From Unwanted Conversations

photo source: Simone Homes

She always felt that there was a sense of seclusion in her backyard: a place where she could sit and think, with the only obtrusion of her thoughts being the loud, mating calls of the cicadas. The tall trees and wooden fence lent a hand to her outdoor hiding place that sheltered her and her thoughts from surrounding neighbors. No interruptions of, “Hi, neighbor,” or the small talk of, “It sure is hot outside today,” could get to her here. However, they would be right; even the early morning sun bared down in its pompous way to let the world know it is still here. Don’t worry, sun, we haven’t forgot you; we just saw you yesterday, she thought. There was a thick smell that day – a heavy one that bared no scent. The sun brought forth beads of perspiration upon her skin and the moisture began to swell into tiny beads that grew and left their sticky residue behind.

Maybe she didn’t want to sit and think this time and maybe it’s just an escape from her thoughts, from reality, and from the inevitable. Today wasn’t particularly inviting and she has been dreading it for three weeks now.

“Are you ready,” her dad cracked the door open, peeped his head out, and asked.

“Yeah,” she solemnly replied. She dragged her feet as she proceeded inside and to the car. They gave each other a quick glance that displayed uneasiness on both ends before they got into the car to begin their drive.

She looked out the window at the trees. They were clear in the distance, but as they drove past them, they swooshed by so quickly that all the trees they passed were a blur, all but one. It stood in a distance, rooted alone in a field, surrounded by tall, yellowing blades of grass.

“I am only going because that’s the only way to finally find out. I want to hear her say it,” she said.

“I’m sure she does, honey,” he continued, “There are some things that you may not understand at your age. I know you’re very bright for a twelve-year old, but this is a complex situation. Do you know what complex-”

“Yes, Dad! I know what complex is! I don’t care if I’m twelve or eighteen I still want to know the truth and from her mouth.”

They drove into the parking lot and she looked around at the cars, wondering which one was hers. A Jeep, Mercedes, BMW. She tried to make out the emblem of another car when a red Camaro whizzed passed them, blocking her view. She gave up. They found a parking spot and walked to the building. She looked up at the building and felt small in its shadow. They got to the room and her dad put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.

“I love you, Jessie. Let’s get this thing over with and go back home. We’ll pick up pizza on our way back.

How does that sound?”

“Ham and pineapple?”

“You got it. Maybe we’ll try out that new pizza place on Inglewood.”

“Okay, Dad,” she attempted a smile but knew that an attempt is all it was and he knew it too, but he still appreciated it. She slid her hand into his as they proceeded through building.

As they sat waiting for the judge to start the proceedings, she walked in and took her seat. Jessie could not bring herself to fully raise her head to look at her. She caught a glimpse of her shiny, black heels that had a small strap around her dainty ankle and her freshly manicured red nails on her hand that clutched her Louis Vuitton purse. A sparkle on her hand caught her attention as she noted the gaudy diamond ring on her left ring finger, the gleaming axiom of marriage. She drew her head a little higher and recognized her dress. It was the one that her dad bought her on their trip to Hawaii for their tenth anniversary. He saved up for so long to take her. It flowed behind her as she walked to her seat, making the flowers dance in the breeze.

Jessie didn’t hear much of what the judge said and as her mom talked, she just looked at her and noted that her mouth was moving. The sounds coming out were stifled by the thoughts racing through her mind. Did she say it? She didn’t know because all she heard was the sounds the teacher from the Peanuts cartoon made every time she talked.

She snapped back into reality as the court stood adjourned and everyone began to get up and shuffle out of the courtroom doors. Her mom walked up to her. Jessie nervously twisted a strand of her long, brown hair and then tucked it behind her ear to keep from fiddling with it.

“Jessie! Hi, baby! Look, I’m really sorry things turned out this way. This was never really my intent,” her mom said.

All the courage Jessie had to finally ask was being bullied by her fear of the truth. She hadn’t seen her in so long and she was so unrecognizable at this point. Her long, voluminous hair looked as though she just came from the hair dresser. Was it always blonde? Jessie couldn’t remember anymore.

