Page 8 of Wanting What’s Wrong

Six

Kat

I can’t feel my legs. I feel dreamy, woozy, off-balance. All I know is I need to be away from him and clearly, he wants me to be away from him.

The beat of my own heart tells me that the sight of his photos, the journal, the tattoo—it brought up all the feelings in me that I have shoved away.

For so long, I convinced myself my feelings wouldn’t be reciprocated.

No, that’s not enough. My feelings were wrong . They are wrong. More than wrong, dirty. Filthy . An abomination.

No matter what I saw in that journal, it doesn’t matter. It’s impossible.

I move through the unfamiliar house, like a visitor lost, and head downstairs.

A stack of moving boxes catches my eye, piled up by the dining room.

Moving boxes I recognize. I packed them after Mom and Dad died, and Trent insisted on paying for movers and a storage unit until I got settled somewhere new.

When he’d asked about my new living situation, I lied again.

Telling him there was a new, gated complex with lots of younger people moving into a up and coming old neighborhood, but my place was too small for all the family stuff, so he said he’d just keep it in storage until he got back, then we could deal with it together.

Now some of the boxes are here, and the top one is open. Sticking out from it I see our old family album.

A forest-green cover, embossed with gold, cheap but the nicest we could afford at the time. I remember picking it out at the craft store, feeling like it was so unusual. So special. Nothing but cardboard and fake gold embossing, but it seemed like the loveliest thing in the world back then.

The pages crinkle as I open the cover, and our family photos stare back at me from behind yellowed, cellophane sheets.

The first picture, which my mom carefully centered by itself, is a 5 x 7 of our whole family, taken at our one trip to the Sears portrait studio.

I look awkward in a little purple dress, my belly sticking out and braces on my teeth.

Trent looks stiff and formal in his suit, with his hair carefully combed.

But his eyes, they’re the same. Those eyes that melted me then. But, there’s more. Something I never noticed before. He’s not looking at the camera.

He’s looking at me.

Our parents raised us as though we came from them both. His mom, Emily, was ten years younger than my dad. They fit together like peanut butter and jelly. Like tea with honey. Yin and yang. But it took me nearly all my life to see it.

Emily had Trent when she was only 17. My dad was older than most of my friends’ fathers.

May and December. But it worked for them.

Perfectly. Even looking at this picture now, with its soft edges and baby-blue background, I see it.

The adoration. The affection. The contentment of finding that extraordinary thing.

Another person to complete you. Another person to make you whole.

Someone that says, it’s okay to be you, because to me, you are perfect.

Trent never talked much about his real dad, probably because there wasn’t much to talk about.

I scooped up bits and pieces, from whispered conversations, and Christmas card newsletters from distant family.

He was a loner, lived in a crummy apartment somewhere.

He enjoyed whiskey and a lack of responsibilities.

I knew because Emily was young when she had Trent and she had no family support, it was rough.

Rougher still because his birth was difficult.

So difficult that she was never able to conceive again.

I think that’s why both our parents made sure neither of us felt any less than a child that was born to them together.

His mom was beautiful, sweet, and treated me with kindness, even when I bucked against her, willful and rebellious. I needed her love. My own mom died when I wasn’t even two leaving Dad and I to figure life out on our own.

I don’t even remember my mom. But there are snapshots of her here, in this album.

Cancer took her. A sad death, but quick.

It was two months from the day she got the stomachache to the day she was gone.

There were a few years there that I know I was hard to love.

Emily was my mom, but I’d had another I didn’t even remember.

Trent and I went through a rough patch at that time too. I wanted nothing to do with him for a while. Nothing. Him with his attitude and his protein shakes, Emily’s real child, putting up posters of rock bands on the bedroom walls, listening to Green Day and Nirvana and being so... Trent .

It was infuriating. I took to stealing things from him. A CD, a flashlight, a magazine with girls in bikinis. Anything to annoy him. Anything to get him to see me .

