by Lily Zante
I splay my arm out, touching where he lay, and then foolishly, I shift over, and sleep on the side of the bed where he had been.
A few hours later when I see him again, it’s in the kitchen and I have his breakfast ready. He looks rough, even worse than he did last night.
“Hey,” I say gently. My heart goes out to him. I want to put my arms around him and ask him what’s wrong, and then I want him to tell me so that I can fix it. But he doesn’t give much away. If anything, he’s as distant as ever and back in that faraway place.
“I can’t be disturbed for the next few days,” he informs me. “I have to get this done.”
“What about Jamie?”
“He’s still coming. Exercise helps.”
He leaves, and I try to figure out if it’s just me he wants to push away. I thought after yesterday, things might be different but maybe he’s crossed the boundary and gotten too close, become too vulnerable and now he can’t handle it. He’s pushed me away again, just like that, with a click of his fingers. He’s using me, and I’m letting him.
That’s how the rest of the week goes. We’re back to staying apart, me tiptoeing around him. It’s high time I checked out of this situation.
I revert back to being just the housekeeper, hating myself for being in this position. I start looking online with renewed vigor, sending my CV off as many places as I can. And in between, I still visit my mom. She seems weaker each time I go, and her memory seems shakier, but Brenda assures me that this is to be expected. On the weekend, I spend both days with her.
When I return, Ward is sitting in the kitchen. I’m on edge, wondering which side of him I’ll see this time. “I went to see my mom,” I tell him when he remarks that he’s hardly seen me. I tell him that she’s in a nursing home.
“And you go see her on the weekends?” he asks.
“Most weekends.” I explain about her having Alzheimer’s and how much it scares me and how this new nursing home is good for her.
“She used to live with you,” he states, as if this surprises him. I explain why I had to move her to a home when I couldn’t cope, when she became a risk to her own safety. “I couldn’t have her live by herself. I had to take care of her.”
“You’re a good daughter.”
“She’s all I have.”
“She’s lucky to have you.”
I walk over to the sink and pour myself a glass of water. “I reached my daily word count today,” he announces proudly.
I turn around, sipping my water slowly. “That’s good.”
He eyes me, as if he’s waiting for me to say more, but I won’t say more. I won’t be his sex on tap. “Goodnight then.” I walk out, even though it takes all of my focus not to turn around and walk back to him.
* * *
WARD
* * *
Mari’s angry with me, and who can blame her? What did I expect? For her to invite me to her room just because I’ve had a good writing day?
Complications, that’s what I am contending with now.
I hate complications, and that’s what this little arrangement has become. Neither of us bargained for this. I certainly didn’t intend for this to happen.
It. Just. Did.
I’m scared of having feelings for her, scared of what it might mean. If she had agreed, we would be having sex right now and everything would be okay.
I hate that we’re like this, not talking. I can do without the sex, but her not talking to me is harder to deal with. I’m going to fix it. I make my way upstairs, and knock on her door. There’s no way I’m going in unless she lets me in.
“Mari?” I knock again, four, maybe five times.
She comes to the door and opens it a little. “What do you want?” She sounds tired.
I have no answer because that’s not the question I was expecting. “You’re angry with me.”
“So?” She says it in the tone of a sullen teenager.
“I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
“You have that effect on me sometimes.”
I clench my jaw. I haven’t come here to have sex, but I also don’t want to get into a conversation about what we have. I don’t need the drama. I’m a fucking writer, and there’s plenty of drama in my head all the time. I certainly don’t need any more.
I want to rest and lately she’s the only one who allows me that luxury. She’s the only one who gives me that place of calmness. “Can we talk?” I want to lie down and have her cradle my head. I can’t explain to her how revisiting my home was a mistake. It’s shaken up all manner of dirt and silt. I wish I hadn’t revisited the past.
“Talk? Now you want to talk?” She tilts her head as if she doesn’t believe me, as if I have something else in mind. “What do you want, Ward?” She opens the door and walks away, folding her arms as she hovers by the wall, nowhere near the bed.
I walk in. “You’re angry with me.”
“You only come to me when you want sex.”
“That’s not entirely true. I came to you the other night.”
“And you left halfway through the night.”
“It was almost morning,” I protest.
“That’s just semantics and you know it.”
My mouth twists, but I am cautious of saying the wrong thing, especially because I have no idea what I want any more. “I’m sorry if I upset you.”
“You can’t rent me by the hour,” she cries.
“That’s not how I treat you.”
“I never know where I am with you. One minute you want me, you need me even, and then you feel guilty and you tell me you need your space.” She glares at me. I hover around the bed, then move away, slipping my hands into the pockets of my sweatpants, unsure of how to be.
“What do you want, Mari?” I ask her, against my better judgment. As if I could even give her the thing I suspect she wants. I learned a long time ago that people are not to be trusted, especially the ones you come to rely on and trust the most.
