Stellan nudged me with his foot. “What’s up?”
Apparently, he wasn’t as oblivious as I thought.
I sighed. “I’m thirty three years old – I shouldn’t be letting my mother buy me things. I should be buying them for myself or going without if I can’t afford it.”
“Honestly, I’d prefer you had a phone, too. How the hell else am I going to harass you?”
“I’m serious.”
“I know, and I think it’s silly,” he said.
“Well, I guess you would.”
He turned toward me. “What, pray tell, is that supposed to mean, Faye dear?”
I heard the indignation in his voice, however feigned it may have been. “I’m just saying that you’re used to being at home and – I don’t know I’m just - I’ve been accustomed to something else, I guess.”
“Look, your mom loves you, and she has the ability to help you when you need it. She’s obviously grateful that she can, so let her while you could use it. There we go. Problem solved.”
“It just makes me feel like a failure.”
Stellan furrowed his brow. “Because your mom can and wants to buy you a cell phone? Who would think that?”
“Someone who bought their own cell phone?”
Stellan harrumphed and slumped back against the couch, grabbing up the remote. He flipped a few channels, pretending to be done with the conversation. “You care too much what other people think.”
This was not a lie. That doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t like hearing it. “Yes, well we can’t all be perfect like you, can we?”
I felt my temper getting the better of me. The truth has a way of doing that.
“It’s true,” he said, and I could hear his as well.
“Is it wrong of me to feel like I should be independent at my age?”
“No, but it is wrong of you to judge other people for their choices when you are on no pedestal, by any means.”
“What are you talking about?”
Stellan didn’t look at me. “Nothing. I’m just used to being at home, right?”
I guess that indignation wasn’t so feigned after all. “Hey! I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You know what, Faye? Let’s be real, the only one who has a problem with your situation is you. Anyone who would judge you for it is a prick. If you wanna roll like that, so fucking be it.” He hopped up off the couch and tossed the remote back onto the cushions. “Shoot me a text on that new phone tomorrow – if you can get your head out of your ass by then.”
And with that he was gone. Mom came back into the front room just in time to see the chime on the front door swaying in his wake.
“He isn’t staying for dinner?”
CHAPTER Four
The new phone was glorious. Given my mother’s generosity, and more importantly, her love of gadgets, I had the newest iPhone, and it was a clean slate - no contacts, no old texts. I was happy to be rid of contacts like Stephen, the guy I kept programmed so I knew not to answer if he called; Jamie, the girl from college who told me I should vomit if I wanted to lose weight, then bought me a pack of Ex-Lax; or Janet Tildon, my old boss who broke the news to me that the company was going under, and I would be out of a job two days later. I didn’t need these numbers, but they were in the old phone. Starting fresh felt kinda good, and despite knowing the number by heart, being rid of Cole’s contact felt liberating. Bittersweet, but liberating.
I shot Stellan a quick text saying I was sorry, and I was around if he was bored. I kept checking for his response. Somehow, having a new-fangled phone didn’t seem as spiffy with no one texting it. Didn’t these people know I had new ringtones I wanted to hear? I joined my mother in the kitchen. She’d just noticed her bird feeders were running low in the backyard and headed out to refill them. I made due by fixing myself a cup of tea while I waited for her to come back inside. Somehow, the conversation with Stellan had left me feeling exceptionally attached to my mother that afternoon. She came through the back door with two big green grocery bags in her arms.
“Looks like Stellan stopped by again.” She plopped the bags down onto the counter and began pulling items out; bread, deli meats, a case of my favorite root beer – “You have to get him to stop this. He’s welcome to anything he likes!”
My mother did her best to invent some form of exasperation, but she was clearly tickled. Stellan had his ways and he would not be swayed from them. She’d known him long enough to know how stubborn he was. She continued pulling things out of the bags; more deli meats and cheese, a couple frozen pizzas, a jug of milk and finally, a box of devil dogs.
That shit!
I was upstairs before my mother noticed I was gone.
My phone was still virginal. I pulled up Stellan’s number.
I called. No answer.
Fucking talk to me, damn it! I said I’m sorry! I’ll buy you a pony?
I returned downstairs to my mother and began helping her put the groceries away. My phone sat on the counter within arm’s reach.
I was still waiting for that response by supper time. I’d gotten a couple texts from Jackie, and Meghan was having some work drama she wanted to vent about, but after the last time we shared a meal, and I didn’t even eat a bite of the lunch she paid for, I wasn’t feeling the free ride today. Plus, I was getting more and more antsy about Stellan. He and I rarely fought, and worse still, we rarely fought because he was mad. He had a temper, but so rarely with me.
‘Damn it, we survived years of little contact, now I’m back home and he won’t talk to me?’ I thought.
I was in the midst of a pristinely orchestrated cloud of self-loathing. I curled up in the corner of the front room with a book, only to realize after three pages that I’d picked up Pussy King of the Pirates yet again.
That book was clearly my nemesis. I should have let Stellan burn it.
