TARNISHED
Caramels have lost their sweet for me, no longer the succulent surprise I used to unwrap.
The rich silk that covered my couch is now rumpled, torn with years and stained by so many searching hands.
Why don’t you ever give back when you take from this empty void now formed inside of me?
The bronze that used to glaze the Romanesque stallion you gave to me has tarnished.
Water drips again from a leaky faucet that once commanded a basin of marbled pink and golden trim.
…and these shadows inside of me start to merge with the darkness of my room;
Empty.
THE BEACH (A WEEKEND THAT CHANGED MY LIFE)
I could almost forget the horrible weekend behind me when I looked at the trees whizzing by the car window. A hawk flew lazily above us, winding from one updraft to the next. Looking across the car at Lisa I saw her trying to lose herself in the peace and the calm as well. We had talked so much about Britta and the things she had said last night, that today there wasn’t much left to talk about. I closed my eyes and pressed my head into the coolness of the window.
“Are you hungry?” I asked Lisa. She had told me to ‘shout out’ if I needed anything, but I still felt like I was intruding. So I did something very typically me; I avoided coming straight out with it and came at an angle to the problem. Confrontation doesn’t come easily for me.
“No I’m fine,” Lisa smiled, “But we can stop and get you something. Any preferences? I know my boys all have their favorite places to eat.”
Someone understood me. “It doesn’t really matter. I’ll eat just about anything.”
“Ok, there’s a Wendy’s on the corner here once we hit 50 in about five minutes.”
“Sounds good.” I closed my eyes again, thinking back over the events of this morning. I felt so guilty for lying to Britta. I played sick so I wouldn’t have to ride back with her, but then, after the screaming match in the kitchen last night, I wasn’t too eager to get in her car. I would never forget that brutally cold and black look she had in her eyes as she was yelling.
“Here we are,” Lisa said, mostly to herself, as she pulled off the main road and into the parking lot of a gas station that offered Wendy’s inside. Lisa handed me a twenty dollar bill out of her wallet and told me to get anything I wanted.
Both of us were quiet as we entered the store. A few minutes later we were back in the car, cruising back down Route 50 towards Maryland and then Virginia.
“Mm, I love these cookies,” Lisa said to me, holding one up with a smile on her face. She always seemed to know when to break the silence and when to let me think. “Want to try one?”
“No, thanks,” I smiled back, I loved the frosted cookies too, but I was too full from my Wendy’s.
“I don’t think I’ve been home once in the past two weeks,” she said. “I bet Jim and Kevin have dirty dishes, dirty laundry, and an empty refrigerator. I always end up having to drive down from the beach house to do laundry, wash dishes, and go grocery shopping.”
As I thought about it, I realized it had been a long time since I had last been home as well. “I think I’ve been home maybe once in four weeks. Let’s see, I spent a week…no almost two with Britta because of the horse show, and then went home for one day, but was back that night with clean clothes, and then stayed until Kelly got there, and went home for one night. Then I came back and stayed the week and a half with Kelly at Britta’s and when we took Kelly to the airport, I stayed the night at my house before going back for a day or two, and then I came up to the beach. Ok, so I was home twice.”
“Does it bother you? Not to see your family?” Lisa asked, curious.
“Not really. I guess I always felt like Britta’s house was a bit like home,” I said quietly.
“Are you going to Lexington?” The question was definitely loaded.
I took a deep breath, I wasn’t sure. I wanted to go, to see Klaus and Jessica, and Carole Lawrence and Robby, and Bob and Shara. But I didn’t want to be there when Britta stressed and yelled over the smallest details whenever she got nervous. “I don’t know.”
“If you do come, I’ve got two hotel rooms at a completely different hotel from Britta and everyone,” she smiled. “You are more than welcome to have the second one, and more than welcome to drive down with me in my rig.”
“Thanks,” I smiled. I had a good friend in Lisa, and I hoped she knew how much I appreciated it. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I couldn’t fall asleep, I kept hearing Britta yell.
What seemed like only minutes later Lisa startled me awake by saying, “We’re at the beltway, your house is south past the barn, right?”
“Yeah, south, past the barn, it’s the Little River Turnpike exit,” I told her as I watched the River Road, Potomac exit flash by us. Merry Go Round had a taint on it now. I loved Duro dearly, but I wasn’t sure how soon I wanted to go out there because it meant having to see Britta. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen asleep, I only felt more tired now than I was before I slept.
