Two Feet Off The Ground Page 14

  The moment was like I’d always dreamed right down to the dreamy eyed stares we shared. Everything was perfect.

  “Just promise me one thing,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Promise me you’ll stay here in Rhode Island with me and Owen.”

  Her eyes popped open, the stilts of reality carrying their weight. “That’s tempting, but a little unrealistic.”

  “It was worth a shot.” I giggled to camouflage my unease.

  She stood up and put her crumpled-up clothes back on. “You can always come with me.”

  Chapter Eleven

  A ray of sunshine poked at my eye the next morning, rudely waking me from my three hours of sleep. I climbed out of bed and dragged myself to the bathroom, dousing my face in cold water.

  Once dressed, I sat on the edge of my bed and decided I’d indulge in a Dunkin Donuts coffee.

  So, off I went to get my liquid rush, and once I downed several sips I began to wake up. I stared straight ahead over my dashboard at a group of bikers sipping coffee and devouring donuts alongside their chrome hogs. They laughed and nodded their bandana heads around. Not a care in the world. Obviously not tormented by bittersweet love like me. The only thing that got in their way was winter when they’d have to hibernate their noisy mufflers and ride out the five months on four wheels.

  I sipped my coffee again. What was I going to do if she took that job? I wasn’t going. I couldn’t. If she wanted to be with me, she’d have to stay. I couldn’t just uproot Owen. He had school, his friends, and sports. And of course, I also had indispensable things like a clientele that could easily fill the lingerie department of Sak’s Fifth Avenue if lined up shoulder to shoulder with each other.

  I’d never get on an airplane. Never. I could drive. But, then what about Aziza? We needed each other. Bad enough a flight took six hours. Driving would take days. I’d fall apart without her.

  I drove, sipping my coffee. I passed Mel’s Gardening and the Outer Limits Bowling Alley and turned onto the highway going north. I sped up past an old Mustang that sputtered oil and a smelly city bus. Sipping again, I glanced into my rearview mirror and watched the Providence Place Mall disappear as I traveled onto Interstate 146 towards Lincoln.

  I should stop this before it went any further. Wasn’t the job of lover to bring out the best in each other? I’d just destroy her life with my pathetic fears. And, she’d destroy mine with her need for adventure and change.

  I kept driving and saw the sign for the airport and took the exit. Maybe if I watched enough planes taking off, my fear would blow away along with the white vapor in the sky.

  I pulled in and parked my car, then walked around the main building to the runway. I dropped to the ground and sat against the building.

  Maybe I should take Chuck up on his offer.

  A plane barreled down the runway and shot up into the air, smooth and balanced like a model with strings attached. How could anyone enjoy that feeling of suspension? I’d rather face each day wearing clothes from a thrift shop than trust a hunk of metal to keep me up in the sky.

  If I ever wanted to fit into Paula’s world, I’d have to take Charlie up on his offer. Even if someone clubbed me over the head and knocked me out for the six hour flight, I’d have to do it again and again if I ever wanted to come back and visit Rhode Island, my home forever, if I ever wanted to be Paula’s true partner. Eventually, her taking off on weekend trips without me would piss me off.

  Just then, a plane lowered to the ground and skidded, spewing black smoke and dust behind it. I gasped and jumped up not sure if I should run off or stay and watch the plane explode into oblivion. It didn’t take but a few seconds for the plane to stop. I backed away from the building and the runway and ran off to my car.

  I’d never fit into this world. Ever.

  * *

  In the day-and-a-half since our night of making love on the beach, me and Paula had talked to each other on the phone at least half a dozen times. Each time she started to make a reference to the California statement, I deftly sidestepped answering. Without fail, Owen would magically appear by my side asking for juice or help to a homework question. Just one of the perks of having kids.

  But now that I sat face-to-face with her at a booth in Backdoor Diner, I couldn’t hide behind my mothering..

