He pulled out the ingredients for two sandwiches, and I declined before he could make the second. He raised an eyebrow. I couldn’t help but laugh. The second sandwich wasn’t intended for me.
“Though, now that you mention it, have you eaten anything today?” Stellan asked.
I shook my head. We both glanced at the clock. It was two thirty. I was about to get reprimanded if I didn’t eat something. I didn’t care. My stomach was in knots. I was anxious as though some terrible event were about to take place. Then I’d remember it already had.
Stellan didn’t push eating as I’d expected, but he did offer me a bite. I took one. It felt like eating paste. Stellan pushed a second bite, but I declined. We sat on the couch watching taped episodes of America’s Funniest Home Videos despite his having made fun of me for loving them for years. Apparently today it was ok to laugh at people falling down. And I did, I laughed every chance I could.
Stellan and I spent the afternoon together until Meghan returned around six. The three of us sat there, Meghan doing most of the talking, but when she again offered to take me out for some girl time and shopping – anything to distract me - I just wasn’t ready. Those penguin pajamas were really comfortable and stupid television felt miraculous. She hung out for a little while, then left. Stellan followed shortly thereafter, having blown off a day’s worth of work to be with me. It took a few minutes to convince him it was alright to go. I collected myself from the living room couch and went upstairs. My mother was still out, Monday night being her standing dinner date with someone from the Museum.
I had the house to myself. Rather than blare some Billy Idol or sing loudly while cooking myself dinner, I simply crawled into my bed. On the bedside table, my cell phone sat silent where I left it that morning. I’d wanted to avoid hearing Cole’s ringtone when he texted or called. Yet after a day with friends, I was ready to face whatever pathetic attempts he’d made to excuse himself.
There were texts from Meghan, Jackie, and a message from Stellan to let him know if I needed him to come back to the house.
Nothing from Cole. He hadn’t called to fix things. He hadn’t chased me down to explain this pain away.
He’d done nothing.
I cried harder then than I had all day.
CHAPTER TWO
There is healing power in sleep. I don’t know if it’s the therapy of dreams, the passage of time, but no matter how miserable you are when you fall asleep, you wake up feeling just a little lighter.
Well, today wasn’t one of those days.
I woke up with the feeling of a vice clamped onto my temples and a wolverine in my stomach. I managed to get out of bed with one simple purpose – take Tylenol - then go back to bed.
Too lazy to rub the gunk out of my eyes, I found my mother topless, sitting lotus style in the center of the living room floor with her morning coffee steaming away in a nearby mug.
Pamela Jensen was an eccentric.
She was an art curator, a painter, a poet, a nude yoga practitioner (and teacher), spoke three languages, and let her salt and pepper hair grow wild and long. It was pinned up in a bun at the top of her head, letting the power of ‘tits out yoga’ work its full magic.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Damn it, Faye. You grew up with the ‘naked time’ behavior, why are you so startled now?
Maybe because I’ve lived on my own for almost ten years and have kept my ‘Mom’s tits’ quota to an absolute minimum?
I took a deep breath. I should have known, given the ambient spa music oozing from the downstairs stereo. I tried to pass by her without disturbing her, but she glanced my way.
I smiled and hurried by, praying she wouldn’t try to have a conversation with me until after she put a shirt on.
She smiled at me, but the jovial look was fleeting. I’d betrayed my mood, and I was practically half asleep.
Shit, shit, shit! Half naked meaningful talk incoming! Please don’t hug me, Mom. I’m too fragile for Mom boobs right now!
“You alright, sweetheart?”
Should’ve stayed in bed.
“Yeah, just a headache.”
“Well, let’s take care of that,” she said and was off the floor in a heartbeat, gliding down the kitchen hallway in her baggy yoga pants toward the medicine cabinet, her breasts tanned and undulating as mammaries are wont to do.
She popped a couple of pills from the bottle and handed them over. When I received my bounty it included a multi-vitamin and a St. John’s Wort. Ah, the pleasures of having a crunchy mother.
I didn’t complain. I didn’t want her efforts to feel unwelcome. She offered me coffee or orange juice. Standing before the open fridge, tits still out. I chose water and downed the pills. She stood leaning against the counter, silent, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched me. She knew I would open up if there was something to tell. I told my mother everything that went on in my life. When my company went under, she was the first person I called. She spent ten minutes assuring me that some other company would snatch me up in a heartbeat and be more than happy to match my just over six figure salary. When I realized I was going to lose the condo, she took a half hour explaining why such an event was a blessing in disguise and that my bedroom was always ready if I ever needed it. Yet, despite those moments of unadulterated positivity, on that morning, I felt allergic to her sunshine.
I was especially allergic to topless sunshine. Sure, I grew up with her nudity, but having lived on my own for so long, coming home to it felt odd.
I drank the rest of my water and wished her a good day at work, then turned back for my warm bed and the serenity of not being conscious.
“I’ll leave the mat out for you? A little yoga might be just the thing to settle your mind.”
