Authors: Ericka Clay
EIGHTEEN
Elena
I’m married to a fag. I know
it’s not PC to say, it’s not Christian. But I imagine my brothers
chanting the word over and over in my head, and that’s what pisses me
off. Them knowing they’re better than me.
And me
knowing it, too.
I
let Ronnie take home Wren, impromptu middle of the week sleepover that makes
Wren's face look like I'm selling her to the highest bidder.
"It
will be fun!" I say, my skin scrubbed free of any last trace of make up in
the jammed hallways of St. Bonaventure Elementary. "Miss Ronnie will
be back here to pick you up at three, and I'll have a bag packed for
you." She's unsure, and I know she's scared she'll piss herself in
the middle of the night and then it will be front page news tomorrow morning
thanks to Trudy's unhinged jaw, but she can't be there when I talk to
Mitch. Scream at Mitch. Kill him.
I
want to kill him so bad.
I
drive home shaky and have a "fuck it" moment. My wheels scream
into McDonald's and I get a large Dr. Pepper and then I head to Quicky Liquor
and doctor it up with two tiny bottles of whiskey. Then I head to the
mall. He won't be home for hours and there's something cracking at my
skull, at the bones in my wrist. I'm breaking apart bit by bit, but first
I need to see Miss Snarly Nose one last time.
I
need to tell her something.
I've
gotten down three-fourths of the drink so as I swerve into the parking lot near
the food court, my idea has become one of those brilliant ideas and if I had an
arm long enough and could walk a little
straighter,
I'd be patting myself on the back.
There's
a blast of noise and cold air and a smell that's kind of like the aftermath of
a cinnamon roll and Philly cheese steak making a baby and the image makes me
laugh. I go to turn and tell Mitch my joke or maybe I think Ronnie's with
me. And when I see no one's standing next to me I wipe at my eyes even
before the tears can come.
I
keep walking and when I see the security guard chatting with a group of sloppy
looking teenagers, I throw my shoulders back and lift my chin with such force
that my spine starts to ache.
I
sniff her out really, because as I walk out of the food court and into the
mall, I find my way by scent, by the perfumey cloud hanging around the doorway
of Bath and Body Works. And then I take my bench, but afraid that she'll
see me, I go and stand around the side of the store, pretending to look at my
phone. I check the
time,
quitting time has
arrived, and count out the Mississipis it takes for her to head toward
Dillard's.
I've
sucked the last drops of Dr. Pepper/whiskey and quietly trash the cup and
clench my purse against my side. I pretend it's an arm guiding me through
the gut of the department store, nimbly dodging the ladies with their glass
bottles aimed at my face.
Past
the old maid dresses, over-sized hand bags, shoes emitting the stench of dead
leather and then into the open air of Wednesday.
"You've
got to be shitting me." I look and there she is. She's about
my height, but that's all we have in common because she's wearing a belted jean
dress with the same wedges as last time and her hair sits high on her head in a
bun. I have a toothpaste stain on my black pants, and I can feel the
deodorant smearing into my sleeveless button down. The stray clump of
hair in my mouth tastes like whiskey.
"I
just want to talk," I say.
"What?
What can you possibly have to say to me? I mean you're the crazy mall
lady. That's what my husband and I even call you!" She raises
her hands and the sun shines off her gold rings, her red lunchbox smacks
against her hip. There's a purse slung on her other shoulder and I pray
to God she doesn't have any mace in it.
I
walk slowly to her like she's the wild animal, not me with whiskey flavored
heart burn and a smelly belch in my throat. I hug her and maybe she's too
scared to move because her body goes stiff and she's not yelling for help.
"Love
her. Love him," I say. I look out and here comes the car
carrying her husband and her baby, those things that make her scream and cry
inside herself at night, that make her feel selfish because she doesn't want
them, but she doesn't want anyone to have them either. I pull back and
her eyes are scared, and I know I've lost her because I never had her in the
first place.
So
I take off, summer wind whipping at my face as I toe-heel it back to the other
side where the food court is and my car waits. But it's okay that she
calls me "Crazy Mall Lady," Miss Snarly Nose with her red lunchbox
and flaming gold rings. Because what she doesn't realize is that I was
her once - a blank sheet of paper barely written on.
And
soon she'll learn there are things you just can't erase.
~
My
hands are pink. Sore. Numb. They look like they're rotting off my
body. I didn't open the garage door because I don't want the neighbors to
see, and I also want to die. I take in large gulps of chemically sweet
air, and each time the exhale is deep chested tears, the kind that quakes the
cartilage in my joints. When he finds me, I'm hands and knees and
concrete. When he finds me, I'm disappointed I haven't died yet.
Mitch
walks and it's his work boots that keep my focus.
Splotches
of caulking on the toes and the frayed ends of his shoelaces.
The
smell of them almost takes over the bleach.
"What
happened?" His lips on ears, his hands on shoulders, and that feeling of
being lifted foot to spine to head, snapped straight up and in his arms.
"Aaron,"
I say. And just like that, he's the one who quakes.
I
go over to the garage door button drilled near the door that leads into the
house and close the scene on our miserable little play.
"How?"
But then
real quickly, "I'm so sorry." Look, I get it. All the
anger and the vile taste that's been in my mouth all day, and my hands, fucking
screwed up hands that I can't quit rubbing raw, all of these things should be
stacked like blocks, like bricks so I can drag his body up them and push him
off the side. But then see, I can't. I just can't do that.
