Love, Carry My Bags

by Everett, C. R.

  We christened my new rental, mid-afternoon.

  “Why don’t I give you some time to unpack, get settled in?” Glenn said, pulling his pants back on. “I’ll come back in a couple of hours and take you to dinner, my treat.”

  I closed the screen door carefully behind him, thrilled he was treating me to dinner. Acrid late-summer air wafted through, bringing not relief from the heat, but a special stink courtesy of Monsanto.

  When Glenn returned, he brought a small oscillating fan. “You can borrow this. My air conditioning works,” he said.

  “Thank you.” I plugged it in immediately and stood right in front, enjoying its breeze.

  “Let’s go, it’s hot in here,” Glenn said, sweating. “Wear something nice.”

  I put on a loose half shirt and a tight denim miniskirt that Chris had helped me pick out over the summer. I had told him that Glenn wanted me to wear more attractive clothes. I twirled around, modeling the new outfit.

  “Mmmm. Nice,” Glenn said, then crept his hands beneath my shirt and kissed me. “Now go get dressed for dinner.”

  “I am dressed for dinner.”

  “You’re not wearing that out,” Glenn said, as if he were a father laying down the law.

  “You said you wanted me to wear sexy clothes, so I got some. I thought you’d like it.”

  “I do like it, but that’s for home. I don’t want everyone looking at you. I want you to wear sexies for me at home.”

  What a waste, I thought, having spent clothes money on clothes I couldn’t even wear. Clothes that were nothing different than what every sorority girl on the main campus wore every day.

  I changed into a pair of wispy gauchos.

  Dinner at Paqueños was extraordinary. We dined on tapas, a series of micro-meals, which we ordered one at a time and shared. Glenn’s order came first.

  “What is that?” I said, amazed. What looked like an overgrown hummingbird pooled in sauce filled just the center of his plate.

  “Quail.”

  “That’s quail? I didn’t know people ate—” Midsentence, I waved at the waiter who was close by, took a deep breath. “Could I get a refill?” I asked, lifting my water glass. Turning back to Glenn, I finished, “—quail.”

  We had less than two forkfuls each. Tasted like chicken. Tiny chicken bones were all that remained. It seemed so barbaric to eat it.

  My Portobello was next, drizzled with herb-infused balsamic vinegar, vinegar I never before knew existed. We cut into the steak-like fungus, laughing the whole time about the incongruous nature of miniature poultry and giant meaty mushrooms.

  After shrimp toast, our meal ended with a thin-crust pizza sprinkled with diced tomatoes instead of sauce. We cut it into eight, fun, bite-sized triangles.

  “We’ll have the chocolate mousse for dessert,” Glenn told the waiter, who happened to smell of the cologne Reese used to wear. Each time he returned to our table, I’d drink in aromatic wafts, filling my lungs to capacity, then hurriedly exhale to take in another long, subtle whiff until he was gone. It reminded me of Reese’s comforting letters and his shirt I used to sleep with under my pillow.

  I began inhaling as four quarter-sized cups arrived at our table. Two made of white chocolate and two dark, each filled with decadent mousse topped with chocolate shavings. Glenn let me have three, after seeing how much I enjoyed the first.

  “Coffee?” Glenn asked.

  “I’ll have Bailey’s coffee.”

  “Oh, you will?” he said, delighted and surprised.

  “With whipped cream,” I said, shivering, wishing the coffee to the table instantly. The temperature gradient between the city street outside and the climate-controlled restaurant was the same as between equatorial high noon and Antarctic night. They must have housed penguins in the back room.

  Glenn dropped me off.

  “I had a good time. Thanks,” I said.

  “Me too.” Glenn kissed me goodnight.

  Spending the night alone in my new home disappointed me, but four nights in a row with Glenn had been almost too good to be true. He reached his limit. The evening out and kiss goodbye, without him expecting anything in return, encouraged me.

