I nodded and wept into my tissues.
*
"Ma'am"? says the EMT. "I'm going to leave you a card for a home care nursing agency. I encourage you to call them tomorrow if you don't feel like yourself."
"Thank you," I say, my fingers closing around the business card. "I might do that. And I thank you for coming so quickly, and the kindness you've shown me."
"It's no problem," she answers. "I'm going to ask you one more time to come with me, though, and let me get you into a hospital. We can make it as painless as possible. Everyone on my crew understands the sensitivity of what your concerns might be."
"You're so kind," I say, shaking my head. "I'm sure I'm fine. I just want all this to be over."
"I understand." She presses my hand and she's gone. Officer Soul Patch and Officer Dunkin gather their things and get ready to leave too.
"We'll send a car around later just to check things out in the parking lot," says Officer Dunkin. He's been pretty professional, asking the questions, ironing out the details in the statements, but he doesn't meet my eyes when he talks. I make him uncomfortable. I wonder if his wife is fat and I am forcing him to wonder if he would still love her if she looked like me. "I'm sure he won't come back, but just in case. If you remember anything else, call. And don't hesitate to call 911 if you hear anything strange, whatsoever. Goes without saying, don't answer your door unless you're one hundred percent sure you know who it is."
He's speaking in rote phrases. He says this every time after a break-in.
"Will you let me know?" I ask. "When you catch him? Just so I know he's not still out there?" But I know Javier won't come back. He took everything he knew I had, and I don't think he has a personal vendetta now just because I pissed him off at the end.
"Sure," says Officer Soul Patch, then looks at Officer Dunkin. "We can do that right? I'll be happy to. Listen, if you don't hear from us, call the precinct directly, ask for one of us, and we can give you an update. Here." He hands me a card, which I am now holding along with the nursing card. I can't remember the last time anyone gave me a business card, and now I have two.
"Thank you," I say. He meets my eyes and smiles, and I think, his mom is fat. Not this fat, but fat. No, his grandmother. Someone in his family is fat enough that he considers me an actual person.
And it's over. They're gone. Moises is sitting in my little arm chair, the one I cannot sit in anymore, looking at me.
"Why didn't you tell the cops how much money he took?"
"Beat around the bush, why don't you," I say. "Because I honestly didn't know."
"How can you not know how much cash you had on hand?"
"Because I never counted it, after the withdrawal. I withdrew enough cash to last me for … I didn't know how long. Just for whatever I might need. COD stuff. Tips. Chinese food."
His eyes narrow. "So you planned this? At some point, you went to a bank, knowing you were never going to leave your apartment again?"
"I didn't plan anything. I just knew that leaving was getting harder and decided to be ready if I ever realized I wasn't going to make it down a flight of stairs."
"How much did you withdraw?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because I want to know how long you planned to do this for. How much did you withdraw?"
I sit silently.
"Okay, how about this. When did you withdraw it?"
"Moises, how is this your concern? I appreciate that you think you're helping, but—"
"Because there's such a thing as being trapped by circumstance and condition, and there's such a thing as choosing to be trapped by circumstance and condition. I just want to know how much of you is resigned to this lifestyle, and how much of you you're protecting by this lifestyle. Are you hiding here? Does this make you happy? Is this what you chose? Or, is this some tragedy, and you're a victim of circumstance and condition?"
I've never heard him speak in a way that had any fluidity – his tone is always so flat, and yet here he is, accenting all his hot-button words for me. Apparently we have stumbled onto a passion. At least I am awake now.
"Okay, just because you've decided to embrace some new kind of holier-than-thou lifestyle does not mean I have to. I am here because I am here. I had no motives. This is where I am, because this is where I am. You can be straight edge, but I'll be Buddhist – I am here because I am here. Is that clear? I withdrew two thousand dollars a little over three years ago. I have no idea how much was in the drawer because I never kept track of how much I had used."
"Why?" he demands, angrily. "Why?"
I become still, realizing now, only now, what he is leading me to.
"Because." I swallow. "Because I never thought I'd still be alive when I got to the end of it."
