My mother gave me a gift. It works against me, not for me. She was always irritated that I was around. As a child I tried to stay out of her way as much as possible because she didn’t like me to ask her questions. When she was home I watched her keenly, eager to please, always wanting to earn a half smile or any sort of acknowledgment. If she was reading and I’d drop something in the kitchen, her head would snap up and she’d glare at me. I’d feel like such a failure in that moment, like I’d failed her in the deepest way. She never hit me, and she rarely shouted. It was her quiet that was distressing. As an adult I am racked with guilt when I feel I have inconvenienced someone. That’s how it works against me. If I walk into a cafe and take the seat by the window, I feel guilt for being selfish, for taking the best table in the house when someone else could have it. If I buy a new pair of shoes and then see someone with no shoes, I want to strip mine off and walk barefoot for the rest of the day. Why should I have anything when someone else does not have what I have? I wonder if this affected the way I thought about David, because I always knew I had someone who was far better than anyone else. When Petra showed interest in him I lost my mind. Petra needed him more; they were more alike than we were. I could survive alone, but Petra needed healing and David could make the lame walk with his never-ending faith. In a sick way I thought I was doing everyone a favor.
It was wrong. I was wrong. I deserve love, but it’s going to take me a very long time to learn that.
It’s lunchtime at Bronte. The front bar is busy and I’ve not had a moment’s break since my shift started. The juicers hum and the smell of fresh fruit is so strong in the air my mouth is watering. They make us wear these waistcoats with ties. It’s unbearably hot. It’s been a week since I met with David, four days since I last spoke to Ethan. I’m feeling quite sorry for myself, a little rejected, and alone actually. Yesterday I bought a paperback from the corner shop and wandered around with it under my arm, intending to find a bench where I could read while I sunned. There were plenty of benches, plenty of sun, but I kept thinking there’d be a better option if I walked a little bit further. Before I knew it, I’d walked four miles and the sun was dipping low in the sky. I missed my chance and I never found a bench good enough. Hey, girl, hey—you’re an asshole. It’s good to know these things about yourself so you don’t go around blaming others for your fuckups.
I’d bought a bottle of wine on my way home and drank the whole thing sitting at my living room window watching the traffic. When I looked in the mirror this morning, my teeth were stained and my skin so sickly looking I’d been frightened. What was I doing to myself? Drinking bottles of wine to cope with my inner turmoil. I’ve been back home for three years and I’ve not felt the need to leave again. Perhaps my wandering days are over, or perhaps I found what I’d been looking for and then lost it. Either way, it finally feels like I have settled in the right place, the place where I started. Except now I question everything. The urge has appeared. I am considering running away again, packing up my things, and going somewhere new. But, how many times can a person start over?
“I thought you hated lunch shifts.”
I’m so deep in thought I almost drop the handful of lemons I’m holding. I clutch them to my chest and look up in alarm. David is sitting on the stool directly in front of me next to one of the regulars, an older lady we call Penny. His skin is brown like he’s been out in the sun for the last week and he’s wearing a white V-neck and ripped blue jeans. So simple and yet he looks like a rock star. I think of my sallow wine-flushed skin and panic.
“They’ve grown on me,” I say, trying to hide the tremor in my voice. “What are you doing here?”
I search the bar in front of him for papers, but there are just his hands, clasped on the bar top. I set my lemons down and reach up to touch my hair. I hadn’t bothered to do anything with it this morning, just slung it up in a messy knot on top of my head. My tie feels like it’s strangling me. This is ridiculous; my fixation on the way I look. What does it even matter? The man is here to divorce me, not ask me on a date.
David clears his throat. “I figured I was a bit of a wanker to you the other night. I threw a spanner in the works and what a cock up that was, yeah?”
I’m laughing before he’s finished. “Dude, you’ve totally been practicing,” I say in my best American accent.
He grins as he rocks on his bar stool from side to side. For a moment I’m transported back to Seattle where he used to rock like that on a different bar stool and flirt with me. I thought it was endearing the way he had the enthusiasm of a little boy, but looked like a man. We grin at each other, but then my heart starts to hurt and I don’t know what to do with my hands or face. I turn away, make a juice for a customer: guava, lychee, mint, and orange. People walk through the doors, obnoxious little hats on their heads, sunglasses whose lenses are pink, green, and silver. I watch them as to not watch David, who is distracting me and making me forget which juice goes in what drink.
“Why are you here…you’re supposed to be on tour,” I say when I’m finished. What I really want to ask is: Why are you here specifically? And how did you find me?
“This was our last stop,” he says quietly. “I decided to stick around, maybe have a Hendrick’s and tonic?”
And divorce me, I want to add. The concert was weeks ago. I wonder just how long he’s been sticking around, what he’s waiting for? Penny has noticed our exchange and angles her stool toward him. She’s nosy, she listens to all the bar gossip and then relays it to me. I smile uneasily at her. An already awkward situation and then you throw Penny in the mix. God, what a day it was already. Everyone would know by the end of the day that my husband came in to divorce me.
