FIGHT FOR ME

by AJ Crowe

  Emma picked at her meal but didn’t seem to feel like eating much. “I want a pop tart,” she said.

  “Grandma made you a delicious home cooked meal. Enjoy it.” Jess took a piece of bacon off her plate and put it on Emma’s. “Come on, I know you like bacon.”

  Eventually Emma took a few bites of her food.

  The conversation eventually floated to a place Ivy was expecting but somehow found herself not quite comfortable with. Maybe it was the way her mother asked the question.

  “So, Ivy, have you found a man yet?”

  Ivy rolled her eyes. “I’m not pregnant, mom,” she insisted. “No more grandchildren yet.”

  “But is there a man in your life? I’ve hear rumors.”

  Ivy looked at Jess. “I mentioned it like a month ago on the phone,” Jess protested.

  “Well, yeah, there is. Kind of. But things are a little strange right now.”

  “What do you mean, strange? You two aren’t getting along?”

  Ivy thought about the seamless way their conversation always flowed, about how they seemed to have almost everything in common.

  No, they most definitely got along.

  “It’s not that. Something happened recently in his life and he wouldn’t tell me what it was. Then, on Thursday, he told me I can’t see him anymore.”

  “Sounds like you aren’t with him anymore, then. A man who won’t tell you what’s going on in his life is not someone you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

  Ivy shrugged. “Something feels weird about the whole situation. I… I think he still feels the same way about me. I think it’s something else that changed.”

  “It sounds like you have a lot to think about.”

  “I do,” Ivy said. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

  “Aren’t you leaving next week?” Her mother got up.

  “I think so,” Ivy said. “Are you going to bed?”

  “I am. It’s a few hours later my time and I’ve been travelling all day. I’m exhausted.”

  “That’s completely understandable,” Jess said.

  The three women began to get ready for bed.

  * * * *

  Saturday consisted of several outings including a walk at the park, visits to restaurants for lunch and dinner, and a trip to the library so Emma could pick out some books. Emma was already a voracious reader and prided herself on her ability to read chapter books. She chose about five of them.

  “Is she really going to read all those before they’re due?” her grandmother asked Jess.

  Jess nodded. “Oh yeah, she’ll probably have them done before Monday.”

  Ivy carefully avoided the aisle and chair where Lucas had found her and kissed her for the first time. She tried to guide her thoughts elsewhere. Maybe she could pick out a book for herself.

  She combed shelves and shelves for an interesting title but eventually decided that the book she had with her was enough.

  Saturday night was charged with a distressing energy. It was very obvious that this was the anniversary of the death of Jess’s husband. Jess was distracted and often looked off into the distance for long periods of time. Emma read incessantly and wouldn’t even speak to her grandmother if prompted.

  Ivy spent a lot of time talking to her mother and surfing the internet aimlessly.

  When she woke up in the morning, Jess was standing by the kitchen window holding a cup of coffee. She was just staring out the window.

  Ivy noticed a wedding ring glinting on her sister’s finger. She felt sadness swell inside her. She couldn’t imagine loving someone, entrusting her life to them, having a child to them, and then losing them without warning barely four years later. Just the thought tore her apart inside. She couldn’t imagine what Jess was feeling.

  Their mother made another big breakfast. She kept the conversation light and casual, but a heavy atmosphere filled the room.

  Even Emma seemed out of sorts. She played on the living room floor for awhile, as usual, but some of her games made Ivy a little worried. Her little girl narration to the events of her doll’s lives sometimes including passages like “and there’s no daddy, because the daddy went away” and “this is the daddy but he’s in the graveyard.”

  She was clearly processing her lack of a father through her toys.

  Ivy got down on the floor with her and tried to move the game in a more positive direction. She put some little stuffed kittens in the mix and changed the story of the game entirely. Emma went with it but Ivy could tell that she was just sort of playing along, trying to be nice to her.

  From time to time, Ivy would check her phone, but predictably there was nothing from Lucas. She had a strong desire to spend this day with him and not with her widowed sister and daughter. She knew it was a selfish wish, but she felt it just the same.

  Except that she couldn’t imagine enjoying spending any time with Lucas after the last few exchanges they’d had.

  And he wanted her to stay away from him, so there wasn’t any chance of them hanging out any time soon.

  She wondered briefly if it was something she did; if he simply didn’t like her anymore and it was a dramatic way to get her to leave him alone. She really didn’t think so. Telling her to stay away had seemed to come directly from whatever terrible thing had happened that he wouldn’t tell her about.

  The distracted, painful way Lucas had handled the situation made Ivy sure it was real. Lucas handled everything well, making sure any party involved left the situation satisfied and happy. He wouldn’t go out of his way to make her sad and upset just to leave her. He would tell her outright.

  “You need to stay away from me.”

  Maybe he had told her outright.

  She stopped her mother from making dinner. “I’ll do it,” she insisted. She needed something to lose her thoughts in. She made soup, salad, and warmed up a baguette that her mother had bought the night before.