Chapter 12
Lying in bed, watching the minutes tick off on the digital clock, sleep will not come. As tired as I was earlier, my brain is spinning, reliving every moment of this horrible day. Midnight has officially passed, and I stare at the shadows moving across my ceiling, and a rectangle of white light through my windows from the moon, crawling its slow way down the wall.
My bedroom is blank, at night. By day it's a soft shade of clotted cream on scones, with milk-white trim and a brown rug. The closet door is what I'd call latte beige, the curtains are weak-tea brown, and my bedding is several different kinds of toasty cinnamon beige. I love the breakfast coffee analogies – morning is the right time to wake up and find browns and creams appealing. But at night, all of those shades of tan are just deeper versions of off-white that get jarringly dark all in the same way, and the room becomes blank. Unless I am looking directly at my father's painting in the shadows, the nighttime walls have no depth. I could reach out and touch the opposite wall from the bed; or, I could throw a stone as hard as I could and never hit it. I have no frame of reference. This is the room where most of my bedroom things won the battle against my parents' – I sought closeness with my parents' memories through their ivy dishtowels, but not so much their bedsheets. I am not five.
When I turn on a lamp, everything falls reassuringly into its place, but I do not want to sleep with the lights on. See above sentence. But I dislike how perception is thrown off in my bedroom at night. Walking through my living room at night, this does not happen. I think it has to do with the beiges: colors that are not colors.
Moises had left, eventually, after trading some barbs with me. My anger had flashed after he flayed me alive with his psychology, so I asked him which gang had taken out his front teeth, only to learn that he played street hockey in the basements of parking garages. "Cockersville counter culture," he explained, telling me how he had gotten a puck to the mouth, but then he got upset when I asked him about his knee. I couldn't let go of the idea that this kid was making up for a painfully delinquent childhood, and I didn't want to be the only fuck-up in the room stuck repenting for every choice I'd ever made, suddenly listening to hockey stories because he'd magically decided to let up.
"Something happened," I pressed him, not forgiving him for his subject change. "You didn't grow up poor and tough and street smart – no, you turned your back on daddy's money, didn't you, because the good Jewish son wasn't a hard enough path for you to follow. Couldn't prove yourself on that path, could you. Had to make it harder. Had to throw obstacles in your way. Had to create problems for yourself."
He'd exploded and he'd left, slamming the door behind him, shouting at me that I was a coward, hiding from the world, and that failures should at least own their mistakes instead of negating them by negating themselves. I felt awful, after a few minutes. Actually, I felt awful right away. I don't talk to people like that, ever. But then again, people don't talk to me like that either – calling me out on every aspect of my psyche, whether I'd uncovered it myself yet or not. He was bringing his game hard, analyzing me, and if there's a game I can play, it's that one. Analysis is my middle name (actually, it's Hedwig – could it get worse? My grandmother's maiden name, but still) and if he could
separate me out into all my secret parts, then I could do the same to him.
Moises was a kid who was supposed to stay in school, graduate at the top of his class, and go to college. I know this. He doesn't have to tell me his life story – I already know this in my bones. But instead he is a Food Mart delivery boy touting a punk culture (a laudable one, sure) that physically marks him as different now, working as many hours as he can get, chasing thugs and protecting helpless fat women. Whom he doesn't have the grace to actually be kind to. Not that he's intentionally mean. He just says what he's thinking – he has no filter. And he doesn't care if the truth hurts.
I've never been anything but filter.
I roll to my other side, my bed creaking, and I find that sweet spot in the mattress that accommodates all my lumps and protrusions perfectly. This is the spot that stops me from ever getting another mattress. This mattress will crap out one day, but until then, it knows me, and it knows my body. I settle in as deeply as I can, and I try to turn off my thoughts. My body is so sore. Something inside me hurts.
If you were going to give up, you should have just given up, Moises had said. Gone to a convent or something. Been of service to someone other than yourself. Donated your body to science.
Those are not words to go to sleep by. I see, by the light of the moon, the little note on my bedside table that I brought in with me a couple days ago, since it was too dear to leave out in the living room. It's a note from the mailman, responding to my sticky note I'd put on the envelope.
