The Man Test

by Amanda Aksel

  I eventually left my office and ended up at the local market to stock up on some over the counter broken heart relief. After liberating fifty bucks from my purse in exchange for wine, ice cream, and tissues, I walked back to my dark and empty apartment. Neither Chad nor any of his things remained. His key rested on the kitchen bar. It was the best decision he’d made in the past twenty-four hours. The lonely silence pushed me to call Holly and Telly. I gave them the quick version of what happened. They were shocked to say the least, and agreed to stay the night.

  While I awaited their arrival, I poured a glass of white wine and walked around my empty apartment. I looked through the rooms to see what was missing. His computer was gone from the office and his toothbrush was gone from the sink. It was like he was never there.

  He did put a fresh set of sheets on the bed and made it up really nice. A considerate gesture, but in light of the circumstance, it didn’t amount to much. I saw myself in the mirror that hung on the closet door. My face appeared tired and worn. I squeezed my cheeks, but was unable to get any color back into them.

  Behind the closet door hung a half empty rod. A box sat just inside the closet. I sat my glass on the dresser and knelt to open it. My wedding dress. The sight of it broke my heart more as I mourned the wedding that would never be. I will never get to wear this dress. I felt the need to put the dress on one last time. A bad idea, but with an empty stomach I was already tipsy and didn’t care. I slipped the dress on. It was a strapless, trumpet-style wedding gown with a lace overlay, and it fit me like a glove. Admiring myself for the moment, I thought of what a beautiful bride I would be. But this would-be bride had just been jilted. My stomach sank. Would I ever get to have my special day, with a special man, in a special dress like this?

  Self-pity made me feel even worse. There I was standing in my wedding gown only hours after I had called off the wedding. It was pathetic and humiliating. In that moment, I felt the magnitude of everything that Chad had taken from me: my love, my trust, my dignity, but most of all, he took the hope that I could ever love and trust again. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I dropped to the floor. Holly found me in my room and ran over to console me.

  “Marin, I’m here.” Holly held me tight. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  I looked up at her, my eyes flooded with tears and buried my head in her chest.

  Holly helped me out of the dress and instructed me to take a long hot shower. The water felt good on my tired, sore muscles that I forced into walking around the city all day after sleeping on the bathroom floor. I felt drained, like I had been through a war. Only the war wasn’t over. It had just begun. In all my experience dealing with broken hearts I knew this was going to take time, and I’d have to be patient.

  I dressed in clean pajamas and found Telly and Holly in the kitchen. Telly wrapped her arms tightly around me. She wasn’t much for showing affection but never neglected to when it really mattered.

  “I’m so sorry.” A pity-filled smile covered her mouth. I tried to mirror it, but was too sad and too tired. She smiled bigger. “I brought Chinese. Your favorite!”

  The three of us sat in the living room eating pork-fried rice and spring rolls. Well, they ate and I just pushed my food around with my chopsticks. They listened intently to the full story and offered encouragement at all the right moments. Afterward, Telly put on a movie. She was trying to cheer me up, and for that I was grateful. But I was beyond cheering up now, and my mind couldn’t focus on anything other than the fact that my engagement was over.

  I tossed and turned most of the night with thoughts of Chad and my ended relationship. Finally, around six in the morning, I fell asleep. An hour later, Holly came in to check on me. She shut my curtains to darken the room and kissed my forehead.

  “I’ll call you later,” she whispered.

  I closed my eyes again and tried to forget the unforgettable.

  CHAPTER THREE

  How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?

  My bed became a permanent fixture to my body. Food, communication, and even bathing were of little interest. I wanted nothing more than to be swallowed by the darkness of my room.

  Lights started to flood my apartment with Holly’s arrival. I managed to open my heavy eyelids and lift my head from the pillow.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Nothing,”

  “Have you been here all day?” She settled next to me.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Telly and I got worried. You didn’t answer our calls.” I remained silent while my worn eyes blinked in the light. “I brought you a sandwich. Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  She lay down next to me and brushed the hair out of my face. Her eyes peered steadily into mine. When she received no telepathic insight she asked, “What’s going on in your head, Mar?”

