A New Leash on Life

by Suzie Carr

  Each step creaked, sounding as if the floor would cave in. I feared I’d fall through and land two floors down in a pile of towels in the kitchen’s pantry. Boxes were piled up everywhere, zigzagged with no purpose, no sense of order, just haphazard afterthoughts to a move that had gone unplanned. Melanie led me over to the right hand corner nearest the window. I peeked out on the old maple and smiled at the song of birds chirping their joy in the branches. The perfect backdrop to an afternoon sifting through my friend’s belongings.

  We explored box after box. Each one she refused to trash. This one is from my grandma. This one is from kindergarten. About two hours into the ordeal she tore open the lid to a box stuffed in between a rocking horse statue and a scary life-sized doll she called Beth. “Oh, this box is going to bring in some provocative memories.” I peeked over her shoulder and surveyed a pretty lacy towel. She plucked it up. It smelled like an antique shop. I burrowed in closer to get a better look and discovered piles and piles of letters addressed to Melanie from a Ms. Jacqueline LaFleur from Hershey, Pennsylvania. “I loved this girl.”

  I picked up a stack of letters and thumbed through the envelopes that contained beautiful handwriting, pretty flower stamps, colorful envelopes with smiley faces and hearts. “What happened?”

  “NOH8 didn’t exist back in the seventies, that’s what happened.”

  “So you just walked away from each other?”

  “Haven’t spoken to her since she walked out of my life many years ago. I did learn she married some dweeb who went to our high school. He used to stroll around like a king in charge of the social landscape of the school, robbing everyone of happiness with his stuck-up attitude and bulging muscles. I don’t hate too many people. I hated him.”

  “How did you find out she married?”

  “My sister styled her hair on the most perfect summer day in June 1986. I spent the day bawling at the park.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell her how you felt?”

  “Oh, she knew, sweetheart. She loved me, too. But, back then society shunned homosexuality, and both of our parents forbade us to be together. Being of strict Catholic backgrounds, the two of us complied with their wishes. So she married the captain of the football team and from what I understand gave birth to a set of twins, and I married Henry.”

  “Can I read one?”

  “Be my guest.”

  I read letter after letter and each one carried the weight of two broken hearts who lost out on love because of other people’s phobias and close-mindedness. Jacqueline revealed her ups and her downs, her anguish and suffering at the hands of a marriage she didn’t want to be in, her disappointment in caving in to others who had no clue about true love.

  “We listened to our parents condemn our love, and we ran away from it instead of facing it like two brave women in love should’ve done. I didn’t trust in the love. It scared me. People’s judgment scared me. I was pathetic. I’d never let someone talk me out of something I wanted now.”

  “People must have said some pretty bad things to you for you to just walk away from each other.”

  “I regret that I listened to them. I pretty much drove her into the arms of her husband.”

  “I take it you don’t still write to each other?”

  “Once she had her children, the letters stopped.”

  “That must have torn you up, huh?”

  “I broke it off. I wanted her to embrace her motherhood without me standing in the way. Besides I had started learning about reiki and the importance of channeling positive energy. Sneaking love letters to a married woman didn’t exactly follow the proper reiki methods.”

  “Have you thought about reconnecting?”

  She traced a letter with her finger. “It’s been over twenty years.”

  “Times have changed.”

  “We’ve changed. I’m sure she’s got a giant family now and would in no way want me barging back into her life.”

  I flipped through to another letter, swelling at the sweetness of her words. “She’s the one who got away from you.”

  “We all have one of those.”

  I shrugged.

  “She wrote a novel you know,” Melanie said.

  “Oh? A seedy romance novel?”

  “She wrote our story.” Melanie dug to the bottom of the box and pulled out a book called Soul Mates. The cover bore an image of two hands entwined. “She mailed this to me.”

  I took the book from her and opened it. “Dear Melanie, may you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.”

  “Written by J.L.,” I said, running my fingers over the cover again. “Wow, she wrote a book for you.”

  “Not too many people can claim that.” She stared at the cover with pride, a sense of peace emitting from her.

  “How did it end?”

  “Idealistically.”

  I opened to the last page and read the last sentence. She whispered into her ear, “I won’t ever say goodbye. So, my love, until we meet again.” Then, she turned to her husband and two children and walked towards them, fulfilling her commitment to them as a wife and a mother.

  “We should Google her,” I said.

  “I’m not reopening the past.”

  “But what if she’s divorced and single? You can still have your life together.”

  “I’m not interested in that anymore. I like to come and go as I please. I like to eat tuna fish out of a can when I don’t feel like cooking. I like leaving my bed ruffled after waking. I like treating reiki patients whenever I please. I like the option of meditating in the middle of the day. I like being free.”

  “Aren’t you at least a little curious?”

  She placed the book back in its nest under the pile of letters, and then closed the lid. “Fuck yeah.” She smiled sweetly, stood up and strolled away, calm and demure. “Let’s go eat our bagels before we tackle this place any further.”

  I followed her across the creaky floorboards and down the skinny, steep staircase. “Let me Google her for you.”

