Surviving Valencia (26 page)

The nursery became the only place I felt at ease. I started to read in there, sitting on the rocking chair with my feet up on the little ottoman. I had all the books associated with pregnancy:
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
, five different baby name books,
Your Child’s First Year
. Adrian left me alone when I was in there. I just closed the door and hours would go by with our house big and silent.

When I tired of the baby books, I moved the television from the kitchen into the nursery, and sat there alone in the dim blue light, watching past episodes of
Cut-Throat Couture
. I fantasized that I was a designer on the show, and I was host Philip Widget’s favorite contestant. In my vivid imaginings, no judge or home viewer could resist my swingy frocks. When I checked out from reality and entered my fantasy design world, I was distracted to the point of feeling almost safe. But then eventually the
Cut-Throat Couture
blocks would give way to
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
repeats, and bored and hungry, I would come crawling back into the light. Adrian was in his studio nearly all the time, so I was still alone out there.

The truth was, there were times I thought about not going through with it. Not having the baby, I mean. Times I worried that Adrian and I were not good enough people to raise a baby, or that we were not strong enough to create a real family. I was afraid the best we could hope to be after all that had happened were three isolated, damaged individuals.

This pregnancy often seemed like a part I was playing in a play or a movie; I woke up doubting whether it was even real. But it was. I could feel it. And when I looked at myself in the mirror, I was starting to see how real it was.

If I could magically undo this baby I would, but it was not that easy. The baby was coming, counting down the days until he was in my arms. How could I deny it, this nursery and my twice-canceled abortion appointments imminent proof of his arrival. And despite how I tried to distract myself, the baby stayed as focused as an arrow.

I graduated from Madison in the spring of ’98 with a degree in Political Science. It took me five years because I kept changing my major. I was living in a dumpy, rodent-infested house on East Mifflin Street with six roommates. Since it cost so little to live there with rent being divided seven ways, no one was in a hurry to find a real job. Our roommate Bob was thirty-nine and working on his third doctorate. He fixed people’s inner tubes on their bicycles and sold pot out of the little shed in our backyard. Our roommates Steph, Michelle, and Bernadette had a unique three-way open relationship going for them that made Bernadette cry a lot and Michelle break a lot of dishes. Steph seemed to be the only one truly benefiting from it. Nora was quiet and nearly invisible, a blonde, ghostly girl from some place we all assumed to be Scandinavian. She sneaked around at night emptying our overflowing ashtrays and washing the dishes. The rest of us rarely saw her, but she always paid her rent on time and kept things clean and tidy, so she was a major asset. Sam was the seventh roommate.

“Sam is such a turd,” Steph warned me.

“Hmm. You’re probably right,” I said.

Nearly seven feet tall and covered in thick, matted body hair, Sam wore his microscopic granny glasses perched on the tip of his tiny button nose. He had a peculiar, plastic smell about him, not unlike the aroma of a new Barbie doll. I convinced myself that he, like everyone, had some redeeming qualities that just needed uncovering. Perhaps he was musical. Or kind to animals. Perhaps he was cool. I turned his flaws into quirky assets. His digestive issues became an endearing sign of his humanness. The enormous bags that looked like change purses under his eyes seemed, at the time, a little edgy. Like Billy Joel.

My first introduction to him came a week after I moved in, via a scrap of paper taped to the mirror of the second floor bathroom.
Love Is An Idea, Not An Actual Thing. Therefore, It Does Not Exist
. was scribbled in a delightfully curly script. I mistook it for girl handwriting and worried about the love triangle. “Is everything okay with Steph and Bernadette and Michelle?” I asked Bob, who was flossing his teeth at the sink next to mine.

He shook his head. “It’s Sam.”

“Sam,” I repeated. The mystery roommate I had then only heard of. As it turned out, Sam taped his feelings to the bathroom mirrors throughout the house on a regular basis. Not realizing then that he did this all the time, this particular message stuck in my head as meaningful.

“Is Sam going through a breakup?” I asked Steph the next morning at breakfast.

“No, he’s just moronic,” she said.

“Is he ever home?”

“He’s probably in his room, moping.”

“Should we invite him to share some of this oatmeal?”

“Let’s not.”

A few days later I learned a little more about him:
I Accidentally Ate Half A Napkin With My Sandwich Today When I Was Having Lunch. Now I Am In A Lot of Pain.
I had still not laid eyes on him but I pictured him to be handsome, noble, tortured… Like a blue eyed dog.