  “Emptiness,” I said.

  “Emptiness?”

  “My head, my heart, my body, my life feels empty. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “You know that’s not true, right?” Her warm voice cooled at my ears, failing to comfort me.

  “I don’t know anymore. I loved him, Holly. I thought he loved me.” My voice cracked. “I thought he was the one.”

  I broke down crying, curled up on my side like a baby. Holly held me and stayed until I was silent and fell asleep again.

  A pounding ache in my head forced me to stomach a few crackers and aspirin. I walked a lap around my apartment, stretching my legs to avoid possible atrophy. When I returned to bed, I summoned the television with my remote. I flipped through commercial after commercial before settling on a movie channel. Fitting, the movie was a tragic love story. As much as I wanted to change the channel to something lighter and more cheerful, I couldn’t. I was hooked. Within an hour, I was crying inconsolably for the heroine who lost the love of her life in a plane crash and never recovered after his death. My sad state was exacerbated by the prospect of being like her and living out my days in mourning. I didn’t want to believe that Chad was the only chance I would get at lasting love, but I couldn’t see myself taking a chance to be fooled again.

  I thought about everything that had happened and wanted to blame something, someone. Chad was the obvious choice, but I started questioning my responsibility in all of it. Had I pressured him to get married? Was the idea of marrying me so bad that he had to have an affair to kick-start our marriage? Was there something I could have done to change things? All I could conclude was, why me?

  Then I thought of my past relationships. There were few to recall, and yet there was one common theme. I always got dumped. My first boyfriend, and high school sweetheart, was Von. Before him, I had no experience with boys. My parents kept me busy with AP classes, tennis lessons, and the track team. Von was the crush of all crushes. Not just to me, but to most of the girls in our class. I’ll never forget the first time I saw him. It was love at first sight. Really.

  After a year of nothing and out of nowhere, he asked me on a date. I couldn’t believe it. To me, a seventeen-year-old girl, it was a miracle. Our romance was brief, but nonetheless magical. We ended things that summer when he went away to college, and I never saw him again. It was the first time I felt the pangs of a broken heart. My dating life was scarce in college, but that changed in medical school.

  Jack Ashbury was a first year med student like me and had all the makings of a great doctor. He was smart, charismatic, and incredibly caring. For a long time I believed he was the love of my life. Our relationship took a turn when I dropped out of med school and moved to the east coast for grad school. Jack had no desire to keep up a long distance relationship and began dating someone new almost immediately. It took me years to get over that one.

  Grad school and my internship kept me too busy for anything serious. My mom began to worry that I might never give her grandchildren as I was twenty-eight and still single. Then, I met Chad and subsequently lost him too. For some reason I could sense my breakups
with Von and Jack before they happened. The signs were always the same. One day they started acting strange and distant. The glow in their eyes disappeared and my gut felt uneasy and nauseous. Both times it happened they convinced me that nothing was wrong, until days later when they got the courage to tell me it was over. No warning signs with Chad though. His deception came as a complete surprise.

  My mind raced with memories from that night and tears wet my worn-out eyes. I studied myself in the mirror, hoping it would reflect some explanation for the sudden turn of events. Was I not pretty enough? Was my ass too fat? Were my boobs too small? What was so wrong with me?

  I threw myself on the bed and sobbed one of those intense cries that start off about one thing, but end up about something different. My father called it a good cry. Oh yes, I thought about every bad thing that had ever happened to me, allowing myself any reason to be sad.

  “Why, why,” I cried out. The pity party was in full force and lasted the entire day. Heartbreaking love songs filled my apartment while tear filled tissues littered the floor. I needed it and wanted it that way. I wanted the sorrow to consume me like a flame so I could be reborn from the ashes like a phoenix. And that’s what I did for days, a pathetic routine of sleeping the day away, eating little food, and doing nothing useful. My professional mind advised me otherwise, but the idea of leaving the apartment, exercising, and being with other people felt like a harder burden than the depression.