  Her plate was clean by the end of the meal but Emma had barely touched hers, and Jess was eating hers very slowly. Their mother was finished as well but kept ripping off more pieces of bread and taking small helpings of salad in order to seem like she wasn’t done yet.

  Conversation was sparse. Ivy almost wished someone would bring up Nikolai so there would at least be some kind of conversation going on.

  A knock on the door caused the whole family to start in their seats. “I’ll get it,” Ivy said, grateful for the chance to leave the table.

  “Are you expecting someone?” she heard her mother ask.

  Jess shook her head, but her eyes were wide. Some part of Ivy knew that Jess was thinking, hoping, somewhere deep inside that this year things would be different and her husband would come home instead of disappearing that night.

  A little excited herself, Ivy opened the door.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was Lucas, steadying himself with one hand on the doorframe.

  “Ivy,” he said, the “y” of her name slurred. “I was looking for you.”

  “Well, you found me.” She stepped out into the hall and shut the door behind her. “Lucas, are you drunk?” she asked incredulously.

  She hadn’t found a drop of liquor in his house. She had been curious once and looked for some. When she asked him finally if he had any hard liquor, he told her he didn’t drink.

  “I’m drunk,” he affirmed.

  “Okay,” she said. She waited for further explanation. When he gave none, just looked at her with those beautiful eyes, she prompted him. “I thought you didn’t want me to be near you?”

  “You can’t,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone I’m here.”

  “Okay,” she said again. “Okay. Why did you come here? Why are you drunk?”

  He started to head for the stairs to the street. She ran to his side and gave him a shoulder to steady himself. He could barely walk straight.

  Once they were outside in front of the building, Ivy tried again. “So, Lucas, why are you here? Are you okay?”
>
  He frowned. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I did a bad thing.”

  “A bad thing? What did you do?”

  He looked up at her. “No, no,” he explained, thought Ivy wasn’t quite sure what he was explaining. “Not to you.”

  “Lucas, I’m not really sure what you’re saying.”

  He stopped and seemed to try to start explaining again. “I’m not a good person,” he said.

  In that moment Ivy realized she shouldn’t try to press any sort of information from him or even try to reason with him. There was something wrong and he had come to her for help.

  She sat in the grass in front of the apartment building and motioned for him to do so as well. He fell down next to her, resting his body against hers for support. It was almost comical, him a strong man completely incapacitated by liquor and needing her support to even stay sitting up.

  “How much did you drink?” Ivy asked rhetorically, mostly just making light fun of his state.

  “A lot,” he said seriously. “A whole store.”

  “What?”

  “Store… store of alcohol.”

  It took Ivy a moment to realize he meant he had a stash, or “store” of alcohol that he had drunk the entirety of.

  “You have work tomorrow,” she reminded him.

  “I called in sick,” he said quickly, almost sounding sober. “I can’t be… near there.” No, not sober.

  “Are you okay?” she asked again, softly this time.

  “Everything’s okay,” he said mournfully. “Except me.”

  Ivy tried to make sense of this while looking up at the night sky above them. She had never expected to be in a situation like this where Lucas seemed so weak, so at her mercy.

  “Does it have something to do with what happened when you disappeared a few nights ago?”

  He looked at her. She wondered if he would remember this in the morning.

  “I went to see someone,” he said, explaining even though she hadn’t asked. “Someone I haven’t seen in a long time. Someone I never wanted to see again.” He let himself fall onto his back, but he kept his fingers entwined with hers. Ivy lay down next to him on the lawn, hoping no one in the apartment building would come home and be upset with them being on the lawn.

  “Sounds like an ex girlfriend,” she said dryly.

  “No,” Lucas said, laughing loudly. “No fucking way. I hate him.”

  He said it with such venom and lack of reservation that Ivy believed him. Whoever the man was that he had went to go see, he hated him.

  “I wish you would tell me more about yourself,” Ivy said. “I want to know you completely.”

  Lucas was silent. “Someone died today,” he said after a long moment.

  Ivy turned her head to him. “Nikolai? How do you know the day he died?”

  Lucas stared up at the sky for another long moment.

  “Not Emma’s dad. My dad.” Ivy took a breath. Oh. She didn’t know why to say. “It makes me so angry,” he said suddenly, his voice loud.

  “Shh, shhh,” Ivy kissed his cheek. “People are trying to sleep.”

  “I always do stupid shit on this day. Every year,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… showed up here. I just knew you were… were sad. With me. I wanted you to know it’s not… it’s not because of you, it because of me.” He started to struggle to get up. “I fucked up.”

  Emma helped him stand up.

  “Do you want to go home?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. His hair was mussed in the back where he had rested his head in the grass. Ivy resisted the urge to reach up and smooth his hair down.

  “I’ll drive you. Stay here, I’m going to go get my keys.”

  She ran back up to the apartment. When she got inside, only her mother was in the living room. She could hear her sister reading a book to Emma in Emma’s room.

  “Who was that?”

  “Lucas. The guy I’m ‘involved’ with. He… needs a ride home. If Jess asks, tell her I’ll be back in ten minutes or so.”

