I opened my mouth to speak and heard my dad’s voice in my head, followed my Kael’s, then my dad’s again. I didn’t have enough time to figure out what I felt, or what I was going to do.
“You can’t be here. I need time, Kael,” I told him just as he reached the grass. My back hurt as I stood there with one hand on my hip and one blocking my eyes from the burning sun.
“The yard looks good.” He looked and pointed past me, ignoring what I said.
“Kael. You can’t be here.”
“Karina, please,” he pleaded. I only caught a tiny glimpse of his face, the sadness in his eyes as he used them to steer me back to him. I moved my hand down, like a coward so I couldn’t see his face.
“I need time. I’m not the kind of girl who likes to be chased, Kael. I won’t tell you again,” I said the same thing to him as I did to Estelle when she called to try and butter me up. At that point the only people who I could trust were Austin and Elodie. And with the way my luck was with people, they were probably going to betray me too.
Kael was staring at me, I could feel it. He was registering everything I was feeling, absorbing it, the way we both do when it comes to people.
“Let me fall in love with you, Karina.”
His voice was so soft that I was skeptical whether I heard him correctly, or not.
“What?”
He stepped closer and I walked backward, putting even more distance between us.
“I’m so close, Karina. Let me fall in love with you. You know me.” He touched his chest and I shook my head profusely.
How dare he throw that word around like it’s nothing, like I was going to just forgive him because he used that word.
“Don’t you dare use that against me,” I spit into the night air between us.
The trees shook as my anger grew. I told myself it was Mother Nature helping me out, giving me strength for this.
“I’m not, Kare,” he said, coming closer again. I dug my nails into my closed palm until I was close to breaking skin.
“Don’t you call me that,” I warned him. “That house in Atlanta? You were going to move without telling me!” I didn’t care how loud my voice was or who heard it. “I don’t know you at all,” I said, mimicking his signature flat tone. I wanted him to hear it and feel the sting of it. He must have found something in my expression when my eyes finally met his that told him to back off, because he put his hands in the air and turned around and walked away.
I collapsed in the grass after he pulled away and stayed there until the stars dried my tears and moon glared at me to go to my own bed and leave hers.
MALI WAS OKAY WITH ME the next day. I thought that maybe she’d give me a hard time, but she knew something was up and gave me the space I needed. I concentrated on my clients, on making them whole. They didn’t need to feel as broken as I did. My shift passed uneventfully. Slow, but uneventfully. The short walk home was hard. I kept thinking of the last time I had taken the same steps, how I had started out in joy and ended in despair.
Life went on like that for a couple of days. I worked. I slept. I may have watched a couple of movies with Elodie. I can’t be sure. Really, everything was a blur. I’m not sure when it was, how many days post breakup, that I had come home from work to find Austin waiting for me.
His face was red and his hair was a mess. His hands were rigid, white fingers shaking. There were no cars in the driveway or parked on the street, so I couldn’t figure out how he got there.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I asked, mildly panicked. He’d only been to visit once since he got back.
He shook his head. “Me and Dad got into it.”
I sat down next to him on the cold cement. “Into it yelling? Or into it, fighting?”
“Both. I swung on him.”
“Austin!”
“He charged at me though. He made me lose it, Kare. You know how he is. He sits there like he’s high and mighty. Do this. Don’t do that. When I was your age …”
“I know, I know. I’ve had my share of lectures, believe me.”
Austin continued his rant as if he hadn’t even heard me. “You know, he doesn’t care about her. He doesn’t give a fuck about her. When I asked if she’d been in touch or anything he just laughed. I swear Kare, he fucking laughed. Right in front of Estelle. You don’t think he’s heard from her, right? You still haven’t?”
I shook my head. I was used to shaking my head when it came to my mother. She. Her. My mother. I knew exactly who he was talking about.
“No.” My insides were scalding.
“She’s close though. I know she is. I can feel it.”
“Austin.” I reached for his hand. We were never a touchy family, except for our mother. When we were little she would hug me for the smallest thing, like a happy face sticker on a book report, or cleaning my room without being asked. Even when I got older she would run her hands down my back almost every night before bed. Sometimes she’d trace words over my pajama top with her long nails.
Nite nite.
Love you.
Kare bear.
“You can’t worry about her, Austin. She’s an adult. She’s made her own choices. You’ll drive yourself crazy if you obsess over her.” I was such a hypocrite.
I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother, no matter how hard I tried. I’d see her in line at the grocery store. I’d hear her voice in my head as I washed the dishes. I’d climb into bed at night and cry myself to sleep. She was everywhere. She was nowhere. And I was so Goddamned pissed at her and the world. How could she take off like that? How could she leave and not get in touch with us? How could she have this relentless hold on us?
“I’m tired of this place, Karina. I just want to go somewhere else. Not back to Rudy’s, just … somewhere else. Don’t you feel the itch anymore?”
Wow. The itch. That brought me back.
It felt so long ago, those days when we’d plan our escape. We plotted everything right down to the last detail. I’d wait tables and he’d change tires and pump gas, depending on where we’d land. I’d find a nice restaurant with gingham table cloths, and a sassy older waitress named Phyllis who would call me “kid” and take me under her wing. Austin would work hard and stay out of trouble. He’d be early for his shift most days. The proprietor of the gas station would notice what a good employee he was and after a while would show him how to fix cars. Austin would be good at that, fixing cars. If only he’d put his mind to solving problems, instead of creating them.
We came up with so many adventures back then, hanging out on the futon in Austin’s room, an hour past bedtime. We knew they wouldn’t notice. They never came in to check on us anymore. We were just kids and already we thought of our parents as they. As them and us.
I told Austin that they didn’t come in to check on us because we were older—almost twelve, then thirteen and fourteen. He was fifteen when he stopped asking why. We’d talk for hours, dreaming of our future travels, the small town where we’d make our home. We’d learn to fit in, be whoever we wanted to be. He’d be that mechanic. I’d be that waitress. Or maybe he’d be a musician and I’d be a painter. Or a glassblower.
I wanted Austin to believe more than I wanted it myself. I spun the words tightly around him, pulling him in closer until I could tell he had accepted the possibility of a better future. And when I could feel him attach to the dream we were drawing for ourselves, I’d relax my own breathing and sometimes even I could believe in that glorious future. I spoke in a loud whisper those nights, cupping my hands over Austin’s ears to distract him from the waves of misery coming from our parents’ bedroom down the hall.
“Where is there to go?” I asked him.
“Arizona. Barcelona. Anywhere. Hell, I’d go live with our grand—”
“Do you even know where your passport is?” I asked.
“Yes. And yours. They’re both at Dad’s, in the drawer.”
Before our orders to Georgia, my dad told us we were going to be
sent to Germany. My mom was as close to happy as I’d seen her in a very long time. She had always wanted to visit Munich; apparently one of her friends had moved there after high school.
We rushed to get our passports. Mom spent her time mapping out trains across Europe and learning basic words in German. It was guten morgen, when she woke us each morning, and guten tag when we returned from school in the afternoon.