“You know, Beth, things will work out,” Lisa interrupted my thoughts. “Talk to your mom about all this, she’ll know what to do.”
I don’t know how she does it, I thought to myself. I had thought about talking to Mom, but for some reason, I didn’t think she’d understand. Maybe it was because nothing with Britta ever really bothered her, she didn’t seemed to be affected by it all. I had spent the day that I was home after Kelly left bitching about Britta, and I know I had taken it overboard, but I couldn’t help it. Some days she made me so angry I could spit fire. But Mom had only told me to shrug it off, not take it personally. She knew it bothered me, but I don’t think she understood why or how much. “Yeah,” I said indifferently.
Lisa glanced at me, I could see her out of the corner of my eye, and I knew she knew what I was thinking. “She will. Your mother is a smart woman.”
Smart or not, she never understood me! All right, don’t get angry at Lisa… “I know.”
Lisa left me to my thoughts again, not pushing the issue.
It was another hour before we reached my house, the traffic was piled up from so many people heading back to their weekday lives. When we pulled into my driveway, a rush of relief filled me and for the first time I was glad I was home. It was familiarity, comfort, and my mom. While she may not understand, she was still my mother.
“Hey,” I called when Mom opened the door. She helped me carry my bags inside and Lisa followed.
They didn’t exchange pleasantries, Mom didn’t have to ask what had happened, Lisa offered. Walking into the kitchen, we talked about everything: how rude Britta had been that weekend to Lisa and Jim, her hosts; how she had completely lost it over the trailering idea and shouted and yelled at both of us; how Lisa had yelled back for both of us. Lisa didn’t tell her about the three hours we spent talking on the dock, but then somehow that felt right. When Lisa mentioned Lexington, I perked up, coming back to the conversation.
“I want to go, Mom. Not for Britta, but for Duro, it would be really good for him to get out there.”
“We’ll see,” is all she would say. Lisa repeated her offer of letting me stay with her. Mom thanked her and soon Lisa left.
“You want to tell me about it?” Mom asked. I didn’t. But I told her anyway. The conversation brought Dad in the room, and soon I was crying and I wasn’t sure why. Well, maybe I was.
Britta had let me down. I trusted her, I loved her, I thought she would never turn on me. Why had she screamed so horribly? Why did she treat me the way she did? I wasn’t just the hired help, I thought I meant more to her than that. Why didn’t she respect my opinions? After asking many impossible questions I went upstairs with my things and lied down on my bed. I didn’t even remember falling asleep.
When I awoke it was slowly, I couldn’t seem to pull myself out of sleep, as if it had its claims on me, and there was nothing I could do to break them. Finally I could open my eyes to stare, blurry, at the posters of the Australian Olympic Team, Karen O’Conner, and Donnerhall. Why? was the question I kept asking myself. Was it something I did that caused Britta to finally lose it on me? For the past four months Britta had been taking away horses from me, not asking me to do as much, giving my duties away to Dana, and Katja, and Stephanie. Why? Was I not good enough anymore? From the moment Mom and Dad announced their ‘brilliant plan’ to move to Florida I knew she would have to replace me, but why so soon? Why now? Why did she have to do it while I was still around? It hurt all the same.
I felt drunk with sleep. I couldn’t convince my body to crawl out of bed, couldn’t convince my feet to swing over the cliff of my bed and onto the rough carpeting of my floor. It wasn’t long before I fell back asleep.
“Beth? Bethie?” I hated it when my mom called me Bethie; like I wasn’t sixteen years old, but six. I feigned sleep so I wouldn’t have to talk to her. It worked; I successfully lied to my mother.
I remember lying in bed a lot, unsure of myself and the world around me. Things had changed again. I didn’t like change. Britta had been my security, my confidence, my routine. Now all of that was gone. It certainly did make it easier to leave her when I was angry. This way I didn’t miss her so much. This way I didn’t have to think about all of the wonderful times we could have had together, all of the shows we would have gone to, all of the people we would have met, together.
Oh, but damn it all, it still hurt. I rolled over and cried myself to sleep. There was no point to waking up. What would I do? School was out for the summer. My only close friend, Alexis, was in New Jersey. She never really understood me when it came to horses anyway. And now my sanctuary had been burned, it was gone and would never come back. The barn was no longer the safe haven I had made it in my mind. WHY?
