The Melting Season

by Jami Attenberg

  I staked out a claim in a corner booth and surrounded myself with my celebrity magazines. Timber had raised the prices with the new menu, but I had an open tab with him as far as he was concerned. When he got too busy, sometimes I helped him out with his books. I ignored his hand on Papi’s ass at night, after he had turned the Open/ Closed sign to Closed on the front door. Once or twice they embraced in front of me. I nodded. There was a little grimace on my face that I hoped I stretched into a smile, but it was not for the reasons you were thinking. They loved each other. It was the love that broke my heart, not the way they expressed it, or whether it was wrong or right. I was jealous is all. I was jealous of anyone who turned things right. It is a tricky thing when you are in the middle of loving and hating someone at the same time. I guess I became a little crazy, me and my magazines all around me, my dusty blond hair down my back, sitting every day in the diner for the whole town to see.

  My sister circled me without actually saying a thing about what had happened. I guess she thought it was enough that she was there for me, and maybe it was. She visited me at the diner after school every day, less to complain about our mother than to whisper about boys. Now that I was a single woman, a brokenhearted woman, she felt more open to talk to me about things besides our family.

  “I like too many people,” she told me on a Friday night, before she went out on a date with a business student from UNL she had met in the parking lot of a boot store in Lincoln. He had rough hands like all the boys around here—he had done his time on the family farm—but he had a bigger vocabulary. “And the problem is it all feels like love. How do you know?” she said. She threw her hands in the air.

  “I do not know,” I said.

  Timber walked over to us and refilled our coffee.

  “How do you know?” she said to him.

  He shrugged. “You just know.”

  “None of us know anything,” I said. The conversation was making me feel tricky and nervous. I did not want to have to answer too many questions. Everything in my life was up for questioning at that moment. There was not a single part of my actions that felt clean or innocent anymore.

  “You know something,” said Timber softly. He had started hugging me every night before I went upstairs.

  “Yeah!” said my sister. “You know plenty of stuff!” She squeezed my hand across the table. I almost cried, then I choked it in.

  I knew nothing. Thomas and I had been children when we met and we were still children. I did not know much more than how to turn on a computer and type in some numbers. I had been halted since I was fifteen years old.

  Back in school I was a rotten student, but not because I was dumb. I am not dumb. I just chose to do nothing. I thought that I did not need to learn what they wanted to teach me. That I already knew everything I needed to know. What good would knowledge do me? There was me and Thomas together forever and he would take care of me.

  He promised me exactly that after we decided we were in love. There had been a few weeks my freshman year—before we met—when I still believed I needed to learn, or at least that I should pay attention in class. What classes did I like then? It was hard to remember. I think I had wanted to be a veterinarian. That was what all the other girls I knew would have said, too.

  We were standing downtown, in the ragged, dusty square of land next to the library where some of the kids went to hang out after school. He had me in the corner, leaned up against the library wall, and we were kissing so slowly over and over. We loved to kiss for hours then. He would not touch me, though of course I felt like his hands were all over me. The clock struck six, and what kids were left started to break up and head home for dinner, and I pulled back from Thomas.

  “My mom will yell,” I said. “And I have to do home-work. There’s a big test tomorrow. Pre-algebra.”

  “Stay with me,” he whined. He held my hand tight, and I could feel my flesh bend under him.

  “I’ll get in trouble,” I said.

  “You will never get in trouble as long as you’re with me,” he said. “You will always be taken care of. You are not even my girlfriend anymore. It’s like you are my wife.”

  There I was, fifteen years old and already practically married. His love engorged me. It was so comforting, and not scary at all. When you are married you have someone to lean on. And I leaned on him every time I failed a test. I leaned on him to write papers for me or to get me answers to exams from his buddies. I leaned, and he loved it. I graduated knowing nothing more than how to be one half of a whole.

  I put my head down in the diner, and Jenny stroked my hair for a while. She told me I was going to be fine. That a man was not worth it. That she would always be there for me. And then finally she whispered, “You really need to take a shower.”

  On Christmas Eve I drove by my old house. The dog next door had a limp now. It barked at my car as I drove by and I slid down in my seat. Thomas’s truck was in the driveway, and there was a red Toyota Tercel next to it. I did not recognize the car. It could not be another woman. It could not be that already. The light was on in the living room and the bedroom, and the rest of the house was dark. I imagined the TV screen flickering as Thomas flipped channels. The cornfields behind the house were flat, they were nothing now. There was snow everywhere, and it disappeared Nebraska.

  I cried when I got home, and then I slept long into Christmas Day. I woke up sometimes and saw light and tiny particles of dirt twinkling and drifting through my apartment and they were gorgeous and then I could not breathe and I would go back to sleep. It was a solid day of me and sleep and everything falling all around me, the layers of dust and dirt and air and misery weighing me down.

  I did not get out of bed until my sister came the next afternoon, and she would not leave until I answered the door. She wanted to show me her new cell phone. She had made videos of all her friends and boyfriends and I stood in the doorway and let her flip through them all. They had their own language, she and her friends all seemed smarter than me. She would graduate from high school next year. No one knew what would happen to her, but I still thought she was already so far ahead of me. I had never felt behind before. This was the first time in my life I even understood what falling behind even meant.

