Life Without You

Obviously, I wasn’t hiding my skepticism very well. “No, I’m just trying to help you see the bigger picture. My apartment isn’t exactly…Junior League material?”

“Honey, I wasn’t born yesterday,” Bette replied simply. Clearly, she had this all thought out. “I have no intention of letting my chances at the committee slip through my fingers just because Steve’s got his head up his rear and is thinking more with his weenie than with his brain.” She shook her head emphatically, looking smug. “He’s got some kind of corporate thing at work that day, so the man will be tied up and sadly unavailable to come in and ruin things. Or let the cat out of the bag that we’re having issues.” Bette’s eyes narrowed to slits. “That’s the last thing I need: one of the other women getting wind of the fact that Steve’s having trouble keeping his eyes on his own paper.”

“But what does that have to do with you being able to run for office?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Nothing,” she huffed, which sent her ample bosom heaving. Bette was nothing if not blessed with cleavage, and she knew how to work it. “But they like to gossip, and any inkling of scandal sets them off.” Her eyes rolled at the absurdity of it all. “Doesn’t matter that half of them have an entirely too intimate relationship with the wine bottle or that their own husbands are banging boots with the secretary. They look for any excuse to gossip.”

I snorted. “What year is this? And really, ‘banging boots?’ Since when do you say, ‘banging boots?’?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You want me to say something a little less ladylike?”

I shook my head emphatically. “No, no. I get the picture. Just call me curious. I’m a writer, remember? Comes with the territory.”

“Uh-huh. Back to the subject.”

“I think I’ve lost track of the subject,” I said honestly, wracking my brain to remember how we’d even gotten to this particular point.

Bette picked up the last French fry on her plate and pointed it at me. “You. Vacation. Your need for a break,” she enumerated.

How the woman remembered in the midst of all the verbal chaos was beyond me. In fact, I’d been holding on to a small sliver of hope that she really would forget this particular topic in favor of her own problems, but she was like a dog with a bone.

“But,” I started in protest.

“You’re not getting off that easy, lady.” Bette shot me a steely gaze. “I’ve known you way too long not to know your little tricks. You’d do well to remember that,” she warned.

I sighed. “I know. I guess I’m still afraid. You know how much I worry. And I can’t seem to stop doing it, either.”

Bette grinned. “My shrink would love you. Maybe she’d start to think I was normal!”

“Hey,” I said in mock insult. “I’m normal,” I insisted, trying—and failing—to convince both of us.

“Honey, you know I love you; but you’re far from normal.” Bette giggled. “That’s part of your charm.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You’re not winning any awards for normalcy, either.”

Bette grinned again. “Normal is overrated. What can I say?”

“Well, still,” I said, dropping my gaze to my hands in my lap. “Sometimes I think normal would be refreshing.”

Bette reached across the table to tap a finger lightly on my nose. “Hey, you. You’re tough, you’re beautiful, and you’re smarter than anyone knows what to do with.” Her eyes sparkled with emotion. “You’ve just had one hard run of it lately. But maybe this is just what you need. Like pressing ‘Control-Alt-Delete,’ if you want to geek out,” she concluded, echoing the words Charlie had spoken in our last conversation.

“Maybe you’re right,” I conceded. “Maybe you’re all right.” My nose burned with tears. “I’m just chickenshit sometimes.”

“Honey,” Bette laughed. “You’re the farthest thing from chickenshit. Don’t sell yourself short. You just gotta go out there and remember who you are,” she said simply, looking pleased with herself for offering such sage advice. “You’re a strong Southern woman who takes no nonsense,” she insisted. “Make this an adventure, Dellie. Don’t hide behind your computer.”

Chapter Three

I stared up at the ceiling, wondering, not for the first time, when I’d let my life get so out of balance. When I’d stopped seeking new adventures and started hiding from them.

Bette was right. I’d been allowing myself to hide behind my computer, and it was time to stop.

Could I afford a vacation, though?

Airfare, a place to stay, food…all of that would be hugely expensive, especially if I was to take everyone’s suggestion and go somewhere for a month.