  Bare skin was too hot to wear, even with Glenn’s fan. I lay awake for hours, soaking my sheet with sweat. After sleep finally came, sirens awoke me at three. Red lights flickered through the blinds. I threw on a nightgown and peered out. Later, I found out that a divorced, single mother lived in the little house next door. A house smaller than mine. Her ex came over regularly, stirring shit up with her and her two-year-old. The police came over slightly less often. It lasted all semester until the day there was an ambulance too. I never saw any of them again after that. A cleaning service specializing in stain removal came, then the house was empty. Even so, nights I wasn’t with Glenn, I thought I could hear screams from next door.

  * * *

  My birthday fell on homecoming weekend. Instead of going to happy hour together that Friday, Glenn asked for a night off to fraternize with the brothers, reminiscing about the vomit fest from the year before and other guy stuff. “I’ll meet you at the dance about nine,” he said.

  Bored and lonely, I called Charmaine—something I rarely did.

  “Meet us at happy hour. Adam’s Mark,” she said, being her effervescent self. “The more the merrier.”

  I sat at the hotel bar with Charmaine and her friends, all at least twenty-five years my senior.

  “How are things with you and Glenn?” Charmaine asked, exuding peppiness as if she were anticipating my answer to be nothing but peppy in return.

  I almost cried in reply.

  “Oh, what’s wrong, baby?” she asked, her pep appropriately replaced by concern.

  I explained my misgivings about Casey, the skirt incident, his hot-and-cold attitude in general, and the tickle rampage. The explanation was infused with a what’s wrong with me, why aren’t I more likable, and an I’ll do anything to make this work feeling.

  “Excessive ticklers have a control problem. They’re control freaks,” she said, in all seriousness.

  I wrote it off as another one of her whacked-out ideas.

  “I’m supposed to meet him at homecoming tonight.”

  “Good luck,” she said. Her voice declared him a lost cause and that there was no luck to be had, but I didn’t hear that part, not really.

  * * *

  By the time I got to the dance, Glenn was already spinning hits with the DJ.

  “There’s drinks over there,” he said, pointing to the refreshment table.

  “Okay.” I answered, perplexed. He usually offered to get me a drink, not send me for my own. Although, at home, he had been asking me to wait on him more than usual. Feeling sorry for him struggling through school, I had obliged. Glenn was repeating Calculus this semester, having flunked in the spring. He blamed it on trick word problems that didn’t make any sense. The administration shunned alternate testing methods—no oral exams despite therapist’s recommendations. At times it seemed the institution existed more to collect tuition checks rather than help students succeed.

  “Want to dance?” I asked.

  “No.” Glenn seemed distracted. An uneasy silence sat between us.

  I watched Deidre and Glenn’s fraternity brother, Ronin, falling all over each other on the dance floor. They shared our table up until Ronin removed Deidre’s shoe. Pouring champagne into the white pump, he made a toast to their future, then drank from it, downing its contents.

  “We just got engaged,” Ronin said, wiping dribbled champagne from his chin. “I wish you every happiness we have.” He tipped an invisible hat to us, then left.

  “If every happiness includes your fiancé calling every five minutes when you go out with your friends, I don’t want it,” Glenn said. “That’s what she does.”

  He was talking more to the air than to me, setting his gaze across the dance floor.

  “Why don’t you go home?” he said to me as if the evening was over and
there was nothing left to do. “I’ve got to help clean up here. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I suspected that cleaning up was a self-imposed duty. He could have come home with me if he wanted. It wasn’t like Glenn to let others dictate his schedule.

  * * *

  Glenn didn’t call until lunchtime. “What do you want to do?” he asked. My dreamlike vision of a planned surprise birthday lasted three-quarters of a sentence.

  “I was thinking we could do a picnic in the park.” Lying on a blanket with Glenn, watching clouds morph into shapes while our heads touched, sounded romantic. The cool outdoor air, refreshing.

  “I was thinking we could go to the mall,” he said.

  Another fantasy butchered.

