by Saints
“I doubt anything will keep you awake this evening,” she said with an eye roll.
Next thing I knew we were in her bedroom and she laid back one side of the bed as if this were a fancy hotel. “Here,” she said, tossing me a long, well-worn T-shirt with a faded P’town sunset on its front and turning back toward the door. “You can use this for sleeping.”
“Wait,” I said.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“What’s okay?”
“You’re sleeping in my bed. I’ll pull out the couch in the living room.”
“Nah, I can sleep there.”
“No, go ahead and change.”
“At least come back and say good night, then,” I said.
She looked at me as if I were a plaintive child who wanted to be read to sleep, shifted her stance from one leg to the other and finally said, “Okay, I’ll be back in a minute,” before closing the door.
I lay back in her T-shirt, inhaling the pleasant odor of laundry soap, possibly sunshine—did she dry her clothes on a clothesline? In between moments of nodding out, my head still seriously swirling, it occurred to me that her whole lifestyle seemed like a big draw. Here I was lying in her bed thinking maybe I wanted to be her!
When she came back, still fully dressed, she brought a tall glass of water to the bedside table.
“Oh,” I said, “so nice of you.”
I patted the other side of the queen bed. “If I move over, I don’t really take up that much space,” I held my arms tightly against my sides to show her how narrow I could make myself.
She smiled but only shook her head. “Go to sleep. I’m fine in the other room,” quietly exiting and pulling the door closed behind her.
My heart flipped. I inhaled the odor of the pillowcase again. Well, I wanted to at least be someone more like her.
I lay there thinking of times I’d been sick as a child—measles, mumps or even severe sunburn—and my mother had arrived to give me special attention. Breakfast and/or lunch on a tray and a new coloring book she had hidden away to save for such a time, or a storybook, from which she would read as she sat on the side of my bed, creating a downhill for my body to spill towards her. She was a nurse, my mother, and sometimes worked night shifts and struggled to get even a minimum of sleep during the day, which made her impatient with my childish demands. Except when I was sick, and then I rated at least as high as her lowest patient.
I was surely just as sick now, but from my own indulgence. I pressed my fingers against various spots on my skull, trying to counter the iron bar that seemed lodged in the center of my brain. I didn’t deserve Jackie’s bed, but I was so glad to have it. Dizziness overtook me and I couldn’t tell whether it was the alcohol messing with my cerebellum, or I was swirling with a crush. I was actually glad that Jackie had refused my offer to make room for her in the bed. I was horny as all get out, yet suddenly the knowledge that sex was not going to solve any of my problems seemed to float up like something close to wisdom.
* * *
She was cooking bacon when I shuffled out to the kitchen at 9 AM. Eyes bleary, mouth fuzzy, that iron bar still present, but as long as I didn’t move my head too much, it sat more or less dormant.
Bright-eyed and fully sober, she extended her arm to offer me a seat, then poured me a coffee while asking how I was.
“I’ve been better,” I said. “But I’ve also been worse…like last night.”
She nodded and smiled. “I’m sure,” she said.
“You’re pretty perky,” I said.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Sleeping on the couch. Giving up your bed?”
“I was perfectly comfortable. And I hope you were, too.”
I nodded, then drummed on the metal table with my fingertips and took a look around. The cottage was ’50’s inside and out, but Jackie or someone had painted the tacky paneling a refreshing light mauve with a satin finish, creating a shiny bright kitchen. “Cute house,” I said.
“Thanks. I love it.”
My eyes roamed to the large picture window in the living room that looked onto a short back yard bordered by a stand of maples.
She asked me where I lived and I told her I was living in my latest fixer-upper.
“Oh,” she said with a quizzical frown.
“It’s what I do,” I said. “Like you photograph weddings and things. Do you make a living at that?”
“A slim one.”
I nodded and discovered that I shouldn’t have, as the motion brought my headache into focus again. “Me, too, but I have to live in most of my fixer-uppers to make a living at it. I do the painting and the simpler carpentry myself, and then, just when it’s looking like a place one might like to live in, I sell it and move on to the next one.”
“Must be unsettling.”
“Not too bad. I grew up in the military. I keep a bunch of suitcases handy. Hard on a partner, though. My ex didn’t want me to sell anything, just keep on buying. But it doesn’t work that way.”
“Is that what happened to the relationship?”
“Maybe, one factor…Too simple, though. As my therapist says, ‘There’s more than one story to every breakup.’”
“That sounds true,” said Jackie.
“What about you?”
“I’m a homebody. Like to stay put.”
“I mean have you had any bad breakups?”
Jackie closed her eyes and dropped her head and her small but distinctive features I was growing attracted to—fine lips, turned up nose—seemed to fade. “I lost my partner to breast cancer when it came back around the second time,” she said quietly.
I shook my head. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s been almost five years now.”
“Still,” I said, “that’s tough.”
Jackie went silent as she lifted the bacon from the frying pan and placed it on paper towels, soaked up the grease and tossed in the eggs to scramble. I listened to the birds chirping outside and tried to think of something else consoling to say but nothing came to me. It certainly wasn’t time to tell her about how my supposedly devoted partner had gone off on a one-month temporary job on the West Coast and fallen prey to the seduction of a silly woman, whom I considered my inferior in every way.
