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| RUNNING ON EMPTY BY TORRI |
CHAPTER 4 |
Jamaica The Beach
Tea was breathless by the time her feet made contact with the wet part of the sand. The tide had just gone out, leaving tightly packed sand particles in its wake. If felt nice against her feet, a welcome change from the hot, dry sand that scratched the bottom of her feet. It's coolness made its way up her entire body, straight to her warm head.
She took a backwards glance, toward the bar she had just ran from, expecting Del to have chased after her. When she was convinced he would not be joining her anytime soon, she let her weary body sink into the dirty sand. And there she sat, watching the sun turn the sky a beautiful shade of orange, and then disappear beyond the horizon.
On her knees, she concentrated on her breathing, on relaxing, on the colors that surrounded her. In the distance, she could see the silhouettes of lovers walking hand in hand, their faces invisible to her, but their shadows were of the life she wished to lead. There was no peace, no lover, no walking hand in hand with anyone. She saw a woman stand on her toes to kiss a lover whose head was bent to her level. The woman deepened the kiss, by wrapping her arms around his neck, his around her waist. And when they pulled apart, she could see the shadow of their smiles, and they entwined their hands again and continued their stroll.
She closed her eyes, silently begging to be taken far away from this place of happiness. She did not belong. She was a stranger to happiness, to contentment, to anything "good." Silently she prayed to be transported to her lonely life of hell, at least that was familiar to her. It was a place where she truly belonged.
What did I do to deserve this? You took my mother away and left me with that bastard. You took my child away. You took me away. I have no one in this world. I have tried to do what I thought was best, but it's just not enough for you. Just when I thought I found someone, and when I thought I understood why you kept torturing me, you took him away. What am I supposed to do now, huh? I mean, really? You have left me with nothing but this body and my mind. Desire is gone. Hope is gone. I am gone. What is it you want from me?
"He don't want not' in from you."
Tea's eyes sprang open and stared into the face of the stranger from the bar. The one with the ability of "sight."
"You been trough a lot, dat's true, but don't you know how strong you are? Dat man you in love wit, he loves you back. More than you know, he loves you. But you can't be together right now. You have to find yourself. He ain't take not' in from you woman, it's all right there. You just have to see it."
The beautiful stranger in front of her, so sincere, brought a hint of a smile to her lips. She kneeled before him, eyeing him with a fascinating weariness it was as if he stepped inside her mind. The words were there, those that she needed to hear, but was he just playing games?
"Don't be scared o' me. Come on, de tide's gonna wash you out dere, way out to de ocean, den you'll never understand." He reached out a hand to her, effortlessly lifting her from the sand. She didn't even feel like she moved, like he pulled her off the ground and she floated across the sand with him.
"How do you know so much?"
"I don't know I feel. I watch. I listen. Everyting's right there if we look for it. You have to find the answers."
"What's the question?"
"I t'ink you already know it."
She walked along the beach with him, without really knowing why. Only that it felt right. Darkness had descended upon the island, and her body felt more at ease. More than she had felt the entire week, her body was completely void of any tension. That hadn't happened since the early stages of loving Todd, when he was a little more open and a little less afraid.
For the longest time, he didn't say anything. She followed a little ways behind him, as if in a hypnotic trance. She didn't look around her, had no idea where he was taking her, but she could feel the texture of the earth change beneath her feet. When she looked down, she saw the outline of rocks, feeling their sharp edges poking the sole of her feet. He reached behind him, helping her navigate the rocky heap. Still no questions, she followed until the reached the top edge of the plateau.
"Look out d'ere. 'Dis is de highest point of de island," he said, making a sweeping gesture toward everything that was beneath them.
Tea looked around her, for the first time she really looked at what surrounded her, what was beneath her, what was at her level. The stars, millions of them, shone brightly in the night sky, with the rays of the full moon enveloping them. Around them, there were lights of every color, some solid, some flickering. Belo, the waves crashed against the shore, or gently covered the sand. Everywhere around her was the same thing beauty.
"You see all dat out d'ere? You hear de music? Do you feel it? You look at de lights, defy bright 'aye? I come up here a lot."
"You do? Why?"
"All a dat out 'd'ere dat's me. De lights de white's me when I'm happy red when I'm mad blue when I'm calm. De ocean dat sound's de lapping of it against de sand is me when I'm content de crashing's me when I'm filled wit de rage. De moon's me when I'm loved de stars are me when I need lovin'. All o' dat out d'ere dat's you too. You got so many t'ings inside o' you so complex you always know it's d'ere, but not everybody knows dat."
