West of You

by Christina Metcalf

  The longer I sat there looking out at the sun flirting with the horizon, the more I was losing my nerve to tell him. Still, he would expect after last night that I would’ve had something to share. I could lie and say my goodbyes and get on the road. What would M want me to do? There had to be a reason she kept it from him.

  I packed my things and slipped out of the house before the sun was completely up. I tiptoed down the stairs and past Luke snoring on the couch. I was relieved to see Travis was no longer laying on the front porch and his cruiser was gone. Hopefully, he was in a ditch bloody and disoriented.

  I jumped from the porch to the ground, avoiding the loud creaking front steps. A real grown-up would’ve confessed to the grieving boyfriend what she realized about her friend the night before. But I couldn’t be the one to tell him if she hadn’t. So I took a lesson from my dear old mom and left.

  I got as far as the airstream diner--cute little thing--where I planned to have some coffee and watch the sun take command of the day. Even though I normally left her in the car, I decided I had ignored her long enough. It was time to take M to breakfast with me. But she wasn’t in my purse.

  I popped the trunk and searched through my duffle bag. Not there either. I rounded the car again and looked on the front seat, under it. And in the space between the seat and the console and then the seat and the door. I looked in the map pocket. She was still with Luke. I had left her there.

  I texted Walsey and asked him how bad would it be to take the final leg of the road trip without her? What kind of a jerk vows to bring her bestie to the Pacific Coast only to leave her a little past half-way? I asked him if there was any possible way I could just leave her there and bring her in spirit.

  He told me that although it was very early where he was and he may not get the full gist of what was going on here, showing up at the Pacific Ocean to cast her ashes to the winds would be a little difficult if I left her in Texas.

  He ended his text with: I’M GOING BACK TO BED NOW...BUT JUST SOMETHING TO CONSIDER.

  #Truth #NobodyLikesAKnowItAll

  I looked at my watch. Luke would probably be up by now. I would have to face him as a forgetful coward. I went into the diner, bought a pie and some coffee to go, and slunk back to his place envisioning M’s delight in my torture.

  When I pulled up, he was sitting on the top step of the porch. M was beside him looking judgy.

  “Forget something?” he asked, not touching her.

  “What? No. I went to get pie. See?”

  “Pie at 7 a.m.?”

  “Fresh is best. Coffee too.”

  He took a long drag on his cigarette, then flicked it into the dirt, and tamped it down under his cowboy boot. I handed him the coffee and he scooped up M. I send a secret prayer out into the universe that the baggie she was in had a good zipper seal. The way he scooped her up like she was impervious to snags and coming undone made me wonder exactly what a person would do if their loved one ended up all down the front of their plaid shirt Big Lebowski style.

  We sat at the kitchen island, hands wrapped around our individual cups of coffee like drunk people with their alcohol of choice. Ever notice how every picture of a college-aged drunk shows them mugging with their red Solo cup. Here I am with my plastic date. Here we are again in front of the bar and again on the dance floor. Oh, and here it is next to me as I hurl.

  M was sitting between our cups. I picked her up and put her to the side. I didn’t really want her to hear what I had to say next. Truth be told, I felt a little guilty like I was breaking the girl code. I put the blueberry pie in between us and grabbed two forks.

  “No plates? No slices?”

  I wanted to say, not for this. Trust me. You’ll want to shove your whole face in it in a second. But instead I asked, “Got any ice cream?”

  He looked at M then shook his head. I wondered if he was used to getting his directions from her. I didn’t think she was like that but what do I really know. I never dated her. Everything I know about her relationships were stories where she was the narrator and the main character, and the writer, and the director. She might’ve skewed things.

  “I’m going to leave tomorrow.”

  “I thought you were going to leave today.”

  “No...pie.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He stabbed at a blueberry and it squirted onto his shirt. He nodded as if he had been expecting it. He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and dabbed at it. I was sure M had taught him that.

  “You said you were going to stay until we figured out why she’d do such a thing.”

  “I think I figured it out.” I said in my small voice the one I save for when I knew I was in trouble as a child. The meek one and the meek shall inherit the earth...but if they did what in the world would they do with it? It would only be a matter of time before the non-meek re-established themselves as the inheritors.

  “Whelp, lay it on me.” He pushed back from the kitchen island and pie.

  I nudged the pie just a little closer to him nearly knocking my coffee onto M.

  “I don’t think it was the tampons or the fight.”

  “Okay…”

  I wanted to tell him about Travis but something told me that wasn’t it...at least not completely. I decided to start with the stuff I knew was bothering her because she wrote quite plainly about it in a few poems or maybe they were song lyrics.

  “I think it was Facebook.”

  “Facebook. I see.”

  He sounded just like my dad when I talked of being able to fly when I was ten if I could just find a way to think of lighter thoughts.

  “Well...not exactly Facebook. Just keeping up with everyone.” I liked the way this was sounding. Very non-implicating. If he didn’t ask for any more details, we’d be okay.

  “Okay. So you think she killed herself because she was tired of the competition?”

