by Various
“I’m not sure we can afford it,” I said, even though living in that house had been a dream of mine for as long as I could remember. And Garrett knew that. He had known since before we married.
Garrett clicked through the photos, landing on a picture of the sprawling master bath. “You’ve always wanted this house, and I want to give it to you. We’ll make it work. With my promotion and your extra hours teaching—”
“Plus my acting,” I added. Garrett swung his gaze to mine and locked on, a question in his expression. I smiled, radiant. I couldn’t contain my excitement. “I landed the role of Fantine at the regional theater. That’ll give us a smidge more income.” I spread my thumb and index finger an inch apart.
Garrett corralled me in his embrace. “That’s amazing, Mia.” He kissed me and I melted against him. “I’m proud of you. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I only heard this morning,” I said, breathless.
“This calls for a celebration. We’re going to place an offer on this house right now. What do you think about that?”
“Are you sure?” I was nervous. The mortgage would be triple what we were already paying on our shoebox-sized condo.
“I’m more than sure.” He lifted my chin so that I couldn’t look anywhere else but deep into his stormy gray eyes. “We can accomplish anything as long as we’re together. Us against the world, baby.”
A thwack on the window jolts me back to my damp, miserable present. A man’s face appears before me, scowling, his mouth twisted in derision. The little blond girl beside him gawks at me, petrified.
“Move on,” the man yells through the glass.
Between us, I catch a glimpse of my haggard reflection and gasp, stumbling backward.
I’m hideous, no better than Victor Frankenstein’s monster. Revolting and destitute, and it’s no one’s fault but my own. I deserve this lot in life.
The little girl’s father stares me down. Don’t look at me. I shirk away, pulling the hood of my Marc Jacobs over my knit cap. Dashing off, I turn left at the corner, my direction opposite that of St. Margaret’s.
————
The sun is high and shadows short when I sit on my favorite bench at the park. It faces the playground and is made of real wood, not the recycled plastic that burns bare skin when it absorbs the sun’s intense heat during the sweltering months of summer. Scooting to the far end of the bench, I rest my elbow on the iron scroll handrail and make room for whomever may happen by on their lunch break. An old habit from another life. I don’t expect anyone to sit beside me. They never do. They don’t want to be bothered by an unwashed homeless woman. If people only knew how easily they could find themselves in my situation, they wouldn’t be so dismissive. All it took for me was one selfish desire and I lost everything.
Despite the cold day and the biting wind that’s picking up, children bundled in parkas skip from the slide to the swing and back. Red noses and wisps of blond hair peek from their hoods. If I squint my eyes, I can pretend Heather runs among the children, even though she didn’t have the energy to play with her friends the last time we came to the park. She only stood there, eyes glazed, her tiny body aching.
“What did the doctor say?” my friend Julia asked at the time, sitting beside me on the park bench. We taught together at the elementary school around the corner. She’d left her classroom as soon as I called and asked her to meet me. I’d taken the day off. Heather needed tests.
“Leukemia,” I said, and the tears I’d been restraining, hiding from Heather, fell loose. They rained down my cheek.
“Mia.” Julia grasped my hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. It’s aggressive.” I wiped my face with a gloved hand. The action only smeared the moisture across my face.
Julia dug into her pocket. “Here. It’s clean.” She gave me a crumpled tissue.
“Thanks.” I dabbed my eyes, doing my best to compose myself before Heather looked our way. Garrett and I had to work with Heather’s team of doctors. We had to put a treatment plan into place, and we needed to work fast. There wasn’t time for me to lose my wits. I had to pull myself together.
I took a deep breath. Air shuttled into my lungs.
Julie watched me, compassion softening her mocha eyes. “It’s okay to cry.”
“I can’t.” I shook my head, wiping my nose. “There’s no time. God, Julia, they aren’t giving her much time.” My chest clenched on the last word. It came out as a whisper of air, carried away by the crisp winter wind.
