A Little Hope

by Ethan Joella

  14. Watercolor

  Hannah wakes up on the morning of her twenty-fifth birthday to the sound of her neighbors fighting again. She peels the sleeping mask off her eyes. She turns to look at the clock: 9 a.m.

  She never hears the exact words the couple says, but loud mumbles vibrate through the walls of her studio apartment, the high tone of the woman who shrieks when she’s apparently making a point, and the man who replies in grunts that sound like, “Chamomile, chamomile.” She isn’t even sure if they speak English or not, but they fight often. Sometimes they just scream all day. They must work at odd times, because for hours the silence is so dull against her beige walls that she thinks they’ve moved.

  She flips the covers back, and today marks a slight difference for her. How did this happen? She feels relieved. A long-carried weight of disappointment is gone. She isn’t expecting Luke to be next to her. Lucas Jefferson Crowley. Not in bed. Not fumbling with the coffeemaker. Not on the phone in a hoarse morning voice trying to straighten out a late credit card payment. She doesn’t expect him to be anywhere today, her birthday, and she is not wrong.

  Birthdays. On her twelfth birthday, the cop took her mother, barefoot, away in his car for writing bad checks. They were living outside Las Vegas then. Hannah remembers running after them with her mother’s shoes in her hand. The dry air. The two stray cats that lived outside their small house. “Get the hell inside,” her mother yelled, mascara smeared around her eyes. On her twentieth birthday, her friend Sammi, who is not her friend anymore, took her to a clinic for an abortion. Two years ago, on another birthday, she woke up and thought of jumping out her mother’s twelfth-floor apartment window in New Haven. Splat. Or writing a long note and getting drunk and letting the bathtub fill up over her head. But she got dressed and went to work her shift at the restaurant, and that day, she met Luke.

  The new waiter with messy brown hair had scribbled song lyrics on the cardboard back of his order pad. He looked at her when the manager was training him on the POS system and said, “Smile. You’ll get more tips, won’t you?” He was older, but looked adorable in his white shirt and black tie, the small apron around his waist. And though it was probably a year and a half until he held her hand when they left their shift together, and she walked home with him and the moon was a thin sliver and the stars were so bright and steady and she stayed the night at his place, there was something about meeting him that first day that propelled her along. That made her forget about jumping, about letting the bathwater finish her. She didn’t want to be forgotten anymore. Did that make sense? His jokes at work, his eye rolls at customers, his whispers of “Don’t trip” when she was carrying a big tray—it all made her like the world better.

  There are seven cracks in the apartment ceiling, and a hole in the wall where the cable was ripped out (she stuffed a bandanna inside this in case a mouse could poke through). The apartment has a hint of garlic smell that never goes away, and she has a small kitchenette with a dish drainer that came with the place that she is never able to clear because there isn’t enough room in the three cupboards for her mismatched mugs and pots and pans. Now the yelling next door has died down. Or the woman might be crying. There is silence, then an occasional sob-like noise—as if someone is saying their last words through a gag. But she is proud to be here.

  She found the apartment in early November. Luke went with her. The rooms echoed as they walked through it. “I like the high windows,” he said, and she started to imagine how the place could look like Carrie Bradshaw’s in Sex and the City with a little imagination. She pictured holding a coffee cup as the sun warmed her shoulders. She thought the far corner would be a good spot to set up an easel for the watercolor painting she was never great at, and maybe Luke would read the paper on a chair with an ottoman she imagined would fit perfectly in the carved-out nook by the small bookcase. She’d walk by him and kiss his head and that would be the start of her adult life. He would stay over more and more, wouldn’t he? He would play songs on the guitar while she made them pasta and poured wine.

  She didn’t imagine the clutter she has now: the mismatched sofa and chairs that sag, the cheap coffee table with the split wood on the leg, the TV stand that serves as a catch-all for mail and her bracelets and hair things, the clothes she has draped over the coat rack in the middle of the room because her closet is too small. And the bed in the corner, with its rumpled blankets and shabby pillows. She didn’t imagine it this way.

  She didn’t imagine waking up alone like this four months later.

  Happy birthday.

