by K. Webster
Pain. This is real.
A figure lays unmoving on the ground, three feet away from the wreck. The large frame of a man, wrapped around a tiny lump of sunshine yellow fabric.
The sound grows louder, my throat feels as though it is being ripped to shreds, and I realize as I tear toward them, that the sound is screaming.
It’s me.
Screaming.
My bare knees hit the ground hard and I barely register the sharp bite of glass digging into my flesh. The only thing I feel is numbness. There is blood, it’s all over the ground.
All over them.
Someone pulls on my arms and I think they tell me not to move them, but how can I stay away. My heart is on the ground in front of me, and I need to know that it is still beating.
I can’t see through the waterfall of tears, and I can’t hear through the pounding in my head, so I lay my hands on the two huddled bodies in front of me and when I don’t feel my heart beating, I know.
It’s stopped.
There is no pain.
This can’t be real.
Three Days Later
The sun is shining, and it glints off the caskets as one by one, they are lowered into the ground. One large, with lavender roses laid across the top, holding half of my heart. The other so tiny, with pretty lavender daisies in the arms of a fuzzy stuffed bear, I don’t know how the rest of my heart fits inside it.
How can the sun shine?
Doesn’t it understand that it’s lost its brightest rays?
After the accident, I was lost to the numbness, and I hung on to that, knowing that without the pain, there was hope that this wasn’t real. But when the doctor brought me a simple gold band and a tiny gold locket, I felt it. The anguish ripped through me, every cell, every nerve, my whole body was tearing apart from the agony. Pain. No. I won’t believe it.
Pain. This is real.
I’m alone, despite the crowd of people around me. People talk to me, but I don’t hear them. I want to ask where the third casket is. I can’t live without a heart, right? And yet, here I am, my heart and soul buried, and somehow breathing without them.
As I face the fact that I am forced to live, I realize I’m grateful for the absence of these vital parts of me. Without them, I feel nothing. I walk away from everyone, ignoring each person as they call to me, I leave all of my emotions behind.
And, even though this is my reality, I feel no pain.
“Now,” I narrow my eyes and pin several of my smart-ass students with a firm stare, “Don’t think by choosing ‘Power and Dominance’ as your topic that I’m going to accept a bunch of BDSM papers. If you took anything out of this class, you’ll understand that it is much more than floggers and calling someone Daddy.” An eruption of laughter roars in front of me. “Anyone who chooses that topic will be graded harder than say one that nobody ever chooses, like ‘Cognitive Biases of Decision Making’ or ‘Parental Investment.’”
The chuckles die down and several of them groan, clearly they were all headed to Tumblr to begin their research right after class.
I smirk at their disappointment and continue. “You have two weeks to complete this assignment as per what the grading rubric specifies. Wednesday and Friday of this week, we’ll use our class time in the Media Center to begin our research. All papers are due the week before finals and it is twenty percent of your overall grade, as you’ll see if you refer back to your syllabus. Anyone have any questions?”
Mack, the class idiot, raises his hand. “Two weeks isn’t very long to do a twenty-five-page research paper, Dr. Monroe. Especially when finals are around the corner.”
Several other students groan in agreement.
I frown and scrunch my eyebrows together as if to contemplate his complaint. “You know, Mack, you have a point. Forget the assignment.”
When they all cheer, I laugh. “Kidding. Do the assignment. Don’t be lazy. Most of you are U of C seniors and plan on taking internships at psychiatric wards and private practices this summer. Do you think they want lazy asses?”
Some of the class chuckles at my cursing while others are grumbling at my not-so-funny joke.
“I’m here to make it tough,” I regard Mack with a serious look and push my black-rimmed glasses up my nose, “Because those patients out there are going to be one helluva lot tougher than I am. Suck it up and do the assignment. See you guys Wednesday and don’t forget to have your topic posted on Blackboard before next class.”