  “So, how did the interview go?” I finally asked unable to calm my nerves from an all out stake-out on my heart.

  She scanned the menu, casting her eyes up at me and offering a wink. She looked back at the menu and studied it like it was the Holy Grail itself. “It’s mine.”

  “Huh?” My head buzzed. I was pretty sure my heart stopped beating and all of my other vital organs demanded a full shut down of operations. “They offered it to you already?”

  Paula chuckled. She shook her head and put down behind her menu. “Not exactly, but does having a really good feeling that the job is mine count?”

  The waitress interrupted us, which was great because I needed a few seconds to stop my erratic heartbeat from running wild.

  The lady’s hair was wrapped into an unforgiving bun and her eyes sunk into her bruised sockets like a couple of rotten eggplants. “Can I take your order?”

  “I’ll just take two blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon,” I said, then decided to add, “please.”

  “And, I’ll have a mushroom and cheese omelet with extra Jalepeño peppers and a side of hash browns.” Paula picked up our menus and handed them to the waitress.

  “Do you want anything else?” She stuck her pen behind her ear as if to warn us we would’ve crossed the line if we requested more.

  We both shook our heads and watched her stagger away.

  “So, you were saying?” I asked her.

  “I think they’re going to offer it to me.” She sat there with a gigantic grin beaming on her face, looking out of the window without a care in the freaking world, obviously in dreamland. Had she really thought this through enough? Palm trees and sunshine were nice, but what happened when Christmas came around and she was stuck sipping juice from a coconut all by herself?

  “You really want this, don’t you?” I asked, braving all to open the dialogue and hopefully knock some sense into her before she hopped a plane and left for good.

  She lifted her hands out like two scales. “Let’s take the two jobs. Here we Sheffield Middle School in Rhode Island.” She lowered her left hand. “Great school. Great kids. Great boss. I teach, coach, get summers off. Everything is pretty much in order.” Then, she lowered her right hand. “And here we have the job offer in California. This school had a graduating class of fifty-four seniors this past year. This class started out with over seven hundred freshman.”

  “Not really making a case for yourself.” I swallowed my shit-eating grin. “What happened to them all?”

  “They dropped out,” she said. “California may seem perfect to people like us who trudge through snow and ice five months out of the year, but it’s got the same problems. They do drugs, they don’t keep up with their schoolwork, they’re in gangs, pretty much the same issues facing kids in any major city in the United States.”

  “And you want to go teach and coach there?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Okay, a simple yes would have made the point. I did my best to remain calm as I continued to listen to her insane reasoning.

  “These kids need someone on their side. They start out with all this potential and then there’s no one there to keep them rolling towards it. They need a leader.”

  “And you feel you’re that leader?”

  “Don’t you?” she asked me.

  “Well, yeah, but I mean…”

  “I know it sounds rough, but I’m up for it. The former athletic director let their sports program slide so far out of control, they barely have enough players to make up a team. They need someone to go in there and take control and stir up excitement and rally for the kids.”

  Screw being support
ive. I needed to squirt a dose of reality into her idealistic bubble. “You think sports is the solution? That six-hundred-plus kids will start attending school again because there’s a soccer team now?”

  “I’m not concerned with the big numbers,” she said defensively, moving out of the way so the waitress could drop her mushroom and cheese omelet in front of her. “I’m thinking about the ten kids that might start up drugs next year because they didn’t have someone in their lives they could trust.”

  I followed her hands as she dropped and folded them neatly in front of her. I thought of Owen and how he could have gone either way with his choice of friends. Owen always acted accountable for his actions, due greatly in part to Paula. She expected great things from him and the other players, and not one of them wanted to let her down. She was like that silver lining for struggling single parents.

  “What about the kids at Sheffield?”

  “I think these other kids need me more.”

  Why couldn’t she just be valiant by hammering a few floor boards into a Habitat house in Providence or guiding some troubled kids on an Outward Bound trip? She spoke like she already decided she’d move there without a solid offer in hand. Without considering me. “Are you going to have the resources to make the kind of changes that need making at this new school?”