Her dad lightly put his hand on her back and said, “Let’s go, honey.”

“No! I want to hear it,” she responded while keeping her eyes intently focus on her mother. “You’re not sorry. All those holidays you missed out on. No call, no card…nothing! And my birthday! Remember what you used to say about my birthday?”

“Yes…I do.”

“That I was the best thing that ever happened to you and my birthday was your birth day! I just want to hear you say it, once and for all.”

“You know the truth, Jess. Do we have to harp on it?

“Yes and I will never ask again.”

“Fine. I have a life of my own and -” she began to say.

“Finish it. Say it,” she demanded.

“What do you want to hear,” she asked. “That I don’t want you in my life right now and that maybe later, we can iron things out and-”

“Let’s go get that pizza,” Jessie said to her dad, cutting her off. Jessie finally heard it and felt that she heard enough. It didn’t upset her as she thought it would. She walked out as her mom tried to recover her words and turned to her dad and displayed an attempted smile.

Putting his arm around her shoulder, they walked out of the courtroom doors with her mom pleading with her dad to get her to stay and talk.

“Frank?” she asked.

“Katy?” He turned and responded, but instead of staying, he proceeded to walk out with Jessie.

It had been years since that dreaded day, but time doesn’t seem to always erase bad memories. Jessie seemed to keep important things fresh in her mind and she was well aware of this because she was always trying to find ways to escape her thoughts. She loved drawing and recently started writing. She found a way to wrestle with her thoughts when she wrote and felt she could defeat them with her written words. She felt safe in those words because they were never going to leave her lips. They would stay nice and quiet in her black journal. Somehow, transferring them from her mind to the paper offered her this escape.

Once again, she found herself sitting and glaring out the window, leaving her sunglasses on to cover her eyes so she could occasionally look up to watch the people filing in, without it being awkward. Jessie sat in the back, as she usually did, no matter where she was. She always felt safer in the back: free from unwanted conversations and free to her thoughts, although she kept her journal close by for those just-in-case moments when they became too overwhelming.

It was getting packed and the seats were almost all taken. She noticed a woman walking down the aisle looking for an empty seat. She looked at the empty seat between Jessie and a heavy-set man who was already asleep and snoring. Then, she glanced to her right. Jessie looked over too and noticed another empty seat next to a mother trying to calm her toddler as she struggled to nurse her crying baby. She looked again between her and the snoring man. Jessie glared at the woman as she obviously contemplated her options. Jessie knew, or at least hoped, that her rainbow-colored hair would most likely deter the woman from sitting next to her.

The woman put her luggage in the overhead bin and tapped the man, motioning to the empty seat. She attempted to squeeze past his knees to get to the seat. Jessie smirked at her as she sat down.

“He could’ve got up to let me get in,” she said, out of breath.

“I’m sorry,” Jessie asked. She didn’t know why she asked the woman what she had said. She had heard her, but had a bad habit of asking people to repeat themselves and then quickly responded with a chuckle before the woman could repeat herself, “Yeah that would’ve been easier.”

“I’m not as thin as I used to be, either, so I guess that doesn’t help,” she said as she fumbled to get situated and put her purse in her lap.

“Where are you headed,” Jessie reluctantly asked as she took her earbuds out of her ears and wrapped them around her phone.

“I’m going back home from a business trip,” she responded, “and you?”

“Oh, you know, here and there. Who knows? Who cares?” She lifted her sunglasses off of her face and situated them on top of her head to hold her messy hair somewhat in place. She put her jean jacket over her like a blanket and crossed her arms to keep it in place, as she usually wore it. Her gaze was fixed on something outside, but not on anything in particular.

“That sounds exciting,” the woman responded, ignoring Jessie’s bluntness. She proceeded to get settled into her seat and tucked her purse under the chair in front of her and pushed it in with her foot. She wiped the scuff marks off of the front of her dress shoes with the palm of her hand. When that apparently didn’t work, she licked her thumb and vigorously rub at the marks.

Feeling uneasy, Jessie tucked her feet back out of the woman’s view. Her Chucks looked like they had seen a war and made it back alive, but just barely.

