by Heidi Lowe
"I think it happened when we exchanged our vows. Marriage turned us into those people."
"Yikes!" I said, chuckling. "If this is what we're like a year and a half in, what will we be like in ten years?"
TWO
"Yola's taken the kids to her parents', which means I have peace and quiet for five hours. I can finally make some progress on the book."
It was Saturday morning in my part of the world, but for Luke the afternoon had already come. I had to keep reminding myself that he wasn't just around the corner anymore, that Yolanda and Romania had claimed him seven years prior.
Before his move we'd been close. With only two years separating us, we'd shared the same friends, the same school. In fact, in high school I dated his best friend for a year. That was pretty wild.
Now that a gazillion miles separated us (5,650 to be exact), it was as though I'd lost my best friend. Phone calls just weren't the same. And although he'd braved the day-long journey on multiple flights with the family four years ago, neither of us were brave enough to make it again.
I laughed, rolled my eyes at the utter bullshit he was spewing. "Yeah, right! Luke, you get peace and quiet practically every day when they're at school. And you've been writing that book since I was in college. Just admit it, you're a bum!"
He chuckled, never one to take offense at my insults. That, and he knew I was right on the money. The book in question was a memoir about his time in the military. A tell-all that promised to expose "the treachery of the US army", his words. There had been a lot of initial interest in acquiring the rights, when he put the feelers out, but after a while, presumably when publishers realized he was full of crap and couldn't finish the book, the phone calls stopped. I must have been the only person still excited to read it.
"It's hard work writing a book, you know, little sis. But I don't expect you to understand that. You only understand numbers and logic; you have very linear views."
"Go to hell!" I joked. He said stuff like this all the time, putting on his best shrink tone, as though he was psychoanalyzing me. Truth was, he knew better than anyone that I was the opposite of that. When I'd first announced my intention to study accounting, he'd laughed in my face and told me to quit messing around. He still didn't get it.
"It feels like I'm there already. It's, like, one hundred degrees in Bucharest. I'm practically melting."
"We can trade places if you like. At least that's one thing to look forward to when I head down to Dad's later today. Nothing like a bit of Arizona sun."
"How is the old man? I tried calling last week Sunday, but he didn't pick up."
"He's Dad. Giving the staff a hard time as usual. He thinks everyone is either trying to kill him or steal from him; and in the case of the cook, both."
Luke groaned. "Please don't let him fire another one. There won't be any inheritance money left for us if he keeps getting sued."
Downstairs, I heard the front door slam shut. James was home from his basketball game. Every Saturday, he and some friends shot hoops in the local pen. Pretended they were cool and hip, and got their butts handed to them by younger, more agile boys.
"I have to go, Luke. The husband has returned."
"Tell James I said hi. Call me when you're at Dad's."
"Will do. Love you." I rang off and rushed down the stairs to greet my husband, like a doting dog when its owner comes home from work.
I found him in the kitchen.
"Before you ask, no, we lost...again," he said as I opened my mouth to speak. Deflated, he poured himself a glass of water, then kissed me on the forehead. "I know I should be used to it by now, but those little assholes never play fair."
I wrapped my arms around his torso. He smelled of sweat and body spray, surprisingly a big turn on. I didn't have the heart to tell him that, even if his opponents hadn't cheated, he and his pack of cronies, who were basically geriatrics compared to the spry teens, wouldn't have stood a chance. Compared to his measly five foot ten, they dwarfed him.
"Well, I'm your consolation prize," I said, reaching up to give him a slow, drawn out kiss, which he received hungrily.
"Mmm, losing never tasted so good," he said, squeezing me close and resting a cheeky hand on my butt. "What time do we leave for your Dad's?"
"Not for a few hours...why?"
"I want to do filthy things to you, that's why." With that, he lifted me into his arms, startling me in the process, and carried me towards the stairs.