And besides that, where would I go? After all, I lived in Florida, in a part of the state that people regularly flocked to for vacation, shelling out thousands and thousands of dollars to lie on the sugary white sand of our famous beaches. We walked the fine line of still being part of the Deep South, with some very traditional Southern ways of thinking and living, even while so many people heard the word Florida and immediately envisioned places like Miami or Ft. Lauderdale, where the glitterati ruled and the air of sophisticated living was tempered only by the high population of the retirement communities. Here, we had Southern culture, lived a more slow-paced life, ate the food steeped in the traditions of the South. We said Ma’am and Sir and respected our elders. We welcomed visitors with open arms, still very much accustomed to showing people Southern hospitality.

In short, I was trying to plan a vacation away from the very place that many people vacationed to.

As I lay there in the dark, my mind was devoid of ideas. Sure, there were all kinds of places I’d always dreamed of going, but I couldn’t afford any of them—not for a weekend, let alone a whole month.

I closed my eyes and shifted under the covers, savoring the feeling of being snuggled up in bed. With the odd hours I kept, I didn’t spend much time between the sheets, but when I was there, it was like heaven.

Think, Dellie, I ordered my brain. If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go?

To the bathroom.

The thought came so suddenly it almost made me giggle, which, given my current circumstances, would probably test my bladder far beyond its limits.

I tossed aside the bedsheet and blanket and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom, fighting back a grumble of frustration that was forming over my forced departure from the comfort of my bed, even if it was only a momentary one.

I flicked the light switch and blinked rapidly as my eyes tried to adjust to the harsh brightness. I tripped over my own feet as I blindly made my way further into the bathroom and somehow managed to knock over a small bottle of perfume I’d had resting on a narrow shelf above the towel bar. The stopper fell out; and perfume began to pour onto the shelf before I could set it upright again, releasing the heady scent of a fragrance that I’d never worn, one that my grandmother had loved while she was alive.

“No!” I howled, reaching for the upended bottle and trying to stop the spill before every drop was lost. I’d been foolish to place such a top-heavy bottle in such a precarious position on such a narrow shelf, but it was so pretty that I’d wanted to put it somewhere that I could see it and be reminded of my grandmother. My cramped little bathroom needed all the decorative help it could get, and the elegant, sparkling bottle had seemed the perfect way to spruce things up just a bit.

“No, no, no!” I moaned, seeing that there was only the smallest amount left. The liquid that had pooled onto the shelf began dripping onto the floor.

I was about to let out another whimper when a thought shot through my mind.

Grammie’s.

I wanted to go to Grammie’s.

Not that she was there anymore, but that was the way I would always think of the house in Hampton that she had shared for more than fifty years with my grandfather. I hadn’t been there in so long. Far too long. I’d missed the funeral earlier that year, explaining that I couldn’t take time away from work, that I didn’t have the money for the plane ticket.

Would Grandpa be welcome to the idea of me coming there to stay with him for a whole month?

But even if he was, there was still the issue of a plane ticket. And a car to use while I was there. And…

I shook my head, trying to shake away all the questions and quiet my mind. They would have to wait until tomorrow, when I could do some research and find out what plane tickets cost and I could call Grandpa to pose the question for myself. All the wondering in the world would get me nowhere if I never did that.

I finished in the bathroom, cleaning up the mess from the spill and doing what I’d come in to do in the first place, then toddled back to bed, trying to hush my overactive brain enough to let sleep come. Tomorrow was Saturday, one of the two days I allowed myself get the amount of sleep that a normal human being needed to function properly, and I savored those extra hours.

Once I was up, I’d start the quest for information.

And make a phone call that I should have made long ago…

My fate, it would seem, was literally in my hands as I stared at the flight itinerary that had been so thoughtfully sent to me by US Airways.

I was all booked on a flight out of Pensacola to Newport News, with a three-hour layover in Charlotte. It was real, set in stone—or whatever the Internet equivalent of stone might be. The flights were set and paid for, the seats that would anchor my overanxious ass preassigned and awaiting the arrival of my rump. The plane might have been ready, but I was not.

