by Joanna Bell
"Yeah but how do you know that?"
After almost a week hiding away from everything, Ava finally managed to drag me out of my sadness nest for dinner. She took me to my favorite restaurant, where I rediscovered my appetite and began, temporarily, to feel a little like myself again.
"I'm not trying to be mean," she continued. "But you didn't know him for long."
"I know," I replied, still dejected in spite of my favorite beef dumplings in my belly and my best friend's comforting presence. "I can't explain it. It felt like longer. It felt like I did know him. You know?"
Ava smiled. "Oh yeah, I know. Believe me, I get it. That's what sex does to your brain. And great sex, with a serious hottie? Like one of those men who just does it for you on every level? That'll mess your head right up."
I looked away, blushing, hoping she wouldn't notice in the low light of the restaurant. But of course, because Ava is Ava, she noticed immediately.
"So it was the sex!" She exclaimed, pointing the tines of her fork at me. "I thought so. I mean, I didn't know what else could have Miss Well-Behaved Astrid Walker hiding out for weeks."
"It hasn't even been a week," I protested weakly, my cheeks still burning with self-consciousness. "And I'm not Miss Well-Behaved."
"Oh yes you are. Everyone knows that. I know it, your friends know it, your parents know it. Everyone knows it. It's not a bad thing, Astrid. It's just who you –"
"Yes it is!" I cried. "Yes it is a bad thing! You know this whole thing – this whole idea that I'm so good and I never do anything wrong or make any impulsive decisions – I think that might be why I did this in the first place. I think that might be why I married him. Or part of it, anyway. Maybe."
I sort of blurted that out, but as soon as I did I think I realized it was probably more true than even I wanted to admit. I was always the 'good' girl. Always the designated driver. Always the one other parents would trust to keep their own kids – my peers – out of trouble. Maybe I was getting sick of that version of myself?
Later that night, I sat out on my balcony and watched the yachts in the bay, wondering if I married a stranger because I was tired of my own goody two-shoes reputation. And, if I had done that, what doing such a thing said about me.
It didn't say anything good, that much I knew. It didn't speak to adulthood or maturity – if anything it seemed to indicate a kind of delayed adolescent rebellion. God knows there was no rebellion going on when I was an actual adolescent, and might still have had some excuse.
Maybe some wish to escape my Official Good Girl designation did help push me into that chapel in Las Vegas?
Or maybe Ava was right and it was the sex? I mean, it was the sex. It was the sex and how the sex made me feel. It was how being with Cillian Devlin gave me something I needed very badly for a very long time without ever once consciously realizing it.
I played it down during that conversation with Ava, but I didn't know how soon the universe would swoop in to prove her correct.
***
Two days later, another brown envelope arrived.
I carried it back up to my condo unopened, trying to will my racing heart into slowing down, trying to convince myself that whatever was inside didn't matter, that it couldn't hurt me.
It was over with Cillian. The papers weren't signed yet but that would happen soon enough.
And in spite of all of it – in spite of everything I knew about what he'd done to his brother Jackson and Jackson's pregnant girlfriend – I kept catching myself wondering if I was too hard on him, too ungenerous. My mind kept searching for ways to excuse the man I married for what he did. Maybe his older brother was a real jerk? Not a regular kind of jerk but one of those people who just treats everyone around them like garbage? But if that was true, why didn't Cillian have any actual details? Why didn't he say, oh my brother did this to me, and he betrayed me or he lied to me? In short, if there was an excuse why didn't Cillian himself give it to me?
The obvious answer was that there simply wasn't one.
I missed him, though. I missed him so acutely and so much I think I almost managed to convince myself I could get over the incident with his brother. Until that second brown envelope arrived, that is.
