by Cathy Lamb
I calmly turned and packed the treasured things that were mine before I met him—my favorite books and journals and gifts from my family. He trailed me around, naked, his dick now down and shrunken. He had been so proud of his dick, talking about how big it was, how talented he was in bed.
“I’m sorry, oh, my God, I’m sorry, Meggie. You made me do this. You travel a lot, you don’t call me enough, you don’t pay me enough attention, I don’t feel loved . . .” Then, when I laughed, a bit maniacally, he said, “You have to take some responsibility for this.”
I laughed again and ignored him.
When he could tell he wasn’t getting anywhere with that, he tried a new tact. I was used to that. One argument doesn’t work, switch to another one. He’d twist what he was saying, twist what I was saying. He’d attack, lie, minimalize, blame me, backpedal, apologize profusely, compliment me, cajole, plead, confuse, attack again. Round and round.
“I won’t do it again,” he whined. “I promise. I’ll be faithful to you. This is the worst mistake of my life. It only happened once. I love you!”
I carried two suitcases out to my junky car. Luckily, all my film equipment was still in my trunk. Aaron fought me all the way, a pair of jeans now on. I put a suitcase in my car, he took one out. I put it back in, wrenching it from his hands, and he took it out, crying, almost shrieking. Again and again he blocked me from leaving until I punched him in the face. I was leaving. I would not let him stop me.
For a moment he was shocked, then he hit me with a closed fist and I went flying into the car and onto the ground.
It hurt like heck, but it solidified what I’d done.
“Shit! I’m sorry, Meggie!” He tried to help me up, fumbling when I pushed his hands away. “I can’t believe I hit you. Don’t leave me, don’t leave me. Please, I am begging you!”
He stood in my way, my head reeling, and I shoved him. Two of my neighbors sprinted up. They had never liked Aaron, because he is a prick. They held him back while I packed my suitcases and got in the car.
“Thank you, Tyrone and Johnny.” I blew them a kiss.
“Keep in touch!” they said, waving cheerily as Aaron swore and struggled between them.
I drove off. In the rearview window I saw Tyrone and Johnny let Aaron go. The tattoo girl hung out on our porch, smoking a cigarette in one of Aaron’s T-shirts. I felt sorry for her. She reminded me of a young me.
Aaron swore up a storm. He tried to hit Tyrone, that black feather with the broken tip flying through the air. Tyrone decked him. Aaron’s feet flipped into the air and he slammed into the ground. He scrambled up, swung, and Johnny decked him, his feet flying up again.
I had wanted out.
My face was throbbing, on fire, but I was out. I was gone.
Good-bye, Aaron!
I had finished what I needed to do with my most recent film, so I drove home to Oregon after leaving Aaron. He called, texted, e-mailed me. I blocked my e-mail. Finally I took his call. “You can marry the girl who was on top of your face. I’m out.”
“Why can’t you forgive me? Why can’t you work this out? Why can’t you give me a second chance?”
“Because I don’t want to, Aaron. I’ve given you a hundred second chances. I don’t want to be married to you. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want you to contact me at all again, ever.”
“What the—”
I hung up. I blocked his phone number.
He flew to Oregon. When he arrived, I left and went to the beach for three days and ran through the waves. My mother called the police and they hauled him off.
When he flew up again two weeks later, I went to the mountains and hiked through a meadow filled with wildflowers. My mother again had to call the police.
He resorted to writing letters. I burned them without opening them.
I hired Cherie Poitras, a tough-talking, gun-slinging divorce attorney, and she got the paperwork rolling. I knew that Aaron would be served soon.
I went to Alaska to start the process of making a film about Native Alaskans and their lives in a tiny, remote village, covered in snow, prowling with polar bears, and sunk in poverty.
My mother called me two weeks after I arrived. Aaron’s doctor had called her, at Aaron’s request.
Aaron had been arrested for getting in a bar fight, then passed out in the police car from too many painkillers. He was recommitted when he wouldn’t stop raving about “My Meggie, My Meggie.”
