by Pamela Ribon
I’m so, so, so, so, so sorry. About everything. I miss you.
-Tess
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000047.
My next week felt three months long. If I wasn’t sleeping, I was crying. If I wasn’t doing either of those things, my head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton, a dull haze fell over my eyes, and even the slightest movement would leave me exhausted. I didn’t answer the phone or leave the house. I wouldn’t have even changed my clothes if it weren’t for Dale, who came by three times a day to feed me. He also brought over his DVD player and kept me in full supply of movies that had nothing to do with families or dying family members. He would rub my back as I cried. I made him talk about mundane things as I zoned out in my bed. I listened to the latest gossip at his job, problems with Jason, or the most recent news on his screenplay. He was almost finished with it, and I couldn’t wait to read it. He was trying to figure out who should play the lead girl and I planned on suggesting Smith.
Through all of this I knew Dale wanted to ask me about Ian. It shows the caliber of friend he is that the subject never came up.
Ian had left the morning after, before I had even woken up, and I hadn’t heard from him since. He left so quietly—like I was some kind of mistake, like there was shame in what we had done. I didn’t have the strength to get upset over it yet; I wasn’t even ready to think about what it all meant. I just wanted the heavy sadness to lift out of my bones. All I did was sleep until I couldn’t stand the sight of my apartment any longer.
I eased back to work the next week, mostly because I wanted to see how Smith was doing. It was the first week of December.
We were at our spot under the bleachers when she said, “I’m really sorry about your dad.” The Action Grrlz had all signed a card for me. They were up to fifteen girls. It must have been comforting for them to all sign something that had a definite purpose.
“Thanks. Are you nervous about the rally?” I asked her.
“Hell, yeah. I can’t believe it’s on Monday. I wrote my speech.”
“I can’t wait to hear it.”
She squatted down to tie one of her shoelaces. It was purple and long. She yanked on her shoes like they were being punished. “Are you sure you don’t want to bail on it? You’ve had a pretty rough couple of weeks.”
I leaned my head against the cold metal pole I was holding on to and closed my eyes. I was still tired from everything. My body ached with sadness. It felt like my joints creaked with every motion. I kept seeing my father’s body in the hospital. I heard Kurt’s voice in my head. I saw Ian’s body over mine.
“You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said, Miss.” Smith punched my arm.
“I’m sorry.” I opened my eyes and focused on her. “Tell me again.”
Smith squinted for a second. She looked away. “Forget it,” she said.
I didn’t know how to tell her that I wanted to listen. I just couldn’t keep my head in one place.
“I can’t believe you fucked your ex-boyfriend. Haven’t you seen High Fidelity?”
“Seen it and read it,” I said, burying my face in my sleeve, wondering if John Cusack was making royalties off the number of times he’d been referenced in my life recently.
“You two getting back together?”
“No. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Anna Koval doesn’t want to talk about boys? It’s like the entire world has just shifted, Miss.”
I must have looked miserable at that moment because Smith quickly reached out to me. She leaned into my side and put her arm around me. I could feel her small fingers on my shoulder. Her skin felt cold through my sweater. She didn’t say another word. She just rested her head on my arm. I hadn’t expected such a gentle touch from Smith. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to allow it, but it felt so good to have someone touch me, to quietly tell me it was okay to be sad. It wasn’t like a man’s touch, which can be hard and can get inside of you, pulling everything out. This was tiny, like when my little sisters and I would twine our bodies together on the couch Saturday mornings and watch cartoons. I pretended Smith was one of my sisters. I closed my eyes and felt my breath catch in my throat. She tightened her grip on my arms and pulled me against her as I tried not to cry. All I could hear was the wind whipping under the bleachers and the sound of flagpole chains clanging in the distance. My head was swirling and my heart was aching. I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know how to feel like myself again.
It’s not like I thought Ian and I would get back together. I didn’t want that. I wasn’t ready and I didn’t feel like my father’s death was an appropriate reason. I wanted to be able to tell Ian that I was flattered by his interest and grateful for his comfort, but I didn’t want anything more to happen. I wanted to be the one to break it off. I wanted to tell him no. I wanted to leave him for a change. But he never let me be the strong one. Instead he left before I got a chance to say anything. I was never the one in control of us. Not the last time and certainly not this time. I didn’t even have the control to stop myself from falling back into his arms and letting him make love to me. I was so weak that I didn’t care about risks or who he had slept with since the last time we were together. It was weak to even want him again, to look back at him and take him again.
I was at square one all over again.
When I got home that afternoon I grabbed my CHANGE list. NEW HAIRCUT had been crossed off. I crossed off LOSE WEIGHT. It seemed like such a stupid thing, to worry about my weight when my entire life was fucked up. I had made a list based on impressing someone else. Not one of those items was for me. Was I so self-hating that I needed to write down things that were wrong with me? Why would I do that to myself?
I wondered if my ass was still tall enough to get on roller coasters.
