by Kim Holden
French onion dip and damage control compost
present
Three more days pass until I’m able to pick up Justine’s envelope again. It’s Friday night, or more accurately Saturday morning, just past one o’clock. I’ve had a few beers, and I don’t want to take my sleeping pill. I’m restless. It’s restlessness that demands action of some sort or another. I’ve paced the living room. That wrapped up quickly because my legs hurt. I watched a movie on Netflix that was so unimpressive I can’t recall the plot thirty minutes after finishing it. I ate the rest of the French onion dip I had in the fridge with the crumb-sized pieces of chips left in the bag in the pantry. The French onion dip expired last week, I’ll probably end up with the runs; it wasn’t my best judgment call. I’m blaming the alcohol.
I need something, anything, to occupy me.
And then my eyes land on it and I’m backpedaling, taking back the word anything and just leaving it at something to occupy me; it’s Justine’s letter.
My name and address are still scowling.
I pick it up from the end table and walk into the kitchen to drop it in the trash. It lands amongst today’s still soppy coffee grounds and the mostly empty dip container. I watch as the stark white paper greedily wicks up the moisture from both, tinting one side deep brown and speckling the other side with spots of creamy curdle.
Satisfied I’ve stripped the letter of all its dignity, I return to the couch and flip through the Netflix menu. The futile act distracts me for about five seconds before I walk back to the kitchen and pull the disgraced envelope from the trash. Wiping the coffee grounds off of it with my hand, I open it over the bin and let the envelope fall back to its fate as compost.
The letter is only a single sheet of paper. Unlined. Each word, just like on the envelope, written purposefully with a heavy hand, as if the pressure used to write the words would translate into a dramatic delivery stressing the importance of the message. The stationary is lightweight, but the slickness in texture notes its high quality. It’s dry and unblemished on the right side, and the left side is a blotchy watercolor of various shades of brown that make the paper translucent, though still legible.
I walk to the sink and stand over it while I begin to read. I don’t know why because the paper isn’t wet enough to drip. Maybe I just need the counter to lean against and prop me, and my sanity, up.
I would say I’m reeling from the news, but to reel you have to feel. And I feel nothing. My blood has gone stagnant in my veins. My heart seized mid-beat and decided function was no longer necessary. All synapses, in a split second, boycotted in unison making thought and action impossible.
Nothing.
Nothing slowly transforms, setting off an insidious barrage of emotion.
The shock and betrayal is staggering as if my entire body and mind have been concussed by the news, and I’m now left to process her actions with a shock-induced, modified conscience. Right and wrong are glaringly obvious in my judgment of her. Right and wrong blur noxiously in my reaction to her. I’d love nothing more than to exact revenge. Revoke her life, for revoking my child’s.
The hate blazing through me is making it hard to breathe. I feel claustrophobic. I need to go outside.
The air outside is considerably cooler than inside, but it does nothing to ease emotion. There’s too much and it feels like it’s gnawing at my insides. Feasting and gorging until soon I’ll just be a shell filled with nothing but rage.
Panic starts to set in, and the only person I want to talk to is Faith. Fuck Miranda if she still has a PI following me. “Fuck you!” I yell as I descend the stairs. “Fuck you!” I yell again as I conclude the stairs.
I knock on Faith’s door. It’s loud, both due to the absence of most other sound because of the late hour, and to my angry, heavy hand.
“She don’t live there no more.” The voice is quiet, meek, but nearby.
So nearby that it startles me out of my solitary focus. It’s the woman from apartment one, Hope. And then her words hit me, and I’m questioning and denying her statement all in one word, “What?”
“The girl, Faith, she left a few days ago.” She sounds mildly sad, but for the most part the words are delivered void of attachment or feeling like she keeps everything buried deep inside.
She’s sitting on the ground just outside her open front door smoking a cigarette. I walk toward her but stop when I’m several feet away remembering how skittish she was the only other time I talked to her. “Where did she go?” I ask.