Aaron lay on top of me. I tried to push him off, but it was futile. His black curls covered my face, the cold chains around his neck settling between my breasts. He giggled, then took the black feather out of his hair and stroked my naked body, from forehead to toes, up and down again and again, slowly, seductively, waiting for me to be seduced.
When I would not kiss him back, when I would not French kiss him, his dark eyes grew furious. He forced my mouth open with one hand and with the other he rammed the chains down my throat. I gagged and struggled, but he held me tight until I had swallowed all of them. When the chains were gone, he took the black feather and held it over my head. It turned into a wriggling rat. He dropped the rat into my mouth.
I swallowed the rat, too.
He locked me in my closet where that thing was hidden.
I heard him giggling again.
Tory and I walked out of the factory, back to our building, with our arms around Lacey. The snowflakes were thicker, the streets glazed with layers of ice and snow, inches of it. It was the most snow I’d ever seen in Oregon.
“Be careful, Lacey,” Tory snapped. “Don’t walk so fast. You have to slow down. It’s icy out here. Don’t be your usual clumsy self.”
“I’m not clumsy!”
“You are. Aw, crap.” Tory lost her footing and generously let go of Lacey so as not to bring her down. Tory landed on her rear. Lacey and I bent to help her. She refused Lacey’s help, saying, “Hello? Use your brain. You’re pregnant, remember?” but took my hand. My cell phone rang when Tory was back on her feet.
“It’s Leonard Tallchief,” I told Lacey and Tory. “We’re going to discuss the desserts for The Fashion Story. You two go on. I’ll be right there. Hi, Leonard.” I braced myself. The man is a maniac about making perfect desserts, and the fact that Grandma wanted him for The Fashion Story, well, he was in a jazzed-up tizzy.
Arm in arm Tory and Lacey walked gingerly across the street, fighting about who was more clumsy.
Portland shuts down when there’s snow and ice on the streets, so there was hardly any traffic. We use it as an excuse to stay home and throw snowballs or catch up on stupid reality TV shows.
But not everyone was home. I saw the white truck turn the corner. He wasn’t going fast.
The driver slowed when he saw Lacey and Tory.
“Meggie,” Leonard said. “I’m going to bake three exquisite sample cakes. I want you and Tory and Lacey to come to the restaurant and taste them. Then you choose which type is most scrumptious. I’m going to have different icings, too. Again, which is tastiest? What combination? Finally, we have to look at the aesthetics. What should the cake look like? Six tiered? Shaped like a strawberry? A strawberry field, perhaps, to honor your grandma’s hard work? A bra? A thong?”
The truck tried to stop, but his brakes didn’t work on the ice and he started to skid.
Everything slowed, so slow, slow motion.
“Oh, my God!” I shouted.
“I know!” Leonard wailed back. “I’m so nervous. Anxious. I want this to be perfect, it’s for your grandma, my angel—”
I dropped the phone and my bag. “Go!” I screamed, trying to run toward Lacey and Tory, my feet slipping. “Go Lacey, run! Run, Tory! Run!”
Time slowed, a second became a minute.
They turned around to stare at me, and I screamed. “The truck, the truck!” I pointed at the truck, now skidding down the street sideways. I slipped and fell, my feet going out from underneath me. I landed on my back.
I scramble
d up on my knees, then tried to run again. I had to reach them, had to get Lacey and the baby—
I saw it coming. I saw the trajectory. I saw the inevitability of it all, one slow moment after another.
Tory and Lacey tried to run as the truck careened across the snow and ice, the back end now forward. Lacey fell first, then Tory, right in the truck’s path. Tory tried to stand and yanked at Lacey as I tried to run toward both of them. I slipped again, landed on my stomach, gave up, and crawled.
The driver honked his horn. His tires spun. The ice crackled.
I saw each detail. I had time to see it, as time was no longer normal.
I screamed.
It was too late.
I was too late.
Too slow. I was too slow.
