My Heart Insists Unresolved Things Need Attention
My heart hasn’t gotten the memo from my head that my infatuation for Hannah is ancient history. Instead, it’s grappling in my chest with my logic and reasoning—and winning. The tingly feeling is more like the eighteen-year-old me, tongue-tied, twisted-up, and less like the buttoned-up, more experienced twenty-one-year-old me. Facing these feelings and sitting in them, like Dr. B would advise, I recognize my feelings for Hannah are unresolved. There was a forced end, but never a chance to begin. Like a dash hanging out at the end of a sentence. Waiting.
I drive away from Lindies, the past swirling around in my head. The way we bounced around one another like bumper cars during senior year. The way she reached out, offering kindness, that I realize was an adolescent way of building connection. I’d been too ignorant to recognize it. How perfect she’d felt in my arms at the beach. The fire of our shared kiss.
I replay tonight, rewinding Hannah walking through the pizza parlor toward me and meeting my gaze. Electricity buzzed at the base of my spine, and the elation in my body was a kite riding the wind, swooping, and twisting but tethered to a foundation keeping it secure as she walked across the room. My heart’s memory rushed in to hug her. When she finally relaxed in my arms, the full commitment of her choice to hug me back spoke a familiar rhythm. The heat of her hands on my shoulder blades was a reminder of our missed chance. The whole night reminded me of the comfortable way we could slide back into talking like the friends we once were.
By the time I park my car in my assigned spot outside of my apartment complex, I know that I can’t wait to see Hannah again. It needs to be soon. I’m smiling like a fool, realizing that while whatever serendipitous convergence of Hannah and me might be unexpected, I feel... fucking happy.
I might have transferred to Western for a clean slate, but life is offering another option. A do-over. A way to reconcile the past of me with the present. Past me hadn’t wanted to only be her friend, even if that’s where we hung out to protect our young and fragile hearts. Present me isn’t going to be content being Hannah’s friend either. To make that claim would be a lie, and I made a promise to myself not to be a liar. I want to knock on that door and see if she’ll open it.
Time to be the risk-taker, I think. Only this time, I can do it right.
I pull out my phone and text her: Thanks for meeting me tonight. I had fun.
My heart expands, blocking the breath moving through my lungs. I watch the three dots pop up and linger, wondering what she’s about to send me, afraid I’ve overcommitted.
Hannah: Me too.
I take a deep breath and smile as I text her back: When do I get to see you again?
I wonder if maybe this is too soon and decide that if I didn’t already know Hannah, if I hadn’t grown up with her, maybe it would be. But I did.
I remember Hannah wearing pigtails with bows that matched her outfit. She used matching barrettes to keep the shorter curls contained. I sat behind her in third grade—Mrs. Smythe’s class—and noticed Hannah’s hair escape those clasps. I would pester her with my pencil, teasing the curls on the back of her neck and revel in her annoyance at me. I remember Hannah in eighth grade student council, standing in the front of the student body giving one of the many speeches. I didn’t pay much attention because Gabe and I were usually debating something sports related. Hannah is always there in my memories. She’s threaded in the fabric of who I am.
So, this isn’t too soon. It feels like I’m running a lot late.
Hannah: I’m going to Cantos this weekend.
Me: It must be before then I guess.
Hannah: (smiley face). Coffee?
Door opened.
Nope, I think. This isn’t casual, but it can’t be too much either. I rip through my brain, trying to think of something that will feel a step up from the noncommittal stance of a casual meet-up for coffee. I recall Trace and Marcos debating the basketball team’s merits and the mention of the game.
Me: How about the basketball game the day after next?
Hannah: You don’t want to talk to me?
Me: What?
I second guess the idea, but then am struck by the fact she wants to talk. That’s a good sign.
Hannah: Basketball games aren’t known for places to chat.
Me: And dinner?
It’s a risk, sort of, and one I’m fully committed to taking, finally grown up enough to take it.
Hannah: I work. Dinner after?
My smile grows.
Me: Perfect.
I’m typing that I’ll pick her up, but her text comes through before I can suggest it.
Hannah: I will meet you at the game when I get off work?
Me: It’s a date. I’ll be waiting.
I get out of my car excited about the prospect of getting to spend more time with Hannah. After locking my car, I walk across the sidewalk and start up the concrete stairs to the apartment when my phone rings. It’s my mom.
“You missed me so much, you had to text and follow that up with a call?” I ask with a smile. I might be floating up the stairs toward my apartment after time spent with Hannah and the new commitment to correct that regret.
“I do miss you,” my mom says. “The house feels extra quiet. I might have gotten used to you being home again.”
“With Dad home, the house is never quiet.”
She clears her throat. “Be nice.”
“I am. I mean the TV.”
Mom chuckles. “Right. The volume might be a little loud. What are you doing?”
“I’m just getting home from dinner.”
“With your roommate?”
“No. Met a friend from high school for pizza.”
“Oh. That’s–” she pauses a moment– “nice.”