She shrugs while she takes an ugly pull from the cigarette, her cheeks drawing in exaggeratedly, and due to her frail appearance she looks like skin stretched over a delicate framework of bones.
“Did she tell you she was leaving?” The inflection I put on certain words makes them sound accusatory, like a mouthy teenager who doubts the validity of what they’re being told.
My tone doesn’t change her demeanor. She’s no less timid, and no friendlier, than normal. She nods, still sucking on the cigarette like it’s a lifeline.
I shake my head, annoyed with her wordless responses, and turn to go back upstairs.
She speaks when I’m only a few steps away. “She’s the only person I talk to besides Mrs. Lipokowski. Faith,” she adds as if clarification is necessary. “The only friend I got.”
Maybe if you weren’t nuttier than squirrel shit and came out of your apartment more often people would talk to you, is what I almost say, but then I realize that’s the rage in me talking, and it’s mean. So, I say, “Yeah, Faith was special,” instead.
She doesn’t agree. She doesn’t disagree. She just looks at me with her dead eyes and says, “I got to walk to the convenience store down the street. You wanna come?” The way she says it I know she won’t be disappointed if I say no, and she won’t be happy if I say yes, either answer will elicit a neutral reaction out of her.
Which is one of the reasons I say yes—no pressure. The other is I’m out of beer. I check my pocket for money and my keys and nod.
Without a word she steps inside her door, slips into some worn out, dirty flip-flops, and grabs her wallet off the floor. I notice she doesn’t pick up the keys on a key ring lying next to her wallet and a thick stack of mail.
When she begins to close her door, I ask, “Don’t you need your keys?”
“No,” she answers blandly.
“But you’ll lock yourself out,” I warn. I feel like I’m talking to a child.
She shakes her head. “I never lock it. I ain’t got nothing to steal.”
I want to argue her logic. This isn’t a small, rural town—crime happens—but I don’t because she’s a grown woman. Though the more I talk to her the more indecisive I am about her mental state or capacity. Socially, she’s awkward. Obviously, she’s a hermit, but I don’t know what’s driving it. And although being around her makes me uneasy, I feel like I’d go mad if I had to go back up to my apartment alone, so here I am shopping with the crazy neighbor at two o’clock in the morning.
We walk there in silence. She walks slowly and matches my pace, which I appreciate and tell her so.
She doesn’t acknowledge my comment, and I didn’t expect her to.
When we reach the convenience store I buy a six-pack of the cheapest beer they have and a stick of jerky and tell Hope I’ll wait outside for her, but to take her time, I’m in no hurry.
She doesn’t take long, five minutes tops, and meets me out front carrying four plastic bags. The weight of the bags is dispersed unevenly and has her walking off-kilter as if she’s developed a limp under the weight.
“Let me help you,” I offer.
She doesn’t hesitate to hand me one of her bags. It’s full of canned goods: soup, Vienna sausages, and baked beans. I take it and couple it in my grasp with my bag.
As we start walking, I look at her other bags: cigarettes, chips, cereal, bread, and milk. She grocery shops at the convenience store. I don’t know why this makes me so sad, but it does. As if
her deviation from the norm is hindering her somehow, limiting her choices to live a well-balanced life. Not to mention this food isn’t exactly healthy. And then I glance at my bag and think about my dinner tonight, and I disregard all judgment.
“Do you shop here often?” I ask. It’s small talk, but I have a feeling it’s the only talk that may turn into a conversation with her.
She’s staring straight ahead as if the journey is a task that needs all of her focus, and her eyes don’t veer off her course when she answers, “Every Saturday and Wednesday morning at two o’clock.”
“Why do you go in the middle of the night?”
“Less people. Everyone’s sleeping,” she says matter-of-factly.
We don’t speak for the duration of the walk. It’s a bit uncomfortable for me, but she doesn’t seem to mind. I hand over her bag at her door. She nods to address the exchange and then she shuts the door without another word.
My mind is muddled. Weary with tonight’s fucked up events. When I get to my apartment, I put the beer in the fridge, the jerky on the counter, and I go to bed and let sleep take me before I analyze anything further.
