by Lila Savage
She always left the newspaper for Bryn, his potential interest in it kept her subscribing even when she sought corners to cut, because he had once said he missed it, confessed with a wistfulness he seldom showed. She didn’t think he read it, really, it seemed he couldn’t focus on much of anything with Jill messing about, grabbing things from his hands, finding liquids to pour out and solids to crumple. Since these interruptions didn’t prevent Ella from resuming her reading once they were resolved, she assumed there was more to it than that, though she didn’t allow herself to put the obvious name to it, which was, of course, depression.
· 10 ·
This job Ella had been doing for years, it was pink-collar, no doubt about it; it was utterly, overwhelmingly, women’s work. She sliced sandwiches on white bread into four neat triangles, and she ironed handkerchiefs, and she baked dozens and dozens of cookies. She stripped and made beds, singles, doubles, kings and queens, and some liked the sheets tucked in at the end of the bed so nothing migrated as they tossed and turned, and some liked the sheets untucked so they could move, but no one was shy about letting Ella know their preference. Ella also polished shoes, sewed on missing buttons, and switched out winter and summer clothes as the seasons changed, only to switch them back again, and she made meat loaf that got eaten and salads that didn’t, and she cut gruesome toenails with cheerful composure, and shaved men’s faces, and even one woman’s legs. (“I feel so feminine now!” the woman had declared, joyfully.) She bathed men and women alike, which was sensitive, slippery work, but less difficult than convincing them to shower at all. She changed enormous disposable briefs, heavy with urine so dark it was almost brown, and wiped poorly cleaned bottoms with damp cloths pinched between gloved fingers.
Caregiving work was women’s work, and yet Bryn did it without question. He and Nick, strapping men over six feet tall, would hose Jill down together once a week in the shower while she screamed bloody murder. He cooked her meals and washed her clothes, and felt her forehead to see if she had a fever, and selected her outfits from the now-stained and newly ill-fitting assortment that remained from her former life. When Ella entered the scene, she took pleasure in selecting new clothes at the thrift store for her, and she and Bryn would marvel, once they got home, at how different size 6 jeans could be, depending on the brand. Bryn and Ella and Jill would sit at the kitchen table and sip their tea, or, in Jill’s case, gulp and abandon it, or plunge her hand into it. They would talk about the best way to grill eggplant or the ideal way to boil an egg, and whether Jill had recently had a bowel movement, and speculate if there was a dentist, anywhere, who would brave the horrors of Jill’s decaying mouth.
From Bryn, over the months, Ella learned that it needed to be hot to grow good tomatoes, and that the only grapefruits worth eating were from Texas, and how to differentiate cedar planks from pine. She also learned that a man could demonstrate his love for a woman with the alert practicality and dutiful nurturing Ella had only ever observed the other way around. It so moved and surprised Ella that she was forced to wonder why. Undoubtedly other men found themselves in similar roles, but the abstract love of strangers had meant little to Ella, while this love she observed so intimately it was almost as though she absorbed its warmth. Why was this so startling? Did she think so little of men that it surprised her when they displayed the decency she would expect from a woman? Or did she think so little of women that they didn’t warrant tender, self-sacrificing care from a man? It was both. It was neither. Together, Bryn and Jill swung quiet, graceful blows to a secret suspicion of hers, one she had nurtured through the years: that men’s romantic love for women was, at best, improbable.
