God-Shaped Hole

by Tiffanie DeBartolo

  “You just don’t meet people like that west of La Brea,” I said, quoting Jackson Grayson.

  Jacob didn’t even try to hide how charmed he was that I’d remembered a line he’d written verbatim. He sat at the table with his chin in his hand, the way he always did, and watched me. I wanted to tell him not a second had gone by since we’d broken up that I didn’t wish things were back the way they were before Thomas Doorley bit the dust. I didn’t say it though. Not that I needed to.

  “Trixie, I have a lot of things to say. Can I start?”

  I nodded.

  “First of all…,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Should I say it again? I’m sorry. For acting like such a dick after my father died, for pushing you away, for leaving town, for thinking you wouldn’t understand, for anything and everything I may have done wrong. I did exactly what I said I’d never do. I became like him. But I’m done with that.”

  A teenager who looked like he might be Lulu’s son brought us our food. In the meantime, the Texan on TV spoke in baby talk to the fish he’d just reeled in. He called the fish “Boy.” I didn’t like the Texan. He struck me as the kind of guy who drove around with a shotgun in the back of his pick-up.

  “The second thing I want to say is this,” Jacob continued. “I know I made some mistakes, for which I’ve just apologized, but I want to point out—free of malice—that you weren’t exactly winning any Good Samaritan of the Year contests. You just gave up on me. On us. What’s up with that?”

  My first impulse was to get defensive at Jacob’s insinuation that I had anything to do with the collapse of our relationship. I curbed it. I knew better. Jacob was right, I’d been a horrible friend to him. I didn’t even know how he could stand to be around me after the way I’d acted.

  “I didn’t give up,” I said. “I copped out.” I was disappointed in myself. More disappointed than Jacob was in me, I could tell. “Why do you even want me back?”

  “Because I’m in love with you, that’s why. And you had your reasons. You were motivated by fear, not by how you felt about me. At least that’s what I think. Anyway, I’ve got it all figured out.”

  “Oh, you do, huh?”

  “Yeah. I went through all these emotions. I was mad at you, I was mad at me, I was mad at him. Basically, I was just mad at the world. Bottom line: we both screwed up. But it’s okay to screw up as long as you keep trying. The key is to keep trying.” He stopped to take a swig of his soda.

  “Are you done?” I said.

  “No. I need to ask you some questions. And you have to be honest. You have to tell me the truth. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. I had to squeeze my legs together to stop the tingling between them.

  “And give me simple answers, okay?”

  “Do me a favor, don’t say okay so much. It’s very distracting.”

  “Okay.” He laughed. “Did you mean what you said that day—the day you threw me out on my ass—or do you still love me?”

  I began dreaming up a long dissertation until he reminded me, “The simple answer, Trixie.”

  That put me in a predicament. There was only one simple way to answer the question.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes, what? Yes you meant what you said, or yes you still love me?”

  I stared at the tablecloth and mumbled, “I still love you.”

  “Can you speak up?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Do you love me a little, or more than a little?”

  I sighed.

  “Come on, just answer. Without thinking so hard,” Jacob said.

  “More than a little.”

  He smiled mischievously. “As I suspected,” he said. “Why?”

  “Why? I don’t know, I just do.” I felt like I was blushing.

  “I need to know why.”

  “Jacob, there are a lot of reasons.”

  “Then give me a few.”

  I tried to do a quick survey of my emotions. “Well,” I said, “I guess the biggest one is because you’re not like anyone I know.”

  Jacob looked at me as if my words held the cure for cancer. “Can you explain that?”

  “I thought you wanted the simple answer.”

  “I changed my mind. Complicate.” He raised his brow like he was waiting for something deep and meaningful to come dancing out of my mouth.

  “I think it has something to do with the way you feel things,” I said. “Everything matters to you. And you aren’t afraid to show it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  What, when, why. Sometimes talking to Jacob was like talking to a four-year-old.

  “Remember the night your father died?” I said. “When I found you on the beach and for an hour you cried in my arms? It might sound totally sick and twisted, but that was one of the most beautiful hours of my life. I loved you so much for being able to do that. I wish I could be that honest.”

  He shook his head. “You underestimate yourself. I know you think you hide so much, but I can see right through you.”

  He could. He was the only one.

  “That’s why I love you,” he said. “You try and act so tough, you think you’re so damn hopeless and godless and faithless, but you don’t fool me. People without hope aren’t tormented by the world the way you are. People without hope don’t give a shit. But I see it in you, in the way you look at things, even in the way you look at me sometimes, like I’m the coolest fucking guy in the universe, and I know it’s in there. Reverence. Belief. Something. You have a lot more faith than you own up to. You just don’t want to be let down. But I’m not going to let you down again. Not if I can help it.”

  Jacob extended his left hand out across the table. He wanted me to take hold of it, but there were too many things I needed to say first, things I’d been thinking about and writing in my journal for weeks; things that were finally becoming clear to me.

