“Layla, if I wanted your input I would have asked for it,” I tell her returning to my documents with a sigh.
“Yes, sir, my apologies. I’ll organize that now.”
I say nothing and she leaves.
Meticulously I look through each piece of paper, wondering if I’m doing the right thing. It’s time to move on, but some things are hard to let go of. With that thought, something drops from the pile to the floor. It’s a photo. Picking it up slowly and staring, I remember this picture, it was taken when my face was much younger. I didn’t have so many lines. My life and career were just beginning. As I stare, it’s there in my eyes—hope. I had it in abundance then. Always thinking I would come out on top. That was what I believed, well, when it came to most things.
My fingers travel over the photograph that shows a group of carefree young kids outside the shop. It stops when I reach her face. She was beautiful then. I have no idea what she’s like now. Probably has a few kids, little girls that have her eyes and smile, with long strawberry blond locks, just a touch darker than their mom. Little boys with her wicked sense of humor and fun. I just hope that she got everything she wanted. She deserved to be treated like a queen. That’s one of the reasons I left. To let her just be. We were becoming closer, closer than was right, so I had to pull away. I slap the palm of my hand against my forehead, as an ache spreads through my chest. “Get a grip Danny.” I murmur to myself. “It’s time to let the past go.”
“Of course you use milk, it makes the potatoes creamy.”
“Actually no, you just use more butter that makes the potato even creamier.” I feel the breeze hitting my back as the door to the store opens and I’m jolted out of my stance. This is what my life has become, watching two little old ladies argue about the best way to make mash potato. Still I smile. I love volunteering, helping the old folks is the one thing that makes me feel like my life has some meaning, some purpose.
“Come on, Agnes, Meredith, we’re in the grocery store, it’s probably not the best place to be having this argument,” I say, trying to appease them.
Agnes spins around to me, a look of disgust on her face. “This is exactly the place to have this conversation. We’re in the dairy aisle, do I want to go home with too much milk, because this one thinks milk is what we need, when we actually need butter,” she tells me with a huff but her eyes are shooting daggers at Meredith. I roll my eyes at her.
“Don’t you roll your eyes at her young lady!” I get shot at me from Meredith now. Looking over to her, she has her hands on her hips and a frown on her wrinkly face.
“Young ones these days… I tell you Mere, there’s no respect,” Agnes says from my other side as Meredith nods enthusiastically in response.
Linking her arm through Meredith’s, Agnes says, “Come on, let’s get butter and milk, then we can make both.” They nod their heads together and walk off to pick up the ingredients that they’ve spent the last ten minutes arguing about. I lean over the shopping cart and run my hand down my face. Shaking my head, I walk toward the old ladies with a smile, hoping I’m just like them when I’m older.
I can hear them laughing out in the back garden. Well, the patch of grass that’s considered a back garden. Sometimes I fantasize that it’s just me living here. This place is a dump, but still, I think about all the things I’d do to pretty it up. At the very least, I’d mow the grass patch and plant some flowers, something that I refuse to do when Keith and his friends insist on sitting out here drinking, throwing empty bottles everywhere and relieving themselves on the grass when they’re drunk. Not surprising it’s turned brown. I would if it was just me, though. I’d save up to get someone to paint the outside of the house while I tackled the inside. I’d paint the outside myself, but I’m so scared of heights that I’d probably fall off the ladder.
Walking toward the back door, I can hear them all chatting, hooting and hollering and generally acting like the asses that they are. “I can’t believe you haven’t got her working yet?” I hear Tommy say.
“Nah, man, I need her to be at my beck and call.” They all laugh at Keith’s statement. I already know that it’s me they’re talking about. Years ago I used to stop and listen, then have it out with him after they went home. It took years, but eventually I realized there was no point. Keith didn’t respect me anymore. Hell, I didn’t respect myself anymore, so how could I demand it from him? Hanging my head, I walk out there with beers in my hands. While passing them out to the guys, I notice, as usual, not one of them says thank you. Declan grabs the bottle with one hand while trying to shove his other hand up my shorts. I step away with a frown and look to Keith, who has his back to us and so doesn’t see anything. But I know… I know… if I tell him what happened, he wouldn’t believe me when Declan denies it. It’s not the first time it’s happened, and it probably won’t be the last. One day I worry that Declan will push it too far and I’ll have nobody to help me. Quickly, I move back inside the relative safety of the house.
