Jessica Sankiewicz - If Only We

Lyndsay puts her arm around my shoulder. “I’ll find a way to convince her.” She stands up, reaches into her pants pocket, and makes a face. “Drat. There’s a hole in this pocket.”

“Did you lose something?”

“No, I was reaching for my phone, but I realized I put it in my purse. Good thing I did apparently.” She feels it again. “Ugh. I don’t want to fix it but I will need these for work.”

I go to my dresser. “I can do it. Just leave them.” I hold out a pair of jeans. “Here. Change into these. I’ll have that pocket fixed by tomorrow.”

She hesitates. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s no problem.” The more projects I have to do, the better. Plus, I can brush up on my sewing skills. It has been at least a year since I've had to mend anything.

After she leaves, I pull out the sewing kit from my closet and get to work. It doesn’t take me long to fix it. I wish it took longer because I need something to distract me. I keep thinking about tomorrow and everything surrounding my decision. There is so much that is wrong with what I am doing. Yet the idea of being honest brings back memories I'd sooner forget than relive. What am I going to do?

Sleep eludes me most of the night. When I get to Lyndsay’s, I'm thankful I have nowhere to be so I can take a quick nap. Faith, as I expected, wasn’t too keen about me not telling my mom the truth. She did agree that I should take some time to find out what I want from life.

“In fact,” she says. “It might not be a bad idea to take a semester off.”

I straighten up. “I couldn’t do that.” Taking a semester off would be worse than taking the summer off.

“Why not?”

“I need to at least be going to college, even if it’s not the career my mom wants.”

“Do you know what you want to do?” she asks.

I slump down in my chair. “No,” I say, dragging out the word.

“Just think about it. You don’t want to rush into something else and regret it.”

What she says resonates with me. I spent my high school years preparing for a career I didn’t want in the first place. It would be less than useless for me to jump into something else just to go to college. I need to know what I want before I proceed. Right now, I have no idea what I want. It's all for the best since I would have to sign up for classes in the next couple of weeks to get in.

I spend the morning browsing the internet for career suggestions to no avail. Instead of spending the afternoon getting the same results, I organize their books by author and movies by title. When I finish, the living room feels cleaner, but I am still at a loss as far as what to do with myself. I keep on organizing until Lyndsay comes back.

She stares at the room. “What are you doing to my house?”

“Organizing,” I say as I transfer magazines from the coffee table to the magazine rack.

“You are officially crazy.”

“What makes you the judge of that?”

“Uh, the fact that I’m not crazy, that’s what.”

I stand up with my hands on my hips. “The fact that you think you can say that while being part of this family makes you the crazy one.”

“Let's call it a tie.” She sits down on the couch, putting her feet up on the coffee table.

I sit next to her. “I say rematch.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “I'd ask you how the career search went today but I have a feeling I already know the answer.”

“Yeah. I'm still completely lost there.” And probably will be for a while.

“I forgot to ask you this morning: did you take care of my pants?”

I jump up off the couch. “Oh! I left them in my car.” I run out and come back in with them. “Here you go.”

She reaches in the pocket. “Wow. I can’t even tell the difference from when I bought these.”

I make a face. “You exaggerate.”

She shakes her head. “Really, I can’t.” Her face lights up. “That’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“You can do this,” she says, holding up her pants to me.

“Sewing? I can’t make a career out of sewing.”

She rolls her eyes. “Not just sewing. Mending, hemming, quilting… Ooh! You could design clothes!”

“That's a bit unrealistic.”

“So? Maybe it's so unrealistic that it's possible.”

“I think I just won the rematch.”

“I'm being serious! Where do all the great ones start? They start with something small, something simple, then they keep going until they reach the top. You could make it into a business.”

I have spent so many years dwelling on one career. Then I spent these last couple of days coming up with others. Never once did I think about starting a business. Me? Running a business of my own? Could I do it? My first thoughts are along the lines of “not going to happen” but I have to keep options open.

She can see me considering the possibility. “Just tell me you'll think about it.”

I smile and say, “I’ll think about it.”

Two days later, I'm still thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about it. There's just something about it that appeals to me. Although I have no clue why it would. I have barely done any bigger sewing projects aside from mending since I was ten.

Lyndsay reiterates it Friday. “My mom still has the sewing machine in the attic somewhere. Remember when we played with it to make quilts for our dolls?”

“Yeah,” I say with a nostalgic smile. “That was fun.”

“See! The look on your face says it all. It’s settled. We’re going to dig it out.” We go upstairs to the attic and find it covered with a film of dust. “There’s step one. Step two is finding some fabric.” She moves the sewing machine out of the way and we open up the boxes nearby.

Dust particles puff up into the air, causing me to cough. “Why are none of these boxes marked?” I ask, setting aside another box to rub my nose.

“They were going in the attic, it didn’t matter. Plus, my mom has a photographic memory of everything up here.” She drops a box down in a huff. “You would think they would be right here.” She walks to the doorway and yells, “Mom! Where’s all that fabric we used to have?”

“It should be up there!” Faith yells back.

“Where?”

