by Mary Wallace
“Seriously? You don’t see it?” Frank looked her in the eye, “When he drops in for a visit sometimes, he looks like he’s going to explode. He’s always looking right and left at the door, like he thinks the cops are watching him. You see his legal drug cocktail, you’ve written it down yourself. How can you lie to yourself anymore?”
“Fuck you.”
“What? How dare you?”
They’d never raised their voices at each other. Celeste felt adrift.
“I’ve seen guys high, Celeste. You haven’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you live in your little world, partying to find a man. Your eyes are closed to what some people are doing to survive.”
It was like another slap on her cheek, “I do not live small.”
“I didn’t say you live small.”
“Eddie thinks I do,” she let out.
Frank shook his head. “You have chosen a fine life. It’s nice, it’s safe. We got you out of granny clothes, now you look your age. He’s wrong.”
She felt torn, not knowing to whom to be faithful. “I don’t want to talk about him with you.” She stood up and pulled money out of her wallet for the lunch bill.
“Celeste, wait,” Frank said. “We’ve been friends for a good long time.”
“Friends don’t rip each other’s hearts out, Frank.” Celeste stormed out of the restaurant, barely feeling the cold wind on her face when she got to the street. She reflexively pulled her knit scarf up around her neck, but unzipped her black jacket. Her hands were numb, it felt like all the blood had left her head, her arms and legs and pooled in her half drunk, acid filled stomach.
She had to get back to her seat at work.
The boss always glared at Frank and then at her when they came in late from lunch. She’d have to hurry, but maybe walking back to her desk without Frank wouldn’t set the boss off today.
The day would not flow, she’d ignore Frank, gut through any conversations she’d have to have with customers and count the hours until she could walk out the door, not knowing how she’d ever sit back down on her swivel chair in the carefree way she had before Frank exploded his bomb on her at the lunch table.
Things might never be the same, but that’s okay, she thought grimly. Eddie wanted to take her to the tropics. She didn’t want to go below water again, but she’d try.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Celeste was rattled. She never had liquor at lunch and she had no stomach for two drinks of hard liquor these days.
The stark hollow loneliness that Frank was able to express for her echoed her own for him.
She couldn’t read men.
When her mother died, she’d not known who or where her father was, whether he was the phone lineman in the cherry picker under which she walked on her way to the bus, if he was one of the men who lined up to give her money through the plexiglas, or if he was dead and buried in a box in some unknown cemetery.
She had missed him though, as much as she spat when someone mentioned his existence as a precursor to her own. Growing up without a father meant that she cringed when other fathers enveloped her friends in hugs at school plays or parent-teacher conferences. Because her mother worked two jobs, Celeste was one of the few ‘latch key’ kids in her class. The ritualistic ending of the school day was not joyous for her in the way that it was for her schoolmates. When they skipped to the driving circle to get into cars and were handed snacks, she shuffled off through the side door to the world of big people, where she tried to fit in. Standing in line for a public bus, stealthily slipping into a bus seat, reaching up to pull the rope to ring the bell so that the bus driver would stop at her stop. She had to act independent, so that no one asked her with whom she was travelling, since the answer was hard to speak. “I’m alone.”
By watching her mother’s face, though, she caught what she needed, the eyes lighting up with happiness when her mother first saw her in the evening. Always tired, with a repressed short temper, her mother was able to express love, so that there were moments of pure peace, where Celeste crept into her mother’s arms, in the wing chair by the window, lay her head on her mother’s shoulder and, for a few precious moments, Celeste could just be.
When school events asked for a father and a mother, she didn’t mind saying ‘my mother is coming alone’ because she knew that together they weren’t alone. Together they were closer than some of the fathers and mothers who loved their children but despised each other.
She had a ghostly black hole for a father and a saint on a pedestal for a mother.
How do you have a relationship then, Celeste wondered, when no one around you has a successful partnership? Frank was the closest person she had to family, and it had been shockingly easy to uproot him to keep Eddie around.
Had Eddie asked her to push Frank aside? Eddie didn’t care that Frank was gay. He told her that he’d served in Iraq with a gay kid from the Bible Belt and when the kid was blown up by a mortar shell, the company had mourned, really mourned the kid. He had been the only one in the platoon to break down barriers with traumatized guys after they’d gone into firefights and seen dead civilians, dying children, screaming robe-shrouded grandmothers, the collateral damage of doing their job. The kid had been able to sense fear and just sit with another young soldier after an ambush until that soldier came back to full capacity. So the unit didn’t care if he was gay or straight, they just knew they needed him around for future fights and were heartbroken when they had to hoist his lifeless torso onto shoulders and carry him over a rocky hill back to base camp, leaving behind a hand and a foot that they couldn’t find under the barrage of mortar fire within which he’d died.
She had closed Frank off on her own.
Maybe trying to get off alcohol was too much. Maybe her body needed a cocktail to quell the loneliness. But she felt a welling up inside, a longing for her best self, and she didn’t want to be altered anymore.