  I slammed my soda can down and rolled my eyes. “Goddamn it,” I said. “That’s it.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why I love you. Because you say ridiculous fucking things like that. Normal people don’t say things like that, Jacob. All my life I waited for someone who would say things like that to me. And for someone I didn’t feel alone in the presence of. Someone who understood. Someone who would make me feel like it wasn’t just me against the world. Even when we’re not together. Even when I think you’re having rough, dirty sex with Rosalita the barmaid in Needles, California, I’m still comforted by the fact that you’re out there. Just knowing you exist changed the world for me. No one has ever made me feel like that, except maybe Howard Roark from The Fountainhead, but he doesn’t count because he’s fictional.”

  Jacob looked like he was going to say something profound, then he froze. “Wait a second,” he said with a crooked face. “Who the hell is Rosalita?”

  “No one. Forget it.”

  He picked up a piece of fried fish, squirted it with lemon, and shoved it in his mouth just as the Texan began to show the camera how to de-bone the catch of the day. Before Jacob swallowed, he said, “We belong together. You know we do. Taste this.”

  He held a spoonful of macaroni and cheese in front of my face and I took it.

  The young waiter came back out to check on us. Instead of asking if everything was all right, he said, “Everything cool?”

  These are good people, I thought. Not like the west side losers who say things like, “Is there anything else we can get for you today, Ma’am?” as if they’re auditioning for a role on a sitcom.

  Jacob said, “Listen, I love you. You love me. I am not, nor will I ever be, the heartbreaking scoundrel you think your father was. You have to get that through your thick skull. You have to let go. Don’t be so afraid. That’s all I can say. The rest is up to you.”

  I t
ook a bite of the cornbread. It tasted like yellow birthday cake. Jacob was right about the food, but I still didn’t understand the significance of our visit to Chef Lulu’s. And I knew there had to be significance. Jacob would have never orchestrated something so specific without significance involved.

  “This ain’t no game,” the Texan said, explaining the finer points of reeling in a fighting bass. He yelled at his Billy Bob cohort. “Pull back! And keep your tip up,” he said. “Set the hook! Set the hook!” He could barely talk around the big wad of chew in his mouth.

  “Jacob, why are we here?” I said. “Why did you bring me all the way out to this place to talk? And why now?”

  “Why? Because this is the best soul food in Los Angeles, that’s why.” Then, acting like what he was about to say was completely beside the point, he continued, “And because I want you to get used to the kind of food you’ll be eating if you come to Memphis with me next month. We probably should’ve ordered something barbequed. They’re big on that down there. They char everything. Especially pork. I don’t even like pork, to tell you the truth. We’re going to have to buy a grill. Do you like pork, Trixie?”

  He crammed a giant forkful of collard greens into his mouth and tried not to smile.

  “What did you say?”

  “I don’t know about you, but come next month, I’m outta here,” he said smugly.

  I wish I knew how to explain the phenomenon that came over me after his words sunk in. If he said he was moving, it could only mean one thing.

  He’d sold the book.

  My entire body became paralyzed. I’m not exaggerating, I couldn’t feel my arms or my legs, only the rushing of blood through veins.

  “Jacob?” I stuttered slowly, “Did you…”

  He grinned like a proud papa.

  The idea of the book finally being sold, the possibility of what it promised, was almost too much for me. When I regained control of my motor skills I stood up, probably to make sure I still could. I didn’t say a word. I just walked out the door. I needed air.

  There was an old, run-down house across the street from the restaurant. Half of the building was lopsided, it had plastic paper flapping where the front windows should have been, and most of the yard was covered with rusty car parts. To the left of the door was a tiny flower box filled with dandelions. Nine out of ten people walking by would have called them weeds. They were the most breathtaking bunch of yellow weeds I’d ever seen, as if the sun had given birth to a dozen babies.

  I sat down on the curb and burst into tears.

  A moment later I felt Jacob’s hands on my shoulders.

  “Hey,” was all he said. He lifted me up, turned me around, and engulfed me in his arms.

  That made me cry even harder. I put my lips to his lips. To say I kissed him would be inaccurate. I tried to consume him.

  “Control yourself,” Jacob said. “According to you we’re not even dating, remember?”

  I buried my face in his chest and inhaled. I’d missed the smell of him almost more than I’d missed anything.

  “Our food’s going to get cold,” he said.

  I asked him to give me a minute. I wanted to look around. I wanted to take notice of everything. All of a sudden, I felt the need to completely absorb the place in which I stood.

  Before he went back inside, Jacob handed me a piece of paper. It was folded up into a cube, the size of a square inch. On it he’d written me a note:

  Dear Trixie,

  Will you come to Memphis with me?

  A) Yes

  B) No

  C) I’d go anywhere with you because you fuck like a goddamn fire hose.

  D)You’re an asshole and I never want to see you again.

  Circle ONLY ONE and give it back to me when you’re done eating.

  Love, J

  When I went back inside, Chef Lulu was spying on us from her window. She saw me wiping away the tears. She shook her head. “See what my food does to people? Makes ’em fools,” she said.

  I sat down, next to Jacob instead of across from him, and made him give me all the details of the book sale. He explained how Adrenaline ended up getting two separate publishers to vie for it.