  I nodded.

  “What competition? Who’s life was she comparing hers to? Who had a better life? Larry and Alyssa? He doesn’t even make eye contact with her when he walks in the door. He spends the entire night looking at his phone. Last night was the first time I’ve seen his face since the iPhone 8 came out. Or maybe you’re talkin’ about Dustin and Mary Beth who haven’t had sex since Obama was elected? She knew all of this and we discussed how we had it pretty good. So no. I don’t believe that. And what the hell? Did you think our relationship was so awful she had to pretend? And couldn’t take pretending anymore? God, I thought she was your bestie? No, we had it good.”

  His words confused me. She never said anything but good things about him but that doesn’t exactly seem believable. Everyone complains about their significant other. Some people have a right to while others just blow smoke but everyone does it. Everyone but M...when she was with Luke.

  And the fact that she hadn’t didn’t mean anything to me at the time because I did enough complaining for both of us. But now that I thought about it, it all seemed very Nicole Kidman. Notice how she always has just the right amount of smile, not a big toothy, goofy grin but a pristine, welcoming, delicate smile. That was M around Luke. I watched his broad back as he left me alone with her.

  “Well, then you tell me.” I said to the baggie. “If I’m so wrong, what was it then?”

  I’m embarrassed to admit I waited there longer than a commercial break to hear if she would answer me before leaving to chase after Luke.

  He was in the barn mucking out a stall. Apparently the smell, feel, and appearance of dirty hay was more interesting than me. He didn’t look up even when I cleared my throat to get his attention. Maybe he just hadn’t noticed that I was there. I cleared it again and still he didn’t acknowledge me so I did what most people do in times of trouble, I apologized. He stopped raking.

  “The thing is, I just don’t know what to make of you. You’re all over the place. At moments it seems you are a distressed friend and then seconds later, you’re like a crazy loner.”

  “Let’s say
Holden Caulfieldish, not crazy loner.”

  “Whatever. If there’s one thing that M’s death taught me it’s not to remain quiet if you think there’s something wrong. I think maybe you need professional help.”

  “For what?” but as soon as the words left my mouth I felt a cramping in my midsection, one I recognized as a familiar pain. I quickly did some mental calculations but had to start over again because I couldn’t remember the last time. Luke watched me like he was putting together a plan to get me committed.

  My crotch dampened and not in a good way. Since turning 43, my periods were completely unpredictable. They came on fast like a summer storm and stayed way too long. I thanked the deities that I was in dark jeans as I sprinted for the barn bathroom. I could hear him shouting at me about running away and how I had to stop doing that--what did he know about me anyway--other than everything. Thanks M.

  But what the hell was I going to do for pads? I hadn’t brought any with me. It was one of those things I figured I’d buy on the road if I needed them. Now I was staying with a guy who’s last argument with his dead girlfriend was over tampons. Ahh the irony.

  I sat on the throne staring at the red in my underwear. Did I call for the guy who just accused me of being cray cray or fish around in the cabinet hoping to find the one thing M was out of months ago. There really wasn’t a decision because that was the first thing I did anyway, look under the sink. Nothing. Just some epsom salt, mane and tail shampoo, and some hand lotion. Not even any pain reliever for my sudden, and what I knew would be, persistent cramps.

  I couldn’t even find a bottle of expired or half-used pills. I rolled up toilet paper wondering just how thick of a pad I would need to make in order to get to the drugstore without leaking down my leg. The toilet paper was not the two-ply kind. I figured there was a good chance I’d be there most of the day rolling it up.

  Luke called from the otherside. His voice now one of concern not anger. “You okay?”

  “Define okay. Thought you just said I was certifiable.”

  “I did...sorta...but most people don’t run off when you say something like that. They stick around and argue with you or call you names and point out your issues.”

  “Are you some kinda expert on crazy? How many people have you called crazy in your life?” I asked it as a joke but he was quiet long enough to make me think he was counting.

  “Just two.”

  “Great. I’m finally in an elite group.”

  “Seriously. You okay?”

  “Sure. Everything’s rosey.” I had tried to come up with a witty play on words but that was the best I could do.

  “Who was the other one?” I asked.

  “The other one what?”

  “The other person you called crazy.”

  Silence. I thought he’d left. I scanned my unfortunate surroundings and briefly would’ve considered using a hand towel if one had been available. But she had left me nothing.

  All through college, she had kept me well stocked. Her mother bought them at Costco and sent enough for our entire dorm. I guess she thought we didn’t have cars to run out and buy them. This was good luck for me since my dad didn’t think about stuff like that. As a graduation gift M wrapped up half her stash because she didn’t feel like shipping them back home. It wasn’t until several months after I married Mike that I had to buy them for myself.

  But today she had nothing for me. I’m not too proud to admit that I quickly eyed her trash can. I was desperate and that’s when I saw it.

  “It was M. Okay? I called M crazy. The day before I refused to buy her tampons. It doesn’t make me happy to admit...”

  He kept talking but I wasn’t listening. He had called her crazy, probably infuriating and hurting her. But that was the least of her troubles.