This sour little grimace of a theory wasn’t one Ella had lost much sleep over. She had liked and wanted both men and women often enough over the years, and, often enough, they had liked and wanted her, but in the end, it had been Alix’s love that mattered, and hypothetical love between heterosexuals had become something uninteresting to spend much time thinking about, at least until now. Newly confronted with her prejudice, she sent an exploratory feeler into the why of it, or maybe, more accurately, the when. She couldn’t really remember a time before she knew that being female put her on the fringes of things. In elementary school, the figurative boys’ club that seemed to sit in the center of life was endlessly tantalizing—what were they doing in there? Why wasn’t she invited? But it wasn’t until adolescence that she began to feel the anemia, the slow, internal bleed of shame that still left her pallid and diminished. When had the ulcer begun? Perhaps at ten, when she and her best guy friend, Tim, had been joyfully hollering and roughhousing with the youth pastor and her mother had pulled her aside, whispering, “You’re too old now to wrestle with grown men.” Perhaps when Tim, a secret double agent, had reported back from the boys’ club at school, “Jeremiah told all the guys that your boobs are nice and big and it’s a shame you’re too fat.” That had been when she was twelve. By thirteen, she expected to be sexualized with a gleeful kind of disgust, glances and comments equal parts hunger and disparagement. By college she was accustomed to the jocks who mocked her with blearily drunken venom even as they propositioned her, bloodshot eyes already removing her dress with clumsy violence, and the more insidious damage of, at twenty-three, being courted by an attractive, charming man who only ever wanted to see her in the privacy of his apartment.
None of that was the worst of it. The worst of it, as Ella saw it, was not knowing what bits of her psyche were herself and what bits were scar tissue, and also, of not knowing how to circumvent the damage done to her own sexual wiring. Was Ella naturally kind and gentle, or had the culture made her so, worn her down like beach glass, pushed her to her knees, forever eager to please? Why could she feel sexy—even with a woman—only with her breasts pushed forward and her hips tipped back, a sultry pout on her pretty face? That was all learned, of course, but it seemed it couldn’t be unlearned, Ella had tried, and trying had only rendered her emotionally frayed and sexually closed. If Ella couldn’t untangle any of this, how could anyone else hope to? Even the men who had believed they loved her, what was it that they had loved? The supplicating Ella on her knees? The teasing pout, poised to wrap around their cocks? There were no threads to parse for the authentic self; even a critique of her supplicating pose was a form of misogyny, as far as Ella was concerned, for who was any man to criticize the person she now couldn’t help but be? It was a hopeless state of affairs. It was, at best, an improbable love.
Enter Bryn’s love for Jill. Routinely now he fished her turds out of the bathtub, he held her close when she wept, despite the smell of death that continually wafted from her neglected gums. He loved her in a hopeless way, and he showed it through the Sisyphean tasks of her daily care. It changed Ella, in a small but significant way. It didn’t make her less angry, although it funneled the scope of her anger. Something shifted there, some distance became smaller, some wound still failed to heal yet ceased to be nursed with quite the same glittering-eyed mistrust. She began to feel that perhaps she and Alix were not so different from Bryn and Jill after all. Part of what stirred Ella’s tenderness for Alix’s future, aging self was a resentful anticipation of the sexual scorn of men, of the invisibility aging women experienced, yet here was Bryn, patiently tending the haggard physical shell of the young woman he had married decades before. There was no practiced performance of femininity required of Jill, no masterful erotic agenda being imposed by Bryn. Their roles were stripped genderless through a wildfire of loss, standing stark where lush growth might have hidden predators, there was only charred and shivering sufferer and co-sufferer, lover and beloved.
· 11 ·
Ella’s bike broke on her way to work: the flat of the pedal snapped off, leaving only the rounded metal pin it had spun on. She could still ride it, but it was clumsy, dangerous going, her shoe slid forward and back over the pin as if she were trying to scrape it clean, and it became doubly indulgent to coast down hi
lls, without the strain of momentum or the treacherous movement of her foot.
When she arrived, she told Bryn immediately, as if he were her mother and therefore best involved in any sort of problem-solving from the get-go. He strode over to her bike like a father to an automobile with a mysterious leak, a quarter concerned, a quarter disapproving, half eager to get his hands dirty fixing something. There was little he could do without a new pedal, however, and he soon rejoined Ella and Jill inside.
“They might have something at the bike co-op,” Bryn said. “They let you fix bikes there for free, they have parts, tools.” Ella looked at him with polite doubt. Was she going to ride a broken bike there as the sun set when her shift ended? Would she know what to do with the tools? Clearly not.