“I hope you’re not vegetarian,” Jackie finally said. I sniffed the air responsively and gave her a big smile.
“Omnivore,” I said, as she plopped eggs and bacon onto the plate in front of me.
She had a knack for cooking. I could tell from the way she got the eggs scrambled perfectly medium and the bacon crisp but not burned. We munched away while I complimented Jackie’s cooking and enjoyed filling my fitful stomach while sitting across from her, breathing in more hope than I’d felt in a while.
“So tell me something about yourself?” she said, her face back to lively.
I shrugged. “Like what?”
“Like what excites you?”
“Finding a good house to turn around excites me,” I said. “The funkier the better. I’m scared of mold, bad smells, rotting sills, termites, even though lots of that is manageable, but it’s so much easier to get rid of funk. When someone’s just lazy about upkeep and lets a place go…it’s like a relationship you forget needs maintenance as long as you’re living in it, so you go blind as to how you’re neglecting it.”
Encouraged by her curious look, I rambled on. “That’s what I did with my ex. Got happily self-satisfied with my creative house projects and felt like saying, ‘Well, where’s your life? Get something going for yourself.’ So she did! But with another woman. I hadn’t meant that.” I paused and Jackie just held the silence, so I continued. “This seems to be a fault line in me. With a house, I can see it; with a relationship, I can’t.”
I shut my yap then, saying, “TMI.”
“Well, it’s interesting,” Jackie said, raising her eyebrows. “So what happened?”
“You really want the whole gruesome story?”
“I’m listening,” she said, flashing an impish grin.
So I told her about how after week-one of the month-long gig, the California woman had invited my ex to her home for dinner. My ex claimed she didn’t even know this woman was a lesbian and expected there’d be others at the dinner and maybe she could make some friends to get her through the month away. But it turned out the woman lived alone and steered her to the bedroom to show off how her bed was covered with teddy bears. My ex tried to tell me it was sweet to see all those teddy bears and get a tour of which ones had been carried forth from childhood and where she’d acquired the rest of them. I said she sounded like someone missing a few brain cells, but my ex said she was smart, that she’d been doing all the financials for the project they were working on. ‘Smart with numbers,’ I said. ‘And with what an easy mark you are.’ She asked me what I meant by that. ‘You know, no impulse control,’ I told her.
“And then, when she got quiet, well, I knew they must have moved the teddy bears aside.”
“I’m sorry,” Jackie said, “that sounds awful.”
“Devastating,” I said, my hands automatically coming up to cover my heart with the memory of that brutal moment when I learned of the affair.
Jackie looked as if she could feel my pain from the way she pursed her mouth. But, wanting only to leave that dreadful day behind, I didn’t go on. Instead, I concentrated on finishing off my bacon and asked about her deceased partner.
“Nel, she was a sweetheart,” Jackie said. She bit her lip. “She could be tough, though, especially at work.”
“What kind of work?”
“Parole officer.”
“Oh.” I nodded, beginning to form a picture.
“We met at the county building, when I was still a social worker.”
“Hard work for both of you,” I said.
“It was hard,” she said, “especially dealing with the bureaucracy. So when Nel couldn’t stay home alone any more, I took a leave of absence and became her caretaker. And when she died, she left me enough so I can make it on my photography, long as I live simply. And I never returned.”
“Well, that’s good, anyway, that you can do work you like.”
“Yeah,” she said, but sounding as if she might cry.
“I’m sorry again,” I said, still unable to bring up any other words.
She shook her head and smoothed her hair back toward her ponytail. “We were trying to get pregnant when she got the diagnosis. Turkey baster method.”
“Who was going to have the baby?” I asked.
“She was.”
We sat in silence broken only by the cackle of birds outside, and for a moment, I felt a bit of her heartbreak rather than my own.
“It would be so good if the earliest attempts had taken. Then I’d have a little person here that looked like her. Probably a daughter.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, upside down is supposed to improve the odds of making a girl. So Nel and I would get the sperm and bring it home in a cooler, and after I’d inject her, she’d do something like a shoulder stand with her legs up against the wall at the top of the bed, and we’d kiss and get sexy while we waited for it to take.”
I laughed at the picture she’d created, and finally she gave a little chuckle.
“Sad to have to give up a dream like that,” I said.
She picked up my plate and stacked it on hers. “It is,” she said, “but am I really living if I’m thinking like that?”
* * *
Back in my fixer-upper, I lay on the queen bed and stared at the ceiling, bright white Benjamin Moore ceiling paint, two coats, slight pink tinge to the walls, only the trim left to be painted. It was a spot of peace, while the rest of the house was still a mess.
I contemplated the empty space beside me. Not that I minded the silence in the room in the middle of the night. Not that I minded sleeping under the covers of my choice, making me not too cold and not too hot. My ex had been both a snorer and a sprawler, sending me to what seemed like a small corner of the bed. Still, the touch of a warm foot before falling asleep. That had been deeply reassuring and I wanted it again.
