The Secret Of Us

“Stuff?” her voice was laden with skepticism.

She knew me well enough to read every nuance in my words, no matter how subtle I thought it was. The woman was truly superhuman.

“Uh huh. Stuff. Lots of stuff,” I said heavily, a sigh escaping unbidden. I closed my eyes and leaned forward to rest my forehead on the steering wheel. “I just dropped Matt at the airport. Actually, I’m still at the airport.” I sniffled and dabbed my runny nose with my already damp tissue.

“How long is he going to be gone?” she asked.

She knew how this worked; my parents were no strangers to the military machine. My father had retired after more than twenty years in the Air Force, and she had been with him for the majority of his career. My mother could easily sympathize with my concern for Matt and the feelings that came along with his absence.

“Ninety days,” I said flatly. “The usual. So,” I breathed, still not ready to dive into why I was actually calling. “How are you and Dad?” I was quite aware that my feeble attempt at evasion was transparent, but I was hoping my mother would take the hint and allow me some room to ease into things.

“We’re fine, just fine. Your father’s out washing the car, and I’ve just put the meat on for the spaghetti. We’re staying busy, I guess. But never too busy to have you up here for a nice long visit, if you ever find the time,” she hinted.

“Mama, you’re as subtle as a two-by-four,” I said, laughing.

“One of the many reasons you love me,” she replied, the smile evident in her voice.

“Yes, one of the many,” I echoed, realizing that I was going to have to talk.

Now or never. I sucked in a deep breath and held it.

“As is your wise counsel, which is actually why I’m calling,” I said as I released the breath.

“Ah hah,” she said soberly. “So tell me, honey. What’s really going on?”

I straightened in my seat and shifted my gaze to the headliner of the car, wishing there were words up there to read. It would have made things so much simpler.

“Matt and I kissed, Mom,” I blurted.

There was silence on the other end of the line as she processed the information I’d just imparted. I knew she would be choosing her words carefully, but I also knew she would be completely honest with me. She was one of the few people I knew would give me the unvarnished truth, and that was what I needed right now.

“I was wondering if that might not have happened yet. When?” she asked.

“Five months ago. It wasn’t planned. At least, not for me,” I replied. “It kind of just… happened,” I finished lamely. I realized how cliché I sounded, but it was true.

It had just happened.

“And then?”

“And then, we acted as though nothing happened. Or, at least, as much as we could. It’s there, now, though, and we both know it’s there. It’s like this big elephant in the room; there’s a palpable difference in our relationship. We do things together, just like always, Mom, but,” I paused, shaking my head. “It’s not the same. We’re not the same,” I sighed.

“How could you be?” she asked, reasonably. “He knew how seriously you take your relationship, and he knows the way you feel about him. It’s a mighty risky thing to do, Eira, for someone who thought it wasn’t going to go anywhere.”

I traced the seams on my steering wheel with my index finger, wondering what I was doing, where all of this would lead. I felt like I was on a runaway rollercoaster.

“I guess I was just deluding myself in believing that maybe we would be able to have a life together. A real life together,” I explained.

“You were hoping that Matt would open his eyes and finally see you.”

“Ludicrous, wasn’t it?” I barked out a little laugh of self-ridicule. I knew how stupid it sounded, how childish and naïve.

Maybe that was my problem.

Maybe that was the way Matt saw me, as a hopelessly naïve child.

“No, Eira, it wasn’t ludicrous. It was optimistic and romantic, and both of those things are traits I hope you never lose. Life has quite a way of jading people until they believe that real, selfless love isn’t possible, and that it’s not even worth the risk to try and find it. They won’t even admit it, but they’re afraid of the complications that love will have on their lives. People want everything to be perfectly definable and all wrapped up in a nice little box, and love isn’t like that. It’s messy. It’s complicated. It’s painful. Anything involving other people is like that, and when you open your heart, you make yourself vulnerable. Vulnerability is also a liability in many people’s eyes. A weakness. And so they run from it.” My mother sounded almost sad as she spoke, her insight obviously drawn from experience.

“Do you think that’s what’s happening now, with Matt? Do you think he’s running away from how he really feels about me, or do you think that he’s telling the truth? That he doesn’t have any feelings for me more than friendship?” I knew the answer I wanted, and she knew the answer I wanted. But I also knew she would be honest.

“I don’t know Matt’s heart, Eira. Maybe not even he knows what he’s really feeling. But maybe these next months away from you will give him time to figure all of that out.”

For almost as long as I could remember, my father drove a 1986 Saab 900S – a seemingly immortal piece of machinery and Swedish craftsmanship that wore its battle scars with pride. It was unmistakable – in more ways than one. Its approach was loud enough to hear halfway down the street, a sound that resembled the roar of jet engines, and its curving silhouette was what my father fondly described as “slipper-like.” As it aged, it also ailed, and my father had to find more and more ingenious ways of nursing the car along. Engine turnover required just the right combination of jiggles, wiggles, and cajoling – and even then, it wasn’t always a sure thing.

The car drew an interesting parallel to life, the way relationships must be handled with a degree of care and commitment peculiar to each person and each situation. Some need just the right sequence of jiggles and clicks, some require holding your head at a certain angle while you stand on one foot – whatever the mitigating circumstances, it all comes down to a decision that all the effort is worth it.

And then seeing it through.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, I’d made the decision that everything here was worth it. That my relationship with Matt was worth all the effort, all the nurturing, all the patience that sometimes felt exhausting and painful. There were days that I wanted to throw in the towel, to pick up the phone and tell Matt that this relationship we had was poisonous, dangerous, and that we would both be better off if things ended now. No more contact.

Just over.

And then I would remember how much I loved him, how much I wanted him to be part of my life – even if the degree to which he was part of my life wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I couldn’t imagine things without him, not after all the time I’d had to get used to him being there.

There would be such a chasm, a void, if he was gone. And I was afraid to face that.

So instead, I held on to what I considered the lesser of the two evils, a known entity, and reasoned that things would change eventually. Either he would come to his senses, or I would become blissfully desensitized.

That was where things seemed to stand the day Matt walked through the doors of the airport to start his deployment. The situation between us seemed about as firm as Jell-O when it’s in that state of not-quite-solid-not-quite-liquid before it’s set.

Which left the possibility of us figuring things out together any time soon seeming slim, too.

Matt’s ninety days of deployment seemed to pass both too slowly and too quickly. There were days that crept by endlessly, and days that were over before they’d even started. One thing that each of those ninety days held in common was the silence. No word – no phone calls, no e-mails, no letters. Nothing from Matt in the way of communication, and I felt sometimes as though I was going to go insane with worry.

All of the previous deployments during our friendship had been consistently peppered with e-mails and fairly regular phone conversations. Now, there was nothing. Nothing except the maddening absence, the deafening silence.

And the ambiguous way we’d left things before he’d gotten on that plane.

So here I was, stuck in limbo and caught in a state of indecision.

Maybe a more logical person would have taken those ninety days of silence and decided that none of it was worth any more thought, any more heartache.

Maybe those ninety days would have been used to rebuild a separate life, one that completely closed Matt out and cut him off, but I seemed unable to think past the immediacy of my need to fix this awkwardness between us.

And my inability to do it.

It was, strangely, like having my feet encased in cement.

And maybe just as dangerous.