Twenty Nine: A Distant Memory
The spring of 2002 was a roller coaster for me… an extremely fast one. In February I was still living at home with my psychotic mother and her even more psychotic boyfriend, in March I was hopelessly in love with the man of my dreams, and my heart was broken the first week of April when Natalie called to tell Taylor she’d be having his baby. The entire Hanson family began frantically planning a wedding immediately. Taylor flew out to Georgia, bought a ring in Atlanta, and presented it to her in her childhood bedroom. It was nothing less than nauseating to hear him tell the tale to all of us at dinner when he returned.
Living with him was awkward. Sometimes I’d feel his eyes on me from across the room- eyes I tried to ignore and refused to acknowledge. Sometimes I met his eyes to let him know I saw him and he’d clear his throat and walk away. He’d promised me he’d stop pursuing me, and he’d kept to that promise. In fact, we rarely spoke.
We had so much to say to each other. Sometimes when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, I’d walk past Taylor’s room just to see if he was awake. I could usually see him, through his cracked open door, sitting on his bed in thought. He’d give me a weak smile and I could tell he wanted to ask me to join him and he wanted to pour out his soul to me. He wanted to tell me about his worries about the wedding and his stress about the album, but he never did.
At the end of April when I found out from my guidance counselor that I was given a full scholarship to OSU, I sped home and wrapped my arms around Diana, tears springing to my eyes I was so relieved. I wanted to race up the stairs and throw my arms around Taylor too. I knew he’d be so happy for me. But I didn’t. There was a barrier between us that had never been there before, but I knew if I tried to tear it down I would risk giving him the wrong idea and turning our lives messy. Being distant was better than letting him go on loving me. I expected my love for him to fade each day, but it didn’t.
I fell in love with him sitting across from him at the breakfast table, watching him mindlessly flip through a discarded TV guide as he robotically ate his cereal. When he slammed the phone down after arguing with one his producers and he laughed until soda came out of his nose, I fell in love with him. Of course, he laughed less and less. In one month he began to develop wrinkles around his eyes that made him look like the father he was becoming. His sleeping patterns became irregular and sometimes he’d still be awake when I woke up in the morning for school. We all tried to ignore the fact that he’d taken to smoking regularly. One night Diana eventually confronted him about it- told him it wasn’t smart to develop a nicotine addiction when you’re expecting a baby and lecturing him on the effects of second-hand smoke. He stormed out of the house with his pack of cigarettes, yelling over his shoulder that he didn’t give a damn.
Sometimes Taylor was excited about the baby, and sometimes I couldn’t help but think he was hoping for a miscarriage. I’d seen him once or twice flipping through his mother’s parenting magazines. When he was caught, he just tossed the magazines aside and excused himself from the room. Most of the time though, he talked about the baby like it had ruined his life.
He flew out to Georgia every other week or so in order to help make wedding arrangements with Natalie’s pushy mother and be there to be support her. He never said goodbye to anyone before he left- just packed a suitcase and drove off to the airport. He was drifting from the rest of us and we could all feel it. He didn’t even say hello to me when he returned. Our conversations were short and pointless. The “good friend” goal just wasn’t possible considering our history, it seemed.
“Are you watching this or can I change the channel?” I’d ask him when I found him sitting in the living room staring at his hands even though the television was on.
“Go ahead.”
“Do you care what I put on?”
“Just don’t put on MTV.”
“I won’t.”
That was the extent of our conversations. Once during the beginning of May we were both sitting by the pool that we had just opened for the summer, him with a guitar and I reading a novel. At one point he stopped his strumming and his muttered singing and turned to me.
“Are you okay?” he asked, simply.
I frowned, “I’m just studying…”
“I know… I don’t mean right now. I just mean… are you okay?”
I paused and thought about his question, trying to understand exactly what he meant although I think at the time I didn’t really get it. He was asking if I was doing okay with everything… living with him, losing him, watching him plan his wedding. I don’t think I realized how broad of a question it was at the time.
“Why… do I seem upset or something?”
“No. I’m just asking. Are you okay?”
I nodded, “I’m fine… are you okay?”
He nodded and kicked his feet gently in the water. “I’m okay.”
That was the closest we ever got to talking about what happened, and looking back, I realized he lied. He wasn’t okay. He was falling apart. He was drinking close to 10 cups of coffee a day just to give himself some sort of spunk. Every song he wrote sounded desperate and depressed. He talked about the future like it didn’t exist.
“You want to add two bedrooms to the pool house?” he dad asked him one evening, looking up the blueprint he was looking at and eyeing Taylor who was walking into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, I assumed. He hadn’t had one in at least an hour so I figured he was due.
Taylor shrugged, “I don’t care.”
“Taylor, you’re going to be living there. Give me a straight answer. How many do you want to add?”
Taylor looked in the empty coffee pot and sighed loudly since there was none left. “I don’t care! Whatever you think. You just pick something, tell me how much it’s going to cost, and I’ll pay for it. I don’t care what it looks like.”
“You’re going to be living there, Taylor. How can you not care?”
