by J J Hebert
“But it’s better than talking on the phone . . .”
“I have work tomorrow.”
“How early?”
“Eight.”
“You have to start at eight?”
“Need to wake up at six-thirty.”
“Are you gonna be okay?”
“Please, stay on the phone with me. I need to hear someone’s voice.”
“Okay.”
I feel used.
* * *
Working at the school is like chewing on broken glass. A kid decides to vomit in my designated area. Guess who has to clean it up? Me. It’s mud season and the kids don’t wipe their feet before entering their classrooms. Guess who has to clean it up? Me. A kid urinates on the bathroom floor. Guess who has to clean it up? Me.
I’m exhausted with playing janitor. No, beyond exhausted. Want-to-hit-something exhausted.
* * *
It’s Leigh’s first weekend at her new place, and she doesn’t invite me over. I haven’t even seen her apartment yet. Yesterday she phoned me. We didn’t talk long, about ten minutes. Work is going well, she said, she’s adjusting to her new environment, which she’s beginning to enjoy. Then she went on to tell me about this guy named Tim who she ran into at the grocery store. She explained that she knew him from before she moved to Portsmouth, from her younger days; he used to go to the same church as she and her family until he moved to Portsmouth a couple years ago, after landing a good job. He’s the pastor’s son at her parents’ church. Anyway, her running into him worked out great in her eyes because she’s been looking to meet friends in her area.
This weekend, instead of hanging out with me, her boyfriend, she’s spending time with Tim, her so-called friend.
I’m highly offended.
* * *
I’m at the school, taking my fifteen minute break from cleaning. I call Leigh. Six rings and she picks up.
“Hey. I’m on the other line with someone. Can I call you right back?”
“Who are you talking to?” I ask.
I hear her smack her lips. “Tim, if you must know,” she says.
“Oh.”
“So can I call you back?” she asks, unflustered, like this isn’t a big deal.
“Sure.”
She doesn’t return my call until the next afternoon, when she’s on her lunch break and I just woke up because I wrote into the wee hours of the morning after a work shift.
“What have you been up to?” I ask. “We haven’t talked much lately.” I don’t touch the subject of her not returning my call, blowing me off, in a sense.
“Tim and I went to the ocean last night. We’ve been doing a lot of catching up.”
Jealousy makes an appearance. “After or before you talked to him on the phone?” I ask.
“Before.”
So she went to the ocean with him and had to call him to say goodnight afterward. She didn’t call me to say goodnight! “What’s going on?” I ask, frightened for what she may say.
“What do you mean?” she says, flabbergasted, oblivious to my feelings.
“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with Tim. There isn’t anything going on between you two, is there?”
She chuckles like a schoolgirl. “We’re only friends.”
I want to chuckle and say I’m only going to kill him. “What’d you do on Saturday?” I ask, chuckle-free.
“Me and Tim went to his apartment, watched a bunch of movies, cooked dinner together, and we fell asleep.”
“You fell asleep at his place?” I say, animated.
“Calm down. Nothing happened. I slept on his couch. It was too late to drive home.”
“But can you see why I’d be a little weirded out about this?”
Silence, then she says, “I guess so,” but I think she really means, No, not really.
“Wouldn’t you be weirded out if I went to some girl’s house and fell asleep there?” I ask, thinking of Erica, not that I’d actually sleep with the Wicked Witch.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Leigh pauses. “Okay. Yeah.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Leigh has been extremely noncommittal about having me over to her place—and noncommittal in every other facet of our relationship—but finally, today, Saturday, I get to see her apartment. The apartment complex is tucked in between a cheese and wine shop and a flower shop, and she’s on the ground floor. I stand in the hallway and knock at her door.
“Coming!” Her voice echoes from within her apartment.
I hear the faint sound of a man’s voice.
“Hey, you,” she says, opening the door, “come on in.”
I step into her home, expecting to see Tim wrapped in a towel, lingering near the bathroom, or lying in her bed, nude, the drama you see on soap operas. Tim isn’t here; it is, I notice, the TV from which the man’s voice is coming.
Leigh doesn’t lay a finger on me, not a hug or a kiss, which is expected by now (I’m diseased and highly contagious, I suppose), then she goes straight to the remote control, and turns off the television.
“Have a seat.” She points to the couch, then sits.
I join her, scanning this living room/kitchen. The walls are painted in tones of blue. She has everything set up nicely—a black kitchenette table sits against the far wall beneath a mirror; the TV is mounted on the wall; a seascape painting hangs above the couch. I ask her where she got it. She says she purchased it at the mall for two hundred dollars.
“It’s good to finally see this place,” I say, “and to see you.”
Her head bobs. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Have you missed me?” I ask.
She skirts the question. “I can only spend a couple hours with you,” she says, “because Tim and I have some plans for later.”
My heart stops. I guess she didn’t miss me. “But I love you,” slips out. Crap. That sounded desperate.
“You love me?” She doesn’t return the statement.