I giggled and giggled all the way there, until my eyes landed on the muddy shoe prints leading from the front door to the kitchen. How had I not noticed them when I first came down the stairs?
"Put me down," I said, suddenly flustered.
"What, why?" He stopped on the first step. Frowned.
"Just do it."
"Lara, what is..." He put me down, then noticed the marks on our floorboards. "You can't be serious."
I shot him a look of pure agitation. "Where were you playing basketball, on a farm? Look at the mess you've made."
He rolled his eyes and tutted. "We passed through a field. I was going to clean it up."
"That's why we have a no shoes past the front door policy. Can't you be more careful next time?"
His laugh was humorless. "It's just a bit of mud, honey. I'll clean it up."
I was already digging my cleaning stuff out of the cupboard beneath the stairs, mumbling to myself about how inconsiderate he was.
"I can't believe what a big deal you're making over this." He stood over me, shaking his head, watching me clean up his mess. Judging me for not wanting my house to look like some abandoned hovel. "I'm about to screw your brains out, and you stop me for...this?"
I scowled at him mid-scrub. The dirt came off easily, but the fact that he'd allowed this to happen was inexcusable. He knew how I felt about this kind of thing.
"What the hell do you think is going to happen if you don't clean it up, huh?"
I heard that tone in his voice, that goading tone. He was about to go somewhere off limits, and in his anger he wouldn't be able to stop himself.
I shot him a warning look, praying he wouldn't go there, because it would lead to a real fight, the likes of which we'd never really experienced.
And then he went there.
"It's not going to kill you, for God's sake! What happened to your mother was rare, all right. You're not sick, and you're not just going to drop dead because there's a bit of soil on our floor."
As soon as he said it I knew he regretted it; he realized he'd crossed the line.
I shot up, dropping the sponge from my hand. I glowered at him, suddenly disgusted by his scent, his beard, everything about him. It would pass, I knew that, but right then I hated him for bringing her up.
"You're a fucking asshole, you know that," I spat, pointing a finger in his face. "A disrespectful asshole. How could you say something like that to me?"
"I-I'm sorr–"
"Save it." I cut him off. "You bring up my mother, what, just because you have to wait five minutes for me to join you in the bedroom? Are you kidding me?"
"Lara, I said I'm–"
"I don't care!" I screamed, blood rushing to my head.
"It's getting worse. I didn't want to say anything, but it's getting worse. It's not about the sex."
This only made me more furious. "What's getting worse?"
"This!" His voice rose to meet mine. He gestured at the fallen sponge. The veins in his neck bulged. "The constant cleaning. Look, I know what you went through, but you're not your mother. What she had was a rare disease. No amount of cleaning would have prevented her from getting that infection, you said it yourself. Her immune system was weak; anything would have–"
"You don't know a goddamn thing!"
It was one of the few times I'd ever walked away from mess without fully cleaning it, but I had to get away from him, from the home truths. Not only because they were hard to hear, but because he'd obviously been holding back all this time. For how
long, who knew?
I kicked the sponge away then dashed up the stairs, ignoring his pleas for me to come back. A couple of minutes later, when he tried to enter our bedroom, he found that the door was locked.
"Lara, come on. This is silly. I didn't mean it."
"Yes, you did." Furiously, I stuffed the rest of my clothes from the closet into my suitcase, careless in my choosing. It was just Dad, and Tucson, not Milan. What did it matter what I packed?
"I just think...I think it might help you to talk to someone again. You said the therapist you spoke to after she died really helped you."
"I'm not crazy," I said, more to myself than to him. I was fighting back the tears.
"I know that," he said quickly, his voice soothing from behind the wooden door. "But, honey, you have to admit, this isn't a normal way to live."
It wasn't, but I'd been this way for so long, I couldn't envision a life without the condition. In fact, I panicked just thinking about a world where I didn't obsess over cleanliness. How did everyone else manage?