Because tomorrow I need my brain fresh.
The epicenter of hell
Present
I swore I would never do this.
Never go back.
Never.
Never say never.
My lungs feel like they’re punishing me for overturning my promise, my breaths are short and stunted. The compression of fear isn’t allowing for enough air. I haven’t had a panic attack since I’ve been in California. I’m convinced now that they were geographically induced. Kansas City is the epicenter of hell.
My legs are soldiers marching up the steps onto the Greyhound bus, determined to carry out their mission. By the time I take a seat near the back, the pain in my chest is swelling. It’s already reached that critical mark that brings the heel of my hand to press against it, praying for relief. My full backpack is sitting in my lap. I hug it tightly to my chest with my free arm and bury my face in the top of the rough canvas, and then I let the tears fall. And I hope the people sitting around me ignore my meltdown and let me muddle through it in peace.
They do.
I don’t know how long it is before the assault lessens and relents, but I’m exhausted in its wake. I sleep through a few hundred miles. I decide I like the unconscious approach, even though each time I awake it’s like a time warp that places me closer and closer to my adversary.
When the bus pulls into the Kansas City station, my body aches. Every muscle is protesting at the tense posture I’ve held the entire trip. Even while I slept I didn’t relax. I wait for everyone else to exit the bus and only at last call do I rise. My legs carry me out on a militant charge, and the thought briefly crosses my mind about developing blood clots in my legs from prolonged sitting and how that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go if it took me quickly before I stepped off this bus.
There are no blood clots.
Only numbness, that’s flushed mercifully through my torso and limbs in a deluge as if it’s being carried intravenously in my bloodstream.
The sidewalk feels more substantial under my feet when I land upon it. I huff under my breath. Everything is less forgiving here, even the concrete. The air is biting and cold, the sharpness of it pricks the lining of my lungs, and I tug Mrs. L’s scarf that I already had wrapped around my neck up over my mouth to repress the attack.
My fingers are shaky as I dial a number I haven’t thought about in years, Claudette, my caseworker.
“Hello?” her answer brings on the same rush of relief it always did. I always thought of Claudette as my guardian angel because she was the woman who rescued me.
“Claudette, this is,” I hesitate because I haven’t said my birth name out loud in years, “Meg Groves.” The words are acrid, and I swallow repeatedly trying to rid my mouth of the awful taste they’ve left behind.
“Meg,” she says it the same way she always did, soothing, setting the stage for what is about to unfold. She lived her life in crisis management mood, obviously she still does. “It’s been a long time, dear. How are you?”
“I’m good,” I lie. I’ve learned that lying when my well-being is concerned is easier than trying to navigate the truth. Nobody wants to hear, I’m not good. That just makes everything uncomfortable and then the fact that I’m not good would need to be addressed or ignored. Either option makes people squirm, so I lie. I’m good. I’m always good. Deep down I’m so scared I want to cry, but I continue. “I’ve been in California, and I just came back to Kansas City for a visit. It’s kind of late to get a motel room, and I was wondering if maybe I could stay with you, just for tonight?”
The pause that comes brings tears to my eyes. The silence sounds like denial.
“Never mind, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have called.”
I’m ready to press the button on my phone to disconnect when she calls out loudly as if she senses my looming escape, “No! No, of course you can stay with me tonight. I apologize for the hesitation. I think I’m just in shock hearing your voice. The good kind of shock, but still shock.”
She gives me her address and I Uber a ride to her apartment. It’s the same apartment she’s lived in for as long as I can remember. The same apartment that offered me refuge all those years ago.
Stepping inside, and into Claudette’s open arms, settles my nerves. She looks the same; her black hair smattered with silver and her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. I’ve always thought of her glasses as a sharp underscore to her intense owl-like eyes. She’s short in stature and heavy set in build. She’s a safe place. The only safe place in this city as far as I’m concerned.