After sleeping off my hangover for several hours, I got up and contemplated making a thank you call to Jackie. “At least give her enough time to let her think you have a satisfying life,” I chastised myself. So I went in and worked on the paint job in the renovated bathroom where I’d changed out the crappy beige toilet for a bright white one and installed a new sink. I draped everything carefully, then rolled on a high gloss pure white, took pains with where the wall met the floor and was back in the kitchen cleaning out the paintbrush and roller when the phone rang. When I looked at the call number, my heart sang.
“I was about to call you,” I said. “To thank you for saving my ass from trying to drive home and escaping whatever calamity might have ensued. And for the great breakfast, too.”
“No problem,” she said. “You sound like you’re feeling better.”
“Sure am,” I said, thinking especially now I was. “I just finished painting a bathroom.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. In my latest fixer-upper. Living room’s still a mess but that’s next. Then I’d like to have you over.”
“O—kay,” said Jackie, emphasizing both syllables of that word.
The vibe of her hesitancy set me off, wondering what? Had I come on too strong? Or misread how sweet she seemed?
“I…I…” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t afford a rejection and my tough girl side seemed to have departed for the moment, leaving me to feel how thin my skin was. I was close to tears and all she’d said was a hesitant “O—kay.”
“What’s the matter?” she asked, after my unfinished sentence dangled in the air for an inordinate amount of time.
“Nothing. Just…I wasn’t sure if you meant you wouldn’t want to come see my temporary home.”
“Sure,” she said. “Sure I’d like to. But I was calling to see if you might like to come over and rehash the wedding. I got some good pictures of Bean and Sylvie, even got the sourpuss mothers.”
That made me chuckle.
“A couple good ones of you, too.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, wondering if they would serve to display the sloppy state I’d been in.
“Want to come over later and see them?”
Jackie was waiting for me to answer. I bit my lip. Of course I was going to say yes. But…but what? Was I doomed always to be on the fence when I liked someone?
* * *
Like Bean and Sylvie, Jackie was sober. I knew she hadn’t been in an inebriated state at the wedding, but it hadn’t occurred to me she was one of those drinking the pear stuff, yet of course that made sense. She herded me out to take a walk on the dirt road that started just past her house, to star-gaze! What a novel date, if that’s what this was. Our shoulders touched a few times and I wished I’d had a couple of drinks before coming, to embolden me enough to take her hand, but that didn’t happen.
Back at her cottage, Jackie offered me coffee again.
“Have anything stronger?” I asked.
“Nope. But my coffee’s plenty strong.”
I opted for herbal tea, hoping to calm my nerves.
“Nice aroma to the coffee, though,” I said, as she filtered hers at the stove.
“Yeah, that’s half of it, the great smell,” she agreed, splashing more water on the grounds.
Was it the rich French Roast aroma, or a flash forward of imagining I might one day risk growing close to someone again that suddenly threw me back to the couch where I’d been seated with a cup of coffee the day my ex disclosed her affair. I heard the words as they had freakishly streamed out of her mouth, saw her guilty eyes squinting as if to protect against whatever I might throw at her. I’d gone stone cold, and my legs had turned to rubber, making it impossible for me to get up. My mind had blurred with memories that spanned our years together in a kaleidoscopic manner.<
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I came back to the present when Jackie started to pour the hot water into an adorable teapot that looked like a pumpkin in front of me. She put the cover on the pot, sat catty-cornered and fixed a questioning look on me, letting me know she had seen me sail away.
“I’d thought the ex and I were going to be forever,” I said, shrugging. “It seemed like we both fell so deeply in love, and then we just went along, good periods and not so good ones, but nothing horrendous. Nothing I couldn’t get over, until this.”
“Did you try to work it out?” Jackie asked.
“Of course. After the initial shock, we went for couples counseling and made a deal. Her part was to terminate all contact with the ‘other woman,’ which she convinced me she had done. Mine was to try to warm my heart back up enough to forgive her. So far, so good, right?
“Then, along came her birthday and the delivery at our door of a grand bouquet of California type flowers—huge open-mouthed Venus fly traps—the kind that seem to say they’ve come to eat you up. They were accompanied by a card, which, since she was out, I took the liberty of reading.”
“And?” Jackie leaned forward.
“It said that this woman, who was supposedly having nothing to do with my ex, was yearning for her madly.”
“As if those mouthy fly traps didn’t speak loudly enough,” Jackie said with a mischievous smile.
“Right,” I said, and began to chuckle. Then we both broke out into hilarious laughter as Jackie gestured with both her hands, making them into Venus fly traps closing in on their prey.
I laughed until I had to bend over because my stomach was sore. A minor form of hysteria, perhaps, but it released a lot of shame as well as a ton of endorphins, and made it seem like I might be capable of starting over some day.
Jackie raised her coffee cup, gesturing a toast. I was drawn toward her delicate and agile hand, though still wishing for something stronger than this herbal tea I had been given at her behest. Then I remembered the very fact I was here suggested I might be in trouble. That Jackie had spared me from driving home way too inebriated. That there might be quite a few more cups of tea in my future.