West of You

by Christina Metcalf

  Larry’s wife stood at the door to collect him. He left without saying good-bye.

  The night was a swirl of disappointing relationships masked by makeup, good shoes, fancy cars, and lake houses. I hadn’t felt this impoverished since college, nor had I wanted to be in a relationship less. I wondered if the pretending was for me or for themselves.

  And why had M never mentioned Luke’s brother. I mean I knew he had one and that he came over for holidays but she never told me about a second husband. I wished I could've asked Larry if he thought M liked that or hated it.

  I was pouring myself another drink when the one other singleton at the party, outside of Luke, walked up to me. I immediately straightened my posture.

  “Hey, Travis.”

  “Hey yourself. Are you old enough to be drinkin’?” he nodded toward my glass.

  “Any older and I’d have to drink this out of an IV.”

  I was feeling really old tonight and as I looked at Travis I wondered if he and Luke could really be twins. How did he look at least a decade older? Sure, he was heavier than Luke but it was more than that. They had the same features but different coloring. While Luke was tan with dark hair and light eyes, Travis’ hair was a nondescript dishwater color with eyes of a similar murkiness. His teenaged acne must’ve also been worse than Luke’s because he had the type of scared skin that people tend to refer to as “crater face.” If they had been girls, Travis would’ve grown up hating Luke.

  “Do you think Marin and Luke were a good couple?”

  “Hmmm?” he asked as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “Marin and Luke.”

  “Right.”

  “How would you describe them?”

  “And I need you now tonight. I need you more than ever…” he sang into my ear.

  Was he being purposely obtuse?

  “Stop that. Answer the question officer.”

  “And if you’d only hold me tight, we’d be holding on forever.” More singing in the tune of whisky sharp.

  I shook my head, annoyed at his antics.

  “And we’d never be making it right…”

  Finally some honesty even if it came in the form of badly butchered lyrics. I placed my hand over his mouth. He removed it, squeezing it a little too hard.

  “Are we being truthful here?” He asked.

  “I don’t know, Officer Jessup. Are we?”

  “Travis. Please. She was a nice girl.”

  M was a great girl. She was way too amazing to ever be referred to as something as flat as nice.

  “I don’t think she liked living here. Some people aren’t cut out for it.”

  “So that’s why she offed herself?”

  “We’ve been through this. She didn’t do it on purpose. Are you questioning the findings in the police report?”

  “I’m not questioning anything.” I went for the bluff. “I have her diary. That’s all I need.”

  “What diary?”

  His eyes darted wildly. Why did the sheriff care if I knew it was a suicide. Luke had said there was no insurance money riding on it. Was Travis worried I’d get him into trouble? I couldn’t care less about ruining his job or position in this town. I had spent all night with their nearest and dearest friends and except for hearing that Travis spends a lot of time over the house, I knew nothing more than I did earlier.

  “Hey, hey. You two gettin’ to know each other?” Luke staggered up with a half bottle of whiskey landing against the wall a little too hard. “Brother. Have a drink with me.”

  Travis said no at first but then he reconsidered several times, one shot after another. I left the brothers alone.

  Sure, I’m lonely on occasion and there’s no one there to give me Valentine’s Day cards now that my children are too old for their kind-hearted teachers to force it on them. But I can be me in my own home. I don’t have to ask permission. I can sleep on either side of the bed, spread out as much as I want, or spend all night on the couch eating bon bons, which I might add I’ve never done. Not because I wouldn’t enjoy a bon bon but because I’m altogether sure where one would even get one.

  I can sleep in the middle of the day without anyone calling me lazy or wondering how I spent my time at home. I didn’t have to navigate what was appropriate to post to Facebook and what I could keep to myself, like the bouquet that was just a little too small and had one too many “filler” flowers in it.

  I left the dull drone of the later hours of the party and sat on the porch swing. I appreciated how the concrete might be hot enough to fry an egg on during the day but dropped down into romantic comedy-befitting cute cardigan weather after the sunset. It was nice to be alone.

