by Paloma Meir
The letter, my letter, not his letter, was a short one, and he opened the door a mere minute later. I took my hand that had only ever been offered in friendship and love to those around me, and balled it up, holding at my shoulder for a flash, remembering to place my thumb outside the knuckles so as not to break it when I threw it full force into his pretty boy face. I wanted to break his nose, and shatter the blood vessels in his bluest ocean eyes. And I did.
“You’re going to tell me when she emails you, and we are going to her house right now. What’s up with her and the water?” he said as he opened the door to receive my fist squarely in his face.
He fell to the floor, his nose twisted sideways, the tip a point of mush, blood streaming down his face. Calmness filled me, a floating sensation of happiness. I stretched my hand proudly as I walked to the kitchen to retrieve an old dish towel, charitably planning to do one last act of kindness as a homage to what once had been a true friendship.
“That felt good,” I sat down beside him on the floor. The wetness from the thrown juice seeped through my khaki shorts. I stretched my hand one last time before taking his nose in the towel and twisting it back into place. “That’s how we fix it in Peru. Third world, no doctors around.” He would need to tape it, or have a cast put on it at the hospital, that from the look of his state of ill health, we would be going to in no more than a few minutes. Other than that, I had done a good job of putting it back into place.
Done fixing his glossy, manly exterior, I knew again, out of a sense of our friendship that was once strong, I would have to do one last fix of his mangled and twisted interior. It would be for Zelda too, to keep her safe. “You’re not going to go after her. Do you understand me?” My voice was mine again. The shrieking banshee was gone.
“I’m going to go to the hospital, at this point probably overnight, and then I will go find her. It’s not that big of a world.”
I did not let his choice of words, words that were for Zelda and myself, bother me. He was never much for original thought anyway.
“Think about what you did. You know Carolina saw what happened. Everybody forgets that she was just a kid too. You want to hear what my sister saw?”
“Fuck off, Serge.” His profanity could not dull my peaceful buzz.
“Zelda, the one you claim to love? Her face was beaten, blood dripped down from the gash on her scalp, the black eye... What really stayed with Carolina were her legs though. Blood smeared all over them, hand-print bruises on her legs, I guess from her trying to keep her legs closed while he forced them apart, the bloody condom on the floor, her crying for you. She’s never shook the image out of her head. But you don’t care about that part. What’s Carolina to you right? What’s anyone to you?”
What was anyone to him? My rose colored vision had blocked me from the truth for all of our lives I thought to myself. The sliver of sanity inside of me told me that wasn’t true, but I let it pass as I did all the other thoughts in my head that day.
“You know I never bought into the myth of you saving her. She was going down quickly. Someone else would have had her put away the next day. Stealing the little liquor bottles from the store down the street, flunking out of school, her trail of destruction was over. If my mom hadn’t been doing her own little death dance I would have had her put away.”
“Thanks. I’m going to the hospital now.” I glanced his way as the blood on Zelda’s legs in my mind morphed into the all to real blood upon his face.
“I’ll get to my point. I never bought into her thinking of you as a hero until that day when the two of us were sitting, talking up on Mulholland.”
“Just shut-up Serge.” Not going to happen “buddy”.
“You’re right, I’m not giving you credit for anything. This is why you’re not going to go on an epic quest for her. You wanted to take her back to that day. You sexually humiliated a rape victim. You did that. That’s on you. You wanted her to feel bleeding and abused on a dirty bed. Do you understand why you’re going to leave her alone?” And that was all the truth I could give him. I knew that I had pierced through his thick bloated ego.
“I’ll leave her alone. Take me to the hospital.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Not more than an hour later, I stood in front of Zelda’s house, now my home. A lonely place without her. My arms were filled with garbage bags and, of course, Celena’s guitar I had been carrying around with me since I was a boy of sixteen.
I dropped the bags to the ground, and the anger I was sure I would never feel again came back strong, pulsating through my weary mind. I held the guitar over my head and beat it against the steps over and over again until the green glossy wood shattered and splintered against the concrete step.
I heard Danny’s voice in my head, “It wouldn’t have changed anything.” I answered the voice in my head aloud, "What?" startling the neighbors I knew were watching me. The voice of Danny in my head, did not reply. I knew it was not his voice but the voice of reason pleading with me, telling me the truth I had so willfully denied in myself. Zelda and I were never meant to be. Celena, my mother, none of the women in my life ever prevented me from being with her. It was me.
I ignored this truth and set out into her home with the same plan Danny had, find Zelda. A trail must have been left behind. Printed tickets discarded in the trash, notes on a counter, anything. I knew she had left quickly because I knew Zelda, and I would always know the way her mind worked.
Into the house I went, piles of clothes with post-it notes on top stating their destination of the Goodwill or her storage unit were in the center of her living room. I looked for a note to me but did not find one. I sensed she had flown into London, the gateway to Europe in her mind.
