Forgiving Eve: A Novel

by Kathryn Hewitt

  There was no zing. There was no electricity in the air; the feelings I’d grown accustomed to whenever Jack was around were missing. Was Jack really gone? Had he left me, just like Gideon? I was beginning to learn that no matter how many times your heart was broken, it never hurt any less.

  I couldn’t help the instinctive response. My arms curled up and suddenly I was gripping myself, hugging my sides as I realized that my no crying policy was being broken. Hard.

  I was silent as the tears streamed down my face. I may have lost my shit, and was crying, but I would Not become hysterical. I was strong. I was a young woman who wouldn’t take crap. I’d learned how to grow up and protect myself mentally from a victimizing asshole. I could weather this too. Push came to shove, I’d move on with my life, get out of camp, go to community college and then transfer and get a degree. In what, I had no clue. Art?

  Despite what I knew to be the truth, I still wandered around looking for him. I even dared to call out for him, although it came out as a sort of strangled whisper as I attempted to reign in my emotions. No Jack No Jack No Jack…it was on repeat in my head. I realized that I really had grown to rely on his presence and that I didn’t want to live here at camp without him. I realized that I didn’t want to live without him period.

  This sent me into an entirely new tailspin of an anxiety attack.

  I’d vowed never to allow myself to be vulnerable again. I vowed to never let anyone in who could hurt me, as I’d already been hurt by those who were supposed to love me; first my mom, then Phil, then Gideon. And now, Jack. Focusing on converting my hurt into anger, I threw up my hands and screamed. It was oddly cathartic. Greg would have been proud.

  ✽✽✽

  Finding no Jack, I sighed with resignation. I was not cut out for this type of thing. I was CRAZY!! Regardless of how many people who chose to assure me I wasn’t, I refused to believe. I was unstable and not the person who should be expected to be the anchor to someone in need. But this was Jack, and maybe he needed me to be there for him as he had been there for me so many times.

  Dammit. Stupid Greg. I was hearing his voice in my head and it was annoying the crap put of me. Can’t a girl claim crazy and just be left alone? Apparently not. All I heard was Greg’s voice.

  “Eve, you are cutting corners and finding excuses. You’re not mentally addled, you are traumatized. There are psychological implications possibly impacting your mental state, but for the last time, YOU ARE NOT CRAZY. And for the record, that is the last time I will use that word, seeing as the ‘C’ word is highly frowned upon in my line of work. Oh, and as much as you think this is about you, I’d like to keep my job.” That last part had earned him a scowl, which had turned into a smirk, which had dominoed into the first chuckle I’d ever heard from Greg. Progress.

  THIRTY-TWO

  “Jack! Why did you run?” I asked as I glared at him. I had to know. I needed to know if it was because of me, because I was flawed, because he was tired of me and didn’t want to be saddled by an unstable pyromaniac. Unstable? I’d say that was putting it mildly. I crawled into bed with a total stranger the first week I was here. I’d say we left unstable at a rest stop three states ago.

  “I don’t know, Eve!” Jack was curled in on himself and seemed to be finding it hard to look directly at me. My strong Jack was showing his vulnerable side. I knew I should be shaken by this; instead I was bolstered. I was feeling my strength grow and rise to the surface, as I unconsciously acknowledged the situation and had clearly decided that I needed to protect and care for Jack at this moment.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said, his voice cracking. Swallowing and trying again, his voice still wavered, but he seemed to have a firmer grip on it. “I’ve met many pretty girls. I’ve been with pretty girls. But Eve?” Here he faltered again. It took all I had not run to him and envelope him in my arms, all I had not to pull him against me as I silently prayed that whatever strength I had would transfer to him. Hey, I was a firm believer in osmosis.

  “But Eve?” He closed his eyes and swallowed. When Jack reopened his eyes, they were his beautiful glowing sapphire eyes, gleaming with clarity. I felt a surge of hope. “Eve, every girl I have ever met has been a spark.” Ummm, suddenly I wasn’t so confident. He felt a spark with every girl he’d met? Was I nothing but a flash in the pan like all of the rest? I felt my heart speed up and my anxiety kick in. “A spark,” he continued, “just that. But Snuggs…Eve…You are a blaze. You are a fiery inferno, the heat of a thousand suns, the soft kiss of heat on a lazy day at the beach.”