“We can throw it in the back of the truck,” Bryn said. “You can sit with Jill, and I can go in and check things out.” The rightness of this solution filled Ella with relief, though the circumstances made her hesitant. She was there to work for Bryn, but here he was, offering the time up to work for her. She sensed it would be embarrassing for him if she phrased her concerns so baldly, especially since she intended to accept his offer. Instead of her usual, mother-instilled habit of declining hospitality twice before accepting—“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly take any of your cake. Oh, absolutely I’m certain, but thank you so much for offering. Well, perhaps, if you insist, but only a taste”—she jumped straight into shy, heartfelt gratitude. “Oh, that would be so sweet, if you really wouldn’t mind.” They swapped Jill’s tattered slippers for shoes and piled into the truck, bike in the back, Jill firmly sandwiched in the middle, not at all where she thought she belonged. Jill loved to sit in the truck, or perhaps love wasn’t the word, for what did any of them know of her pleasures or motives these days? She often slipped into the passenger seat of the parked but unlocked truck and shut the door, leaving Bryn and Ella chatting in the yard. Was she cold? Was she trying to ensure that Bryn couldn’t leave without her? Did she think she had somewhere to go? There was no way of knowing, no one to ask.
Each time the three of them got into the truck, it was the same struggle to move Jill out of the passenger seat that had always been hers. Of course, Ella could have sat in the middle, for Jill had never tried to open the car door when it was moving, and she had ready access to the handle whenever Ella wasn’t with her, but no one seriously considered this. It would have been too awkward, squished together shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, Bryn’s hand moving against Ella’s knee every time he shifted gears. Just not seriously considering it was a little tense, actually; Bryn didn’t look at Ella as he pleaded and prodded to get Jill to scoot over, a note of urgency creeping into his soothing tone, with Ella standing at a slight distance, arms crossed, as though this had nothing to do with her, Bryn and Ella both afraid Ella would finally, reluctantly, offer to sit bitch.
When they got to the bike co-op parking lot, Bryn swung out of the driver’s seat and lifted Ella’s clunky bike out of the truck bed with a careful ease that seemed at odds with the bike’s heaviness. This dissonance struck Ella as somehow representative of the whole situation. She would have been shy to bring any bike into the co-op, but the unloveliness of the one she had would not have been the reason. It was, however, the reason she was embarrassed for Bryn, in his simple, broken-in button-down and beautifully frayed jeans, and the plain gold band that was his wedding ring. What had this cheap, shabby women’s bike to do with him? Kindness, she thought, and that stilled her fretting, or at least the abstract dimension of it, for Jill grew increasingly distracting beside her.
It seemed like ages had passed since she’d watched Bryn wheel in through the front door across the lot, but then, at last, he came out and strode toward them, empty-handed. He reported back to Ella with a pessimism that was almost cheerful, like a plumber telling you how very dire and expensive your problem is, although glad for the job just the same. He had been digging through their enormous bin of used pedals, looking for the right type that would also attach to the correct side. No luck yet, but he would keep at it. He seemed invigorated by the challenge, and Ella sensed he liked the masculine camaraderie of the co-op, broad-knuckled hands dark with grease, guys giving each other a good-natured hard time just for the hell of it.
Ella kept Jill inside the truck for as long as she possibly could, not that it was either easy or pleasant. They were parked in the shade but the air felt close in the small cab, even with the windows cracked. Jill squirmed and muttered, “And why? And why? Go go go go. And you have to tell them. Mine. Mine.”
“Bryn will be back soon,” Ella soothed, uncertain if Jill even knew she was addressing her, since they were sitting side by side, so that it was even harder than usual to make eye contact. “He’s just fixing my bike—it won’t take very long. He’ll be right back, and then we’ll go home.”
“Get out. And I don’t want to. And I don’t want to.” Jill unbuckled her seat belt and reached for the driver’s-side door handle as Ella stretched across her to lock the door. Ella knew Jill would eventually remember how to unlock it again, and she considered how if Jill were a small child watching her lock the door it would likely cue her in on what must be done to unlock it. As it was, cause and effect seemed mysterious to Jill; she seemed to exist in a reality where actions—including her own—were completely unrelated to one another, each floating in time in its own sealed vacuum. Jill flipped and flipped the door handle; she scrabbled her hands over the surface of the door, across the window crank and the map in the pocket. Eventually her finger caught under the lock and flipped it up, but Ella pressed it down before Jill’s hand made it back to the handle. It clearly agitated her that Ella was sitting so close, only Ella needed to be able to reach the lock.
