Getting by (A Knight's Tale) (7 page)

The same week, Mom closed herself into the studio and never came out—at least while I was awake. Not that I cared much, I wasn’t speaking to either one of my parents. Dad never came home. Gaby went to visit family, somewhere around the world. She was best friends with Waldo, and they wrote ‘Where in the world are Gaby and Waldo’. Never heard of it? Well, the dumb book didn’t sell much.

Early Monday, right when I was heading to my car, I saw Dad’s car pulling into the driveway. He had circles under his eyes and it looked like he had been wearing the same clothes for a week. They reeked of alcohol. He had skipped an entire week of my life.

“I love you, Dad.” I hugged him before I left for school because I thought my behavior provoked the fight with Mom and him. “I missed you.” But I didn’t apologize for my behavior.

“I love you too, Emmy.” He hugged me back and kept the embrace a little longer than usual. “You’re my favorite girl,” he said, tightening his grip. When he released me, I turned one last time to the house. Mom wasn’t a morning person and instead of waking her up for her eight o’clock class as usual, I left her there. Avenging what she had done to me.

Once I got to school I noticed that Malory Horton’s car occupied my usual parking spot, next to Tom’s. Serendipity gave me the warning, but I ignored it. Whispers and pity looks received me with open arms while I walked from the parking lot to the inside of the school. Gaby ran to me and drug me to the janitor’s closet, which was only a few feet from my locker.

“Gaby, I love you, but I’m not into girls.” She didn’t laugh at my joke, not a good sign. “I’m not going to like whatever it is you’re going to say, so you might as well say it now.”

“Malory and Tom hooked up during Spring Break.” Within seconds my cell buzzed with a text message, but she had already dropped a bucket of ice cold water over my head, leaving my entire body frozen.

Tom: Emma we need to talk

“Seriously, he gets to dump me? Why didn’t he tell me those words before sleeping with Malory?”

“Sorry, Em.” Gaby began her rant of how he didn’t deserve me, but I tuned her out because it wasn’t the point.

Heck, “I’ll miss you” meant different things for me. Tom meant to say “I’ll screw another girl while I’m away”. My parents ruined my life. Prom wouldn’t happen—my second chance to lose it with Tom. If the world ended, I’d die as the virgin cat lady—no cats—I was allergic. “The rumors say they’d been doing it for months, and word is out that he’s doing Stacy too,” Gaby continued her little report. That was two full bullets of bad news before my calculus class. What else could go wrong? I sighed and left the closet. Tom approached my locker but I stopped him with my hand.

“Save it,” I said, and ripped the pictures of the two of us from my locker door. Our moments together meant crap to him. “How long, Tom?”

“Don’t do this, Emma,” he responded.

“I didn’t do anything,” I said, and slapped the pictures against his chest. They fell onto the floor and he looked astonished at them. “I waited, and this is what happens. Well I’m glad I never had sex with you. Fuck yourself and the rest of the school, Tom.”

By midafternoon Tom’s betrayal and Gaby’s secrets dissipated to make room for the Anderson tragedy, the boy was no longer important. I never returned to school.

Due to my mourning state and excellent grades, I graduated with the grades I had as of that day and kept my valedictorian title, but I didn’t go to graduation.

Coming back to reality, I rewound part of Gaby’s news. “Wait, five years old?” She nodded. I made a few non-complicated finger calculations, thank you Miss Jane—my kindergarten teacher. “That comes out to before Spring Break, cheater. His hormones wasted the full ride scholarship. Any other news before we arrive? I would rather avoid the loud ‘what the fuck, Gaby?’ Makes me look trashy in front of others and always draws unnecessary attention.” She shook her head, keeping her eyes on the road. We were getting closer to ground zero. “Perfect. Shall we review the rules? No pimping, no pimping and seriously, no pimping.”

She pulled into the garage and gave me an indignant glare, as if she had never pimped me. Should I remind her about the nine, possibly ten atrocious blind dates she was responsible for? Before she gave me some lecture or we fought about my lack of dating, I opened the car door and got out, pulled my tote bag, and headed toward the porch.

