The Contradiction of Solitude

by A. Meredith Walters

  I dropped my hand from my mouth and did nothing to hide my upturned lips. I even showed a little teeth. Just for her.

  She was angry and jealous and a dozen other unfortunate emotions because she wanted what was already mine. I felt the echoes of pity for her. It wasn’t her fault that she gave her heart to a man who could never take care of it.

  “I thought we were going to get some barbeque, Elian. It’s your favorite,” Margie said, her voice pleading. I hated how easily she bared her soul to him. She should have more self-respect.

  Elian clenched his jaw and I wanted to touch the skin that covered hard bone.

  “I’ll get some later, no worries.” He was so dismissive and Margie with the red hair knew that. Finally she got the point and turned on her heel, stomping off like a child.

  Tate rolled his eyes. “What crawled up her snatch?”

  “Dude, seriously,” Elian growled, clearly not amused with his friend’s language. Tate finally got the point and gave us a hearty wave before he and Stan headed off in the direction Margie had just gone.

  “Sorry about them,” Elian apologized, his voice low and quiet and meant for me alone.

  I lifted my shoulders in a careless shrug. It didn’t matter. They didn’t matter. Because he was the only reason I was there in the first place.

  Elian pulled at a loose string at the hem of his T-shirt. He dressed like he hadn’t done laundry in a while. His jeans were stained and his shirt faded and threadbare. His brown work boots were scuffed, the laces tucked into the sides. He reminded me of a little boy running wild, regardless of the danger up ahead.

  “This isn’t your type of scene,” he commented, shifting my focus from his shoes to his face.

  “You’re right. This isn’t normally my scene at all,” I admitted, leaning into him just slightly.

  Elian snapped his fingers together. “I knew it!” As though he had just made a monumental discovery. These were tiny, inconsequential pieces that I gave away without effort. Safe. Painless.

  “So why are you here?” he asked, pushing his hair off his forehead. I stared at him for a moment, taking in all the parts of him. His green eyes, the first thing that I had really noticed about him. His light brown hair that fell in a haphazard disarray across his forehead.

  The scars, thin and shiny, crisscrossing along the length of his neck. They were brutal and violent. And when Elian was nervous, he rubbed his fingers over the slightly raised skin as though trying to wipe them away. I wondered about the scars. I wondered about his false smiles.

  I wondered about Elian Beyer and his many, many secrets.

  The air felt hot. Constricting. It squeezed and pressed uncomfortably against thirsty skin. Brecken Forest had been experiencing an unseasonable drought. There hadn’t been any rain in over two months. The flowers were dying. The leaves were falling before they were ready. The earth looked parched. Desperate.

  The brown blades of once green grass were sharp beneath my palm. Dry and brittle, breaking off under my fingers. Once alive but now dead and dusted.

  “To see you of course,” I told him honestly, wondering how he’d take the words I had just handed him.

  Elian swallowed audibly and there was a hint of blush on his cheeks. I knew that Elian wasn’t the blushing sort. He had unknowingly handed me all of the control.

  “Is that okay?” I asked, dropping my hand onto the blanket so that it lay between us, only inches from his leg. I bent my fingers, scrunching them, and then laying them flat. Restless things itching to move and touch.

  Elian gave me a small smile but didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

  We sat together listening to the musicians play loud, obnoxious music. The vibrations of the bass shook my bones and I wished it would stop. People stood in front of us, obstructing our view of the band.

  “Do you want to move closer? So we can see the stage?” Elian asked, craning his neck to try to see. I knew that his group of friends, including the territorial Margie, were nearby watching us.

  “Okay,” I agreed, getting to my feet. Elian looked surprised again. His preconceived ideas of me were amusing. I would enjoy shattering them. And upholding them.

  He wiped his hands on his jeans and then held his hand out. I knew he wanted me to take it. To interlace my fingers with his like children skipping down a street. Palm to palm, the heat of him infiltrating my chill.

  I knew he expected me to comply in a mindless promise. Skin to skin.

