Saving Tess - Chapter 1& 2

Chapter I

Do you remember when you were young and you would dream, no, plan what your life would be like when you were an adult? Everything was planned out. Who you were going to marry, what the wedding dress was going to look like, where you were going to live, kids, no kids, how many kids, the whole picket fence-two dogs-one cat- happily-ever-after dream. O f course you do. We all do it. I remember one time in specific. It was towards the end of a hot August in a small park right down the street from our ranch home in Alabama. It was a time when hopes and dreams were wildly active. I was eight. My big sister, Chelsea, was thirteen. Mom was going to call us for dinner any minute, which was why we were in the park sitting on the little bridge overlooking an old, decrepit and very unused railroad track eating watermelon from Tom, who ran the local farmer’s market, instead of our back porch. There was something about sneaking it before dinner that made it more delectable.

“Tessy, what do you want to be when you grow up?” Chelsea asked.

Without hesitation I said, “Veterinarian.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“Well, that’s what I want to be.”

“I’m going to be a singer or a model. No, I’m going to be an actress. I’ll live in L.A. with a town house in NY and go to Paris for month long vacations.”

I shrugged. Chelsea was reading too many “People” magazines that her best friend, Rosaline, was sneaking her. She certainly wasn’t getting it from home. We were dirt poor living in a three room house with no TV. Just a radio and the occasional newspaper. But if Chelsea wanted it, she would get it. She was determined, and it helped that she was a long-haired, blond beauty with crystal blue eyes. She was also popular, a drama queen, and head of the cheerleading squad. And me…

I brushed back my average brown-colored mop of unruly hair back away form my face, so I could spit out a watermelon seed to the depths below. Chelsea was curvy, I was twiggy. Chelsea was elegant and graceful; I was child-like and gawky. Chelsea was a teenager, and I was eight.

“Where would you get all that money, Chelsea?”

“I’d be rich silly. Filthy rich. And I would marry…”

“Oh, I know! I know! Benny Philips.”

“Benny Philips? Heck, no.”

“Don’t you let mom catch you cussing. And you flirt with Benny all the time.”

“’Heck’s’ not a real curse word and just because I flirt with Benny Philips doesn’t mean I have to marry him.”

“That doesn’t seem right. And ‘heck’ is too a bad word.”

“Oh, you’re just too silly.”

That was Chelsea’s answer to a lot of the things I said to her.

Chelsea continued to tell me that she wanted to marry someone dark, handsome, dashing, and mysterious. I decided I was going to share my plans for the future too.

“I’m going to be a veterinarian.”

“You said that.”

“And I’m going to live in Mr. Holland’s old stone farm house…”

“That old piece of junk?”

“…and I’m going to marry Javin Monroe…”

“Javin Monroe?”

“And have five kids.”

“You’re going to marry Javin Monroe?”

Javin Monroe moved into our sleepy, southern town five years ago with his family from Scotland. Their family sported a fabulous accent and sled-sized European car. At first they had a hard time integrating themselves into our backwards town where everyone has thick southern accents, pork-roasts on Sundays, country bands on Saturdays, one convenient store, a decrepit movie theater that only played movies made in the forties, quilting circles, and traffic laws that demanded that you drive on the right side of the road. But once the Monroes joined the town community and replaced their kiddie-pool sized automobile for an honest and true American tank, they were adopted into the family. And it helped that they were dirt poor like the rest of us.

Javin was my sister’s age and lived next door which was enough to form a fast friendship between the three of us. Chelsea, who was always interested in the male species, liked him especially because even at a young age he had all the promise of being a handsome, eligible young man. I liked him, because he didn’t care that I was five years younger, a girl, and couldn’t hit a baseball straight even though Javin would practice with me everyday after school in the park. Because of these three points (that and he was the only boy I knew that would tolerate my never-ending, pointless questions) I fathomed myself in love with him. So I was destined to become Tess Monroe with five kids.

