Chapter Twenty-Four
Kelli
I awoke the next morning to a faint, wheezy sound coming from somewhere nearby. It was the sort of hacking sound a tomcat might make as it coughs up a piece of food that went down the wrong way. I got up and looked around the room, thinking maybe a mouse had gotten trapped behind the desk or under the bed. It took me a moment to realize the noise was coming from the living room.
I threw on my robe and came out of my room. I found Renee sitting on the couch, crying.
“Renee?” I came around the couch and sat down beside her at the other end. “Renee, what’s wrong?”
Renee sniffled unhappily and looked up in annoyance, as if mad that I had interrupted. “It’s Max,” she said, wiping the snot off her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “He’s having second thoughts about getting married, and I think he might be thinking about breaking up with me.”
“No way.” I reached over to take her hand. “How did this come up?”
“I guess I’ve known it was coming for a while now,” said Renee. “I’ve seen how he looks at other girls when we’re out shopping or eating dinner. You know how you hear women say, their partner has a special way of looking at them that’s only for them?” I nodded. “Well, Max and I have never had that. Sometimes I catch him looking around, and I can almost see him wondering if he would be happier with somebody else.”
“But you seemed really happy together. Are you sure you’re not just overthinking it?” Renee had a long history of panicking whenever a relationship was threatening to get too serious. “Why don’t you come into the kitchen so I can make you breakfast? You can tell me all about it while I’m cooking.”
I made her a breakfast of chickpea pancakes and a tofu omelet made with spinach, onions, and garlic. For myself I fried up a couple of sausage links, two hash brown patties, and a chicken crepe doused in butter. When Renee saw my plate, she set down her fork and stared longingly at it.
“Do you want some of this?” I asked. “You can have it.”
“No, it’s okay,” she said sadly. “I shouldn’t be eating it anyway. Are we all out of the good orange juice?”
“Pulp-free is the only kind of orange juice I buy,” I replied. “If you want orange juice with pulp in it, you’ll have to buy it yourself.”
Renee stared wistfully at her glass as though at a lover who had betrayed her. “Anyway,” I added, scraping some of my mashed-up hash browns onto the edge of her plate, “what exactly did Max say to you?”
Renee let out an involuntary shudder and lowered her eyes. “He said he doesn’t know if we’re really compatible—we’ve been dating for over a year now, and this is when he decides to tell me. I asked him if he was going to break up with me, and he said we can keep dating, but he doesn’t see marriage being in the picture.”
“That doesn’t sound very promising,” I said, stabbing my fork into one of the sausages vengefully. “It sounds like he’s planning to break up with you.”
“That’s what I thought!” Renee exclaimed. “I almost think I should get the jump on him and break up with him before he breaks up with me. That way it wouldn’t hurt as much, and I wouldn’t have to tell future boyfriends I had been dumped by a guy. On the other hand, what if he’s not thinking of breaking up with me, and I just ruined what could have been a good relationship?”
“Well, he’s being kind of an ass, if you ask me.” I set down my fork and faced her at eye level. “I know I’m slightly biased because I’m your sister, but what kind of guy says, ‘I like you enough to date you, but not enough to go out with you, but we should still keep dating!’ It sounds to me like he wants the benefits of a relationship without the commitments of a relationship. Honestly, I’m a little—well, majorly disappointed. I thought Max was better than this.”
“So did I,” said Renee, wiping her eyes with a napkin, “or I would never have gone out with him in the first place.”
After breakfast, we got dressed and went out shopping for dresses, but continued to talk sporadically about Max throughout the day. Renee wanted to know how I had lucked into my relationship with Zack, and I had to remind her that we had only been dating for less than a week. It felt strange to hear those words coming out of my mouth, I felt like we had been together for a lot longer than that.
At one point, we passed by Victoria’s Secret, and Renee paused in front of the shop window, staring up at a poster of a skinny model in lacy red lingerie coyly hiding behind a heart-shaped velvet pillow. Renee admired the figure enviously, as if reflecting on the sad fact that she had never been that skinny, had never been a model, and had never been hung up in a shop window for men to lust over and women to gawk at.
Over dinner that night at Avant Garden, she said to me, “Do you want to know a secret? I’ve sort of always wanted to be you.”
It was one of the more surprising confessions she had ever made to me. I set down my fork and stared hard at her. “Why would you want that? Have you met me?”
“I know it’s irrational,” she said, “and I know from your perspective, it probably doesn’t make sense. But growing up, our parents and teachers were always going on about how brilliant you were and how you were destined for great things. And I just wanted someone to fuss over me like that and to tell me I had the potential for greatness in me.”
“I don’t think anyone has ever before said to me that they wanted to be me,” I replied.
“More people should want to be like you,” said Renee. “I mean, look at you. You’re so much more put together than I am. You have a career, and you’ve done some award-winning reporting, and you’re in a steady relationship with the world’s most amazing man.”
I began to get the uncomfortable feeling that Renee wished she was dating Zack instead of Max.
“Renee, listen to me,” I said slowly. “You don’t want to be me. I realize I might have given you the impression that my whole life is in order, but that’s because I’m solitary and secretive and don’t talk to you much about my personal failings. Which, I’m really sorry about that. Maybe if I had been more open with you, you wouldn’t have gotten the wrong idea. The reality is, I’m a mess. I’m probably about to be fired from my job, and I spend about half of each day panicking instead of writing because I don’t think I’m qualified or capable. I’ve had exactly one decent relationship in my life, and so far it’s lasted all of about three days—and that’s only because I’m a doormat and never express my true feelings. The second he finds out how I really feel about various things, he’ll probably break up with me, and honestly I’m just waiting for the day because I know it’s coming sooner or later. That’s what you have to look forward to if you want to become me.”
In the long pause that followed, I began to wonder if I had permanently derailed the conversation. It would be hard to follow up with the latest celebrity gossip after an outburst like that.
“The thing I’ve always wished for you,” Renee said finally, and with some effort, “is that you could see yourself the way everyone around you sees you. Maybe then you wouldn’t panic so much. Maybe then you could enjoy being you.”
“Maybe,” I said skeptically. “But then I wouldn’t really be me, would I? The worry and panic and all the rest, it seems like such an integral part of the whole Kelli experience.”
Renee shook her head. “No, I think somewhere there’s a Kelli who’s capable of being fearless and happy. I hope to see more of that Kelli some day.”
I folded some stir-fry noodles around my fork without raising it to my mouth. “As long as we’re being honest,” I said, “I always sort of envied how good you were with people, how confident you were in the things you did, and in how much you seemed to enjoy life. I had no idea, until you told me just now, how much of your life you spent wanting to be someone else.”
“I only seem confident because I don’t talk much about how afraid I am,” said Renee, with the perfect simplicity of a child.
“Both of us growing up in fear, afraid even to talk about what we’re afraid of.” I shook my head. “I wonder if Africa will ever stop hurting us.”