  Wait. Huh?

  “You are the beginning of me. And you will be the end of me.” He looked pleadingly at me, as if his very life depended on my ability to understand him.

  And I wasn’t exactly sure that I understood him.

  “Jack?” I was whispering, fearing that I might set him off.

  “Eve, I love you. I’ve loved you since the first day I met you.”

  I stifled a gasp.

  “Jack, why did you leave?” I asked again, speaking softly as I approached him slowly. I was crazy myself, so I wasn’t exactly equipped with the knowledge of how to deal with someone when they were a little on edge, but instinct guided me. Jack just kept looking at me as if I should know the answer to my own question. Like it was obvious.

  “Why?” He finally asked. “Eve, ‘why’ is the most useless concept. The why is never as important as the action. We all have our obscure reasons, intricately plotted and painfully thought out, always justified in our own minds. But after the fact, none measure up to the consequence. It’s a sad condition of humanity.”

  “Jack! Cut it.” I felt bad, but not bad enough to reign in my temper. Sometimes his pontifications made me want to scream. “What happened? We were doing well, I’m working my ass off to heal myself, and I thought you were too. I thought we’d reached a good place. Then you up and leave.” I threw up my hands. “If you won’t give me a ‘why’ in regard to your experimental field trip, then at least respect me enough to explain why Irma and Richard have been up my butt while I’ve been worried sick about you.” I exhaled harshly. Apparently we were back, considering Jack had wreaked his magical touch on me, and I was no longer scared for his safety. Bastard.

  “Eve,” Jack replied softly. There was an element to his tone that both put me on edge, and made me want to run to him and hold him as I attempted to protect him from all of the evil in the world. “I’m ruined. I’m not someone you can be with. I thought that maybe, maybe this was my chance at happiness. But then we were real, and suddenly I was the one taking you down. We were getting serious.”

  He paused, breathing and refusing to meet my eye. I had apparently begun pacing in a small circle directly in front of him. God it was hot. I was sweating through my tee-shirt’s armpits. I had an epiphany in that moment. I was sweating, through my shirt (who knew if I was also smelly), I was flushed and make-up free, my hair was going on a walkabout to find itself…let’s just say I was a hot mess.

  But I realized that Jack didn’t see all of that. He didn’t care. For such a physically beautiful being, for someone who was almost ethereal in his properties, he didn’t care what I looked like. He knew me, he loved me, but he was trying to let me go because he was just like the rest of us. Majorly effed in the head, thoroughly screwed over by circumstance, and clinging by fingernails to a future that was better.

  I was not about to let him get away with this.

  Sure, most of us at camp had problems that weren’t behaviorally created. There was a lot of chemical imbalance going on around here. Most of us were lucky if we’d been totally abandoned or screwed with and abused as children, landing us here. But then there were those who had wholesome upbringings, tender loving care, the cookie cutter life. Still, the universe played a cruel trick and dealt a hand of mental illness, loss of a normal life, parents who looked on helplessly because love only cured so much.

  Jack may have fallen in the middle of the two categories.
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br />   Greg had torn my own self-diagnosis to shreds. Here I’d assumed I was ass-crazy but the reality was that I was an abuse victim and I had a whole slew of other diagnoses. I had fear of abandonment because my mom always left me alone for 12 hours at a time because she was out ‘having fun’ and ‘looking for a job.’ I still don’t know how you can apply for a job after 10 pm. Also, I apparently have a ‘the student has become the master’ complex, as I was forced to learn how to be an adult and care for my drunken mom every time she came home trashed. I was a mini adult when I was still a child. I grocery shopped, I rationed our food and did our laundry at the coin-op, dragging our many baskets multiple blocks away.

  But this was exactly why I was so willing to welcome Phil into our lives. All of the burden, all of the responsibility, all of the nightmare, was going to go away once Phil galloped in.