  She washes her face and fills a big glass of water, cracking ice cubes out of the plastic tray.

  Is it odd she didn’t expect Luke today? Almost like she went to bed sad and broken but woke up with some of that washed out of her? She feels guilty for beginning to be over him.

  Is that what the brain is programmed to do? Wait and wait and then finally give up—like the story of the dog she saw once on the news that would wait under the tree for its owner who died?

  She looks in the freezer where she keeps the coffee (the fair trade kind that Luke always bought) and then remembers she used the last of it yesterday. Fuck my life, she thinks. Her grandfather hated when she didn’t plan. She closes her eyes and sees him—dead, like Luke. His pressed flannel shirts. His red suspenders he loved wearing. Her Pappy. She could use him now. She would love to be at his house while he put out a plate of those butter cookies he bought in a big blue tin. “You didn’t eat nothin’,” he’d say, and push a few more her way. She’d lick the sugar off the pretzel-shaped cookie and smile. He saved her so many times from her rotten mother. From all the times she’d fallen. “You’ll see it the right way one day, and it will all come together,” he said as he poured her coffee from a thermos and smiled.

  She has eighty-three dollars and twenty-eight cents in her checking account. She is barely making enough money processing loan paperwork at the Kia dealership during the day, taking odd shifts at the restaurant to keep afloat. God forbid her car needs tires or the pain in her tooth gets any worse.

  She shouldn’t have gotten this place. She was overreaching. She wanted Luke to be impressed. Was he? She thought the apartment could seal this deal, that she could keep him with a respectable home. She never had a respectable home before. With this apartment, she wanted to be someone he could admire and fully love, the one who could save him.

  She wants coffee so badly. The space between her eyes starts to hurt, which seems ridiculous. But it does. Her body needs it. She closes her eyes and thinks of the smell, the hot dribble and slurp the coffeemaker makes. Maybe she has transferred everything, every craving over to coffee. She barely eats these days. And no funny stuff. She has a glass of wine here or there, but not a joint, nothing, nothing since Luke’s accident three months ago. She promised him that, but beyond that promise, she has no desire for any of it anymore. It ruins you. She doesn’t want to be ruined.

  Three months with no Luke. It is March, and she is ready for spring and summer. She needs them to come.

  She stands at the kitchen counter in her flimsy T-shirt and the scrub pants her mother found for her at a thrift store.

  Scrub pants. The young doctor in his scrub pants in December who put a hand on each of her shoulders and explained carefully what had happened to Luke. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he said.

  Yes, yes, she understood.

  Understood that she had hoped for too much. The knowledge of this makes her numb, makes her half angry. When he died, the chances of her rising above who she was seemed over: the girl who the other girls called a skank in high school. The girl who got C’s and D’s and never thought of going to college. She always felt discounted, cheap. Yes, she was a cheap-purse, cheap-lipstick, forgettable girl. Worse when she dyed the edges of her hair pink, when she put in more than one earring and got that tattoo of her grandfather’s signature across her wrist.

  Once she had shown Luke a brochure for an evening co
llege program where you could get credit for life experiences and start to earn your bachelor’s degree. “Cool,” he’d said. “Go for it.” College was no big deal to him. He had a degree. His sister had a degree. They were from a good family. Upper middle class: a basketball hoop in the driveway, a green lawn. She imagined taking classes at night, holding a book to her chest in the apartment as she quizzed herself on art history or botany terms. She imagined furiously punching numbers into a calculator and saying something like, I’m just double-checking my stats. She imagined learning, finally, what the hell a sonnet was. Or getting further with her watercolor painting. She was relieved that Luke thought she could take on college, but at the same time, she wanted more credit for even thinking about it. Was he impressed, or didn’t he even care?

  She brushes her teeth, twists her hair into a bun, and slips into a long sweater with tights. Her boots are imitation Uggs. Fuggs, Luke called them. She will buy herself a hot cup of coffee for her birthday, from the good shop down the street: Annabelle’s Brew House. She will even splurge on a pastry or croissant. She wishes she could go to a place like that every day. To stop being meager. She hates being meager. Did Luke think she was meager? This makes her heart hurt again for a moment. She knows she’s meager. Whenever she has pretended she isn’t, she feels like an imposter.