“I don’t …I …” She stumbles on her words, and I sense that she too is being careful. “I don’t, I won’t allow myself to be used anymore.”
“Used? Is that how you see it? I used you?”
“We’ve used one another.”
That much is true. She has needs. She needs me. Needed me. “We didn’t set out to do this,” I remind her. “It just happened.”
She nods, but her arms are still folded like a defense shield and nothing is going to get through. Not my words or my actions. I don’t plan to do anything tonight. I didn’t come here with anything in mind. I just can’t operate this way when the way we had started to be was so much better.
I don’t want her to go to sleep thinking I’m an asshole. I especially don’t want her to think I don’t give a fuck, when I do.
Staring at her, with only a few strides between us, I’m blindsided by the notion that I care more about Mari than I allow myself to think. She has always made things better for me. I’m so used to my own company that I haven’t needed to think about anyone else but me.
I’m learning, but some lessons are hard to learn when you come from where I do.
“It did just happen,” she says, agreeing, but “What is this? What do we have?”
I hate that she’s making it difficult. Putting me on the spot. “We have …” I don’t know what to call it. I should have been prepared for her to dissect and analyze everything.
But I, too, have been unfair. I haven’t treated her the way she deserves to be treated. I’ve been selfish, thinking only of myself.
“I can’t get close to you and it’s not for lack of trying. You don’t open up.”
Where I come from, with the things that have happened, it’s near impossible for me to open up. She’s lucky. I have shared more with her than I do with most people. “What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you’re willing to tell me.”
I’m not willing to tell her anything. She’s forcing me to be another way, and
I can only be the way I am.
“There you go again,” she says, jabbing a finger at me. “You close me off. You only tell me little things here and there.”
I came here to talk, and now that she’s confronting me, I can’t. So much of my past has been shaken up and has been spinning around in my head. “Goodnight,” I say, not wanting to push past this.
She doesn’t say it back.
Tonight is going to be another sleepless night for me. Instead of returning to my bedroom, I head downstairs to my study. When sleep doesn’t come, there’s no point lying in bed tossing and turning. I might as well try to write.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
MARI
* * *
I’m calmer the next morning and Ward seems fine, too. He hasn’t shaved and his eyes are ringed with dark circles.
“Did you sleep?” I ask as I pour his cup of coffee.
“Not really. I was writing until the early hours.”
We’re talking normally, and there’s no hint of the drama from last night. I feel bad that he came to me to apologize and we ended up having another disagreement.
A knock at the door signals that Jamie is here so I go to answer it. “I’m seeing Danny this week,” he informs me as I let him in.
This reminds me. “I should meet up with him as well,” I say.
“You haven’t yet?”
“I’ve been too busy.”
He swipes his hand across his chin. “This is a big house, but you said you can take your time cleaning all the rooms. I don’t get why you’re so busy all the time.”
I shake my head at this typical man’s reply. “We can swap roles one day. I’m sure Ward would let us if I put forward my argument.”
“What argument is that?”
“That you have no idea what you’re talking about.” We hover around in the hallway instead of heading into the kitchen. “Why do you need to see Danny?”
“This job is going to end soon, and it’s not looking good with where I’m currently at. Danny mentioned he has potential openings where he works.”
“When?”
“Sometime on the weekend, unless you’re going to visit your mom.”
“I can take time out this weekend.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” says Jamie, just as Ward comes out into the hallway. He lifts his coffee cup and greets Jamie who comments, “You look like you’re ready to go.”
“I am. I’m enjoying my workouts,” Ward admits. “Now that’s something I never thought I’d say.”
Jamie raises an eyebrow at me, then rubs his hands together. “We’ll take it up a level then. Are you ready?”
“I was born ready,” is what I hear Ward say as the two of them head towards the gym. I can only pinpoint Ward’s exuberance down to him being so near the end of his book that any day now he could say to me that he’s done and is returning to New Orleans.
I definitely need to meet with Danny. I’ll take two jobs if I have to. I’m sick of hanging around for morsels of interest from Ward, sick of wishing he would see me as something more than a physical release. It hasn’t all been bad. This man and his moods have kept me on my toes, and for that reason, I’ve managed to stay on here. Still, I sense that the end is near, and as the days go on, my feelings towards him change.
During the following days, Ward is still nice and kind and polite, and still looking as sexy as ever. Tellingly, he hasn’t mentioned anything about meeting his word count goals lately.
Sometimes I catch him looking at me when I look up, and I can tell that he thinks about me as much as I think about him. There’s a sizzle in the air even though we aren’t sharing the bed.
“How is your book coming along?” I ask him one day after dinner. He’s sitting on the stool, taking forever to finish. A part of me hopes that he’s dragging out the time so that he can see me. It’s only at mealtimes that we seem to get the time to talk.
“I’m on the second read through,” he informs me. “Making notes and finding lots of errors.”