Chapter 8

Emma

THE OLD SUBURBAN neighborhood, cookie cutter area with identical lots and perfect manicured lawns, surrounded me. This was the American dream, white picket fence and 2.5 children. While walking, I pulled out my phone and checked my emails. No one had an emergency on a Sunday; I could only hope. But, miraculously there was a job, my precious. I slammed the phone to my chest and petted it like a fuzzy friend.

Then the realization of leaving my laptop in the hotel made me slap my forehead. Without my portable office, I’d have to use paper and pencil. But I’d do whatever I had to in order to convince Liam to give me the project. First order of the day was to say hello to the Clements. Then I’d work my magic, take a picture and email the initial proposal to Liam.

I got ready to face Mrs. Clement, or Tina, as she insisted to be called back when I turned thirteen. Which I didn’t, Mom would’ve kill me for being disrespectful. She opened the door and gave me a hug worthy of five years of absence. The woman blurted words in Spanish while crying all over me. The little woman came up to my breast, and I hoped she didn’t wet the area or I’d be sobbing myself. This sounded insensitive, but those weird things happened to me. Smeared mascara over the nipple area wouldn’t look very appealing at a family barbecue, though I was used to it in certain ways.

I remembered the time I walked around one of the finest restaurants in London with a piece of toilet paper under my shoe. A huge piece no less. Luckily, most of the customers only had eyes for my hot companion, not my shoe.

“My little girl.” Gaby laughed at the irony. She was almost five feet tall and the heels gave her only a few inches above them. Mrs. Clement was strange, but fun. She pulled me inside and called Gavin and Mr. Clement. “John, Gavin—Gaby and little Emma are here.”

The noise stopped and everyone turned to see who the hell little Emma was. Gavin gave me a hug and introduced me to his girlfriend. Cute girl, and nothing like Chloe; very polite, did I mentioned nothing like Chloe? Because he did several times, emphasizing he was happy. Good for him. He and my sister dated during high school, so why he would care about her after so many years was a puzzle I decided to overlook. Gavin excused himself and went to the garden with his brother in law to be and cousins—dragging the so called “girlfriend” by the waist.

Looking closer at the walls and the fireplace, I noticed the art hanging around it. I didn’t like it one bit. Their main piece was the oil I painted during one of my visits to Half Moon Bay. I threw it in the trash with everything else, but what happened? Tina Clement, of course. My photographs and other pieces of art splattered around their house in a strange way of decoration. A pang inside my heart sent an alarm to my entire system; a way to avoid a sentimental scene in front of the strangers that surrounded me. I wanted to grab them and…burn them?
No take them home, Emma.
They were mine, a piece of who I was long ago.

“They are so pretty,” Tina said, and interrupted my plans for world domination, or plans to steal my pieces back. If I could contact my sidekick, things would get done. However I dismissed that thought and gave her a polite smile. “I had to keep them.” Then, for the twentieth time she looked me up and down. “You grew up to be a beautiful woman. I bet Anna would be proud of you.”

I doubted Mom would be proud of me. Mom loved the girl that created beautiful pieces of art with her hands. Before my parents fucked up my life, and someone else theirs, I was living the dream. The perfect life, which included a spot in the Paris-Sorbonne University—tuition paid by the school. Dad didn’t want to let me go, but I didn’t care, because I had enough money saved to pay for the first year of expenses. Well, that was until they drained my account. Furiously I wiped the tears with the back of my hand; Tina’s pity glare made me aware of them. I hated being weak. This feeling had haunted me for the last few days. Not only that, I craved to touch a sketch book, clay, pencils and other precious utensils.

Must fly out of California.

“Now, Emma, tell me about your job.” She patted my back. “Gabriela told me you got a promotion.”

There was one a couple of years ago, after graduating, and another one last September, when I finished my master’s degree online. But who’s counting? Me, because thanks to the promotion, I’d been traveling outside the country. During the summer, between my first and second year of college, I landed an internship in New York with a solid advertising company. No, one of the best advertising companies in the world. Once summer was over, Knight & White, or as everyone knew it—K&W, snatched me from the competition by offering me a part-time remote position. Sam White, one of the founders and partners, hired me personally.