  “I don’t live in the past. I live in the here and now.” She walked past the dining room and into her kitchen where we dug out our bagels.

  I blocked her from picking up the cutting board. “Well, in the here and the now we have Google.” I wanted nothing to get in the way of this conversation.

  She turned to face me. Her cheeks flushed. “Of course I wonder. She crosses my mind all the time, still. Not a day goes by that I don’t see her handsome face. Sometimes, I laugh out loud at the wacky things she used to say and do.”

  “It’ll take two seconds,” I pleaded, wanting to learn all about this girl who possessed Melanie’s heart.

  She twitched her mouth to the side, biting her inside cheek. “I’m not interested.” She opened up a drawer and pulled out two knives. “Now, be quiet and butter your bagel.”

  I reached out for my knife. “Fine.”

  “And, don’t you dare come by later and tell me you Googled her,” she said, pointing her knife up in the air.

  “You’ve got no sense of adventure.”

  “You’re lowering my energy level.”

  Chapter Eight

  My energy level dropped drastically a few weeks after rummaging through Melanie’s attic. Natalie and I were enjoying a bowl of chicken soup that she had cooked that morning when Trevor came out from the back and told me the bad news from the day before. “I ran into Howie, the handler at the Clyde’s City Shelter. He told me that they turned away a litter of kittens the other day because of overcrowding.”

  I dropped my spoon in the soup, which then splattered all over the paperwork I had started for a modification loan to the shelter building. “Why didn’t they call us?”

  He rounded the corner and patted my shoulder. “They figured we didn’t have any room, either.”

  “We’d never turn any animals away.” I wiped my spilt soup. “We need to get out there and educate more people about spaying and neutering.”

  “We r
eally don’t have much space in the cat room, Olivia,” Natalie said.

  I thought about the kittens surviving alone in the woods, curled up to one another, hungry and unable to satisfy their basic needs. My shelter would never become one that turned desperate animals away. We needed more room.

  I called Melanie to see if she could ask Phil to rig up something.

  “I have no idea where he is,” Melanie said.

  “Can you have him call me when you see him?”

  “He just left here a couple of hours ago and said he’s heading to his mother’s for a couple of weeks. I guess she’s sick with her heart valve. I’ve already started on remote therapy for her.”

  Of course she had. “How’s the packing?”

  “I’m not making much of a dent. I’m looking after Snowball for him, and that little girl is keeping me on edge with all of her barking. She barks at leaves, you know. She is going to give my kitties heart attacks. I’m about to dive into a treatment with her.”

  “Pet her for me.”

  “I will. She’s a great companion, even with all of her barking. This morning as I reread those letters again, she snuggled up to me and buried that cute little nose of hers in my tummy. She’s wonderful.”

  “You were reading the letters again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s it? Yeah?”

  “They bring back some good feelings. Right now, I need them.”

  Melanie never lacked good feeling. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, of course.” Long pause. “Olivia, sweetheart, you should ask someone other than Phil to take care of the work at the shelter.”

  “Will he be gone longer?”

  “Once he comes back, I’m going to hand over a much more balanced Snowball and I’m going to go my own way.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s already talking marriage.”

  She feared dependency more than I feared dying. I pictured her sleeping on a cart in the shelter’s backroom, fixing her meals on a hot plate. “Where are you going to live?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I never lack for a solution.”

  “But, he was your solution.”

  “Your solution,” she said. “He was never my solution.”

  I rubbed my eyes with my fist, warding off the beginning pangs of a headache. “You seemed so happy together.”

  “Phil is traditional. He’ll never understand how I work.”

  I didn’t understand how she worked. “You’re a complicated woman.”

  “I guess that’s why we get along so well.”

  “I can’t argue with you on that one,” I said. “Can’t you just tell him you’re not interested in anything more than being roommates?”

  “Men like Phil aren’t interested in being roomies. I don’t want to bother him with my independence.”

  Sometimes her ‘independence’ served as a good excuse to fold in on herself. The moment any of us did too many nice things for her, she stepped back for several weeks and came back revitalized, more free-spirited, and stronger. She hated being the taker. Now that she no longer could give how she wanted, she crumpled under the weight of guilt, of sadness, of weakness. Melanie didn’t understand how to be vulnerable.

  “Don’t decide just yet,” I urged her. “Just wait out the few weeks he’s away and see if you feel the same way when he returns. If you’re in his way, you can come stay with me. I’ve got the sofa bed in the living room. We can flip a coin and see who lands on it.”

  “Don’t worry about me. This will all work out.”

  I hung up and worried. She would be kicked out of her home, reduced of her treatment center all because of me and my dependence on the good fortune of others instead of figuring out how to effectively fund the shelter in a financially responsible way. Without her consistent donation money, the shelter could fold.

  I turned to my bank statement and cringed. How would I be in a position to serve the needs of animals in a town financially and physically ravaged with only three hundred and thirty-five dollars in the bank? I’d be homeless along with Melanie. The two of us would be circling around the kennels, sniffing out an appropriate spot to rest our tired, poor bodies.