I mentally checked my very low bank balance. I considered the cost of flying out and searching all the five star hotels. I knew she would be gone before I arrived, and the chase would end with me heading home in defeat, fully broke waiting for my first paycheck.
In the kitchen, I found a batch of tinfoil-covered cookies with a note saying the date they were baked. The whole refrigerator was filled with post-its notes stating the 'eat by' date. I laughed imagining Zelda in her rush to leave but taking the time to make sure I didn’t come down with a stomach ailment. Always so organized, always so caring. You go Zelda.
Out to the trashcans, I thought maybe she had disposed of the evidence of her flight. Her thinking that nobody would be 'gross enough' to dig through it. In some ways' she didn’t know Danny or myself. I laughed imaging him by my side tearing through the house and trash with his bare hands in ways I couldn’t conceive of.
Nothing to be found beyond discarded food and a pile of Louisa’s diapers. I wondered briefly if she would be potty trained soon. I wished I could go back and get to know the little girl. I had assumed my time with Zelda would be infinite. I would never know Louisa.
I shut down that thought with a furious whip of my head and forced my ego upon it, stealing Danny’s spirit as he had stolen mine. Yes, I would know Louisa. I would be with Zelda again, and I would keep Danny far from them.
I headed back in to the house, tired and sleepy in an unexplainable way. I sat on the olive sofa and looked around Zelda’s temporary residence for the first time. She had not added a personal touch. She had waited for her dream of Danny to take her away, into her home with him happily ever after.
My eye caught the glint of a cell phone by the modern nondescript coffee table. A brass bird sculpture sat upon it. Yes, the phone she had crushed, a laugh filled my throat at her word choice, always so specific trying so hard to be clear.
I felt an eagerness to get to it, but my slow moving body didn’t register the impatience. I picked it up and fiddled with it. She had only broken the screen and the speaker. I thought of Laurel and when she had held up her phone to show us the volume was broken. Zelda, always running away.
I didn’t trouble myself with the deep thoughts. Information would be found on the phone. Her plans w
ould be in the emails I assumed. I saw a jumble of unread texts from my sister asking where she was, long lines of words from Danny I did not want to read. Texts from myself to her, All my plans for our future.
I didn’t read the texts from my sister or me but stupidly clicked on Danny’s. I saw the phrases disconnected from each other, random, “It was never you, all the bad things I thought were me, not you, the selfishness everything, it was me.” I closed the text app and knew it was true. I had failed him, her and myself.
I ignored my self-pity with a mission in mind. Find Zelda. I selected the email icon only to have it open to her account and vanish before my eyes. She had covered all the bases in not wanting to be found. I threw the phone across the room violently, but my heart wasn’t in it.
I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my loose shorts that felt childish. I knew my days as dressing as a boyish lout were coming to a close and not too soon for me. I dialed my sister and lucky for her the call went to voicemail. I screeched into the phone, rambling every angry thought in my head.
I was certain Carolina knew everything and had let Zelda carry on with all the untruths, all the hiding that had never done anything other than hurt her in life. My shouts into the phone were quick. I could never recall exactly what I said, but there was no doubt I effectively ended our relationship, cut her off as a sibling for the rest of our time on Earth.
Tired and zombie-like, I stumbled up the stairs ready for a deep sleep not caring if I woke up at 11:00 P.M with my circadian rhythm thrown off for all of eternity. I imagined her long lean body laying against her pillow with a giggle as if this were all a little joke she played to throw Danny off. Her waiting for me to come and rescue her like the prince I wanted to be for her. The rational part of my brain, which I had grown to hate that day, whispered to me that she had never needed anyone to save her. She was more than strong enough to overcome all that life could throw at her.
She was not in the room, and worse she had left the window open diminishing the rose scent that clung to her and everything around her presence. I shut the window wanting to retain what remained. I climbed onto her overstuffed white duvet, my heavy head sunk into her goose down filled pillows. I heard a crunch. I sat up drowsy but my mind awake, not too much but enough to satisfy my curiosity about what lay beneath the pillow heap.
A line drawing in the style of Matisse, an artist I would never have known much about without Zelda on a sheet of thick white card stock. So much of the world would have eluded me without her dreamy thoughts filling my life, pointing out the beauty around, the grace of a simple line, the contours of a shape, the complimentary splash of color that enriched our physical world.
The drawing was of us, the night we were together. The two of us standing our bodies pressed together, arms around each other, our long limbs the masculine and feminine mirror of each other. In her eyes, we were never different. I always gently mocked her fanciful thoughts. I wasn’t mocking them anymore.
I closed my eyes and held the slightly wrinkled drawing to my chest, my arms around it as if it were her and fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My father was recounting his morning spent with the turkey he proudly roasted every Thanksgiving. He told what he thought was a funny story about the slimy uncooked turkey carcass almost slipping through his hands. A meaningless, boring story but I nodded along.