“Did you pick up more beers when you were out?” Keith shouts into the kitchen. They’ve been out there for five hours now and they’re all drunk. It’s like looking after a bunch of toddlers.
“Yes, of course,” I reply shouting out into the garden.
Forty-five minutes later and they just seem to be getting louder. “I don’t know why she has to volunteer any time to those old fuckers, they’re gonna be dead soon anyway,” he tells his friends and my grip tightens on the iron. I’ve been standing here ironing his clothes for the last half hour, listening to him berate me. It makes me so angry but I realize, every time my anger surfaces, that there’s nothing I can do about it so I might as well let it go. Looking down at the now small pile of clothes left, my skin hot and prickly with irritation, I wonder why I bother. I think it’s a thing that’s just bred into me. Plus, if he noticed I wasn’t doing it anymore I’d just be giving him ammunition to shoot me down.
“If I had her I would bang her all day long,” Declan slurs to Keith.
“No, you wouldn’t. Trust me, it’s not fun now she’s passed it.” They roll about laughing. My shoulders sag as my vision blurs and I feel the emotion that I usually hide so well, bubbling to the surface. Pushing it back down for the moment while grabbing my jacket and purse, I creep out the front of the house. Keith and his friends will be there all night, and they’re too drunk to really know what’s going on. If he asks tomorrow, I’ll just say I went to bed with a headache. He’ll chew me out, but I need to get away. Some days it’s just all too much.
It’s a three-mile walk into town, but it’s one that I need right now. I’m glad I grabbed my jacket, as although it’s the end of August and the days are hot, the nights are cold. It’s eleven p.m. now, and it’s only going to get colder by the time I’m ready to walk back. I smell the crisp night air, and can feel the dew on my face. When I reach town, I walk briskly past the local bar so nobody will see me. Scooting down the alley behind Main Street, and digging the key out of my pocket, I look around taking a final sweep of any possible signs of life, before concluding it’s just me. Opening the back door to my parents’ old ice cream parlor, as soon as I’m in I lock the door, then lean back against it, closing my eyes as my heart thumps in my chest. It’s strange to think back to only twelve years ago where I would have come in here every day to open shop. It’s the last piece I have of my parents—the final piece of me that Keith has destroyed.
I walk through the back of the shop. I can’t sit out front anymore, the glass windows will give me away. Although I have, on occasion, still gone in the front door at the dead of night and sat in my favorite spot, remembering when I would come in after school and Pop would bring me out my favorite ice cream—mint choc chip. I’d sit and watch as he and Momma danced around to the old music, which they always played in the shop while serving customers. Always happy. God they loved each other so fiercely. I only ever wished to have a love like theirs. Something all consuming, and for that person to love me back in the sa
me way.
They would be disappointed in me now. I know it. Disappointed that I’ve let myself become so worn down, that I’ve allowed my self-esteem to drop enough that I’m broken. I feel a tear slip away from my restraint and I quickly wipe at it, making my face dry once again. I don’t want to allow myself to go down that path, I don’t want to open the floodgates. Reaching out, I touch the photos that still hang in the back room. Photos of my momma, my pop, and me as a young girl in my teens. Keith didn’t want those photos in the house, he says we don’t have room, and that the memories are all in our heads anyway. I’ve managed to hide a few photos away, but as for the rest I had nowhere to store them, no one to ask to keep them for me. Then while I was trying to work out what to do with them, I realized that it didn’t matter—nothing mattered. If I stayed with Keith, they were never going to be allowed to go up on my wall. I cried that day, for my parents, for their shop, for their photographs and for my loss. Then two months after selling this place—once Keith had spent all the sale money on drink—I realized there was still nobody doing anything with the place.