  I turned to some wine, and before long found myself desperately seeking out Chloe’s business card that I hid in my sock drawer. I fired up my Mac and landed on her website, Homestead Capital Ventures. The site, colored in blue and white, communicated loyalty. She invested in a host of organizations. A quote sat front and center on her homepage: “We’re proud of our projects, the experience of our team, and the breadth of our network – let’s talk about how we can put these resources to work for you.”

  A knot pressed into my gut, fisting its way up the back of my throat. I read all about how she earned her first million investing in mobile home trailers. I could see her studying by a dim light in a public library, hungry for a sense of ownership over her life, transfixed on providing for a child and being the stand-up parent hers never were. I imagined her wearing business suits, talking with company heads, negotiating business deals. She always captivated, always persuaded. I even envisioned her team—a group of seasoned steel-headed men who smoked cigars and sipped brandy, circled around a boardroom table listening to Chloe dictate which companies they funded.

  Her success intrigued me, tickled me, and drove me to drink a bottle of sangria as I sat staring at a picture of her looking every bit the part of a Wall Street whiz.

  My mental footing slipped. I’d always been the one in control, the one she looked up to and relied on to protect and guide her in this world of money, danger, and abusers like her stepdad. I always assumed we’d get married, and I’d be the one supporting and protecting her, buying her Coach bags and taking her on expensive getaways. She’d look up to me as her mentor, and ask me questions all night long, a curious soul intent on one day rising to that occasion. I never imagined her alone in this world, running a successful venture capital company, being the one who controlled money flow and success. I never saw myself as the one who would crawl to her and beg her for help, for guidance, for protection against all the world had thrown at me. I never saw myself slipping, gripping a skinny rope for dear life, crying out for saving. I stood at the helm of fate, releasing my best friend into the wild without a morsel and failing to pay her back for her sacrifices, failing to provide my trusted assistants with a viable place of employment, and dishonoring the lives of countless animals in need because of stupid pride.

  Pride eroded things. It corroded friendships, gutted businesses, murdered families, and worst of all, served as a stake nailing bad fortune into place for decades. I couldn’t let any of this happen. People relied on me. Animals relied on me. Melanie’s good vibes relied on my balancing things out in the universe. Natalie and Trevor’s livelihoods and senses of purpose relied on me to get my act together, to swallow my useless pride, and to just ask the freaking girl for some financial help.

  By ten o’clock that night, ignoring the pull on my chest, the lack of air in my lungs, I caved and finally called her.

  ~ ~

  She agreed to meet me down the road at the only working diner in town. As I entered, I reminded myself that the shelter needed her, Melanie needed her, Natalie and Trevor needed her, the animals needed her. I did not need her, at least in any other way than her money.

  I entered and waved at Rick, the owner and cook. The fifties-style diner smelled like percolated coffee and pancakes. Elvis blared over the mini jukeboxes. Silverware and plates clanked. Light chatter filled the small space. Only four other tables brimmed with customers, a sad reality since the storm. No one spent their money on anything other than hammers, nails, sheet rock, and new carpeting. Pancakes, Belgian waffles, and maple syrup were not necessities.

  Chloe sat in the same booth we used to occupy over a decade earlier as horny, innocent fools. She greeted me with her sweet smile. I strolled over to her, mindful of her new side-swept bangs and her cleavage poking out of her fitted scoop-n
eck t-shirt.

  She stood when I arrived at the table and drew me into her arms, patting my back. Her soft black layers tickled my cheek.

  I pulled back. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  Her glossy lips curved up and a tiny flirt rested in her eyes. “I’m happy you called me.”

  We both slid into our respective seats. An espresso sat in front of her, a remnant of her fabricated New York City life. “I’m surprised they knew how to make one of those here.”

  “Oh, I instructed the man behind the counter a bit.” She leaned into the table, spreading her presence wide so that it filled the space. She circled her lips up to the brim of the delicate white mug and sipped.

  Sally, an older lady with a one-inch band of silver at her roots, arrived at our table with a sunny smile. “Hey, doll. Espresso for you, too?”

  “Since when do I drink espresso?”

  She chuckled, stuck her pen above her ear, and strolled away leaving the two of us alone in our little pocket of air. I folded my hands and sat tall, leaning slightly forward. She rested back against the booth with ease playing on her face, looping those eyes around that part of me that melted with her single tug.

  I plucked up the menu and dove into it for escape.

  She followed my lead. “Everything looks so delicious.”

  I scanned the pictures of a mushroom omelet dripping in butter, a three-inch stack of blueberry pancakes drowning in maple syrup, and golden hash browns sprinkled in salt crystals. I always ordered two eggs over medium and a side of hash browns. Yet, I dissected each picture afraid to get lost in Chloe’s soft glance. I zeroed in on that menu until Sally returned with my steaming mug of coffee.

  “The usual?” she asked me.

  I handed her the menu. “I’ll just have a couple of eggs and a side of hash browns.”

  “You got it.” She jotted this down as if I’d just tossed her a complicated new order.

  “Can I get oatmeal, plain, and three scrambled egg whites with some salsa?” Chloe asked.