He was right. Many times she felt no one would, or even could understand the life she lead. That life and all of its complexities were something she kept deep within herself. She was forced to bury it, to help someone else, to be someone else's savior. Somewhere along the way, she had forgotten about it, and it was making its presence known once again.
"De way I see it you don't have issues with 'im or 'er," lifting his head toward the sky, "whatever you want to call it. You got problems wit you. I come up 'ere when I 'ave to take care of me. Sometimes, you 'ave to forget 'bout everybody else and take care of you."
"I don't have time to take care of me," she argued.
"Dat's why you're so unhappy. Forget 'bout everybody else and t'ink 'bout what you want. You asked what he wants you to do I'll tell you. He wants you to help yourself. You got so much inside o' you, so much past you gotta go back d'ere and kick its ass."
She turned away from him and stared at the land before her. She had never had a man sit and talk to her like that before. Not so honestly, and openly, and knowingly. He was her kindred, or so it seemed. She turned back to him, and took in his beauty. He was like the land, vast, knowing, wonderful, ever changing and beautiful. At that moment, she thought about reverting to her sexual ways. But it didn't seem natural, not natural at all.
*****
New York Todd's Apartment
Viki busied herself with meaningless tasks while she waited for Todd to emerge from his room. All kinds of emotions were running through her as she thought about what he must have been going through. Tea was always the one that could calm the stormy seas within him, but with her gone, it was always Viki's fear that he would not survive. And he almost didn't.
It was her belief, that as long as Tea was somewhere in the picture, near Todd, there was hope for them, and in turn for him. It was her belief, that in the months they were together, she had witnessed the impossible become possible, and for Todd to love again. It was her belief, that they would make it through anything life threw at them, because they were the same in the heart, but the exact opposite in the way they chose to deal with life's obstacles. And that opposition, she believed, would cause some sort of balance in the imbalance of their lives, and carry them through eternity.
Sitting in his living room, she realized that all of her beliefs may have been her own hopes projected onto them. They had something she had searched for her whole life, with Joe Riley, Clint Buchanan, and when she found it with Sloan Carpenter, he died. She shook her head and her own inability to find exactly what Todd and Tea had.
She kept looking down the hallway, hearing a creak or a footstep glide against the wood floors, and thinking he was coming out. And as the seconds would tick away, she would realize that it was only a figment of her imagination. The hours passed, and still, he hid from her.
*****
Todd's Bedroom
He felt like a animal, trapped inside the cage that was his room. He had the desire to go out and have fun, the kind that would involve not remembering what happened in the morning. It had been too long, and he wanted his mind to go blank again.
At first, after talking to Tea, he felt pretty good. Great, in fact. Like the sun would rise again in his life and maybe, just maybe, there was a chance for him to find happiness. Then it hit him she was with another man. She didn't say it, didn't have to she evaded. Same as she used to do, evade to protect his feelings, or to protect herself evade and avoid outright lying.
When he thought about it, she seemed very relaxed. The long lulls of their conversation, he mistook for a sort of peaceful meditation. She didn't sound happy, nor did she sound particularly unhappy. As he replayed the conversation in his mind, he tried to figure out exactly what she sounded like. During their marriage, it was easy to decipher her moods through the inflections of her voice. But in their conversation, there were no inflections. Her voice was calm and steady, like the flat line of a heart monitor. He incorrectly assumed that the reason the sound was foreign to him, was because she was never truly at peace with him. He was chaotic, causing chaos with her.
It cut like a knife into him, thinking of how much he had hurt her. There were times when he could have sworn she was happy, but they were far out-numbered by the times he made her miserable. Never occurred to him back then, he was too consumed by revenge he couldn't notice anything outside of him and his needs.
There was the time he took her to the Bayberry Inn for a Christmas getaway. He even wore the stupid Santa hat. He did touch her then, warmed her freezing hands with his warmth. Then he blew it by running away. Yelling and screaming about how she couldn't understand and he couldn't have another relationship and it had to remain strictly business between them. Even as the words rolled off his tongue, he knew he was lying and their deal had already become so much more.
He wore the grain of the wood floor smooth. It became a slippery sheet of ice, as he socks rubbed back and forth against it. She was with another man was written across his brain in bold, capital letters tattooed there.
"You blew it Todd. The best thing that ever happened to you and you blew it. Why the fuck do you always have to screw everything up? Peter was right, you bastard! You can't do anything without fucking it up!"