  I fished my phone out and scanned for Walsey’s text but there wasn’t one. The buzzing I had heard earlier was my retail connection for my goat sculptures.

  It is with much regret that I have decided to no longer carry your sculptures. I have tried to reach you several times by phone to no avail. Please let me know where I should take the remaining inventory. They’re very charming but not making me any money.

  I could hear the last word coming from Paul’s mustachioed mouth “munnn-ay.” If you didn’t know him you might have thought he and Thurston Howell went to the same finishing school. But they didn’t Paulie was from my side of the tracks, and his pop and my pop used to go fishing for crappie together. Paulie was a long way from eating crappie now. Sadly, I was still eating my fair share.

  I texted Walsey and told him to forget about learning sculpture and asked him to check out the SNAP program instead.

  I watched the screen awaiting his response but none came in the time it took me to think of everything I was qualified to do, so I slipped my phone back into my pocket. Then I took it out again and turned it off. I knew that was probably a mistake because the kids might need to call me with an emergency but I figured no one needed to talk to me after I’d just realized my dream of being a goat sculptor wasn’t going to pan out.

  Tears fell as I thought about how little I had to show for my 45 years. My children were more a part of Mike’s family than mine. In fact, considering I had been gone for a little over a week and neither of them had called me on their own, I was fairly certain I could fade into the memories of yesteryear without either noticing. Plus, soon they would have a fun little sibling and eventually a step mother.

  The worst part was that I was strangely okay with this. When they were each born I thought I had postpartum depression. I even let Mike hospitalize me over it. But it wasn’t that I was depressed. I wasn’t sad about being a mom or even overwhelmed. But I looked at these beautiful children, all children are beautiful right?, and I waited for that rush of love everyone talks about. That mind-blowing, soul-crushing love where you can barely breathe and you know you’d lay down your life for that kid or at the very least you’d pick fights with anyone who messed with them. But I didn’t. I felt nothing.

  I appreciated those little fingers and toes and God how I loved that falling reflex they had where their arms and legs flail out just as they’re about to fall asleep. I adored the monkey qualities of my babies but had no deeper of a feeling for them than when you see something adorable on Facebook and give it a thumb’s up. They didn’t seem like mine and I wasn’t sure what kind of creator would give me such a serious responsibility.

  When I told Mike, he said it would come. He always believed good things were just around the bend. Every bad thing was a lesson.

  But all I felt was guilt because I knew exactly why my mother left me. She...we...didn’t feel that motherly bond. We were somehow broken or defective.

  As the kids got older, I enjoyed their company and conversation but I still feel that distance. I’ve gotten better at faking the adoration. It’s not that I dislike my children. I just don’t feel any more connected to them than one might feel connected to someone they see every day but rarely talk to. I attend to them with a scientific eye of what will happen next but having very little emotion vested in the pro
cess. I don’t ever miss them when I leave or when they are at Mike’s house. They simply are no longer in my range of vision and so they are like characters on a television show you watch on occasion. My former shrink who doesn’t like his ear licked would call that “dissociative.”

  I hate my mother because I understand her now. Social expectations and familial responsibility are the only things that keep me answering to “mom.” I told M this the day before she killed herself. She took it well, meaning she didn’t call me a momster...or monster, whatever. But I could tell she was choosing her words carefully.

  She told me this surprised her because I had always made being a mom look so easy. I told her it was easy because when they fought, I felt no concern over how the fights ended. She thought I sounded “a little depressed.” I told her I thought I might be a sociopath. Isn’t that what you call a mom who feels nothing for her offspring? She said I was probably just tired. But the word tired cracked in an unusual way and there was a fast intake of air. I asked if she was okay but she didn’t answer.