I don't know how he wrote it – I guess he keeps a pen on him? A notepad? I wasn't expecting a response, for sure. But his note was a lovely surprise, mixed in with my next day's mail.
I am at your service, it said. Jim.
I saw him in the parking lot walking to his mail truck, looking up at the windows searchingly, trying to figure out which window was mine, maybe. I sat stone still, afraid to move, afraid to draw his attention. I knew all he could see was sky reflected off the glass, and I didn't want to ruin the illusion. I'll be his woman of mystery, happily. Invisibly.
I am at your service.
Those are words to go to sleep by.
*
The left side of my body is terribly sore. Of course: that's the side I landed on. But it's sore like I landed on a rock. When I haul myself out of bed this morning, I am shocked at how much pain radiates from the middle of my left side.
Just a bruise, just a bruise, just a bruise. I go through my morning rituals: making the bed and making the coffee, mostly. But I don't want to drink my coffee. I sip on it half-heartedly, trying to get comfortable on the couch.
I turn the television a little louder than usual, letting the chirpy morning voices of the Today show anchors drown out my thoughts, but then I turn it down – they're making me hurt worse. I shift position and shift back again.
I remember again, for a fleeting painful second, my miscarriage – I had the same deep pain then that felt like it was coming from a very specific spot. A different spot then than now. But it's throbbing and spasming the same way.
Oh, my miscarriage. I think I'll sit here and remember it more – why not? I am already miserable. I'll never know whether I miscarried because I was too fat to have a healthy pregnancy – did I eat the baby to death? – or if something unrelated happened that could have happened to anyone. Do you want to hear the story? Did you know I was married? Oh, now you're shocked. You thought you had a real bead on the fat chick. You thought you had me all nicely in my box, since you've learned so much about my childhood, and my life. You thought you could chalk my life story up to a few hems and a few haws.
Well guess what. I was married.
Yes, I do wield that fact like a defensive karate move – I do feel validated as a human being, and as a woman, that someone wanted me around for the rest of his life. I was proud to have been his wife. I am still proud to have been his wife. His name was Danny. And he was some kind of messed up.
Shall I start at the beginning? I need something to distract myself before I start to panic about what my escalating level of pain might mean. So get comfortable, since I can't, and I'll tell you about my marriage.
I met Danny Remington online, because of course I did. Internet chat rooms: the great equalizer. We already assume that all the women are fat and all the men are geeky, so we are reduced to simply our words. Danny and I hit it off, which doesn't mean anything, since I had hit it off with other people online, who had simply disappeared into the ether or who had followed through with an actual phone call that had grown too awkward to pursue any further. The first time Danny called me wasn't promising either. But we agreed to meet – so of course, you know I must not have been too terribly fat or I wouldn't have even tried. I was 33 years old, and just under 200 pounds. I could have described myself as statuesque, maybe, or pleasantly plump. Or maybe having more cushion for the pushin'. I could have still gotten away with using a euphemism, is what I'm saying. I hadn't gotten to the point yet where there were no words to suffice but morbidly obese.
We met at a park, and I wasn't as fat as he'd expected and he wasn't as geeky as I'd assumed. We were both pleasantly surprised to be pleasantly surprised. He smoked six cigarettes during our walk through the paths, and I kept up with him for at least half of that. Welcome to why I ended up skinny, for a while, later that year, and actually made a pretty bride, if a smoky one. Danny had a shy smile and dark bangs that flopped in his eyes. He told me he loved me a week after meeting me.
Danny smoked three packs a day. Danny also drank at least a pint of whiskey too, two on weekends. I found Danny one night when he wasn't answering his phone passed out on the curb two blocks from where he worked, in an industrial park near the loading docks downtown.
