And maybe, just maybe I would be less bitter, have less yearning for a different life if I wasn’t drowning in the dreadful question of why she kept me. Every few months I’m reminded what my brothers have—their amazing life and future opportunities—and I feel like the poor cousin. I bet they’ve never wished they were me, even if I am their older brother. They’ve probably felt embarrassed . . .
“Uh,” I clear my throat, trying to rid the thoughts of my mom’s choices from my mind. “It’s fun.” Lame response, but how can I tell her the truth? That I’m making up for a part of my childhood I always wished I had, just like stairs . . .
I can remember the conversation so vividly as if it was yesterday.
I was talking on the phone with Tyke’s adoptive parents, when he’d just turned one. They were telling me what he likes to do, how he loves running around the house with his walker and pulling magnets off the fridge. I was laughing, thinking how fun it would be to chase him around the house. And then I asked what his favorite thing to do was and without even skipping a beat, Sue, his adoptive mom, told me that he loved climbing the stairs. I can feel the sink of my stomach I experienced that day.
Stairs.
Such a simple thing, something many people don’t even consider a privilege, but it’s all I’d ever wanted in our house. Stairs. Just like the grand house I walked by every day coming home from school, I wanted stairs. I wanted to slide down a banister, to watch a slinky glide down them with ease, to be able to race up and down them, not letting the “goblins” get me.
I remember the exact words that came out of my mouth: “Wow, you guys have stairs? I’ve always wanted stairs.”
Sue was silent on the other end of the phone. After that, I was quickly ushered off the phone, but that conversation stuck with me. Tyke had stairs . . .
“Are you okay?” Amelia asks, poking me in the arm. “You’ve gone silent on me.”
“Yeah, sorry. Just thought of something I have to do at work tomorrow.” I lie. “Okay”—I snap out of my thoughts—“let’s get to work. Do you want to do the chopping, or do you want me to?”
Eyeing the long machete, she bites the side of her mouth and says, “You do the chopping. I’ll just stand back.”
With a heavy heart, trying to ward off the stagnant feelings in my chest, I say, “What happened to the wild one I used to know? The girl who threw caution to the wind? Where is she?”
“Grown up.” It’s a simple answer that causes complicated emotions to blossom inside me. She’s grown up, without me, because of me.
I nod and then hold out the machete. “Never hurts to let the grown-up play like a child from time to time.”
She eyes the machete and slowly, oh so fucking perfectly, she starts to grin, and there she is. The bold, fearless Amelia I used to know. “Just whack the corn?”
I chuckle. “Yeah, aim for the bottom though, we want tall husks.” I hand her the machete and add, “And it helps if you make karate sounds.”
“It does not.”
I shrug. “Try it your way, but I promise you will get more of a swing if you karate it up.”
“You’re ridiculous.” She shakes her head and gets in position near some husks. Squatting a little and cocking her arm back, she holds the machete out and gives me a glance. I nod for her to continue, trying not to laugh at her stance. With one giant swing, the machete flies into the corn husks, whacking off the tops and landing somewhere in the middle of the cornfield.
Christ.
With her hands to her mouth, she turns to me, a little laugh shaking her shoulders. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” Even though she’s apologizing, she’s still laughing. “I kind of threw it.”
Kind of?
I cross my arms over my chest and stare her down. “Kind of threw it? You chucked the damn thing like a discus.”
“It was slippery.”
“It has a special grip on the handle.”
She cringes. “It was heavy, top-loaded.”
“Not accurate.”
She capitulates. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe we can find it.”
I gesture toward the dark cornfield. “Please, have at it. I’ll just wait here while you dig around.”
She bites her lip now, turning toward the field. “It’s awfully dark out there.”
I roll my eyes and chuckle. “Yeah, and you tossed the thing about fifty yards, so we’re not getting it back.” I walk past her toward the corn husks she was trying to cut down and start ripping them out of the ground. Nothing like a little brute force to get the job done. I toss them to the side and say, “Knock as much dirt off the roots as you can and tie them up.”
Quietly she does as I ask. We start to work in harmony but it only takes a few seconds before I can hear her chuckling to the side of me. I scan back to look at her and see her shoulders shaking while she wipes under her eyes.
“You think it’s funny throwing people’s prized tools in dark cornfields?”
She wipes some more under her eyes and laughs out loud now. “I’m sorry, it’s just . . . it flew so far, I almost expected it to come back like a boomerang to slash your tires.”
“That would be my luck, especially when hanging out with you.”
“Hey, what is that supposed to mean?”
I stand straight and put my hands on my hips while facing her. “What is that supposed to mean? You’re kidding, right? Do you not remember the amount of high jinks you got me into when we were together? I swear it was like dating Lucille Ball.”
“Not true,” she huffs.
“Yeah, want to explain how I got my foot stuck in a toilet?”
“Not my fault you have terrible balance.” She smirks.
“Or how about the time I wound up being pantsed in front of the entire Black Friday crowd that one year?”
She points a finger at me. “I told you to wear jeans and not sweatpants.”
“You fell and grabbed onto my pants, ripping them down for my Johnson to be exposed.”
“Taught you to wear underwear.” She chuckles to herself, probably remembering the less-than humorous escort I had from the staff at Target, telling me nudity wasn’t part of the Christmas spirit.
“And what about the time I threw up at Buffalo Wild Wings because you thought I would like the hottest sauce they have?”
She laughs even harder. “Okay, that was my fault, and I apologized to you profusely that night, so you can’t bring that up again.”
“I threw up in front of the Syracuse football team. I have all the right to still be mad at you.”
Now she’s facing me, a fire in her eyes, the same fire she carried so many years ago. “They were calling you a sissy since you chose the honey barbeque sauce. I had to prove them wrong.”
“I like honey barbeque sauce; be happy I didn’t get sweet and sour.”
“Ugh.” She rolls her eyes and turns back to twining the husks. “God, you and your sweet and sour sauce.”
She mumbles something under her breath, and I can’t help but smile as I get back to work, pulling husks out of the ground. This feels good. It feels like old times. I haven’t dated over the last three years, and even if I had wanted to, trying to open myself up to someone new hasn’t really interested me. I never wanted to lose Amelia. Her bright. Her crazy. Her sweet. And now? I’m slowly becoming addicted to the feeling of having Amelia back in my life. And tonight is how it always was. Fun. Easy.
It’s dangerous, but hell, I like walking on the dangerous side of life on occasion.