“Five kids? I don’t want any kids,” Chelsea continued to rant. “Javin Monroe? I guess he’s cute.”

Being I called him first, I found her last comment inappropriate. There were sister rules you just don’t break and the can’t-like-the-guy-I-like rule was one of them. But Chelsea was a natural flirt, and she had been flirting with Javin for a while and would continue to do so. But at eight I really could have cared less. I was too busy trying to spit watermelon seeds into an abandoned bucket placed below the bridge. That and hoping mom was going to make cheeseburgers and chips for dinner. And how hard would I have to beg to get a bowl of chocolate ice cream after dinner? So Chelsea and I, after carefully dumping our watermelon left overs in the woods, ran home each with our own set of dreams. Funny how life never turns out the way you expect.

The story gets more painful from this point on, but it is necessary to tell it so you know how I came to be the way I am, or I should say was, and how I transformed into what I am now. A few years later after that hot August evening in the park, Mom died of an acute form of cancer. It was only a month after the diagnosis that she passed away. I was eleven and Chelsea was sixteen. Dad took it very hard. Family stayed with us and tried their best to be a comfort. Chelsea and I were both hit excruciatingly hard which was to be expected, but we dealt with it in different ways. Chelsea threw herself into her cheerleading and hung out with her friends more including plenty of boys. Anything to be away from the house, the memories, Mom…

I wrote in my diary. When that didn’t work, I went to Dad. He couldn’t handle his own emotions let alone mine, so I ran to Javin. I didn’t want to bother him, but it was so easy to talk to him. Everyday at school he would say, “You’re coming by the house tonight, right Tessy?” Or, “Do you need a ride home, Tessy?” Of course I would always say yes and end up crying about Mom, and he would put his arms around me and tell me this was a good thing. After a while the crying turned to soulful talking then acceptance until I felt I was healed. Still, we kept the tradition of spending sometime with each other after school playing baseball, or rather, me attempting to improve my swing or my arm. Javin was always patient with me. I also appreciated that he never paid attention to the teasing he received for hanging out with a dorky girl five years his junior.

As I got closer to Javin, I grew farther apart from Chelsea. I always invited her to hang out with us, but after a few times she got angry and said she had more important things to do than throw around a ball. Our trio was breaking up, and I felt I was losing some part of myself.

About a year and a half after mom’s death, just when I felt things were starting to calm down, Dad dropped a bombshell. He was engaged to Vanessa Stevens. Being an innocent country girl in a sheltered Alabama town, I didn’t foresee this coming. Chelsea did. “Why do you think they were spending so much time together?” she asked. I didn’t answer. All I could think about was Mom.

Chelsea shelled-up once again, and I ran to Javin. He patiently listened as I ranted and raved about Dad disgracing Mom’s memory and how was I suppose to sleep knowing they were in the bedroom next door. We didn’t play baseball that much that day. While my anger improved my throwing force, it disrupted my aim. After being hit so many times, Javin called in quits and listened to me instead. Javin got me to the point where I was willing to try to accept her, not as a new mother, but a new friend.

Vanessa didn’t want to be friends. She didn’t want kids. She wanted the house all to herself. Just her and Dad. Chelsea and I didn’t enter into the picture.

I was sixteen. Chelsea and Javin were twenty-one. Dad told us he was dying. His only hope of survival was surgery. A surgery we couldn’t nearly afford.


CHAPTER II

“Chelsea! Chelsea! Chelsea, wait up!” I ran after my sister as she headed towards the post office.

“What is it,” she asked in an annoyed voice.

I was breathing heavily trying to catch my breath.

“Look.” I handed her a newspaper clipping. She grabbed it and quickly scanned it. She flushed, and then turned white.

“Needed: Fresh faces for modeling agency. Excellent pay. Miami, Florida.”

“I over heard Mrs. Jenkins talking. She said her granddaughter did something like that. She made thousands in one month. One month!”