I read their five year contract with a sign in bonus to die for and the possibility of growing as far as I wanted. They let me work from school while classes were going, but I needed to report to them the times I was free. They paid for a small furnished studio and any post-grad education I chose to take. The only catch was I’d return my bonus if I quit before the five years, and couldn’t work with anyone until the five years had run their course. As promised, they promoted me a couple of times. Now I had a window office with a shiny plaque that said ‘Emma L. Anderson, Creative Director’; an impressive achievement at my age of twenty three. I stayed as late as midnight or worked from home until one or two in the morning. We had offices in London and Japan, so you can’t blame a girl for keeping up with the other branches. The vice-president spot looked closer every day.

“Paint me a pretty picture,” Tina said, pointing at one of the few empty spaces in her wall.

“I don’t, I can’t,” I said defeated, as I slumped. The height my wedges gave me was gone and I became an insignificant insect. My guard was down, naked, vulnerable for everyone to see. “Since Mom, I–I can’t. If you’ll excuse me, I’m heading to Gaby’s room. I need to take and make a few calls.” Rude, but I needed to cut off her before she broke me in front of a bunch of strangers. She seemed to have an agenda programmed for me, where she’d talk about my parents until I boarded the plane.

Her gaze began to change from friendly to something else, until Rachel—the mother of the groom, or aunt—came to ask a few questions about the food. She was a proper woman, with a warm sincere smile. She was about my height, sandy hair and amber eyes that looked familiar, but I couldn’t place the face. My new best friend introduced herself as
‘Rachel, the groom’s mother’
and snatched Tina from me. I wanted to kiss the ground she walked on, after she did that, since she stopped Tina from releasing her wrath against me for not indulging her dramatic spot. While heading to the upstairs room, I noticed only a few changes, flat screen televisions in every room and more pictures of the family. Gaby’s canopy bed was intact, along with the fairy decorations we had put up, back when she was ten. I never knew why she didn’t change them during our teenage years.

Finally, I sat on the bed and began to work on the baby line Liam had sent. I suggested new names and drew a few logos. My fingers loosened up at the touch of the pencil, easily, like riding a bike. Carried away, I produced seven different ideas and took a picture, but my phone signal wasn’t strong enough for my message to be sent inside the house. I left my tote bag, slid the paper inside my jeans back pocket and headed downstairs to join the party. Children and adults filled the entire downstairs area, inside and out.

Avoid eye contact, and hide behind that curtain of hair and don’t talk,
my internal manual on how to survive the semi high school reunion, reminded me.

“Hey, hot stuff.” A gruff voice jolted my trip to the old doll house. I turned to encounter a not so tall, bold Tom, sporting a beer belly and in need of a new pair of jeans his size that would fit him better. “Shit, no way. Is that you, Emma? Fuck, the years have been good to you. I can use a quick one with a piece like you.”

“And you are?” I chose ‘amnesia for four hundred, Alex’ during the encounter; even put the sentence in the form of a question all in hopes that he’d go away. It was better than slapping him on the face with a knife—which I didn’t have.

“Tom, remember me?” Indifferent, I crossed my arms and shook my head. He gave me a look of “how dare you,” but dancing his eyes and giving me what I think was his interpretation of a charming smile, he continued talking. “We dated back in high school.”

“No, sorry.” I began to search for an exit but everything was blocked. For one second I wished I had Jake next to me to take this guy out of my sight. I took a deep breath and sent Jake back to where he belonged—next to my parents. Not that I wished him dead, but I didn’t need him or the memories of us around. Bringing him back would never help me move on and find a guy that might accept me and who I could be with for the rest of my life. Like Grampy suggested. “But nice to see you, I guess.”

Bullet dodged, I finished my journey to the old house, which no longer had a door and begged for mercy to be taken down or repaired. My pretty sign of welcome and the flowers I painted around it were all washed away. I took a peek into my old house; no tree house—who tore it down? No, wait, the entire tree was gone from my house. The perfectly manicured grass housed a tiny plastic playground and a few dog toys. Whoever lived there had no respect for Mom’s award winning garden, because it no longer existed.