A Place to Stand

by Meg Farrell

“True. I’m sorry she has to deal with all of this too.”

  “Me too. I’m sorry you’re dealing with it. Want a girl’s day next Saturday? We can get breakfast and go shopping.”

  “I’d like that.”

  We wrap up our phone call shortly after that. She’s on her way to see Dad. Apparently, he’s dealing better than anyone. Still, I feel guilty. I need to be better about calling him. He and I are just so much alike. He thinks, if he calls me, he’ll be interrupting or bothering me. I keep thinking that he’s out fishing and carrying on with his friends, and that I’d be bothering him. Plus, every time we do call each other, Jess calls him. He handles this by hanging up on me to answer her. I can’t be sure if he doesn’t know how to work his cell phone, or if he’s just in a hurry to talk to her. The bottom line is our inability to change is causing a gap between us, and that, I don’t like.

  I take another long tug on my coffee and decide that my funky ass needs to shower. My hair has more build up than an oil slick right now. I rinse my coffee cup and put it in the sink. I can always load the dishwasher later. The doorbell rings. I stare at it, willing my x-ray vision to kick in and show me who’s out there because I’m not expecting anyone today. In fact, I had put everyone on notice. “Leave me alone.” I need some time to myself. I make my way to the door and see the outline of a woman standing on my porch. Glancing down at my jammies, I shrug, and decide I look decent enough to answer the door. Hell, I know women who wear this style of outfit to the Wal-Mart.

  Slowly I crack it open. “Hello?”

  The woman looks terrified and confused. She’s a cute blonde, shorter than I am. Curvy and pretty. She might be my age, if not a little younger. “Hello? Can I help you with something?” I ask again, trying to be direct.

  “Uh, I wanted to see Rhae Wells.”

  “You’re talking to her. Who are you?”

  “My name is Melody. Melody Richards.”

  “Hi, Melody. I hate to seem impatient, but was there something you needed?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Ryan.”

  I purse my lips and cock my head to the side. She wants to talk to me about Ryan? “Did you know him from work?”

  “No. I knew him from...” she trails off and looks like she’s about to cry. “Can I come in? I don’t want to talk through your front door.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up and heat floods my face. Something about this is wrong. This is not going to be pleasant for me. I always assume the negative, so I take a deep breath and swallow my apprehension.

  “Come in. Do you mind if I run and change real quick? Would you like some coffee?”

  “That would be really nice. Thank you.”

  “Okay, well make yourself at home. I’ll be out soon.”

  I grab my cell phone as I breeze through the living room on my way to my bedroom. I call Jess and try to whisper as I say, “A strange girl just showed up on my front porch. She says she knows Ryan and wants to talk.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Yeah, I know. I was headed to shower when she got here. I let her in and left her sitting at the kitchen table while I change clothes.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Jess sounds exasperated. “You are going to end up slaughtered!”

  “I think she’s okay. I don’t know what she has to say to me, but I’m trying to overcome my knee-jerk negative reaction to everyone I meet.”

  “Okay, well, I’m on standby if you need me.”

  “Do you remember meeting a blonde at the funeral? A friend of Ryan’s, little shorter than I am. Curvy thing.”

  “Not ringing any bells. She know him from work?

  “She says she’s not from his work.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “I know. I’ll call you back.”

  I dress like my hair is on fire. Stepping out of my room, I apologize for taking so long. I make myself another cup of coffee and one for Melody before sitting at the kitchen table. Drinking my coffee, I mentally prepare for whatever this is. I would have thought, since she was the one who had something to say, she would just start talking, but she doesn’t. Her demeanor lets me know this is big. She sits as still as a statue and stares out the window and slowly glances around my house. Standing slowly, she starts strolling around looking at tables, bookcases, and even the fireplace mantle.

  She stops and turns to look at me. “You don’t have any pictures of him.”

  I scowl a bit. “I do, actually. Since he passed, I needed a break from seeing him everywhere. I packed all but a few away.” Just the thought ignites an old familiar ache in my chest. I take a deep breath to steady myself.