  “They’ve got the money; they just don’t have the leadership. It’s not a pretty picture I’ll be walking into. But, that’s the fun part of it for me. I’m bored. I need a challenge. I need more of a purpose.”

  “So toss a soccer ball in between a group of trigger happy teenagers?” I tried really hard to be open-minded. But, come on?

  “You don’t get it,” she said, her voice hinging on anger, frustration.

  “There’s not a hell of a lot to ‘get’ here.” My voice cracked. The tears started to well. “If you’re going to give up a possible great future between us to go help a few misguided kids, then, you know what? Go save the fucking world, Paula.”

  I had about thirty seconds before the geyser of emotion would explode from me. That was just enough time for me to stand up from the table and walk out of the building. I collapsed in a blubbering heap on the side of the diner.

  She followed me out and sat next to me. She grabbed my hand and gently tilted my chin up so that our eyes met.

  “Lauren, I have to tell you something,” she said, taking a deep breath. “When I was thirteen, my mom and dad divorced and fought over who would raise us. We’d spend two weeks at our dad’s, then he’d drop us off on our mom’s front lawn with our baggage, then no sooner would we make friends in school, and our mom would start back up on her coke. Then, it was back to dad’s. I went to twelve different high schools. I had gang members holding me at knife point because they hated gays. I could have just as easily slipped into my mom’s drug habit life to escape.”

  I stared at her in shock.

  “Coach Davis saved our lives. He took us in like two of his own. We shared a dinner table with eight kids. It was great. He fed us, disciplined us, educated us. He taught us what a family was all about.”

  “No wonder you’re such a great role model.”

  “This job is really important to me. I feel this need to give back everything Coach did for me. I can’t sleep at night unless I know I’m making a difference in the lives of kids in need.”

  She proved that good things happen to good people. “How did you find out about this job?” I asked.

  “A headhunter called me.”

  “Just out of thin air like that?” I sat up straighter.

  “Poof, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “I just got done grading Teddy Scaglia’s test, and still had ten more to go, when she called me.”

  “You even remember whose paper?”

  “Are you kidding?” She placed her hands on top of mine. “It was the one of the most important calls of my life.” Her eyes sprang open wide. “I don’t want to lose you over this. I know it’s a lot to ask for you to move there with me. But, I’m serious. I really want you to come with me.”

  I looked down. “You know I can’t go. My life is here.”

  “People start over all the time. They pack up the U-Haul and off they go to a new life. People in California get their hair cut. There are schools for kids, better ones than the one I’m going to.”

  Oh God, how I wished I could be that person. I’d love to sit under a palm tree sipping from the same coconut with the love of my life. Damn fear.

  “I wish I could just up and go.”

  She pulled my hands up and kissed them. “Do you realize how crazy I am about you?”

  I smiled and stared into her eyes. “I feel the same way.”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  “You’re in love with me?” Tears stung my eyes.

  “Madly in love.”

  Okay, so maybe the dirt lot on the side of the diner wasn’t the most idealistic place to profess our love for each other, but we could’ve been swimming in the middle of a shark tank, and it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference. I knelt and rose up to kiss her. “I love you, too.”

  Her eyes twinkled under the orange light of the setting sun. “Then, please come.”

  I backed away. “I really can’t.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “It’s a huge step.”

  Her chin quivered. She looked off in the distance and bit her lower lip. “Wow. I really thought this would be easier. I thought you’d be excited. I thought we’d start a life together. I know we haven’t been together long, but I knew the night at Brown that I loved you.”

  I prayed endlessly for a moment like this to happen to me. “This has got nothing to do with how I feel about you.”

  “What else is so important, then? Aziza would be able to keep the salon under control. Owen is young and friendly, and he even asked if I could sneak him into my suitcase if I go. So what’s the problem?”