  I went back to bed. Early the next morning, there was another knock at the door. There was Timber, Papi standing silently behind him, holding a bag of food and a stack of magazines that people had left behind at the restaurant. “Something to keep you company,” said Timber as Papi handed them to me. We hadn’t talked much, Papi and me, but we both were warm to each other. He sat next to me on the bed and put his hand on my head. “Do I have a fever? Am I hot?” I said. He snapped his hand back and made a face like he was getting burned, and he smiled at me. “I think you will be fine,” he said. He left me a take-out tin of eggs scrambled with green pepper and cheddar cheese, wheat toast, and a few slices of banana and orange. Everything was warm, even the fruit. “I will bring you coffee later,” he said.

  I looked up but did not say anything. I could hear him, but nothing was getting through the haze around me. It felt like the whole world was bright headlights and there was this early morning fog in my apartment and I wasn’t going to see anything until it was too late, the car would be right in front of my face.

  “Should I call a doctor?” said Timber.

  Somehow words came out of me. “I am going to be fine,” I said. I watched as the words pushed their way through the fog. They were colored fluorescent pink.

  “You have to get out of this apartment,” he said. “It’s making you sicker.”

  “I have to sleep now,” I said.

  “Promise me you will come down tomorrow,” he said. “First thing.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  I slept another day. I was growing to love my bed. Everything was much easier under the covers.

  And then my mother showed up, dressed to the nines. She cut a nice figure, my mother. I loved it when she wore her hair up like
that, all neat and pinned. She looked French, or something. I had forgotten what she looked like out in the world; I only knew what she looked like at home, miserable and messy. At home we are all always different. She pushed past me when I answered the door. I guess she wanted to see who I was now. She kicked a foot through the papers on my floor. The dust hovered heavy in the air. My mother sneezed. There were garbage bags of old food cartons in the corner. I had meant to take them down but I had not found the time. I had been very busy. I wanted to tell her this: I have been very busy. But how could I explain what I had been doing?

  “Usually it is cleaner,” I said. What could I offer up to her? “What with the holidays and all.”

  “Catherine,” she said. I waited for her to yell at me to clean up my room, but she did not yell. She opened her arms to me. “Come here,” she said. She wrapped herself around me but I could not feel it. Something inside me tossed and turned. A bad night’s sleep jammed up in my body. “I’m worried,” she said. I listened to the sound of her voice. I listened for the truth. The warmth in her voice was not working on me. I had passed the point of believing her. It was a scam. She knew I knew. “You’re flipping out in front of the entire town. You don’t know how many calls I’ve gotten. Everyone knows something’s wrong.” She grabbed a fistful of my hair and sniffed it. I pulled back. I could see in her eyes she wanted to cut my hair, but I liked the way it was, knotted and dusty. “People talk,” she said. “That’s all they have to do around here is talk. You know that.” I pulled back. I stood against the wall and slid to the ground. I pushed some papers away from underneath me.

  “How many crosses must one mother bear in her life?” she snapped suddenly. “Why do I need two crazy daughters?”

  I looked at her feet. She was wearing high heels. Snow was melting around the edge of one heel. She walked over to me and slid down on the floor next to me, slapping her purse between us.

  “Did I tell you that your father and I are going to see chamber music now in Lincoln? Once a month, we’re subscribers. It was a Christmas present. The series starts today. Festive songs of the season.”

  “Dad’s here?”

  “He’s downstairs getting coffee.”

  I pictured him looking down into the coffee, searching for a secret escape route.

  “He’s trying, is the point. We’re trying.”

  She opened her purse and pulled a flask out of it and unscrewed the top. Well, that’s new, I thought.

  “To keep me warm,” she said. She took a swig. “It’s cold out there.” And then it only took a second before the liquor hit her gut and she turned a little mean. “He’s not as smart as he thinks he is though. Not even half as smart. I’m way smarter than him.”

  “Of course you are,” I said. I stared out into the clutter of the apartment.

  She put her hand on mine and tried to make me meet her eyes, but I wouldn’t. We both stared out across the apartment.

  “There’s a lot of paper in here,” she said.

  “I’ve been very busy,” I said.

  “Whether or not I’m smarter than your father—and I am—is not the point. I’m trying to ask you something. Did you do everything you could to save your marriage?”

  I sobbed. I did not know if she meant to be cruel, but it was the worst question she could have asked. “I loved him as true as I could, Mommy. I tried to support him in everything. But there are some things you can’t fix.”

  “Then let it go. That’s it. It’s time to move on.”

  I said nothing but I was thinking: I am not done yet. I would know when I was done. There was going to be something solid and fixed inside me. That was how love had felt for so long. And when the love was destroyed, it was like all these little pieces went in crazy directions in search of somewhere to land. I was waiting for everything to re-form into something new. But for now it was in the money, the stacks of money inside the oven.

  My mother touched my cheek and turned my face toward hers. If she meant it to be gentle it did not feel that way.

  “Thomas has moved on, Moonie.”