  God. I really loved him in the beginning. He was truly our Knight in Shining armor; he was our savior. I know my mom knew she’d struck gold. Shit, she’d come running into our trailer screaming that night.

  ‘“He did it! We’re in….WE’RE IN!!!!!”’ I’d looked at her with a confused expression, wondering if tonight I could question her without being berated. Her buoyancy gave me hope.

  “Mom, what did he do?” I tried to sound hopeful and enthusiastic. If I sounded ever so slightly less than keyed up when she was in these moods, she would make me pay.

  “Oh baby girl, we have finally done it! We’ve finally gotten what we’ve been working for all of these years.” She smiled at me grotesquely.

  What we’ve been working for? We have finally done it? If I didn’t hate my mom before, I hated her now. Apparently she had been actively looking for a man to care for her financially. I guess I’d been blind to this endeavor because that stuff didn’t appeal to me. Or maybe I wasn’t jaded enough. Although, growing up as I had, I was pretty jaded.

  “We’re getting married. Once I’m Phil’s wife, we’re moving into his mansion, he’s paying for everything! Oh princess, you’ll be so happy.”

  I fell for it. I started dreaming of life outside of a trailer park, life where I was actually looked at, considered, remembered. Where I wasn’t left alone for hours on end, where I didn’t eat frozen mac ‘n cheese four nights a week. A life where I didn’t go to bed in four shirts, two pairs of sweats, socks and mittens, because there was no heater in our trailer and the doors and windows had no seal, allowing a wicked wind to blow through at all times.

  I was going to be Phil’s Princess.

  If only I’d understood at the time what the job requirements were.

  I’d have welcomed five pairs of sweats, five sweaters, and multiple socks. I never would have signed up for my new assignment had I known the nature of my restitution.

  But I wanted a dad. I’d dreamed of a fairy tale dad, the kind who came home every night from work and I would run towards the second he opened the door. How I’d scream, “Daddy!” as I flung myself at him and he would sweep me up in his warm loving embrace. One who coddled me but was stern when necessary, who tickled me and giggled when I tickled back. A daddy who taught me about life, who swore to keep me safe, who showed how much he loved me with even the tiniest of gestures.

  Phil.

  Phil was an entity who I held up to impossible standards. I know that now. But just as it wasn’t fair to him, I sabotaged myself in the process. And Phil was good. He was almost perfect. To the outside world, he must have seemed ideal. Not to mention how much accolade he received for marrying a woman (“such a doll”, “poor girl”), who was down on her luck, not to mention taking in her fatherless little girl. What a saint!

  And for the most part, Phil was just that. He cared for us monetarily, he provided a beautiful house, all of the luxuries we’d never dared to dream of, and he welcomed me with no reservations.

  My New Daddy.

  My new daddy who broke my heart and my hymen on the same night.

  THIRTY-THREE

  But I was still not letting Jack off of the hook. Hey, I may be messed up but I was still human and, Apparently, had feelings. Who knew?

  “Jack. You and I are royally screwed. I’m a freak, and clearly you’re a freak,” I sucked in air and tried to gather my words, “so we might as well be a couple of Freaks! Don’t you dare try to leave me behind on this self-destructive trajectory. Just because I’m totally mind screwed, doesn’t mean I can’t love.” Jack’s eyes widened. “Trust me, I’m as startled by this revelation as you are.” I was now breathing heavily and starting to feel the comings of an anxiety attack. Pushing it back, I knew we were at a make or break moment and I needed to pull my shit together.

  “You are Not allowed to check out on me. I’ve been checked out on too many times for someone who hasn’t even been on this earth for two decades. I’m done. I’m through with it,” I declared to Jack.

  Standing there, my hands on my hips and my chest heaving, I could only imagine how I looked. I was certainly flushed with emotion, which only made me flush twice over with embarrassment. I was Eve! I didn’t have emotions, dammit!!

  “Through with me?”

  I’d never heard Jack sound so timid or fearful. Holy Bat-freak out….I was headed into to major freak territory. Finally deciding that taking charge was the best course of action, I plowed forward.

