A Life More Complete Read Online Free PDF Page B

noticeable. If at all now.” I can’t gauge his emotions from his
voice or body, but he quickly changes the subject. “So, tell me about your
sisters,” he says smiling.
      “My sisters and I are all very close in
age, Irish triplets, I guess. Rachel was born almost exactly one year after I
was and Courtney, who we call Maizey, eleven months after Rachel. My
relationship with Rachel is the best it’s ever been now that we’re adults, but
it’s nothing compared to some. When you grow up in a house void of love, you
don’t really develop close sibling relationships. We had the fact that we hated
our mother in common, but once that was gone there wasn’t much left. Rachel
lives in Santa Barbara, works as a massage therapist at the Four Seasons. She’s
three hours away and I see her maybe once a year. It’s sad.” I shrug my
shoulders as if I’m not sure what to say. “Courtney is the baby. My poor sister
Courtney was tagged with too many nicknames to count. She became Corny, which
turned to Corn, and after a watching an old movie on cable about Indians she
became Maizey, like maize, like corn. She’s been Maizey as long as I can
remember. She’s the one who I guess has fallen the hardest. She lives with her
drug dealer boyfriend and although she won’t admit it, she’s a drug addict. Cocaine,
just like our father. It’s ruined her life. I haven’t spoken to her in three
years. I don’t have any idea where she is or where she could possibly be.”
    “Do you have any good memories of
your sisters?” Ben asks and seems intrigued by my openness.
    “Of course I do. Not everything in my
life was a mess. I shared a room with them until I was twelve. Something funny
happened almost every night. One summer we broke my mom’s desk chair spinning
each other around in it. We didn’t tell her, we just left it like nothing
happened. And that night when she sat down to finish up some work, she leaned
back and the chair collapsed. It took everything in us not to burst out
laughing. That night when we were in bed we laughed so hard we cried, all three
of us. Rachel continued laughing long after Maizey and I stopped. She was quiet
about it, but I knew she was because the bunk bed was shaking and every once in
a while she’d giggle.” I laugh again as I recall the memory.
    I fill the silence of the night with
all kinds of stories from my childhood as Ben sits with his legs crossed,
facing me and taking it all in. He smiles and laughs with me.
    “How’d you end up here?” he asks,
eager for more information. I’ve always been a private person. It’s hard to
share your life when you don’t even know where to begin. Ben is one of the only
people in my life that I’m this honest with. Melinda and Bob know my story, but
they allow me to leave it behind. They understand the pain and take it for what
it’s worth. It doesn’t define me and I hope someday it will stop burdening my
future so entirely. “I’ve known you for six years and I have no idea how you ended
up in California.”
    I smile at him. “Obviously, my
mother. I couldn’t get far enough away from her. But it really all came back to
a boy. My high school boyfriend, Tyler McCarthy. I applied to colleges with
absolutely no frame of reference, but knowing it was my only out. I picked
mostly based on their remote proximity to my mother. The University of
Washington, because of the movie Singles ,
Arizona State because I love the heat, The University of Hawaii Maui because my
mother was exceptionally awful that day and California State University Long
Beach because of a boy.”
    I remember at the time thinking my
decision wasn’t all that odd, but looking back it changed my life. It’s the
only choice I ever made that was off kilter and strange even for me. I’m not that
girl who does things just because of a boy and yet I applied to college just
because of a boy. My relationship with Tyler McCarthy was tumultuous and
obsessive the way young love is,