At least, not mentally.

My bags were hungrily awaiting their sartorial satisfaction, and every other bit of pre-trip preparation that needed to be taken care of had been thoroughly executed. Bette was happily counting down the minutes until she could take over her pied-à-terre, and my family was all quietly celebrating the victory of finally having convinced me that I really and truly did need some time away.

And so, less than a week after the initial proposition was made, cyberspace served up a bit of adventure and notified me that I could no longer keep the idea of a trip in that someday-maybe-I-should realm of unrealized musings.

Best to bite the bullet.

I clicked around awhile on my laptop, idly wondering what might be going on up in Virginia’s swingin’ city of Hampton during my month there, hoping I would find something to mitigate the overwhelming nervousness I felt.

I shook my head, wishing I could find that almost explosive sense of glee that I had always had as a child getting ready to go to my grandparents’ house. True, I wasn’t a child anymore, but Hampton was still Hampton. What had changed more than anything, I realized as I sightlessly wandered around the world in Wi-Fi, was the fact that Grammie was no longer there. The magic she had so unwittingly brought to her surroundings was now gone—residual, perhaps, in the memories—but no longer to be captured.

So was that what I was so afraid of? Facing that feeling of…loss?

Or was it that I was afraid to face myself, to push myself out of the hole I had created for myself and so deeply burrowed into?

It was safe there. It was secure.

It was controllable.

Nothing about this trip, if I was honest, was comfortable or truly controllable.

Which scared the absolute you-know-what out of me.

I picked up my phone and started punching out a text to Bette.

Wondering what to wear on flight to Virginia…and how many in-flight cocktails are allowed.

I plinked the words out, then hit Send.

I stared at the message of carefree bravado on the screen.

It sounded so que-sera-sera. So easy breezy.

So far removed from the roil of emotions that was actually running through me.

So very, very much braver than I felt. So very, very much the brave woman I wanted to be.

Fake it ’til you make it.

And I was determined to make it. Part of a new project I’d begun since booking my tickets was to make a bucket list of things I wanted to do: some were things that were completely new for me. Some were things that I’d once enjoyed but that had been cut from my life, once I’d let my fear start running the show. One of those bucket-list items was to take a trip, which I hadn’t done since before I’d gotten married, even. Once upon a time, I’d felt bold and adventurous and audacious in hitting the road or booking a flight all on my own. Anxiety had shut me off from that, had robbed me of the excitement I used to feel and replaced it with a sense of dread at being out of control, away from the zone of safety to which I’d confined myself. Taking this trip to Hampton was one way to combat that, to try to reclaim even the smallest sense of adventurousness that I used to have. I’d felt a thick mixture of fear and triumph as I’d crossed that one off my list, determined to go, even if I was in a cold sweat when departure time came.

Another one of those bucket-list items involved flirty panties, something I’d enjoyed buying once upon a time but had stopped wearing after I got married. Finally having someone to see my flirty panties should have been a win, but the man I’d married had been less than appreciative, shooting down my confidence and making me feel as though this small luxury was completely ludicrous and extremely frivolous. Which made Buy Flirty Panties shoot straight to the top of my newly constructed bucket list.

For anyone looking at my list, it would have seemed simple and mundane. They would likely raise an eyebrow at the normal-looking activities—those like Eat Somewhere Unsafe and Eat Cake might seem somewhat odd—but for me, a woman whose world was so ruled by the dictates of anxiety, these were things that took tremendous amounts of courage to complete. My food and restaurant choices had become driven by fear, confining me to only a limited number of meal options and places that felt safe to eat. It was part of dangerous self-denial that was a coping mechanism for the lack of control I had felt so strongly during a very vulnerable time in my life. Food was controllable—the rest of the world was not. These were steps to my own victory…

1. Buy Flirty Panties

2. Take a Trip

3. Eat Somewhere Unsafe

4. Get a Makeover: New clothes? Haircut? Make-up, etc.

5. Break from Routine

6. Reconnect with Family

7. Eat Cake

8. Go on a Date

9. Learn to Dance

10. Take a Long Shot

My eyes wandered to the clock at the top corner of my computer screen.

