Bass-Ackwards: A Wrong-Way Romance

by Eris Adderly

  It took effort and deep breaths to drop his shoulders. What did he want? That was the question that needed answering in the first place. Out loud. Not avoiding it like a big shit on the carpet, hoping it’ll just disappear or someone else will come along and clean it up.

  You know what you want.

  He was being an idiot. Stubborn. He was going to have to talk to her. She was right. It wasn’t enough to acknowledge the mess. He had to get everything out in the open and just deal with it. Even if her response was the one thing that was twisting his anxiety into something gnarled and unrecognizable.

  Hell. She was dealing with her problems. She was knee-deep in that fucking hoard of her granddad’s, and no one was on her but herself to take on that burden.

  Coward. Just tell her.

  And, as if the brutal pep talk had been some kind of morose little overture, here came the Bronco, turning in to the lot from the highway.

  He inhaled. Exhaled. Nothing slowed his pulse.

  When she stepped out of her truck, it was in jeans and a tee-shirt. Why did it give him some small relief to see her that way again? How she always looked before their little ‘bargain’. Before his selfish demands. This was the woman who’d made him feel this way in the first place.

  She hit the door without her purse; only her keys gripped in a fist. Bulled right past him through the door to the back half, which thumped shut while his mouth was still open.

  Bad. This is bad.

  There were muted noises from the back room, and then quiet. The door whipped open and Christina now had a plastic grocery bag over one wrist, and a hoodie she kept in the back slung over her shoulder.

  Now, Asshole. Now.

  “Christina, you’re right,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  She turned on a heel and stared at him. Her brows and mouth went through a series of lines and positions, like she picked up and discarded any number of things she might say.

  She was so beautiful it hurt.

  “Bill, I—”

  I love you, Christina.

  Something in her eyes flared and then shut down.

  “I quit.”

  The bells on the front door handle clanked a lifeless goodbye.

  It was a numb day. And a numb night.

  He couldn’t sit on his ugly couch anymore. There was a plastic chair on his back porch, and he slouched there, listening to the katydids click away in the elms in the dark.

  He put the bottle of beer back down on the little glass-topped table that stood beside the chair. There were two more empty, just like it.

  The fist on his left knee curled around a pair of yellow panties, cut apart at each hip. On his right, a brand new pack of Marlboros. Not opened. Yet.

  Christina shouldered her way out of the gas station mini mart, her wallet and keys in one hand, and a bottle of Dr Pepper dangling from between the first two knuckles of the other. The overcast sky from a summer thunderstorm brewing to the east made the shadows under the Bronco soft and noncommittal.

  “Hey!”

  A voice jarred her out of autopilot and she blinked.

  “Christina!”

  On the opposite side of the gas pump from where she’d left her truck, Travis waved while he docked a fuel nozzle in his black Silverado. She sighed and forced a smile on her approach.

  Small town.

  “Sup, Travis.”

  “How you been?”

  “Eh. All right.” She opened the driver-side door and deposited keys, wallet, and soda on the front seat of her truck. “Lookin’ for a new job.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Sucks.”

  “Yeah. There’s nothing decent where I don’t have to drive for twenty, thirty miles.”

  This might have been the most she and Travis had ever said to each other. Maybe he was just one of those people who only relaxed outside of work.

  “Lucky you got out when you did, though,” he said, watching the total on the pump flicker higher as his tank filled.

  Her eyebrows went up. “Yeah, why?”

  The pump housing and the adjacent support column for the canopy framed her former coworker. “Shit, Bill’s gone way back down the rabbit hole since you left.”

  She shrugged, not understanding.

  “Turned his prick dial way up to eleven,” Travis went on. “Probably because he’s the one who has to fuck with the schedule software now. Caught him watching a YouTube tutorial the other day.” He chuckled, and the pump shut off with a grind and chunk.

  Christina mustered a smile. “Yeah, no doubt.”

  “He’s fuckin’ smoking again.” Travis hung up the nozzle. Screwed his gas cap back on.

  She didn’t know what to say, and just stood there, fingers curled around the door handle and body turning just enough, trying to convey her readiness to leave. After too much silence, she managed, “Well, uh … good luck with that.” Gave a low-effort laugh.

  “Right,” Travis said, turning to the door of his own truck. “Hey maybe I should put on a skirt. Maybe that’ll cheer him up!”

  Her face got hot in an instant.

  He’s just making a joke. He doesn’t know.

  “Yeah,” she said, “just don’t ask for a day off.”

  The Bronco door slammed after her, and she gave Travis a weak wave as she turned out of the gas station lot and back onto the highway.

  Two weeks, and she had just stopped finding reminders around every corner to make her cry.

  And for what? What this time? To know he was affected, too?

  No. She was not going to feel bad for him. Not even one little bit. He was a grown-ass man, and he could have used his words. He’d made his choices, too.

  And they hurt. His choices. Mine. They were all stupid, and they all hurt.

  Pain, Christina decided, was easiest when you got the fuck away from it.

  And none of this was helping her find a job.

  ✪

  “Saw Christina at the gas station the other day.”