  I tucked my hands into the pockets of my pants.

  Elian seemed embarrassed. Confused even. His dancing green eyes darkening ever slightly. “Shall we?” I asked, inclining my head toward the stage.

  His eyes cleared, and the smile tinged with disingenuous mirth returned. His mask firmly in place.

  I was close enough to see the thud of his pulse in his neck. Tick. Tock. Thud. Thud. Like a clock. Constant.

  I didn’t want to hold his hand but I wanted to touch his skin. Right there. Where the tender, vulnerable skin thumped steadily.

  “Okay,” Elian said, his hand once again by his side. The hand that had waited for mine. I followed him through the crowd, my feet shadowing his steps.

  We stood in the sea of people, listening to music I didn’t like, our arms brushing against each other. He looked down at me, his tall frame towering over me. His head brushing the clouds.

  Buzz..…

  I reached out, fingers tiptoeing over skin, gliding, sliding until they fit into the curves and planes of his hand. Palm to Palm. Heat to chill.

  Elian startled slightly, and I wondered if he could feel how cold I was. Inside.

  Could he tell how hard it was for my heart to beat?

  How my clock had stopped a long time ago?

  “Layna, your paper was delivered to me again,” Mrs. Statham smiled, her swollen, red gums appearing above stained, yellow teeth.

  “Thank you. Would you like to come in for some tea?” I asked, confident that my invitation wouldn’t be accepted. Which was the only reason it was given.

  “Oh, I can’t. Gettin’ my hair washed and set. It’s Thursday, you know,” she informed me. I knew the old woman’s schedule. Just as she made it a point to know mine. She was an observer in her own, nosy way.

  “That’s right. Well another time then,” I said with a smile.

  “I’ll bring you some peanut butter crunch cookies later. I’m trying out a new recipe before my granddaughter comes to visit.”

  “When is she coming?” I asked.

  “In a couple of weeks. She’s about your age. Maybe a little older. How old are you again?” I eyed the older woman speculatively, knowing exactly what she was doing. She had been trying to glean information out of me since I had moved in. She wasn’t in the slightest bit subtle.

  “Twenty-four,” I replied, feeling no need to lie. I typically held my truths close to my chest, revealing none. But there was no harm in giving Mrs. Statham what she was looking for.

  It didn’t hurt. It didn’t spoil.

  I didn’t bleed afterwards.

  Mrs. Statham clicked her tongue several times, her eyes wrinkling at the corners. “Danielle is twenty-eight. She’s been working in the city for a few years now. She’s close enough that it shouldn’t take her six months to come see her grandmother, that’s for sure,” Mrs. Statham remarked sternly, already discarding the information I had given her.

  Insignificant.

  Unimportant.

  She had no idea.

  “People get busy,” I offered, backing away from the door, knowing the conversation was nearing its inevitable conclusion.

  “True, true.” Mrs. Statham peered at me, eyes wanting to see so much. “You don’t leave your poor grandmother to pine after you, do you?”

  “I don’t have a grandmother,” I reminded her. She knew the story I had told her. Sprinkled with the reality I had come to know. Some honesty that made it real.

  “Oh that’s right. You lost your parents and grandparents. I�
�m sorry about that. It’s a shame that such a beautiful girl like you is all alone in the world,” Mrs. Statham exclaimed without tact. If I were an emotional woman, her words would have wounded.

  But there was no pain.

  “I have to get ready for work. And you have hair to wash and set, Mrs. Statham,” I reminded her, getting annoyed, wishing she’d leave.

  Mrs. Statham clucked her tongue again. “That’s right. I’m going to be late. I’ll come by later.”

  I didn’t bother to tell her that I would be at work later. I’d let her come by to find me not at home. Her future disappointment almost made me smile.

  “Bye, Mrs. Statham,” I said and closed the door as she turned to leave, more words on her lips that I didn’t want to hear.

  I walked into my kitchen and stopped at the dry erase board I had hung on the refrigerator.