DRINK MORE WATER. I couldn’t believe that was a resolution. As if drinking a few liters of water would give me a brand-new perspective on the world, make me one with the universe, and allow me to finally understand calculus. It was just hydrogen and oxygen, not a master’s degree.
I crunched the paper into a ball in my right hand. I wasn’t going to live by a set of flaws. I was going to live my life without feeling like a daily failure.
000048.
Subject: re: re: re: Don’t tell anybody—I hate the Indigo Girls
AK,
I hate that I only have your mother’s phone number. I’m thinking of prank calling her until she gives me your number. Are you afraid that our long-distance bills would be too high? Is that why you’re playing telephonic hard to get?
Today I shoveled my sidewalk. That is how exciting my life is here. I also realized that Christmas is very soon. Just a few weeks away. What would you like? Wait, are you Jewish? See? So many things to learn about you.
Last night I went out to this bar where I go sometimes because everybody inside it is always the same. It’s been the same four guys at the corner of that bar for the past ten years. They served me before I was old enough and now I feel very loyal to them. It’s a good place to go when you want to see how far you’ve come over a period of time. Just check in. They haven’t seen you in months, so the questions they ask tell you how much your life has changed.
“How’s Heather?” they asked. So I hadn’t been to the bar in over a year.
“She’s getting married to a Frenchman,” I replied, and they paid for my beers all night long in exchange for their opinions. Apparently I look thinner, seem happier, and am better off without that bitch that they never liked.
Then I met the most beautiful woman while I was waiting in line for the bathroom. She loves Ben Folds Five, knows how to use chopsticks, and has an extensive art collection. She has two dogs and speaks three languages fluently. She can pick up a bar of soap with her toes and knows all of the words to the theme song from The Great Space Coaster. She thinks I’m witty, charming, and handsome. I took her back to my apartment and we made love slowly until the sun came up, where she made me crepes whil
e wearing only a pair of high heels. She fed me breakfast as she sang all of the songs from Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks in order.
Are you jealous? Well, don’t worry. Turns out I just fell asleep at the bar.
But come on, you have to admit, if I found some girl like that you’d be insanely jealous, wouldn’t you? You’d have to come to Pittsburgh and punch her in the face, right? Because from where I sit, that imaginary girl might be the only woman in this world that could beat your place in my heart.
Ignore what I just said there.
-LD
-----
000049.
Tess showed up at my apartment the following afternoon.
“Hear me out, okay?”
She was wearing a green coat and brown corduroys. She wore a ski cap. Her right foot was twisting inward at an awkward, nervous angle. She was holding two cups of coffee. A bag was crammed under her arm.
“Are those for me? Because if they are, you’re starting off on the right foot.”
“Is Ian here?”
“No.” I was sick of the sound of his name. Sick of all things Ian. I needed Anna K to break up with him soon so I didn’t have to talk about him anymore.
“Please, can I come in?”
It felt like years had passed since Tess posted that entry. It was the same feeling as when Meredith and I fight when I come home for holidays. The next time we saw each other, there’d be a faint ache from where we used to be smarting, but it was too dull to remind us what the fight was all about.
I let Tess in and took a coffee from her. She dumped out the bag. Cookies and packs of cigarettes scattered onto my coffee table.
“Merry Christmas,” I exhaled.
“I have a proposition.”
She started talking very quickly, moving her hands whenever she stopped for a breath so I wouldn’t have a chance to interrupt. I sipped my coffee and listened.
Tess had written a paper on Internet diaries. It was part of her thesis, and she had submitted it to a web conference. They liked her paper and what she had to say and had invited her to come and speak at the conference that weekend. They wanted her to bring someone who wrote a web journal to answer questions and discuss what the next wave of journalism might be if these sites gained a greater audience.
“How many people visit your website a day?” she asked me.
“I don’t know, Tess. It’s been more expensive lately, though. The hosting company has been charging me out the ass. Something about the bandwidth.”
“You don’t know? You don’t check your stats?”
I stared at her until she walked over to my laptop and pulled up my website. She asked me a few questions, typed a few things, and pulled up a page. She made a hissing noise through her teeth and turned the laptop toward me. “Did you know over five thousand people read your site every day?”
“Is that a lot?”
“It’s not huge if you’re a company. But if you want to compare it, about fifty people read my site, and I’m dancing over it. That means I don’t suck.”
“So, what does this make me?” I asked.
“A writer.”
I tried to imagine what five thousand people looked like. I wondered how many of them were just like Kurt. Was that possible? Could there be more than one of him out there? Maybe I could find someone else, someone who lived closer to me. My head started aching. Five thousand people. What did they all want from me?
In all those five thousand people, how had Kurt stood out? How did he break past that faceless pack? What made him take an extra step forward, allowing him to be whole and human in my mind? Maybe I had added qualities to him that he didn’t really have. I might have just elaborated and exaggerated until I imagined a real relationship between the two of us. I could be the only one feeling this, reading into his words and deciding we had more than was even possible.