I closed my eyes, unwilling to face the ‘why’ of it. Memories flooded back to my unwilling consciousness. I smiled as I thought of Lexington the summer before. It had been so much fun rooming with Britta and Sara. We laughed a lot while we were there. We also learned a lot. I loved that, the laughing and the learning.
It was gone now.
I remembered singing along to Shania Twain in the truck, wedged in the middle of the bench seat between them, smiling and belting out the words to “I Feel Like A Woman” with the windows rolled partially down, Partita and Revel in the trailer. The green hills rolled by and we reminisced about the show and the people.
That was gone too.
I sobbed into my pillow and hated myself for ruining that relationship. I didn’t know what I did to destroy those precious moments, but surely I had done something. Why else would she have yelled at me? What had I done?
“Bethie, you awake?” Why did she have to call me that! I closed my eyes again, hoping she would leave.
“Beth, come on, wake up, it’s dinnertime.”
I ignored her, pretending I was deeply asleep.
She shook my leg, “Bethie, wake up.”
I wanted to shout, “Leave me alone!” But of course, I didn’t. She would get all offended and probably pissed off and that would get me nowhere because the last thing she would do after that was leave me alone. So I took the only option I had and pretended to wake up, dazed and still sleepy. “Oh, did I fall asleep?” Gee, you think??
“Dinner’s ready, sweetie, are you hungry?”
If I said I wasn’t would you leave me alone? No, of course not. But I had to try… “No.” I decided not to elaborate.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
God! What did she think was wrong?
“You want to talk about it?”
NO! Of course I didn’t. If I had wanted to talk about it, I would have. But I don’t, so I didn’t! I changed tactics, “I’m hungry.”
She brightened and forgot that anything had been wrong, “Good, its getting cold.”
Brilliant.
Lying on the couch watching TV was not something I indulged in very often, but with no one home I had left the confines of my room and wandered downstairs. It was late, past eleven or so in the morning and I was alone.
Well at least that was nothing new…
So I watched re-runs of programs I had never seen before. I didn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry. Food wouldn’t fill the emptiness I felt.
Normally I was at the barn during the day, and well generally everyday and most nights. Now that it was gone – oh, God, why? – I had nothing to do. Helplessness is not something I enjoy. Neither is idleness.
Normally I would be training horses at this time…or fixing lunch for everyone…or grooming horses…or taking care of Wesby…or any number of a million things that I would never do again. Ever again. Not in Maryland, not at Merry-Go-Round, not with Britta, not ever again.
Damn. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. Obviously TV was not taking my mind off of it. I switched to books somewhere around three. Books always took me away into another world. Surely I could escape in a book.
“Bethie, I’m home!”
I looked at the clock, four. Mom was home from wherever she had been. Great. Wonderful.
I saw her walk in and dump grocery bags on the kitchen counter. She didn’t see me in the family room on the couch. As soon as she walked back out the door I hurried upstairs with my book and flopped down on my bed, arranging blankets and pillows. It took her some time before she came up to find me. When she did I was able to evade her with noncommittal, brief answers.
I felt horrible. I lost Britta. I lost the barn. I lost my horses. Now I was evading my mother. Well, maybe that wasn’t new, but on top of everything else, it just added to the weight I felt on my heart.
What was I going to do? I felt so lazy just sitting around all day in my pajamas, but what else was there to do? Was there a world besides the barn? Where was it? How did I get there?
No.
I wasn’t ready to face it. I fell back onto my bed and leaked tears onto my pillowcase until my dad came home from work and knocked on my door. I perked up immediately and put on a smile. “Come in!”
“Hi,” he smiled.
“Hi Daddy!”
“How was your day?”
“Okay, it was nice to be lazy around the house. Yours?”
“It was okay.”
When he left I threw myself back down. I was as fake as the girls I made fun of at school…
This wasn’t looking good. How was I ever going to make things better? How? Could it get better? Did I want it to? I was leaving in two weeks, could I hold out that long?
My savior came again and I was whisked away to spend another weekend with Lisa at the beach. There was something about the quiet peace of the beach house that took away most of my troubles. It was also nice to say good-bye to Lisa away from all the hustle and bustle of the barn.
