The Secret of You and Me - Melissa Lenhardt Page 0,52
his family when he was released. Todd was a barber during the day, a regular at AA meetings at night, and a chainsaw artist who created statues out of logs on the weekends. Bears mostly. He soon became my sponsor, and after a while, my confidante. To a point. Todd knew I was holding something back, and I suspected he knew what I was holding back, but he’d been in the program long enough to know not to push me.
I might have admitted the truth to myself at that dive bar, but I’d never said it out loud to another person. Not until today. To my mother. My last choice for the first person to tell.
I was still shaking from rage when I sat down with Todd at the rear table of the diner next door to his barbershop. “What happened with Brenda?”
Todd had never met my mother because I’d never invited her to my chip meetings. But, he’d heard all about her.
I crossed my arms and put my head down on the table. “I told her I hated her. Then I told her to fuck off.” I sat up. “Or maybe I said fuck you. I don’t remember.”
“How do you feel now?”
I sipped my coffee. “Disappointed I don’t feel better. I’ve wanted to say that to my mother for twenty years and when I finally do? There is no catharsis.”
“What brought this on?”
I laughed. “How much time do you have?”
“As long as you need.”
“You might regret not putting a time limit on this, Todd.”
I rubbed my sweaty palms on my skirt and shifted in my seat. Todd sipped his coffee in silence. He had mastered the art of stillness, of letting quietness fill the rare gaps in our conversations. I tended towards chatter, to fill our time with inconsequentialities out of fear something would slip. Now the same urge to chatter and avoid the topic was almost overwhelming. But, I couldn’t. If I didn’t trust Todd with my full self, I would never be able to trust anyone. It sure as hell couldn’t be as disastrous as coming out to my mother.
I closed my eyes and lowered my head, hitting my forehead with my fist. Goddamn her. She stole my coming out. It should have been with someone who would accept me, who I could trust, not her. Never her.
I opened my eyes when I felt Todd gently squeezed my forearm. “Sophie, just tell me the story.”
I gripped his hand and sighed. “Okay.” I nodded my head quickly. “I have to go back to the beginning, to explain today.”
Todd twirled his hand in the air, the universal signal for get the fuck on with it already.
“Okay. When I was seventeen, I fell in love. With my best friend.” Todd stared at me, waited.
“You want a drink, don’t you?”
“How’d you know?”
“You’re licking your lips.” Todd squeezed my hand. “You got this, Sophie.”
I inhaled deeply and said, “Her name was Nora.” I waited for Todd’s horrified reaction, an expression of disgust, for him to release my hand and sit back in the booth—put as much distance between us as possible—to try to escape as soon as possible. Instead, he held my hand with both of his and nodded his encouragement. Tears of relief welled in my eyes.
“We were best friends since fourth grade. You know how everyone says opposite personalities attract? That was me and Nora. I loved being the center of attention, Nora just stayed back and smiled at my antics. She never told me to tone it down but being around her... She was a good influence on me. I think I was on her, too. I learned pretty quickly she loved reading, so I cajoled her into reading our book assignments to me. I mean, in fourth grade it wasn’t a problem, but we got older and the books got longer. I always expected her to say, ‘Read your own damn book, Soph’—that was my influence on her, the ability to call people out and not take advantage of her—but she never did. I think she liked it as much as I did. She wouldn’t do voices, exactly, but she could make each character distinct. It’s probably why, to this day, the only way I can read a book is to listen to an audiobook.
“One day, she laid her head in my lap to read to me. I ran my fingers through her hair for an hour while she read Persuasion. We’d long since moved on from required