“How’d we know Jenkins knows what she’s talking about?”

“Chelsea, can you imagine in six months between the extra jobs we’ve all taken on, the community donations we’ve been getting, and the modeling money you’ll be pulling in. We could do it! Dad can have the surgery.”

For the first time since the crushing announcement, I actually felt life was possible to live again.

“Wait. Back-up. Me?”

I gave Chelsea a confused and rather annoyed look.

“Of course you. Model ling’s your dream. At least one of them any way, and you not only fulfill your dream and get out of the house, out of Alabama, but you can save Dad’s life.”

“There are thousands of girls applying for this…”

“You’re better than them. And we have to try for Dad.”

Chelsea gave the ad back.

“Forget it.”

“Forget it? I can’t believe this.”

“I’m not doing it.” She picked at her oversized sweatshirt, an odd garment to wear in Alabama. If fact she was wearing a lot of baggy sweatshirts lately.

“Chelsea, think about this.”

“I did.” She continued her walk towards the post office.

“Chelsea, you’re not going to walk away without talking about this.”

“You do it.”

“What?”

“You do it. You model.”

“You…are you mocking me?”

“Oh, please, Tessy. Like I don’t have better things to do.”

“You’re the beauty of the family. The…the natural actress. The singer. For havens sake you won Miss Teen Alabama.”

“That was eight years ago, Tessy.”

“That’s not the point.” Could she not see how absurd this was? I was becoming desperate.

“Tessy, just stop it. If you want me to stroke your ego and sweet talk you saying what a natural beauty you are and how you’re going to win just forget it.”

I wish I cried. It would have relieved some of the tension that had trapped our family since Mom died and had only escalated since Dad got sick. But I didn’t. I threw Chelsea up against Mrs. Price’s old, rickety, white picket fence instead and nearly scared Mrs. Price, who was planting tulips on the other side, half to death.

“Don’t you dare, Chelsea,” I threatened in hushed tones. “Don’t you dare. Now I don’t know what’s going on with you whether you’ve given up all your dreams or you’re just being a glorified idiot, but quite frankly I don’t care. I do care that Dad’s dieing and his only hope of surviving is winning a modeling spot in Miami. So forget whatever selfish thoughts are running through your head, because quite frankly you’re the best chance Dad’s got.”

My force scared Chelsea, but in all honesty, it scared me more. This was the first time I expressed my rage at the insanity of our life. Mom was gone with a wicked stepmother in her place, Dad was being eaten away by cancer, and I had a sister who I couldn’t even talk to anymore.

“Tessy…,” Chelsea’s voice sounded weak and feeble. “I can’t do it.”

I stared into her eyes for what seemed like hours looking for anything that told me she wasn’t serious. I found my answer. I felt nauseated.


I knocked on the backdoor of the Monroe’s old house. I knew Javin would be home from work. He worked with someone in the next town over in construction. Javin was never going to get rich doing it, but it supported him and his aging parents as well as his passion, photography.

I knocked again a little louder and more franticly. My persistence was rewarded when Javin opened the door. He was tall with thick, dark hair and crystal blue eyes. Hard physical labor made him powerful and muscular in appearance. He leaned towards the quiet, insightful type, but you knew just by looking at him that he was a force to be reckoned with. All the local girls swooned in his presence. I thought it ridiculous.

“Javin, I need you to take a picture of me.”

“I just don’t get it. This is Chelsea’s dream. She’s the one who should be doing this. I just don’t understand.”

Javin and I were walking in the park trying to find an ideal spot for a glamour shot. Or, rather, he was searching and listening to me while I dumped all my recent woos from the last hour.

“Perhaps her plans for her future changed.”

“You know Chelsea as well as I do. She would want this. Even if she didn’t, and I know she can be selfish, she wouldn’t be selfish enough to the point of refusing Dad his surgery.”

“This spot seems to be the best place.”