As his pace quickened, so did his words. They spilled off and like poison, he spit them out. "She cheated on you! Fucked the righteous Reverend when she knew she knew how you felt about her. She let him fuck her and showed up at your door before the stench of sex even had the chance to go away. You let her inside that was your mistake. Just like Blair, you let her in and she walked all over your sick ass. And you let her some more. Walked around while she made a fool out of you. No more! No fucking more! You don't need her. You don't need shit. Everything's so fucked up."
He walked over to his top nightstand drawer. Stared at it a moment, looked at his fingerprints against the brass knob. He had opened that drawer more times than he could count, to look at just one thing her picture. Hundreds of them were hidden in various places around his apartment, but only his very favorites were kept in that drawer. He kept them there, close to him, for those nights when he woke from his nightmares. Opening it, he withdrew the one that was on top. It was from Christmas, the last one they spent together.
Starr, like all children, awoke early and yelled through the house about how Santa had come. He and Tea had just gotten to sleep when they heard her voice bouncing off the penthouse walls. And Tea came from her room, and he came from his, both a little grumpy from lack of sleep. But when they saw Starr's eyes light up, they couldn't help but smile. Tea was one to get into the Christmas spirit, and wore a pair of red silk pajamas. The belt on her robe was loosely tied and hung low on her hips. Without her knowing it, he checked out the little patch of skin he could see from her low cut pajama top.
Starr opened her gifts, while Tea snapped pictures of every expression. When he complained, she said one day he'd appreciate it. After Starr finished, they awkwardly exchanged gifts. She bought him a collection of rare comic books and a Sony Playstation with all the games. He loved them, although he only barked a half-hearted "thanks." She knew him so well, even back then he thought about how well she knew him. He, knowing her just as well, gave her a book of clothing designs he had commissioned and told her to pick out anything she wanted. It was Viki's suggestion; he hadn't planned on getting her anything. At first, he thought it was a stupid idea, but after seeing the designs, he wanted her to have one of everything. The smile on her face made it all worth it, and just when it was at its biggest and brightest, Starr snapped a picture. It was the picture he held in his hand.
*****
Jamaica Roseanne's Room
The whole trip had been sort of a bust for Roseanne. If she wasn't sick, she was sleeping or complaining about how sick and tired she was. All she wanted was to get back to her life in Llanview.
She loved the time she was able to spend with Del, and even Tea, but the trip was nothing like she had expected. Everyone was too caught up in their own world to notice her. She noticed them though, noticed the tension between them, and Tea's distractions.
It worked out well for her though. Gave her time to think about her life, and all the bad turns she had taken. The mistakes were too numerous to count, some she could never undo. While Del and Tea were busy with their distraction, she had time to make some decisions about her own life. She loved Christian, always had and probably always would. But she was beginning to realize that there was something missing. The love on his end. No matter what she did, or how much she loved him, it would never be enough.
Tea taught her that, through her never-ending love and support of Todd. And no matter how much Tea loved him, trusted him, gave him of herself, it was never enough. The strange thing was, even though they had been apart for months, the love didn't go away.
She witnessed, first hand how love could cut the very heart of a person out and leave black coal in its place. It was the case with Tea. Things had changed so much within her, the Tea she once knew no longer existed. In her place was a hopeless, soulless shell. She didn't want her life to be that way. She didn't want to lose so much of herself to someone, that when they left, she would become a nothing.
But she loved him so much. All her life she wanted him to love her, to look at her the way the handsome prince looked at his princess in the movies. She wanted him to look at her the way Bogart looked at Bacall, or, more recently, the way DiCaprio looked at Winslet. Maybe the idealistic young child inside believed in that sort of love, but she didn't not anymore. Christian was it, or so she thought. The one and only man that could make her heart skip a beat with a passing glance. Yet she was on one side of the world, pregnant, and he never called once to see how she was doing.
Tea once told her that love was an illusion, "when you reach out to embrace it, it disappears, leaving you standing in the cold." That was before Todd came along. While she was with Todd, her advice was to "risk everything for the real thing. It only comes along once, and if you blink, or wait, or close yourself off to it, you'll regret it for the rest of your life." After Todd, she said, "love hurts" that was all.
Roseanne was beginning to think she was right love is painful. As she rubbed her still flat belly, she thought of the child growing inside her, the piece of Christian she would have with her forever. That child was what counted, not Christian, not what was going on between them that child. She smiled to herself, speaking softly as to not hurt its ears.
"You're never going to hurt like I hurt. I promise you that. Your daddy might not love me, but at least we have each other."
She would go back to Llanview, not for Christian, but for her child. She had grown up deprived of a father's loving touch, and she would not do that to her child. Letting go would be the hardest thing she ever had to do, but it was, in the end, the best thing she could do for both of them.