“Mia.”
I startle at the sound of my name. The voice rips me from the past, lifting my gaze upward. I squint against the sun’s glare. Standing before me is a woman clad in a quilted coat that reaches her knees. She sits beside me, my gaze following. I blink at her.
“Hello, Mia.”
“Julia?” She hasn’t changed. Wavy black hair and round cheeks. She looks so clean and put together. Beautiful. I shy away, but she only smiles.
“I was wondering if you’d show up.”
“How did you know?” I didn’t know I’d be here until a short bit ago. The park was suddenly here, along with a rush of memories. Overwhelmed, I had to sit down.
“I didn’t. But it is February ninth.”
The day Heather died.
I stare, dumbfounded. “Has it been three years?”
Julia nods. “I waited for you last year, and the year before. You never showed.”
The pain of losing Heather, of losing everyone, had been too raw. The memories still make me ache. They steal my breath, leave me gasping.
Julia unfolds white butcher paper from a deli sandwich and offers me half. I take it greedily, starved for the taste of turkey, tomatoes, and provolone.
“I’ve seen you around town. I call out to you,” she says while I devour my first bite. I’d seen her, too, and I did what I always do whenever my path crosses with someone from before. I walk away.
“When are you coming home, Mia?”
“I don’t have a home.”
Julia watches me eat. She doesn’t touch her half of the sandwich. I consume mine in large, unladylike bites. Lettuce hangs from the corner of my mouth. A smear of mustard decorates my upper lip. Her mouth turns down, and she looks away. I’m sure she’s repulsed, and I don’t care. My manners died when my dreams did.
“What about medical attention? Have you seen a doctor lately?”
“I don’t need a doctor.”
“It might help. Life outside can’t be healthy.”
“I get by. I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
“But you’re not living,” Julia objects, her frustration with me evident. “Stop running. You can’t hide from the pain forever. It always catches up. You need to talk to someone who can help you.”
“Like a shrink? No way.”
“Then find someone else.”
“No.” I give my head a hard shake.
“Live with me then. I have an extra room. I’m sure the school would offer you back your old position. Your students miss you. So do I.”
“No, you don’t.” No one misses me. I don’t deserve to be missed.
I abruptly stand. Stopping at the park was a bad decision. Too many painful memories. Tears thicken my throat, and I sob. “No one needs me.” Not anymore.
I walk away.
“Don’t leave.” Julia starts after me. I pick up my pace. Jogging from the park, head bent into the wind, I don’t look back. I never do.
Crossing the street, I wander, aimlessly, through the neighborhoods. My boots shuffle on pavement, and the declining temperature seeps into my bones. I bundle my coat tighter, shivering. The sun dips, and blue sky darkens to lavender. I pass a lingerie store, and two women, unbalanced on their stilettos, carrying an abundance of shopping bags, stumble out of the store. They bump into me, knocking me to the gr
ound. I land hard on my rear, my wrist taking the brunt of the impact. I whimper, cradling my arm to my chest like a wounded animal.
Leaving me in a piled heap on the concrete, the women teeter like giraffes to the curb and hail a cab. The yellow taxi immediately pulls to the curb, and one of the women, the tall, willowy blonde, glances back at me. Our gazes lock and I’m launched back in time. I see myself in the woman, dressed in designer clothes in a rush to get home to share my purchases with my husband. One of Garrett’s favorite pastimes was having me model for him.
I recall such a time early in our marriage. He sat on the edge of the bed, gaze upon me, eyes heavy with lust. He spun his finger in the air. Obligingly, and with a sultry grin, I slowly turned around, showing off the burgundy wine cheekies. Before I could complete the circle, he came up behind me, pressing his hard length against my backside. His arms circled my waist, and his fingers dipped below the hem of my silk panties, searching. A delicious tightening coiled at the juncture of my thighs, and my head fell back on his shoulder. I moaned, caving in to the feelings he stoked deep inside me.
