Written in the Scars

by Adriana Locke

  Maybe that’s why he was eager to leave. Maybe that’s why it just took a simple shot from me to go, and he hauled ass out the door. Maybe it’s because after all these years, he realizes what a joke I am of a woman, one that can’t conceive. With me, he can’t play catch in the backyard with a little boy that looks like him or tuck a little girl into bed that looks like me. There’s no hope for any of that with me, and that’s the most humiliating thing anyone can ever experience.

  Yet, here I sit, spewing hate his way, secretly wanting him to return. My words say how horrible he was for not being there for me, and that’s true, but my heart misses finding the rhythm of his in the middle of the night.

  “I can’t do this,” I sputter, throwing the pillow across the room. It lands at the foot of the entertainment center, brushing against it just hard enough to rattle off a metal figurine in the shape of a coal bucket Ty’s grandpa gave him right before he died—one miner to another. I watch it freefall to the floor, almost in slow motion. It falls end over end, twisting and turning in the air before it lands solidly on the carpet.

  I know what I have to do. Or, rather, what I can’t do anymore. The end of a journey of my own.

  Racing to the garage, maneuvering the house by memory because I can’t see through the tears stinging my eyes, I grab a box. Coming in just as quickly, I start picking up what’s left of Ty’s belongings and shoving them inside. I don’t think about it. I focus on the fact that I can’t live in this perpetual state of uncertainty anymore. I can’t live loving a man that doesn’t want me, in a situation in which I’m doomed to fail. It’s time to accept reality.

  Using the tail of my shirt, I sop up the wetness from my face.

  The coal bucket figurine goes into the box. It’s joined by a picture of him from high school, holding the state title up in the air. My hands shake as I pick up his grandmother’s quilt off the quilt rack and lay it on top of the other items. The pale pink linen is darkened by the fluid dripping off my chin.

  Sniffing up the snot that dangles onto my lips, I start towards the bedroom where a few articles of his clothing still reside in the closet. I stomp by the room that would’ve been the nursery with the practiced “eyes straight ahead” so I don’t break down. It’s a dream that will never happen.

  I grab his Tennessee Arrows hat off the hook on the closet door and dig out his favorite t-shirt from the dresser drawer. Before I can toss them into the box, I catch the scent of his cologne, and that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

  I fall to my knees, the box dropping to the floor in front of me. I hold his hat to my chest and sob.

  TY

  I rustle through a trash bag against the wall and find a clean t-shirt. Pulling it over my head, I notice the smell of the laundry detergent. It’s some brand I picked up at the laundromat yesterday. Waves of overly perfumed, cheap flowers drench my senses. It’s not so much what it smells like that drives me nuts, but what it doesn’t.

  It doesn’t smell like home.

  Elin always uses the same brand, the same one her mother used. Every time I do a load at a random laundromat with a box of suds from the dispenser, I’m reminded how much I miss her and how every little part of my life goes back to her. Even my fucking laundry soap.

  Collapsing on the futon in Cord McCurry’s spare room, I rest my head against the rough material and close my eyes. Bracing for the onslaught of memories that floods me every time I don’t intentionally focus on something else, I’m halfway relieved when the sound of footsteps thud through the room.

  “You all right?” Cord’s voice echoes from the hallway

  “Yeah.”

  A few moments later, his head pokes around the corner. His sandy brown hair is cut short, his jaw set as he takes me in and decides how to approach.

  “There’s food and shit in the refrigerator. Washer and dryer are in the room off the kitchen.” He leans against the doorframe and waits on me to answer.

  “Thanks for letting me stay here.”

  “You’ve let me bunk with you a time or two. Glad to repay the favor. You can stay here for as long as you need to,” he says, a slight slant to his grin.

  It’s one I return readily, an understanding between two men that met as a couple of rowdy boys in high school. Cord was a handful when he moved to Jackson, getting suspended for fighting on his very first day in school. I jumped in, not being able to stand watching the new kid from foster care—a fact I learned from my mother the night before—getting mauled by Shane Pettis, resident asshole, and got myself three free days to boot.