The class groans and shuffles as they gather their things. Cort, my teaching assistant, strolls down the steps and drops his bag on my table. He’s been my assistant for two years now, but I’ll lose him in a few weeks once he graduates. Then it’ll be a nightmare selecting another to take his place. The guy’s familiar with the way I like to grade and keeps me organized. It sucks that I’ll have to start all over in the fall.
“You even had me going and I know never to believe your goofy ass,” he gripes and rolls his eyes at me as he leans against the table.
I chuckle as I gather my notes and tuck them into my thick, leather folder. “It’s twenty-five pages. They’ll get over it—so will you.”
“I, for one, could have used two weeks of extra study time,” he pouts.
Shoving the folder into my messenger bag, I raise an amused brow at him. “Really, Cort? You typed up the rubric and input my notes into Blackboard. Did you really think I’d waste all that work and you’d get off easy?”
He runs a frustrated hand through his overgrown blonde hair and frowns. “Wishful thinking I guess. I’m stressed and have a lot going on right now with my classes—all of which are unloading a crap-ton of assignments at the last minute. But I should have known better with your hard ass.”
I stand and walk over to him and then slap him on the shoulder. “Come on. I’ll take you to dinner, you big baby. I’ll tally the topics as they come in today and tomorrow and then add them to the spreadsheet. You can,” I throw up air quotes and mimic him in a whiny voice, “study.”
He swats me away as he laughs and shoulders his bag. “You’re a prick, Chase. No wonder you can’t keep a girlfriend.”
I flip him off and grab up my messenger bag. “I think you deserve an ‘F’ for that smart-ass comment. Besides,” I tease with a wag of my eyebrows, “They couldn’t handle the Chase.”
He shoves open the classroom door and I follow out after him. “Most women,” he mutters as if he’s the professor and I the student, “prefer to catch the one they’re chasing. You never settle with any of them.”
I scratch the dark scruff along my jawline as I ponder his words. “I stayed with Savannah for a while.”
He scoffs from beside me. “A while? Chase, you dated her for three weeks. The girl had practically planned your wedding and named all your future kids. And when you got bored of her and broke it off, who do you think she pestered for weeks afterward?”
Cort may be my teaching assistant and eight years my junior, but we’ve become pretty good friends. Unfortunately for him, he’s been privy to several hairy breakups. Including Savvy.
“She didn’t pester you,” I laugh and hold open the door that leads outside and to the parking lot.
This time he bellows. “Fucking asshole! She stalked me on Facebook and sent me like fifty-seven messages asking me to ‘talk’ to you. I finally had to block her ass. So yes, she pestered the hell out of me.”
My thoughts turn to Savvy. Sweet, petite, pixie of a woman, Savvy. Her bobbed brunette hair and dimples drew me in. Her neediness and pressure to define our relationship was what drove me away. The woman was great in the sack. It was after we crawled out of bed that things became a problem.
“Maybe I should call her up. Invite her to dinner with us,” I poke at him to see if he’ll bite.
“Do it and I’ll torch your baby,” he threatens, taking my bait.
As we stride through the parking lot, I search for my baby. She’s all curves and gloss. My baby doesn’t whine or complain w
hen I leave the toilet seat up or ask me to call her my girlfriend. In fact, she purrs when I get her all revved up.
“Do it and I’ll torch you.”
He bursts into hysterics as we approach my midnight black with charcoal racing stripes, Dodge Challenger. I bought her new in December—a little present to myself. Her payment is more than my mortgage, but she’s worth it.
“You know,” he muses as we toss our bags into the back and climb in, “maybe I should become a college professor instead. Dr. Murdock drives a six-year-old Toyota Camry with hubcaps and wears stained button downs. You, on the other hand, look like you fell out of a magazine with your model hair and drive a badass car. I wonder if I could convince Mom to skip on my interning with him and change things up a bit. Chicago needs better professors. Who better than fresh from the class of 2015?”