  “And then something called ‘a floor’ got going,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m still not exactly sure. It’s fabulous though,” he said. “I think it’s something like an auction maybe, but different. One of the interested publishing houses throws out a bid, and if that bid isn’t upped by the other house then they get the book. I think that’s what happened. All I know is that she finalized it yesterday. It’s done. There’s no turning back now.”

  We were in the middle of eating the sweet potato pie when the waiter brought us our check. I asked him if I could borrow his pen. I unfolded Jacob’s note, circled my answer, and handed it to him. Jacob looked at it but manifested no reaction. He just nodded like a judge reading a verdict, feigning indifference.

  “You ready to go?” he said.

  On our way out of the restaurant, Jacob pressed his body against mine, lowered his voice and said, “Speaking of fire hoses…”

  We considered stopping at the Exxon across the street for a quickie, but Jacob feared the smell of a service station bathroom would compromise the purity of my enjoyment.

  We made it home in record time.

  “I hope you’re ready,” Jacob said as we wrestled with each other’s clothes. He felt the need to apologize beforehand, predicting the imminent session wasn’t going to take very long.

  “Contrary to what you seem to think, Rosalita, it’s been a while for me.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Jacob was making breakfast when I woke up the next morning. The sight of him standing over a frying pan with bed-head wearing nothing but a pair of baggy shorts made me feel like Mary Magdalene the day after Jesus’s resurrection.

  We ate banana pancakes and made a list of all the things we had to do before we left. There were myriad minor details to iron out, a lot of loose ends to tie up, and not all that much time to do them. One month—that’s the window we gave ourselves. We wanted to be ex-residents of California by mid-November. No, I take that back, it wasn’t simply that we wanted to be, we had to be. Once our exodus was imminent, it was all we could do not to get in the car and go.

  “Beatrice,” Jacob said. I knew he meant business if he was calling me by my real name, “why haven’t you ever left before? I mean I had self-imposed mind games, not to mention financial constraints, keeping me here. You could’ve gone a long time ago. How come you didn’t?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I never really believed it was an option. And I didn’t want to go alone.”

  Jacob smiled impishly. “What do you say we leave everything we can’t fit in the back of the car and take off now. Today,” he said, barely able to keep still. I watched him doodle over his pancakes with syrup. First he drew a bird, then he smeared that with his fork into a sticky Rorschach blot and tested me.

  “What do you see?” he said. “I see B.B. King. Do you know B.B. King has a bar in Memphis? Come on, what do you see?”

  “I see a Herman Miller ball clock.”

  He turned his plate sideways, entertaining that possibility, then he nodded and looked up. “So, what do you think? You wanna go tonight?”

  “Jacob…” I said. I hated to burst his beautiful little bubble of joy, but one of us had to be practical. We had commitments, work to finish, people to say good-bye to. We couldn’t just go. Once I finally convinced him of that, he said, “Okay then, let’s leave a few days before my birthday. That way we can take our time driving across the country and still be in Memphis by the end of the month. How’s that?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  We called everyone who cared and told them the good news.

  Pete and
Sara decided to throw us a big going-away party the Saturday before we left.

  Kat told me I was the best friend she’d ever had. Then she freaked out. “Y’all have a good time now,” she said in a pissy voice, and hung up. Jacob called her right back.

  “Hey, butt-face,” he said. “We’re not going into the witness protection program, you know. We’re just moving.”

  “This is all your fault, Grace. Don’t think I don’t know it.” Click.

  Joanna congratulated us and promised she’d visit as soon as we got settled.

  My mother wanted to know why we couldn’t wait until after the holidays to move. “Nobody moves during the holiday season,” she said.

  I told her we’d waited long enough.

  Jacob and I got back into bed with his beat-up road atlas and started planning our drive.

  “Can we camp the whole way?” Jacob said.

  “Camp? You mean like sleep outside?”

  “No, I mean dress in drag,” Jacob said sarcastically.

  “I guess,” I said. But I was skeptical. I’d never been camping before. Certain aspects of it concerned me. “Won’t it be cold?”

  “Not if we bring the right gear.”

  “Where do we go to the bathroom?”

  “In the woods. I’ll dig you holes.”

  “Holes?”

  “Come on, don’t you want to make love under the stars?”

  He didn’t have to ask me twice. Fucking under the stars more than made up for having to shit in a hole.

  Jacob planned on showing me where he stayed in Needles, which was sort of on the way. He wanted me to get a good look at the barmaid there.

  “To ease your mind,” he said.

  I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. Moving on, we’d go through Kingman, Arizona; make a fleeting stop in Flagstaff; from there we’d keep heading east to Albuquerque, speed through Amarillo and Oklahoma as fast as possible, then hit the fringes of Dixieland. Little Rock, Arkansas, would be the last real city we’d see before finally glimpsing the banks of the Mississippi river framed by the Memphis skyline. Depending on how much time that took, we were planning a quick detour down to Montgomery to spend Thanksgiving with Cole and Toren. I called Cole and he said we were more than welcome to stay with them as long as we wanted. He thought we might even like Montgomery enough to live there.