  From that day on, Cord has had my back and I’ve had his. He’s the most dependable human being I know, which is why I called him when it became apparent I wouldn’t be going home tonight.

  “Let’s hope to fuck I won’t be here long,” I mumble.

  His chin dips just a touch. “It was probably just a shock to her to see you out of nowhere. Just give her a minute to adjust.”

  “Do you know how bad I want to fucking go home and be with my wife? How I miss her? How I want to just forget all this bullshit and go back to the way things were before the fucking accident?”

  He chuckles, his eyes sparkling. “I can imagine. She basically wipes your ass for you. I don’t know how you’re surviving.”

  A small laugh escapes me too. “That’s true. But it’s not even about that. I just . . . I don’t even know what to do with myself, Cord.”

  “Follow your gut. Always trust your gut.” He winks and shoves off the door. “I’m taking Yogi for a swim at the lake. Want anything while I’m gone?”

  “You and that fucking dog,” I mutter, falling back on the stiff pillow again.

  “Laugh all you want. She doesn’t put me through this shit,” he teases before pulling the door closed behind him.

  The futon springs rip into my back. They scrape against the scars etched there from the accident, the same ones Elin used to feather her fingers across at night while I slept.

  Oh, how far we’ve fallen.

  Loving her is so damn easy. It’s as natural as breathing or the beating of a heart. Even when we were hurling insults at the very moment my rope was being frayed, a couple of seconds before she asked me to leave and I bolted—I loved her. That’s never been a question. It’s making life work around the love that’s hard.

  Life doesn’t care about feelings. It couldn’t give a shit about who you love and want to be with. It keeps tossing crap your way, trying to break you until all you know is the chaos of it all.

  “What happened to your back?” Mrs. Kruger asks as I enter the farmhouse, her silver hair like a halo in the early evening sun.

  I place my sweaty shirt over my shoulders. Drops of sweat roll down my jaw and drip onto my chest from a long, hot day working for her husband in the fields. “It was from an accident in the mine.”

  She stops stirring a pot on the stove and turns to me. Her apron hangs over her round belly and she grabs the hem and dries her hands. “You know, it’s better to have a scar than a bruise.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “Bruises go away, Tyler. Scars stick around to prove you showed up for life. That you lived. That you fought. That you loved.” She peers at me over the top of her glasses. “I knew it the night you came here, asking to talk to my husband, that your heart was broken. I’ve seen a lovesick man a time or two in my years. But can I give you some advice?”

  I nod, my body breaking out in a cold sweat under her scrutiny.

  “What would you say about your heart? Would you say your heart is bruised or scarred, Tyler?”

  “Scarred in every direction possible,” I whisper without hesitation.

  She starts to smile, but catches herself. “When did you know you loved her?”

  “From the moment I saw her.”

  “I see,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. She thinks for a long moment before taking a deep breath. “You can’t expect a relationship to succeed based on the love you felt at
the beginning. It succeeds because you continue to build on it until the end.” She removes her glasses and smiles. “Your heart will be more scarred than your back by the end of your lifetime. That is, if you live the right way.”

  A warmth builds in my core, my feet shuffling beneath me.

  “Go home, Tyler,” she whispers. “Go build on the beginning.”

  Her words ring through my mind as I try to find a comfortable spot on this godforsaken futon. It sounds simple, to build on what we had at the beginning. So simple, in fact, that I’d raced back to town, sure as shit that I would find Elin, we’d see each other, she’d break into a tight smile, I’d smile back, and we’d figure this out.

  Never did I expect the coldness in her posture, the disdain that filled her beautiful green irises. Anger? Yeah. Sadness? Sure. But hatred? It stopped me in my tracks.

  Swinging my legs to the side, my footsteps create a circle in the room as I attempt to block out the idea that has me more worried than any other: she doesn’t want to fix this.