It was a bright, sunny day which was a photographer’s nightmare, but Javin found a shady spot under a large oak tree on a crumbling stone wall. I plopped myself down (and plopped was a good work for it) in a very ungraceful manner and smiled. Javin grinned back crossing his arms in amusement.

“Miami’s not going to know what to do with you.”

“What?” All I had to do was smile. Right?

“Take your hair out.”

“Take it out?”

“Take it out.”

I took out my ponytail and shook out my wild mass.

“Better. Now cross your legs.”

“You mean like a girl?” I teased.

Javin took the camera away from his eye and gave me a look.

“Humor me.”

He took millions of pictures at every angle and with me in different poses. We took some silly shots when the serious ones got to be too much. Being photographed by Javin was fun, easy. I couldn’t imagine there being anyone else doing it.

Back at the Monroe’s in Javin’s dark room, he developed the pictures one by one. I sat on the floor in the little room that was bathed in a red glow. I loved this room. I helped Javin build it.

“I’ll only do a couple of jobs and be home before the summer’s over. Maybe take a few jobs here or there. Until Chelsea comes to her senses, that is.” I was aware of how desperate I sounded.

“Tessy, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. If it makes you sick inside…”

“No. I want Daddy to live.” What kind of choice was that?

“I don’t know why I’m even bothering. I’ll never make it. A tomboy from Alabama.”

Javin held up a finished picture to inspect it.

“Oh, you’ll make it alright, Tessy,” he whispered.

I peered over his shoulder and inhaled sharply. I took the picture from his hands and stared.

“Javin…Javin, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“It looks nothing like me. I look…older, and sophisticated, and…” Did I dare say it? “I look pretty.”

“You look beautiful, Tess.”

There was an awkward silence, and then Javin took the picture out of my hands and hung it up on the rack.

“It needs to finish drying, and you need to get home.”

There was something in his eyes, but it was too dark to see. I left and ran towards home thinking over and over again, What if I do make it?


What happened after that is so blurry even today. Javin was right, I did get accepted. I didn’t know whether to cheer or to cry. I wasn’t one to cry, and I didn’t feel particularly happy either, so I didn’t do either.

Dad was upset, which I couldn’t understand. Chelsea was furious which I did understand. The only good thing was that I would escape the evil stepmother, Vanessa. She was delighted at my departure and even more delighted that Javin offered to drive me to the airport so she wouldn’t have to do it. I had managed to keep my focus and goal of why I was doing this, but as soon as I stepped into Javin’s car I lost it. I kept asking myself, Why? Why me? Why now?

We tried talking. It was too hard. I ended up with my head against Javin’s shoulder as he drove. The last thing I remember before stepping onto the plane was Javin. He held my face in his hands.

“If you want to come home anytime anywhere, you call me, you write me, you get in touch with me, and I promise you, Tessy, I’ll come for you. I’ll come for you.”


He never came. We wrote and called each other everyday. My family deserted me, Dad was too sick to speak to me, Vanessa just wanted my pay check, and Chelsea hated my guts. Javin was my lifeline. The last call that I got from Javin he told me he was moving, but he had something important to tell me. The line was fuzzy, so he told me he would write me and to send my letters to my family to forward until he got a phone number and permanent address.

That night, unexpectedly my agent moved me from Miami to New York City. Javin didn’t have my new address and number and I didn’t have his. I was dependent on my crumbling family to keep me in touch with Javin.

That night changed my life. I realized that I was drowning in my so called "career." The cattiness and superfical lifestyle was too much for me to bear. I needed to be home with the people who loved me. I felt as if I were going crazy. Photoshoot after photoshoot. Was I pretty enough? Thin enough? Was the "new" talent going to put me out of a job, chew me up and spit me out into the cold uncaring world? I needed to escape. I needed someone to rescue me. I wrote a desperate letter to Javin with a second one to my family to forward it to him immediately. But he never called. He never wrote. He never came.