The heat of the kitchen from all the busy hands helping my parents cook coming and going through the swinging door caused me to sweat. I considered taking off my suit jacket but thought better of it. My uniform suited me. The casualness of my previous self, distasteful.
I interrupted my father with a pat on the shoulder. Physical touches were new to us. The repulsion I felt for him as a boy had dissipated. Time will dull even the strongest pain I thought as I went to answer the doorbell that would not stop ringing.
“Serge, should we call Carolina?” My mother called out from behind me as I made my way across the living room. There was hesitancy in her voice. She knew from my sister all that had happened but respectfully honored me by waiting for me to come to her and tell the story of my lost love. Zelda had left me with a gentle touch of her romantic thoughts.
“Maybe after dinner,” I lied and didn’t turn to see the expression of worry I knew would be on her face. My mother was a soft woman. Who would have ever thought that would happen? I pondered the old question of whether people were capable of true change as I went to the door for the annoyingly impatient person on the other side. I assumed it was one of the newly sober girls. They were usually in a fog for the first few months.
“Serge,” my girlfriend Nicki said, “I have to take this call. I’m going out on the patio,” She blew a kiss to me.
I opened the door to find the one who had been my friend. The one who I had not seen since I had dropped him off at the hospital many months before with an angry “get the fuck out of my car” and a shove to his nearly broken body. He stood on the porch with a nervous smile that twitched as if forced.
“What are you doing here?” I ignored his outwardly friendly pose and focused on his nose, looking to see if my fix had held. It hadn’t. The tip tilted slightly to the left making him if possible more handsome.
But none of that was important. What was important was to get him off my parent’s doorstep, and out of my life for the remainder of mine. My delicate mood that existed on the surface was fine, an ideal state I didn’t want disrupted with thoughts of all we had lost. I shut the door as he said in his upbeat way, “Road trip to the airport. I’m giving you back your time. Let’s go.”
He blocked the door with his foot.
“You must have work off until Wednesday. Don’t lawyers stretch their vacation days? This is the only time you can do it. You’ll get five days. Is that enough?”
I could not comprehend his offer of five days with Zelda. I had no idea what he was talking about. “Are you on drugs? Get out of here, Danny. No more dying for love, secret babies. You said you would stay away from her.” I said without much conviction and opened the door a little wider.
“I am going to stay away from her. I didn’t say anything about Louisa. She’s my daughter. She needs me. If you can’t understand that then I don’t know you at all.” He was out of his mind, but not destructive. I knew what he said was true. I wasn’t ready to acknowledge it to him.
“How are you going to be with Louisa and stay away from Zelda? How do you even know where she is? You said you wouldn’t bother her anymore.” I knew she was in Oahu, building her life on a compound of pink cottages.
My sister who I did not speak to, who had given up trying to speak with me, did send me text updates. Simple ones honoring my rejection of her, but in her respectful way keeping me informed of Zelda’s life. She had hidden her tracks well, her financial planners had seen to a life of anonymity, putting all of her financial footprints into corporations, and from what Carolina texted, Astrid’s name.
“You’ll help me figure it out on the flight. I’m not going to hurt her, Serge. I’m not going after her. I’m not “bringing her home." I’m bringing you to her. Finish whatever you started.” He stared down at the ground. Expressing emotions had never been his strong point. “You’re both gone. ”
He looked up again, his bright blue eyes a well of vulnerability. It didn’t matter to me. All I heard was that I would see Zelda again, for however many days Danny allotted in what sounded like an insane plan.
“I haven’t seen my parents in a month. I’ll be right back.” I slammed the door on him for effect, but my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was already with Zelda. The feelings I thought I had put away were back strong. I knew there would be no more of us after the trip, and that would be okay. It wouldn’t be.
I went outside to talk to Nicki ,but didn’t know what to say to her. Our relationship though not defined had been lived as exclusive. I decided on a simple approach. A friend in need, a promise to explain more when I came back home in a few
days.
I put my arm around her waist when she finished her phone call. She was a partner in my firm, a decade older than myself, and round like Marianne, “I have to talk to you Nicki,” I didn’t know why I was leading her upstairs. We had been alone on the patio.
“Nicki,” I shut the upstairs bathroom door behind us, “No, Nicki, not that...” She threw herself on me. Part of me must have known she was going to do.
I did try to talk to her, but not really. The sex felt routine. The sense I was using it for stress relief, or to avoid the complicated thoughts others would take a yoga class to deal with was annoying. Self-awareness was rarely welcome in my world.
“I have to go away for a few days...” I managed to spit out as I pushed her plump body up the wall with the power of my thrusts.
“Going somewhere? I’ll miss you...” I put my hand over her mouth because she had screamed that out.
“Where?” She asked through the muffle of my hand.
“Hawaii...” I panted, “My old friend... have to help him out... be back in a few days... Nicki... You’re a champ...” I came with a force that I feared would drown her.
