My thoughts were interrupted when the door creaked open, letting some light in.
“Sorry to disturb you. Is she asleep?” A young Hispanic woman with long black hair down to her ass walked into the room. She looked like she could have been a teenager.
“Yeah, she is. Do you need me to wake her up?”
“No. That’s fine. My shift is almost over. I can have Jeri come back in an hour. Someone just needs to give her meds.” She held out her hand, and I took it. “I’m Marisol.”
“I’m Jake, Ivy’s husband. I take it you’re new here?”
“Yes. I just started this week. I…uh…didn’t realize Ivy was married. I saw your picture on her dresser. I thought maybe you were her brother or something.” She looked down at her feet as if she regretted her comment and then glanced back up at me. “Not that she couldn’t have…I didn’t mean…”
“I know what you meant. It’s fine.”
I expected her to walk away, but she moved in closer. “Was she always…like this?” This girl was making it obvious that she was new. It wasn’t the first time that a staffer hired at this place seemed green. Working in social services, the first rule of thumb: do your job and don’t pry into the personal lives of your clients. She’d probably never even worked with the mentally ill before. It was hard to find good staff because the pay was crap considering the responsibilities they had. I guess I couldn’t fault her for her curiosity, but it seemed a little inappropriate.
“No. She wasn’t always schizophrenic. We met as teenagers. She was...” I hesitated to use the word normal and looked over at Ivy’s red curls—the one constant—sprawled across the pillow. “She was vibrant, happy then.”
Marisol continued to look at me as if she was expecting me to continue, but I didn’t. I just kept looking at Ivy sleeping.
“So, when did things change?”
“When she was about nineteen, about six months after we got married. Over the years, she’s gotten progressively worse.”
“This must be really hard for you.”
I really didn’t want to be having this conversation with a stranger. Did this chick really think I was going to get into this stuff with her? Of course, it’s been fucking hard for me! She couldn’t begin to understand the road that Ivy and I had been on over the past six years.
“We have our days,” I simply said dismissively.
“Well, she’s lucky to have you.”
I didn’t even know how to respond to that, so I didn’t.
She continued standing there, clearly unable to read my rigid body language. Then, I could sense her eyes lingering on me and when I looked over at her, she was staring at the tattoos on my arms. She looked up at me with a look I recognized all too well. “I hope you don’t mind my asking. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Why would you ask me that?” I snapped.
“I’m sorry…it’s just…you’re a very attractive man and clearly a good guy. I just figured…maybe you get lonely. I’m getting off work in fifteen minutes. Would you want to go get something to eat?”
She had to be fucking kidding me.
“No. I have a train to catch.”
“A train? Where are you going?”
My responses were getting terser by the second. “New York.”
“On a trip?”
“No.”
“Wha—”
“With all due respect, aren’t you supposed to be working? I’d be willing to bet coming onto a resident’s husband is not in your job description.”
Marisol walked out without further questioning. I hadn’t meant to be that harsh, but she deserved it for treating Ivy like that. Sure, I lived a separate life outside of my marriage and dealt with that guilt. But this girl had no right to make assumptions about the nature of that relationship and to disrespect Ivy right under her nose. Ivy shouldn’t have been looked after by people that would take advantage of her so easily.
I felt my heart clench.
Ivy rustled in her sheets as she started to wake up. She leaned up against the headboard and grabbed a cigarette. Her chain smoking had gotten worse over the years. She got up and stood right under the clock on the wall, looking up at it without acknowledging me. She liked to watch the hand go by.
I walked over to her and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Baby girl, I have to leave. I was just waiting for you to wake up so I could say goodbye.”
She blew smoke in my face and said, “Don’t come back, Sam.”
Sometimes, she called me Sam. I had no idea why.
I’ll always come back, Ivy…even when you don’t know who I am.
On my way out, I demanded to see the house manager to request that Marisol never work with Ivy again. Since I couldn’t be here during the week, I needed to be able to trust in the people handling her care.
The blast of cold air outside was a stark contrast to the stagnant air in the group home. I hopped a bus to the Amtrak station and boarded the last train to Manhattan.
During the ride, guilt set in because with every mile closer to my destination, I felt a familiar relief, anticipating the reprieve that the work week always brought. When it came down to it, though, I was trading one place of emptiness for another.
***
When I approached the entrance to our building on Lincoln Street in Brooklyn, she was staring out the window as she often did late at night. It was like Rapunzel waiting in the wings, except instead of long hair, she wore a scarf tied around her head, and instead of a loving gaze, she gave me the stink eye.
I waved as I always did to mess with her. I knew she wasn’t going to wave back, and I knew what was coming.
In her strong Jamaican accent that had become like music to my ears, she said, “Go fuck yourself!”
Right on cue.
I smiled. “Fuck you too, Mrs. Ballsworthy.” I meant it in the nicest of ways, and that exchange with my neighbor was always oddly comforting.
Walking up the stairs to my apartment, I shook my head in laughter and repeated to myself, “Fuck you, too.”
Yup. I was home.