The new lingerie didn’t last long on me. It never did. Garrett had the bra unlatched and panties pushed down my thighs before I could gasp his name.
“You drive me mad when you dress like this for me,” he rasped, nipping my ear. He spun me around and kissed me, hard and deep. We fell onto the bed, where he went to work on my body like a man possessed. A man in love. And afterward, spent and gloriously languid, we talked into the night, whispering of our love for one another and devising plans. We had such grand plans.
But the memory of us lying together morphs into another, more recent memory spent wrapped around each other, crying.
“We’re draining our accounts,” I said through tears. “I wish I never wanted this house. I wish we never saw the listing. If only we’d known about Heather before we bought the house.”
“Shush, it’ll be fine,” Garrett rasped, thumbing the wetness from his eyes. “We’ll second mortgage the house if we need to. I’ll get another job. Some of the bills can lapse. Trust me, baby. We’ll make it work.”
He pressed his lips to my forehead and I held on to him, tight. I hold on to the memory of him just as tightly. I don’t want to return to the present, but here I am, back on the pavement with the dirty, rank city surrounding me.
Slowly, cautiously, I stand, and the tall, willowy blonde rushes to my side.
“I’m sorry. My friend and I didn’t see you. Are you hurt?”
“No,” I snap the lie, cradling my injured wrist. It throbs.
The woman opens her clutch purse and withdraws a five. She waves the cash at me. “Take this. But promise you won’t spend it on booze.”
I stare at Abe Lincoln’s profile, and my fingers tingle. Grab it, the voice in my head urges.
I make a fist. I’ve been accepting handouts all day. Help I don’t deserve.
“I don’t drink.” I push her hand away and walk off.
“Fuck you, lady,” the woman yells. I don’t have to look back to know she’s flipping me off.
Time slips away. The sky darkens, and late afternoon blends into evening. Strands of twinkle lights wink on, flickering in the night. They spiral up tree trunks and into the branches, casting the glow of hundreds of fireflies. Storefronts brighten and light pours out windows, dripping yellows and golds onto the dirty snow that’s been shoveled into corners. At night the city is a fairy tale, hiding the filth that lurks in the shadows.
I keep up a steady pace, pausing to peek inside trash cans or to pick up a half-eaten apple someone tossed aside.
Voices whisper and thick-soled shoes shuffle behind me. I hear giggles and dares and the slosh of liquid in a bottle. Whoever is behind me has been following me for several blocks. I don’t glance over my shoulder. I don’t give them the satisfaction that I know they’re there. Move along, you old hag, they’ll tell me. They always do. I am nothing to them.
As I make my way toward the back alley of a restaurant where I know the kitchen staff leaves a basket of spoiled fruit and vegetables, I come upon a wine bar and stop abruptly to hover by the window. I can’t remember the last time I had a glass of wine, but at the table on the other side of the paned glass sits a solitary woman, her red wine a stark contrast to the table’s pristine white linen. I catch the woman’s expression and it lures me in. Despair weighs down the corners of her mouth and bows her shoulders. She fists a soiled tissue and averts her face when the waiter passes her table. Our gazes lock, and a flood of memories pour into me. They push the breath from my lungs. I’ve been this woman, my face awash with grief, sitting alone at a table across an empty chair.
But I wasn’t alone in a wine bar. I was home, sitting at the kitchen table, my untouched coffee cooling on the wood surface. I should have been on my way to the hospital to be with Heather, but I couldn’t find the will to move. I couldn’t take my eyes off Garrett’s empty chair. He’d taken on an extra job so I wouldn’t worry about our diminishing finances from treating Heather. He worked himself to exhaustion, and he’d fallen asleep behind the wheel. He didn’t suffer, the police officer had told me, after they found Garrett’s car wrapped around a tree. It had been quick. Instant. A life snuffed in the blink of an eye.