  Forget my stupid Facebook idea. It wasn’t competition or depression caused by watching how everyone else was doing. It wasn’t him calling her crazy.

  “Luke, what did she say about tampons again?”

  “When? She told me to buy them.”

  “No, after you refused. Later when she apologized.”

  The planks outside of the bathroom creaked.

  “I don’t know. She said forget about it or nevermind. I assumed she’d get them later. I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

  Or maybe she said don’t worry about it now. I don’t need them.

  Save a Prayer for the New Moon on Monday

  M and I lost contact for almost a year after I found out I was pregnant with Maddie. It was the only time in our lives where we didn't talk every week. Not that we did it on purpose. Neither of us was angry with the other as far as I know but her fashion-designer dreams had led her to Atlanta, and Mike and I were in Troy, Ohio at the time living the dream as he made a living as a fertilizer salesman. Seriously. The man could sell anything to anyone and he literally chose to sell shit...or I guess technically chemical shit.

  The weekend before I found out I was pregnant, I went to visit her in Hotlanta. We ate at the types of restaurants where you went home hungry because there were only three dots of something pureed on your plate with a drizzle of something else. But we oooh’d and ahhh’d accordingly. We drank wine that cost more than I was making working at the local feed store. And we drank lots of it, like it was our duty to consume all of the over-priced wine in the capital of the old South.

  Her new boyfriend Tommy, drove us around town in his Jag and M pointed out the fact that everyone had a foreign car in her neighborhood. At that point in her life she was going by Marisou. M liked to play around with what the “M’ of her first name stood for. She’s been Marin (her latest and longest), Marisou, Martini, Madeline, and MissNasty but few outside of those who graduated with her or sat through the first day of class when the professor reads roll and never gets anyone’s name correct except for that annoying John Jones, whose parents obviously didn’t love him enough to give him a name anyone would ever pay attention to outside of grateful professors who had just butchered everyone else’s name and were glad for the break, knew her real name was Millicent.

  It was a family name that had “absolutely no value in the fashion world.” She sneered at its lack of romance and imagination. It was an “old lady name” bestowed upon people who were born and died in the same house surrounded by cats who had lived with the family for generations.

  Sometimes I think of Marisou in Atlanta and I remember how she looked at Tommy, adoringly, like they had a world of opportunities begging them to try and experiment and be those good-looking people who drove around in a convertible with the heat blasting when it was only thirty degrees. And they’d laugh as they’d pass the mini vans filled with children and bedraggled parents. Dads looking at the giddy couple wondering what it was like to have your girl look at you again in that way, while the moms eyed the couple full of jealousy because M could run out of a house with a tiny purse that matched her beautiful shoes. But of course these moms couldn’t really see her lovely heels but I’m a mom and I know what it’s like to hate those people.

  When I returned home from this mecca of young and beautiful people and I realized what I thought was just a really long hangover was actually soon to be someone who would demand much of my attention, I was petrified. Mike had made it quite clear to me no kids until we had ten thousand dollars in the bank. We’d still be childless if I hadn’t forgotten a few...okay...half of my pills. Somewhere, maybe there’s a childless Mike and Sara who spend weekend mornings in bed doing crossword puzzles and occasionally having okay sex. Maybe.

  Maybe there’s also a Marisou and Tommy driving the highways of some perfect city looking beautiful and carefree in a time untouched by wrinkles, mortgages, thinning hair, widening hips, and babies who nurse every hour on the hour. What if Tommy hadn’t been afraid of her mood swings? What if he had wanted to see her in sickness and in health? What if he had been more than a golden moment in time? But that type of relationship is never enduring. It lives on an island of days and
once those days expire, the characters move on to play another role in a different play.

  “Marisou” had moved onto Phillip and then Scott. Those were parts of M I never saw as I was deep in diapers. I wondered what person she had been with them. We reconnected when she was with Bucky, her nickname for the giant of a man who was quite literally Ohio State’s biggest fan. In the pictures I saw of them together, he enveloped her like a winter white hare in a snowstorm. His snowstorm.

  Then there was Trev. He too, was a beefy guy with butcher hands and he gave her the kind of hugs that made everyone jealous, especially those of us whose husbands had long stopped touching us in fear of getting us pregnant again. In some island of time, Trev was playing professional football but in the path he chose in this life he became an insecure band geek.

  I remember in high school chemistry reviewing the concepts of how elements took particles from one another until my brain bled. Sometimes this “taking” happened naturally, sometimes by force induced by an electrical field. Maybe we’re a little like that too.

  I thought about each of these men and what they might have taken from her, a piece of what would never be. A human being yet to be realized. With each relationship, she lost a proton or neutron, never could keep those straight. Positive and negative charge, I know, but maybe sometimes we give up the positive and maybe sometimes we lose the negative. One little building block of negativity follows the other person like a dandelion seed attached to their pant leg. Or maybe like a chemistry reaction we are all slightly different when paired with other elements, yet individually we are still who people perceive us to be on the outside.