  “Yeah?” Bill put copious amounts of effort into keeping his face disinterested while he continued putting the shop’s main workbench back in some semblance of order.

  Travis was rooting around in a box from the parts house. After no success finding whatever he was looking for inside, he picked up the whole thing and headed out through the open roll-up door to the shop. Under bright, noon sunlight, he pawed at the contents again.

  “How’s she doing?” Bill said. As though a follow-up question made him seem less invested. He used the side of his hand to sweep little odds and ends into a pile on the work surface. Cut bits of wiring. Twisty ties from packaging already opened.

  “Eh.” Travis came up at last with something tiny in a plastic bag from the parts box and shrugged. “All right, I guess.” He returned through the door into the shade of the shop. Started tearing into the little bag. “Said she’s lookin’ for a job, still. Seemed like she wanted to get the hell out of there, though. Kinda weird.”

  “Oh?” Bill scooped the little pile into his other palm. Transferred it to the trash bin.

  “Yeah, I dunno. I don’t remember her bein’ that antisocial.”

  Bill grunted at this. “Hey, put that little bag in the trash,” he said to Travis, when he saw his employee about to start cluttering up the workbench again. “Tryna keep this area where we can find things.”

  And that was the period on the conversation about Christina.

  She’d been smart. She’d quit. She didn’t have to walk around here all day looking at the workbench. Where he’d touched her. Seen her. The chair outside behind the office. The bathroom.

  Fuck.

  He’d done this to himself.

  She’s the one who quit. You were ready to talk. To tell her. She’s the one who stormed out of here.

  After he’d made things as difficult as possible, of course.

  Bill began picking up boxes that littered the workbench—oil filters, spark plugs, and the like—to see which were empty and could be t
ossed.

  He could make whatever excuses he wanted. This was his grave, and he’d dug it. He hadn’t deserved Christina Lee Dodd six months ago, and he didn’t deserve her now.

  ✪

  The guest bedroom at her granddad’s house hadn’t been touched in even longer than the living room, and Christina made a conscious effort to avoid wishing Bill were there to help her with the hoard again. This had been her dad’s room, growing up. It was about to be hers.

  She was cringing and attacking the upper reaches of the inside of the closet with the tube attachment of a vacuum cleaner, making herself tiny and hoping none of the spiderwebs to which she was laying waste had any active inhabitants, when her clunking of the tube made a small box tumble to the ground.

  Christina shrieked and leaped back. Her anxiety was at a level.

  Bits of paper inside came fluttering out on the way down, and more splayed themselves on the floor space she’d cleared like a messy deck of cards. She switched off the vacuum.

  “What’re you doin’ in there?” Her granddad’s voice came from the recliner she’d convinced him to make his way to in the living room.

  “I’m makin’ a mess,” she hollered back. Silence told her this was a satisfying response.

  Christina squatted on her heels and righted the little box. A cigar box with a hinged lid. The paper things were notes. Yellowed postcards. Envelopes that were intensely sharp and flat, in the way of old papers that had been stored, compressed, for long years.

  She turned over a stiff white rectangle to find a photo of her grandma and granddad. Maybe from the early 60s, judging by her grandma’s hair? It was for sure from before when her dad was born; he’d been a late-in-life baby for her grandparents, and this was in front of some house she didn’t know. Pops and Nana were both smiling in the picture, even as they squinted into the sun.

  Photo set aside again in the box, Christina thumbed open one of the folded notes on the floor. In that nearly identical cursive that all older folks born around the same era seemed to have, she began to make out in faded ink the beginnings of a letter from her granddad to her grandma. After a few lines, she folded the paper and returned it to the box—it was personal, and not hers to see.

  The hoarding had really started after her grandma had passed.

  She gathered the rest of the spilled mementos back into their container and stood. Made her way out into the living room.

  “Hey, Pops,” she said. “Look what I found.”

  “What’s that?” He eyed the box.

  “Look.” She handed it to him, and he took it and set it in his lap. Selected the note she’d seen to open and inspect.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, once he got a handle on what she’d brought him. “I haven’t seen these in years. Where’d you find these?”

  “Closet in Dad’s old room.” Christina refrained from pointing out that things wouldn’t go missing for so long if he kept the hoard under control. Saying stuff like that didn’t help.

  She let him be to sift through memories without her hovering and returned to the bedroom to work. Her trailer was already on the market and, once she sold it, she could live with her granddad and avoid having to pay space rent at Ashland Estates while she continued to hunt for a new job. Pops had agreed readily to the idea—he’d never liked the idea of her living alone—and there was no way she could keep Denise on to help him out now that she’d reduced her income by one hundred percent.

  Just needed to find a job. Before her savings ran out and things got really shitty.

  You had a job. Your stubborn ass just had to have the last word.

  Making her dogged way through more boxes and piles in the closet did a good enough job of distracting her until her stomach decided to have a say.

  “I’m gonna make us some sandwiches, Pops,” she said as she came back into the main part of the the house.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said, I’m gonna make us some food.” Christina went to where she’d set her cooler on the kitchen counter and started lifting out the sandwich fixings she’d brought. The kitchen was still in no state to cook in—cleaning in there would come after the bedroom.