  She moves things around on the TV stand and finds the apartment key. She slings her purse over her shoulder and opens the door.

  “Oh, hello.”

  She jumps back. She is surprised to find Mrs. Crowley standing there. Luke’s mom. A woman with high cheekbones and tinted eyeglasses. She holds a drink carrier with two cups from Dunkin’ Donuts and a large shopping bag. “I hope this isn’t a bad time, dear,” she says.

  “Oh no. Not at all.” Coffee? Is this really for her? From this woman? She can’t believe Mrs. Crowley is bringing her a treat. Has anyone ever done this? And on her birthday, no less. Maybe this year will be different, she thinks. Maybe this is the start of something.

  But Mrs. Crowley has always made her nervous. She feels every centimeter of not measuring up to this woman’s high standards. In the time she and Luke dated, she never ate a meal with his mom. Luke brought her home just once in December: a clean house in that perfect neighborhood, the type of street she never, ever set foot on when she was younger, with a polished dining room table and stiff curtains. Mrs. Crowley was polite but didn’t offer her anything. Didn’t ask her any questions. At the funeral, Mrs. Crowley sat close to Luke’s ex-girlfriend, a veterinarian. A goddamned veterinarian. Really?

  “May I come inside?”

  “Yeah, I was just going to get coffee.”

  “Lucky timing.” She holds up the twin Dunkin’ Donuts cups.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Hannah says. She melts for a moment. This is a big deal. Happy birthday, she thinks. When they step inside, she feels nervous as she closes the door. Something makes her terrified of being alone with Luke’s mom. She is like the scariest teacher from high school, or a head nurse at a hospital who bosses everyone around. She speaks slowly and precisely. She emphasizes each word as though she will refuse to repeat herself later. Hannah looks at her sloppy apartment. Cheap. Unmade bed, all that clutter on the TV stand. This woman must be disgusted. I am not a veterinarian, as you can guess, she wants to say. I don’t have the clean face and honest eyes and good posture that that girl has, she wants to say. I was brought up on SpaghettiOs and Hi-C.

  “I should have phoned you. I apologize.” Mrs. Crowley looks around, lifts her eyebrows for a second, and then puts her stuff (the coffee, the shopping bag) down on the small drop-leaf table. Hannah notices the lint on the floor. Mrs. Crowley wiggles a coffee free from the holder and hands it to Hannah. “I guessed cream and sugar.”

  “Works for me.” She sips the coffee gratefully. Does she look like a beggar who just took a handout? She doesn’t care. She loves Luke’s mom now just for this. Maybe she will start having her coffee this way instead of black. It tastes like a cozy house, like care. She starts to wonder what has brought this woman here, and nervousness fills her body. I am meager, she thinks. This woman knows it. Why am I so meager? And how did she even know where I live?

  Mrs. Crowley sips her own coffee. She gets lipstick on the cup. She breathes. Even her breaths are strong and confident. She gestures toward the shopping bag she brought. “I have some things of, of his.”

  “Oh.” She stops being nervous. This feels nice, like she has, finally, been noticed. She sees Luke’s face so clearly then. He is laughing. He is waltzing by her at the restaurant carrying a tray with mozzarella sticks and dipping sauce. The couple next door makes one sound, and Mrs. Crowley turns her head.

  “I thought you’d like to have them. Mary Jane and I have been getting the apartment cleaned out. Not much there in the way of big stuff, but you know: a thousand little things. I told him once he was a pack rat.” She laughs, but then there is a glimpse, a flash of hurt on her face even the blush can’t hide. Hannah starts to like his mother fully in this moment. Poor woman.

  Hannah loves the coffee against her throat. She loves the perfect sweetness and cream. She is almost finished. She doesn’t know the etiquette. Should she take the stuff out of the bag now or wait until the woman leaves? “He kept a lot of stuff, yeah. Movie tickets, notes, fliers. Yeah.” She scolds herself. Stop saying yeah.

  Mrs. Crowley walks around and looks out the window. “My goodness, I think about him a lot.” She puts her coffee down by the sofa. “You have a nice view here. I like the high windows.”