  “Everything I know is here. This is home.”

  She exhaled and shook her head. “That’s not enough of a reason.”

  She stared at a crack in the sidewalk. I lifted her chin. She shook my hand away. The last thing I wanted was to make her feel like I didn’t want to be with her. The excuse floated above us like some frivolous pollen ball. “I’m afraid to fly.”

  She snapped her eyes up to mine. “So, if you weren’t afraid to fly, you’d come with me?”

  “I’m not like you. I can’t pretend that I’d ever enjoy flying around the world with you on your endless adventures. So, even if I get there by car, then what?”

  “Look, I have to level with you,” she said, “I’ll always be there to support you through anything. But, I’ll never nurture fear.”

  “I don’t want your pity.” My parents threw that crap at me forever, which is why I didn’t relocate to Maryland with them when my dad took a job with Andrews Air Force Base. They always dotted over me, afraid to break me, to rattle my nerves. No wonder I turned out to be such a freak.

  “Please don’t let your fear get in the way.”

  Snapping into defensive mode, I lashed out. “Yeah, well, you said yourself that you’re afraid of snakes. I wouldn’t expect you to pick one up and sling it around your neck.”

  “But, it’s not like our relationship’s future depends on me wearing a snake.”

  “Well, isn’t it great that you’re not the problem with us then?” I shook my head and watched as a couple with a young son walked by us, giving us a strange look as they walked in. “I’m sorry I’m a freak, Paula. But I’ve been like this my whole life, and I’m probably never going to change.”

  She darted her eyes back down to that crack again.

  I wished I had a rewind button so we could’ve backed up to when we ordered blueberry pancakes and omelets again and just forget about all this serious crap. My last statement sounded too final. It couldn’t be final. I reached out to mess with her hair, lighten the load. “You need another haircut.”

/>   “Well, I’m not getting another one until you get on an airplane.”

  I laughed out loud. “You with unruly hair?”

  “Nah,” she said, “I have complete faith that you’re too good of a stylist to let it get messy.”

  “You’re serious aren’t you?”

  “Yup.”

  She rose and extended her hand to help me up. She dusted the back of my jeans and led me back inside the door. The hag of a waitress looked relieved that we hadn’t chewed and screwed on her.

  As we sat back down, I whispered and nodded towards the waitress. “You’ll have hair like hers.”

  She laughed, caught up in the moment. We smiled at each other over our coffee mugs. Two women falling in love. Just like a scene right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Add in the underlying tension that threatened our existence as a couple and suddenly we’d be Michelangelo’s David, broken.

  I was going to lose this woman.

  * *

  “How about this one?” Aziza pointed to the computer screen. “They say they can cure you in ten sessions, money back guaranteed.”

  “Yeah, but it’s group therapy. I don’t want to sit in front of a bunch of strangers and have to tell them about the time I accidentally flushed my Gran’s roller down the toilet, and how that eventually screwed up my childhood because Gran had some weird attachment to that roller. Then, they’re going to want me to talk about the day I started my period and how that made me feel. And worse, then they’ll move to more perverse analysis by asking what made me gay. Then it’ll come out that my mother reprimanded me for undressing in front of my friend when we were eleven and how she blames that harmless little bathing suit swap for making me gay. I’m not interested in group analysis or psycho analysis or any of that crap.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re insane.” She clicked onto Amazon’s site.

  “I’m not buying another book.” I stood and walked away towards my station. “That last one was a bunch of psycho babble. It just made me hyperventilate.”

  I opened my drawer and dug out a brush and started to brush my hair straight. I reached for the blow dryer and shot the hot air onto my hair, blowing away the frizz. “And another thing,” I said, hoisting the blow dryer in the air, “I’m not taking any magic pills. All they do is make me gain weight. The last thing I need is to prance around the white sandy beaches of California with a two inch slab of fat hanging over my bikini bottom because of my daily dose of happy pills.”