A Woman Alone

by Nina Laurin

  “I’ve been getting strange messages,” I say. “Threatening messages. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

  She doesn’t even twitch.

  “Do you think I would stoop that low? To see my only daughter too.”

  “I called you, and you said you had to see me, as quickly as possible. So here I am,” I say to her turned back. “Did you make me come all this way just to berate me?”

  She makes me wait for the answer. She turns on the tap without doing anything, just letting the water run. Then she turns it off and wipes her hands on a kitchen towel, all faded to gray and stained.

  “I asked you to come over, Cecelia, because I need a favor.”

  Now there’s a new one. But when she finally spits it out, it’s so prosaic that I’m tempted to laugh. She’s saying something about bills and a bad investment. It’s pathetic, it really is.

  “You need money,” I say.

  Having it put like that—plain, the words sitting between us like a boulder—makes her bristle. I’ve only rarely seen Therese squirm, and the sight isn’t as satisfying as I remember.

  “Yes. I’ve never asked for anything of the sort before so do you think you might be able to help your mother this once?” The words come out rushed and with an exaggerated directness, like she’s rehearsed them ahead of time. Maybe she has. This can’t be easy for her. She has her pride. Her own definition of pride, at least.

  “What happened to all your savings?” I ask calmly. “Donated to some new sect you found? Or did you get a thing for the ponies that I’m not aware of?”

  “How could you say such a thing?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid, Therese? For as long as I remember, you’ve never had to work. And we weren’t on welfare, this much I know.”

  “You ingrate. I took care of us both all these years—”

  “I always wondered, you know. So where did that nest egg come from?”

  “Look, Cecelia, do you think I would ask you for a single thing if I didn’t have to?” She’s never been good at hiding her anger, and now it’s showing through the cracks as she struggles to hold on to control. “I know we don’t agree about a lot of things but I’m still your mother. Go ahead, complain about me, nice and snug behind the walls of that soulless place where you’re ensconced, but don’t forget where you came from. You think I don’t deserve your charity but you didn’t earn what you have either. You wouldn’t have any of it if it weren’t for your husband.”

  “For someone who’s asking for money, you could grovel a little better,” I say.

  “You know it’s true. And if it weren’t for me, you would have been stupid enough to let him slip away. Would have gone on to live in some trailer with that loser of yours.”

  * * *

  I have nothing to say to that because she’s probably right. But that loser of mine was the guy I met later that evening, on the very same day I met Scott. And that story intertwines with the story of us, inextricable, even though Scott—or the world—has no idea.

  Everyone thinks my husband and I are the cutest couple ever, and not just that. We’re that happy urban legend, the college sweethearts who made it work. And look at us now. It’s the stuff of romantic comedies. But everyone forgets that even in romantic comedies, there’s always that other guy. The bad one. And for some reason, the lovestruck heroine doesn’t see what’s so obvious to the entire audience. Because otherwise, there would be no plot.

  What no one knows about our story is that by the time the day ended, I had forgotten all about that awkward guy Scott whom I shared a cigarette with after work. Because I met another man that evening. And I fell in love with him. All of a sudden, I understood all the clichés, love at first sight, head over heels. Butterflies in the stomach. I still, to this day, have no idea how he felt about me in return, and the older I get, the more I realize it doesn’t matter. This kind of love is self-sustained, 99 percent in my own head. He paid attention to me, and it was good enough. The rest, my imagination could fill in with bits and pieces from pop culture and novels.

  It’s such a sad irony that in my first meeting with Scott, I remember only blurry bits and pieces, yet the rest of that night is in Technicolor detail. Andrew kissed me up against the wall of his off-campus apartment—a place unlike anything I’d seen before, not a grubby little one-bedroom or closet-sized studio or dorm but the first floor of a brownstone, with big windows and ivy on the walls. It went so perfectly with the man himself or, more important, with my image of the man. In reality, he couldn’t have been older than late twenties but still he seemed so much more worldly and sophisticated. Has there ever been a girl in her very early twenties who didn’t fall for that?

  As the people from the party gradually drained away, the music died down. Discarded bottles of craft beer and plastic glasses sticky with mixer littered every flat surface. My friends had left a long time ago, and only at that point did I realize they just left me behind. Not that they were really my friends in the proper sense. In college, you think of everyone you’ve ever gone drinking with as your friend.

  Outside the tall windows, the sky had lightened to a delicate lilac-pink as the sun threatened to rise any second, and that’s when I knew, deep in my gut, that I was staying over. I glanced sideways at Andrew and caught him looking at me, and we exchanged this conspiratorial look that said he knew it too. Only two other people were left at the party, a couple making out on the other couch. So he and I exchanged another glance. He got up and, in the most polite but nonnegotiable terms, reminded them that it was time to head home.

  They stumbled out into the cold early morning, bleary-eyed, and the moment the double doors closed behind them, I forgot they ever existed at all. He turned the lock, and it was just us in the enormous apartment. I giggled. He sauntered over and picked me up, spinning me in the middle of the living room.