I grumbled my approval as I hunched up the stairs. “Sure. That sounds great.”
Mom stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching me as I escaped back into my bedroom.
I listened to her get ready for work, then relished the sound of her car pulling down the road.
I spent the day lying there replaying each moment I’d spent with Cole – each kiss, each gift he’d bought me, each Valentine’s Day, each sexual encounter. I tried to recover from those memories with the terrible and miserable ones that had come in between, but I couldn’t help but miss him. I hated myself for it.
I didn’t go back downstairs.
I didn’t do any yoga.
I didn’t change out of those penguin pajamas for three weeks.
***
“Honey?” My mother called from outside my door one morning. I murmured for her to come in. “I made some eggs. Scrambled with ham and cheese, do you want to come down, or should I bring it up here?”
“I’m not really hungry. Thank you, though.”
She stood at the door a moment. I could almost hear her fretting. Finally, she delivered the eggs to my bedside table and headed off to work.
I didn’t eat a bite.
This was another infuriating part of living with your parents – not only to do they like nudity a little too much for your tastes, they have the audacity to care about you.
I tried not to feel guilty for causing my mother worry. It wasn’t working.
When noon rolled around, I heard heavy footsteps across the downstairs floor. My brow furrowed and I turned to watch as my door swung open, slamming against my bedside table. Stellan appeared in the doorway and jumped on the bed. He knelt beside me, bouncing up and down, chanting “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey!”
I slammed my pillow into his face and returned to my prone position. He had me by the ankles in a millisecond.
“Let go of me!”
“God, you fucking stink.”
I kicked at him, pulling feet from his grasp. “Oh, and you smell like roses?”
Stellan grabbed my wrist, hoisted me up off the bed and over his shoulder. I screamed, but it was no use. When he wanted you to move, y
ou had no choice.
Stellan shifted me on his shoulder. “What can I say? Some days, I sweat awesome. You on the other hand are just festering. I’m doing everyone a fucking favor.”
“Fuck you!”
“You wish.”
I kicked and pushed against him, but he simply ducked himself through the doorjambs and carried me to the linen closet. He set me on my feet, pulled out a couple towels, and pressed them to my chest.
I glared up at him. He’d been my best friend for most of my life, but damn it, I’ve lived on my own – a grownup – for almost ten years. Suddenly I’m back home and he’s treating me like he did when we were in high school. Who the fuck did this guy think he was? “You suck, you know that right?”
“Hey, it ain’t my fault your mom called me.”
She did? Oh god, I thought.
He turned me toward the bathroom door. “I should be fucking working, right now. So suck it the fuck up. You’re not spending the day in bed.”
“I fucking hate you.”
Stellan puckered his lips and made kissing sounds as he pushed me toward the shower. “Love you too.”
He clomped down the stairs and turned on the TV. I knew if I tried to get back in bed, he’d be back up here in ten minutes, and we would go through this scene all over again, only next time he’d use his big voice.
I went about the bathroom, slamming every door and hinged object I could as I undressed and climbed into the shower. Despite my determination to avoid this very thing, the warm water felt good, like a baptism into a better humor. I washed my hair and face, brushed my teeth – hell, I even flossed, as though the crannies of my molars might hold untold twat shots that had yet to foul up my mood. When I tossed the penguin pajama in the hamper, I felt released – a little. I pulled the sheets off the bed and tossed them in as well, pulled mismatched sheets from the hallway linen closet and made my bed. Once I’d finished, I was ready to properly tear Stellan a new asshole.
My mother’s house has the blessing of wall to wall hardwood floors – deathly cold and merciless in the winter, but cool and inviting in the warmer months. It was late August and the central air was whirring away through the vents, a sign that outside was uncomfortably hot. For a split second, I forgot the shame of living with Mom, and was grateful.
I shuffled down the stairs in my bare feet and made my way to the kitchen. I collected a cup of coffee from the fresh pot bubbling in wait for me. I’d thank Stellan for it if I didn’t want to punch him. When I came back to the front room, I kept distance between us, curling up in my grandmother’s old club chair by the fireplace. The light from the corner windows poured in there all day long. I pulled a dog-eared book from the small bookcase and cracked it to the last page - read a month earlier - and began to read. The two of us sat in each other’s company, content to be together, but separate. It was nice – for about four minutes. That’s how long it took for me to remember why I’d left the book for a month. It was terrible.
I joined Stellan on the couch. So much for intellectual relaxation. “Remind me never to buy a book based on its title again.”
Stellan didn’t look at me. “Never buy a book based on its title again.”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
We sat watching a documentary on the making of a Coen Brothers movie and quietly melted into the couch.
Stellan shifted. “What was the title?”
“Pussy King of the Pirates.”
“Well, if you’re not going to read it -” he said and went to snatch it out of my hands.
I swatted him away and laughed. “No, I can’t in good conscience let this book out into the wild. It must be destroyed.”