She shifted her body so that her attention seemed focused away from Jill, out the windshield and toward the trees that sheltered them. She kept her arm snaked discreetly behind Jill without touching her and wondered how long she could possibly sit there poised to press the lock. She was grateful Jill hadn’t figured out how to honk the horn, though of course it could happen at any moment, and then what? Jill shifted her attention to rattling the air vents with irritated purposefulness, ignoring the turn signal arm and radio dials. She glared at Ella and twisted as far from her as she could. It was unpleasant to feel so disliked. Ella tried speaking soothingly again, “Bryn will be back any minute, and then we’ll go home. He’ll be right back, I promise.” Ella didn’t even know if Bryn’s name meant anything to Jill but she hoped her tone conveyed reassurance, suggested she and Jill weren’t in opposition.
Ella’s arm began to ache, and she considered her options. Jill was happy enough to sit in the truck at home; perhaps if she were alone in the cab, she would settle in. Ella slid across the seat to the passenger door and opened it quickly, hopping out and immediately swinging it shut. She decided to stand back just barely out of Jill’s sight line, even though it left both door handles unguarded.
If this worked at all, it was only for a little bit, because it seemed barely moments had passed before Ella was forced to lean against the door on the driver’s side to keep Jill from slipping out. Jill complained loudly, her voice sharp but not panicked, “What! What! And it’s mine! And it’s mine! Go! Go! Go! And go! What!” Ella felt as though she were going about this all wrong, as though someone who wasn’t her would know how to placate and distract. Force seemed like such a last resort, so bullyish and lazy, and Ella almost felt as though she shared in Jill’s disgust for this lumbering, awkward girl leaning rude and heavy against the truck’s hot and dusty metal. Perhaps they ought to take a little walk along the edge of the small pond behind the co-op.
Ella opened the door. “Should we go for a walk? Come on, Jill,” she said, and she stepped aside with a gesture of invitation. How do you walk with someone who doesn’t want to walk with you? You follow them, and when you want them to turn you step in front of them, hoping they start av
oiding you in another direction. This was not a foolproof system, but somehow they jerked strangely across the side of the lot to the path by the pond. Ella felt fortunate that Jill didn’t seem interested in leaving the path; she only seemed intent on avoiding Ella, and so they made their way slowly in the same direction, with Ella trailing.
The water looked murky and the September sun was hot on the goose-shit-smeared tar, but the breeze off the water was cool and pleasant. Did Jill feel her sweat-dampened hair lift and ruffle pleasingly off her neck and temples as Ella did? Could she observe the sunlight on the rippling water, the movement of the grass below and the branches above? Both her posture and her muttering still communicated only distress. Ella began to wonder if they were getting too far for Bryn to easily spot them should he discover the truck sitting empty. There was a bench beside a weeping willow just ahead that looked inviting but Ella couldn’t imagine convincing Jill to sit beside her, even for a very short time.
Reluctantly she sped up, stepping in front of Jill, who then angrily backed away before turning around and moving in the general direction of the parking lot. Having a destination instead of merely ambling proved much more difficult to strategize toward; Ella had to curtail Jill’s listing and turning by menacing bodily in all the directions that didn’t lead to the lot. Eventually, though, they neared the truck. Unfortunately, Jill was not interested in resuming her captivity, instead making her way toward the construction site that sprawled on the parking lot’s far side. This was so stressful it was almost unreal. Ella’s hands and the small of her back were wet with sweat. She tried to corral Jill with a new desperation, but Jill was like a frightened animal, thwarted in her will, and she snarled and yelled and dodged with kinetic illogic, sprinting onto the dirty boards laid over a deep construction-related gully.