Time yields results, even against the defiant
present
Justine’s letter is wavy and rigid now that it’s dry. It feels brittle, like the words it contains.
I read it again this morning as soon as I woke up. I think I was hoping it was all a nightmare.
It wasn’t.
If anything, it hurts worse in the daylight.
Last night it gutted me with intense anger.
This morning it gutted me with sadness—mourning what could have been.
What could have been…
I know Justine isn’t expecting a response—that she’s probably hoping against one—but I feel like I need to write her.
I dig her envelope out of the trash—it reeks with the days old decay taking place in the bottom of the dark, moist bin. I jot her address down and quickly discard it again. I transfer the address to an envelope and place my folded letter inside. I’ll mail it tomorrow on my way to work.
I glance at the time on my phone; it’s just after eleven. The deli is open, so I head down to see if Mrs. Lipokowski has any forwarding information on Faith.
The place is crowded with the early lunch rush. I buy a six-inch roast beef and ask her if she can stop by apartment three when she closes up this afternoon because I don’t want to take up any extra time while she’s swamped in paying customers. She agrees.
And at three o’clock she knocks on my door. “Hi there, Seamus.”
“Hi, Mrs. L. I won’t keep you, I know you’re on your way home to relax. Hope told me last night that Faith left.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Hope talked to you?”
That isn’t the information I want to focus on, but I answer to move along to the important stuff. “Yeah, I walked with her to the convenience store.”
“Huh.” She looks perplexed.
“Faith moved out?” I ask because I’m done with the Hope talk.
“Her rent is paid until the end of the month, but she didn’t know if she would be back.”
“I was wondering if she told you where she was going? Or if she left a forwarding address? You know, in case she doesn’t return?”
“She didn’t. She seemed preoccupied when she stopped by to talk to me; like in her mind she was already someplace else. I
felt bad for her. She’s a determined young lady, but I have a feeling her decision was weighing on her heart.”
None of the words I’ve just heard make me feel any better about Faith leaving. I was hoping she would tell me Faith found her birth mother and moved closer to her. Or that she got a new job, in a new city that would complement and embrace her potential. Instead, I’m left with uncertainty tarnished with negativity. I hate that for Faith. “Okay. Please let me know if you hear from her.”
She smiles softly; it’s a gesture meant to comfort. “I will, Seamus.”
“Thank you.” The words don’t feel appreciative. They feel like I’m begging her to deliver good news to me. Sooner than later.
She nods and turns to walk toward her apartment. “Have a good night.”
After Mrs. Lipokowski leaves, my mind goes back to Justine’s letter. It’s a presence in the apartment, like another person occupying the space. I don’t pick it up. I don’t read it again.
I don’t need to. I have it memorized word for word.
Heartbreak floods in again with a brand new intensity. I’ve been heartbroken for months. First, by the divorce, which I thought monumental and that nothing would ever top it in the heart wrecking department. And then she took my kids. That took the storm I was besieged by and ratcheted it up from a tropical storm to a hurricane. This latest news was like adding a tsunami wave, one giant destructive swell, within the eye of the relentless storm.
How could she have made a decision so important to both of us without consulting me? Without including me?
I’ve always thought of each of my children as a miracle. Because in essence, they are. Every child is a miracle. I understand the whole process of conception and a baby growing within a womb is scientific and physiological, not a rare occurrence. But I can’t wrap my head around the fact that one day there’s no baby, no separate life existing within another, and then nine months later a tiny human being is delivered to the world. A human being that is unique in make-up and perspective. A human being unlike any who’s lived before. That is miraculous. And the fact that these tiny human beings have the ability to own your heart even before you meet them, touch them, feel them, and then when you meet them, touch them, feel them for the very first time, that love you already felt explodes into something so strong and protective and nurturing. The English language should have a word for it. Though the new word would lack weight and defining presence. Because that love you feel the instant you lay eyes on your brand new tiny human being is indescribable. It’s a love so instantaneous and so intense that it defies logic. Just like babies do. It’s all miraculous.