“Need some more juice and gin, Penny?” I ask.
She pushes her glass toward me, never removing her eyes from David.
“Do I know you?” I hear her ask him.
Someone waves me over at the end of the bar and I leave David and Penny to it.
“Don’t forget my fucking drink,” Penny calls after me in her singsong voice.
“Mine too,” David echoes.
I eye him while I make his drink, just little glances to prove to myself that he’s really there, but he catches me each time and smiles in turn. They’re not divorce smiles, which confuses me more. They’re just…genuine. I have no reason to distrust him, yet I still do.
You’re the one who can’t be trusted, I remind myself. This guy only says what he’s feeling. You tell lies about what you’re feeling and then you run away.
“It sort of feels like old times,” I say as I slide the glass toward him. To his right, Penny nods.
“Old times, huh? You know, the first time I saw you in that bar it was as if someone plugged me into an electrical socket. Everything in my head lit up. I could have written ten songs, answered the age-long question about the meaning of love, and asked you to marry me on the spot.”
“You did ask me to marry you on the spot,” I point out.
“See.”
“And you have written songs apparently making me the butt of the joke. So tell me, David Lisey, what’s the meaning of love? Enlighten me.”
For a moment I think he’s not going to answer me. He stares down into his drink thoughtfully and when he looks up, his eyes are soft, sincere.
“I’ve thought a lot about that, actually. It’s when you can’t get someone out. They crawl inside you and they just live there for the rest of your life.”
When he says that it feels like a jolt of electricity passes through me. There’s familiarity, but I haven’t thought about it that hard. Like I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me what I’m feeling.
“Like a parasite,” I say. “Draining you of…well—everything. Not pleasant.”
“Who says love is pleasant?”
He’s right, of course. That’s why people create art—because love crawls inside them and they need a way to get it out.
“I suppose it’s not. It’s most
ly just painful.”
“You two are giving me a headache,” Penny says. She’s wearing her big, dark sunglasses and I can’t see her eyes, but her mouth is turned down in a frown.
“Maybe you shouldn’t eavesdrop then, Penny,” I suggest.
She sticks her tongue out at me. Very mature. I like to imagine what Penny was like when she was my age. There’s still some of the wildness left in her eyes.
“Tell us how we’re wrong, Pen,” David says.
She turns to him and smiles, and I can see that she’s thoroughly smitten. Who isn’t once they meet David? I had to watch girls younger, prettier, and firmer than me throw themselves at him on a daily basis.
“You young people treat love like it’s an accessory, not a matter of life and death. You’re amused by it, in love with the idea of it. You make all of your songs and books about it, but don’t know how to live it out. Love is not part of something else. It’s the only thing.”
Her words catch David off guard. He looks like he’s been slapped.
I lean my elbows on the bar and stare at him. “Are you writing a song?” I ask. I know that face he’s making, and I can’t keep the smile off my lips.
“Hush,” he says, still staring at Penny. “Tell me more,” he says to her. “You’re my new muse.”
“Who was it before?”
He points a finger at me.
Penny glances at me and raises her eyebrows. “Fresh meat. Nothing I have is that firm.”
I laugh, but I feel like I shouldn’t. Nothing about this situation is funny, it’s really quite uncomfortable, my husband who I ran out on, showing up at my work.
“Don’t worry, Penny, I broke his heart. Have at him. He’s done with me.”
“Am I?”
I stare at him, too uncomfortable to know what to do. I want to ask him where he’s stashed the divorce papers, but Penny turns to look at me, her drink cradled in her bony, wrinkled hand. She has a ring on every finger and she’s wearing hot pink nail varnish. That’s the thing about Penny: she’s crackly and age-spotted, her voice is raspy and dry, and she smells of Chanel and mothballs, but there’s something devastatingly elegant about her.
“American boy comes all this way for—”
“His band played a show here,” I say, cutting her off. “That’s why he’s here.”
Penny looks at David very seriously and asks, “Why are you here?”
David doesn’t look at Penny when he answers her. He looks at me.
“I’m here for Yara,” he says. “I came to find her.”
At some point during my shift, I let Ben, my fellow bartender, know I need to run to the loo.
“Hurry,” he says. “That bloody lot from the law firm just came in. You know how they love the mixed drinks.”
I wink at him and hurry round the corner, glancing once more at David before I go. He’s in deep conversation with Penny and I can’t help but smile. Most people would dismiss Penny as eccentric and weird, but not David. He loves eccentric and weird. When I reach the toilets, I have to wait in line. I wash my hands and hurry out, ready for Ben to give me a mouthful for taking so long. When I round the corner Ben is fine, laughing with a guest, and David is nowhere to be seen.
“What happened to the guy who was sitting there?” I ask Ben.
He’s juicing grapefruit and he doesn’t look up at me.
“Paid his tab and left in a hurry,” he says.