Time to get back to work. After all, I had a trip to finish preparing for.

Bags to pack and a bucket list to conquer.

And according to the calendar on my desk, not many days to do any of it in.

I decided to ignore the silence of my unanswered text to Bette and tried to shift my focus to the article I was currently tackling. “Mid-Year Makeover: How to Shake Things Up and Make the Most of the Next Six Months.”

I arched an eyebrow, as I did every time I caught a glimpse of the uninspired title.

Who came up with these things?

I couldn’t help but wonder, as no one with any ounce of imagination would dream up such a lackluster title. It was blah and a bit cliché, in my opinion, for a women’s magazine; but it was one more article to pay the bills.

One more article that would put my name out there.

One more article to add to my portfolio.

Who knows, I thought optimistically as my fingers found their rhythm on the keyboard, maybe I’ll learn something interesting.

After all, who couldn’t use advice on how to reinvent the rest of their year?

Or, really, the rest of their lives?

I certainly could.

Maybe this trip would help me do that.

Chapter Four

I could feel a full-on pout coming.

Sure, maybe it was unreasonable to expect nylon boots to last more than a decade without looking like crap; but when you’re living the high life on a freelance writer’s budget, you tend to hope for miracles everywhere you can find them. And this was one place that I was hoping to find miracles. After all, I needed some boots to wear in Hampton. The weather was starting to turn a little bit crisp, since summer seemed to be outward bound, and I was sorely lacking good fall shoes aside from my ten-year-old Doc Marten Mary Janes. I raised an eyebrow.

Sensing a theme here. It seemed that many items in my closet were actually old enough to be at the upper echelons of elementary school. Maybe not something to brag about. Especially not to Bette, who already thought I was a perfect candidate for Extreme Cheapskates. I was beginning to worry that I might come home one night to be accosted outside my apartment by a TLC film crew dead set on capturing a reel of my very mundane, very budgeted life as a writer, which involved trying to squeeze blood out of every penny I could find.

But I digress.

I stood at my closet in sad—and getting increasingly sadder—contemplation of the contents within. If I was going to start packing for a month away, I needed to face reality and figure out what was actually wearable in there. At first glance, it looked pretty good, but a more thorough investigation revealed a copious number of tops, dresses, and skirts that I wasn’t comfortable with anymore.

Not in my current state, anyway. With my naturally slight build, I’d never had a weight problem; but even my once-slim frame had been greatly reduced by small anxieties that had built up over time and become almost overwhelming. I found relief only when I channeled them all into one focus: food and my ability to control it. True, the weight loss had been unintentional, even subtle at first. But now it was undeniable. Startling, if I was being perfectly honest. My clothes hung limply on me, my light brown hair—the curls once so bouncy—was thin and dry, my once full cheeks left hollow. The only things that seemed not to have changed were my eyes. Those, at least, were still a shade of almost aqua blue that constantly caught people’s attention. This, I thought, seeing my reflection in the mirror mounted on my closet door, this is why I try to hide. This is why… I shook my head against the encroaching feelings of defeat, of anger at myself, of frustration at my own weaknesses. Now was not the time for this. Now was the time to get out of my own way, to pack my bags and try to find a new future.

I shifted my focus back to the numerous articles of clothing hanging so neatly in my closet and shook my head again. This was really getting me nowhere. What I needed—besides a total life makeover—was a wardrobe overhaul, a bigger budget, and some time with my sister. For some reason, staring into my closet was making me miss her like mad. I took a peek at my watch.

Half past noon.

Hmmmm. Probably not the ideal time to call her, since it was likely that she was elbow deep in lunchtime with the kids. After sandwich crumbs and applesauce smears were wiped up, she would have to get them down for naps, and then she’d have a little time to talk. I squinted up at the ceiling, mentally calculating. That put me at about an hour from now.

