Jake Understood

by Penelope Ward

  I cleared my throat. “It’s a dragon.”

  “I couldn’t tell at first if it was a seahorse or a dragon.”

  “Definitely not a seahorse.” I laughed and looked down at her dainty hand on my arm. “You know, long after I got this, I read something once that the dragon is apparently a symbol of strength and power. It also said that the power of the dragon must be balanced with wisdom. Otherwise, the greed that comes with that power turns him into a ravenous creature with an insatiable appetite.”

  Little did she know, that was a cryptic description of my exact dilemma when it came to her.

  The tension in the room was thick when she said, “Wow. That’s pretty intense.”

  “Yeah.” I touched my finger to her neck. “What’s this, a sea urchin?”

  When she looked down, I slid my hand up and pinched her nose.

  She laughed. “You tricked me.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time today.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s for sure.”

  Several seconds of silence passed. She bit her bottom lip nervously as I imagined sucking on it. You could tell she had something on her mind.

  The words finally came out. “You know, I was really scared about moving here, but it was something I knew I had to do for myself.”

  “Why did you choose New York of all places? That’s like jumping right into the fire.”

  “As much as it scared me, I’ve always dreamt of living here. I told myself if I got into the nursing program, then that was the sign I needed to make the move. I felt so out of place that first day, though. I really considered just going back home.”

  “I’m really glad you didn’t,” I whispered.

  “Me, too.” She glanced over at the wall and hesitated. “You make me feel safe. I realize I don’t know you from Adam, but what I do know is that I feel more secure knowing you’re here. Is that strange?”

  Pressure built in my chest. Hearing her say that felt so good and so awful at the same time. She was right. She didn’t know me from Adam and had no idea how true that statement was.

  You should get out of here, Nina. Please.

  I swallowed and said, “No. It’s not strange. I like how honest you are. One of the first vibes I got from you was that you wear your heart on your sleeve. You’re not afraid to make a fool of yourself, either, for the greater good. That says a lot about a person.”

  “Thanks…I think?” She smiled and lightly punched my arm.

  There was so much more I wished I could say to her, but it all stayed inside of me.

  Then, Nina looked straight into my eyes with a permeating stare when she said, “I think sometimes people come into our lives at a certain time for a reason.”

  That was the truth. I’d always believed that I was meant to meet Ivy when I did because she was going to need me. At the same time, it felt like destiny in a different way with Nina. I just couldn’t figure out why the man upstairs would lead me to her if he needed me to take care of Ivy.

  She stayed for another several minutes, opening up to me about her first panic attack that happened in a dark elevator during a high school field trip. She just kept thanking me again for seeing her through things earlier but said she planned to spend the rest of the night studying. She wanted to make sure to get an A on her next exam to avoid another excursion for a while. I couldn’t say I blamed her.

  My stomach felt unsettled because tomorrow I’d be leaving for Boston. It was the first time since moving to New York that I almost considered staying back in New York for the weekend. But I couldn’t.

  I decided to make Nina an origami bat that I’d sneak into her room when she went to take her evening shower.

  I jotted down some potential poems in my notebook before writing anything in permanent ink inside of the bat.

  Well, what do you know? I was a poet and didn’t know it.

  What I almost wrote:

  Sorry you pissed yourself.

  I hope we’re still friends.

  Remind me next time,

  To pack some Depends.

  What I wished I could have written:

  Don’t thank me for helping you through.

  I should be thanking you.

  Getting lost in your smile,

  Made it all worthwhile.

  What I actually wrote:

  You didn’t run…you saw it through.

  Mr. Bat is proud of you.

  CHAPTER 6

  Past

  Reality has a way of smacking you in the face sometimes. That weekend, my visit with Ivy was one of the worst in recent weeks and definitely served as a wake-up call.

  On Saturday morning, she seemed to be in a great mood, so I decided to take her shopping that afternoon for winter clothes downtown. We were inside Macy’s when she started having one of her delusions about me.

  Ivy was trying on some sweaters in the dressing room. Nearly twenty minutes had gone by, and she still hadn’t come out. She’d only taken in a few items with her, so it shouldn’t have taken her that long. Even though I was standing right outside the fitting area, I started to worry that something was very wrong.

  The attendant had disappeared, and Ivy wasn’t responding to me. My shoulder brushed by a bunch of plastic hangers on a rack as I barged my way in and spotted Ivy’s striped socks underneath one of the stalls.

  I knocked on the door. “Ivy, what’s going on? Is everything okay?”

  “Who are you, and what do you want from me?”

  Great.

  “You know who I am. It’s Jake.”

  “Leave me alone.” Her lighter clicked, and smoke started to fill the room.

  I banged on the door. “Ivy! You can’t smoke in here.”

  She threw a wool sweater over the door, and it hit me in the face. “Get away from me, or I’m calling the police.”

  My heart was racing because I knew all too well where this was headed. Needing to calm down, I let out a deep breath.

  “Ivy, please open the door.”

  She started screaming at the top of her lungs, “Help me! Someone help me! He’s trying to hurt me!”