It wasn't another letter – whoever my dad hired turned out not to be the letter-writing type. It was a photograph. An old-fashioned, printed-on-film photograph. I pulled it out of the envelope and held it in my hands for a few seconds, trying to figure out what I was looking at. It was Sweetgrass Ridge – I recognized the buildings along Main Street – and it seemed to have been taken in a parking lot full of pick-up trucks. Against one of those trucks, a couple was entwined, kissing each other passionately. The man had his hand up the woman's very short skirt. My eyes traveled up to their faces.
I didn't have any idea who the girl was, but the man was Cillian. It was hardly 2 weeks since I left. The divorce papers weren't even written up yet.
I sank down onto the sofa and stayed there for a good 15 minutes, staring into space. And then I looked at the photo again, hoping desperately that I'd made a mistake, that it wasn't Cillian.
Of course it was him. Why would I be receiving photographs of random strangers making out, in the exact same kind of brown envelope as the letter? It was him. He didn't even wait 2 weeks. He didn't even message me to confirm he was moving on.
My hands shook as I placed the photo face-down on the coffee table. I didn't cry right away. I couldn't. All I could do was sit there blinking, astonished at how much it hurt.
That's what Ava was talking about. That's what sex does to you. It makes it so just seeing a photo of the person you're all wrapped up in with someone else hurts so deeply the aftermath manifests almost the same as the aftermath of a physical attack. I felt like someone punched me in the stomach, slapped me across the face, threw me into an icy river and left me to make my own way out. I couldn't move or talk or think. I could barely breathe.
At one point I looked again, salting my own wound. The girl was pretty. She had long, brown hair and Cillian's hand was definitely up her skirt. All the way up. I knew exactly where his fingers were. I knew what she was feeling. And the way he was kissing her! He kissed me that way! All I had to do was close my eyes and it was like I could feel those hungry, demanding kisses of his falling on my lips once more.
Did he take her back to his condo after that make-out session? Did he make love to her the way he made love to me? Did she notice the way he opened his mouth and took in a quick, deep breath in the seconds just before he came? And if she did, did it make her insides twist with lust the same way it did mine?
I spent the next few days stumbling around my apartment like a zombie. I didn't do much of anything, I just trudged from room to room, frequently catching myself standing in front of the kitchen counter or at the foot of my bed or out on the balcony with no recollection of how I got there or what I was doing.
And still – still! – I waited for Cillian to contact me. Still I hoped for something – anything, some excuse or reason or explanation – to fall from heaven and turn everything back to the way it was during those blissful early days with him.
It was stupid. Stupid and shameful and indicative of the kind of low self-esteem I definitely did not have the upbringing to justify.
"You have to stop this."
I said that to my own reflection in the mirror on the third day after the photograph arrived. Dark circles ringed my eyes and my hair was tangled. My shoulders were rounded, hunched forward, my head inclined towards the ground. My physical demeanor matched my mental and emotional state: beaten, defeated. And I didn't have any idea how long it was going to go on. Surely not that much longer? Surely not forever?
Because my parents are rich, I made it well into my 20s without ever having to work. My life before Cillian Devlin was pretty idyllic, actually. Lots of wilderness adventures, excursions, retreats – all those words rich people use instead of just saying 'vacation.' There were a lot of those. A lot of afternoon
s whiled away at various private beaches with friends. When I met my ex-husband, my social group in Miami was just starting to age into the dinner party era of life – and out of the house party one. We still did both but I'd noticed more and more gatherings featured sit-down meals and earlier conclusions than they had just a year earlier.
People were starting to get married, too. I was supposed to be among them – and I was, very briefly and not in the way I intended.
My point is there wasn't a lot to do. Not much that needed doing, anyway. I didn't have to worry about paying rent or making mortgage payments because I owned my condo – it was an 18th birthday present from my parents. I didn't have to worry about paying bills, either, because the money for bills came out of the interest payments on a trust fund my parents set up 5 days after I was born.
I was free to enjoy all the blessings and indulgences of the extremely privileged existence I lived, is what I'm saying. Which meant I was also free to fully immerse myself in the pain when the time came for that. I didn't have to get up at 7 a.m. to go to work or worry about putting food on the table for a child or care for a sick relative. Like I said – I didn't have to do anything.