Mom and I ate a nice meal in the dining room for a change; my crunchy mom’s favorite – vegetarian lasagna. We sat at the table and talked about life – she shared the details of recent work endeavors, an exhibit of famous Japanese painters was leaving to make way for Dutch Masters. She was a curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, a job she loved tirelessly. I relayed news from the lives of those around me. Seriously, I rarely left the house, what did I have to share about my own life that she didn’t already know?
When supper was done, she retired to her room to read, and I went to the front room, cradling my phone in wait. Another hour came and went with no response. Then another. Finally, at seven thirty my phone buzzed. I launched myself across the couch.
I’d give anything to see your face.
Unknown number. Not Stellan.
It was Cole.
The same urge to throw something suddenly seared down my spine, but I managed to curtail the desire. Instead, I was out the door in less than a minute and at the end of Davis Court by two.
Stellan’s house was a block from the town square, less than a quarter mile from my house. Still, I was in a bit of a spell and walking could have slowed my tenacity and purpose. I couldn’t have that, so I drove. I pulled up outside Stellan’s house and stormed the front door. The same house rules applied to me in the Ødegård house. I plowed in, giving the doorbell a quick tap out of polite habit rather than request. The happy little sing song almost deflated me completely.
“Hallo Faye. Come on in,” Lennart called from the front room. He was slumped in his usual chair, watching TV. I leaned in the door and waved before heading down the hall toward the kitchen. Linda was brewing tea at the stove.
“Is Stell downstairs?”
“Oh, no hon. It’s Tuesday. He has class tonight.”
Shit! Balls! Shit! Fuck!
I didn’t share these thoughts out loud. I was pumped and ready to surge onward, hunting Stellan down like a prize boar, but I knew full well that once you stepped inside Linda’s lair, you were in her web for as long as it took to dis
cover all the recent details of your life. She liked to let you know she cared. She led me into the parlor as she called it – the front room that didn’t include a TV – and sat down on a rose colored, claw footed couch.
Linda was a magnificent example of the female species. She was sixty, if I recall, but she could pass for much younger. She had blonde hair which had once been the same color as Stellan’s, but had lightened with age. They shared the same blue eyes, hers a shade darker, but still just as piercing when you were in their sights.
“So how is life with you, young lady? I haven’t seen you in – goodness, ages? Where’ve you been?”
If I wasn’t sure my best friend hated me and wanted me dead, being in his house and kvitzing with his mom would have been a real treat. We chatted a moment or two.
Stellan was Swedish born, but only by a few months. His parents moved him to Concord, Massachusetts before his first birthday. Despite growing up an American, Stellan spoke Swedish and still had most of his conversations with his father in the man’s native language. I’d loved listening to them when we were growing up. It is a lot easier to listen to a father and son rip each other’s heads off when you can’t understand a word they’re saying.
I met Stellan in middle school. He was swearing at a computer in Swedish when it failed to keep up with him. There wasn’t much on earth that could. I’d initially thought he was an exchange student and felt compelled to befriend him. He hadn’t hit his growth spurt by then. After a bullying incident in fifth grade, Linda put Stell in martial arts in hopes he wouldn’t be bullied again. By junior year of high school, Stellan was a lumbering giant who could sneak up and kill you with your own finger. Almost twenty years later, Stellan taught at the same Ninjutsu school where he’d been taught as a kid. Despite my thinking he’s a raging jackass, he is one hell of a teacher.
He had one motto that seemed to remind his students of just who they were dealing with.
Stellan’s #1 Rule - ‘You raise your hand in anger, I break it.’
Oddly enough, no parents have ever complained.
Interesting choice of job for an MIT drop out, wouldn’t you say?
“Mrs. Ødegård, do you know what time Stellan is due home at?”
“Oh, he should be home anytime. Would you like some tea?”
I accepted, and settled with Linda in the dining room, eyeing the front door every few moments. I worried what he would think when he walked in to find me. It didn’t take long to find out.
Stellan trudged in the front door ten minutes later, his hair pulled back and his face flushed. He was wearing a quintessentially Swedish sweater, its high collar framing his jawline. He always looked good in Swede.
He spotted me and raised an eyebrow, kissing his mother hello.
“Hey there, Jensen,” he said.
I waved. Linda headed for the kitchen, leaving us alone.
“I’m sorry.”
He leaned into the doorjamb and chuckled. “Yeah, I know. I got your text. Where’s my pony?”
I smiled.
Lennart hollered in the living room, apparently unhappy with the Football game. We stood in silence a moment.
“I really am sorry -”
“Oh, hush up. I’m not worried about it.”
“If you weren’t worried about it you wouldn’t have ignored me all day.”
He smirked. “Maybe I just wanted you to suffer a while? Knock you off your high horse.”
“You suck.”
“That I do. You hungry?”
I smiled. Yes. I was.
Stellan insisted we head out and get Pizza from a new restaurant he was fond of and would not hear my protests. I finally caved in when he promised I wouldn’t have to go anywhere public.
I didn’t want to admit that I was still avoiding the world, not just because I’m wallowing in misery, but because I honestly feared I might cross paths with Cole somewhere – or more aptly, with Cole and his new paramour. I hadn’t so much as brushed my hair in weeks. I wasn’t exactly ready to be seen.
