Paris for lunch?”

I darted my eyes up to the sunny sky. “On what universe do you think I live?”

She inched closer. “Ever take a girl to sail down the Hudson with you?”

I gripped the clouds, hanging on for dear life, pulling in my lower lip and biting down on it. “Nope, can’t say I did that, either.”

“Ever have sex with a girl on the roof of a skyscraper?”

I swallowed hard and looked down at my legs. “There have been other girls, Olivia. I can’t lie.”

“So, yes to the skyscraper?”

I landed back on her and sighed, perhaps a little too aggressively. “I’ve lived a boring life since leaving here.”

“So, if you didn’t leave for excitement, then why did you?” Grit played on the edge of her words.

“Not now,” I said, placing my finger to her lips. Another time. I wanted to drift home in a reverie, and fall asleep as the good girl for once.

“Was it worth it?”

I shook my head, shrugging off her line of questioning. “That’s a complicated question.”

“I see,” she said. She pulled her hand back and gripped the steering wheel. “Would you do it all over again? Pack up and move to the big city in search of more fun, more adventure?”

I clung to my legs. “Come on, Olivia.”

She pressed on, the pull of curiosity too great to fend off now. “I want to know about your life. I want to understand who you’ve become. I want to know how that grand city took you in and molded you into who you are today. What did you learn? Who did you meet? Tell me.” Her knuckles whitened around the steering wheel, as if pleading with me to uncover the Chloe who used to need her to protect and guide. “Come on. Tell me. Does the city really smell like hotdogs and honey-roasted peanuts? Do people really sleep on park benches? Do people smile at each other on the street?”

I fiddled with my capris, realizing the moment to come clean and tell her the truth dropped in my lap and waited for me to act. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

Anguish crawled up the back of my throat. My secret trapped me. “It’s just not my style.”

“Then, why are you still there?”

“I don’t want to talk about me right now.”

“I really want to know.” She touched my bare arm and I shook it off. I slipped away from her good graces like a ball descending a hill, losing my footing, and tumbling as I tried to catch myself before catapulting off a cliff.

“I packed a few bags, dated a few women, got drunk a few dozen times, danced naked in my apartment once or twice and spent my money on frivolous clothes and dinners. Not much more than that.”
Stop! I yelled at myself. Stop the lies.

I searched the parking lot for refuge from her questions.

Olivia sighed and sat up, paused, stared at my lips, then landed back on my eyes as if searching for a confession of murder, thievery, or something more than dancing naked in my New York City apartment. “I know you’re hiding something.” Her voice softened. “You don’t have to.”

I stared out of the window at the bright day. I wrestled with my lips to open and speak some honest sense. The safety ball rolled out of my reach, charging for a cliff to toss itself off so it could never be caught. I stopped, surveyed for a second, and let the ball roll without me.

Once I confessed to everything, we could deal with it all like two mature women who loved each other.

She smiled softly, waiting for me to unload. Just as I did years ago, I fell into her protective embrace and stepped up to the moment. “I’ve got so much to tell you.”

“Tell me.” She stared at me, waiting, hanging on my truth.

In a low crawl I said to her, “I’ve never even been to New York.”

She looked down at my hand like I’d just branded her with it. “Um. Okay.”

“I moved to my aunt’s house thirty minutes away.”

Her jaw hung open. “Wow. Okay.” She backed up against her seat, her eyes still bearing down on my hand. “So, I’m guessing maybe there was someone else?”

I flushed. My cheeks burned under the pressure of her focused eyes on my hand. I drew it back, brushed some runaway hairs from my face and attempted to compose an honest answer. “I did leave because of someone else, yes.”

She dropped her eyes to her lap. “I knew it.”

“It’s not what you think, though.” I placed my hand on her elbow.

She shrugged it off. “It seldom is, isn’t it?” She smirked through gritted teeth, still staring at her white knuckles. “I know I shouldn’t be bothered after all these years, but I am. I feel like a fool.”

Four words sat on the top of my tongue waiting for me to brave up and release them. I did everything to launch them, licked my lips, curled up my tongue, cleared my throat, even blew out whiffs of air. They toyed with me like an unruly child, punishing me with a prickly assault until finally I slapped my thighs and cried out, “I have a daughter.”

Silence swarmed between us, thick as mud, powerful as quicksand. I couldn’t look at her directly, so I stretched my eyes as far as they would move left and watched her chin quiver, her lips press into each other, tracks of tears roll down her face and onto her white strained knuckles.

She nodded. “Wow. A daughter.”

“She’s five-years-old.”

She scoffed, bringing her clenched fist up under her nose. “Who was it? Was it that acting partner?”

I bit my lower lip, not sure what to say. I settled on, “It’s not important, is it? The fact is I was young and stupid.”

She hugged herself tight at this point. “So, you cheated on me.”

The word “cheat” pricked me, seared me, nauseated me. “It just happened. I got caught up in a moment, and I’m not proud of myself for it.”

She groaned and looked about ready to punch the steering wheel with her vulnerable fists. “Why couldn’t you trust me enough to tell me?”

“It was complicated and I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“You should go.”

“I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

She turned her head to her door again and waved me away. “I don’t want to hear anymore.”