  The itch of frustration working its way up my spine has my skin on fire. This is my fault, this entire fuckup is my mistake in so many ways.

  Taking a deep breath, I glance around the room. It feels empty, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the lack of furniture.

  Rising, I grab a pillow and a blanket out of another bag and toss them on the futon. It’s going to kill my back to sleep here, but I have no inclination to get a bed. Buying furniture seems like planting roots somewhere, admitting that my marriage is over, and while I know it just might be, I can’t see physical proof of that.

  I might sleep on a futon for the rest of my life.

  Getting as comfortable as possible, I try to block out Elin and focus on what I need to do. Yet her face slips across my mind as my eyes drift closed.

  “Remember the good that used to be in me, Elin,” I whisper, the words skirting past the lump in my throat.

  Not the failure.

  Not the weakness.

  Not the man sitting on the couch popping pain pills with no job.

  I swallow, forcing the lump down, and try to remember every line in her face. “I’m sorry, baby,” I whisper again. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

  ELIN

  “When do you start at Ashby Farms?” I ask Jiggs, watching him take a marshmallow out of a bowl on the middle of his kitchen counter and pop it in his mouth.

  “Monday. It’s harvest time, so it’ll be solid work for a while. Hopefully long enough for me to figure something else out.”

  “I wish someone else would start hiring permanently,” I sigh. “I hate that the mine is basically your only hope for a consistent job.”

  “Even it’s not consistent now.” Jiggs shrugs, swiping another marshmallow. “It’s good money though. I’ll be glad to go back.”

  I watch him toss the candy in the air and try to catch it in his mouth. “Mom didn’t want you working there.”

  “No, but she would’ve understood. It’s Jackson, Elin. It’s what we do here. Grandpa did it. Dad did it. It’s our life. You know that.” He tosses it up again. When it hits the floor, he looks at me and smiles. “May as well get used to it.”

  He leans over the island and presses his lips together, holding steady until Lindsay gives in and kisses him.

  Laughing, he swipes another pillow of sugar. “I gotta figure something out, right?” He catches Lindsay’s eye and they exchange a look that piques my interest.

  “What am I missing?” I ask, furrowing my brow. Before I can continue on and prod my brother and best friend, I hear a man’s voice.

  “Where y’all at?”

  “In the kitchen,” Lindsay shouts. She grabs bags of chips and tosses them into a picnic basket just as Cord comes into the kitchen with his trademark wide smile.

  Cord McCurry has hung out with us since high school. We have a special friendship, one that’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s because he stayed with my family for a year or so after high school when my father got him a job at the mine. I don’t know. All I do know is that Cord and I don’t see each other daily, sometimes not weekly, even, but we always seem to be there for each other. It’s almost a brother-sister relationship, although not quite. Cord would never allow someone that close to him.

  “Hey,” he says, patting me on the shoulder as he walks by. “Smells good in here, Lindsay. Whaddya got I can sample? I’m starving.”

  “You can wait like the rest of us,” Jiggs says, reaching for another marshmallow.

  “Oh, whatever, Jiggs,” I laugh. “You’ve been into every dish we’ve made today. You probably still have brownies on your fingers.”

  He looks at his hands with a smirk before glancing up at his wife. “That’s not all that’s on these fingers.”

  “Jiggs!” Lindsay blushes and tosses a towel at him, making us laugh.

  “Are you denying it?” Jiggs teases.

  “Do you guys want to take everything out back?” Lindsay says in an attempt to change the subject. She glances out the window towards the fire that’s starting to glow as the afternoon sun sets behind it. Upwards of thirty people are already here, lingering around the fire. “I think it’s time to get this party started.”

  “Sure thing,” Cord says, grabbing the cooler of snacks Lindsay and I put together earlier. Jiggs balances the picnic basket on another cooler and they head out the back door.