“Oh,” I say casually. “Did he say anything before he left?”
I try to keep my voice nonchalant, but there is an urgency inside of me. I want to run out into the street and call his name. He can’t just come in like that and then leave without saying goodbye. I need to know what he wants to do. I can’t be kept suspended like this.
“No. Just handed me twenty quid and left.”
I don’t know if I feel confusion or disappointment more, but what had I expected? Maybe he just needed to see how he felt one last time. I suppose he could have even been walking by when he saw me inside, Trafalgar was a popular place for tourists to be wandering around. But he’d said, “I’m here for Yara,” like that had been his plan all along.
When I go back around to check on Penny, she hands me a scrap of paper. There’s a strange expression on her usually impassive face. I breathe a sigh of relief. He’s written me something, I think. A note, or a telephone number maybe. I unfold the tiny strip of paper and blink down at it, confused. Two numbers are written inside in red ink and nothing else.
“Did he say what this meant?” I ask her, holding it up.
She shrugs. He’d written 49. I recognize his handwriting right away, scratchy and slanted. 49? Was it a room number? A date? Should it have triggered a memory of something from our past? I shake my head, tears pooling in my eyes. I turn away before Penny can see me and tuck the slip of paper into my shirt pocket.
I take a cab home that night. I can’t bear the thought of standing in the Tube squashed against all those people when I feel like I’m about to cry. The piece of paper David left with Penny sits open on my lap, the number 49 staring up at me like an accusation. I don’t remember. If he’s trying to trigger something from our past, I’ve forgotten. I search the internet for the meaning of the number. The San Francisco 49ers, a ski resort in Washington state, the DC comic episode 49 where Batgirl makes an appearance. None of it means anything to me. When the cabbie leans back to tell me we’ve arrived, I’m thoroughly confused and already planning on buying another bottle of wine to carry me through the night. I hand him his money and walk a block to the corner shop. I could e-mail David, ask him what his note meant, but I’m too prideful. He obviously thought it would mean something to me. David was the aware one in our relationship. He knew the wine I liked to drink, and he knew my favorite color. When the time came for him to choose a wedding cake flavor and our honeymoon, he did so without pause—because he knew me.
I choose a bottle of white this time. White wine makes me loopy. I’ve been known to strip off all my clothes and try to run outside naked after drinking too much white wine, but I’m desperate to feel something, even if it’s something that makes me behave badly. I carry my bottle up to my flat and search the cupboards for something to eat. I’ve not been shopping for food since before Ethan and I saw the flat. Everything else has been boxed up for the move. I’m too depressed to leave, so I text Posey and ask her to come over and bring food. I expect her to swear at me, tell me to go to hell like she normally does, but instead she texts back: Be right there. Want a curry?
I send her a thumbs up and finish off my bottle. By the time Posey arrives, two brown paper bags cradled in her arms, I’m drunk off my ass and singing Britney Spears circa 2001 at the top of my lungs.
“God,” she says. “I don’t even know who you are anymore. You were always more of a Mandy Moore girl.”
I launch into a shrill rendition of “Candy” while I unpack the bags she set on the counter.
“So why are you drunk at six o’clock in the evening?” she says. Her voice is light and teasing, but I know she wants her question answered truthfully.
“David,” I say, opening the plastic tub of rice. “He came into the restaurant.”
She doesn’t look surprised. “Of course he did,” she says. “And what did he say? Does he need you to be a muse for him again?”
I stop in my spooning of curry to look at her.
“I don’t know why he came,” I say. “He just left while I was in the loo without saying goodbye.”
“Figures.” She licks the dishing spoon clean and I make a disgusted face. “Artists are dramatic that way.”
I reluctantly tell her about the slip of paper he left with the number 49 written on it. I figured she’d make fun of me for not remembering what it meant, but she looks thoughtful instead.
“It’s not an anniversary date then?”
I shake my head. “No. And I’ve ruled out apartment numbers, bus numbers, inside jokes, and songs.”
“Mayb
e that’s it then. He’s writing a new song and giving you ample warning.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s it. There’s something I’m missing.”
“So why not just e-mail the guy and ask?”
“I feel stupid, I guess. I feel as if I’m supposed to know.”
Posey shakes her head. “Your inability to communicate is going to fuck up your life for good, you know that? And where’s that wanker boyfriend of yours? You walk out on him too?”
“Ethan found out I met with David and won’t talk to me.”
Posey closes her eyes like my drama is overwhelming her. “I suppose you haven’t contacted him either to talk things over.”
“He’s the one mad at me!”
“Oh my God, Yara! You’re such a narcissist. You met with another man—one you used to be in love with—and didn’t tell Ethan about it. How do you expect him to feel? That’s not how a partnership works. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but now seems like the time to apologize to him if you’d like to salvage that relationship.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know if I want to. Maybe it just ran its course.”
Posey looks dumbfounded. She sets her fork down and just sits there staring at me.
Atheists Who Kneel and Pray Page 18