  By the weekend, my friends were so concerned that they showed up to execute an intervention. I awoke from another nap to find Telly and Holly standing over me. Holly knelt down to face me. “You ready to get out today, sleepy head?” she asked in her sweet, maternal way.

  “No. I don’t want to go anywhere.”

  Telly knelt next to Holly and in the same tone said, “There’s a big sale at Nordstrom today. Half off select shoe wear.” Her words a bribing tactic no different from the kind a mother uses to get her child to eat his vegetables.

  “I don’t care about a shoe sale, Telly.” I turned my head in the other direction thinking that if I didn’t see them they wouldn’t be there. Telly did not accept that. She stomped over to the other side of the bed and bent down so I could see her face. Her maternal tone was replaced with an attitude of disbelief.

  “Don’t care about a shoe sale?” She gaped at me for a moment, looked up at Holly, then back at me. “Honey, when was the last time you brushed your teeth?” She tried to smile, but it turned into a cringe. I pulled the pillow over my head, but could still hear them whispering to each other in the hallway.

  Ten minutes later they returned. Holly stole the pillow from off of my head. “Telly drew you a nice warm bubble bath. I think it’ll help. You wanna take a bath?”

  “No,” I said, firmly covering my face with my hands and curling into a ball.

  “Come on, Marin. It’s just a bath. You’ll feel better,” Telly said.

  “I appreciate it guys, really, but I just want to be alone right now.” How could they not get it?

  “That’s it!” Telly said, pitting my hardwood floors as she stamped over in her stilettos and tore off my comforter. “You can’t just lay here day in and day out. If you want to start feeling better you have to get out and do something. This isn’t you. You’re stronger than this. Don’t let that selfish son-of-a-bitch do this to you. Take your life back.”

  Surely deep down I knew she was trying to help, but it wasn’t very apparent in the moment. Why couldn’t they leave me alone and let me deal with my heartbreak my way?

  “You can’t lay here forever,” Telly said.

  Tough love was definitely her tactic, and it pissed me off. I stomped over to the bathroom and slammed the door shut. I brushed my teeth rashly and stepped into the tub still dressed in my three-day-old pajamas. The girls came in after me and stared from the doorway as I sat fully clothed and soaked in bubbles.

  “Is this what you want?” I shouted with tears in my throat. “I’m taking a bath and I’m brushing my teeth. Do you feel better now? Because I feel the same.” I rose from the tub, my pajamas saturated and dripping warm bath water. I looked onto Telly’s pity filled face.

  “Telly, I’m sorry I don’t care about bubble baths and shoe sales right now. And Holly, I’m sorry I don’t want to leave the house or eat anything. I’m sorry, but I don’t.” I broke down and sunk back into the sea of bubbles. My eyes filled with tears, blurring my view of them. “I can’t. I just can’t.”

  Holly wrapped a towel around my shoulders with few words and they left me alone. They helped me to my bedroom and into dry pajamas. My point was clear to them, and so they let me be. I fell asleep, and when I awoke I felt a wave of embarrassment over the way I acted. Yes, my fiancé cheated on me. Yes, my wedding was over. And yes, I was sad. But that was no reason not to bathe, change clothes, or eat.

  Those five days had been such a blur, and I recalled it like one incredibly long and painful day. Even with all the sleep, my body and mind were still so tired. My friends were right, the only way to feel better was to get up, and that’s what I did. After a long, hot shower, I put on some jeans and a tee-shirt and made a PB&J. I wasn’t quite ready to leave the house, but it was Saturday night, and I had slept enough for the next month.