  An attendant rushed in. “Sir, you need to get out of here right now! This is a women’s dressing room. And she can’t be smoking in here.”

  No shit. Really?

  “He’s trying to kill me!” Ivy yelled.

  “Lady, you don’t understand. My wife is mentally ill. She locked herself in there, and I’m trying to get her out.”

  Before she could respond, store security came in and began dragging me out of the room.

  I protested, “Someone needs to open that door and get her out of there.”

  “Take him away. He’s trying to hurt me!” she screamed from behind the door.

  “Why should I believe you over her?” said the burly man still holding my arm.

  This could not be happening to me.

  “Look, just give me a minute to call her case worker. I’ll let you talk to her. She’ll explain.”

  Gina’s number was on my speed dial. She picked up. Thank God.

  “Gina, I’m at Macy’s with Ivy, and she’s having an episode. She’s telling people I’m trying to hurt her. I need you to vouch for me and talk to the security people here, so they can help me get her home.”

  The man spent about three minutes on the phone with Gina while the attendant unlocked the dressing room door. Ivy was huddled in the corner of the fitting room and wouldn’t move.

  When the security guard got off the phone, he turned to the female employee. “Keep the dressing room closed to the public until he can talk her out.” Then, he looked at me with a sympathetic expression. “I’ll let you handle this. Let us know if you need any help.”

  My voice was low. “Thank you.”

  Ivy stayed still in the same corner and was no longer saying anything. Experience told me she needed some time to come down from one of these freak outs.

  After several minutes, I bent down slowly and reached my han
d out even slower. “Baby girl, we need to get you home. Please.”

  She had tears in her eyes as she looked up at me. “Jake?”

  “Yeah. It’s me.” I smiled. “You’re okay.”

  Ivy took my hand and let me lift her up. I grabbed the two sweaters that were strewn on the floor and hung them up.

  She caught me off guard when she wrapped her arms around my neck. “I’m scared.”

  The only thing worse than Ivy’s delusions were the fleeting moments when she’d become aware of her illness. I couldn’t begin to imagine the confusion and terror trapped inside her mind. It broke my heart when she’d look at me, her eyes pleading for help, because there was really nothing I could do to take the pain away.

  “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me,” she pleaded.

  I held her tighter. “I won’t. I always see you, Ivy. I know who you are. Don’t worry.”

  She began to cry harder onto my shoulders, and my own eyes started to sting. This would never get easier. I had no problem assuring her that I would always be there, though. How anyone with a conscience could abandon someone in her situation was incomprehensible to me. Everyone has a cross. Ivy’s and mine were one and the same. I was somehow chosen to help her carry it in this life. I’d always believed that.

  We took the Orange Line train back to the group home. It was a quiet and uneventful ride. I stayed with her until about ten o’clock when I left to head home to my sister’s house. Allison, her husband Cedric and their twin girls, Holly and Hannah, lived in the Brookline suburb of Boston, about thirty minutes from Ivy. They offered me their spare bedroom for my weekend stays.

  Before I got to their door, I turned around, deciding to head to the neighborhood bar around the corner for a quick drink to clear my head. After the day I’d had, it would have to be something strong.

  Beacon’s Tavern was dimly-lit with a few televisions playing different cable sports channels. It was surprisingly empty and quiet aside from a couple of guys with strong Boston accents arguing over one of the games.

  “Vodka straight, please, Lenny.”

  The bartender poured my drink and placed it in front of me on the counter. “Haven’t seen you here in a while, Jake.”

  “Just trying to stay out of trouble, I guess,” I said before throwing back the liquid courage. The vodka burned my throat as I downed half of it in one gulp.

  Avoiding the bar had actually been quite intentional lately. My days with Ivy were always long ones. Because of my weeklong absences, I tried to make the most of my time with her. After leaving the group home on Saturdays, I usually went back to my sister’s for a late dinner of leftovers then slept. But occasionally, I’d hit the bar, and it usually ended up with my drinking too much. Waking up with a hangover on Sunday mornings when I had to return to Ivy’s was not ideal.

  Lenny placed a second vodka in front of me even though I hadn’t asked for one. “A lot of guys would be just fine with your kind of trouble, pretty boy.”

  He was clearly referring to the last time I was in here a few months ago when I left with an attractive blonde named Debra. She and a friend were the only two females in the bar that night and were being hit on by pretty much every single patron. At one point, this drunk dude was coming on too strongly, and Debra looked really uncomfortable. I walked over and pretended to know her, hoping to take his attention away. When he finally got the hint, she and I started talking and ended up getting along well. She was about ten years older than me and in the middle of a divorce. Like me, she said she wasn’t looking to get into a relationship but confessed that she hadn’t had sex with anyone since her marriage ended.

  She asked me to have a night cap with her because her two kids were apparently with their father for the weekend. Debra ended up going down on me within the first two minutes after arriving at her apartment, and we had sex three times. She screamed so loudly when she orgasmed, they probably heard it at Fenway Park.