“Oh hey! Did I show you my newest one?” He asked, suddenly.
Stellan snatched up his iPhone as we sat at a red light. If there is an Apple product in the world that has been more hacked and rehacked than Stellan’s phone, I’d like to see it. He flipped through icons and showed me his prize - “Beer Goggles” it read in happy red letters. It made a bubbling, chugging sound as it loaded.
I gave Stellan a sideways glance. “You have no class.”
“Yeah, but look -”
He pointed the phone at himself and took a picture. The application made some inappropriate comment in slurred speech, and suddenly a picture popped up of Matthew McConaughey.
“How you doin?” said the “Beer Goggles” voice.
I laughed. “Okay! Do me!”
Stellan smiled and shook his head, putting his phone away. I protested.
“No, you’re too pretty to need Beer Goggles. You’ll confuse it.”
I punched him. He rubbed his arm as though I’d been a mosquito.
I leaned back in my seat, catching sight of my reflection in the passenger side window. I stared at my own face; the slight ski slope of my nose, the curve of my jaw and the hollow under my cheek bones. Despite how terrible I’d been feeling, I didn’t think I was all that bad. A sudden flash of ‘fantasy twat shot’ popped into my head. I’d imagined her short, a perky little height that made it easy for average height Cole to rest his chin on her head when they embraced. I hated short women. Well, I did those days because Twat shot was tiny, and I hated Twat Shot. Ok, fine - Imaginary Twat Shot was tiny and therefore all tiny women were an abomination. I imagined her with bushy dark brown hair and big earrings, maybe even one through her nose to match her Tutu, and she had the slightest, tiniest little waist and she enjoyed long walks on the beach, moonlight serenades, showering together, being on top, and Cole was happy – so elated to give her all those things, and I hated her. I fucking hated her.
“You alright, F-bomb?”
God damn it, how does he fucking do that?
“Yeah -” I started and stopped before I could say fine. I wasn’t fine. Even if I lied, he already knew I was a million miles from fine. “I’ve been better.”
“I know,” he said and patted my knee. “Wanna vent?”
I laughed. “Naw. I can’t go venting to you about this kind of stuff. This shit you berate your girlfriends about, not your guy friends.”
“Well, it’s not exactly a stag party, babe.”
“I know,” I said, reluctantly. The thought of telling Stellan about my thoughts - my feelings of female inadequacy, my fears that I would never find someone who could please me sexually, the thought that I’d only ever been serious with one man, and it had blown up in my face – these weren’t exactly the stuff of letters you read in GQ. Not that Stellan would ever read GQ, but still…
“Tell me one thing. I know you have an infinite amount on your mind. Vent about just one,” he said. I mulled it over a moment, tempted to spill what was running through my mind, as though purging it to him of all people might somehow cure me. I still just couldn’t see Stellan taking it easy when I told him I’d found it impossible to masturbate since my break up because Cole had been my only sexual desire for almost four years.
That would be a fun conversation.
“I applied for a job,” I said finally.
Stellan glanced at me smiling. “That’s good, yeah?”
“I hope so. It’d be nice to get my life back together.”
He slowed down to turn onto Strawberry Fields Road, a winding side way through the woods. We were no longer heading anywhere in particular. I didn’t protest. I guess supper could wait.
“Your life isn’t all that bad, babe.”
“I know,” I said, and for the first time since I moved home, I actually let myself mean it.
I knew there were people who’d suffered worse than I when the rece
ssion hit – people with kids and no support system, people out in the cold. Sure I’d lost my house, but I had a home to come back to. I was warm at night.
I closed my eyes for a moment, and thanked God. “I just feel like there are expectations of me that I’m not meeting.”
“Whose expectations are we talking about?”
I thought for a moment. “Mine.”
He made a soft ‘Ah’ sound and turned down another side street. The leaves were bright even in the dark. Autumn in New England was just days from full swing.
“So, what are your expectations?”
“I don’t know. If you’d looked at me five years ago, I was one of the most successful people of my graduating class. I’d say, by far the most successful woman, and now…”
I paused.
Stellan watched the road, driving aimlessly into the dark. “Now what?”
“Now I’m not, I guess.”
Stellan rolled up to a stop sign, put the Jeep in park, and turned to me. He didn’t speak. He just waited for me to go on. I felt exposed suddenly, and without knowing what was coming, I started talking.
“I’m a failure. And worse than that, I’m the one reminding myself most often. Every time my mom offers me cash, every time I fill my gas tank on her dime, or come home and feel agitated that she left a bunch of shit on the kitchen table – who am I to be agitated with her, it’s her fucking house? And I’m such an asshole, I shouldn’t have said anything about you and your family yesterday, but I did, and I think about you and compare myself in so many ways.” I was unloading. One thought led to the next and the next and my filter was just about gone. “When I was doing well, I looked down at your situation. Not at you, but your situation. You can hate me for that, but I did. I thought ‘why doesn’t he do something with that brilliant mind of his and get out of there,’ and now I’m the hypocrite sitting in the same situation – only worse.”
“Why is it worse?” He asked, and there was nothing tense about his tone.
Catch My Fall Page 5
