Throwback

by Zeia Jameson

  It was past midnight when I came out of the room. And I realized that somehow, miraculously, Amelia was still asleep. Or quiet at least. I rushed over to the baby monitor to check it.

  “She’s fine. She’s been asleep the whole time,” Jeremy says.

  “Wow. I cannot believe that she’s still sleeping.”

  Jeremy is sitting on the sofa, flipping through TV channels. “Did you finish?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says flatly, not even turning his eyes in my direction.

  “Want to see what’s in envelope B?” I ask, silently begging him to look at me.

  “I’m exhausted,” he huffs. “But those are the rules right? We are supposed to open envelope B immediately?”

  I nod and head to the kitchen table. Jeremy follows. I look through the remaining envelopes that are on the table to find B. It’s larger than the other lettered envelopes, and heavier. I unseal the envelope and look in.

  “What on earth?”

  Jeremy leans in towards me, up on his tip toes, “What is it?”

  I pull out a large stack of photographs. They are wrapped with a piece of paper that says:

  Sit down together and look through these. But before you do, pull out the other two items from the trunk that are related to this envelope.

  I set the pictures down onto the table, still wrapped in the paper. I look into the trunk and find two square items labeled “For envelope B”. I pick up both squares of packaging paper and hand one to Jeremy. We unwrap each at the same time.

  In my hands, is a medium-sized box. But I immediately realize that it’s not any regular old box. Taped on the top of the box, there is a small, white record slip cover. There is a label on the cover that says “Play this.” I remove the slip cover from the box and pull out the small, 45 record from its jacket. I take a glance at the writing on the label of the record and I find myself stunned a bit.

  “Jeremy,” I sigh. I look his way and hand him the record. It’s the Janis Joplin single that he used to love to hear me sing. I look down at the square box that is still on the table and take off the lid. Nope, not a regular old box at all. It’s a record player.

  “What was in your paper?” I ask Jeremy.

  He lifts up two glass, cylindrical containers full of wax, one with an index card taped to the front that says “Light these.” “Candles,” he says, not amused.

  “I feel like we’ve fallen into some rehashed version of Alice in Wonderland,” I say. I take the candles from him. They are both the same color—white. But I smell them and they smell distinctly different. And insanely enough, they smell like…us.

  “Jeremy, smell this.” I hand him one of the candles. He tilts it and takes a whiff. His eyes grow big. “Peaches.” He smiles.

  “Yes. And this one. This one smells like you. It’s earthy and smells so clean. It’s just like the cologne you used to wear.”

  Used to wear being the operative phrase. I don’t even think Jeremy wears cologne anymore. And I ran out of my peach conditioner and hand lotion months ago. I just had not had the chance or really the thought to buy any more recently. When Jeremy told me two weeks ago that we were going out on a date with each other, I knew I had a sample packet of the conditioner shoved away in my bathroom somewhere. When I finally found it in a drawer, I was so excited. However, given how the end of that day turned out, I’m not even sure Jeremy noticed that I had used it.

  I walk over to the kitchen and pull a box of matches out of a bowl of random things that I have on the counter. I set both candles in the middle of the table and light them. In seconds the room is filled with the scents of Jeremy and me. It’s as though he and I are swirling and floating around the room—dancing with one another. I close my eyes and inhale deeply. Emotion hits me and I have to sit down.

  I look at Jeremy. “Do you feel that?”

  He tilts his head upward and breathes in, “I don’t know if I’m feeling what you’re feeling. But I feel something. And it’s good.” He smiles.

  I pick up the 45 record from the table. I place the record onto the player and set the needle. I turn on the record player. Cracks and pops come from the speaker just before the instrumental of the song begins. I adjust the volume a bit, so that it’s not too loud. Then, Janis’ raspy voice enters. Jeremy places a hand on my shoulder.

  I look down at the pictures. With the fragrance and the music setting the ambiance, I pick up the pictures, remove the paper and begin flipping through. “These are all of us. You and me.” Jeremy sits beside me and we begin looking through. There are some of before we got married. God, we looked so much younger and it was only a few short years ago. There are pictures of our wedding. We look so happy. Pictures of our first Christmas as a married couple, pictures of when Amelia was born. The three of us. So happy.

  This is Rosalie’s handy work for sure.

  We continue to look through and I then realize that there are some pictures that I took myself with my phone.

  “Wait a minute. This is a picture I took of us. On my phone. When we went to the space needle in Seattle. I never showed this to anyone. Especially not your Mom. This can’t be Rosalie. She doesn’t even know this picture exists.”

  “Wait, you think my mother is up to this?”

  “Well yeah of course. Didn’t you?”

  “I suspected.”

  Well at least we agreed on something.

  “But look. All of these last few pictures are of us on trips. They are pictures I took with my phone. No one knows about these pictures but you and me.”

  The wheels in my mind begin to spin. I point to the trunk and look at Jeremy, “You didn’t come up with this did you? You are the only other one that’s seen these pictures.”

  “No, Livy, it’s not me,” he says with a little condescension is his voice. “I’m not this clever. Plus, if I had the time to come up with something like this, I would have used that time to spend with you and Amelia.”