  Melody nods and comes back to sit at the table with me. She doesn’t start talking. She just stares at me for an uncomfortably long time. It’s like she’s committing my face to memory. Awkward doesn’t begin to describe it. I don’t want to interrupt her thoughts, so I try to be patient with her. Okay, who am I kidding? Of course, I want to interrupt her thoughts. The suspense is killing me. “So, you had something to talk to me about?”

  Melody nods and looks down at her hands. “Yeah. I do.”

  Being patient is not something I’m really good at, but I’m trying. I want to reach across the table and shake her, and demand she start talking.

  Finally, I see her take a breath, wringing her hands as she starts, “Ryan and I were dating.”

  I didn’t hear her right. “Excuse me? Could you say that again?”

  She looks up to my eyes. “Ryan and I were dating.”

  I think my heart just stopped beating. Panic swells into my throat, and the ache in my chest spreads to my limbs like a freezing wave. She must be mistaken. There is no way she was seeing my Ryan. I can’t form a thought to ask her any questions. My stunned silence is, apparently, a cue for her to continue.

  “I knew he was married. I knew about you,” she clarifies. “I saw your picture in his wallet. He was...” she trails off.

  “I’m sure there’s some kind of mistake. Ryan didn’t have it in him to cheat.” I smile at her sweetly. She’s probably just infatuated with him. Ryan was handsome and very compassionate. She likely took his kindness for something more than what it was.

  She shakes her head and holds out her phone to me. On the screen is a picture.

  What I see isn’t exactly clear at first. Like a fuzzy puzzle. One of those optical illusions where you have to turn your head funny to see the different images. I stare. I study. I wish I could unsee this. It’s her kissing a guy, but not any guy. It’s Ryan. Not a selfie, more like someone else snapped it while they weren’t looking.

  “I knew you would need proof.”

  I just stare. Light brown hair. His jawline. Slightly tan skin. It’s Ryan. My heart is still frozen. Now my lungs aren’t functioning. I’m suffocating. This is not happening. He did not do this to me. I feel a familiar burn in my eyes. I’m about to cry. Waves of emotion crash in on me all at once.

  Pushing the tears down, I close my eyes, swallow hard, and give the phone back to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, contrite.

  “No, you aren’t.” I shake my head. “You said you knew he was married. You should have walked away. By the way, you weren’t ‘dating’ Ryan. You were having an affair. Call a spade a spade, honey.” I feel anger welling up behind the hurt. Anger is good. I think better when I’m angry, more so than when I’m hurt. I look up when I hear her sniffle. She’s crying. Good. A feeling of satisfaction surges through me.

  “I’m sorry, and you’re right. It was an affair. I’m ashamed of myself for that.”

  “Is that all you have to say about it? I’m sure there is some reason you didn’t just let the affair die with him. Why did you come here to tell me this?”

  There’s more to the story. I listen to her explain how they’d met. Ryan was a frequent customer at a restaurant on his route between work and home. Usually for lunch, but on this particular day it was a breakfast stop. Melody is a student at o
ne of the local community colleges. She works two jobs to pay for school. Her first job is at Brown’s, a southern diner-style place that’s only open for breakfast and lunch. After school, she works nights at Dancin’ Cowboys, a small-town watering hole. We aren’t real creative with the names of businesses around here. I listen to her story as long as I can stomach it. I can’t be sure how many details she provides because I’m so irritated, and I can’t stop the swirl of thoughts in my mind.

  She stops talking. I guess giving me a break to digest, and eventually continues, “We would meet at my dorm and go to dinner or movies. Sometimes, he would take me muddin’ in his Jeep.” She searches my face. I don’t know if she’s hoping for acceptance or understanding. She doesn’t get it, and she goes on, “I know you don’t want to hear all this. Listen, I know this hurts. I don’t want to have to tell you about any of this. Please don’t judge me.”

  “Maybe that thought should have crossed your mind before you carried on with him like that.”

  “I deserve that.”