The night of my twenty-first birthday was the first time I crept into the shop. It was my first birthday without both my momma and pop. I had come home from a day saying goodbye to my best friend, Amanda. We’d been inseparable growing up. I loved her like a sister, still do. She was my next door neighbor, our parents had been close too. Unfortunately, her mom had passed when we were in high school from cancer. After school, she went on to college. When my pop died, she came back to visit me, but then, when my momma died she came back to town and stayed longer than she should have. She had just finished both a French and English Degree at Dartmouth College. Amanda was heading to Paris to be an English teacher. As an only child her father had sold everything and was going with her, but because she loved me, she pushed back her plans to come and prop me up knowing Keith would be useless, even back then. We had spent practically the whole day crying. Then she was gone. I had gone home in bits hoping that Keith would, at least, give me a hug and maybe give me a birthday card. Instead, I didn’t even get a hello, just a ‘Where the fuck have you been, and just because it’s your birthday I still need dinner.’ I made him dinner, then I walked out. He was livid when I got home. It was the first real undeniable and irreparable hole in our marriage. After that, it just got worse.
I sigh as I walk into the kitchen. The big freezer is still here. It’s empty and clean. The whole place is spotless, I made sure of it before it was sold, and now I clean when I’m here, which is becoming more often as time goes by. Grabbing the cloth and cleaning spray under the sink, I wipe all the surfaces that don’t need wiping, just to do something.
Picking up the radio, I wish I’d remembered to bring batteries. It died the last time I was here. I love listening to music, but it’s just another thing Keith doesn’t like at home. Now I only get the chance to do it when he’s at work, which isn’t often. Since he hates any kind of labor and won’t let me work. We live below the breadline, but we always have beer, especially for his asshat friends. I put the cloth and spray back and check the clock on the wall, which still works. I can’t quite believe it’s after one in the morning. Grabbing my jacket and purse, I creep out the back door to the shop and lock up, walking down the alley and back onto Main, turning right and starting the journey back home. Dragging my feet, with a heavy heart and wondering why I call it home, when in reality it’s nothing like what I’d consider a home. Halfway there it starts raining and I just stop and hold out my hands looking up to the sky, like a completely crazy person with a smile. Before I carry on walking, I scream up into the night, releasing whatever tension my body retains from the day. Telling me I’m still alive.
I have moments of peace. They don’t happen often, but when they do I savor them. This is one of those moments where I have freedom today. Keith’s currently at work at his job at Selma’s, the local bar, which he manages two days and two nights a week. The peace I feel right now comes from digging out my secret box of photos and knick-knacks, which I keep at the bottom of my closet. I sit flipping through my hidden keepsakes. The photos, from a time long since passed, bring me an equal mixture of happiness and sorrow. But, more importantly, they also remind me of who I used to be and sometimes I need that reminder.
Skimming past anything relating to Keith—moving those items to one side to throw away—my first stop is a photo of Amanda and me. We must have been sixteen. It was before Keith and I got together and about a year after her mom passed. She was just starting to come back from the downward spiral that saw her acting out and hanging about with the wrong crowd. That year had tested our friendship, but I never gave up on her. She was and still is my soul sister, and I would have walked to the ends of the earth for her. So I kept holding on, gripping her with only my fingernails sometimes, but it was worth it, she was worth it. Then Amanda got out of this place, and she made something of herself. I miss her so much sometimes that I can’t breathe. She calls me once a week when I visit Pastor Wilson and his wife after church on Sunday’s. We don’t have a phone in the house and the cell is held by Keith. Lack of my own money ties me to him. He likes me there, under his control. As much as he tells his friends I’m not worth anything—and I know he really truly believes that—he likes that he has someone to dictate to.
When I think about the way he turned out, I’m glad we never had children. I wonder if we did, how he would have tried to control them—what lengths he’d have gone to. I shiver at my own thoughts. I can’t even imagine having sex with him anymore, I’m just grateful that he doesn’t try. I sleep in the spare room now and he doesn’t care. He asked me to move in there years ago. Said I was getting fat and taking up too much of the bed. I’ve stayed in that room ever since. But it doesn’t give me a false sense of security, I know my place, and I have no doubt that he probably looks through my room regularly. Checking for God only knows what. Still, he either hasn’t found this box yet or he just doesn’t care enough.