“I just don’t,” he muttered as he grabbed his keys and headed for the garage door. “I’m going to Starbucks. Be back later.”
He was crumbling before us and there was nothing anyone could do. The circumstances were a result of his own actions, and as much as each of us wanted to go back and fix it all for him, the truth was we couldn’t. He had to get married, he had to father the child, and he had to keep on trying to be happy no matter how hard it seemed for him. Diana signed him up for therapy once but he refused to go. He preferred to release his emotion in lyrics and late night talks with Isaac. He was like a different guy. He was so different from the Taylor I originally met. His spunk was gone. He acted like it pained him to speak, when before he could happily talk your ear off. His optimism faded and he rarely smiled. By the end of May, I could hardly even remember the Taylor I’d fallen in love with.
Most of the time though, I hardly had time to watch Taylor breaking. I was too busy with everything else in my life. I was watching the kids everyday after school and applying for housing at OSU. I was filling out financial aid papers, trying to study for finals at school, and still trying to assimilate into the Hanson family. I began to grow close to Isaac, who often felt left out since Zac was always on the phone with his girlfriend- Kate- and Taylor just never seemed to talk at all. When Zac and Taylor flew out of Atlanta together, Isaac and I would rent movies and go out for ice-cream. He told me about all the trials they were fighting with their record label and I couldn’t imagine how Taylor was dealing with all of that and the wedding too. Isaac expressed worry about Taylor, but like the rest of the Hanson family he placed a lot of blame on Taylor for getting himself into the situation that he did.
I spent my time in the evenings becoming closer and closer with the Hanson family- well, all except for Taylor who never seemed to come down for dinner anymore anyway. I grew closer to everyone one of them except Jessica, who was never mean to me, but I think she felt I was taking her role away from her. She was the oldest Hanson daughter, and suddenly Zoe was asking me to braid her hair and Diana we bonding with me over making dinner every evening. I eventually gave Diana the heads up about it and she started spending more individual time with Jessica, and eventually her attitude towards me began to fade.
I spent April and May becoming more used to being a member of the Hanson family. That is what I was becoming really, a member of their family. Isaac joked once that now that Taylor and I were broken up, my mother felt like she could completely treat me like one of her children without it seeming like incest. On the positive side she began to randomly buy me things. Some days I would come into my room to find a bag of Victoria’s secret underwear or a novel she’d finished and wanted to give to me. Eventually I got used to just thanking her and enjoying it. The downside of integrating into the family was that suddenly I was being yelled at for accidentally leaving lights on in rooms I wasn’t using and coming home later than I said.
One time I said I went out to a park to just do some reading on a Sunday afternoon and I completely lost track of time. When I got home I was 10 minutes late for dinner and walked in on all of them already eating. I sat down and received an annoyed look from Diana- probably one of my first annoyed looks from her ever. It was amazing how my mother could scream at me and I wouldn’t care, but just a look from her was unsettling.
“Sorry I’m late,” I told her as I grabbed a roll from a basket and set it on my plate.
“I’m sorry you are too,” she said pointedly.
“You’re gonna have to do dishes,” Zac smirked from across the table.
“All on your own after dinner,” Diana nodded. “Don’t be late for dinner in the future.”
I learned very quickly that family dinners were something she took very seriously. I’d heard her get in a million fights with Taylor because he was neglecting to come down to dinner when called. He would just come down afterwards and bring left-overs up to his room. Eventually she told him if he wasn’t going to eat with the family, he wouldn’t eat at all. Just to spite her I guess, he did just that. He stopped eating dinner. After a few days of it she finally started cooking all of his favorite meals every night of the week and he eventually relented and joined us again. We all grew sick of lasagna and chicken parmesan quickly, but were glad to see him at the table so no one complained.
I met Natalie for the first time when she flew to Oklahoma in late May. The wedding was three weeks later and so she flew out to show Jessica the bridesmaid dress she picked out. The general Hanson family consensus about Natalie was that they liked her, but they weren’t crazy about her. Everyone was polite about her to Taylor and friendly when she was around, but no one seemed completely thrilled about her or the wedding. Sure, Diana enjoyed talking to her on the phone sometimes and helping her pick out things, but for the most part the wedding was just something that had to happen- not something the family was looking forward to.
Taylor nervously walked over to me with her in tow while I was sitting in the living room trying to figure out the various buttons on the new cell phone Walker had surprised me with as an early graduation gift.
“Hey Gab…” he cleared his throat. “I just figured I should introduce you to Natalie… she just flew in this morning.”
I looked up and expected to see a gorgeous diva, but she was simply pretty. She looked pretty down to earth, to be honest, and if you looked really hard you could see a very subtle bump on her stomach. I forced a fake smile and tried to hold back any resentment I felt for her.
“Natalie… this is… I’ve told you about Gabrielle,” he said, clearing his throat again- something he did out of nerves. “She has lived with us for just over two months now.”
She flashed me an equally forced grin and extended her hand, “Nice to meet you,” she said in a southern drawl.
I shook it, inwardly flinching at having to touch the woman who’d caused Taylor to break my heart.
“It’s good to finally meet you,” I lied.
