The Price of Inertia

by Lily Zante

  I wish I’d spent more time with her. I wish I’d gone to see her every weekend. I wish I hadn’t been scared of her lapsing in and out of forgetfulness. I would give anything to have my mom alive, even if she didn’t know who I was.

  As soon as the cab parks outside Jamie’s place, he comes running out and settles the fare. He’s been waiting for me and looks as if he hasn’t slept a wink. He must be exhausted. I’m feeling the exhaustion now, as it sinks into my pores and deadweights me.

  I’ve been trying to be brave, trying to hold it together, but upon seeing Jamie, the strength drains out of my body. He opens his mouth to say something, but then holds back, his face softens and he holds out his arms and lets me fall into them. He hugs me tightly, and it’s exactly the type of hug I need.

  This is what a true friend does and how a true friend behaves. Jamie is my rock.

  “My mom died,” I say, even though he already knows. The saying of it out loud makes it true in a way that not saying it never did. He holds me for the longest time, still standing in his doorway, before he pulls me inside, where his arms go around me like a protective blanket. He doesn’t ask any questions, he just holds me and lets me cry.

  We sit on the couch, and I sob because my heart is broken, and because my mom was the only constant in my life. Jamie lets me be, gives me time, lets me get it all out. I cry until I have no more tears and my voice is hoarse.

  He asks me if I’ve eaten, if I need a drink of water, or something hot, or alcohol. I shake my head. I haven’t eaten since I left this morning, or was that yesterday morning? This day has stretched out so long, it feels like a week.

  He fetches me a glass of water nonetheless, and I gulp it down, then sit back against him, against the couch, not wanting to move, not wanting him to move. I tell him slowly, because he deserves to know, this man who waited up for me until the early hours. I tell him how I saw my mom in the ICU, and how I sat with her for a few hours, and how I fell asleep only to be woken up when the doctors and nurses came running in.

  I tell him how when they could do no more, when she had passed, I held her hand, and told her I loved her, and asked her to forgive me for not being there sooner and for not visiting her more often.

  “That’s not your fault, Mari,” he says, hugging me to him.

  “I could have gone. I could have spent more time with her, instead of wasting it with …” I stop and think. Instead of getting all wrapped up in Ward’s little web.

  “It’s easy to have regrets,” he says softly. He’s trying to make me feel better, but I feel wretched. I chose to spend those weekends with Ward, because weekends were the only times he’d take things slower, ease up on the writing, give himself a break. I wasted precious time with my mom for sexy times with a man who I don’t really know, and a man I now hate.

  I think back to our argument. It was only yesterday, and yet it seems like weeks ago. I turn to Jamie. “If he hadn’t smashed my cell phone, the nursing home would have contacted me right away. I would have gone to my mom sooner. I could have had more time with her.”

  “Woulda, coulda, shoulda, these are words of regret, Mari. Don’t beat yourself up wondering what might have been.” His arm squeezes my shoulder in a reassuring hug. I shift my legs so that I’m sitting on the side with my legs tucked under me, and I’m resting against Jamie’s chest. It feels a little too familiar. I remember doing this with Ward not so long ago.

  Jamie kisses the top of my head. He’s the only person that I can rely on and trust. “I have to find a job,” I say, remembering that I have now quit working for Ward.

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “I have to figure out the funeral.”

  The funeral.

  How is it that today I’m talking about funeral arrangements, and yesterday my main worry was reading a few pages from Ward’s manuscript? Life can change in the blink of an eye. So fast that even now, I feel I’ve got whiplash.

  It will be a small affair but arrangements will need to be made.

  “You need to sleep first,” Jamie says. “And worry about the other stuff tomorrow. Don’t ever think you’re alone, Mari, because you’re not. I’m here for you.”

  Chapter Fifty

  WARD

  * * *

  “It went up in flames,” I tell Rob when he calls to tell me he still hasn't received my manuscript. He is used to this, my timelines slipping, especially when it comes to my first draft. It’s almost like a game but I’ve never said this to him before. There is silence at the other end. I can almost see the dumbfounded look on Rob's face.

  “In flames?” His upbeat voice tells me he’s not sure if I’m joking or being serious. This is the first time I’ve hit him with something like this. A manuscript on fire. He's had to deal with me being late many times, but not dangerously late, and definitely not this.

  “I threw it into the fire.” I look at the floor, at my desk, trying to locate the damn box of donuts.

  “You’re not kidding me, are you?”

  “I swear I’m not. I threw it into the fire.”

  “You needed to get it to me, Ward. It needs to go to the editor next week.”

  “Shame about that.”

  “Should I ask why you threw it into the fire?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Print off another copy. Send me that.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t use this manuscript.”

  “What?” he shrieks. This is another new thing he’s heard from me. He makes another low-rumbling noise which is a cross between disappointment and rage.

  “What do you mean you can’t use this manuscript?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why are you talking in riddles? What’s going on? Is Mari there?”

  “She's gone, too.”

  I hear a deep grumble at the other end. “What have you gone and done? I’m about to catch a flight to the Bahamas. It’s supposed to be an anniversary present for my wife. I was supposed to enjoy this trip because I thought I would’ve received and read your manuscript by now.”