“Under the old black and white television set!” Sure enough, there it was.

We take the sewing machine and box of fabric downstairs and set it down on the living-room floor. After moving the coffee table off to the side, I open up the box. I chuckle as I pull out some flowered fabric. “Hey, I used this one to make a scrunchie.”

She laughs. “I think I still have that scrunchie.” She reaches in and then freezes. “Oh my goodness.”

“What?” She holds up one of our quilts. The bright colors clash like an outfit from the eighties. “Oh my goodness is right,” I say as I touch it. “Boy, does that bring back the memories.” Our poor dolls. All they ever wanted was a nice duvet. What did we make them? A crazy quilt.

Faith comes into the room. “When are we leaving for Ben’s house?”

Lyndsay looks at the clock on the VCR. “Crap. In about ten minutes.”

While she gets ready, I move everything out of the way. I almost forgot about their families going to dinner tonight. Aside from the brief moments Lyndsay and I had, most of the week was spent with my family. After the whirlwind of a week I just had, I really need to get out of the house and talk to someone.

And I know exactly who that someone should be.

* * *

Chevy and I meet up after dinner at the Sweet Treat, the local outdoor ice cream eatery twenty yards from the high school. It was a smart move on their part because when kids are walking home from school, all they want is to go there every day. Of course, when you’re young you don’t have enough money to.

We place our order—he chooses a strawberry shake and I choose marshmallow—then we take a seat on the furthest picnic table along the side of the building. After he fills me in on his week, I tell him about mine. I try to make it as brief as possible, since I've already talked excessively about it in the last five days.

When I reach the end, he waits a moment before speaking. Then he says, “First of all, I fully agree with your decision to stop doing something you don’t love. I’m not too keen on withholding that from your mom though.”

I sigh. “I know, neither am I.” I twist my straw between my thumb and index finger. “I want to tell her. I almost did, and then I chickened out. I could just see it all crumble and topple over. My mom wants nothing more than to see me succeed. I just want a little bit of time to figure those details out, and then I’ll come clean.”

He nods. “It’s a tough place to be in, trying to balance out pleasing your parents and following your dreams.”

“It is.”

“Do you know what you want to do?”

I chuckle, shaking my head. “Not really. Lyndsay is working on convincing me to be a seamstress.”

“Why? Is it something you're good at?”

“Um, sort of?”

He laughs. “That’s a good start, you know. Here’s the difficult question: do you enjoy it?”

I ponder this for a moment. Looking through the box of fabric earlier sent me to a land of reminiscing. All those rainy summer days Lyndsay and I would be sewing until the rain stopped. At the time, it was to stave off boredom. Thinking about the joy I got from creating something made me realize how I really felt. “Yes,” I respond with resolve. “I enjoy it.”

“Then that,” he says, “is your answer.” And it is.

I change the subject. “So, what else have you been up to?”

He shrugs. “Nothing really. Just hanging with Roger and Nathan. Speaking of which, how do you feel about karaoke?”

“Karaoke?” I look into his eyes to see if he is being serious.

He is. “Yes, karaoke.”

The last time I sang was for a spring recital in fifth grade, but I don’t like to think about that night. “I don’t know. I don’t really sing in front of people.”

“You can’t sing?”

“I can, I just…don’t.” I shake my head. “Why? Do you like to?”

“I can take it or leave it. I only ask because Nathan is leaving early for New York and he wants to go to the coffee shop next week for karaoke night.” He puts his hand to his face and sighs. “Of all the things he wants to do before leaving, karaoke and coffee on a Saturday night?”

I stifle a laugh. “Well, at least he didn’t want to go out clubbing or drinking.”

He straightens up a little. For a second he looks unsettled, but then it vanishes. “So, yeah, karaoke next Saturday. You, Lyndsay, and Ben can come.”

“Do I have to sing?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. Then he smirks. “But since it is Nathan’s night, I expect him to drag every last one of us up there at least once.”

I groan. “I guess that would be tolerable. It’s better than having to sing alone.”

He gestures to my cup with his. “Are you finished?” I nod yes. He takes it from me and throws them both away. “I’m going to walk you home.”

“My place is out of your way.”

“So?” He looks at me with raised eyebrows.

I narrow my eyes, and then nod. “Okay, if you insist.”

“He walked you home?” Lyndsay asked in disbelief.

We are walking down the sidewalk at the Hamilton Outdoor Shopping Mall. The weather is cooler today than it usually is at this point in June. I convinced Lyndsay that it was going to be too hot the rest of the summer. She asked me how I knew that. I just rolled my eyes and told her that’s how it always goes. She humored me.

“Yes, he walked me home. What’s so unbelievable about it?”

“It’s not that it’s unbelievable. It just seems…never mind.”

I tap her arm. “Oh no, don’t you never mind me.”

She taps me back. “It’s nothing. I just think it seems interesting.”

“Interesting…that’s not vague at all.”

“Oh, come on, Adrienne!” she says, stopping to face me. “Can’t you see? There’s something more going on here. You should have asked him at graduation.”

“Why? Because he walked me home? He was just being a gentleman.”