But when push came to shove, he did see me. He did help me. He did love me in the way that only a brother can. A few years later, I remember he found me sitting in his room, staring blankly at the wall. No books, no toys, no stealing his stuff, nothing.

“If it’s that fucker Henry Weaver again, I’m probably going to need a lawyer,” Trent said. Even when I was little, he didn’t sugarcoat things for me. He never treated me as less than an equal. Never acted like I couldn’t handle the way things were.

“Close the door,” I said, waving him closer to the bed.

Trent leaned back on his comforter, laying down, staring at the ceiling and folding his hands on top of his worn Nirvana tee-shirt. “Spill it, Kitty Kat.”

I sniffled. “I think… I think Dad is hurting your mom.” My eyes welled up with tears. That sharp sting of sadness filled my nostrils and throat.

Trent’s blue eyes met my gaze. “What? Why would you say that?”

I felt my lips tremble, but I kept myself from bursting into messy sobs.

“I think they were fighting. Last night. Your Mom was making these noises. I tried to look under the door. I could see Dad was holding her down.” The welling tears tumbled down over my cheeks. “I think he was hurting her, Trent.”

Trent took a minute. Half amused. Half thoughtful. Watching me, I know now, and surely thinking, How the fuck do I explain this?

But he handled it well. He handles every difficult thing well. “They weren’t fighting, Kat. He’s not hurting her. I promise.”

He extended his pinkie to mine. At first, I was skeptical, but he looked so certain.

“Promise?” I asked, as our fingers squeezed together

“Promise.”

“But what were they doing, then?” I asked. “I saw him, holding her hard. He was grunting, and she was… ”

Trent cleared his throat, looked away. He ran his muscular hand down his face. And I remember the sound of his stubble against his palm. “How about we go get an ice cream?”

I blinked at him. “But, Trent…”

“Your dad will explain it to you sometime, Kitty Kat. Not my job. But I promise an ice cream will make you feel better. So?”

It wasn’t like him to change the subject. But even then, I trusted him to tell me what I needed to know. And if he said my dad wasn’t hurting Emily, then I accepted that as the truth.

“ So, ” I said, like I always did, in our little secret language. “Two scoops?”

Trent rolled off the bed, smiling that devastating smile. “Maybe even three.”

More cellophane pages, more years of memories.

One of him at his senior prom, with a little blonde bombshell that looked like a Jazzercise instructor in the making.

I hated her back then and a bubble of that hostility comes up now looking at the picture.

He never really had girlfriends that I remember.

He had girls as friends, I guess, but nobody seemed to keep his attention. Or capture his heart.

Now the formal portrait of him when he joined the service, looking so sharp and so strong and so sure. Once he joined up, the girls gravitated toward him even more. He was a force of nature and there was never a shortage of girls waiting to take his arm.

But, he never looked at one of them the way he looked at me just a few minutes ago.

Glassy-eyed, lost forever, barely able to hold it in his pants.

I swallow my nerves and try to get my butterflies under control. I close the album and go find my purse in the kitchen, desperate to go somewhere, anywhere. Because knowing that he’s one floor above me, where he and I were just…

I can’t. I can’t do this. Be here, think this, imagine that.

I can’t.

I’ll explode if I stay. We need some space.

I do have somewhere to be—something to do.

I got paid last night at the Velvet Touch and I slip my wallet from my purse and double-check that I’ve got the money for my rent which I assumed I’d deliver when I took Trent back to my place.

Just the thought of seeing my landlord makes my stomach turn.

But still. It’s something. It’s something to do, something else to focus on.

I step outside and find the limo driver, sitting on the patio beside the guest house, reading a James Michener book. The bright sunshine helps clear my mind, just a little. He looks military, more or less, with a clean-shaven honesty. He stands up when he sees me.

“Can I help? I’m Edward. At your service.”

“Yes. I need a ride to my apartment.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and gives me a playful but still respectful salute. “Trent told me your wish is my command. Let’s go.”