  “Thanks. And, uh, he said that exact same thing. About the windows.” She lets out a polite laugh.

  “He did?” Mrs. Crowley smiles gratefully. “Oh, that boy.” She sighs. “Anyway, I won’t keep you. I just wanted a quick visit.”

  Hannah feels honored. She can’t believe she has even crossed this woman’s mind. “That was nice. Especially the coffee.”

  “If you don’t want the stuff, don’t keep it for my sake. It’s a sweatshirt, a few pictures of the two of you. A mug with his name on it… just silly stuff, really.” Mrs. Crowley shrugs. She picks up her purse and starts to walk toward the door.

  Hannah watches her. She glances at the stuff in the bag. Junk mostly, the stuff that probably avoided the garbage by a hair. Silly stuff. Did she give the important stuff—his guitar, the Navajo rug, the carved walking stick of his grandfather’s—to the veterinarian with her expensive purse and straight perfect teeth? Probably. It starts to hit her. Why didn’t they invite her to see his apartment one last time? To help them clean it out? She was there more than either of them ever were. She slept beside him in his bed. She bought bananas and oranges and put them on his counter. Was everything she left there—her makeup, a pair of flip-flops, the blanket she bought for their bed—assumed to be trash? She feels goose bumps. Jittery. She feels the way she felt in high school when she wanted to answer a teacher’s question. “I didn’t like it,” she spits out.

  “What?” Mrs. Crowley turns. Her eyes are so focused, intense. She looks half frightened, bracing for something. Hannah’s heart races.

  “I didn’t like how you sat with her the whole time at the funeral. How you touched her shoulder to comfort her. How you introduced her to everyone.” She starts to cry. “I was his girlfriend.”

  Mrs. Crowley doesn’t answer at first. Hannah’s words echo in the quiet apartment. “I’m sorry you feel this way, dear. I was not trying to make you feel bad.”

  “You did! You did.” How did she turn the conversation into this? It had been perfectly polite. The woman was leaving. What made her do this?

  But she can’t stop. She swallows, chooses her words carefully. “My friends kept saying, Isn’t that his mother? Isn’t that his sister? Go sit with them. I couldn’t sit with you. I couldn’t even hug you in the hospital. I had no one to cry with. My mom is a… she doesn’t care. I lost him that night and I had no one. And I know I’m not good enough for you, I’m not the girl a nice g
uy like Luke brings home. You probably wanted to keep him from girls like me. I know this.” She holds the empty coffee cup, and her knees shake.

  “You’re fine, dear.” Mrs. Crowley clears her throat. Her arms are folded tightly across her abdomen. “I just don’t know you. That’s what put us at a disadvantage. I met you only that one time at the house. When we watched him put the star on top of the tree? We never had a chance to get acquainted better.”

  “Because he was ashamed. I bet he had no problem bringing her home. She probably came to Thanksgiving, to Sunday dinners.”

  “Please, dear. I am certainly in no position to explain why I knew Ginger better and longer, but that’s the only defense I can make. I knew her when they were young for a long time. We have history. That is all.” Her purse hangs from her thin shoulder, and she keeps one toe pointed toward the door. “And I am very sorry you felt alone. I don’t think any of us were in the right frame of mind, were we?”

  “I was trying to help him. Did you know he was writing songs again that last month? Beautiful ones. He would sing them to me. I feel so lucky to have been there for that.” She shakes her head. One was about swans he saw on a lake as a child. It broke her heart. “He saved me. When I met him, I wanted to die, and knowing Luke, just knowing him, saved me.”

  “I didn’t know any of this.” Mrs. Crowley compresses her lips. She reaches for a handkerchief and blots her nose. She points to the bag she brought. “I just wanted you to have these things.”

  “He was on his way to see me that night. I loved him.” She stops. “You called her first, didn’t you? To come to the hospital?” She doesn’t stop to register the reaction on Mrs. Crowley’s face, but her mouth is agape, her eyes are reddish. “You can say yes. You can.” She wonders if the neighbors now hear her. Her mumbling through the walls.