CHAPTER 3
Past
Desiree brushed her ass up against me and curled into my pillow. She wanted to cuddle. That meant I needed to get her out of my room as fast as possible.
I immediately got up and disposed of the condom before throwing some pants on. Turning on some music to drown out the guilt in my head, I grabbed a cigarette out of my nightstand and walked over to the window to light it, blowing the smoke outside. Plumes of smoke mixed with my visible breath in the cold air.
I always felt like shit after this, namely fucking someone I didn’t care about.
“Jakey, you want to come down to the restaurant for some lunch?”
I turned around to a glimpse of Desiree’s bare ass as she rolled off my bed. When she bent down to put on her thong, my eyes caught sight of the purple rose tattoo on her ankle.
Her father owned Eleni’s, the Greek restaurant underneath our apartment. I’d gone in there countless times over the past few months, and Desiree always made sure she attended to my small table in the corner. We flirted heavily for a long time, but I resisted making any moves because she gave off a vibe that she was the type of girl who would want more than I could give her (or at least the type that would pretend she didn’t and then change her tune).
One afternoon about a week ago, she came right out and told me how attracted to me she was and asked if she could come upstairs with me. She was a beautiful girl with long, dark hair and big brown eyes, and she seemed sweet enough. I hadn’t been with anyone sexually in a while, so it was hard to resist a direct offer.
When she started practically attacking me before we even got to my bedroom, I came right out and told her that I couldn’t do anything with her if she expected more from me. She assured me that at twenty-one, she felt she was too young for a relationship and just wanted to have some fun. So, I relented.
Twice.
This was our second
afternoon rendezvous.
She came over to the window and waved a hand in front of my face. “Earth to Jake.”
I looked at her without saying anything and threw my cigarette butt out.
“What’s that?” I asked, still lost in my own head.
She wrapped her arms around my torso, and my body stiffened.
“I love your body, Jake. Seriously, it’s like a work of art.”
I didn’t respond, just continued looking at the traffic below. It might have been strange, but I didn’t like it when she—or any woman for that matter—touched me outside of sex.
“Did you want to come downstairs for lunch? Are you feeling okay?”
Kind of dead inside, actually. Thanks for asking.
What the hell. I was hungry.
“Yeah. Sure. Let’s go downstairs.” I put on a shirt and grabbed my keys.
On the way out, I noticed a pink scarf on the floor in the living room that hadn’t been there on the way in. It wasn’t Desiree’s, and my roommate Tarah was at work. Someone else had been in the apartment. Then, it dawned on me that we were supposed to be getting a new roommate today, some chick named Nina from upstate New York. Picking up the scarf, I threw it on the couch and followed Desiree out the door.
***
I’d gone back into work for the rest of the afternoon after lunch. The shit hit the fan when a major flaw was discovered in one of my designs. The rest of the day was spent trying to save my ass. To make matters worse, Ivy had called me in the middle of it to complain that I hadn’t gone to see her the previous weekend when, of course, I’d spent the entire two days with her. My head was spinning.
On the way home, I stopped at the market on the corner and picked out two bunches of bananas. I fucking loved bananas. They were my comfort food. They had to be just right though: yellow with a greenish tip. That meant they’d be sweet, creamy and on the firmer side. An old lady was giving me a dirty look while I made my selection. From her expression, you’d think I was fondling my junk instead of inspecting the fruit. I decided to mess with her, so I took one of the bananas to my mouth, kissed it and winked at her. She clutched her purse, scowled and walked away. That had been the highlight of my day.
When I got to the apartment, I was relieved to find that my roommates weren’t home. Given the day I’d had, talking to people was the last thing I felt like doing. I lived with a guy named Ryan and a girl named Tarah. Ryan interned for the district attorney’s office and Tarah was a hairdresser for a high-end salon in Manhattan. They were nice enough, but we didn’t exactly socialize together. The fact that I took off for Boston every weekend didn’t make it any easier to get to know them better. I was pretty sure the two of them were hooking up, actually. I’d be up sketching late at night and would hear him leave his room to go into hers, but I never asked them about it. If I didn’t want people getting into my business, I’d stay out of theirs.
I arranged the bananas in the fruit hammock I’d bought a while back then ripped one off the bunch before heading to my room.
Needing to blow off steam, I took out my sketchpad and started drawing yet another variation of my father on his motorcycle. Whenever I felt down, I liked to draw my dad. It made me feel closer to him. My father died in a motorcycle crash when I was five. I’d probably completed hundreds of images of him over the years: riding his motorcycle into the clouds, riding into the sunset. Drawing was my outlet, where darkness spun creativity. It was both a therapy and an expression of sadness at the same time.
I heard the front door slam and then voices in the kitchen. It was Ryan and another girl who wasn’t Tarah. Fuck. It must have been the new roommate. After my day from hell, it skipped my mind that she was moving in today. I wasn’t in the mood to meet her but couldn’t exactly stay locked inside my room all night. If I went outside even to grab a drink, I’d have to introduce myself.