There had been a time when none of that mattered to me, but that carefree life had died with my mother. Up until her death, I'd been a relatively normal, healthy child. Even though she'd been sick for years, I'd coped. My grades hadn't suffered, nor my social life. Heck, she'd smiled almost every day through her illness, despite the pain she must have been in.
Then a month after my thirteenth birthday, she caught the infection. An infection that normally wouldn't have been fatal, but to someone whose immune system had all but shut down, it proved deadly.
There was a clinical negligence lawsuit against the hospital, a fight to prove that they'd failed to keep her room clean. We won, they paid through the nose, but the damage was already done. My mother was gone.
I didn't know it at the time, but the manner in which she died changed the course of my life forever. The cleaning, the inability to function around filth, even my zest for life. You see, I couldn't have prevented her death, I had accepted that already, but I certainly could prevent anyone else I loved getting sick...as long as I kept the dirt at bay. That had been my thinking. It still was.
James was waiting by the door when I emerged from the bedroom with my suitcase. It looked as though I was leaving him for good.
"You want us to leave now?" he said, trying to relieve me of the weight of the suitcase.
I snatched it away from him. "I called a cab. I'm taking the bus."
"For God's sake, Lara. I said I'm sorry. I'm not gonna let you take a bus all the way to Arizona on your own. It's a twenty-four hour journey."
"Oh, you're not gonna let me?" I shoved past him and stormed down the stairs, lugging my case. "A week apart will do us some good. Maybe you can figure out if you still want to be married to a madwoman."
He tutted, following me down. "You're being unreasonable. I love you. So you're a little peculiar...but you were when we met, and I still married you. It was the best decision of my life."
I was too angry to forgive him there and then, but I planned to when I was on the bus. I wanted him to know that, even though I was pissed off now, we were going to be okay. We loved each other too much to let this be the end of us.
Outside, a car horn beeped. My taxi was here.
He looked at me, his eyes pleading me to reconsider.
"I have to go," was all I said. My lips lingered when I pressed a kiss to his cheek.
"I love you," he said.
The monster in me refused to say it back to him, even though it was on the tip of my tongue.
"Where to, miss?" the driver said when I climbed into the car.
I peered through the window, staring at my husband, who looked contrite, forlorn, as though he thought this was forever. As though he expected me never to return. God, I loved him!
"The bus station," I replied, finally turning away from the window. It was only for a week, then we would go back to being the happy Murrays, the perfect couple.
THREE
Sunday, April 20, 1997
Last night's performance was a success! I know, I know, all that fretting for nothing. No lines were forgotten, or botched, and no theatrical mishaps occurred. Almost had a full house, too.
I'll tell you about the space. So Roger convinced the shady jerk who owns Curves and All strip club to let us use his other plot, the not-yet strip club. Told him he'd make "serious bank" from drink sales in the interval. The guy only agreed to it if he was able to turn up the heating, get the audience hot and bothered. Yeah, I did say he was a jerk. Gold teeth and tattoos to boot. I think he might even have a gun!
While performing a play in a gangster's establishment wasn't exactly ideal, we kind of didn't have a choice. Doesn't mean I didn't leave feeling dirty about myself and needing a long shower.
The review in this morning's Oakwood Gazette had this to say about my performance: "As the not so fair, rough around the edges Eliza Doolittle, a role made famous by the late Audrey Hepburn, newcomer to amateur theater, Tiffany Price, gave a spirited, formidable performance, which had the audience roaring with laughter. Though the English accent needed work, it wasn't too distracting. A++ for effort."
I'm still shaking as I write this. Spirited and formidable performance? Me??! The last performance I gave was as a witch in high school, when I was booed off stage for forgetting my lines. This is a huge deal for me. Not that I'm interested in pursuing this as a career or anything. I needed to get up there again and face my demons. Now that it's done and I wasn't too terrible, I feel like I can do anything.
Gillian and Rob couldn't make it, couldn't get a babysitter for the kids. I told them they could have brought them, but Baxter's still going through that phase where he's blurting out inappropriate things in front of strangers. You know Gillian doesn't handle embarrassment well.