  “I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

  Fifteen minutes later, he was at my door. I answered with a curling iron wrapped around my hair, anxious to plug it back into a socket.

  “You’re not ready yet?” Glenn asked, stunned. “What takes women so long to get ready?”

  “You said thirty minutes,” I yelled out from the bathroom, hurrying to finish my hair.

  “That was thirty minutes ago!” he yelled back.

  “No it wasn’t. You called at five past twelve and it’s twelve twenty-five right now.”

  “That’s not what my watch says. It says, twelve thirty-five. See, thirty minutes ago.”

  “But . . .” I started to point out the multiple erroneous issues when Glenn interrupted.

  “So, are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  The moment I knew that Glenn had remembered my birthday was when he said, “I forgot it was your birthday, so I didn’t have time to get you anything. I thought I’d take you to the store and let you pick out your own gift.”

  That was my fifty-first unnoticed clue. My stomach churned. I thought I was just hungry. We rode in silence for a few miles.

  “When did you get home last night?” I asked.

  “About one.”

  “One?” I said, surprised it took so long to clean up.

  “Tom and I went out for a beer.”

  “Oh.”

  Glenn offered no further details. We rode in silence again. I stared over the guardrail at the Mississippi’s muddied, rushing current.

  “Do you ever wish you could see your ex again?” I asked.

  “No.”

  He answered calmly, but I detected slight repulsion that I had asked.

  “Do you? I mean, do you wish you could see an ex-boyfriend?”

  He looked at me, waiting for an answer. Glenn’s reciprocal question had picked a fresh scab. I continued staring at, but not seeing, the mighty waters below, addressing the re-opened wound.

  “No,” I lied, telling myself it was the truth.

  We strolled through the mall, seldom holding hands.

  “Do you like this?” Glenn held up a white cotton shirt, buttons down the front.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d have to iron it.”

  We moseyed to the next store.

  “How about this one?” he asked, holding up a rayon print blouse.

  “No, dry clean only,” I answered, in no mood for shopping. No mood for shopping for my own birthday present. “Flowers would have been nice.”

  “Where’s a flower shop?”

  “I’m not going to pick out my own flowers,” I said with a tone of are you crazy?

  “Then why’d you bring it up?”

  “I just thought it would have been nice if you’d gotten me flowers.”

  “I’ll get you the damn flowers, if that’s what you want,” Glenn said, exasperated.

  “No. I wanted you to get flowers for me.” I tried spelling it out.

  “I said I would.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “You can be difficult sometimes.”

  Glenn was mad.

  I had no idea what was so difficult—except holding back my tears.

  “Why don’t we just have lunch and call it good?” I said.

  “Fine.”

  My lunch consisted of a bowl of sizzling rice soup at the Royal Dragon, something I normally had seconds of, but only managed a few sips on the worst birthday of my life.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you like the soup?”

  “I just can’t eat it right now.”

  “You said you wanted lunch, so I got you lunch.” He looked at me like what’s your problem? “You’re hard to please, you know that? First I offer to take you shopping and you don’t want that, then you say you want lunch and you won’t eat it. Can I do anything right?” Glenn asked, his anger pointed at me. He caught the waiter’s attention. “Bill please.”

  Holding back my tears proved too difficult, beyond my control.

  “Why are you crying? I should be the one upset,” Glenn said.

  I dried my eyes in response. “Let’s go,” I whispered.

  On the way home, Glenn fumed. He didn’t speak. He just glanced my direction, his eyes shouting, I want to rip your head off. Finally he said, “You know what? We’re over. I can’t take this shit anymore.”

  Tears poured again as soon as he said the word you. His tone had forewarned that nothing good was about to come. What shit? I wondered. I wondered why it was so hard to love me. I loved him, and he was breaking my heart. Often. He would rather buy me something than love me. I just wanted love. It didn’t cost anything.