The plane began to depart from the terminal. The woman fumbled around in her business blazer pocket for her pack of gum and took two pieces out. She held one out and Jessie took it and smiled. Tears began to well up in Jessie’s eyes. She quickly turned to fix her gaze out the window again.

Twenty minutes later, the pilot broke the silence. All Jessie seemed to hear were bits and pieces of his announcement -“We are now cruising at,” and something about feet and then, the most important reveal, “You may now use your electronic devices.” Everything else was not important after that. “Wah wa wa wah,” was all she heard.

She turned the notch on the back of the seat in front of her and lowered her tray. She quickly grabbed her journal and a pen out of her army green messenger bag. Her journal was full of doodles and short, quickly written ideas and thoughts. Maybe I’ll turn these into something someday, she thought. She put her earbuds in her ears to listen to music and began to write:

Why do awkward situations constantly present themselves? They’re like bad dreams that replay over and over in my mind. Why are there always reminders? Reminders of what could’ve been, how things are now, and of what they were. Am I the one at fault? What if I did things differently? What then?

She took her earbuds out of her ears and fidgeted with her pen, tapping the tip on the notebook. For once, she was at a loss for words-almost like the words wanted to escape their white prison with blue, horizontal bars. Maybe they didn’t want to be written down and harped over. Maybe…

“What kind of business trip?” Jessie turned to the woman and awkwardly asked, abruptly breaking the long silence.

“What?”

“What kind of-“

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m a Realtor and we had a convention in Houston. I guess like a training get-a-way or something like that,” she said as she ran her fingers through her shoulder-length, brown hair to make sure it was still in place.

“Cool.”

“What kind of music do you listen to?” she asked, motioning to Jessie’s phone.

“Oh, I dunno. The kind you wouldn’t like.”

She chuckled, “Maybe. You should listen to some Frank Sinatra or Astrud Gilberto. I love soothing music. It does something to your soul. It- I don’t know- calms you,” she said as she rested her head back on the seat.

“Ewwww, no,” Jessie responded.

She propped up to face her and said, “Look, Jess, I really want to talk to you. I have for years.”

“Mom, just leave it alone,” Jessie wearily responded.

“No, I have for too many years and you have never reached out to me. I wanted to leave it up to you to contact me when you were ready and I haven’t seen you since the courthouse,” Katy said, in a somewhat hushed voice, “and I cannot let this uncanny chance that we are both on the same flight home pass me by without trying.”

“Mom, I-”

“No, Jess. I want you to know that I love you with every ounce I have and you don’t know how hard it was to not call. I have sent you cards for every holiday, hoping you would finally hear my words, rather than just read them, and call me,” she said as her voice became shaky.

The plane rumbled through the clouds as though they were the speed bumps of the sky. A voice came on the intercom to say, “Well, folks, we are experiencing a bit of turbulence. The fasten seatbelt sign is turned on. Please remain seated as we get through this patch. Snack and beverages will resume shortly,” the pilot said.

“You know, what I said at the courthouse. I regret it. I only told you what you demanded to hear. None of it was what I felt, but that was the only way you’d listen to me is if I told you what you wanted. I thought you’d stay to talk and when you walked out, I regretted it so much.”

“I never read them.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I threw all the cards away as soon as I got them,” Jessie said quietly.

As the plane began to descend for landing, an abrupt snore from the sleeping man interrupted their conversation for a brief moment, but her mom persisted. “When your brother left us, everything changed. It changed us – all of us.”

“You always blamed me!” Jessie exploded.

“Honey, I never blamed you! I never even thought it was your fault. You just-”she paused for a moment to seemingly readjust the tone of what she was about to say and lowered her voice and continued, “You usually assume the worst and that’s not always the case,” she said.

“But, you always got mad at me when I argued with him and I always had to do everything around the house. When Ollie died, everything did. It was like I didn’t even exist anymore.” She had said so much in a few short sentences, but she felt that it was all she needed to say; all she wanted to say, for so long.