“We’ll leave you alone… just figured you two should be introduced properly,” he said. As they turned and began to walk away, Taylor tossed an apologetic look over his shoulder.
During her visit Natalie was helpful in the kitchen. She chopped vegetables and mixed sauces- taking some of my responsibilities and giving me an opportunity to lounge around the house watching television with Isaac. As each day passed, I felt more and more liked I belonged, and less and less like I needed to earn my keep. I knew I was becoming too relaxed when one afternoon Walker hollered at me for being too lazy to park my car to the side of the driveway and black half of the family’s cars. As I sheepishly ran outside to move the car, I couldn’t help but smile. It felt good to be part of a family.
News got around school that I’d broken up with Taylor, but no one knew why. The Hanson camp was very silent about the entire marriage. Taylor had been talking on the phone to his record company and publicist and was constantly being advised about how to handle the wedding with the fans.
We couldn’t tell friends about the marriage or the pregnancy, online registries couldn’t be made for the expected baby, and the chapel in Georgia where the wedding was to be held knew that it was all top secret. I knew Taylor was scared of telling his fans about the wedding, but I think at that point it was the least of his worries.
I remember that I graduated on May 25th- two weeks before Taylor’s wedding. The entire family dressed up for the occasion and stood out in the lawn at my high school taking pictures and cheering when my name was called. Zoe handed me lilies at the end of the graduation and Diana forced me to pose with each and every member of the family. I remember how awkward it was as Taylor and I wrapped our arms around each other and uncomfortably smiled for the camera. He hadn’t touched me in so long. We were always careful not to bump into each other in the hall or let our fingers brush when handing off the remote. As he wrapped his arm around my waist, so many feelings hit me again and I was off in my own world during my graduation dinner at a local steakhouse.
The best thing about graduation was my mother. She showed up without Brad. It was strange that even though I resented my Mom and hated her for so much in my life, I was relieved to see her standing in the audience next to the Hanson’s. She talked to Diana just enough to maintain her pride but to be polite. She even let then Hanson’s pay for her dinner. Honestly, I think she was jealous of me as we all sat around the huge table at the restaurant. She could see what a wonderful family I had wandered into and she was still stuck with Brad and Bobby back at home. But somehow she seemed to put away her jealousy and it actually began to seem like she was simply… happy for me. She gave me a 10 dollar calling card for my graduation gift, not knowing I’d been given a cell phone already. I didn’t tell her about the cell phone and just promised to use it to call her once in awhile while I was away at school.
The night of my graduation I was invited to a school-wide graduation party at a local YMCA. Diana insisted that I go since I didn’t go to prom and so I ended up asking Isaac to come with me. As much as I loved Ike and appreciated him being a good sport about it, something felt off as I walked into the YMCA with him. It felt like it was supposed to be Taylor.
Isaac and I returned home at 4 A.M. that night and he passed out on the couch before even making it to his bedroom. He rarely stayed up late anyway. As I closed my bedroom door and began to take off the damp bathing suit I’d been swimming in, I heard a knock on the door.
“One second,” I said, quickly pulling a sweatshirt over my head and pajamas pants on. I opened the door to see Taylor standing there in sweatpants and a Bob Dylan t-shirt. His hair was messy and his eyes were tired.
“Hi…” I said quietly, stepping back so he could come in.
“Hi,” he nodded, stepping in and holding out a shoebox to me. “It’s a graduation gift… I’d have wrapped it but I couldn’t find any wrapping paper around the house that wasn’t for Christmas.”
I nodded and took the box hesitantly from him, sitting down on the bed and slowly lifting the cover. I smiled at the new pair of red Pumas inside. He’d remembered my size and everything.
“It was sort of… well the first thing I bought you,” he shrugged. “And you wore them out already…” he nodded at the discarded pair of beaten up sneakers in the corner of my room. I’d worn them almost everyday since he’d bought them for me.
“Thank you.”
“I figured it’d be a good gift,” he added.
“It is a good gift. Thank you very much. You didn’t need to get me anything.”
He nodded and looked down at his bare feet, tucking his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. “I wanted to.” We stood there in an uncomfortable silence before he cleared his throat and added, with a smile, “Well, happy graduation. Only like a decade left of school to go.”
It was good to see him smile. I nodded.
“I’ll let you go to bed,” he mumbled and then turned to leave. Before he left and closed the door, he added over his shoulder, “Sleep… sleep tight.”
It baffled me how I could be so comfortable with him only months earlier… comfortable enough to have sex with him, tell him I loved him, hold him like I needed him. How could we have gone from being so close to so distant? It was like we hardly knew each other. It was like he talked to me only to be courteous but I was nothing more to him than a stranger on the street. A part of me knew I’d asked for it, but I never imagined we’d drift that far or that quickly. I wanted my Taylor back… not the Taylor he’d become but the Taylor I remembered.
That June, the weekend of the wedding, as I laid out the dress I’d worn to the Spring Social and packed it for my flight to Georgia, I realized the odds of getting him back were decreasing by the day. Within a few days, he’d be married and grown and the Taylor I knew would just be a distant memory.