Chapter Twenty-Five
Harley
The next day, we walk along the main street, passing Debbie’s favorite bakery that she says makes amazing cupcakes. “Let’s pop in there after I grab a book I’ve been meaning to give to one of my waitresses,” she says as she gestures to the bookstore next door. We head inside, and when she picks up the paperback she’s been eyeing, I stop in my tracks.
There it is: a full display of them. The book I labored over. My blood debt to Miranda, but really, to my mom, since I was blackmailed to protect her.
My stomach churns when I see the cover. A gorgeous young girl in a corset and fishnets lies on a bed, her legs crossed at the ankles as they rest against the wall, a hauntingly beautiful but immensely sad expression in her eyes. Then the title: Memoirs of a Teenage Sex Addict, and the author: Anonymous.
My shame slams into me without warning, like the truck barreling at you that you didn’t see coming.
All I want to do is cover my reddening face. Or, better yet—toss a sheet over the display, hide it, knock it over. Anything, so Debbie doesn’t see this and know it’s me. I stand in front of it, inching my body around it as she walks by and heads to the counter with the book she’s buying.
Debbie doesn’t know I was a call girl. She doesn’t know I serviced the fetishes of middle-aged men in Manhattan. That I became close to the father of her great-grandchild through Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. That I heard my mother f*cking men all over town. She doesn’t know the things I did. She knows the sweet and fun six-year-old, and she knows the twenty-year-old who loves her guy, who is pregnant and staying in school, who came to see her, who likes sandwiches and sunshine.
She doesn’t know who I was in between.
I can’t let her know who I was. If I do, she won’t want to be my family anymore. Fear digs its sharp heel into my chest, and I’m sweating now from anxiety.
When she’s done with her purchase, she says, “Carla is going to love this. She reads all these crazy detective stories.” Then she stops talking, cocks her head to the side and lays the back of her hand on my forehead. “You okay? You seem out of sorts, all of a sudden. Seen a ghost?”
And I realize I don’t want to hide. I harbored secrets for far too long, and they nearly destroyed my very soul. They gnawed away at my heart, until I finally had the guts to stare them down so they’d stop haunting me. I have to start everything new, from honesty. To break the cycle.
“Debbie, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“What it is, sweetie?”
With my shoulders shaking as nerves ripple through my body, I remove one book from the display. I hold it up. “I wrote this book.”
“Well, that sounds like an interesting story,” she says and she guides me to a quiet section with a comfy leather couch where I tell her everything.
“Do you want me to leave now?” I ask when I’m done.
She shoots me a quizzical look. “Leave the store?”
“No. Leave your house. Leave San Diego. Go back to New York, so you don’t have to see me again?”
She laughs deeply, shaking her head. “Oh, you sweet thing. No, no, no. And just in case that wasn’t clear—NO. I want you to stay as long as you want. You are always welcome, and like I said, you drew the short straw. I’m just glad that’s all behind you. It is behind you, right?”
“Yes,” I say emphatically. “But it doesn’t bother you, who I was all those years when I didn’t see you?”
“We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t. The goal is to learn, and to move on and try to live a life of no regrets. Here you are, living the life you intend. And even though I didn’t see you for fourteen years, you have to know I love you now, and I was loving you that whole time. And what you just told me doesn’t change my love one bit.”
I sit up straight, and look at her like that’s the strangest thing I’ve heard. “You loved me?”
“Of course I loved you. And of course I do still love you. Why would I do anything but love you?”
But … but … but … I want to backpedal and reel off a million reasons why. Because love comes with a price tag. Because love comes with expectations. Because love is bought and sold, and bargained for. Because love is on the surface.
But that’s the old me. That’s the me that came from Barb.
I’m not from her anymore. Not even close. I’m from myself, from the new me that I forged without her.
And this is love given freely. Love without chains, without agenda, love simply because it can’t be anything but. This is love that lasts, love that holds on through the years, through absence, through not knowing, not seeing, not hearing, but still it endures, because it is real and strong and everlasting.
It is family.
“I thought you might not love me when you found out what I’d done.”
“You’re a silly girl,” she says, patting my hand. “Now, let’s go next door and get a cupcake. The chocolate buttercream is divine, and your baby will have a riot in your belly when he or she tastes the sugar.”
* * *
The next few days race by and as the vacation nears its end, I can feel the unspooling like an insistent thrumming in my heart. New York is calling us back, and San Diego is letting us go.
A dull ache settles into my bones, and we haven’t even left yet, but already I miss.
As I clear the dishes on the final night, balancing several plates along my arm en route to the sink, Robert winks at me, then looks to Debbie. “She’d make a good waitress.”
“Um, thanks,” I say, as I place the dishes in the sink while Trey returns condiments to the fridge. “I’ll take that under advisement as a career path.”
“Actually,” Debbie begins slowly, as she wipes down the table with a cloth, and I grab the remaining glasses, “I thought you could help out from time to time at the café if you want. And then you can let me help you out more than from time to time. We have the duplex, and we can rent it again, or you can come live with us next door, and we can help you with your baby. You can finish school here, and I can help as you take classes, and Trey can get a job. God knows, he already has connections, since he’s been wooing the artists up and down Ocean Beach. And you can raise your baby where all babies should be raised. By the sand and the sun and the beach. And, most of all—by family.”
I freeze. I am a study in stillness, a glass in each hand, immobile, jaw hung open, eyes wide. Call it shock. Call it surprise. Call it wonder.
Maybe it’s all three. I don’t know, but I know this much. There is only one answer.
I unfreeze, set down the glasses, and turn to Trey, who’s standing by the open fridge door. His eyes are lit up, and I know I don’t even have to ask him, but I do anyway. In a whisper bordering on reverence, because this moment feels reverent, I say, “Do you want to move to California?”
He closes the fridge door, walks over to me, and cups my face in his hands. “Do you remember what I said the night I met you?”
I nod. “I would leave New York in a heartbeat. Put me on the next train out of here.”
“Yes. I’d get on a train to Florida. To Virginia. To California. I don’t care. I’d ride it across the country and not look back.”
“I remember that well,” I say, grinning.
“I need to amend it. I’d go anywhere with you and not look back. The answer is yes.”
Then he kisses me in the kitchen, in front of my grandparents, and it’s not a chaste kiss by any stretch of the imagination, but they don’t seem to care because they’re clapping and hooting and hollering.
“When can we move here?” I ask.
“Anytime,” Debbie says.
“I’m done with school. It’s up to you. I’m ready anytime,” Trey says.
“If I can transfer here for the rest of the year, can we come next month?” I ask, and I sound like a little kid pleading for a pony.
Robert reaches for Debbie’s hand. “We would love that.”