Emily's Reasons Why Not Page 6

  The time machine races back in my brain, past late nights alone and days spent working off the repercussions of almost a year without David. The white fur fades out of Sam’s face back to a time when he was still spry. The stress lines magically dissolve from mine as if Botox had already been approved by the FDA. It had been one year and nine months since I’d had a vacation. I was twenty-seven years young and over the train wreck that was David Jenkins. Prick. Almost a full year spent working late, working early, working overtime. Never complaining. Sucking ass. Being a corporate team player. Believing and creating propaganda was my mission statement. Generous listening was my motto. Only to be promoted to a higher volume of exploded egos and greater stakes.

  Grace finished her doctorate in psychology with me as her subject for dating people you work with. I feel very proud to be the topic of her thesis. On our limited incomes, she needed the practice and I needed the therapy. Fortunately her thesis passed. But I am still single. Reilly is dating Bob. She’s got a new job, working with Clinique, so she’s keeping me rolling in free lip liner and facial skin care products.

  Flying to St. Croix, my eyes gaze over miles of blue-green water and white sand beaches dotted with red umbrellas that change to navy followed by green ones. From the air they represent the flags of each resort. I watch a couple riding horses along the surf, sigh, and feel myself slipping into the land of make-believe until I remember that my mom is sitting next to me. Her bright red lipstick reminds me that it’s VD, Valentine’s Day, as she reapplies after the eight-hour flight from Los Angeles. I shake the ice in my plastic cup and down the last of my Bloody Mary.

  This is the perfect escape, just mom-and-daughter time. Beach time, drinking time, playing time. No beefy forearm distractions, tight buns, or tan abs with water dripping off that curve above the hip, that yummy male muscle. God! A year is too long to go without affection or at least heavy petting.

  Jesus, enough already! Needless to say, there will be none of that. Just yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum … with Bitsy.

  I pull my Ping ball cap down low over my bangs, slip on my dark shades, and tighten my seat belt for landing. A yellow 1970s VW van from the resort picks us up on the tarmac. Mom and I pile in behind the driver’s seat with our luggage. The driver, a tan American kid, listens to Bob Mar-ley on the stereo as he drives and looks me over in the rearview mirror. He glances at my mom and smiles back at me. I smile at him, as I don’t think he is old enough to be dangerous.

  “Welcome to St. Croix. First time?” Driver Boy questions.

  “Yes,” Mom says. “Do you live here?”

  “Yeah, I moved down after college. My parents thought I was going to Georgetown Law, but instead I ended up in St. Croix and never went home. They think I’m in my third year of business law,” he chuckles.

  Correction, law school age is definitely old enough to be dangerous. Trickery on his own parents can 100 percent lead to trickery on women.

  The oceanfront goes by with surfers, locals, and couples lying on the beach. My eyes hidden behind my glasses eventually land back on Driver Boy.

  “Are you babes single?”

  Just shoot me now. Why does my dating status have any relevance to the boy driver of our van? Why is that any of his business?

  “Yes, and we’re looking to get grrroooovy,” Mom says, nudging me in the side.

  Oh my God. What is going on here? Did my mom just say “looking to get groovy” to a horny schoolboy? I am not looking to get groovy. I am looking to hide. I am looking for peace and quiet, nurturing from my mother. I am looking for a calm inside, not to get groovy with some trickery-filled slacker on an island who drives a VW.

  “You shouldn’t have any problems, the scene is full of guys like me willing to show you a good time.” The VW comes to a stop. I look at my mom.

  “Groovy?” I ask, eyeballing her.

  Driver Boy, whom I notice is six foot one, lanky, and hot in his Hawaiian shirt, slides the van door open for me. I grab my bag and jump out as he hands my mom his card.

  “Call me if you need,” he raises his eyebrows and glances at me, “… a ride.”

  I slam the van door as Mom looks him over. “Thanks, we will.”

  We walk up the wooden steps to the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, Mom wraps her arm around my shoulder and gives me a good squeeze. “I know you wish you were here with a boyfriend, but let’s make the best of it,” she says as a pretty, tan island girl puts flowers around both of our necks and welcomes us to paradise.

  Is it too early to drink?

  As if reading my mind, she points to the small bar nestled in the middle of the pool. “Neat.”