  My empty shell didn’t even make it to the bedroom that night, but instead washed up on my living room carpet. I rolled over after there were no more tears to cry, absentmindedly pulling the carpet pile, yarn by yarn. I touched a smooth but hard piece, looked, and instantly regained presence as I hit the ceiling. A cockroach head had crunched between my fingers, ejecting me from the floor. I resumed my lament in my bed, creeped out and feeling violated all over again.

  Dreams pelted my sleep, unsettling ones, even the one about Reese living in the beachfront home he had always wanted. It woke me just enough to wonder what he was up to.

  * * *

  I didn’t do well the next week either. Every time I passed the phone, I thought of calling Glenn, to patch things up. I allowed myself to call him only once. I said into the receiver, “Come over tomorrow. I have some of your stuff.” After that, I posted a sticky note on the telephone that reminded me DON’T CALL GLENN.

  Two brown paper grocery sacks, a laundry basket, and his fan waited for him by the front door. I could get my own pliers, cookbook, screw driver, and Lee Greenwood tape. I had baggies, I didn’t need his Tupperware, or that spare flashlight. I sure didn’t need his extra laundry basket. He’d be doing his own wash. And reluctantly, I parted with his key. It was like parting with my identity.

  Glenn didn’t just pick up his stuff and leave; he sat down a minute like he wanted to talk, but not before he noticed the note on the phone.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “I had to remind myself not to call you. Habit.” I said, trying not to die from embarrassment. I tried sneaking a look at my armpits, checking my shirt for sweat circles.

  He looked at his things I had set aside. “You can keep the fan if you need it.”

  “I don’t need it,” I said, stoically.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “About?”

  “About breaking up with you.”

  “You know,” I said, staring past Glenn at the sparse snowflakes falling outside. “Ever since I was little, I always wanted to be with just one man. And that didn’t work out. Two hasn’t worked out either.”

  I sniffled, holding back the tears. Glenn didn’t know what he was supposed to say. I didn’t know why I was saying it, but I went on, recounting my wish for a fairy-tale life.

  “I wanted to get married and see my 50th wedding anniversary. By the time I find someone new, there may not be time for that to ever happen.” I sniffled again, holding back nothing.

  Glenn pulled a tissue from the box on th
e end table and handed it to me.

  “I wish you loved me,” I whispered so that even I could barely hear.

  * * *

  Eleven days later, Glenn stood on my doorstep. “Can I come in?” he said.

  I let him in even though I had just stepped out of the shower, wearing only a towel. “Let me get dressed.”

  He sat on the floor, leaning up against my new used-couch—a liberation gift from Charmaine—while I closed my bedroom door to throw on some clothes.

  “I saw you at the party last night,” Glenn hollered.

  “Yeah, I saw you too.”

  We had planned to attend the fraternity party together, before our break up, that is. Undeterred, I decided to go anyway, torn between feeling isolated and being uncomfortable at a beer bash. I chose to push the envelope. After the third offer of beer in my empty hand, I accepted. My first brew. It was better than the nasty sip of piss water Karla had given me in seventh grade.

  “You looked like you were having a good time,” Glenn said as I took a seat beside him.

  “It was okay.”

  I had left before the dismantling of the second-story handrail began and partygoers started dropping off the edges. Budding rocket scientists had decided the weight of six fraternities and four sororities might be too much for the balcony. Guardrails were dispensable.

  “Jason called last night. They had the baby.”

  “Boy or girl?” I asked. I wondered why he came over to tell me this.

  “Boy.”

  “What’d they name it?”

  “I forgot. Some weird name.”

  “Oh.”

  “After Jason called, the first thing I thought about was telling you.” Glenn paused, thinking carefully. “I was so excited for them, being a family and all.”

  He looked at me with the same eyes I’d seen on icebreaker night. I felt myself melting inside even though part of me wished to remain frozen.

  “I know I’ve made some mistakes. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I’m sorry,” he said.

  The melt water seeped from my eyes.

  “I was wondering if you’d have dinner with me. We could try this thing again,” he said. “Why are you crying?”