  “Well, this has taken a creepy turn. That means someone, perhaps Rosalie, hijacked my phone somehow.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t share them? Text them to someone?” Jeremy quizzes, with a little more condescension.

  “Positive,” I responded, confidently.

  “Hmmm,” is all he offers back.

  We continue looking at the photos. In each of them we are smiling, hugging, kissing. We are loving each other.

  Something we haven’t done in a long time it seems.

  “So are we just supposed to move on to envelope C once we are finished looking at the photos?”

  Jeremy looks at the paper that was wrapped around the photos. He flips it around. “There aren’t any more instructions.” He shrugs. “Odd, considering how specific everything else has been so far.”

  I grab the C envelope. “Ah ha! Here we go!”

  On the sealed flap is a label with a typed message.

  Once you have thoroughly enjoyed your trip down memory lane with your aromatics, melodies and photographs, open this envelope.

  And that is exactly what I do.

  Another piece of paper:

  The pictures are to remind you of why you are married in the first place. You were once two young lovebirds that looked at each other with nothing but passion, admiration and respect. You are still young. And you still love each other. You just have to find it. Sometimes life gets in the way and you lose each other in the murkiness of it all.

  For your next step, use the pages of your journal to write down what you remember about what you used to feel. How did you feel when you first met? Your first date? First kiss? First time you had sex?

  “Um,” Jeremy stammers, “I don’t think this is from Mom.”

  “Why? Because of the word sex? I think your mom is familiar with the term.”

  “Yeah, but I just don’t see her typing up a letter asking us to write about our first time.”

  “Let’s worry about that later. There’s more to read.”

  Write about all of the things yo
u used to love about one another. As much as you can possibly remember. You don’t have to write this in a room by yourself. You can write together. But you must follow two rules:

  1) You must hang up all of the pictures before you start writing

  2) You absolutely, no matter what, cannot have sex until further notice

  “Further notice?” I question. “This trunk is very demanding.”

  “The trunk is demanding?” Jeremy asks.

  “Well, I have no idea who is up to this. So I’m just going to blame the trunk.” I motion my hand toward the trunk. “I mean, look at it. It’s old. A little creepy. For all we know, it could be haunted, and we could be in the middle of some twisted horror movie. What if the spirit of the trunk hacked my phone, printed out these pictures, put all of this stuff inside the trunk and mailed it to us?”

  Jeremy squints his eyes at me, “Livy, don’t be ridiculous. Someone, alive, is behind this. But you are right. Until we know who to blame, it’s best just to blame the trunk.”

  I read the last sentence of the instructions:

  You must complete these instructions immediately and proceed on to envelope D.

  “Yeah, well the trunk doesn’t know we’ve begun this in the middle of the night. How are we going to hang all of these pictures? We don’t have any frames?” Jeremy states.

  Whoever put together this trunk knows that we are very scant on hanging pictures of ourselves. We have a ton of pictures of Amelia hung everywhere. We have one of the three of us and one of our wedding. I have no reasoning behind why we don’t have more of us up; we just never did. Anyone who’s ever been to our house knows this.

  Which is everyone we know, practically. That narrows it down a lot.

  “I know,” Jeremy says. He walks over to one of the drawers in the kitchen and shuffles things around. He pulls out a small, white tube and lifts it in the air.

  “Is that putty?” I ask.

  “Yeah. We can stick it to the back of the pictures and stick them to the wall. At first, I thought tape but that could ruin the paint on the wall, so we should use putty.” He smiles, basking in his creativity.

  I can’t help but smile too. “Ok. Putty it is.”

  We take the pictures into the living room and begin hanging them. With each picture we pick up, it seems we begin a “do you remember when” story with each other. It took us a good half hour to hang the photos. We laughed a lot. We smiled a lot. And once we were done, we even hugged each other. And it was one of those hugs. The lost in our own universe hug. We hadn’t done that in a long time.

  “So since it looks like we’ll be up for a while writing, want some wine?” Jeremy proposes.

  “Sure,” I say.

  Jeremy pours us some wine—the kind we had at the restaurant on our first date; it’s the only wine we drink. I turn off the record player, but leave the candles burning. We sit on the sofa, journals in hand, and lightly clink our glasses together. “Shall we begin?” Jeremy asks.