  Oh honey, you deserve so much more from me. I have a white-knuckle grip on my coffee cup, which has gone cold. I can’t drink it because I’m afraid I’ll either spill it all over myself or throw it on her. Just another mess for me to clean up either way. Instead of spewing more ugly thoughts, I try to dig for her true motive. “Why are you telling me this? He’s dead. What benefit could there possibly be for you to tell me about any of this?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  This just keeps getting better and better. I burst out laughing. It’s a rather maniacal laugh. There’s no humor. Just uncontrollable laughter because, after all of this agony I’ve been in, it’s all I have left in me. He was having an affair and got her pregnant. “Let me guess: it’s Ryan’s baby and there is no possibility that it could be any other guy.” The statement drips with sarcasm.

  Her mouth drops open in shock. My words have her momentarily stunned, “Please don’t treat me that way. I’m no angel, but I’m not a whore. He is the only one I’ve slept with since January.” Her face is hard and sad.

  “What do you want from me? Money? Hoping to cash in on that life insurance? I don’t understand why you’re here.” I’m exasperated with this woman. I stand and start pacing because my nerves won’t let me be still anymore.

  “I don’t really know,” she says defeated. “When I stopped hearing from him, I thought he was dumping me. I planned on finding him at work. Then one day I was clipping coupons with my roommate and we saw the obituary. It was just chance that I even saw it. I mean, who sits around reading those. That was how I found out he was dead. I thought he had just been avoiding me. I didn’t know what to do.”

  I stop pacing and turn to face her. “What do you mean? Are you saying Ryan knew you’re pregnant?”

  She nods slowly, wiping tears from under her eyes. “Yes. He knew.”

  I’m not processing this well. The whole time I feel like I’m in a room where the walls squeeze in slowly. I’m still struggling to thaw my heart, so it can keep beating. My lungs are burning because I’m not breathing right. My arms feel like they’re made of lead. I manage to maintain some semblance of calm because of all the malfunctions I’m feeling at this moment. The air is thick with the silence. I can’t form words. From the look of her–slumped shoulders, dark circles around her eyes, shaking hands–she’s bearing a ton of guilt. Ryan is just as guilty as she is, and she’s the only one left here to face the consequences.

  Staring at her while she sips her coffee and figures out what she’d like to say next, I decide I don’t hate her. I think under different circumstances we might have been friends. If she was my friend and was cheating with someone else’s husband, I would tell her she’s crazy. Married men are just that, married. Taken. Off limits. I can tell she comes from good people because of the amount of guilt I can see on her face, and I feel sorry for her. She has a baby coming, the baby Ryan and I could never have together, and no dad to help out now. Hell, did she think Ryan could go on living a double life once the baby came? How did she think he was going to manage it? All my questions bring me in a full circle.

  “Melody, where do you live?”

  “In Lakeview.”

  Holy shit. I sit as my mind starts adding things up. “When was the last time you spoke to Ryan?”

  She won’t look me in the eye.

  “Melody, look at me. When was the last time you spoke to Ryan?” Her avoidance is her tell. I should encourage her to never play poker. She has no poker face at all.

  Still refusing to look at me, she answers anyway, “It was the night he died. He called to break our date. We fought on the phone because he was dumping me to be with you at a friend’s cookout. He said he was in a hurry to meet you. I was losing my mind and yelling at him. He hung up on me. That was the last time we talked.”

  “And?” I ask.

  “And what? I was being a selfish brat. That’s it.”

  Her body language tells me that’s not the whole story. “I’m not an idiot. There’s more to it. Him breaking a date wouldn’t set you off like that. I can tell you are normally good people.”

  She hesitates, wiping fat tears off her cheeks before going on, “You’re right. I told him about the baby that night. I was hoping that, if he knew about the baby, he would change his mind, and maybe it would get him to come see me instead of going with you.” She starts crying harder. Sobbing. “I was using the baby to keep him from breaking up with me. I thought that since you two couldn’t have kids that he’d be happy. When he refused to come see me, I went crazy thinking I was going to have to do this alone. Telling my parents, I got knocked up by a married guy and he wouldn’t be around for the baby and me, well, that would not fly. But, like I said, I was going to give him some time and then find him at work. Then he died. I mean he died. How could he do that?”