So I suffered. For the first time in my life, I truly suffered. I wasn't hungry or homeless or sick but that's the thing with emotional pain: no one is safe. You can have all the money in the world and it will never be enough to stitch the pieces of a broken heart back together. You can't pay people to love you or respect you. And it could not have been more obvious – even without the photo – that Cillian Devlin did not love or respect me.
I went over our interaction at the airport – and the final, drunken phone call – again and again. I replayed his mean-spirited comments in my mind the way women do, searching for some sign that he didn't mean them, that he was just trying to cover up how much he did care by trying to pretend he didn't.
But really, how could he have loved me? He was right that I didn't know him. I expected too much. I needed too much.
A week after the arrival of the photograph I decided I simply could not go on like I was, trailing around my apartment all day like a morose, pajama-clad ghost. I had to do something. Anything. I had to get my mind off Cillian Devlin and how much it hurt not to be with him.
And then on my way out, headed to my mom's offices to talk to the manager of the umbrella organization that manages her charitable endeavors, Jordie handed me another brown envelope.
My palms began to sweat as soon as I saw it in his hand.
"Another one of these for you!"
I almost told him to throw it away but my curiosity got the better of me. Ten minutes later, instead of in the car on the way to my mom's offices, I was back in my condo with another photograph in front of me.
The girl was different that time, a blonde rather than a brunette. And instead of a random parking lot they were outside the bank of elevators in the lobby of Cillian's building. The blonde had her arms loosely around his shoulders and her head leaned back and Cillian was kissing her neck. One of his hands was on her hip, gripping her tightly enough that I could see the indentations his fingers made. At one point there had been a series of fingertip-shaped bruises on my own hip, left there in a moment of intense desire by the same man I was staring at in the photo.
Cillian's other hand, the one not on the woman's hip, was on her neck. He appeared to be caressing her as he kissed her.
A wave of nausea washed over me. I retched and then swallowed hard and closed my eyes – because I couldn't tear them away from the image of Cillian and the blonde. There would be no visit to my mother's offices that day. I scrabbled around in my purse for my phone and called Ava.
"Hey!" She greeted me cheerily when she picked up. "Astrid! I've been trying to reach you. Did you get my –"
"Ava?"
"What? Is something wrong? You sound a little –"
"Can you come over?" I whimpered, suddenly breaking after days of mostly tear-less pain. "Can you please come over right now?"
"I'll leave right now," she replied, not hesitating or asking for further explanation. "You're at the condo?"
"Yeah," I sobbed.
"Do you need anything? Do you want me to bring anything?"
"Wine."
"OK. I'll bring wine. Anything else?"
"No."
"I'll see you in 45 minutes."
There's a reason Ava Gillian is my best friend. She's as good in a crisis as anyone. Cool, collected – entirely cucumber-like.
***
Half an hour later she was at my side.
"Bastard!" She pronounced, sipping a glass of wine as she examined the photos. "Total bastard! Your dad hired someone to take these?"
I nodded and wiped my eyes. "Uh-huh. It had to be him."
"Well," she said, sighing heavily. "At least it's clear now – right? There's no ambiguity. You know it's over."
I did know. But even in that moment, staring directly at an image of my husband in an intimate clinch with another woman, I hesitated. Ava noticed.
"You really liked him, didn't you?" She asked, kindly but incorrectly using the past tense. "This is the first time I've seen you like this – over anyone. Including Julian."
I nodded again but didn't reply because I was crying too hard.
"Oh Striddy," Ava whispered, using an old nickname I made her stop using before we started high school. "I know how much this hurts. It won't always hurt this much, I promise you. This is the worst part."
"Is it?" I pleaded, my eyes blurring with fresh tears as the old ones rolled down my cheeks.