  Just as I was about to sit down with a new magazine, I heard a knock at the door. I was sure it was Telly with cocktails, or Holly with dinner, or both. But I was wrong on both counts. It was Chad standing in the hallway. His head hung, and he barely looked at me. I froze.

  “Hey, Marin,” he said. I remained stiff not knowing what to say, what to think, or what to do. “Can I come in?”

  I took a deep breath and stiffened.

  “Sure.”

  He entered the living room. I remained by the door wanting to reopen it.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “How do you think I am?” I said.

  “You’re right. That was a stupid question.”

  “What do you want, Chad?” I was surprised by my emotionless persona.

  “I miss you, and I’m so sorry. I can fix this. I can make it right.” Make it right? His face was desperate. I considered every possible couple’s counseling trick I could think of to move on from something so devastating, but nothing seemed viable.

  “I don’t think this is going to work,” I said. His face became desperate.

  “Marin, please.” He gently took my face in his hands and I fought the urge to cry. In that moment, as I inhaled his cologne, I missed him. I wanted things to go back to the way they were, lock the door behind me, and never let him go. But I couldn’t. The truth was that deep in my heart I knew it was over. “I love you,” he said.

  “I know, but I can’t do this.” My voice choked on a lump in my throat and a tear escaped. He wrapped me in his arms, and I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting like hell not to cry on his shoulder. Whatever strength I had was no match for his touch, his smell, his voice.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, holding me tightly to him. After a minute, my eyes dried, and I pulled away. For the last time, I gazed into his brown eyes, the ones that once filled my life with love. I searched for something I might have missed, but found nothing.

  “I need you to go now,” I said.

  With a regretful sigh, he covered his face. I thought for a moment he was crying too. He pushed the hair out of my face. “I’ll never forgive myself for this, for what I’ve done. I’m sorry I let you down. Take care of yourself, okay?”

  I nodded. A second later, he was gone. I closed the door behind him and placed my forehead against it, tears streaming down my cheeks and dripping off my chin. I had mourned my loss for nearly a week, but the sting of severed ties felt as fresh as an open wound. I will never know how my body expressed so many tears in such a short period of time. It was over. My heart was broken. The end. At the same time I felt a sense of relief, relieved that I could move on.

  When I was done crying, I glanced around my apartment planning my next m
ove. The most appealing option was to return to bed for another week of sadness and despair, but I had finally made progress and didn’t want to regress. Instead, I channeled it into something useful; cleaning. When I got to the bathroom I realized what a mess I’d made. It was one of the only rooms I had used during the week, and given my depression, I didn’t bother to clean up after myself.

  I snapped on some yellow rubber gloves and got down to work, which included scrubbing the tub, the toilet, and the sink. I also polished the mirror and the faucets, then swept and mopped the floor, wiped down the baseboards, and reorganized the cabinets. Whew, I thought wiping the sweat from my brow and smiling with accomplishment. The freshness of the bathroom transformed my spirit. It was the best I’d felt in days.

  Following the same protocol in the other rooms of the apartment, I dusted, scrubbed, and organized. I rearranged the furniture in my bedroom and in the living room. On a whim, I took down my drapes, and then decided to put them up again. It was three in the morning when I finished and admired my work in every room. Everything was so clean it was like new. It felt almost like a fresh start. I was a firm believer in changing your space to change your life, and here I had done it without even realizing it. My cleaning venture exhausted my mind enough to stop thoughts of Chad, and so I slept like a baby.

  Determined to get back to my normal routine, I opened the drapes and let in the morning sun. My newly cleaned apartment looked even better in the daylight. I let out a peaceful sigh as I sipped my coffee and picked at a blueberry muffin. Then, there was a knock at the door.

  I jumped up to look through the peephole fearing Chad’s reappearance. This time it was only the sweet face of my wavy-haired friend. She greeted me with a caring hug as I let her in.

  “This place looks great!” Holly said, noticing all of my hard work. “You even rearranged the furniture.” She looked closely at the arrangements in my living room and spotted my half eaten muffin.