The following week, yet another peek into his secret mind:
I Found A Coupon Book Filled With Half Offs And Buy One Get Ones In A Walgreen’s Parking Lot. Now I Am Going To Have To Spend A Lot Of Money On Things I Do Not Want.

In those first weeks, when all I knew of him was based upon scribblings on pocket-sized sheets of notebook paper, an imperfect but loveable Sam sprouted and grew in my brain. Then one day while lounging in the living room and crocheting a scarf, I heard him speak.

“Did
you
eat the rest of my Golden Grahams? Did
you
? I am
positive
there was half a box yesterday!” came the searing, whiny voice of a demon troll. The sound curdled and died in the big, high-ceilinged kitchen, awkwardly met with no response.

“Who
is
that?” I whispered to Bernadette who was lying on the floor, circling toys in an old Sears Christmas catalog.

“It’s Sam,” she said without looking up. She hesitated, her Sharpie hovering over a My Little Pony from 1986, and then she circled it and wrote
maybe
beside it. “You’ve never
heard
him before?”

“I guess not. I mean, I’m pretty sure I would remember.”

Michelle, half dozing on the couch, buried the box of cereal she’d just had her hand in beneath a couch cushion and we all laughed at what a loser he was.

It was inevitable that I would end up sleeping with him.

One day men with big metal cranes showed up to tear down our house. Boy were we surprised! It was a Wednesday morning, but as luck would have it, we were all home. Steph tried calling our landlord, but none of us could remember who it was. We just gave our money to Nora every month and she took care of things. We asked her who to call, but her English was mysteriously failing her in this time of crisis. She kept saying she couldn’t understand, couldn’t understand.

“Write it down?” she said, gesturing like she was wiggling a pen.

“Let’s band together,” said Bob. “This is our home and we aren’t leaving without a fight!”

I curled up on the couch and decided I would just do whatever everyone else decided to do.

Outside, the big ball on the crane was swinging ominously overhead.

“Pick your battles,” said Sam, pushing his granny glasses up his nose.

“Yeah, screw it,” said Steph. She grabbed her backpack and her weed and she was gone. This made the rest of us panic.

None of us had time to do much besides throw together what we could in some duffel bags and laundry baskets. Sam and I were driving around together, wearing pajamas, homeless, with everything we had been able to grab in the back of my car. As the afternoon turned to evening and our worry grew, we passed a rickety four unit over by Camp Randall. A ‘For Rent’ sign was nailed to the front porch, which the landlord happened to be repairing. We stopped the car, talked to him for a few minutes, and looked at the apartment. Next we were signing a lease he retrieved from his car, and just like that, our problems were solved and we were living together. It seemed like an obvious decision. I would even say we both felt pretty lucky.

As the months in our lice nest ticked past, we came to realize that we needed to get better jobs. My part-time job at the yarn store and Sam’s reliance on finding garbage and selling it on eBay were making it hard to scrape by. He was still posting his thoughts on the bathroom mirror as his only means of real communication, and I was beginning to notice a theme:
I Want Groceries
. was Monday’s message.
Starving. How About You?
on Tuesday.
Ramen Again? No Thanks
. was on Wednesday. Finally he got a job at Merry Maids and I started working at Border’s.

It was the fall of 1999 and everywhere you looked, The Millennium was the theme.
The. Millennium
. A looming, ominous abyss, just a few steps away. There was fear and excitement about what a new millennium might bring. Would computers still work? Would our bank accounts freeze? Would we say the year was two thousand, or would we say twenty oh oh?

Border’s was filled with Millennium-themed calendars and coffee mugs and books about Nostradamus’s predictions. My supervisor Krystle was putting together a newsletter about all of us employees she called her
Y
Not Get
2
K
now Your Border’s Team Gazette
. Her boss was totally impressed that she had taken it upon herself to go above and beyond the call of duty. In actuality, she was one of those lazy, creative types who found ways to tie up all her time with little diversionary projects. She interviewed every last one of us over the course of that fall. By December she had stacks of the newsletters ready for customers to take. “They’re free! Learn about Your Border’s Team!” We stuck them in people’s shopping bags until Corporate found out and told us that was taking it too far. Stacks by the door were allowed though.

In February we all got to divide up the leftovers. I still have a few. It’s not very often I’ve had half a page devoted to me. I must admit, it was kind of flattering. I showed a copy to Sam. “What’s so special about that,” he said, still in his Merry Maids outfit. “Everyone is in here. It’s not like you won some kind of contest.”