I screamed again, raw and primal, my scream bouncing off the buildings and the snowflakes, high-pitched, desperate.
In a tiny, beige hotel room with a creaky bed in Alaska, in the midst of a roaring blizzard that whitened the view outside my window, I hung up the phone. My mother had told me about Aaron, the painkillers, the bar, the My Meggie part, and being recommitted.
As I listened to the wind howl, I thought about how I’d loved Aaron so much at one time. Loved his smile, his passion, his wit, his brilliance. There was no question that he was one of the most compelling people I’d ever met. He was almost like magic, the way he could attract people to him. And, stuck so often in his own emotional muck, he had a keen, finely honed insight into other people, other problems, other lives, that was attractive.
I lay down on the bed. In the weeks since I’d left Aaron, I’d gained ten pounds and felt so much better. I could swallow normally. My hair was no longer falling out. My cheeks actually had some pink in them, and it wasn’t all because of the fierce Alaskan wind.
I thought of the films we’d made together.
I thought of how he’d gotten into my head, then spun me around, flinging me this way and that. I’d allowed him to get inside my brain, my voice, myself. I let myself be trapped.
I knew Aaron.
He would expect me to fly down like a winged angel to his rescue.
I studied the blizzard swirling outside my window. I listened to the howling wind.
I felt sick at the thought of being with Aaron again, weak. Anxious and panicked.
I couldn’t do it. I could not survive any more time with him. I picked up a camera with trembling hands and wrote down who I needed to talk to tomorrow, what questions I needed to ask. I felt happy thinking about my new documentary and what truths it would tell. I felt myself coming back to me. The other day in the village I’d even bought a bracelet with a J on it for Josephine and two pairs of earrings.
I decided not to fail myself. I stayed in Alaska.
I screamed, the sound piercing, from the depths of my soul.
I saw Tory shove Lacey in front of her as the truck spun three hundred and sixty degrees, out of control.
The truck hit Tory on her side, threw her up in the air, and deposited her on a parked car, as if she were no more than a black-haired doll. I could not see Lacey at all. I didn’t know where she was. The truck continued sliding until it smashed into the next car. I crawled across the street on all fours, screaming Lacey’s and Tory’s names.
I saw people rushing toward us as fast as they could on ice, two falling. The door to Lace, Satin, and Baubles burst open as our employees stumbled out. I reached Lacey first. She was clutching her stomach, gasping for breath.
“Lacey.” My voice cracked as I wrapped my arms around her. “Honey . . . Lacey.”
“Get an ambulance,” she whispered, her face pale, pasty. “Get an ambulance, now. Please. Hurry, Meggie, tell them to hurry.”
I didn’t need to call. People already had their cell phones out. Lance Turner wrapped his arms around Lacey, too. The Petrelli sisters slipped before reaching us on their knees. They all took off their sweaters and covered Lacey.
“Hang on, honey. Hang on. We’re getting help.” I put my shaking hand over Lacey’s on her stomach, my forehead against hers, my arm around her back. “Breathe in, breathe out. Relax. Relax for the baby. . . .”
Our tears ran together.
“Where’s Tory?” she gasped. “Where is she?”
“She’s . . .”
Lacey’s face paled further. “Is she all right?” She burst into tears. “Is she all right?”
“Hold on, Lacey, I’m sure she’s fine.” Oh, I didn’t think that at all. I had a vision of Tory flying through the air. I was panicked, frantic. I was with Lacey, but I wanted to be with Tory, too. Both of them. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh God, no.
Lacey recognized what I wasn’t saying in the midst of this tragic chaos. “Go see her. Go, go!”
“No, I won’t.” My voice was raw. “I won’t leave you.”
“Meggie, help her. You must. Go!”
She doubled up, gripping her stomach, and let loose a ragged cry. I curled myself around her, devastated, Lance on the other side.
Aaron called me from the clinic. I didn’t have that number, so I hadn’t blocked it.
He was well versed in how to get to me, on how to get me rescuing him again, coddling, praising, encouraging.