  I uncapped the marker and jotted down a line: Sealed lips, closed eyes, dead ears. Easy heart.

  I laid the newspaper out on the table and turned on my computer. While I waited for it to boot up, I skimmed the local stories. I made a point to familiarize myself with the goings on in the tiny towns I chose to live in.

  Brecken Forest was typical in all the usual ways. The front page was dominated by the minutes from last night’s school board meeting. Pictures of the recent garden show took up most of the second and third page. I looked at the faces of local celebrities. Women and men whose names meant something in this quiet hamlet. Families who had been there for generations.

  This was about blending. About claiming. I wanted to slip inside the blood and bones of the town to find belonging. For however long I could have it.

  I could pretend that I had grown up in the small town with the state championship winning football team. That I skinned my knees on the streets of a make believe childhood filled with parents who had normal jobs and friends I had known since infancy.

  I could dip my toes in an imaginary past and live a few moments in content delusions.

  I read about Mrs. Gardner’s upcoming yard sale to benefit the homeless shelter. I went over the obituaries, pretending that I was sad for the loss of Mr. Davis Cooper, who had been a volunteer firefighter for forty years and was survived by his three children and ten grandchildren.

  For a brief period of time, these people, these citizens of Brecken Forest, Virginia, were my home. My family. Strangers that were more important to me than the people I knew.

  “Family is the most important thing in your life, Lay. Wherever you go in this world, no matter what you do, family is in your blood. You can’t ever forget about the people that made you.”

  My mother hadn’t meant for her words to tighten like a noose around my neck. She hadn’t meant for her love-filled sentiment to drag me into purgatory and keep me there.

  Without conscious movement, I tucked my hand into the waistband of my panties, touching the once tender skin that had been altered forever only days before. The bandages were gone, and it was healing nicely.

  Family made me. It shaped me.

  Family owned me.

  I folded up the newspaper and set it aside, turning to the computer. My compulsion taking over once again.

  I clicked open the bookmarked site on my browser. Another newspaper from another town popped up and the tendrils of ease disappeared. The Norton Hill Gazette was filled with stories so much like the ones I had just read in Brecken Forest’s local paper.

  Filled with people from another life. A thread that I could never sever.

  My chest started to feel tight and my hands started to tingle. My face flushed hot as I clicked through the pages, reading…reading.

  When I couldn’t bear it any longer, I opened another tab, closing that door for another day. Turning to a different fixation. A different driving need.

  I searched.

  I spent the next hour flitting from one newspaper to the next. Making notes on scraps of paper and then balling them up and throwing them away when they didn’t seem to fit. I couldn’t find them.

  I knew they were out there.

  He had left me a trail…somewhere. Secrets safe for me to find. Between us. Only us.

  Stars that needed their stories.

  And I wanted to tell them.

  I had been collecting them for him since I left home. Since my mother died and Matthew was taken away.

  I had been lost and adrift, nothing tying me to the life I once had.

  But the stories my father had told me once upon a time kept me company during the loneliest days.

  It was hard to hate the man when he had given me something to hold me together.

  His stars.

  His stories.

  They weren’t all told.

  I became obsessed with finishing them. For him. For my father.

  For the man that had ruined me.

  And there it was. A small article at the bottom of the front page of the Vanleer Observer, the source of news for a tiny town in the middle of Texas. A story from their archives, nineteen years earlier.

  I didn’t recognize the name on the headline but I felt the flutter in my belly. Vicious birds taking flight. My fingers tingled as I scrolled down, reading. Reading.

  Maybe…

  Janurary 16th, 1998 Grisly Murder Unsolved

  Police are still looking for leads in the murder of a young Abilene girl who was found just outside of Vanleer on June 10th, 1997. The victim whose body was discovered by two local schoolboys on their way home, had been stabbed multiple times. Her throat was slashed and her hands were removed. Officials searching the area were never able to recover the missing limbs.