I wonder if she goes back in time when I mention high school. We did some family counseling after my car wreck, so I’ve heard her share some of her feelings about that time, but then I started my own therapy, and she and Dad have theirs. We haven’t talked a lot about it since. Over the last six months that I lived with them, I could see when Mom would drift into her memories. In fact, thinking about it, my dad did too, drawing her back toward him with a touch. When she’d come back, she’d focus on him and smile.
The thought makes me frown.
It’s so much easier to think about my dad as a monster.
Makes it easier to justify withholding my forgiveness.
“What’s going on, Mom? Is it Dad? Is he drinking?” My worst fear is that she’s going to call and say Dad has fallen off the wagon.
It’s hard not to go here. I spent the bulk of my lifetime—up until the winter of my junior year—with an alcoholic father who hit me. Hit her. And she stayed. He would jump on the wagon after a particularly bad bender, then fall off. The never-ending peaks and valleys of living with him. This is the longest he’s been on the wagon, and I’m still waiting for the slide back into the valley.
Like my thirteenth birthday.
I never had parties, because having one would mean subjecting my friends to the volatility of my father, but my mom tried to make things special. She’d planned my favorite dinner to celebrate me turning into a teenager. Asked Dad to barbeque the burgers. She made me a cake, frosted it green like a soccer field, and decorated it with these special soccer candles she’d found. My dad, on the other hand, spent the day watching hockey finals and drinking. By the time he got to the barbeque, he was angry, throwing things about while he cooked.
I remember being terrified at dinner, the three of us sitting around our little table. Mom and I silent, waiting for Dad’s fuse to reach the explosives. And it did. When my mom set that cake on the table, a knife on the platter slipped. It fell into my dad’s lap, smearing green frosting across his white shirt and the crotch of his shorts. He lost it. The cake was destroyed, then shoved into my mother’s face.
“How do you like it?” he’d screamed, spittle collecting on his lips, his face red with rage.
He’d pushed her, and she’d slipped in the mess, falling hard against the floor where he was bent over her yelling in her face. Then he looked at me sitting at the table, watching him, and froze. I’m not sure what went through his head, but he stomped from the room, then the house.
He came home a few days later sober, having “been to a meeting.” With an apology to both Mom and I, he promised to be better. He brought home an old truck a few days later to work on with me, saying it would be mine. It was the truck I drove into oncoming traffic four years later when I thought there was no other way to escape the awful cycle.
“No! Of course not,” my mom says emphatically, drawing me back to the present conversation. “It’s nothing. I mean, nothing supremely important. I just wanted to let you know that your dad is going to the doctor.”
I narrow my eyes and round the platform to the next flight of steps. “Dad’s going to the doctor?” My father didn’t go to the doctor.
Mom gives a subdued laugh. “Right? I didn’t want to text that to you because I thought you might worry.”
I’m not sure if it’s worry I feel. “How come?” Maybe it is, but that would mean I have more feelings for him than just an acknowledgement that he exists.
“He just hasn’t been feeling well.”
I recall watching him walk up the porch steps of the house as he helped me pack up my car, thinking he’d seemed old. “Well, Dad agreeing to go to the doctor is concerning.”
“Just a checkup,” she says, and I don’t know if she’s telling me or herself. “His stomach has been bothering him, and he’s finally agreed to stop being stubborn and get it checked.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”
“I’ll keep you posted. His appointment is next week.” She pauses, then asks, “Did you finish your paper?”
I maintain my pace up the steps, rounding the corner for the next flight. “Almost.”
“When are you coming home next?”
“Not sure. Why?” I stall, stopping on the final flight and standing at the railing that looks out over the parking lot. The hand holding the phone pressed to my ear is cold, but I can’t walk and talk at the same time when it feels like the rug might be pulled out from under me. I wonder if she’s more worried than she’s letting on.
“Just making plans. I was hoping to see you for your next break. Or a weekend soon?”
“Spring break?” I imagine doing something with Hannah, and my heart picks up a hopeful pace. “I might do something with friends.” I look down at my shoes and rest one of them in between the metal bars.
“Right. As you should,” she says, but I can hear the disappointment in her tone.
“Maybe one of these weekends,” I say.
“I’d like that.”
I start back up the last set of stairs and walk down the walkway to my apartment door. “Well, I have homework, Mom. Got a paper to finish.”
“Right. Okay. I’m glad I got to talk to you. Don’t be a stranger, okay?”
It’s a weird statement. The second time she’s said it. “I’m your son. Why would I be a stranger?”
With my hand on the doorknob she says, “Promise?” and my hackles go up.
Mom and I ran interference for one another for years. And though we haven’t needed it recently, this is reminiscent of that, but I don’t know why. There isn’t any evidence to suggest my dad is drinking again. She’s said he isn’t. I don’t have the energy to dig for it, however. As Dr. B has repeatedly said, “You mother is an adult, Seth. She will make her own choices. You are not responsible to fix them for her.”
I take a deep breath. “I won’t. Promise.”
After we hang up, I wonder if I’ve meant I won’t be a stranger, or I won’t promise.