By the summer of 2000 Sam was getting really depressed. Despite his cynical outlook, I believe he had expected the new millennium to bring some kind of positive, sweeping change to the world, and it had not. His messages were getting longer and ramblier, and less subtle.

There was this one in June:
I Can’t Even Tie My Shoes Anymore Without Spending Ten Minutes Trying To Psych Myself Up For It. Everything Hurts. Especially My Teeth. I Wish I Was Dead
. And then in July, this:
I Try Overdosing On Tylenol Almost Every Day Now But I Am Too Big To Die. I Think I Will Buy A Gun
.

He and I never had sex anymore, which was fine considering how unattractive I found him. He was starting to not even shower. Plus, there was someone new at work who made Sam seem even worse than he actually was, if that was possible. It was Adrian.

Adrian had started in the early spring, but our schedules hadn’t crossed until summer. When I first saw him I looked twice, then a third time. Inexplicably, I seemed to have captured his attention too. It was impossible.
He must be gay
, I decided, remembering Alex Wescott, the only other cute boy who had ever liked me. The last I heard, Alex was tap dancing off Broadway and living with some ancient, emerald-encrusted sugar daddy named The Captain. Adorable, sexy, straight men might be my type, but I was not theirs.

In August Krystle bought her first home and invited everyone over for a housewarming party. I invited Sam to come along, but he said he would rather eat glass shards.

I had the closing shift on the night of the party, and so did Adrian. We had never worked together before. When I saw both our names on the schedule, I got butterflies.

“Are you going to Krystle’s?” Adrian asked me, while we were straightening one of the front tables that some little kids had demolished two minutes before we closed.

“Yeah, I guess so. Are you?” I tried to act cool.

“Yeah…” he said. I waited for him to say something more.

The thing is, I had no idea Adrian was married. I knew practically nothing about him and I was not “in” with the Border’s gossip. He never wore a ring. I felt like he wanted to ask me to go with him, yet now he was silent, straightening the books and not looking at me. What if this had been The Opportunity, the only one I got? I struggled against it slipping away, trying to come up with the right thing to say. “I hate finding new places at night. Do you know where Krystle lives?” I asked. “So I can follow you, in my car,” I added.

He turned back to me and said, “Why don’t you come with me? We can ride together. It just makes sense to not take two cars.”

“Okay. If you’re sure,” I said.

“I’m sure,” he said. Then he seemed to reconsider. “Hey, do you mind finishing this? I’ll be back in a minute.” He disappeared in the direction of the break room and I kept straightening.

He’s calling someone,
I thought.
He’s making an excuse why he will be late.

“Can you help me with this?” a new girl called to me, standing by her cash register, so I went over to help her.

A few moments later, Adrian came up behind me and pulled me aside, literally, touching my arm and pulling me gently toward him. “Hey,” he said. I melted, heart-stoppingly aware of his entire aura, tingly from being within its parameters.

“Hi. What’s up?” I asked.

He pulled us a little farther away from the new girl. She was in her own world anyway, counting the pennies for the second time.

“My wife is coming with us, I hope that’s okay with you.”

“Oh, sure. That’s great,” I said.

“Okay.” He shifted from foot to foot. “I just wanted to, you know, mention it.”

“We’re just driving together, right?” I said, raising my eyebrow at him like he was crazy.

“Right. Sorry.” Then he blushed and nodded, taking off to finish whatever it was he had left to do.

Four or five of us left at the same time that night, and everyone except for the new girl was headed to Krystle’s. Adrian’s wife was in the parking lot waiting for us. She stood beside her car, a green, rusty 1970’s car. She was cool enough to make it seem like the most desirable car in the world. I would have looked like a fool behind the wheel of a car like that. Anyone would have. She was smoking a cigarette and playing with her long red hair. When she saw Adrian she waved and came walking over. She wore funky, cat-eye glasses. She was taller than me, and super thin. Without hesitating, she kissed him on the mouth.

“Everyone, this is Belinda, my wife,” he said.

“Hi Belinda,” we said.

“Do you want to drive, Honey?” she asked Adrian.

“Sure,” he said, taking her keys. They were on a simple, steel ring with a small, artsy metal ornament hanging from it. Of course I noticed everything. I think it is a female problem, to notice and evaluate and compare.