I want to break down and cry. “What are you two gonna do?” I ask.
“He just got a new car and wants to go cruising.”
“What kinda car?” I’m working hard to keep from collapsing.
“A Beemer. It’s sweet, from the sounds of it.”
I’m threatened by Tim and his fancy car. “I bet his parents bought it for him, didn’t they?”
“Actually, no. He makes good money and bought it himself.” Her tone has attitude.
I’m your boyfriend. You should be cruising with me! “But I traveled all the way out here. I thought we were gonna spend the whole day together,” I say, desperate yet again.
“I know. I should’ve told you. Sorry.”
“Are you sure there isn’t anything going on between you two?”
“I told you before, we’re friends.”
“Are you attracted to him?”
She doesn’t say no and she doesn’t say yes. I wish I hadn’t asked.
* * *
I’m driving home from her apartment, grieved. I don’t get to see Leigh all week long and when I finally get to see her, she cuts our time short because she wants to hang out with Tim, a guy who sees her practically every day of the week. Is she serious? I picture them in his Beemer, windows down, sunroof open, Leigh’s hair blowing in the wind, he smiling at her, she smiling at him.
I weep, tears streaming down my cheeks. I glance at the passenger’s seat, the void Leigh has left behind, where she once sat. My windows are down, my sunroof broken. I’m going home to nothing.
I don’t know why, but I see them at a beach, hands interlocked, as ours once were, hugging and kissing, as we once did, and I bawl. I don’t want to lose her, the woman I love, but I feel I already have. She’s attracted to Tim. I know it, feel it inside.
I imagine her mother and father sitting her down at their kitchen table, the table where I was ostracized. They discuss Tim vs. James as though it’s a boxing match.
“Tim is everything we want in a son-in-
law,” her father says. “You should really think about dating him.” There’s one punch to my face.
Her mother says, “Think of it. He’s the pastor’s son. He has a high-level job, can support you and a family.” Another wallop, this one on my nose.
Again, her father: “But then there’s James. He’s everything we don’t want.” Bam!
Her mother: “So which one will it be?”
Leigh doesn’t need to give it much thought. “Tim,” she says. A right hook. Pow!
Her father smiles, claps his hands together in glee like a cartoon villain. “We knew you’d come to your senses one of these days,” he says. That’s the final blow. It’s a knock out in one round. Hold up your hands, Tim. Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the new heavyweight champion of the world!
* * *
I sit at the kitchen table, poking at my food like Leigh’s mother. When I finally push myself into taking a bite, one tiny piece of chicken, I find the food flavorless, as though my taste buds packed up and went on vacation. I set my silverware down, sobbing alone, tears pouring on the plate, wondering if I’ll ever have a desire to eat again, thinking about Leigh and Tim gazing into each other’s eyes, their long, flirtatious phone calls, their lengthy car rides in his Beemer. These thoughts knot my stomach.
* * *
In bed, at night, I can’t lie still. The sheets are too tight. Then, after I kick them out, they’re too loose. The room is too warm. Then, with the help of a fan, it’s too cold. There is no comfort. On top of the latter, I cry every few minutes, deep, unrestrained sobbing, flashing on Leigh and Tim at the mall, our old stomping ground, and she and him spending exorbitant amounts of time at his apartment, watching movies in the dark, touching, holding, falling in love.
* * *
Writing is virtually nonexistent. I don’t desire to write about magic of any sort, or to write. Period. It takes enough work to bathe, to shove a couple saltines down my throat and to throw down a glass of water from time to time. I can’t possibly imagine being creative at this point.
* * *
I pass by the Robert Frost letter, stop, and stare at the text. I’m letting him down, wherever he is. He frowns, eyes narrowing. “You should be ashamed to carry the Frost surname,” he says.
* * *
At work, I barely function. A constant haze swallows my mind. In the past, I’ve done a respectable job cleaning, but this week I forget to collect the garbage from four trash cans total. I also somehow overlook the vacuuming of two classrooms on two separate occasions.
Dad approaches me outside the janitor’s closet. “You’re not yourself these days. What’s wrong with you?”
If you were around once in a while, you’d know. “Nothing,” I say.
“Is that you saying you don’t want to talk about it?”
No, it’s me saying it’s too late to come swooping in asking questions about my life when you’ve shown practically no interest before. “Sorry,” I say. “I’ll try harder.” I wish he would say the same.
* * *
I’ve lost five pounds from a body that can’t afford to lose any weight. My hair has gotten long, inches beyond where it usually falls, and I’m taking a break from wallowing in despair to get my hair cut, of all things. There’s a chance I might see Leigh later today (she said she may have some time), and I want to look as attractive as I can for her. In that case, I should go home and stuff my face with food, despite my non-appetite, because I need to gain some of this weight back. And fast.
My hairdresser, Phyllis, starts snipping my hair. “So what’s going on in your life?”
I have that stupid bib over my body and I’m sweating underneath. “What isn’t going on in my life?”