What more could I say? I cheated. I hurt her. I lied to her. I still hadn’t told her the complete ugly truth. I saw no point to it now. Why drag her into the worst of the truth when the result wouldn’t be any different than the silent slap from betrayal I justifiably received?

Fuck my gut instincts. Fuck consequences. Fuck the idea of a perfect moment.

I slid out of the car in silence.

Half an hour later, I returned home, empty and unfulfilled. I drowned my misery in several glasses of rum and coke. How could she understand that I wanted no one else when I’d gone and hacked away at the trust she’d given me?

She hated me and had every right to.

A week later, I received a call from Ayla’s father. “I heard you visited Olivia.”

“How did you get my number?”

“I have my ways.”

“So, why do you care?” I asked.

“You told her you have a daughter.”

“Yes,
we
have a daughter.”

“I’m not prepared to have a daughter.”

“Well, that’s okay because I’m not prepared for her to have a father.”

“So, you’re not going to tell her?”

“No,” I whispered, unable to speak more words. I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand, clearing the path for more. “It’s best if I don’t tell Ayla.”

“I’m not a bad person. I just have a different life now,” he said.

Five days later a twenty-thousand-dollar check arrived from him. “Trying to replenish some of the costs you had to shell out for the past five years of my daughter’s life. I promise this won’t be the last. I’ll send along monthly checks until she’s eighteen.”

I deposited the twenty-grand into a joint savings account with Ayla. Then, I deposited check after check, month after month. When Ayla turned six, I enrolled her in a private elementary school that catered to gifted children. An intellectual whiz, she memorized the presidents in order of years-served, back-and-forth, by the end of her first year.

With Ayla in school full-time, I worked part-time at the library sorting books and videos so I’d be there to drop her off in the morning and home in time to get her off the school bus. I grew bored and restless with this. So, I applied for odd jobs at a nursing home, a breakfast restaurant, even a casino, only to be told I needed experience. For six years, I mothered after Ayla. I served as president of Ayla’s life. Didn’t that count?

I needed to do more. I needed to fill my mind with something than regret over Olivia Clark. She still swam in my mind and tangled around my heart. I imagined her in vet school, meeting someone wonderful, someone trustworthy, someone lesbian.

So, one day, while moping at the counter of a café, I answered an ad from Ayla’s school magazine about a seminar to get motivated. The next week I sat in the middle of a crowded auditorium listening to successful self-made millionaires talk about how I could be just like them. I spent the twenty-thousand-dollars Ayla’s dad sent to me on a series of investment classes. I needed to take charge of my future and of Ayla’s. This would be the best use for Ayla’s money.

I enrolled in stock investing classes, real estate investing, and then learned all about tax liens and deeds. Within six months, I purchased my first mobile home trailer with seven-hundred-dollars.

One trailer turned into many.

Within two years, I rolled in money. I funded a non-profit organization dedicated to helping pregnant teens get through the tough process of pregnancy. The organization sheltered many teens who would come to the house by their third month and have a safe place to live while they nurtured their bodies and protected their unborn babies from the maladies of malnutrition, judgments, and bodily harm. Many adopted their babies out, some like me, kept them. I enjoyed investing in this organization so much so that I invested in many non-profit startups with the purpose to protect and provide for those less fortunate.

Soon, I learned how to set up charitable trusts with all the cash I earned from my mobile home parks and trailers, trusts that would outlive me if properly managed. My mom’s trust tickled my core the most. I purchased an estate house, turned it into a residential home for adults with mental health disorder, and placed her in it. Gone were the institutional hallways, smells, food, and shared bedrooms with twin mattresses rats wouldn’t even want to sleep on. A beautiful home replaced this. I decorated it as I would my home, with hand-crocheted blankets, tailored window treatments, luxurious sofas, daily flower deliveries, and oil paintings of cottages and beach scenes. I wanted to envelop her in love. A musician performed for them every night in the grand room around the piano. A chef prepared gourmet meals and snacks for them every day. A staff of caring health professionals catered to their needs twenty-four hours a day. I had settled that part of my life finally, the day I visited her and she managed to hug me. In those few moments when her arms wrapped around me, the needless, pointless insanity that usually engulfed her had vanished, replaced by a woman with a smile and a happy heart. I wished I could’ve created this piece of paradise for her sooner.

I purchased a bigger house for Ayla, my aunt, and myself, taking much of the pressure off of my aunt. She retired shortly after and cared for her cats, crocheted, and watched soap operas. I’d never seen her so relaxed.

When Ayla turned eight-and-a-half, I bought her a horse farm so she could learn how to care for her horse, Trixie. Every day she’d beg me to bring her to Trixie so she could brush her. And, I did. We’d buckle up and drive along the country roads all the way to Ashland Farms where Trixie rested comfortably in a grand stable across from her best friend, Boomer, a magnificent horse with an uncanny ability to neigh as soon as we entered their courtyard, as Ayla liked to call it. Ayla and I would spend the morning grooming our horses and talking about fun things like alphabet soup, friendship bracelets, and braids. She never brought up questions about her father, about her grandparents, about her life outside the stables. That came later on, when she turned twelve and befriended the daughter of a guy I had been dating. Her friend’s name was Alexia. She asked me as we licked ice cream cones at Cool Licks down on Main Street one blistering hot summer day. “Where’s Ayla’s dad?”