“Should I get the blessing salts?”
“No. This must be scoured by fire.”
The two of us silently rose from the couch and walked to the fireplace on the other side of the front room, my favorite room. It spanned the width of the entire house with windows on three sides. It was bright and open, separated at the middle by the bottom of the staircase, and along one side of the stairs was the hallway to the kitchen. On the other side of the stairs the front room curved around, leading to the office and dining room. Over the years, my mother had managed to gut the house of all remnants of carpet and seventies wallpaper, leaving it to look like a Home & Garden spread. Someday, I hoped to have my own house, just like it.
We hunched over the fireplace and Stellan started chanting, ominously, holding his hand out for me to hand him the book. I did and joined the chant.
Yet, when Stellan suddenly produced the fireplace lighter I snatched it back from him. “I’m not seriously going to burn this, you jackass!”
He feigned devastation. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Something about book burning just doesn’t settle right. Call me weird.”
“You’re weird. And no fun,” he said and crossed back to the couch. I tossed the book back onto the bookcase and promised to choose a different book the next time I felt like reading.
We wore divots into the couch for an hour. I hadn’t left the house in weeks and a part of me missed the outside world. Then, as evidenced by the embarrassing ‘splurf’ of my gastrointestinal workings, I apparently missed food as well. Stellan rolled an eyeball in my direction, and I smacked his arm.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
He hopped up off the couch, towering over me as he held out a hand. “I gotta get back to work, but come on. Let’s get you some grub.”
I followed him into the kitchen.
He’d gone a half hour later, and I found myself stewing on my mother’s couch. This felt rather pointless, given the battle it took to get me out of bed.
After an hour of soap operas and old game shows, I texted Stellan, Meghan, and Jackie in the hopes that one of them would be free for something – anything to distract me from the passage of time. I’d become dependent on them for human contact. I stood in the middle of my front room, sipping raspberry tea with honey when boredom inspired an unexpected thought.
I went into the office and sat down at the computer. I pulled up a job search website, one I hadn’t even considered for a month or more now, and began searching. This act had become tedious over the months after I moved home, and I found myself despondent to the idea the longer I went without luck. I’d managed to find one job during that time, one possible savior onto which I clasped with every ounce of my being. All my hope, my gospel, my self-worth, lay weighted on that one position. Head of Marketing at Endine, a position that offered perks, sixty plus hour work weeks and a comparable pay grade to the job I’d recently lost. I played that interview like a fiddle, regaling my interviewer with ‘anything to please the client’ talk. I’d retold every extra mile I’d gone, every midnight meal, every last minute flight I’d managed to catch, just in order to please some client who I knew from experience, was just as desperate for business as I – as my firm was. When the bank called a dozen times a day, I sat in front of my computer, willing it to bring good news. I spent my days waiting, praying, assuring the mortgage company that my prospects were looking up and if all went well, I would be able to make my payment.
That miracle didn’t happen. They went with ‘the other guy.’ The bank stopped calling. They foreclosed. I was evicted. My condo sold at auction to some young single guy, perhaps even the guy who’d swooped in and stolen the only job prospect I’d had. What a cosmic glitch that would be.
I stared at the screen, my stomach churning out of habit alone as it saw the lines of job positions in bold purple and pink. This was my exit strategy, my road to reclaim my life. Yet, the life I built overworking myself, smiling through exhaustion - that castle was built on sand. One good wave and it was gone.
I held the cup of tea to my lips, letting the steam warm my face as I tried to focus on something else, something hopeful. I couldn’t. I was still mourning.
My resume and info was already programmed i
nto my account so if something caught my eye, I was ready to pass my life along. There were random jobs, some temp work here and there; the same lines of repeated positions that were kept constantly open due to high turnover rate. These positions had been unacceptable to me once, but a few more months of mooching off of my mother and shoveling shit might start looking good. I highlighted a temp job, but something caught my eye. Marketing Strategist, the position read.
I took a breath. The position had opened at a firm still located in Concord. I quickly opened the link.
Bachelor’s Degree? Check. Previous work of at least five years? Check. Willing to travel? Check.
I stared at the ‘Click to Apply’ button for five minutes. Somehow, the promise of work, of the same, well paid, busy work that for seven years I busted my ass doing, felt almost ominous. I couldn’t decide whether this was Inertia having set in – an ass on the couch is inclined to remain an ass on the couch – or if it was the remains of my dashed hopes the last time I’d applied for something. I thought of the running tab of rent not paid and lunches bought by well-meaning friends and clicked the link. I attached my resume, rewrote my cover letter and a second later it was gone.
I stared at the screen a few moments, sipped the last of my tea, and made a decision. I was going for a walk.
The air was cool and damp from the chilly night before. It was only halfway into September, but the weather was beginning to hint at its intentions, scouring the earth with burning heat for a couple days, then leaving a frost the third night. Today was the first cool day that week. I was content to be out in it.
Catch My Fall Page 2
