Broken Glass, Broken Hearts part 72

Milly's music was blasting from her room, and I couldn't focus on my studying, so I stood up, eventually, exasperated, and walked over to her room. I opened her door to ask that she turn the music down, but as I did, I saw her sprawled out on the bed, facing away from me, with a wide smile on her face. She had a phone pressed up to her ear, and I heard her, over the music, say a phrase that included the pronoun "Jake." As she lay there, laughing, radiant, somehow able to hear the person on the other end of the phone even with her music blasting, I realized there was really no decision to make. I loved my mom, I really did, and I cared about her happiness a lot. But Milly was smiling right now, right there. And Milly's smile was more bright than any lights of New York could ever be. I wasn't about to let it slip.

My mom had a slight grin on her mouth. I don't what I had expected to receive from her, but it wasn't that. She nodded calmly as I explained my decision to her, and the playful half-grin danced on and off her mouth in a way that made her look young, like the hippie with long dark hair and bright blue eyes who had run away with my father. Her bright eyes were a precise replica of Milly's smiling ones, though the skin around them was more aged. I discovered, as I looked at her smiling eyes, how my father must have felt when he saw them. Why he would leave behind his whole life to travel the country in a van with this woman. Those smiling eyes, just like my sister's, were something that could make the rest of the world seem insignificant. I could imagine, as my dad had looked into them, that he must have felt how I felt when I looked in Angela's eyes. And as she replied, calmly, to me, that she was perfectly fine with my decision, and was proud of me for making the decision unselfishly, I knew that I had to appreciate her smiling eyes more. Milly's were never something I took for advantage. And I should treat my mother's the same way.

And maybe I should also think more about the importance of smiling eyes. Because there was one person in the world whose eyes had even more of an effect on me than the eyes of the two women that were connected to me by blood. And now that I knew her secret, her pain, I knew I would never take her smiling eyes- even just her grinning eyes, her smirking eyes- for granted again.

Tyler called me on Tuesday afternoon. His voice was bright, excited, and so warm. I wanted to climb into the phone and fold the warm blanket of his voice around myself, to fall asleep to the rhythm of his vowels. He told me that he had something important he had to tell me, but that he wanted to say it in person. I invited him to come out that weekend, to stay overnight from Saturday to Sunday. He offered to stay at his grandmother's house, but I told him that I had a guest room, and that he could sleep there. When we hung up, I felt a surge of adrenaline running through my body that I could fight, so I changed my clothes and went outside, jogging in the fog, down my street. I paused after a while, sitting on a tree trunk as I re-tied my sneakers, and I smiled at the idea of Tyler visiting. I wouldn't mind hearing that voice of his in person. Or seeing those indescribable blue eyes... I wouldn't mind at all.

© 2010