  She kept begging me to fuck her again, saying no one had ever made her come the way I had. After that night, Debra wouldn’t stop calling and texting me. Even though I made it clear I wasn’t interested in getting involved with her, she insisted that she needed to see me again, basically doing a total one-eighty. That was the main reason I’d avoided coming back to the bar for so long since she only lived down the street, and I was sure she’d been back to look for me.

  Briefly looking behind my shoulder, I shrugged. “Not interested in getting into any more trouble if you know what I mean, Lenny.”

  Of course, the encounter with Debra was before Nina came into the picture. No other woman had entered my sexual consciousness since. Swirling the remainder of my drink around in the glass, my mind drifted to my roommate again as it typically did lately. I stayed lost in my thoughts for the better part of an hour before throwing a twenty down and exiting the bar.

  The rest of that weekend was spent reflecting on the reality of my situation as it related to Nina. It was easier to think straight when we weren’t under the same roof. Even if I were to let something happen between us, it would all be a lie. She deserved better than a guy who wasn’t up front with her and could never fully be there for her. She deserved better than to be pursued by a married man. Despite the fact that she made me feel more alive than I probably ever had, it was becoming more necessary by the day to distance myself. It needed to start immediately. This was for her own good and ultimately, mine.

  ***

  Demons by Imagine Dragons played on my iPod as the subway approached my stop back in Brooklyn. It was ironic because the lyrics described to a tee how I saw myself. I was hiding demons, sure, but if she looked closely enough at me, I felt like Nina should have been able to see that they were there. I often wondered why she never asked me what I did every weekend in Boston. It was as if she knew the answer was something she might not want to hear.

  As I walked down Lincoln toward our apartment, I thought back to the same time one week ago and how excited I was then to be able to see Nina again. But after my rough weekend with Ivy and the epiphany I had, the approach home tonight was downright painful now that I’d made the decision to stay away from my roommate. The tutoring would have to be it, mainly because I didn’t know how to explain my way out of it.

  To add to my miserable state, it started pouring rain. I just wanted to get home, shut my door, take off my wet clothes, maybe rub one off and have a cigarette.

  Nothing about this night felt right. Even Mrs. Ballsworthy wasn’t at the window like she normally was at all hours. Being told to go “fuck myself” was something I’d come to rely on.

  A weird feeling followed me all the way up the stairs to the apartment.

  Even though Nina’s door was closed, longing developed at the pit of my stomach as I passed her room. Not even a minute home, and I was wishing I could see her. This was going to be one of the hardest weeks of my life.

  When I turned the light on in my room, my heart nearly stopped.

  I stood frozen in the doorway, unsure of how to handle the sight that greeted me. Nina lay sprawled across my bed, her golden hair covering my pillow. My sketchbooks were all over the bed.

  What. The. Fuck.

  This should have made me livid, but mainly, it just confused the hell out of me. The normal thing to do would have been to wake her up and ask her what the hell she was doing snooping through my things. Instead, I threw my backpack down and just stood there taking in the sight of her in my bed.

  Nina was in my bed.

  Her beautiful ass was facing me as she curled into my mattress. I moved closer to stand over her and just watched her breathing. She must have sensed me because her body stirred, and then she started to wake up. She jumped up so fast you would have thought I’d lit a firecracker under her ass.

  “Jake…I can explain,” she said in a hoarse voice.

  I was mad at her, not for being curious and snooping, though. I was mad because seeing her in my bed undid every fucking bit of resolve I’d built
up on the ride home.

  “What the fuck, Nina?”

  A small stream of water from my wet hair dripped down my forehead. Everything was still except for the sound of the rain pelting my window. The ability to speak totally escaped me as she continued to look up at me in fear. She thought I was angry at her. If she only knew the thoughts that were floating through my sexually frustrated mind, how I wished I could take it out on her hard in a different way than she was probably imagining.

  She started to speak. “Um…a few hours ago, I was alone in the house, and your door was open. I had thought I left the math workbook in here, so I came inside. I noticed these sketchbooks. I only meant to peek in at the top one, but when I saw how amazing the first drawing was…I just couldn’t stop looking.”

  I swallowed hard, knowing that she’d been looking at drawings of Ivy, drawings of my father, even though she had no idea about the meaning behind them. I thanked my lucky stars that I’d nixed the idea of sketching her one night last week because she would have seen that, too.

  A mental war continued to be waged inside my head as to whether I should kick her out or ask her to stay.

  She continued, “I must have closed my eyes and fallen asleep.” Her voice was shaking. She reminded me of a shivering puppy. “I am really sorry. I should have never thought it was okay to look at your stuff. For the record, they are the most phenomenal drawings I have ever seen.”

  My chest tightened at the compliment. Trying to buy more time to think, I started to stack the sketchpads on top of each other and returned them to their rightful place.

  “Again, I’m sorry.”

  She threw me off guard when she suddenly got up from the bed. I instinctively grabbed her wrist to stop her. “Where are you going?”

  I guess I’d made my decision.

  “Back to my room.”

  I was no longer thinking with the right head when I pushed her down onto the bed slowly. “Just stay.”