After we wrapped up for the night, the cast and crew went out for drinks to this bar no one had ever heard of. It was a grimy, dark place in a shady part of town, but the drinks were cheap. When Roger insisted the waitress was checking me out, I laughed at the thought. That sort of thing never happens to me. Hot women with piercings and risque tattoos around their cleavage? Yeah, right.
So he sends me up there to order more drinks, and when I go there she makes a point of taking over from her co-worker and serving me herself.
"Hey," she says.
Startled, I say hey back, thankful for the club's darkness, so she can't tell that I'm blushing.
And then she just randomly blurts out, "You're hot. What are you drinking?"
At this point I'm speechless and just gawking at her with my mouth wide open. I bet I didn't look so hot then.
I stutter a thank you and she laughs to herself, then slips me a piece of paper – an old receipt – with her name and number on it.
"In case you wanna call me. I won't be offended if you don't." And she does this sexy wink that makes me melt.
I couldn't actually believe this was happening to me, and not to some Mary Sue in a Hollywood movie. I've been gay all my life, and it's never been this easy to pick up women. At least not for me.
"Was I right or was I right?" Roger said when I returned to the table with the grin to end all grins on my face.
"You were right." I was still unable to believe it myself.
"You're on fire tonight," Pam said, slapping me on the thigh. "A great performance, and now you've got sexy tattooed barmaids offering themselves to you on a silver platter."
"She just gave me her number, she's not offering herself to me!" It's always about sex with Pam.
"Are you gonna call her?" They all wanted to know that.
I can see the receipt with her number on it sitting on the chest of drawers now. Am I going to call her? She's pretty, there's no mistake about that, and she has that mysterious edge to her that's always been a draw for me. But she can't be any older than twenty-five, which makes her at least ten years younger than me. I'm not ready to be a cradle snatcher. I've still got a few years before I reach mid-li
fe crisis age.
Of course, that's not really the reason why I'll probably dispose of the receipt. When I got home last night, there was a message from Diana left on the machine. She's coming over to get the rest of her things tomorrow evening. I'm going to make myself scarce just so I don't have to see her, because I know what will happen if I do. She'll suck me right back in, and we'll end up sleeping together again...like we always do. Why does she have that hold over me? Even though I know she's probably screwed half the women in the state of Utah, my body can't seem to refuse her. She's like a drug.
God help me!
Oh, I've been called into work this afternoon. It's my day off, but extenuating circumstances. A bus crashed into Ivy Bridge. Driver had a heart attack at the wheel. Fifteen casualties, two fatalities. Horrible stuff. I think they said it was a cross country bus, so who knows where it was coming from.
They need all hands on deck.
FOUR
The fog in my head hadn't cleared when I opened my eyes. It was a feeling that was hard to describe – something deep meditation would have loved to achieve. Not quite a nothingness, more like a white sheet covering my brain. I knew something was there, I just couldn't access it, or see what it was.
My mouth was dry. In the quiet hospital room, I sat up slowly, my body aching everywhere, my eyes scanning for a glass of water or any type of liquid that would get the feeling of dust out of my throat.
The curtains were drawn now. Upon waking the first time, the sun was beaming through the window. How long had I been out?
Excruciating pain shot through my limbs, my back, my head, as I hauled myself out of the bed. When I pressed a bare foot to the cold, tiled floor, overcome with weakness I collapsed and let out a cry.
A nurse came rushing in.
"You shouldn't be out of bed." She helped me up, back into my prison. That was how it had felt the first time I woke up and couldn't move. Nothing much had changed.
"I don't want to be here," I said, close to tears. An improvement on the last time we spoke. Well, insofar as one could call my screaming at her and the doctor a conversation. Frightened and confused, disoriented to the point of throwing up, I'd screamed and cried until someone gave me a sedative and put me out.