  I asked her if she thought my mom made me this way. She assured me she hadn’t. We weren’t doomed to be our parents. But I told her I wasn’t so sure. Believing it was in my DNA or that my mom had somehow broken me as she pulled out of the driveway without even a glance in the rearview mirror was a lot more palatable than believing I was some sort of heartless mutant.

  But what was wrong with me? Did I have this same problem with men, this detachment? I was here to solve the question of M and all I could think about was my own issues. I wished M into existence next to me but she wouldn’t come. Maybe it was me calling her a “selfish bitch” in my dream. I had never called her that in reality.

  I felt connected to her. I loved her. I wished I could’ve said I loved Mike but the seeds of detachment were in that relationship too. I had been head over heels for Cash. But does that count? Or was that some kind of addiction? Was that addressing a need and not a love? It seemed like all of my relationships took place underwater and I couldn’t feel, see, or hear anything clearly, everything was muffled and murky. Am I the only one? Or am I just choosing the wrong guys?

  What about M’s best (local) friends. I had heard plenty of stories about them and their relationships and what they told me tonight didn’t resemble anything M had divulged. In the lives of the people I had met tonight there were no drinking problems; no arrests for domestic violence or a “wrestlin’” match that got out of hand; no plastic surgeons or chemical peels; no infertility just natural twins; no begging your best male friend to leave his wife so you can run off together; and certainly no talk of M committing suicide. It was all a tragic accident involving a train whose schedule everyone in town knew because it blew straight past the middle at noon every day.

  But I allowed them their delusion and they preferred what they probably thought was some secret an out-of-town northerner would never figure out. I doubted Larry would tell them otherwise. It didn’t make for good dinner-party conversation.

  Sure, he would probably tell his owl as she was chipping away the black eyeliner at the end of the night that she had so deftly applied to make her squinty eyes appear larger. And she would likely nod and say that she thought I seemed a little off. Whether I am or not is irrelevant but extreme jealousy...such extreme jealousy that you worry about your husband with an overweight, forty-something, haggard, unsuccessful goat sculptor...is going to make anyone seem off. Still, she will probably go to bed satisfied tonight after her husband’s admission of another woman’s issues. After all, one of the prerequisites to a happy marriage was pleasant delusion.

  And tomorrow the owl will post to Facebook about the wonderful husband and father Larry is. She’ll proclaim it to the world and post some picture of them together where she’s used the “beauty face” filter to make everyone think she has the skin of a twenty-something bride, fresh and dewy. His head will be tilted away from hers ever so slightly, while she leans into him at nearly a 45-degree angle. But she’ll use that picture because it’s the one she looks good in, even if he seems slightly less than interested.

  And people will comment about how they “love that couple” and how “in love” they look or how great they are together or how they have barely aged. And then there will be some old friend of his that will get a shot in about how Larry is the luckier of the two or how he landed her is one of the world’s great mysteries. Then she will ring in with a blushing emoji and a request for him to “awww stop.”

  And she may tell Larry some of what is going on in the post but the one thing she won’t tell him, as he sits on the other side of the l-shaped couch is how much she loves him and what a great husband and dad he is. She doesn’t need to because it’s all on Facebook for him to see if he could get out of the Messenger app and stop trading memories with his high school ex-girlfriend and “look for once.”

  Sitting on the porch swing, I wondered if we’ve always been this fake or has social media made our crimes against honesty more apparent...or did I mean abhorrent? What’s the danger in pretending our lives are better than they are? Who are we hurting to fake this amazing love we all wish we had. Sure, it might get exhausting but…exactly how exhausting?

  Exhausting enough to want to end it all.

  Is that question or a statement?

  The breeze stopped and the day’s heat seemed to return and settle in my stomach even though it was well after midnight. I listened to my breathing the way they instruct you to in yoga. Maybe it wasn’t my blabbering on about Walsey that had pushed her over the edge. Maybe it wasn’t Luke refusing to pick up tampons. Maybe she just wanted out. And maybe she couldn’t bring herself to end another “fine” relationship, dealing with the questions and the tears. Maybe...somehow this was easier.