  Sheriff Carter confirmed shortly after the discovery that the victim was sixteen-year-old Tawny Reaves of Abilene, Texas and a junior at Middlebeck High School. Tawny had been missing for seventy-two hours before her body was found in a ravine off Back Road sometime between ten and eleven p.m. on June 9th.

  It is unclear how Tawny, who resided thirty miles away, came to be in Vanleer. Mr. and Mrs. Reaves contacted their local police department when Tawny failed to come home after school on June 7th.

  The Reaves family admits that Tawny had been going through a “rough” period after the death of a close friend. An autopsy confirmed that Tawny had both THC and opiates in her system at the time of death.

  The lack of forensic evidence in this case has led to a standstill in the investigation, intensifying the sense of fear and disquiet in the small town of Vanleer. Locals vocalized their concerns during a town meeting last week where Sheriff Carter was the focus of increasing hostilities. Sheriff Carter assured the unhappy crowd that solving the brutal murder on their doorstep was the department’s top priority.

  In the meantime, Tawny Reave’s family has offered a substantial reward for any information that leads to an arrest.

  I ran my finger along my bottom lip, re-reading the article several more times. Then I hit the print icon. A bit more research showed that the case had never been solved.

  I bit the inside of my cheek, feeling something akin to excitement.

  I have a new story to tell you, Daddy. I think you know this one.

  It’s about a girl named Tawny. She was sad because her friend died. She didn’t want to live. She did things she shouldn’t because she wanted the pain to go away. But it never did.

  Until the day came that she could be a star forever…and then she was finally free…

  I gathered the printed papers and put them in a file that I kept in a drawer in the kitchen. After putting the article away I became angry. Violent. The usual tide of emotions erupting without notice. I picked up my tea mug I had left on the counter and threw it against the wall.

  It gave a satisfying thump as it collided with the wall. Shattering. Falling. Pieces on the floor. I didn’t bother to clean it up. I left the mess where it lay. Destroyed.

  Why couldn’t I just let it go?

  And what was wrong with me that I didn’t want to?

  Why did I let this
morbidity consume me?

  Because I couldn’t let him go.

  I was drowning. I was suffocating. I couldn’t see because of the shadows in front of my eyes.

  Because it was dark…so dark. I didn’t think I’d ever see the sun.

  The alarm on my phone went off, and I took a deep breath. I ran my hands down my face, tucking hair behind my ears, smoothing wrinkles from clothing.

  Fix, tidy, collect. Get myself together and move on.

  Until I could afford the time to dwell.

  Right now I needed to go. I had places to be.

  People to become.

  Lies sounded like a heartbeat. The rushing of deceit through my veins. It sustained me. It emboldened me.

  It was my existence.

  “I thought you might be here.”

  I closed my book and pushed it to the edge of the table. Our ritual becoming a song. Familiar. Beautiful.

  “Hi,” I murmured, glancing up at Dancing Green Eyes as he slid into the booth across from me.

  Without speaking, we had given up the pretense of being there for anyone but each other. Elian sat with me as though he had been doing it for years.

  It had been two days since our designed meeting in the park. The evening had passed simply. Holding hands and listening to music I hated but Elian enjoyed. And when the band was finished I gathered my things and left.

  He didn’t follow.

  He didn’t chase.

  But I knew he wanted to. He was a man, in many ways, like all the others. He desired. But he had games to play. Pretenses to keep.

  He bided his time until he couldn’t control the urge any longer.

  And in that way we were one and the same.

  Something had changed between us in those hours at the park. Our roles had been decided. And I was giddy with the anticipation of it.

  He would never know how I planned.

  “You really like that book, huh?” he asked, sliding my copy of Swann’s Way toward him. I itched to stop him. To snatch it back. To hold it to my chest and keep it close.

  But I didn’t. I let him pick it up and thumb through the worn pages. Paper smudged with my dirt and tears.

  “I’ve never been a big fan of Proust. He’s a little maudlin, too self-indulgent for my tastes.” Elian continued to skim through the book, not realizing how he sliced through me with such trivial actions.