  Bitch.

  The anxiety coursing through me was giving me a headache, and heat was flooding my face. He wrecked his Jeep out on that country road because he was fighting on the phone with his…his…mistress. I don’t feel anything anymore. I cannot believe this. She killed him. Well, she didn’t kill him. He killed himself using the phone and driving. He was just more distracted than normal because of what she told him. I hate her. I hate Ryan. “I need you to leave now.” I stand and motion to the door. I’m doing all I can to keep calm until she leaves. She gets no tears from me. I refuse to give her that.

  “But, I was hoping...” She’s stammering to form a thought.

  I don’t care. There is ice in my veins. “I really could care less about what you were hoping for. The fact is you made a dumb-ass mistake by getting involved with a married man and getting pregnant. I don’t know if you did that on purpose, or if it was pure accident. I’m withholding judgement right now. The other fact is that Ryan is dead. There is nothing he or I can do for you. I’m doing my best not to hate you for being young and stupid, but it’s really time for you to go.”

  Melody looks at me like I’ve ripped her to shreds. Not really my goal, but I am finding it hard to feel bad for her right now. “Thank you for listening, and for the coffee. I’m leaving, but here’s my number if you want to talk about it sometime. I know what I did was horrible, but since we both loved him, perhaps we can end up friends.”

  I take the paper she offers me and walk her to the door. I don’t wait until she’s safely to her car like I would a friend. No, I slam the door shut as part of an angry tantrum and lock it.

  I start pacing. Walking circles until I’m numb. My phone buzzes on the table, and I see that I’ve missed some calls and texts on my phone. I don’t look through the whole list. Apparently, my quick call to Jess earlier had resulted in the sister grapevine being activated. I turn my phone off. I don’t remember time passing, but I start to feel hungry. The bagel and coffee from earlier are gone.

  I warm leftover macaroni and cheese, and then pour myself a Dr. Pepper. I plop down in my recliner to eat my lunch while everything is
playing over again in my mind. The only thing I keep coming back to is resentment. I resent Ryan. I resent Melody. What would make him do something like that? How could I believe he was so honorable and faithful to me? I sit there making myself miserable for hours. The questions are just piling up on me. Why do I believe her? She could just be making up the whole story. She could be lying about being pregnant, but she’s not lying. I can feel it.

  I vaguely hear my doorbell ring through the haze of my thoughts. Then pounding and another ringing of the bell. I don’t care. “Go away!” I yell. More pounding. “Rhae, honey, let me in.”

  Jess.

  Of course, turning off my phone and going M.I.A. for a few hours had scared her. Oh goody, she brought Red. They’re both taking turns knocking on the door and calling to me. I roll my eyes. Looking around, I notice that it’s gotten dark out. I have been in my chair and pacing the house all day. More knocking, and then threats. “We’ll call Liz. Let us in!” Oh, that’s right, they think I’m possibly suicidal. Finally, I motivate my ass out of the chair and answer the door.

  They come in slowly. I can tell they’re forcing themselves not to freak out on me. I guess they know if they come in here all crazy-like it would have the opposite effect of what they want. At first, they ask a million questions, but I don’t want to talk, so I don’t answer. Mostly, I’m embarrassed, and I’m replaying the whole conversation with Melody. The despair in her voice. The shame in her eyes. I replay how I had torn her apart. I waffle between being ashamed of my behavior toward her and feeling justified for my actions. I haven’t considered how to explain all of this to my friends and family. What does it say about me that my husband was having an affair? I was inadequate as a wife. He wasn’t satisfied. I wasn’t enough for him. I wasn’t important. I’m not important.

  All these years together. I was seventeen when I met him, and he was the only man I had ever been with. I was an awkward teenager. Boys didn’t notice me. So, when I met Ryan and he was so into me, I was in deep from the very beginning. He was my first real date, first kiss, and first make-out on Mama’s couch. My first everything. Everything.