  Needless to say, that afternoon I was loopy from sleep deprivation and the crashing high of that first time with someone you really, really like. I barely stayed awake through my late-afternoon classes and then poured an extra-large drip coffee down my gullet and headed to work. Friday night was always busy, and I had no idea how I was going to get through it.

  I’d passed by his table three or four times before I even noticed Scott, let alone recognized him. Finally, I turned around, my tray empty and ready to carry another dozen reeking, sticky beer glasses, only to practically bump into Scott.

  “Remember?” he asked. “It’s me. The guy from last night.”

  For me, the guy from last night referred to someone else—someone as unlike Scott Holmes as humanly possible. But I smiled bravely and pretended I remembered. I had to keep up the charade for a good two or three minutes before I really did remember. “I said I’d be back,” he said. If he were a little vexed because I so obviously struggled to remember who he was, he didn’t show it. “And here I am.”

  After work, I had nowhere to go. I wasn’t going to just randomly show up at his apartment—I might have been clueless about how to play the game but not that clueless—and he hadn’t called. Not that he said he would call. He just asked for my number and wrote it down but never, as far as I could remember, uttered the words I’ll call you. That’s how I justified it to myself to avoid a full-on junkie crash.

  Still, as I followed Scott outside after I got off work, I checked my phone discreetly. Back then, I had one of those indestructible Nokias that couldn’t go on the internet but had batteries that never died. The screen was empty. I put away the phone and hid my disappointment. And to take my mind off things, I let Scott kiss me awkwardly in the parking lot. I wasn’t being disloyal—there was nothing to be loyal to, I told myself. There was no commitment, no exclusivity. I could do whatever I wanted. This was just to kill the time.

  Surely, a part of me must have realized that it all meant the exact opposite to Scott. That in his mind, the girl of his dreams kissed him in a dingy parking lot behind a campus bar, and it was the b
est night of his life. I only know all this now because he told me in so many words, much later. It was like I held everything I ever wanted in the palm of my hand, he said. He gazed at me with that look in his eyes that he had early on, and I felt deeply inadequate. That was the dominant emotion our meet-cute aroused in me: shame.

  That sloppy kiss, tasting like cheap mints overlaying cheap beer, was the start of a pattern. In between my meetings with the Love of my Life, on the days after, when I was still tipsy from the $20 cocktails he’d buy me in swanky nightclubs and fancy restaurants, I’d hightail it to Scott, filled with longing and resentment and a healthy dose of self-loathing. No $20 cocktails there but, once I got past self-flagellating over my disloyalty, his puppy-dog devotion and the admiration in his eyes were like a balm on my sense of self-worth, which always felt inexplicably bruised after too much time spent with the guy I told myself I was in love with. As if all that opulence had a purpose: not to make me feel pampered but to make me feel inferior. I resisted the feeling stubbornly, coming up with explanations and blaming myself. In times of such inner conflict, the cute-but-not-handsome, chubby-faced junior was just what I needed.

  It all couldn’t last. And so it didn’t. I might have been legal on my ID but in my head, I was still a naïve, insecure teenager, with limited knowledge about all things contraception—and limitless desire to please the guy who could drop a couple of hundred dollars on me in a single evening.

  And here’s the thing I still can’t remember without cringing: When I saw the extra stripe on that test, I felt happy. I don’t know what exactly it meant, in my mind, but I fully expected him to feel the same way. I showed up to his regular Thursday-night summons (he never invited me over on the weekend, which I stupidly never questioned) to share the good news.

  In guise of an answer, he gave me his credit card and a clinic address. When I tried to protest, he started to panic, and then it all came out. It wasn’t his apartment. He was apartment-sitting for the real owner. He was a college dropout. He was broke. He couldn’t afford this child.

  I don’t remember how I reacted on the spot. I think I managed to keep my cool—or simply was too lost to react. I wandered out of the beautiful apartment and into the middle of the street and just stood there. Traffic was sparse but what cars there were honked and had to swerve around me. I thought that, any moment now, he would come running after me, pulling me back onto the sidewalk and kissing me like in the movies, and everything would be all right.

  After minutes ticked by and this wasn’t the case, I did the only thing that made sense to me at the moment. I took the bus to my mother’s house.

  This was after the dump but before the condo. I trudged up three flights of stairs and knocked and knocked on her door, not quite realizing it was the middle of the night. Therese finally got out of bed and opened the door. When I told her about the situation, I expected her to slap me or hit me—and truth be told, I would have been secretly relieved if she did. It would mean the world was still familiar, still followed the same rigid set of rules, even if they were harsh and cruel ones. But it was a framework in which I could still function.

  But Therese listened to me, nodding coolly. Finally, she tilted her head and said, “Well, why don’t you just go and get rid of it? Don’t be an idiot.”

  “I don’t want to get rid of it!” I shrieked. I couldn’t wrap my mind around Therese being such a raging hypocrite. Had everything been a huge joke, the world’s longest—and shittiest—running gag?

  “Then you’re just stupid,” she said with a shrug. “You want to be a single mom? You’ll be dropping out of college, you know. There goes your whole life. Is that what you want for yourself?”