Oh, wait, I didn’t go to the barn anymore…
After three days of new sanctuary I went back home ready to pack up my things and move on.
Well…almost.
I only had one week left. Only seven days. Could I make it?
On the fifth day I was standing in Britta’s small house staring at the floor. I felt Steve watching me. Britta was pointedly not looking at me while she talked to Mom. We exchanged brief good-byes as if I had known them for only a few days and Mom and I walked out the door.
I was not going to cry where she could see me. I was not going to let her know how much she had hurt me.
That night I talked to Mom for a long time about what had happened and why. I still didn’t feel like she understood where I was coming from, but I had to talk by then. The painfully long minutes we had been in Britta’s house had made my head spin and the tears come afresh. At least now I knew what I should do. It may not have been what I wanted to do…but then when was the last time that what I wanted to do coincided with what I should do?
On the sixth day I remember standing in Wesby’s stall with my head on his shoulder, crying. I was still debating whether or not I could walk back into that house and say what I needed to say. Wesby was warm and horse-y-smelling and that was immensely comforting.
Finally I took a deep breath. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other. Left. Right. Left. Right.
I was standing beside the door, at an angle so the people inside couldn’t see me, and I couldn’t see them. All I had to do was open the door. My hand reached out and twisted the knob. WAIT! What was I doing? The door swung open and my feet stepped inside. Oh no. I stood there, unlacing my shoes and taking them off, procrastinating the simple movements into several minutes. The room had fallen quiet. Oh God…
The conversation was not something I remembered. She and I talked for some time. Or rather, should I say, she talked while I listened. Just as I had been afraid, she explained everything away. It wasn’t her fault. How could any of it have been her fault? She was under stress and pressure. I should have come talked to her sooner when I started feeling this way.
Wait, what way?
I didn’t ask. She didn’t say. I really should have come to talk to her when all of this had started. What was she supposed to think with me pulling away all the time? I was obviously losing interest. It was me who wasn’t communicating. I should have been more adult about it.
Damn it, I was only sixteen! She was thirty-five! She was the adult!
Mom and I left some time later. I didn’t remember how or when. I hugged her good-bye very tightly. I hugged Steve. He whispered in my ear that everything would be all right. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to believe him.
I know I hurt my grandpa when he picked me up and we drove to Florida. I was lonely and alone, though there wasn’t much of a difference then. I listened to my dark music and slept for the fourteen hours it took to drive form Fairfax, Virginia to Indian Harbor Beach, Florida. The sleep was nice, I still felt so tired, even after all the sleep I had been getting lately.
When we got to Florida, DeeAnne was there to help me unload my stuff into her house and unpack a few things. We had dinner and I went to sleep again. I didn’t even thank my grandpa, that much I remember very clearly. My mom’s sister looked a lot like her, although DeeAnne was at least a foot or more taller. Somehow that was comforting. She was like my mom, but not close enough to get on my nerves.
School started a few days after that. It was…different. School at Cocoa Beach High School compared to school at Woodson was very, very different. Cocoa Beach was small and quiet. The class sizes were small, and the kids were small-town. It wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened in my life, that spot was all ready filled thank you very much, but it was a close second or third. No one knew who I was or where I had come from, and at first I don’t think any of them really cared.
That seems like it was years ago instead of only months. Six months and ten days. Now what? The pain ebbs away with time, of course. But there is still this ache inside because I never really got to say what I wanted to say to her. I guess that doesn’t matter so much now.
Now all I feel is pain, but for a different reason. I miss her desperately. She made me hurt, and still does when I feel those angry black eyes again, but I miss her. I miss the level of riding, I miss having fun, I miss being in charge of something, I miss having those responsibilities. My own ego misses all those people who looked up to me, who took lessons from me and admired me. Most of all I miss feeling important, because Britta made me feel important to her and to the business she ran, and at sixteen, that’s an awesome thing.
There are days that I remember what it used to be like and I get really angry. Then there are days that I remember and I only get sad. I’m going back to Virginia to stay with Britta for a week over spring break, and maybe that will help heal the holes I have inside. I hope so. I’m tired of not being sure of what to feel, not being sure of what I’m doing, and most of all I’m tired of being unsure of myself.
It takes a lifetime to learn life lessons, unfortunately, and I just wish it didn’t have to be so painful sometimes…