  “Sorry.”

  He huffs out loudly. It’s the sound of exasperation, frustration and downright giving up.

  “Say it,” I taunt him. “Say you’ve given up on me. Tell me I’m useless.” Others have. I sniff, then take another sniff of my armpits. I wrinkle my nose in disgust. The room stinks. The blinds are still drawn. I haven’t showered since … since that argument with Mari

  The TV room is a mess and so I’ve come into the study even though writing is the last thing on my mind. I can’t make out if it’s daylight or night outside and I don’t want to find out, either.

  “You make it hard for me to want to work with you, Ward.”

  “Then don’t. Walk away.”

  “What happened?” he asks. I can hear the concern in his voice. I know Rob. He probably wants to walk away but can’t. He’s too decent, too caring. I should be lucky to count him as a friend.

  “I got bored,” I reply. I got bored of giving a fuck. I got sick and tired of being let down.

  “You miss this deadline and it’s going to cost you,” he threatens. “Don’t mention your fans getting pissed off, think of all the people working to get this book to market. You might feel okay about letting yourself down, but you’re letting down whole departments of people.”

  “As many as that?” I mumble, stretching out on the couch and looking around, trying to find something to eat. Then I see it, the box of donuts. Only, it’s lying on the floor near the fireplace and it looks almost empty.

  I don’t even remember finishing it off. I don’t even know what day it is. A weekday or the weekend. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was suffering a bad hangover, because alcohol would have helped numb my feelings. I don't care for alcohol, but it would probably be way cooler than overdosing on a box of donuts. Food coma has always suited me. Maybe because there is a deep-seated urge to feed myself, to not go
hungry. Food signals comfort. No food signals terror.

  My own mother didn’t care that I was up in the attic starving and scared. She was happy for her husband to leave me there for days without food. How could she not care?

  “What caused this?” Rob asks. “Was it revisiting your childhood home?”

  “No. Wasn’t that.” I wish I hadn’t mentioned it to him.

  “Because you were fine. You were on target up until then. What happened?”

  What happened? I fell back into the spiral again. Couldn’t help it. Couldn’t save myself if I tried. Despite my outward shell, my world within is fragile. I can plummet in a second.

  I have. “Stuff happened,” I answer. I consider ordering more donuts. I’ve come to love the expensive donuts from that fancy bakery in town. I blame Mari for that. She’s the one who introduced me to them. I blame her for everything.

  Rob huffs out loud enough for me to hear. He's incensed. “I can’t do this anymore, Ward. I need to be someplace else.”

  “Then don't.”

  “I treated you like a friend but I can’t do anymore for you. I can’t save you if you won’t save yourself.” The line goes dead. The bastard hung up on me.

  Somewhere in the fog of my thinking, I am aware that I need to get myself out of this rut. But knowing and doing are two different things. I’m stuck back in that spiral I can’t climb out of. Even if I try to put a leg forward, I get sucked back into the vortex. Not that I’ve tried too hard just yet.

  Maybe I should just go home. There’s no need for me to be here anymore. I’ve angered a whole heap of people. My publishing house is going to write me off. Rob has given up. I haven’t taken my editor’s calls. I don't care that James Garvey is riding high in the bestseller charts. He can take my crown.

  I’m sick of writing, of the relentless schedule. I'm sick of making words mean something when life itself has no meaning.

  I reach across the floor trying to grab the bag of potato chips lying just out of my reach. I stretch over, reaching out for it, and fall off the couch, hitting the floor with a thud.

  Crap.

  I knock over a half-full can of Pepsi. The coffee-colored liquid sinks, bubbles and all, into the beige carpet, leaving an ugly stain.

  I growl in annoyance. She’s not even here to clean it up.

  The doorbell rings, but I’m not expecting anyone. I ignore it and climb back onto the couch with my bag of chips but the doorbell rings a few more times, and pisses me off even more. Eventually, I drag myself up to answer it.

  “I’m coming!” I holler when it rings again. There’s a persistent fucker on the other side of the door. Who the hell could it be? Jamie knows better than to come here.

  Mari?

  Has she come to make amends?

  But when I open the door, it’s Jamie’s ugly face I’m staring into. “What the hell do you want?” I snarl.

  His eyes narrow. He doesn’t look too enamored to see me either. “I need to get some more of Mari's clothes.”

  I sneer. “She sent you again? What are you, her lapdog?” I open the door to let him in.

  “I'm here because she never wants to see you again,” he says, telling me something that is no surprise at all.

  I scowl. Didn't he just take some of her things last week? “Take everything. Take the whole goddamn bunch.” I really don't want to see him here again. Or her.

  I walk up the stairs, he follows. Even though he knows where her room is now, I feel the need to see it again for myself.

  I haven’t stepped foot inside here and as soon as we enter, I catch a hint of her floral scent. The dresser has a few things still on it. Jamie walks over to a closet and grabs a few clothes.

  “Take it all,” I bark.

  “She only needs a few business suits.”

  I don't want him here and I don't want any memory of her. “Take. It. All.”