A sharp knock on the glass reels me back from the past, along with my grief and suffering. The emotions are oppressive and overwhelming. Life-sucking. I stumble backward under the weight, gasping. The woman on the other side of the window is talking to me. I watch her mouth form the words. Are you okay?
I want to scream, No, I’m not. Garrett is gone. My brave, adoring husband is gone.
A sob rips from my lungs, and I sprint awkwardly to the corner. My legs complain, unused to sudden bursts of activity. I stop at the light and catch my breath. My lungs rattle on the inhale, and another sob escapes. A bubble of air that leaves my throat raw. Tears fall unhindered, drenching my cheeks. The light changes and I run across the street. I run as fast as I can, away from the grief and sorrow. Away from my life.
But there’s no escape. My misery keeps pace with me.
So does whoever has been following me.
I stop and bend over, hands on my knees. My chest heaves from the exertion, and I sneak a peek over my shoulder. Three young men in their late teens, judging by their grunge attire, tattoos, and piercings. They point at me with their paper-bag-wrapped bottles and laugh, mocking the way I ran, arms flailing and legs kicking out.
Tears continue to well, clouding my vision, like they did that time I drove home from the hospital after Heather’s death. With my vision blurred, it would have been so easy to let my car drift off the side of the road. Garrett was gone. Heather was gone. I had no one left. Nobody needed me. There was no one left to love me.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t swerve the wheel and throw my car into the ravine. Instead, I drove home, to a house that had once been filled with love and laughter. In their place, I found a mailbox full of bills, a voice mail box stuffed with collection calls, and a notice of impending foreclosure taped to the front door. The burden of it all broke me. I snapped and walked away. I walked away from it all.
Something hits me hard from behind and I go flying. My chin hits the pavement, jarring me back to the present. Dazed, I feel someone grab fistfuls of my coat and hair. Scorching pain rips across my scalp, and I shriek. Hands drag me into a darkened alley. They flip me over. Dizzy, I see three heads spinning above me. I can’t make out faces, but I know it’s the three teens who’ve been following me. They snicker and jeer. A shoe connects with my ribs and I grunt. A fist knocks my cheek, and a fireball of pain rattles my teeth and blazes down my spine. Hands tear at my clothes. Fingers bruise my skin.
I don’t move. I don’t try to fight them off. I stare blankly at the sky and let them have me. This is the way I deserve to go, the punishment and suffering so much greater than freezing to death on a
cardboard mattress ever could be.
One of my assailants rips open my shirt and roughly grapples my breasts. I shirk away at the unexpected pain, and a switch flips. Survival mode clicks on. I kick and thrash. It only excites them. They punch me again and kick my shoulder. I cry out in pain, and a warmth spreads across my backside.
One man holds my wrists above me. Another tugs at my pants. “Dude, she reeks.”
The third kneels between my legs. I hear a belt buckle unclick, a zipper pulled down.
“Do it quick then let’s get out of here.”
A hand dives down my pants only to immediately withdraw. He swears. “She’s pissed herself.”
“Fuck this. I ain’t doing her.” The biting grip around my wrists disappears, freeing my hands.
“Bitch.” A boot connects with my stomach. I roll to my side, curling into myself, and retch. I brace for the next kick, waiting for them to finish me off, but it never comes. They’ve left. I’m alone.
Lying in a pool of my own blood and urine, I’m too weak to move, too stunned to crawl to safety or call for help.
You don’t deserve help, that nasty voice in my head shouts.
I don’t get up, and I don’t bother to cover myself.
I. Am. Done.
Minutes pass and the cold sets in. My body shakes uncontrollably. Darkness narrows my vision, and my mind drifts to more pleasant days. I think of Garrett’s smile and Heather’s laughter. I feel warm again. Peaceful.
“Mia.”
My name is a whisper in the night.
I moan. “Go away.”
“Mia.”
Again, my name. Spoken with more force.