“That much, huh?”
“Yeah.” I don’t look at myself in the mirror, instead look down at my lap, watching peripherally as the hair falls from the side of my head.
“Last time, you said you were seeing a girl. What was her name again? How’s that going?”
Can I plead the fifth? Ah, screw it. “Leigh. And things aren’t going well.”
“What’s wrong?”
I don’t have anyone else to discuss this with, so . . . “She moved to Portsmouth because of a new job and she’s been hanging out with a guy named Tim all the time instead of with me. Her parents hate me. And when I say hate, I mean hate. I’m the last person they want their daughter with.”
“That’s not good. How’d she meet Tim?”
“Bumped into each other at the grocery store. She recognized him. She knew him from before.”
“How’d she know him?”
“From church back home. She used to go to church with her mother and father. He’s the pastor’s son.”
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“She’s religious?”
“Yeah. So?” I don’t know what she’s getting at.
“Do you go to church?”
Oh, here we go . . . “No.” I look at her in the mirror.
“You need to watch out, then.”
“Why?” I’ve asked this too many times already.
“I can understand what you’re going through, I think.” She circles me, cutting hair here and there.
“You can?”
“Before I married Emerson—what, twenty years ago now?—I was engaged to a guy named Paul. He was a good guy. Went to church each week with his family. A real straight-edge. Treated me really well. But his parents couldn’t stand me, thought I was the devil or something because I didn’t believe the things they believed and I didn’t go to church with Paul and them. About a year into the engagement, our relationship changed. Paul stopped calling as much as he did before and we weren’t spending much quality time together. Come to find out, his parents had been speaking ill about me behind my back the whole time and they didn’t want him to date me anymore. I know this because he told me.”
“So what happened?”
Phyllis is still cutting; I watch her reflection, her fingers wrapped around the scissors. “He broke off the engagement,” she says. “He said he needed to find someone that his parents didn’t hate and be with that person. A year later, he was married.”
“To whom?”
“To some woman his mommy and daddy picked out for him. Last I heard, he and his wife were miserable.” She pulls her hand away from my head, gets rid of the loose hair around my neck with a brush. “How do you like it?” she asks, standing behind the chair.
I look into the mirror. “Pretty good,” I say, thinking that Tim is likely more attractive.
* * *
I’m in the car after the haircut, driving, thinking about the conversation I had with Phyllis. I flip open the cell phone and dial Leigh. She picks up, says “Hi,” and I don’t waste any time. I ask her right away, “Is everything all right between us?”
She pauses, the most horrific silence possible. Then: “Well . . . no, James. We need to talk, but not on the phone.”
“Why not on the phone?”
“Because this is the type of talk that should be done in person.”
I pull to the side of the road, fear washing over me. “You can’t give me some clue as to what you need to talk to me about?” I think of Phyllis, her engagement turned sour.
The line is silent for a second, then she says, “I don’t know if we should be together, honestly.”
I want to vomit. “Does this mean you’re breaking up with me?”
She pauses. This is the most horrific silence possible. “Would it be okay if I came over tonight?”
“Why don’t you want me to come over to your place?” I ask.
“Because that wouldn’t be right.”
“What wouldn’t be right?”
“What time is best for you?” she asks.
“Anytime.”
“Five?”
“That works.”
“Okay. See you there.”
Call ended.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
&n
bsp; Oh boy, what is it that she needs to talk to me about? Is she going to reveal that Tim had sex with her, that she’s fallen for him, he and his Beemer, his job, his apartment, his status as pastor’s son, his appeal to her parents, and she wants to be with him and not me?
I’m outside the house beneath a quilted sky because I can hardly breathe, and inside the house, warm and stuffy, isn’t the place to be when you’re on the verge of hyperventilating. Leigh will be here in about thirty minutes. Why didn’t she want me to come over to her apartment? She said it wouldn’t be right. What does that mean?
I can see it now:
She arrives, and we sit down in the living room to talk.
Leigh: I can’t be with you anymore.
Me, hyperventilating: Because?
Her, indifferent: Because Tim’s a better fit. My parents love him. He’s what they want in a son-in-law.
Me, dying inside: So this is it. Are you gonna leave me now? Is this why you wanted to come over here instead of me coming over to your apartment?
Her: Goodbye, James.
Me: But goodbye is something you only say to people you’re never going to see again.
Her: Exactly.
I hope I’m wrong about those thoughts. I hope the conversation doesn’t happen like that. I pick up a rock, an inch long, and hurl it across the street; it strikes a tree trunk, makes a thud. I choose another rock at my feet and chuck it even harder; it skims through the woods, hitting one, two, three trunks like a pinball game. I bend over again to select another rock to throw, to help ease some of this anxious energy, but prior to doing so, I hear a voice I haven’t heard for a while.
Tim’s everything a guy should be. Brad has returned with vigor. I picture him standing in front me, grinning. Tim has a better car than you. He has a better job than you. He has a better place to live in than you.
* * *