  Jamie's face hardens. “I don't have time for that. We're busy. She’s busy.” It's the way he says it that catches my attention. They are busy doing what?

  “How is she?” I ask. I'm curious to know, now that he's pushed all thought of her to the front of my mind. I'd buried all thoughts and feelings about her. Pushed them to the back, trodden on them and kept them down, and now he's brought them all to the forefront again.

  He doesn't answer, but instead, pulls out her clothes. What does she need business suits for? “Did she find another job?” Or maybe she has an interview. I hope she gets the job because she needs the money.

  He throws a few things into his bag, and picks up suits on hangers. His silence troubles me. “Is she okay?” I ask.

  “As if you care.” He gives me a dirty look.

  I do care. I’m in a bad place right now, but I do care.

  “You’ve got sugar all over your beard,” Jamie points out. I wipe it away quickly with the back of my hand. Then I smooth down the front of my t-shirt because I’m suddenly conscious that I must look like shit. That I probably smell, and that he knows it. I look like a slob. I feel like a slob. He’ll go back and tell Mari what a train wreck I am.

  “What’s happened to you?” he asks. “You look like a mess. Do you miss her that much?”

  I run a self-conscious hand across my beard, hoping to wipe away all traces of sugar, donut crumbs and anything else there might be. “I need to know that she’s okay.”

  “You don’t need to know anything,” Jamie hollers, brushing past me as he walks out of the door.

  There’s something he’s keeping from me.

  He likes her.

  I always suspected.

  He stops when he gets to the bottom and glares at me. “Her mother died, you asshole. She died and the nursing home couldn’t get in touch with Mari because you,” he stabs a finger in my direction, “you smashed her cell phone, you fucking freak.” He slams the door as he leaves.

  Mari’s mom died? They couldn’t get a hold of her? I try to ignore the sharp pain that slices through me, spreading from my chest to my back. Her mom died and the nursing home couldn’t get a hold of her?

  Because I smashed her cell phone.

  I sit on the stairs in shock, feeling the force of this blow more acutely than when my own mother died. I feel for Mari, and what I did. The guilt climbs up through my stomach and into my throat, until I choke on it.

  I want to do something. I want to help her. I know what her mom meant to her. She will be devastated. She’ll be heartbroken. I can’t have her break down.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  MARI

  * * *

  I haven't been able to get out of bed. Jamie gave me his bed again and he’s been sleeping on the couch. He's been working and comes back in the evenings, but he calls and checks in on me many times throughout the day.

  I like that I'm here alone. Even making conversation is hard. Luckily for me, Jamie understands. I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not, and what I am right now is a mess.

  I can't function. I can't eat, or sleep, or think. I can't do anything. I don't want to do anything.

  I want to curl up and sleep for years.

  My mom's funeral takes place next week. We've got the date, and I've let a few friends and family members know. I wouldn't have been able to do this without Jamie’s help. I wouldn't have been able to function even in the tiny capacity that I am had it not been for him.

  I've sent him to get some of my business suits. I'm supposed to be working on a speech but I can't find it in me to write the words I have in my head. I can't express how much love I have for my mom. Had. The love I had. I can't encapsulate it in words, what I feel for my mom, what I felt.

  It is an overabundance of feelings, a myriad of emotions. Her smile, her touch, her voice. There are so many precious fragments of things I remember; her picking me up from school, and sending me away to college, her nursing my heart when my first boyfriend dumped me, and then doing it again over the years when all the others did. It was the pride in her eyes when I got my fi
rst job, and her elation for every job I got after that.

  I feel her through images and emotions, not words. It makes it impossible for me to write it all down.

  Ward could have helped with that.

  The reminder of him sets me crying again. Not because I feel sad or miss him. What I feel is hate, so much hate, but crying is the only emotion I have. I seem to only operate in two states: crying or not crying. There is nothing else in between.

  I'm staring out of the window when Jamie returns. He'll be home all day today, it being the weekend, so I will have to try extra hard to convince him that I am coping.

  “Hey,” he says, walking in with a bag of my clothes. He's carrying the jackets and skirts on hangers, and he disappears into the bedroom presumably to hang them up.

  I turn my writing pad upside down so that he can't see.

  “How are you doing?” he asks, coming over and sitting down on the far end of the couch. I lift up my feet, hunching up my legs to clear him a space.

  “Good.” I smile as if to prove it.

  “Get anything down?” He swipes the notepad before I can stop him. He turns it over and stares at the blank page. “Want me to help?”

  I shake my head.

  He nods. “You've got time. It will come.”

  Will it? I don't want to say the last goodbye, that's what makes this so hard. I swallow, trying to push back the huge lump that forms in my throat. “Did you get everything?”

  “I picked up what I could. I had to do it quickly because he was hanging around watching.”

  I clear my throat.

  “I told him,” says Jamie. “He kept asking how you were. I wasn't sure if you wanted him to know, but he kind of put me on the spot.”

  “It's fine.” That man can be overbearing. I know how hard it is to be around him.

  “I told him it was his fault that you couldn't get to your mom fast enough because he broke your phone.”