  Ivy grabbed her keys and headed back to the front of the building. Lucas was leaning against her car, looking as gorgeous as always. She went to open his car door but couldn’t resist giving him a long kiss. He tasted like vodka but still had impressive skills as a kisser when he was drunk.

  She opened the car door for him, feeling a bit light headed from the kiss.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling his bashful smile. “I want…”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I’m driving you home and you’re going to sleep.”

  He seemed to understand and obediently got in the car.

  As she drove the quick drive back to his house, she thought about why she was so sure she wasn’t ready to spend the night with him again.

  First of all, he was drunk. An apology and strange explanation while drunk was not enough to remedy the strange way he had treated her in the past few days. Second –well, he was drunk. Maybe he didn’t want her to be there in the morning. She couldn’t know, and neither could he right now.

  She helped him to his door and poured him a glass of water as he clumsily stripped down to his boxers.

  “Drink this,” she said.

  He dutifully drank the glass of water and then ambled to his bedroom. She was him literally collapse into bed, not taking a moment to get under the blankets or anything. She grabbed a blanket from the closet in the hall and covered him with it.

  “I hope you call me when you’re sober,” she said quietly and kissed his cheek. He was breathing deeply and softly.

  She got in the car and began to drive home.

  What a strange and uncomfortable day so far.

  She was no longer upset with Lucas. He clearly needed some time to deal with whatever was going on in his life right then. She wished dearly that he would include her in his life at all levels, but for some reason he wasn’t able to.

  What had he been talking about? Someone from his past? How he always does something bad on this day? Was he saying that getting drunk and talking to her was the mistake he had made this year?

  She really had no idea.

  Mentally exhausted from thinking in circles and trying to make sense of her situation, she pulled up in front of her sister’s apartment building and got ready to explain what had happened to her somewhat conservative mother.

  * * * *

  “He doesn’t sound like marriage material,” her mother said once she’d explained the events of the past few days in detail.

  “Mom! I’m… I’m not even thinking about that at all. He’s my boyfriend, and things are getting really weird.”

  “They are,” Jess agreed. She had poured herself a large glass of wine and had the bottle next to her on the coffee table, even after both her mother and Ivy had declined. “I can’t believe he showed up here drunk.” She took a sip of wine.

  “He’s… having issues.”

  “Apparently,” their mother said, raising her eyebrows.

  “Guys, you aren’t being very positive about this.”

  “I don’t see anything to be positive about. I think you should get him out of your life.”

  “Mom! Ivy, I think he really likes you and everything will work itself out. Just don’t worry about it in the meantime.”

  Ivy nodded. She decided that her sister and mother wouldn’t be the best sources of advice for this situation. She took a deep breath and let the stress of the situation leave in her out breath.

  “Can I have a sip of that?”

  “Sure.” Jess handed Ivy her glass of wine. Ivy sipped it, savoring the flavor.

  “This is good wine.”

  “I know. Mom picked it out.”

  “Oh, did you?”

  “I happen to know my wines, girls.” The elderly woman leaned back into the couch. “A good wine got me through many a disagreement with your father.”

  “What? Do you mean you gave him the wine? Or you drank it?”

  Their mother shrugged.
r />   “Okay.” Ivy laughed.

  “You and dad have been together for so long,” Jess said quietly. “Married for thirty years, right?”

  “Give or take a year, yes.”

  “And you never, ever talked about getting divorced?”

  “No,” their mother said. “We love each other very much and though we have disagreements there’s really no way we would be any good by ourselves in the world. We’ve grown to be natural companions. I wouldn’t know what to do without him after thirty years of sharing a life.”

  “Wow,” Jess said, looking at the deep red liquid in her glass. “I wonder what it would have been like to be married to Nikolai for that long.”

  Ivy shared a look with her mother. This was the first time Jess had mentioned Nikolai all day.

  “I wonder,” Ivy said, filling the silence that had fallen after Jess’s statement. “I’m sure you would have been very happy.”

  Jess looked up at her and smiled bitterly. “Yeah. We would have been.”

  Their mother put an arm around both girls and pulled them close. Ivy noticed that she smelled of lavender hand crème, just as usual. “Whether the man you love is close or far, alive or dead, a lie or a completely solved mystery, it’s never simple. Feelings are incredibly complicated and there’s no way to go throughout life like it’s a dream. Just trust that there can’t be only sad, terrible periods. You will have periods of dreamy love. It’s just the way life works.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Ivy said a little sarcastically. “Thanks for your wisdom.”

  “I don’t want another period of dreamy love,” Jess said, wrinkling her nose. “I think I want to be alone my whole life.”

  “No, you don’t,” their mother said.

  Ivy felt herself drifting off to sleep against her mother. She could imagine a similar scene twenty years ago, her and her sister snuggled against their mother and falling asleep.

  “I’m going to go talk to Lucas tomorrow,” she said, her eyes drifting shut.

  “That might be a good idea,” she heard Jess say.

  “Something is really wrong, and even if he can’t or won’t tell me about it, I want him to know I’m there for him.”