I’m glad tomorrow is Sunday. It means he works today and tomorrow and it also means I’m able to speak to Amanda. She hates Keith, we talk about my situation sometimes, but to be honest, not much changes on my end and I prefer to listen to what’s going on in her life. She got married three years ago to Pierre. The man who won my best friend’s heart. She’d been dating him for five years and she seems totally in love. So, I live vicariously through her, learning about relationships all over again, reminding me what I saw with my parents and hers. Maybe that’s where we went wrong, Keith looked to his parents. They weren’t happy, you could see that a mile away, but they stuck because they came from a time when you didn’t divorce. It just wasn’t the done thing. So Keith and his brother Robert, who’s three years his senior, grew up in an unhappy home. Their dad was strict and would regularly beat them. It’s one of the reasons I’ve always felt grateful that Keith isn’t like that with me. Robert went to prison for assault and rape eight years ago, and although I suspect Keith talks to him I steer clear, he always gave me the creeps when we were younger. Thankfully Keith was never like his brother.
I take a moment to ponder my thoughts, and when I manage to clear them, I pull out my paper and pencil. I open my folder carefully, containing layers of paper, some empty and waiting for beauty, and some I’ve already used to draw. I sketch my dreams. It’s how I still function, by having dreams. I dream that someday, I’ll be rescued. Someday, someone will love me with their whole essence. One day I’ll be somebody’s everything. I look at my favorite sketch of the Eiffel Tower. I picture laying on the grass, staring up at the beautiful masterpiece in front of me. Amanda would be with me, and so would our respective husbands—Keith would not be in that picture—and we would all be deliriously happy. The only thing missing is the unicorns farting rainbows, right? Well, I guess that’s why they’re called dreams because most people don’t get to achieve them.
I fold the papers up and tuck them back in the box. Returning to the photographs, I pause
at a group shot. I’m standing next to Amanda smiling wide, we were obviously giggling just prior to the photo. Keith is next to me with Tommy and Declan, at the back stands Rubén and the girls. Then there’s him… Danny. He stands at the other end to me, and while everyone is looking into the camera, he isn’t. Instead, he’s staring right at me, looking straight down the line of people to my smiling face. I didn’t know it until I had this photo developed. Then I kept it for myself. Kept a piece of Danny to have with me. We’d gotten close since I started dating Keith, at times I had told him things, problems or worries I had, whether they were about Keith or about life in general. I found him easy to talk to. He didn’t treat me like the others. He acted like I was worth something, even if I wasn’t from the popular crowd. We became really close, actually too close. Well, back then it was too close, for someone who was already in a relationship. I asked him once whether you could love two people. He told me he thought that it was possible to love two people, but you couldn’t be in love with two people. He held my hand, looked into my eyes and said, ‘The strongest love, the love that was meant to be, that’s the kind of love that will stand the test of time. That’s the love that will still sit in your heart fifty years from now… even if it’s a dormant love, remaining useless and unused. It will still be there and will always exist throughout time.’ I get what he meant now I’m older. He was mature beyond what eighteen-year-old boys should be. I wonder if he has that love. That same one I do, the one that sits dormant in my heart unused, because the person it was truly meant for left and has never come back.
“Welcome to Wentworth by the Sea Marriott Hotel, Mr. Quinn,” the over enthusiastic receptionist says as I check in. “Christoph will take your luggage up to the Presidential Suite, Sir,” she continues and I just nod. Weary from my flight and four days of phone calls from Shannon. Calls that I could have done without. I make my way to the suite, ready for sleep. The moment the door closes my cell buzzes and vibrates in my pocket. My heart is heavy as I pull the phone out, dreading another round with Shannon, but the day brightens slightly when I see it’s not her calling.
Finally Unbroken Page 2