  A tropical paradise, with cool breezes and the sound of the ocean waves crashing on the shore. I am in heaven. I float around the pool on my blue raft with a frozen strawberry daiquiri in hand. Mom plays bunko with a few older women around a bar table.

  This is what I needed. Rest. No men, no drama, no problems. Just alcohol, more rest, and more alcohol. I close my eyes and drift off to la-la land.

  Second day in paradise. I awake to the sound of a BEEP-BEEPING alarm clock, roll over, and look at the time, 7:00 A.M.

  I smack it off the nightstand, pull the covers up, and roll over. Scrunching my eyes closed, I pretend that my mother is not scurrying around the room with her long khaki shorts, large straw hat, 35mm camera, video camera, knapsack, and purse in hand.

  I scratch my eyes and roll over as she rips the sheets off my body only to realize that I am naked. “Jesus!”

  “Up, up, up,” she says, on too much coffee.

  Did I mention we were sharing a room? My eyes are dry and burning. My head is pounding. Wow, rum should not be put in the same fat frozen glass with fruit juices.

  “We are going on a hiking tour of the island. I signed us up yeterday,” she adds eagerly.

  “No way. I am on vacation, Mom. Leave me alone.” I grasp for the sheets.

  Thump! My body hits the floor from Mom shoving me off my twin bed with her feet on my bare bottom.

  Why, why didn’t I spend the two hundred dollars to have my own room?

  “It’s a hundred dollars a person for the tour and hike.

  We’re prepaid and I can’t get my money back … now get your butt out of bed.”

  She stands with her hands on her hips at the end of my bed. “Your naked butt,” she cocks her head at me. “Where are your pajamas?”

  I bury my head in the pillow on the floor. “I’ll give you two hundred dollars to leave me alone,” I moan.

  She sits on the end of my bed looking down at me. UGH! I know what’s coming. A change in her tactics. Anger and rules never worked with me as a child. Guilt did, and continues to be the way to get me to do any thing I don’t want to do.

  “Em, I don’t ask for much. Please, won’t you go with me? Spend some time with your ole mom. I want to share it with you. You’re my girl.” I stand up and my mother looks at me from head to toe.

  “Honey, what’s happened to your pubic hair?”

  “It’s a Playboy wax,” I say through my teeth in a huff to the bathroom.

  “Looks painful,” she yells back as I slam the bathroom door.

  On the tour bus Mom holds my hand and I have to admit, it’s kinda nice. My daughter time. I look around at the people crowded on the seats. A couple, middle-aged, snapping photos out the window. A couple, elderly, on their forty-fifth wedding anniversay. I know this, as they are wearing T-shirts that say, It’s our 45th anniversary … can you believe it?

  Then there’s a lovely gay couple … Thad and Tom, the two Ts. I borrowed sunscreen from Tom in the pool yesterday after mistaking him for straight. The rum dulled my gaydar. Just my karma that the guy I try to pick up on my “escape” weekend turns out to be gay. I miss Josh. Finally, my eyes narrow on what must be a couple having an affair, as I can’t see her face. They have had their tongues in each other’s mouth for the past twenty minutes. That leaves me … and Mom. Jesus, am I going to en
d up with my mother? Alone, with two dogs, a guest house, and my mother making me breakfast when I am fifty? Perhaps that is it. I’ll just enlist for this life with Mom and call off the search for love.

  Then my blind, deaf, and dumbness magically vanishes as I notice a tan, blond, mid-thirtysomething guy sitting ALONE at the back of the bus. I look over my shoulder, subtly as not to be noticed, place my hand on my hip, twist, and pretend to crack my back. Wedddddding band? No! No ring. Single. BONUS!

  He pulls on a Ping baseball hat. Heeeeellllllo, the same baseball cap I’m wearing. He must be straight with that golf hat on. A single babe on my bus. Why didn’t I notice him?

  “Say hello, honey,” Mom says, pointing the video camera an inch from my face. “Tell everyone at home where we are.” I want to smack that camera right out of her hand!

  “Hi. We’re in St. Croix.” Did that just come out of my mouth? Mom hands me the video camera and proceeds to SNAP. She takes my picture.