  “We shall.”

  ~~~

  We write for a while.

  We are sitting on opposite sides of the sofa, both neatly tucked into the corners. Every now and then, we peek up from our journals and look at each other. Smiling. Snickering. Even blushing. Finally, Jeremy puts his journal on the coffee table and leans over to me. He hovers for a few moments and then grabs my journal and pen. He lays them on the coffee table as well. Jeremy leans down and kisses me. Softly at first, but strengthening in power by every second that passes. I run my fingers through his hair. Writing about how we used to be helps me realize I miss this kiss and apparently it helped Jeremy remember too. It’s refreshing.

  Refreshing? Jeremy is laying on top if me, kissing me and trying to get his hand up my shirt and the only word I can think of is refreshing?

  Jeremy’s hand grazes my stomach and I immediately think of my stretch marks. And then I remember what the trunk said—“no sex.”

  “Jeremy, stop. No sex, remember? The trunk said so.”

  Jeremy leans up. “Yeah. Dammit. I just feel like we haven’t been in this position much lately and writing all of those wonderful things about you just made me want to be closer to you. To kiss you.”

  “I know. But we have to listen to the trunk, right? I mean, it obviously knew this would spark something in us. It wants us to not have sex for a reason.”

  Jeremy lays his head on my chest and exhales.

  “Are you done writing?” I ask him, playing with his hair.

  He nods his head into my chest.

  “Well then, let’s get going. It’s almost three. There’s no telling what’s in the D envelope. We might be up all night. Not to mention there is no telling when Amelia will wake up.”

  I am astounded that she has slept this long. It’s as though the trunk delivered upon Amelia her own set of instructions to stay asleep while Mommy and Daddy sort it out in the other room.

  We head over to the table and Jeremy picks up envelope D. He opens it to find yet another note. He begins reading it out loud.

  You’ve written down the worst. You’ve written down the best. To complete Envelope #1, you’ll have to be brave enough to read what you’ve written out loud to one another. Previous instructions stated that these journals were for your eyes only, but it was stated as such in order to get you to put how you really felt onto the paper. And no one but you will read it still. But you now have to read it out loud. To each other.

  At this time, you will only read the things you wrote regarding why you are angry. The second part will be read at another disclosed time.

  Once you’ve read your entries to one another, you can go about the rest of your day as normal. But remember, no sex. And do not open the next envelope for at least 24 hours from the time the last word is read from both journals.

  “This trunk is a fucking asshole,” I murmur.

  “Indeed,” Jeremy agrees. “So let’s get to reading,” he adds.

  “I put those words on paper in hopes that I could leave them there and forget about them,” I whine.

  “Well, the trunk had other plans. And we have to follow the rules. Are you worried about me hearing what you wrote?”

  “It’s not pretty,” I confess.

  “Well, maybe I need to hear it.” Jeremy places his hand over mine. “Even if it is harsh, I’ll be ok.”

  I inhale and exhale quickly. “Ok. Well here goes nothing.”

  I look at Jeremy and look at my journal, then back at Jeremy. I’ve said most of these things to him before, so I don’t know why I am hesitant now. Maybe because I’m not in the heat of anger. Maybe because when I look down at the page at the things I wrote, I feel guilty for having written them, even though it is how I feel. Jeremy has been working his ass off, but we don’t communicate about anything anymore. I have to say what I’ve written. I’ve never been a chicken in my life so why start now?

  You used to be my best friend. All we’ve done lately is argue because we don’t see eye to eye on our current situation. I miss talking to you. I’d rather be talking to you. Not arguing, but talking.

  I haven’t seen you smile in a very long time. Before you started your business, I’d never seen you frown. Now, that’s all you seem to do. And worry. It makes me want to keep all of what is going on with me bottled up inside because I don’t want to stress you out anymore than you already are, but it also bothers me that you don’t step back from your work every now and then, and see how Amelia and I are doing.

  You’ve missed a lot of Amelia’s firsts. I know you said that it wasn’t important to you, but it should be. You don’t ever get those back. Every first I’ve witnessed has been so precious. She’s growing faster than I could ever imagine a tiny human could grow and you are missing it. She needs her father here, even if you don’t agree.

  When I found out I was pregnant, you told me it was going to be ok. I have changed my whole life for Amelia. My whole life right now IS Amelia. You haven’t changed a thing about your life to acco
mmodate her. You still get up do your same routine every morning. You go to work, come home whenever and do the same thing over again the next day. Even on weekends, you are so consumed with paperwork and phone calls that you don’t even notice that Amelia is playing on the floor trying to get your attention.

  I feel like a single parent.

  You used to make me feel beautiful, but I don’t feel that way anymore.

  I used to have confidence in myself, and now everything I do is riddled with guilt and doubt.

  I look up at Jeremy. The last few lines are going to be the hardest to say. I don’t know if I can do it. I look back down at my journal and take a deep breath.

  I love Amelia so much. She is the most precious gift I have ever been given.

  I begin to cry. To say the last sentences out loud may just kill me.

  But, some days, when it gets really hard...when I’m up to my elbows in shit and running off no sleep and I have dried, pureed carrots stuck in my hair...I wish...

  I have a golf ball sized lump in my throat. The final words have bundled up in my windpipe, refusing to come out. I clear my throat. I have to start what I finish. I am staring directly down at my journal, tears hitting the pages. I can’t look at him. I’m sniffling and my hands are shaking.

  Sometimes, I wish I would have just been strong enough to tell you to leave me be that night at the bar. Because I wonder if you could have found someone else that was better suited for you and this lifestyle you want me to have.

  I drop the journal on the ground and sit on the sofa and put my hands in my face and cry.

  ***

  39

  Jeremy’s letter

  You are stubborn. Usually I like that but now that we don’t spend as much time together, I find myself not having the patience for it.