One. Whole. Hour.

Unfortunately for me, the prospect of an hour seemed almost endless, and I needed to talk to someone.

I reached into the back pocket of my jeans for my phone and scrolled through to the speed dial button for my mother. Hopefully she would answer.

After an almost interminable few seconds of having to listen to it ring on the other end of the line, she finally picked up, sounding out of breath but perky.

Definitely a good sign, I thought, instantly feeling my mood lift a little.

“Hi, Mama,” I said.

“Oh, hi, Dellie, baby. How are you?” she asked.

“Fine.” I shrugged, even though I knew she couldn’t actually see it. “Just trying to figure out what to take. Not getting anywhere,” I sighed.

“No? Even with all of that stuff in your closet?” she marveled. I could just picture her, mouth agape, blue eyes wide with incredulity. As my mother and former cohabiter of anyplace I’d called home for most of my life, she had reason to be so amazed. She’d seen the size of my wardrobe while I was living with her and my dad before I was so unhappily wed, and she had helped me move from said house of mirth into my current apartment. Which most likely meant she also assumed that I still wore all of it.

Or, at least, most of it.

In all reality, though, I was wearing a steady rotation of about ten outfits, thrown on without thought beyond the fact that they were functional. My jeans were old enough to babysit for my shoes, and my one bra was almost old enough for pre-school.

If it wasn’t so sad, it might have been funny.

“Most of the stuff in my closet is destined for the consignment shop,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

“Why? You’ve got so many cute clothes.” Quite a reasonable observation. And very true, indeed. They were cute, and I really liked most of them. But most of the pieces felt like they belonged on someone else, with a different life. Someone who went out with friends and had spur-of-the-moment lunch dates. Someone who didn’t look just as hollowed out as she felt on the inside most of the time. Someone I missed.

I sighed, hoping she hadn’t heard it.

“Are you okay, honey? Are you sleeping okay?” she asked, concern creeping into her voice. “Are you eating okay?”

I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at my lips. No matter that I was now in my thirties or that we saw one another on a pretty regular basis, she was definitely still my mama. And I had to admit, there was a certain degree of comfort in that knowledge.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, a blanket answer to all three questions. It might not be the absolute God’s honest truth, but it was what came out. Much as I really wanted to lay everything out there right now, I didn’t want to worry her, either.

“I know you probably think I’m being nosy, but I’m your mother, and I only want the best for you. I want to see you happy, and healthy, and have everything good in life.”

I smiled. “I know, Mama, I know. I’ll get there. Things are just a little stressed right now.”

“I know that—which is why I’m glad you’re going to take this trip. I really think it’ll do you some good.” I heard a smile creeping into her voice. “And you can do a little bit of spying on your grandfather for me.”

“You bet. I’ll have daily updates for you, if you want,” I replied.

She laughed. It was a beautiful sound—one I couldn’t bear to think about never hearing again. How do you deal with the loss of your mother? I wondered silently.

“Mama?” I ventured. “I know you’re worried about me, and you’re worried about Grandpa…but how are you? How are you feeling these days? I know it’s been a few weeks since we had some time together, and I feel like I’m being a horrible daughter,” I said, adding one more item to my own guilt list. “Are you doing okay?”

There was a deafening silence on the other end.

“Mama?” I asked again.

“Mmm?”

“I love you.” My voice was thick with emotion.

“I love you back, baby. So much,” she whispered.

“So, so much,” I echoed.

“Now go pack,” she said, clearly having decided to regain her grip on her composure. “You only have three days until you leave.”

I rolled my eyes, letting my gaze fall on the itinerary I’d printed out. As if I could forget. Three days to pack. Three days to wrap my head around this whole thing. Only three days. I felt my gut tighten.

“Three days,” I repeated flatly.

“Suck it up, Buttercup,” Mama said, sounding gleeful.

“And put on my Big Girl Panties?”

“You got it. Just make sure they’re presentable.”