“You’ll be finished soon?” I need to know how long I have here. I don’t want any nasty surprises. I don’t want him to come to me one day and say ‘goodbye’, cut me off suddenly and disappear. Even this tawdry thing we’ve got going deserves a gentle letting go.
“Not soon.” His voice is tight.
“But you said you were at the first draft stage and then you could go home.”
“I need to ensure that the story makes sense. It needs another read through.”
“What does that mean?” I’m trying to gauge how long we have, and he’s being vague.
“It means I need more time.”
“How much time?”
“Why the need to know?” he asks.
“So that I know how long it might be before I have to start looking elsewhere for work.” I am sort of looking elsewhere, but nothing promising has turned up. The job market is as stagnant as a dead lake. Hopefully the meeting with Danny will prove fruitful.
Ward seems irritated by my questioning. “I can’t give you a time limit. It’s not that simple.”
“That doesn’t help me.” I wish he would look at me with longing. Why can’t he?
“You sound anxious to leave. Are you?”
I fold my arms and scratch my nose for good measure, trying to act all casual—which is hard because casual is something I don’t feel about him and me. “No.”
“Then what’s up?”
This stops me. His voice is soft again, his gaze softens too. It’s almost as if I have the old Ward back. The good old Ward. “You haven’t talked about your word count,” I say, curious to know what he’ll answer.
“We were done with talking about word counts,” he says slowly. “You made that clear to me the other night.”
“I’m glad you’ve taken it on board.” I’m not glad but I’m in danger of being as clingy and as desperate as I was with Dale. The first time I found out he cheated on me, I accepted his story of a drunken encounter with a woman at work who liked him. Stupidly, I didn’t heed the warning, and I took him back.
“I got the message.” Ward gets up to leave even though his plate isn’t completely empty. It’s obvious that he’s fed up and eager to get away, because this man has a good appetite and never leaves his plate empty.
“Good.” I toss the word at him as he walks away.
“Yeah, good.”
A visit to Maplewood to see my mom soon buoys up my spirits. She’s back to her normal self again. Today she was my real mom, and she didn’t lapse in and out of remembering. I cherished every second we shared. We talked about my dad, and our family vacations, birthdays, and memorable moments.
And then she asked me about Dale and I almost blurted out that we’d split up and how could she forget?
Until I remembered that I hadn’t told her.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t any of it. Me losing my job, or Dale cheating on me and fathering someone else’s child, or me getting evicted.
It hit me then, like a wrecking ball to my heart, that the person I had looked up to and gone to all through my life for wisdom and guidance was the woman I could no longer go to with my problems.
With my circle of loved ones shrinking, I feel increasingly isolated and lost.
“We’re good, Mom,” I tell her.
“That boy ought to put a ring on your finger,” she says. Instead, I hold her hand and squeeze it and smile through the pain of what I know. I spend the day with her, helping her to eat, and talking about the past. Being around Ward on a bad day is like walking through a bombed-out site, trying to miss the debris and broken stones and splintered glass. Being with my mom allows me to smell the roses and take in breathfuls of fresh air.
However, the day that had started off so well doesn’t end so well as I face my new normal. Desperate for friends, connection and belonging, I go over to Jamie’s and break down. I burst into tears as soon as he opens the door and fall into his arms.
>
He holds me and cradles my weary body against his chest. He gets out the best medicine: a bottle of wine and chocolates, and we spend the evening on the couch. I tell him everything that was hurting, but I leave out everything about Ward.
I stay over that night and sleep on the couch even though Jamie insists I could have his bed, but I’m not going to put my good friend out like that.
My weekend ends up being wonderful. Like the good old days. We wake up late, have brunch and laze around. Jamie reminds me of all the good things I used to have when I had a life, an apartment, a job and a boyfriend.
I don’t want to return to the mansion. I don’t want to see Ward. I don’t want to get ensnared again into his sticky web. Most of all I don’t want to look him in the face with longing and have him stare back at me as if I mean nothing.
Later that afternoon, we meet with Danny at a bar and we end up staying there all evening, until late at night. I’m tipsy, and happy, and for a moment it seems as if I had my old life back.
But in the end, I have to return back to Ward’s house. We get a cab and when we got there, Jamie helps me out. Then he hugs me because I keep saying I don’t want to do this anymore.
Eventually, I find the courage to go inside.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
WARD
* * *
She was away the whole weekend.
The. Entire. Fucking. Weekend.
I looked out of the window as soon as I heard a car pull up. Saw her and Jamie embrace outside. Even kiss maybe. I couldn’t bear to look.
Fuck.
I slunk away to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I’m back to staying out of her way again.
When Jamie shows up the next morning, I’m already in the gym working out. He’s impressed. Says that I’m a new man.
There’s nothing new about me, or how I roll. When women get too close, I freeze up. I can’t handle it. I don’t want it, and so I tell them to go, and then I miss them.