I was thin and beautiful and devastated. I was a romantic weeping figure at support groups for families of alcoholics. I had a tragic secret that I bravely did not share with my colleagues at work. My parents tutted at me and said they understood why I loved him so much, but that he really should have waited to clean himself up before he married me. I saw a child during a field trip which was touring my office for career day, when I worked reception for a law firm, and she looked so much like a mini girl Danny that I stared at her. She had his floppy dark hair, but my freckles and pale skin. She had his long nose with flared nostrils and my light-colored eyes. We would make a cute kid, I realized, flashing her a smile, and I discussed this with him later.
He was hesitant but even breathing whiskey fumes, he smiled gently and didn't hurt my feelings. "Let's just see what happens," he whispered into my ear, and made love to me in our bed. He had an ex-wife who had a habit of serving him with papers demanding alimony, and I was glad to be loved so much more than she ever was.
I couldn't keep up with Danny. I couldn't match his habits – eventually, the more he smoked, the less I did, and my weight crept back. The more he drank, the less I did – I refused to even have a glass of wine in his presence, as to not give permission for him to continue through his bottle. The drunker he got, the more he loved me, and the more upset I got that he wasn't so demonstrative when he was sober. "You only want me when you're drunk!" I cried, every week at least, and I punished him by sleeping on the couch. He suffered my rejection until he passed out on top of our bed, still mumbling my name.
I was 35, four months, and 3 days when I realized I was pregnant, and I was 35, four months, and 7 days when I miscarried. Those four days that elapsed were like none other in my life. I hadn't gotten my period in a couple months, a common non-event that I chalked up to massive weight fluctuations, and so did any gynecologist I'd ever seen since I was 18. So I could not even guess how pregnant I was. I was thrilled. I was petrified. I was scared of how Danny might react, but I was hopeful that the news would save him. I planned all the different ways I could tell him, waiting for the right moment, or at least a good moment, thinking maybe on the weekend we could go out and I could let him know over a fancy dinner.
I ended
up letting him know while I was crouched in the bathroom, shaking, bawling, cramping and bleeding. He stroked my hair and knelt on the floor next to me, while I cried and cried. I begged him not to drink for just that week, and he promised me he wouldn't and made it for three days.
I will love Danny for the rest of my life. We might have been the loves of each other's lives. But his company caught him passed out driving the forklift through their warehouse, sent him to rehab in another state, where he followed the twelve steps like they were the ten commandments and then died trying to climb out of his sixth floor window when another patient smuggled cocaine onto the unit. He had more cocaine in his system than was measurable by the medical examiner during his autopsy. I think he thought he was really flying, until the final second. I think he might have been happy, until he didn't know anything more.
So why, you wonder, do I tell you about Danny only now, after all this time, after telling you about the inconsequential Chris Manikal first, and Ponytail Man, and David Brewster who called me thunder thighs when we were little? Why does Danny get a mention only as the afterthought of the afterthought of the afterthought?
Why, it's because we are so frightened of that which we love the most. I am so frightened of that which I love the most. Danny is the Galway crystal bell in the locked curio cabinet, the most prized collectible in the house, and the one which is rarely touched or dusted for respect. It grows cobwebs because of its value. It sits unused because of its expense. No one shakes the clapper to hear its clear, reverberating ring: it is too valuable to be thought of as simply a bell. It must be forgotten for fear its dearness is wasted from being used.
Thus I try not to think of Danny.
Chapter 13
The next week passes slowly. I pick my way around my apartment carefully, trying not to worsen my pain, becoming worried at how nagging my left side is becoming. My worry itself becomes nagging, like a hangnail that keeps rubbing against cloth – worsening itself. I am not eating very much, incredibly enough. I am not making a dent in my hoards of food that should have been long gone. I don't know which store I will use now for deliveries – I feel like I cannot call Food Mart, and not because Moises and I parted on bad terms. Quite the opposite. Moises got to know me better in a few brief visits than anyone has in years, thus I cannot look him in the eye and have him deliver my groceries unless I am ordering fresh fish, bags of spinach, and five pounds of apples. I cannot eat in secret when the bearer of my food does not permit secrets. I cannot hide my shame when my shame knocks right on my front door and calls me Mrs. Jam.
Take a Load Off, Mona Jamborski Page 9