I shake my head ruefully at him and push my key into the ignition. After I turn her over and rev the engine, I glance over at him before putting it in gear. “Considering Dr. Murdock is the partnering psychiatrist at your Mom’s private practice, I don’t think that’d be a good idea. Besides, I like when she invites me to dinner a couple of times a month. She’d kick my ass if I influenced you to switch careers and my home cooked meals would dry up.”
Rolling out of the spot, I lean back against the cherry red leather bucket seat and cruise out of the parking lot. I hang a left onto 59th and head toward our favorite Irish pub, O’Malley’s which sells the best Galway oysters and draft beer.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think my mom would ever cut you off. She says I need a good, male role model in my life.” He growls out the last part with a bitter bite.
I clear my throat and change the subject. Cort has the corner on deadbeat dads. But, he doesn’t like talking about it, and I don’t push. “How’s Blair?”
Glancing over at him, I’m rewarded with a toothy grin. “God, man, she’s amazing. I’m going to marry that girl one day.”
“Did she finally start giving head?” I laugh.
His cheeks redden, but he nods. Lucky bastard. “Like a champ,” he says with a whistle. “But that’s not why. She’s great and I love her.”
Love.
Such an unfamiliar word in my head.
No matter how many times I lecture on the topic of love and mating from a psychological perspective, I have a hard time grasping it in my own head. Aside from my mother, father, and sister, I don’t love anyone. Several girls I dated came close, but it was never more than a lovely infatuation. Never love. Never the all-encompassing, do anything for the other, blinding type of love.
I wonder if I’m even capable.
I wonder if I even deserve it.
Once I thought I was in love and it was torn from me.
Love’s a touchy fucking subject.
“Blair’s a good apple,” I agree, driving out depressing, self-loathing thoughts as I pull into O’Malley’s parking lot. “She’s good for you.”
We climb out and make our way inside the smoky pub. Claudia owns the place and squeals when she sees me walk inside. The fifty-something woman with her horrible blonde dye job painted on her shoulder-length hair bounces over to me, suffocating me with not only her hug but also with her God-awful perfume she no doubt hoarded from the eighties.
“Missed you, handsome,” she gushes and finally releases me. Her brown eyes are dulled from years of drowning her sadness in alcohol. Tiny wrinkles around her heavily rouged lips though, indicate she’s spent the past few years finding happiness again.
I chuckle and flash her a flirtatious grin. “You saw me Saturday, gorgeous. It’s not like I don’t come in here at least once between weekends.”
Her cheeks redden and she waves us over to a booth near a window. “You’re too young to be flirting with an old lady like me. Sit your cute butts down over there and I’ll bring you a couple of tall boys. I’ll have Baxter throw in a batch of fried pickles too.”
Cort rolls his eyes at me as we slide into the booth. He’s used to my effect on every woman I encounter. Claudia’s different than most women, though. She’s a true friend and we understand the pain we each force below our surface, hidden by jokes and smiles.
“Maybe you should hook up with her,” he jests after she scurries off. “That is unless you’ve already hit that. You dirty bastard.”
“She’s my friend, asshole. We’re in the same group that meets each Saturday.” As soon as I blurt out the last bit, I clamp my mouth shut, grinding my teeth into dust and wishing I could erase my words.
He quirks a blonde brow in question, the clever guy not missing a beat. “You ever going to tell me about this group? What is it? A singles group? It can’t be AA because you drink more than me and I’m the college kid.”
Guilt surges through me at not ever having told Cort about what my group is. He’s never asked so blatantly before and I’m unsure how to respond. My group is very near and dear to me. Each person in there is closer to me than my own mother. Our pasts are all brittle and broken. It seems traitorous to share what we are about with someone who could never understand.
“It’s a support group. And Claud’s a great lady but she’s not interested in ever remarrying,” I clip out and cut my eyes over to her. She’s slicing an orange to garnish our beers with and she’s lost in thought. When no one’s looking, she drops her playful demeanor. Loss and heartache plague her features. But the moment she lifts her chin and her eyes meet mine, she forces a grin. I smile back. “Anyway, what’re you doing your topic on?”