“Honey, you were getting older. I wanted you to feel more mature by offering you more responsibility. I just wanted to make you feel like a big girl and that we trusted you with more things. Baby, I-“

“And then, you got remarried,” Jessie said exasperated.

“What? No, I didn-,” she remembered the ring. “Oh, you mean this,” she took the ring off of her left hand and held it up for Jessie to hold.

Jessie slowly took it. “Yeah, this,” she mumbled.

“I never got remarried, Jess. I wear it because, well,” she said sounding slightly embarrassed, “it helps me get sales. You see, when someone is making one of the biggest investments they’ll make in their life, it just looks better when they are doing business with someone who seems successful and is well-rounded. You know, married, at my age, anyway,” she said. “Wow, I never realized how stupid it sounded until it came out of my mouth. It didn’t when it came from the mouths of the women at the office,” she said, sounding ashamed.

“It’s not even real,” her mom chuckled. “Well, it’s real, just one I found a good deal on.”

“It’s still pretty,” Jessie said as she held and turned it around by the band.

“Hey, you keep it!” her mom said. “I want you to have it as a gift. The cards I sent always had gift cards and sometimes cash, that I hope someone found in the trash and made use of,” she chuckled, “but this is something I really want you to have.”

Jessie abruptly handed it back and said, “No, I can’t.”

“But, Jess, this is the first time we’ve really gotten to talk and it means so much to me. Please, take it,” she held it out to her but Jessie declined to take it.

The plane had already landed and pulled into the terminal by this time and the people began to clear out. The lady with the two young children scrambled to get her things together and keep her toddler from jumping on the seat. “Natalie, stop jumping and carry this bag for Mommy so that she can carry Danny,” the woman pleaded with her daughter. “I don’t want to! I want to play,” the daughter wined.

“Please, honey, just until we can get his stroller,” she begged, “You’re a big girl and I really need your help.” They clumsily made their way down the aisle and to the exit. The musky smell of the leather seats, mixed with body odor filled the cabin. Jessie was anxious to get off, too.

Katy grabbed her things and told Jessie to call her anytime. Jessie nodded, but said nothing. She didn’t know what to say – what to think. Too many thoughts filled her mind to be able to focus on one thing to say before she leaves, again.

Katy turned away and tapped on the man’s shoulder to squeeze through, “Frank?,” she said.

“Katy?” he responded and got out of the aisle to let her pass.

She walked away and turned to look back over her shoulder and offered one last smile to Frank and to Jessie. She watched her mom until she could she her no longer and turned to her dad and said, “Let’s go get that pizza.”

Months passed and Jessie was sitting outside watching the sun as it tries to rise against the graying sky – a battle of colors projected through. She took out her journal began to note her observations. The beauty in front of her was so immense that she could not describe with words and put down her pen. She watched as the orange subtle hue enveloped the ground as the sun peeked over the sole cloud in the clear part of the sky. Its opposing side had its own story to tell-one of dark, looming energy pregnant with moisture and ready to deliver. In this battle of oranges and grays, dark versus light, clear versus shaded, the skies equipped their accouterment in preparation. Colors collided below as though God turned up the contrast and turned down the brightness, creating a filter of their own. The green grass was greener than before and the gray pavement turned violet. Battles of light and dark had a preconceived righteous entitlement and appearance as the sun’s crepuscular ray weakened, the sky began to show the light’s defeat. Hefty drops of rain collided on the graying pavement, as it came to wash away the secrets left behind from the drought of the sun- the poisoned chalice. The smell of victory loomed for the spectators and petrichor filled the air.

As she stood up to put her pen in her jacket pocket, something fell out of it and landed on the ground. Confused, Jessie bent down to pick it up and smiled – her mom’s ring. She put it onto her finger, surprised at its perfect fit. She grabbed her phone and shuffled through some music. She closed her eyes and listened to the Astrud’s soothing voice as she sang:

“The shadow of your smile When you have gone Will color all my dreams And light the dawn

Look into my eyes, my love, and see All the lovely things you are to me”

As Harrison once chorused and penned: “Here comes the sun,” she, with love in her eyes and hope in her heart, sang, “Here comes the rain,” and went inside as the skies consummated their choreography.