The next day in the store, I can’t help myself. I keep looking out for Anna. I keep listening for the excited bark of a dog. I keep hoping that she won’t have changed her route, although I know her well enough by now to know with absolute certainty that she will have. I told Janet I would sleep on it, hoping that the night would bring me some much-needed guidance on what to do about this.
I walked away from her. I said goodbye to Anna. And I believe I did so with good reason, but still. Something gnaws at me and every time I close my eyes, I see Anna’s face on the back of my eyelids. The goofy grin that makes her look adorable but also the anguish in her eyes when she doesn’t know what to say or do. All of this would be so much easier if she hadn’t gotten under my skin already, but she has.
She may be convinced that she’s not an easy person to get to know, but I’ve caught enough glimpses of the real her, the person lurking behind that vast, thick wall of defensiveness she likes to hide behind, to see her for who she really is—or who she could be, if she would allow herself to be. But this isn’t all about Anna. This is about me, as well. It’s about my reaction to her, to her sensitive nature and the way her face would change when she looked at me—really looked at me. It’s about how it pains me that she would think of herself, even for a second, as less valuable than anyone else. It’s simply heartbreaking to witness and I need to decide if it’s something I can live with, or not.
But I’m not like Anna. I’m not someone who likes figuring out all the hard stuff on my own. I need someone to talk to about this, someone who knows how hard it can be to fall for someone like Anna. I need to speak with Cynthia.
Anna won’t like it, but Anna doesn’t like a lot of things. I can’t take them all into consideration all the time. Besides, we’re not even together now.
It’s easy enough to get Cynthia’s number from Janet, to call her and invite her over.
When she arrives, she looks at me as though she already knows what I want to talk to her about, that this is not a simple social call of a Donovan Grove newcomer looking to connect, although it could also have been that.
“I need a sounding board,” I start. “Because I don’t know what to do.” I explain to her what happened over the weekend.
“She told you that I was the one who coaxed her to get assessed and get an official diagnosis?” Cynthia asks.
“Yes.” Cynthia’s question makes me wonder if I’m recalling this correctly, but it’s one of the things that stuck with me, because it didn’t really make sense to me at the time.
“If I did, it was only because the not knowing for sure was driving her mad. Although, in hindsight, I wish that I hadn’t pressed her to get a diagnosis.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe we were doomed either way.”
“I do know that she feels very bad about how things ended between you. Anna knows it’s her fault.”
“Yeah, another thing she can blame herself for.” Cynthia manages a small smile.
“She would hate it if she knew we were sitting here talking about her,” I say.
“She wouldn’t speak to you for days,” Cynthia says. “She takes her aggrieved silences very seriously.”
“You and she never lived together?” I ask.
“No. I pushed for it after we were together for about two years. To me, it just made sense. It was the next logical step. And we stayed over at each other’s houses all the time. And I left more and more of my things at hers, but she always brought them back the next time she came to my house.” She chuckles. “In the end, I accepted that she needed that time for herself, even though she already spends most of the day alone. I think it was more a matter of not being able to accept another person living in her house and messing things up in a way that would annoy her. She likes things just so. It gives her a sense of calm—of much-needed control. Another person’s presence, even if it’s her own partner, is always going to perturb her, I guess. But not living together was not a dealbreaker for me.”
“Before things took a turn for the worst, you and she were happy?” This is beginning to sound as though I need Anna’s ex to talk me into giving Anna another chance.
“I was. But the problem with Anna is that she thinks she’s so hard to love, while she’s exactly the opposite. If she’s feeling good about herself, she’s the most easygoing person I know. With strong opinions, of course.” She smiles again. “One of the good things about not living together was actually that I could watch TV on my own. Watching TV with Anna is a special experience, I’ll tell you that, and not something I was always in the mood for.” She actually chuckles now. “She used to crack me up so much, though.” She follows up with a sigh. “Anna’s at her best when she doesn’t take herself too seriously. When I met her, she didn’t. But once the ASD got into her head, she started taking everything so seriously. And she hardly ever shouted at the TV again. She lost her sense of self, her perception of who she was, after she got the diagnosis. I had been hoping for the opposite effect. I truly believed it would show her who she was more, help her understand herself better, and make her see that the things she went through happened for a reason other than her thinking she was a nut case.” She exhales deeply again. “I thought she was doing better with all of that now, but maybe being with someone brought it all back. Our breakup was hard for her as well, I know that much. Jamie told me once when we had a late night at Lenny’s. I think she’s afraid of the possible pain that opening up to someone else might cause her.” She sits up a bit. “I can talk to her, you know. Make her see some sense. Tell her to not take it all so seriously. Remind her that there’s fun to be had and she’s just as capable of having it as the rest of us.”
“She would just love that.” I chuckle.
“Hey, if she can’t stand it when people talk about her, she shouldn’t behave the way she does.” Cynthia clears her throat. “But it’s one of the things that get worse when she feels like things are quickly spiraling out of her control. She believes that everyone is against her then.”
I shake my head. “God, to live like that. Has she never tried to get some professional help?”
“Not really,” Cynthia says. “I tried to get her some. I made an actual appointment with a counselor for her once, but she had a million excuses not to show up. We had a big row about that. I figured she’d finally get to it when she felt ready, or when things got really bad.”
“But through all of that, you loved her?” I ask.
“Yes,” Cynthia says emphatically. “Of course, because I saw her for who she really is. And it wasn’t a case of you-can’t-choose-who-you-love, because I happen to believe that we’re all very capable of choosing who we love. Which is why, at the end of our relationship, I decided to leave. Because the person she had become was not someone I wanted to love anymore, even though it caused me a great deal of pain, because I knew it wasn’t the real her. But I’d had enough and I had to realize that the only person who could fix Anna, was Anna.”
“That’s why you warned me that day that I shouldn’t try to fix her.”
Cynthia nods. “You should talk to Jamie, Zoe. He knows her better than anyone.”
“I will.” I smile warmly at Cynthia. “Thank you for sharing all of this with me.”
“I’m glad to have this conversation, too. I’m over Anna now and I’ve moved on, but there’s nothing I want more than for her to be happy. That’s why I was so hopeful when you and she started dating, because I knew she wouldn’t take that step if she hadn’t started accepting herself more.”
“Yes, well, I can be very persuasive when it comes to certain matters.” I grin at Cynthia.
“I can see how Anna might have found you hard to resist.”
If I didn’t know any better, I would have taken that as flirting. “I think I see in Anna what you saw in her.”
Cynthia nods. “Good. That does mean she’s getting back to her old self.” She grins at me. “If you want to test her, you should watch The L Word with her.”
“The L Word? Why?” I’m intrigued.
“I can’t explain it. It’s something you have to experience. But if you’re not crying with laughter at the end of an episode, it means she’s not there yet.”
“That’s one of the strangest pieces of advice anyone has ever given me.”
“Come talk to me after,” Cynthia says.
“So what you’re actually saying is that I should give Anna another chance.”
“Maybe that is what I’m saying.” She finds my gaze. “Maybe you should.”
Maybe I will, I think.