Cort narrows his eyes at me but respects my blatant subject change. “Personality and Psychopathology. Thought I might figure out ole’ Daddy,” he grits out.
His parents divorced when he was a senior in high school, when his mother found her best friend in bed with her husband. It was a bitter, nasty divorce that pulled both him and his younger sister into it.
“Psychopathology isn’t the same as psychopathy, man. Hate to burst your bubble there. Your dad’s just a cheating asshole. That’s my professional opinion,” I tell him with a shrug.
He laughs and soon we’re past tense subjects while we devour fried pickles and beer that Claudia’s long since brought to us.
My laptop sits on the coffee table in front of me, open to Blackboard. Most of my students have already inputted their topics, a few brave souls—Mack included—challenging me by taking on ‘Power and Dominance.’ But my gaze isn’t on my computer, instead it’s on the wall in front of me—a wall I’ve painted countless times. Clamping my eyes shut, I attempt to conjure up the exact shade I remember. Everything is sketchy in my memory bank and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get it right.
One thing’s for sure, though.
It’s the wrong goddamned shade.
With a huff, I rise to my feet and stalk over to the bookshelf in the corner. On the top shelf, sits a color palette booklet. Snatching it up, I thumb through the colors of the rainbow until I find the one color that always alludes me yet is perfectly imprinted in my brain.
I count through the Xs over each wrong color.
Sixteen.
The seventeenth shade gets a big fucking X too.
Since I only instruct Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week, Tuesdays and Thursdays are my play days. Tomorrow, it would seem, I’ll be playing in the paint section of the hardware store.
I carry over the palette to the bar and drop it beside my wallet. Tomorrow I’ll attempt, once again, to find that color.
The color that haunts my dreams.
The color that should bring joy but instead drags out depression from the depths of my soul.
A color that will always be perfect in my head but no matter how hard I fucking try, I’ll never bring it to life on my living room wall.
“Life’s not fair,” I mimic Mom’s words.
I cringe at her harsh words that were meant to mend my heart and push me back into reality. Back then, despite her unyielding personality, she was there for me. Tough love, she used
to say. But, she eventually lost the bite of her rigid nature, the moment Alzheimer’s started playing tricks on her. Little by little, it stole my strict mother away and in return gave me this confused, lost woman. One of the only three people I’ve ever truly loved came to a point where she couldn’t remember if she loved me back or not. Now, I feel as though I’m all on my own, facing reality, without my mother’s guiding hand and advice.
My head throbs in unison with my broken heart and I run my fingers through my hair. Gripping at it, I slam my eyes shut.
Discombobulated shards of my brutal past stab and slice through my head. I force my eyes back open and with it, the sadness that ever attaches itself to my psyche withdraws into the shadows of my mind.
Tomorrow, I’ll visit her.
Tuesdays they have fresh daffodils at Schrage’s Florist, and just like I do each week, I’ll bring them to her.
She doesn’t have to tell me she likes them because I know.
Pain once again slices through my chest and I stumble into the kitchen, on a desperate mission to dull it. Yanking open the cabinet door above the stove, I grab the amber colored whiskey bottle and unscrew the cap. I bring it to my lips and take a long swig, enjoying the burn as it races down my throat.
It burns in my chest and chases away the hurt.
But for how long?
Another pull of the whiskey.
Life’s not fucking fair.
The wind whips at my hair and rogue strands plaster against the front of my face. Damn it. I tuck them back, irritated that I didn’t put on that extra layer of hairspray this morning. It’s a rare spring day in Chicago, the weather in April often swinging from fifty degrees to seventy-five day to day.
I walk swiftly up Whacker Drive toward my office building, barely noticing the river, still green from the St. Patrick’s Day celebration. I don’t see the other people around me, taking in the sites, eating a Chicago dog from a street vendor, the sights and sounds of the city that excite so many people. I miss it all, my thoughts focused on my upcoming meeting.