  The swing stopped creaking as I slowed down. I looked at my car and thought about leaving.

  My phone buzzed. Walsey’s face.

  I’M THINKING ABOUT YOU

  I responded accordingly and the queasy fire in my stomach abated. It was replaced by a light quickening.

  Travis staggered out onto the porch and flopped on the swing next to me causing us the swing to sway with such force we nearly hit the back porch railing.

  “Whoa cowboy.”

  “Fuck that.” he said.

  “I thought all you Texans were gentlemen.”

  “Screw it. I’m the law around here.” His words joined together as if they were written in cursive.

  I nodded and faced forward. Without warning he leaned over and kissed me. Before I could push him away, he leaned forward and dropped a heavy hand in my lap and squeezed. I gave him a quick shove just as the swing went backwards. He launched forward and fell to the floor of the porch.

  “You sure are purty.” He laughed with the intensity of a wolf howling at a full moon. I wasn’t sure if he was quoting a movie or having some fun at his own expense. He laid down on the porch and was silent. I thought he might’ve passed out.

  Then he sat upright like an electric shock had supercharged his being.

  “She was a stuck up bitch, your friend. Just like you.” He pointed a finger at me lest I be confused about what “you” he was talking about.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. She no doubt held you in the highest esteem, particularly if you always carry yourself with such gallantry.”

  “Fuck her and fuck you too.” He laid back down. From my perched position it looked like he might have had a case of the spins.

  “You really should learn to control your hands.” I reminded him as I didn’t want him to try anything again.

  “I didn’t touch her. I don’t care what she wrote.” He coughed, breathed in deep and starting snoring.

  The temperature dropped twenty degrees in my blood. I could hear the pulse in my ears. My stomach rolled and lurched like I was on a roller coaster.

  Did the good officer of the law just admit he made an unwanted advance to M? Had he done more? Or was he talking about someone complete
ly different? Some other girl at the party who had a diary she was writing in?

  My mouth dried out and felt caked in dust. No amount of beer could clear the taste away. Would Luke even believe me if I told him? What if he already knew? What if that was the iciness I had witnessed between them when I first arrived, like two competing drug lords on opposite corners.

  As I opened the screen door and saw Luke passed out on the couch, curled up in the fetal position, with a slight smile on his face, I thought... tomorrow. I was ready to leave anyway. If he threw me out of the house it would be okay. M hadn’t told him. She’d left that to me.

  Tomorrow I would explain why I thought she did it. Tonight I would allow him one last delusion of happiness.

  I ran. That is all I'm taking with me.

  I read her diary cover to cover. When I finished, the light of a new day was just starting to think about brightening the landscape. I don’t know why it took me so long to read it. I guess I just didn’t want to know the kind of pain she was in, what she had kept hidden from me.

  But now I wasn’t sure I wanted to share it with Luke. She never came right out and gave a reason. It took a lot of reading between the lines and wishing I had kicked that drunk slug on the porch last night. I was still trying to put together the hows in my mind because I knew Luke would ask about them. Right now I only had a hunch and a couple of lines of poetry and song lyrics. Certainly not enough to accuse anyone in a court of law.

  I wish she was there to ask. I was haunted by the fact that she hadn’t told him. Was it my place to share what could be just a terrible misunderstanding? What would he do if I told him? I didn’t know him all that well. Maybe he had a violent temper. Maybe that’s why M kept it all a secret.

  But the one thing that still didn’t make sense to me...so what if Travis had taken advantage of her? The degree to that happening was still not fully realized. He had admitted that he “didn’t touch her.” But that could be anything from kiss to something more sinister. If it had been a kiss, it’s possible they were both drunk and he misunderstood or misread something she did. I’m not saying she wanted it but it could’ve been innocent enough and in that case she probably shot him down quickly. It may have been a coincidence that she decided to have a date with a train two weeks later and that had nothing to do with his drunken pass.