  I look back at the babealicious guy and he’s smiling at me, giving me a knowing nod … like all parents, at any age, were put on this earth to embarrass and humiliate us.

  I am struggling to strap on my backpack and Mom’s video camera when Mr. Single-Over-Six-Foot walks past and says, “Nice hat.”

  Flutter, flutter.

  I almost fall on Mom. She shoves me forward down the bus aisle.

  “Was he talking to you?” Mom says, watching him through the window. “He’s kind of cute. Sweetie, where’s his wife?” She has a point. Maybe the wife, girlfriend, gay lover was sick and they didn’t want the tickets to go to waste.

  Maybe his perfect, size-six girlfriend with long beautiful hair and perfect legs minus any visible signs of cellulite is waiting naked in their bangalow bed for her prince to come home.

  The hike begins up the curvy, rocky slope. Mud flies up from Mom’s sneakers and lands on my sweaty shins. Bugs and mosquitoes buuuzzzzzz around me. Panting like a dog, I am anything but glamorous at this moment. I hate hiking. I hate this mountain. I hate this island.

  Crack! Mom’s hand lands hard on my sunburned thigh. “Spider,” she says, showing me the gooey remains on her palm.

  “They’re not poisonous,” Hot-Babe-in-Matching-Hat says.

  “I’m Craig, Craig Kautz from Montana.”

  Nice green eyes, white teeth. His forearm brushes against me as he helps Mom up a steep, rocky slope.

  “Bitsy Sanders, and this is my daughter Emily,” Mom adds, wiping the sweat off her brow. “Do you mind taking our picture?”

  I wish the spider had bitten me and it was poisonous. Wish I would die. I wrap my arm around Mom and smile. “Sure.’ He takes the camera from Mom, looks through the lens, and stops to look at me for a good long while.

  I stand, confused, looking back at him. He slowly steps closer, his face next to mine, his green eyes looking deep into me, studying my face, then he wipes a yellowish-brown smudge of something that resembles horrible tropical insect poop out of my hair.

  I feel my heart tighten and constrict as I collapse on the ground and die of humiliation. This trip has become a lesson in humility.

  “Wouldn’t want to tarnish that pretty hair,” Craig says, looking back through the camera lens. “One, two, three, say—we’re almost off this godforsaken hike.”

  “We’re almost off this godforsaken hike,” Mom and I both say, laughing. Click.

  That was the best picture from the entire trip.

  I am pulled back into Dr. D.’s office by the smile on his face. “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m just listening. Please continue.”

  I guess therapists can enjoy a story, too, from time to time. It dawns on me that Dr. D. is human, a man, sitting there listening to my intimate life tale. I file the thought and jump back in.

  On the bus ride back to town I learn that Craig is not married, but I hide my curiosity and refrain from digging any further, as I would like to be kissed at least once on this trip. So much for denying my need for men.

  “Do you play golf?” he asks, pointing at my Ping hat.

  “I played with my ex-boyfriend. He loved to play and I found after he dumped me that it was the one thing I still liked about him.”

  “My ex-fiancée hated golf. Hated it when I played. I think it’s awesome that you learned,” he distantly replies.

  Did he say ex-fiancée? What makes a person commit to marriage and then decide to call it off?

  I realize that I have let too much time go by, and there is now an awkward silence. How could there not be when he just threw that word fiancée out there like a damn grenade into my future of eleven days in paradise with Mr. Ping Perfect?

  “Well, after I broke up with my boyfriend I kept playing golf. You figure there’s thirty-to-one odds guys to girls on the golf course, I like the ratio. And if you’re remotely ‘okay cute’ and can play, it’s a great place to meet the other half.”

  Then there was … laughter. Humor, the saving grace for any awkward situation.

  “You’re absolutly cute, not okay cute,” he says, looking directly at me.

  Yeeeaaahhh, cute isn’t how I feel, covered in dirt, bug poop, and sweat.

  But there is something nice about Craig’s compliment. Must be the Montana in him. I take a deep breath as Bitsy turns with her camera and hollers, “Smile!”

  I feel like an eighth grader. “Have dinner with me tonight?” Craig asks through his frozen smile, waiting for my mom to take the picture. I turn and look at him. He is still looking forward.

  “Okay.”

