Guilty feelings all over the place. I used to think I was such a good guy, just a solid, all around, good guy. I fell for Spike and won over her daughter because I was just basically decent. Spike. Jesus. The girl had sort of terrified me when we were in school. The hair, she was like some British punk. And the baby. She gets pregnant in eighth grade and she keeps the baby. Says basically fuck you to the school, her teachers, her mom, and she keeps it. That's balls.
Things had changed, of course. We grew up, Emma was growing up, Spike's look softened and she had the trendy little hairdos of everyone else and I felt I could approach her. She wasn't a 14 year old with a baby but a 28 year old with a kid in junior high. Earaches and changing diapers and spitting up and all that was over, not that it would have fazed me.
Turns out she's still a terrifying British punk inside. Maybe it's because she was a mother so young and had to forcefully advocate for herself and Emma at such a young age but she always had to demand that things be how she wanted them. Our marriage wasn't a partnership, it was like a ship and she was the captain. I was somewhere below swabbing the deck.
This was first evident to me when I kissed Hatzilakos in the movie theater. I was making a break for independence. I was being a colossal idiot in the bargain, risking losing my marriage, my kids, my life as I knew it. But it was hard to be a man when Christine did that so well herself.
Like Joey. Not to tread on the sainted Julia, and granted they did seem pretty happy together, but how would it all have played out? They weren't married all that long, they had the new baby, the new little house, picket fence. Little dream world in a bubble, and I remember Joey's smile that seemed almost painful, that brief time after Angela was born and before Julia got sick. But marriages aren't what they're cracked up to be, what might have happened if she lived? What cracks would have been exposed?
Emma was grown up, a woman right before my very eyes. A glamorous woman, tall and thin and blond with a smile that was cool and icy, aloof. Spike was never as glamorous as her daughter. How did this happen? And then there was Jack, my little man. Blond with bright red cheeks like one of those old illustrations of kids from the 30's and 40's. Jack wasn't as much Christine's as Emma was. Jack was a real kid to her, whereas she sort of grew up with Emma, and I could see the blurring of boundaries between them. They were closer than any mother/daughter I'd ever seen. They were different aspects of each other. They bled into each other. With Jack she knew her boundaries. She was all grown up. They both were.
Sigh. Having my cracked whole wheat toast in the morning with natural, no preservative jam. Fruit juice with no high fructose corn syrup and besides sushi I haven't had meat for years. Did I mind this ultra healthy, ultra natural diet? No. No, of course I didn't. But sometimes I wanted a fast food hamburger and greasy fries loaded with preservatives, loaded with ketchup. Triclycerides. Fatty acids. Clogged arteries. You want this sometimes. Long for this. That's what Hatzilakos was for me, a bag of shoestring fries cooked in the fattiest oil available. It wasn't good for me but damn did it taste good.
But I was good. A good husband, a decent man. I went back to Spike, atoned for my transgression. Vowed to live lean and pure for the rest of my days. But I was like some stray dog suddenly chained to the bulkhead in the backyard, scratching the grass into raw dirt. I wanted out.
Emma was nearly out of high school. Model-like, ethereal and beautiful, she glided through the halls she once ran down with so much energy, thinking of new ideas for her projects, ponytails flying. I miss that. I miss when she was like that. And Manny, little Manny, grown up, too. A curvaceous flirtatious woman all her own. I had to shake my head at these cocoon transformations. How did these full fledged human beings emerge when I wasn't even looking?
Craig was gone, a drug addict gone to rehab. I used to have to keep my eye on him for Joey because Joey was so paranoid things would go wrong with him. He wanted to do right by Craig for his ghost mother, I was sure. Trying to please the dead was always a tricky business. And now Joey was gone, too. It was hard to say how much I missed him. He'd been one of my moorings.
But we go on, do we not? Jack was learning, growing, becoming. And I hated to say it but that little twist of DNA we shared endeared him to me in a way Emma couldn't. At the deep genetic level Emma was Shane's, and that was a shame what happened to him. Acid, trippy concert, parent hood on the horizon. He lost his head. If he'd kept his head like Spike did he could have had a meaningful life with Emma, he could have fought for his right to be a part of her life and he would have won.
I had a bit of an awkward relationship with Hatzilakos, the kiss between us. She was a beautiful creature, wide smile, wide hips, everything there and in the right places, and she had that little devil son of hers, Peter, giving her a run for the money. I'd been around kids a long time and that kid may have had issues but he also enjoyed a certain sort of havoc he created.
And then there was Darcy. Darcy was relatively new to me, just recently a student in my class. She was delicately thin, almost like a waif. Deep soulful eyes hiding a new pain. I could just look at any of these teenagers and could read them like a blind man reads brail. Could touch on all their issues just by looking at their handwriting. She'd been hurt somehow, by someone, violated in one way or another and she was trying to construct the mask that would hide that. I could always see through those masks. I saw her anger just under the calm surface, like a smooth blue lake hiding a volcano. The nearly imperceptible ripples of water gave it all away.
I didn't even feel guilty for wanting to get to know her, to have the secret revealed so we could begin to piece her soul back together again. For wanting to kiss those slight lips, hold the silky light brown hair beneath my freckled hand.
I watched the anger simmer there day after day, speculated on its source. Speculated on ways I could spend more time with her. Bright dark challenge of a girl. How could I help? What could I do? Went home to Christine, watched the lines around her eyes and between them grow deeper. Watched Emma breeze in and out, her life off and running now, no stopping it like some train until it crashed. Watched Jack explore and learn things I felt I've always known.
Looking forward to my class with Darcy without guilt. Watched her enter the classroom, her books hugged to her chest like armor, head down. Every muscle movement screamed that she was hurt. Hurting. I could kiss all that hurt away. I watched her in that way I've perfected over the years, that way in which no one could tell. My eyes playing over her wavy hair, the delicate cheek bones, the thin line of her neck, collar bones poking at the skin so you wanted to scream, "eat a candy bar!" despite loving the delicateness, the breakable aspect of her.
We were all breakable, though. My marriage had broken me. It sucked at my self worth like some raven haired vampire, taking and taking and never dying. I didn't know it would be like this. Caitlin broke Joey, her endless promises and her endless leaving on good causes. She was not the Julia he was trying to make her be. And Craig broke Joey, being so out of control, so damaged the moment he showed up. And Craig was himself broken, the years of abuse and the death of his parents taking their toll before the diagnosis of bipolar, drug addiction.
So I watched Darcy with my broken eyes and wanted her to turn her eyes to me. To begin to ignite the tiny spark of connection. The years between us hardly mattered. What were years? Time? It always fit into the equation but how? The scientists all said time travel was possible. Maybe I could spin around and find the way, come back and make everything right before it all went so horribly wrong.
Darcy, skinny girl in a square of cold sunlight, her eyes resting for brief seconds on the heads of her classmates, on the plastic corners of the computer screens, on the ceramic apple on my desk. My eyes rested on her.