"Uh-huh. It is."
"How long will it take?" I continued. "Because I – I can't stand this. I can't stand how bad this feels."
Ava pulled me into her slender arms and held me. "It takes as long as it needs to take. I can tell you from experience, though, that these short, intense relationships are always the easiest to get over. They feel like the hardest in the moment – but they're the easiest."
"I bet I sound really stupid," I whispered. "Don't I? I bet I sound like I'm 15. I know I do. I'm sorry, Ava."
"Shhhh. You don't sound stupid at all. I know exactly what this feels like. Exactly. You will get over it. You will. I promise."
Ava stayed with me for the rest of the day – and then she stayed for a few more days, sleeping in one of the guest bedrooms and tending to me the way a mother tends to a sick child. She brought me chicken soup and crackers like we used to have at her grandmother's house when we were little girls, she made me sit in front of her on the floor so she could brush the knots out of my hair, and she made sure I was never alone for longer than a few minutes at a time. She held me up when I couldn't hold myself up.
And when I could hold myself up again – even if I was a little wobbly – she went back to her own place with a solemn promise to be right back at my side the minute I needed her.
"Oh," she said, after we hugged good-bye at my door. "One more thing."
"What?" I asked, still not feeling anything like happy but at least feeling cared for.
"I want you to let me deal with this – the photos and letters and whatever else – OK? I want to make sure you never see another one."
"Sure," I replied gratefully. "Yes. Thank you. I mean, I don't know if there will be any more but you could talk to Jordie and –"
"Just give me permission to take care of it."
Despite a certain amount of self-destructive curiosity over what – if anything – was still to arrive in an oversized brown envelope, I gave my permission.
"Good. And give me the letter – and the photos."
I didn't want to give Ava the letter and the photos. I didn't know why. I think I wanted to torture myself a little more. But she insisted, so I did. And then she left and I was once again alone with my thoughts.
***
The next day, I met with Carmen Martinez, the woman in charge of my mom's charitable activities. I had to do something. I didn't know what, but it had to be something
– and it couldn't be another vacation or another meditation retreat or fancy restaurant dinner or shopping trip. It had to be something that wasn't bullshit.
We discussed a possible role for me at the offices in Miami after I made sure to mention that I was willing to do grunt work and didn't expect to be handed a top role just because I was Heather Walker's daughter.
Carmen smiled politely at my suggestion that I could be useful in the Literacy Miami program, which worked with ex-prisoners in a 1-on-1 mentoring and teaching context.
"I have a degree in English," I said, eager for her to know I was actually formally qualified.
"Do you?" She replied. "That's wonderful Astrid, but I'm not sure this would be right for you. We obviously require more specialized training beyond an undergraduate degree for most positions. Of course if you want me to talk to your mother I could do that when she gets back from her trip?"
Carmen wasn't afraid of me – but she was wary. She knew she was dealing with the boss's daughter. And I knew I was being handled with kid gloves.
After gently shooting down a few more totally unrealistic propositions from me, she seemed to remember something and asked me to excuse her for a moment.
When she came back she handed me a stack of papers with a brochure on top. "This is our new project in Peru," she said, sitting back down. "It's a mother and baby clinic serving remote communities. We need more people down there right now, to help with –"
"I can help with anything!" I barged in, and then immediately apologized. "I'm sorry. I mean, if I'm qualified. If I could be of use."
Ms. Martinez eyed me, trying to figure out just what kind of spoiled rich girl she was dealing with. "It's not glamorous work," she warned. "It's in a very remote location, you can only get there by bush plane. What that means is there's no construction equipment on-site. We're building this place from the ground up, almost entirely on manpower. We need people to carry stones, dig wells, hammer nails. It's that kind of thing."
I didn't even know what a bush plane was. And I definitely had no concept of manual labor that went beyond the entirely theoretical. I think maybe my mother's right-hand woman was testing me, seeing just how sincere I was in my desire to help.