  Once they’re gone, Lindsay leans against the counter and watches me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say, straightening out my red and grey flannel shirt, my fingers only slightly fidgety. “Why?”

  “You’ve not quite been here mentally all day. Just wondering if everything is okay.”

  I snort, turning my back to her. I don’t want to dampen the party by bringing up the fact that I feel like crawling in a hole and sleeping away my life. That I don’t even want to be here. That seeing Ty has brought back, in vivid technicolor, the moment that forever changed the way I’ll feel about him.

  Dr. Walker sits down on the stool in front of the examining table and looks up at me through his black wire-rimmed glasses. He takes a deep breath as he sits my chart on the little table behind him. My hands find the edge of the white paper hanging off the sides and crumple it in my fists.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, my voice trembling. I’m on the cusp of breaking down, my heart beating so fast in my chest that I can barely sneak in a breath. It’s been this way since he left and I can’t take it anymore. I feel like I’m going to die, like the world is starting to crush me with its weight. It’s why I’m here. To fix it. To get something to help regain control of my emotions. But something’s wrong. I can see it in his eyes, a benefit of seeing the same doctor since I was fourteen.

  The glasses are removed and he clears his throat. “Where’s Ty?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit through the burn in my throat.

  “Is anyone here with you today?”

  “No. Why? What’s wrong, Dr. Walker?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, but your bloodwork showed you’re in the process of a miscarriage, Elin.”

  My world stops yet starts a slow spin that wobbles me slightly as I take in his words. My gut churns, like I’ve drunk too many margaritas on a Thirsty Thursday with Lindsay, but something itches in the back of my psyche that tells me a margarita might be helpful right about now. I’m starting to sway in my seat, but no amount of grabbing the edges of the table helps.

  “What?” I ask, trying to focus on the wrinkles in his face. “I’m not pregnant. It’s impossible,” I say, a sad laugh rolling past my lips.

  Surely I misunderstood. The universe wouldn’t do this to me, wouldn’t take away the one thing Ty and I have wanted more than anything else. It wouldn’t do this to me now, when everything else is falling apart. I won’t be able to take it.

  “I’m sorry,” he says finally. “You were just a few weeks along . . .”

  The rest is muffled by a screaming only I can
hear. My heart thunders so hard I think it’s going to explode as I touch my stomach and then pull back, like they’re going to be burnt by contact.

  I am pregnant. I was pregnant. I . . .

  My head falls forward and I barely catch it with my fingers. All the times we tried. So many negative tests. Thousands of unanswered prayers. I can’t . . .

  My shoulders start to tip my body to the side, but I don’t care enough to even try to catch myself. Let me slam against the cold linoleum. Maybe it’ll wake me up out of this nightmare.

  Dr. Walker’s on his feet faster than a post-sixty-year old man should be able to muster, his arm going around my shoulders to keep me from falling off the table. Tears cascade down my face like an open sieve, my wail surely landing on the ears of everyone in the building.

  He pulls me to him, and it breaks me that I’m being comforted by a medical professional and not my husband.

  Ty. Where are you? I need you.

  I hear the doctor whisper to someone to call Lindsay Watson at Blown and I feel like I should tell him not to interrupt her day, but I can’t. All I can do is feel myself die a cell at a time.

  “Elin?” Lindsay asks, shaking me out of my head.

  I shrug. “What do you want me to say? Everything is peachy? My world is a bright and happy place?”

  Lindsay rolls her eyes and drops her hands on the laminated countertop. “No, I don’t want you to say that. You’ve just been lost in your own head more today than usual, so I thought maybe something happened. I’m sorry.”

  I look at her features and instantly regret my attitude.

  “I just had a bad night,” I sigh, thinking back to the night before and how I didn’t sleep at all. Every minute that ticked off the clock, I was there to watch it.

  I’ve only wanted one thing in my life—a family with the man I’m sure, even now, is my soul mate. If I can’t have that, what’s left for me? How do you replace that dream when it’s all that mattered?

  “From seeing him?”