  I didn’t know what to say. “There has to be something else I can do.” Despite the lies, the bullshit, the deception, I still loved him and wanted this baby.

  “That other guy you just told me about. Any chance this baby could be his?”

  I had to admit that there was absolutely zero chance of that because Scott and I had never had sex. In my own delusion, I drew the line at that. That would be cheating. When I told Therese this, she did the last thing I ever expected her to do. She threw her head back and laughed.

  “That boy must be crazy about you,” she said, “if he’s still sweet on you after all this time when you won’t even put out. You want my advice? Why don’t you go to him right this moment and put on the best show of your life? I bet he’ll be plenty happy when you tell him he knocked you up. And by the sound of it, this one has an actual future ahead of him. You could do worse.”

  That night, I hated her more than I ever had before. I hated her more than I thought possible. I spent the predawn hours ruminating on that hatred and agonizing over what to do. Yet never once did it occur to me to just have a go at it myself. To try and build my own life without needing to attach myself like a barnacle to someone more capable and successful. Maybe I was just young and stupid. But after I left Therese’s apartment, I went and did as I was told.

  Scott couldn’t believe it when I turned up at his dorm. Seeing the look on his face, something inside me wilted in all-consuming shame. But by the next morning, I knew I did the right thing—at least, according to my warped view of myself, him, and the world. Later that weekend, we were officially an item.

  And within two weeks, I got my head on straight. Common sense returned, and so I went to the clinic and never told Scott or anyone a thing.

  What I never counted on, however, was that my first so-called love would see me on the news after the home invasion and decide to worm his way back into my life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “What do you know about this?” I ask Therese. She’s never been good at hiding her emotions, and even though she does her best to hang on to a look of smug superiority, I see her pale under the artificial circles of blusher on her cheeks. “Has he contacted you?”

  She’s silent.

  “Therese,” I snap.

  “He showed up here a few weeks ago,” she admits. “Asking about you. I told him never to come back. What more do you want from me?”

  In that last phrase, her voice slips into a hysterical pitch, and I immediately guess everything.

  “You gave him my number.”

  “It’s not what it looks like, Cece. He came to help out with one of my church events. He said he was an old classmate of yours.”

  “And you believed it? Or did you do this on purpose? That’s so like you. Did you think I needed to be taught a lesson? Because according to you, I haven’t suffered enough already.”

  “I would never do that on purpose. Please.”

  I shake my head. “If you think I’m going to wire you money now, you’re nuts.”

  “Right,” she says. “I guess I should have gone to Scott in the first place.”

  I glower at her, and she meets my gaze with that infuriating false air of contrition.

  “If you so much as contact Scott, Mom, I swear to God—”

  “Calm down. I know you hate me, and you have your reasons, but like it or not, I’ve always had your back—when it counts. Have I not?”

  * * *

  Once I’m in my car, it starts automatically. I sit there without going anywhere for a few minutes, struggling to calm down.

  I don’t know if I really believe she did this on purpose. Therese can be infuriatingly unpredictable at times, going from obtuse to strangely shrewd as the situation demands. It’s remarkable how lightning fast she can get her shit together when needed. For all her delusions, she has a preservation instinct sharper than a razor, and right now she needs something from me. For all I know, she just might contact Scott, and with my ex back in the picture, lurking outside the walls of Venture ready to pop up when I need him the least, it’ll be a lot harder to write her off as crazy.

  Yet as I log on to my banking app, I’m gritting my teeth. Yes, I’m letting her win, and setting a precedent that she’ll no doubt try to exploit again. But I can deal with tha
t when the times comes, and in the meantime I decide to send her a little money. Nowhere near as much as she asked for but enough to keep her out of my hair.

  It’s been a while since I’ve used the banking app. That’s because it’s been a while since I left Venture, where I can pay for everything automatically using my chip. So now I look at the accounts in mild confusion.

  My own is practically empty but I knew that already. This is the account I used for my ebook cover business, and while it was never anything to retire on, it used to have a healthy four figures in it once upon a time. Now, there’s a couple hundred dollars in it, which I deposited there many months ago for the software subscriptions that have now lapsed.

  What’s alarming is that the other account has less than a thousand dollars in it. The last time I logged on, this wasn’t the case. Scott’s pay goes into that account, and, since he just got paid last week, this makes no sense. Maybe I overspent on all the stuff that debits automatically. I try to do the math in my head: the groceries, the bills, myriad little indulgences I no longer notice. Oh yeah, the catering and wine for that party. Thinking I might transfer some more money here just in case, I tap and swipe but can’t access the savings account from the app. Scott manages these things, and I’ve always let him because it’s not like I contribute anything to the savings anyhow.

  A couple more taps, and I’ve wired Therese some of the money from the accounts. Scott might notice, and then he’ll ask questions. I can’t say I look forward to the conversation.

  I’m not in a hurry to go back to Venture. The prospect of driving back through the gilded gates of my new home makes me queasy. Yet I can’t help feeling like I’m a guest here in the real world, just passing through. I don’t live here anymore.

  There’s still time so instead of going straight home, I decide to go for a drive to clear my head. It’s almost at random that I find myself taking a turn in the familiar direction.