  “Good for him,” I said. I did not believe her. I was weak and the words felt all mumbly in my mouth.

  “I understand what it’s like to lose it,” she said. “I won’t lie and say it hasn’t happened to me before or it won’t happen to me again. Your sister could push me over the deep edge at any minute.” She took another drink from the flask, this one longer, and I could hear her gulp a few times loudly, like a clogged-up drain finally letting the water through the muck. “But you have to keep it together, at least out in public. Keep the craziness behind closed doors, where it belongs.” She leaned in close and whispered, “Keep everything inside. Where it belongs. Just hold it in tight. If you hold it in long enough, you won’t feel a thing.”

  I clutched at her and she clutched back at me.

  “Is there anything I can do to fix you? I would do it. I would,” she said.

  But you’re the one who broke me, I thought.

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” said Valka.

  “I don’t know,” I said. But it was a lie. I knew exactly what I meant.

  AFTER MY MOTHER LEFT I pulled out the stack of magazines Timber and Papi had dropped off for me. There was Rio DeCarlo, front row at a fashion show, her legs spread open a little too wide, a little pink x across her crotch. Another magazine, a four-page spread of her house in Malibu. The next week there was a movie opening, and she was on the arm of a man, younger, a kid, I thought. He could not have been but a few years older than my sister. That picture was in the Fashion Don’ts section. She was the pick of the week. Her eyes were wide and messy and her dress was cut out in too many areas and there were her arms, headed to the sky. I thought of my dusty clumps of hair, my eyebrows unplucked and busy. I had not changed clothes in a few days. I was certain I smelled sour. I looked through another magazine. No Rio. She was missing from the next one, too, and the one after that. Three weeks without Rio. Something was wrong, I knew it. Sure enough, the next week, there was a one-on-one interview with Rio about her time in rehab. Her heart had been broken. She had an addiction to painkillers. And liquor. And she had been afraid to ask for help.

  Oh Rio, I cried. I get it. I raised my hands up to the sky. I understand.

  I could not be alone any longer. I went to the diner and sat at my booth. I had no more magazines left. I thought I would just sit and be. At the other booths and at the counter people sat and chatted with each other, or quietly ate their food. They were in motion and I sat perfectly still. I wondered what that was like. Motion. Outside people walked in pairs. There was a hand on the door, and then a familiar face. Thomas. My breath caught, and then my heart went nuts, pounding me from the inside out. A hot liquid feeling curled up in my chest.

  I had a moment to look at him before he noticed me. His hair was longer and curled around his ears. I used to trim it for him, and blow the leftover hair off his neck when I was done. Also he had grown a mustache. It made him look older and I liked it. I loved it. I still loved him.

  Then he saw me sitting there. He pressed his lips together first, and then his cheeks puffed up on his face, and when I looked in his eyes, they were two thin slits filled with something like pity, or something like disgust. Nothing like love. It was hard to tell from where I was sitting, but it was definitely not love. I raised my hand anyway, and waved. I could not help myself. A woman walked through the door and Thomas pulled her back and whispered in her ear. They turned and left.

  “WHAT DID SHE LOOK LIKE?” said Valka.

  “Like a slut,” I snapped.

  “Really?” she said.

  “No,” I said guiltily. “She looked fine. She did not look any different from me.”

  THAT HOT LIQUID inside me was freezing up, starting at the pit of my stomach and making its way up to my chest. In one moment, I had gone from deep love to something close to death. A sharp line of pain dragged itself behind my eyes, a great divide left behind in its wake. Dry e
arth cracked in my head. Thomas with his hand on the door. That look in his eyes, no love left. And if he did not love me, who was I?

  If the insides of me were frozen, the outside of me did not know it. I was crying, right there in the back booth of the diner. It was quiet at first and then I was suddenly gasping and sobbing. I was soaked in my tears. I did not wipe them away. One part of me froze, another part of me melted. I could not stop it if I had wanted to.

  I do not know how long I sat there like that before Timber came out from behind the counter.

  “Mercy,” I said.

  “What?” said Timber.

  “Mercy.” That was all that would come out of me.

  He helped me get up. I had to lean on him. My legs were so weak he practically had to carry me. We stood outside. There was an icy wind, and it was starting to snow. The snow blew around in little tornadoes all over the town square. My coat was open and I had no gloves and no scarf and no hat. The air was so cold I was choking. My hair was everywhere, up in the air and in my eyes and mouth. I embraced the whirlwinds.

  “You might be thinking you won’t get past this,” said Timber. “But you will.”

  That was when I went to the bank and withdrew $178,000 from our joint bank account. It seemed like a lot, and it seemed like nothing at the same time. Early the next morning I got in my car and headed to the highway. The snow was writhing all around me. I went west. The roads were not fit for driving, but I kept moving. I knew I could not go back.

  “I DO NOT EVER want to go back,” I told Valka.

  “Oh, you’re going back,” she said.

  “Don’t you see? I cannot ever go back there ever ever ever. I have shamed myself. I am a criminal.”

  “You are not a criminal,” said Valka. “That money’s as much yours as it is his.” She sat up in the bed. “And you have to go back.”