  A few minutes later, she had paper plates bearing ham sandwiches to share with her granddad. The TV tray alongside his recliner was their table for the afternoon—he still wasn’t moving from place to place if he didn’t have to after the hip surgery. She’d have to get better about convincing him to try walking around a little every day.

  While her granddad worked his way through the triangle of meat and bread, Christina eyed the open cigar box, still on his lap.

  “Pops,” she said around a mouthful, “how did you know you were in love with Nana?”

  “Mm?”

  She repeated herself. At least once was normal.

  “Oh?” he said, thumbing the same photo she’d found in the other room. “Hell, I don’t know.”

  Christina hid her eye roll behind a smile and chewing. Always seemed like everything was easier in those days. It wasn’t. But it sure looked like it. Like things just happened and nobody had any idea how they’d happened.

  “Well, maybe,” her granddad said, after picking up the picture and squinting at it for a time, crust of a sandwich still in his other hand, “maybe …” He frowned, and she waited.

  “You know,” he said, “there was a time your grandmother went off to take care of her great Uncle Harv for a bit? Oh, maybe six months?”

  “I did not know that.” She tried to encourage him; not just for her own sake, but because her granddad was happier when he could tell his stories.

  “He’d done this same thing I did,” Pops went on. “Fell and bust a hip. This was before we were married.”

  Christina nodded, and he continued.

  “By the time she was gone a couple weeks? Hell. Missed her so much, I liked to died. And she was all the way in Missourah.”

  She smirked at the way her granddad always pronounced ‘Missouri’. “What’d you do, Pops?”

  It was like he hadn’t heard her. “This was in nineteeeen … forty-nine? Fifty? No, forty-nine.” He brandished the crust, arguing with himself before meeting her eyes again. “It don’t matter. You best believe I had a ring bought by the time she come back. I couldn’t be without her. All there was to it.”

  “But how’d you know you couldn’t be without her?” Egging him on was fun. Good to see him lively. And focused on something other than actively trying to fill his house with junk.

  “Oh, I suppose … every damn thing around reminded me of her. Couldn’t go see a picture show with the boys, and I didn’t think of our first date at the theater. Or help Mama bring in the groceries, and I’d see your grandma in my head. The first time she come over and helped Mama cook, and then we’d sneak off after supper and go neck.” The old man’s eyes glinted at the memory, and he gave Christina a wink. “But I didn’t tell you none of that.”

  “Can’t imagine why, Pops.” She returned a crooked smile.

  “Why you wanna know all this?” he asked, cocking her a suspicious eye. “You makin’ eyes at a boy?”

  Christ, Pops. If you only knew.

  “I’m just bein’ nosy,” she said, gathering up the paper plates. “You wanna play some cards before I go back to cleaning in there?”

  “Sure,” he said to her back as she moved to one of the trash bags under the kitchen counter. “You try not to cheat this time.”

  “You’re the one who cheats, Pops! I see you ‘accidentally’ bumpin’ the cards when you don’t think I’m lookin’!”

  She went and fished the deck of cards out of her purse. Her and her granddad bickered, friendly, and Christina tried not to leave space in her head for one William James Marshall.

  It had been three months and six days since Christina had quit her job at the Haul Ash. Not that she’d been keeping track.

  The trailer had sold after escrow had taken for-fucking-ever, and tomorrow she was going to make a
final sweep of the place, the first big adult purchase she’d ever made about to be another thing at which she’d failed, and get the last of her stuff out. Possibly clean some things, because that never ended.

  She was wiping crumbs off a countertop that very minute. Her granddad’s kitchen was clean all around her. As clean as it had been in decades, thanks to her vigilance.

  And now it smelled like warm, baked things. A thousand times better. Her granddad was walking around more every day, though she had to keep on her toes to curtail his bringing more things into the house.

  Christina laid the cookies atop a paper towel inside the plastic container she’d set aside on the counter. They were gingerbread, and it was only October, but it was the only one of her nana’s recipes she’d ever been able to not screw up on a consistent basis. Her ‘go to’ for any sort of situation where people expected her to show up with food.

  She’d let it fester. The whole three months. There were times where ‘forget and move on’ was her sole objective. More often, ‘dwell and wallow’ stamped her other goals right out.

  Today was the day.

  Christina pressed the container lid down on all four corners and hefted the thing. Came around the counter to collect her purse.

  Her granddad was watching a war documentary on the TV in the living room.

  “I’ll be back later this afternoon, Pops.” She stopped beside his chair to get his attention. “You call my phone if you need something.”

  He dragged his eyes from the screen. “Where you goin’?”

  “Gonna go take these cookies to some friends.”

  “And you aren’t gonna leave me any?” He twisted his face in mock affront, and Christina smiled.

  “There’s more in the kitchen,” she said. “We’ll have some after supper.”

  “All right.” Her granddad turned back to his show. “Have fun.”

  Fun. Right.

  The Bronco fired up and pulled away from the curb.

  Today was the last chance she was giving this whole thing. Why she’d made cookies for it, she didn’t entirely understand. Some kind of peace offering? A way to open dialogue?