Catherine McKenzie: Hidden

I cast those thoughts aside as the Claire James in question came out to meet me. She was about my age, maybe a bit older, and pretty. Wearing a navy-blue skirt and jacket, she had chestnut hair that touched her shoulders, pale blue eyes that were a little close together above a straight nose, and medium-full lips covered in a light gloss. She smiled and her whole face lit up, exuding warmth and confidence.

I felt tongue-tied as I followed her down the corridor. Although I was still in the process of breaking up with my college girlfriend, Lily—she didn’t want to move to Springfield, but we weren’t quite prepared to give up on the idea of us having a future together—I knew immediately that I really wanted to ask Claire out.

But first, we had some business to attend to.

“Did Tim give you my name?” she asked as she sat down behind her desk, kicking off an uncomfortable-looking pair of high-heeled shoes. “You don’t mind, do you?”

My brain fogged with confusion until I realized she was referring to her stockinged feet.

“No, of course not. But how do you…”

Her face fell as memory clicked into place. Claire James. Shit. This was Tim’s law school girlfriend, who happened to be from Springfield too. The one I didn’t meet because Tim and I never seemed to be home at the same time anymore. The one I never met before that because she went through the private school system and was Tim’s age. And, most importantly, the one Tim broke up with around graduation and had been tight-lipped about ever since.

“Oh,” was all I could manage.

“I’m guessing that means Tim didn’t send you?”

“I’m sorry, I called the general line and they put me on to you.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“For not making the connection, I guess.”

“That’s all right. Have you heard from Tim lately?”

She was trying to act casual as she asked this, but the way her neck flushed gave her away. Problem was, I hadn’t spoken to Tim lately. None of us had. He’d fucked off a few months after finishing law school to take a “spin around the world,” and his communication since then had been infrequent and short. In Spain read one postcard, sent from Seville and depicting a bullfight. Old buildings.

“Not really.”

“Me neither.”

“If this is going to be awkward, I’m sure I can find someone else to handle my stuff.”

“No, no,” she said, and waved off my suggestion. “That’s all done with. And it’s not your problem.”

But it was.

When I was twelve, my dad decided it was time to give me the Talk.

I’d been caught folding my stained Matchbox-car sheets into the washing machine early one Sunday morning. I stood there, frozen, while my dad watched me over his coffee cup with a look of deep understanding. My ears went hot, feverish. I thanked God my mom was a late sleeper.

He beckoned me into the kitchen, poured me a small cup of joe, and stumbled his way through a version of the facts of life that was so alien to what I already knew from TV and the schoolyard I was pretty sure he didn’t know what he was talking about.

When he finally let me go hide in my room, Tim came to find me. Tim was fourteen. He’d grown. I had not. The weight of him as he sat down on the side of my bed reminded me of my father. But his voice still cracked.

“Nice try, loser.”

I pulled the sheet down. He was smirking at me, but in a friendly way.

“Ah, fuck off.”

“You gotta wait till they’re out of the house.”

“I was kinda figuring that out.”

“Dad talk to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Predictable.”

“Whatever.”

“Bet you can’t wait to get a girl now.”

His mild sarcasm made me wonder whether what my dad had said might’ve been accurate after all.

“No way. Girls are gross.”

“Right. Till they aren’t.”

“Huh?”

“What do you think you were dreaming about, dummy? Unless…”

I picked up my pillow and threw it at him. “I’m not a homo.”

“Sure.”

“I’m not.”

“So girls won’t be gross forever, then.”

I thought about the girls in my class. How my friends and I made fun of their “best-friend” necklaces. How they held hands when they walked down the hall. How they’d cry over the breakup of their friendships.

Who needed that kind of drama?

“Maybe.”

“Trust me.”

“What do you know about it?”

“More than you, Mr. Matchbox Car.”

“I’ve asked Mom like a thousand times to get me new sheets.”

“Well, maybe she will now that you’re a man and all.”

My stomach clenched in panic. “Dad’s not going to tell Mom, is he?”

“I think you can count on it.”

I pulled the covers back up over my head. Tim left me in my fortress of embarrassment wondering whether what he’d said about girls was right, but it soon became clear. Almost overnight, girls stopped being “girls” and became Sara, Allison, and Christie. And the scuffle that resulted a couple months later from John kissing Brendan’s “girlfriend” led us to adopt the Rules.

Well, there was just the one rule, really: Once a girl was stupid enough to go out with one of us, she was off-limits.

Forever.

Because forever seemed like a real thing then, something that had to be respected.

Loyalty to my brother—and the certain knowledge that acting on my growing feelings for Claire would be a gross violation of the Rule—kept me from asking her out for months.

I held it in check while she helped me buy my condo and set up my business and became a friend. I worried that becoming her friend would mean I’d lose my chance to be something more. I spent way too much time thinking about the whole thing, to be honest, which really wasn’t like me. With the exception of Lily, I’d flitted in and out of relationships without much thought, and had been attracted to girls who I instinctively knew would tire of me in short order or wouldn’t be that upset if I tired of them.

So I knew I was in trouble.

I just didn’t know how much.

In the midst of all this thinking, I finally broke up with Lily, driving twelve hours to do it in person. Six hours there, a two-hour prolonged and tearful—on her part—conversation, then six hours back, knowing I’d done the right thing but still feeling shitty. Would I have tried harder to work things out if Claire wasn’t in the picture? But Claire wasn’t really in the picture, so why was I acting as if she were? My brain wheeled round and round until I took the exit off the highway for home and my spirits began to lift.

I was twenty-four, free, and half in love with my brother’s ex-girlfriend. I did a few stupid things to try to get her out of my system. Like hanging out in the local hookup bar, taking home girls I knew I was never going to ask out again, who’d become someone I avoided in the grocery store. I was having fun, but I was brooding too. Assuming Claire did want to go out with me, how was I ever going to get past the Tim factor?

Then she did it for me.

About six months after we first met, we were having lunch at a deli that had opened recently near her office.

I’d received a postcard from Tim. Welcome to Coolangatta it read, with the words Learning to scuba written on the back. I had to look up the name to figure out he was in Australia. It was in my pocket, and I was fingering it nervously, wondering if I should show it to her. I eventually decided to do it, and tried to act casual as I pulled out the slightly moist card and slid it across the counter.

“Heard from Tim,” I said, taking a large bite of my sandwich.

“Oh?”

She picked up the card, staring at the azure ocean, the cloudless sky, the red sand beach. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she turned it over and read the words on the back.