Because looking at him isn't looking at him now. Looking at him is
looking at him in his room in Helena, a rock with "faggot" on it in
his hands and his brain struggling to process and refuse what his heart is
telling him.
He's
her father for Christssakes.
He's
there near the bucket of bleach, near the sponge that's barely sponge and more
like a holey mess. This time, it's my arms around his shoulders, lifting
him up.
Keeping him on his feet.
NINETEEN
Mitch
The night ran long and it's
embedded in the skin under our eyes. We look like crack addicts or
alcoholics I guess. We look like alcoholics.
Wren
had a sleepover and the first thing I wanted to do was drink like a fish in
that garage, shit, even grab that bucket of bleach and start guzzling.
She knew. She knows.
Elena, Christ, Jesus Christ,
man.
I'm so sorry.
She
was holding me, bleach going to our brain cells, and I changed my
thinking.
A twist, a turn, click-click.
Just like that. I told her I wanted to go to a meeting with her.
And
we're here now, our bleached up brain cells helping us shower, dress and coat
my poor wife's hands in a nearly fatal dose of Aquaphor.
We
ate Georgie's bad cookies and now Peg and her tattooed eyebrows are standing at
the microphone. She calls me up and I'm tugged back for a moment and
that's when I see Elena's hand is still attached to mine. She squeezes
it.
One time.
Two times.
And then I float away.
Standing
at the podium, the microphone hotly buzzing, I want to say things to them like
love is the reason the sun glints its edge into my eyes and why my hands
feather out into wings against a slow stream of wind. That the earth is
small from the top of a roof and how it's never looked more manageable.
But
then I’d have to kick my own ass.
And
honestly, it's not even love, not love at all. It's more like a base
condition that has no cure, and when I reach for my heart, it's not there.
Instead,
Wren's in its place.
Elena, too.
I
twist them deep into my thoughts until my thoughts take to unraveling and silently
say the only thing that comes to me, thinking of two people who have given me a
lifetime supply of hope.
Good
luck.
TWENTY
Elena
Music's up,
windows down.
Gloria Estefan is blasting through the GrandAm's
speakers, and I don't even go to change it. I'm in that good of a mood.
I
sleep better without drinking, that I've known for a long time. But I
also slept better after last night, underneath Mitch's body, relearning what
we've already learned. I know there are splintered parts of him that love
me, the physical kind of love, and I think maybe I can glue them back together,
slowly but surely. And maybe somewhere down the line, I'll be the only
woman, person, he needs to love.
Maybe.
"What's
in it?" Wren asks. I picked her up from Trudy's, from "girl's
night" as Ronnie kept saying with so much saccharine, it nearly rotted my
teeth. But God bless her for trying and being my friend even through the
shittiest of my storms. She also gave me a box of clothes she no longer
needs that she thought might cheer me up. So God bless her again.
And
now Wren's strapped in with Mitch's lunch cooler on her lap because Jimmy had
to take the truck home and lay a whooping on Brent, his eldest, for smoking a
joint in the woods behind their house. I'm sure Pam's called on Jesus
more times than she can count today.
Poor Jesus.
We
pull in, get out. I slam my door shut and then bump Wren's with my hip
when it won't close all the way.
"Mitch?"
I call out but no answer. I think about yelling out again, but don't want
to startle him. "Here," I say to Wren, handing her the
cooler. "Stay
here,
and I'll bring him
down." She stands at the pillar with the penny, and holds Mitch's
lunch in one hand and scratches at poor Abe's face with a free finger.
She's like a mini-version of her father.
The
ladder's at the side of the church, and I make my way up. It reminds me
of when we moved to town, Jimmy not quite on our heels and Mitch needing a
little extra help with his very first job. It was the funeral home over
on Pyle Drive and the woman who ran it reminded me of a fox with her thick red
pony tail. It was my first time up on a ladder and Mitch showed me how to
patch the roof. It was kind of nice, just the two of us and a long strip of
sun-streaked sky.
I'm
thinking of that day because the sun is glowing much the same way. And
when I reach the top, his hands are at his sides and he's looking up at the
sky, too. But it's not Mitch.
Oh
God.
He
turns and his face is broken, that look when something awful has happened and
your body is finally accepting it.
"I
didn't mean to," he says. "I didn't. It was…you just have
to understand." Aaron's whispering now and my body plays catch up,
and I think my legs will go loose on the ladder. I think I'm going to
vomit.
"I'm
so sorry," he cries, his face now shielded with his hands.
I'm
sorry
echoes inside of my head. What Mitch said last night, face and
breath
warm in my hair.
Aaron
creeps towards me from near the steeple and there’s a bird trapped in my chest.
I think about yelling down to Wren but I don’t want to scare her, and I don’t
want to scare myself. He takes my shoulders and he’s heavy with sadness and I
want him off me, I want my husband, I want Mitch.
Aaron
dry heaves and cries and there's snot on my shoulder. He's noise and
force and weight and then suddenly he’s movement, his arms pressing hard into
me. My new sandals Ronnie gave me slide against the metal ladder.
It’s
true you know, that card trick of moments flicking at you right before it ends.
I see Mitch and his hands and my thighs and the razors and my daughter the time
I told her to hurry the fuck up because I needed to get my hair trimmed and
soiled diapers, soiled panties, soiled hands, and the taste of bleach, of
booze, of kisses, my lips in Wren’s hair, her heart in my ears.
And
then the white spaces between each card, the lost moments I spent denying
myself the pleasure of feeling any of it.
I
think of what wasting feels like.
I
think of my TV.
###