I cracked open the door but couldn’t get a look at her from where she was standing in the kitchen. All I knew about this girl was that she was a childhood friend of Ryan’s and according to him, she looked like one of the Olsen twins. Since I mainly associated the Olsen twins with that show Full House, I sort of had this weird vision of a new roommate named Michelle Tanner with puffy cheeks, walking around saying, “you got it, dude.”
I smoked a cigarette to gear myself up and was just about to head out to the kitchen when a story she was telling stopped me in my tracks. She giggled as she reminisced with Ryan about an ex-boyfriend in high school who used to write her poems inside of origami birds. Some guy named Stuart.
Origami birds? How fucking dumb.
I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t help myself. I walked out into the kitchen and laughed. “That is…the STUPIDEST fucking thing I have ever heard.”
She jumped a little, seeming startled by my sudden appearance.
I reached out my hand. “Hi, I’m Jake.”
She was short, had long, dirty blonde hair and a small pinned-up nose. The only thing about this girl that really resembled the Olsen twins specifically were the gigantic blue eyes now scanning the tattoos covering my arm. Then, she glanced up at me and looked down again quickly when my eyes met hers for a second. You would’ve thought I was holding a flashlight to her face.
Was I making her uncomfortable?
“You must be Neenee,” I joked.
I knew her name was Nina.
“It’s Nina, actually.” As she took my hand, she finally looked straight into my eyes.
“I know your name. I’m just fucking with you.” I smiled.
“Nice to meet you, Jake.”
Her hand trembled in mine. I was definitely making her nervous. I just couldn’t figure out why.
I decided to break the ice. “So, who is Stuart, why is he making you origami bird poems, and who cut off his balls?”
She laughed. At least she had a sense of humor. And a pretty smile.
A really fucking pretty smile.
“Stuart was my boyfriend freshman year of high school. Ryan decided to bring him up now for no good reason.”
“What brings you to Brooklyn?”
“I start nursing school on Monday. Long Island University.”
“Isn’t that in Long Island?”
I knew where it was.
“No, there’s a Brooklyn campus. It’s actually not far from the apartment.”
“With your fear of subways, that’s a good thing,” Ryan said.
Wait. What?
“What’s this, now?” I asked.
“Thanks, a lot, Ryan,” Nina said. Her face was turning redder by the second.
He apologized to her, and she tried to change the subject, but you could tell she was still embarrassed.
I interrupted her because I needed to know. “Are you seriously afraid of the subway or something?”
“She’s afraid of everything,” Ryan said. “Planes, elevators, heights…”
Nina looked over at me, and whether she realized it or not, the fear in her eyes was apparent.
“I just get a little nervous in crowded, contained places. That’s all.” She smiled, trying to brush it off.
I nodded in understanding. “It’s like a phobia. So, places that make you feel trapped?”
“Yeah, basically.”
I got the feeling there was more to this. She might have been trying to downplay it, but her eyes betrayed her, exhibiting a dark honesty that contradicted everything else. Something about the way she looked at me reflected how I felt inside, too. I couldn’t explain it, but I experienced a connection with this girl right then. It was like for a moment, she saw through my façade in the same way I could see beneath the fake smile she gave me when defending her phobias. There was a lot more to this, a lot more to her story. And she couldn’t begin to know the half of mine.
“Hmn,” I said.
She cleared her throat. “So, where do you work?”
She was trying to change the subject. I decided to have a little fun with her.
; “I’m an electrical engineer for a company in the city. We design stadium lighting. And at night, I dance…at a male strip club.”
The skin on her face pinked up before my eyes. Bingo.
“Seriously?”
“Yup.” I turned to Ryan. “You didn’t tell her she was living with Magic Fuckin’ Mike?”
She just stood there speechless. She had this innocence about her that I wasn’t used to seeing in girls her age. The effect I seemed to have on her was exhilarating, though. When her face eventually turned from pink to red, I decided to put her out of her misery.
“I’m just fucking with you again.”
“You’re not a stripper?”
“I like you. You’re an easy target. It’s gonna be fun to have you around.”
I walked over to grab a banana and felt her watching me. I bit off the entire first half in an exaggerated way. As much as I loved them, I didn’t normally eat them like an orangutan while crossing my eyeballs. I was doing it to get a reaction out of her and enjoyed the suddenly amused look on her face. Her eyes, which were so fearful and sullen moments ago, now seemed to be genuinely smiling back at me.
“I forgot to mention, that’s Jake’s bushel of bananas over there,” Ryan said. “We think he is part human, part monkey.”
“You like bananas, huh?” she asked.
“Damn straight, I do,” I said. “I fuckin’ love ‘em. Mmm.” Stuffing my face, I inhaled the last half in one big bite.
Nina started laughing as she looked at me like I was crazy. I smiled back with my mouth chock full and started to crack up. I couldn’t remember the last time I truly laughed.
When the laughter faded, her eyes lingered on mine, and I felt that strange unspoken connection again that I didn’t quite understand. All I knew was that making her laugh was addicting, and I wasn’t in such a rush to go back to my room anymore.
Jake Understood Page 2