I refused to engage in it.
“How are you, My Meggie?”
“I’m fine.”
“You heard that I had to go back in the hospital?”
He knew I’d heard. It was his opening to get me to say what he wanted to hear.
“I heard.”
“Too many painkillers to kill the pain that you caused me, My Meggie.”
“You caused it yourself. I believe you had your face in another woman’s vagina.”
“One mistake.”
“No, there have been hundreds of mistakes. I have to go, Aaron.”
“What do you mean you have to go?” I heard the snap in his voice. “Are you with someone else?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He threw a fit. Swearing. Stomping like a bull with an arrow stuck in its hide.
“Aaron,” I interrupted, knowing that being this adamant about how I felt was best when he was already in a secure setting with a gaggle of psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors. “Don’t call me again.”
I hung up. Blocked the number.
He tried to call using different lines. I blocked them all.
I went back to work when the blizzard died down and the howling stopped.
I bought two new sweaters. One red, one green, and two scarves.
I looked at myself in the mirror that night. Not so skinny. A red sweater. A fuzzy orange and red scarf. Huge silver hoop earrings.
I smiled.
Free. I was free.
Josephine’s mother was free.
The sirens screamed from two directions.
“Baby’s coming,” Lacey whispered, gritting her teeth in pain. “Contractions. It’s too early, too early! It’s coming!”
“Hang in there, Lacey, the doctors will help. They’ll help—”
She shook her head, tears racing from her eyes into her red curls. “Meggie, go and check on Tory. It’s worse for me,” she panted, and I knew she was in labor. “Not knowing . . . she was hit, check on her, help Tory—”
Lance’s arms were securely around Lacey. “I have her, Meggie,” he said. “Trust me.” The Petrellis were there, too. “We have her, dear.” They reached for Lacey as I left. Abigail and Maritza met me, and we slid-tripped over to Tory.
Tory was unconscious on the back of the car, sprawled across a broken windshield. Larissa, Tato, Delia, Lele, and Tinsu were with her, hands holding her still.
She was bleeding profusely from her head. I put my hand carefully right over that bleeding wound. Her arm was set at a wrong angle. No one had dared move her.
“Tory.” I laid my face right next to hers, cheek to cheek, her blood hot, streaming, horrible, seeping through my fingers. Too much blood, oh, too much. “I love you, Tory. Hang on, honey. H
ang on.”
She was so pale, absolutely still.
She looked dead.
I could feel her breath on my cheek, but dear God, she looked dead.
No, please, no, Tory. I need you, I love you.
Sister, I love you.
Six months later I flew from Anchorage to Los Angeles the day before Aaron and I were to meet to sign the divorce papers. Cherie Poitras, my attorney, would fly down to join me. It was all simple, as Aaron and I didn’t have anything in terms of assets. We had blown through all of the money I’d brought into the marriage on his medical care, his films, and his credit card that he continually racked up. It was a formality to break up the marriage.
Aaron asked me to meet him at the apartment. He called me from a friend’s phone so I didn’t recognize the number and answered it. “I found some things of yours that your mother and grandma gave you.”
“What?”
“Come and get them.” He hung up.
I shouldn’t have gone, but I wanted whatever it was. I felt like I was contaminating my mother and grandma to leave anything of theirs with him.
After being in Alaska, I felt like a new person. It was like I’d shed a nightmare, a rat’s claws, and a dark, suffocating cape that wrapped tight around my body and squeezed.
Until . . .
The paramedics carefully put Lacey in one ambulance, Tory in the other. I went with Tory, holding her hand, pleading with her to wake up, while the paramedics went to work. I heard words like “head injury . . . low blood pressure . . . okay, she’s crashing . . . move people, move now,” and I watched them do CPR.
I watched, shocked and panicked, as they pumped air into my still and silent sister. When we arrived at the hospital, she was whisked away by a group of doctors and nurses shouting orders and information, and I sank against the wall, ill with worry, stopped by a kind but forceful nurse from following Tory.