  “Jack. That is quite possibly the stupidest question I have ever been asked.” Grabbing the bull by its horns, I went for it. “You are NOT ALLOWED to give up on me. You are Not Allowed to let me give up on you. Deal with it.” I was breathing heavily through my nose as I registered my own words. Yikes. Not only did I sound like a Biz, I was, for all intents and purposes, signing up to stay with Jack no matter what. Please alien species, Please give me my brain back? Oh, and please don’t anally probe me. Ugh, I was talking to myself again. Groan.

  “Evelyn. Please. You have to understand. I’m not made for love or for people relying on me. I left because I was trying to help you. But I came back, which only shows how weak I am. I can’t even self sacrifice for someone I love and need, someone I know would be much better off without me ruining their life.” Jack looked at me pleadingly.

  He never called me Evelyn. It was ‘Snuggs” or ‘Eve,” or even ‘babe.’ I suddenly hated my full name.

  “Tough Shit, Jack.” Oh crap, Eve was back with a vengeance. “I don’t care what you have decided you’re, ‘made of.’ I don’t care that you have figured out how to pick the most cowardly out. I’m not stupid. By telling yourself that you’re not made for people to rely on you, that you’re incapable of providing emotional support for someone else, you’re taking the easy way out. You are a coward, Jack.” I glared at him, channeling all of my Eve-ness and throwing it at him.

  “So no. There is no giving up because relationships are hard. There is no failing without trying because emotional investment is exhausting and scary and often leads to heartache. You’re stuck Jack.”

  Jack just looked at me, his face blank but pale.

  “You’re stuck. So grow up, suck it up, and figure out that I’m not going to let you declare your unworthiness just so that you never have to take a chance. Self pity is easy. Self empowerment is hard.” My death glare didn’t waver. “And I know you’re strong enough.” Jack’s blank façade crumbled.

  “How do you know that, Eve? I am a lot of things, but strong is not an adjective that I would ever use to describe myself. Irresponsible, unreliable, lacking in good judgment, far too good looking for my own good…That is familiar territory. But strong? Worthy of you and your trust and love?” He closed his eyes and I immediately missed his sapphires. Visibly swallowing and then inhaling deeply, Jack’s eyes popped open and I was once again being pinned by his laser-like stare. “No. That is not me, and I wish you could be the strong one. I tried to leave you, tried to allow you a chance at happiness, but I’m too weak. I need you too much, want you too much, to be able to force myself away from you.

  “So it’s going to have to be you, Snug
gs. You have to cut ties, you have to make the break. It’s the only way. And I know you are strong enough. I know you have enough self preservation to rationally see that allowing another completely damaged person to remain in your life is not wise.”

  “No.” My voice sounded scratchy. I suspected that it was a combination of fear and heartbreak, terror that Jack might be right. I had come too far, worked too hard to find myself. The Eve who came to camp wouldn’t have allowed it. Then again, the Eve who came to camp also wouldn’t care to save herself either. It wasn’t wise to keep someone who could drag me down with him, in my life. Especially someone who had complete control over my heart.

  But therein lay the problem: Jack owned my heart. I couldn’t turn my back on him to save myself because along with destroying him, it would destroy me too.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I’d only managed to accomplish getting Jack to follow me back to camp. He’d fallen for my tough girl act, succumbed to my forcefulness and apparently believed that I knew what I was talking about. He’d stupidly not called my bluff. Had he, I wouldn’t have been able to stand my ground, but I guess I had a flair for acting.

  Either he fell for it, or he really didn’t want things to end between us. I prayed it was the latter but assumed it was the former. After all, I’d thrown down the gauntlet: Jack may have felt he needed to prove his strength or his lack of cowardice. Either way, despite all of the self doubt swamping my brain, Jack was back and I was no longer the only one fighting for him.

  Irma had appeared the second we were within sight of the Admin building. One look from her and Jack lost whatever puff he’d built up since our confrontation at the fence. He mumbled an apology to me and hightailed it after Irma, who’d stalked off.