“So, will you come to the conference with me and speak?” Tess lit a cigarette. “You’re qualified, and the fact that you know nothing about the community you’re in is incredibly fascinating.”
“I have to answer questions?” My mouth went dry. “I don’t really like talking about this thing, Tess.” Maybe I could send Shannon in my place, since she spent so much time reading journals. She was much more of an expert.
“I know it’s not glamorous, but it’s a free trip, a free hotel room, a free rental car, and a chance to get away. You can do your Christmas shopping in a different part of the country. It will be fun.”
“I don’t know, Tess. Does the hotel have a pool?” I joked.
“I’m pretty sure Pittsburgh is the last place where you’d want to swim these days. I can see about moving the conference to Green Bay if you want to totally freeze your ass off.”
“Pittsburgh?”
She booked my ticket that instant, from my computer. The conference was just days away. Days. I was going to see him in days. I had to see what he looked like. I couldn’t ignore the pull inside of me any longer. I had to find out if it was real.
000050.
While making the final descent into the Pittsburgh International Airport early Friday evening, I went over my Post-It list again. I was smarter this time and had written out two lists: one for Tess and one for Kurt. I wasn’t going to make any mistakes. I was going to try to weave all of my lies into at least semitruths by the time I said good-bye to both of them.
I was pretty comfortable with the Tess list. I wasn’t so emotionally involved with her that I might slip up, and I wasn’t too worried about what she’d think if she caught me. I’d explain to her that there were some lies I told early on to protect myself, back when I felt more vulnerable to strangers interested in my life. Was that a good enough excuse that Kurt would buy it as well?
I waited to tell Kurt I was coming until yesterday. Originally I wanted to surprise him, sending an e-mail from some local café telling him to meet me there. That entire ordeal was way too You’ve Got Mail for me, though, and I figured he deserved some preparation time.
Besides, I needed him to have his schedule completely free so I didn’t end up sitting between him and some girl he’d known for years. I was asking him to cancel all plans immediately and drop everything to wait for me to bust in on his city. I was fine with how selfish that was. I felt I’d earned it in thousands of half-flirting words over the past four months.
I was happy to be flying alone, as the conference had already booked Tess’s flight when she invited me along. We were meeting in Baggage Claim. I wasn’t even in charge of getting the rental car. I leaned back and tried to imagine that this was just a vacation and not potentially an enormous disappointment.
I shifted in my seat away from the sleeping woman leaning heavier and heavier on my side, and my mind wandered to the other night, when Becca almost kicked me out of her wedding.
She had met me for drinks, saying she had a “delicate matter” to discuss. After the uncomfortable small talk she finally said that Ian told Mark about us sleeping together in Connecticut. Now Ian wanted to skip out on the wedding so it wouldn’t turn into “a scene.” Becca and Mark didn’t want a situation on their wedding day, but Ian was one of Mark’s best friends, so they didn’t want him to leave. Basically they were asking if I’d be nice enough to bow out of the wedding and let someone else be a bridesmaid. I was mortified to find out that Becca and Mark actually had to sit and talk about Ian and me having sex, how Ian had run out on me afterward, and which one of us was more important at the ceremony. Everyone at that wedding would soon know that Ian wasn’t talking to me because he flew to Connecticut for pity sex.
“I understand, Becca,” I said quietly. “I won’t come to the wedding.”
“I hate that they’re making me do this,” she told me as she dropped her head down to the bar. “I’m so sorry, Anna.”
“Don’t, Bec. That’s dirty. Your hair’s in beer.”
“I don’t care. Shit, I paid thirty dollars for a shampoo with beer in it. This is just as good, I�
�m sure.”
She wiped her forehead back and forth on the bar. She was wearing her hair down because her stylist had told her that she was ruining her hairline by wearing it up so often. Becca didn’t want to be a bald bride. She moaned from under her hair as the ends lapped in puddles of beer.
“She can’t do that here,” the bartender said to me.
“Thanks, dude.” I nodded at him. “Good to know.”
“I can do what I want, Mr. Bartender Man. Don’t you know the bride always gets her way?”
It wasn’t that she was drunk; I think Becca was just at her breaking point. So many things to deal with and now she had to fire a bridesmaid? I couldn’t imagine.
I grabbed her purse and held her on the shoulder as I paid the tab. “She’s had a rough day,” I explained to the bartender.
“Do you want me to call a cab?” he asked. He was cute. Blue eyes, big hands, and a tattoo at the base of his neck on the right side. A word I couldn’t read. I briefly imagined us naked on the bar counter, shattering beer glasses all around us as he drove my hips into the counter and pulled on the back of my hair.
What was wrong with me?
“We’re fine,” I told my brief boozy lover as I pulled Becca into my arms. “Let’s go,” I said to her.
“I’m sorry about Ian,” she whispered into my ear.
Once outside the bar, Becca whipped around so quickly that her purse smacked me in the thigh. She grabbed both of my arms and looked into my eyes.