  Mom’s flash goes off.

  Sunset over the ocean and Bitsy and I stand at the maitre d’ stand, waiting. She fixes the straps on my white, flowy sundress and kisses me on the cheek. “You look very sweet.” She smiles.

  I give her a little hug. “So do you.” Moms can make us feel good about ourselves, but I think we know that they are biased and thus we’re less likely to believe them. Bitsy and I walk through the bamboo-and-wildflower-decorated dining room of the resort. We follow the maitre d’ to the balcony, where I see Craig sitting alone. He stands when we approach.

  He’s wearing black linen pants and a cream linen shirt with a white T-shirt underneath, black belt, black casual loafers. No socks. His tan face and green eyes are highlighted by a blond, sun-kissed crew cut. His teeth are great; one of the bottom front left ones is just slightly chipped. Rugged in a cute kind of way. It makes me want to run my tongue over it. He’s way hotter and stylish than I ever would have guessed a guy from Montana could be.

  I mean, isn’t Montana all about open prairies, cowboys, and John Deere tractors? The waiter opens the second bottle of Chardonnay as I watch Craig charm my mom. “… from Duke in eighty-six and then got my MBA at Stanford.” His eyes catch mine for a long beat while Mom cuts her salmon. “I lived in L.A. for a while and did my time on Wall Street before I got tired of the crazymaking and went back to Montana. Now I help my father manage our family business. It’s funny. I spent my entire childhood wanting to get out of Montana and small-town life, but these days all I want to do is be there in the comfort of it. Of my family, friends.”

  At that moment I knew exactly what he meant.

  “What do they do?” Mom seems riveted, as if she’s already planning our wedding, and he doesn’t even notice.

  Like mother, like daughter.

  I can barely hear a word. I just want to reach over the table at this point and kiss that incredible mouth. Wow, I need to ease off the wine.

  “Real estate, mainly. We own and manage property in Idaho, Montana, Utah. Mainly ski resorts.” He turns and looks at me. “Do you ski?”

  “Yes, I do, but I really want to try snowboarding,” I answer.

  “I’ll teach you.” He cuts his steak. Did he just say he’ll teach me? When? When will he teach me?

  Reason #1: Beware of promises made in paradise. Men talk about the possibility of a future with you on a romantic island when you are tan and easy-breezy, but it never ma
kes the flight home.

  “I’m pleased you said that. I was just about to interrupt,” says Dr. D. “Be wary of a man who talks about the future when he has no idea who you are, or where the future will take you as a couple when there is no ‘couple.’”

  “At the time Craig said it, I could see us laughing, snow-boarding, having snowball fights, mauling each other in front of a roaring fire in his mountain house. I snapped out of it, but the damage was done.”

  “Where’d you go?” Craig studies my face.

  “Oh, ah, nowhere.” I shake my head, almost embarrassed that he knows I have him naked on a bearskin rug. When the check comes, Craig takes the bill.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mom says, handing him her credit card.

  “Ma’am, ladies don’t pay,” in his best John Wayne.

  As Craig walks us out, Mom stops in the lobby. “I’ve got to meet some of the ladies for late-night bunko,” she lies. “Thank you for dinner, Craig. Take care of my girl.”

  “I will.” He kisses Mom on the cheek, and she gives me a good-night wink over his shoulder.

  The sand on my toes feels cool and soft. The waves are slushing up onto the beach. The sound of steel drums floats in the distance. We walk for a long time without saying anything, just watching the clear sea brush against the soft white sand under the moonlight. Craig carries my sandals. He stops and looks up at the moon, lays our shoes on the sand, and takes off his linen shirt, leaving his white T-shirt covering his shoulders and chest. He looks even tanner and hotter. “Wanna sit for a while?” he says in a soft whisper.

  Yeah! I almost scream. I wanna sit, roll, strip, kiss, and stroke that beautiful tan body.

  “Okay.” I ease onto the shirt and dig my toes into the sand.

  He sits next to me. “How come you haven’t asked me why I am here alone?”

  I lean back and look up at the stars.

  Because I don’t want the answer. Because you’re about to ruin a perfectly good evening. Because whatever you might say could infringe on my ability to put my lips on yours and my obsession with running my tongue over that jagged tooth.