And yet, here she was, woozy at work. Why? Because it hurt to realize that she didn’t believe that she could have both a friend and a lover unless they were the same person. Eddie might not be able to be both, but she refused to choose Frank and lose Eddie.
She couldn’t think clearly, and she blundered through two transactions with customers, asking for more money each time because she hadn’t hit all the buttons on her keyboard.
Then a woman came to her window with a child whose small fist hammered at the plexiglas with a tiny car that she clutched in her hand.
Celeste blew in anger, “I’m not going to help you with her being an ass like that!”
“Did you just call my 3-year old an ass?” The customer put her face right up to the squawk box, shrill voiced, “Come out here and say that to my face, Bitch!”
Celeste waved them away and put her plastic ‘closed’ sign up.
The woman pulled the girl off the countertop and stormed back in line.
Jeannie whispered over the desktop, “What is wrong with you?”
Frank waved her off, “Leave Celeste alone.” He motioned for the woman to cut the line and come to his window.
Celeste rubbed her temples. She should stand up and go home. Now. But there was no longer an early bus, there was only one route left from work to home and it didn’t leave until after closing time.
Maybe she should just stay, gut through. The line was dwindling anyway. The alcohol made her gregarious. She’d marry Eddie. Frank would come around. She’d find a house with Eddie, in a new town where they could, he could, recreate himself, leaving behind whatever memories he couldn’t forget from Afghanistan. She’d set up a nice house, she could finally feel grounded, take some time to figure out what she’d do for the rest of her life now that she had the things she’s always longed for, a partner and a home. This job had been fine to start with. But if the plexiglas hadn’t been there, with two lunchtime cocktails in her, she might have ripped the car out of the little girl’s hand. Not good, she thought, not good at all.
She shook her head to get the cobwebs and growing exhaustion out, then pulled aside the plastic ‘closed’ sign, toppling it onto the floor next to her chair. ‘Klutz’, she heard her childhood dance teacher’s voice say in the back of her head. She reached gingerly for the sign but couldn’t grasp it while sitting on her swivel chair. Rather than fall on her ass, she instead forced her lips into a bright smile and looked forward, yelling ‘Next!’
The sudden reappearance of the enraged mother’s face against the window shocked her, toppling her off her chair. She grabbed for the counter and stood herself up.
“Oh, you can help someone else but not me and my daughter?” The woman shook her fist at Celeste.
Celeste could see Frank and Jeannie standing up but she leaned towards the plexiglas, “If you can’t control your daughter, don’t bring her here!”
“She was fine until you were a bitch,” the woman turned her head, yelling, “Where’s the Manager? Get me the Manager.”
Celeste felt arms pulling her away from the window but she also felt herself grow large and strong, “She wasn’t fine, she was slamming her damn car at my window.”
“She was trying to show you the new little car she just got with her lunch. She tapped your window, but you went crazy!”
Celeste heard her boss in her ear, “Back down, Celeste, NOW!”
“I’m not crazy, you are!” Celeste pounded on the window, which felt suddenly strange. The solid see-thru glass had sat in front of her for years of her life and the only times she’d ever touched it were when she felt the heat of Eddie’s hand as he’d high fived her through the window. Now that she had him in bed and could get skin-to-skin contact, she didn’t need to ignore the window anymore. And with as much force as she felt being used to yank her away from her desk, she countered and blew out of herself, climbing onto her own desk, slamming the plexiglas at the mother who now shrank back, yanking her little daughter’s hand, dropping the small metal car out of it.
The little girl, instead of noticing the loss and crying, lunging for her car, stood transfixed, mouth wide open in an ‘O’, staring at Celeste as she pounded in rage until tears came and she let herself finally be pulled back into her cubicle.
Her purse was grabbed and her refrigerator opened, one small plastic container, her photos and her mug with the palm trees on it, empty but for rivulets of dried morning coffee and half and half were all shoved into the last space available, her purse was then shoved into her hands and she was unceremoniously pushed towards the now open back door.
Her boss seethed, “No fucking drinking at work. You’re fired.”
She felt his hands release her, the manhandling ended and she stood cold and alone in the alley between the office building and a small parking lot.
If only she hadn’t sold her car a year back, she thought, she could hide in it. Instead, more sober from humiliation than actual sobriety, she realized that she would have to catch a bus home. She didn’t know the new reduced daytime schedule. She have to sit on the covered waiting bench, with cars of families going by who didn’t live in undecorated apartments waiting for life to start, who didn’t have to choose between friends and lovers, because for them there was a fullness in their hearts that came from having two parents to see you, to listen to you, to help you when you felt lost. Like Frank, whose father sends him recipe clippings and whose mother sends him new slippers every year for Christmas.
Celeste hunkered down in her seat, no bus in sight.
She’d get a damn house. And buy her own damn slippers.
Fired.
God Damn.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The apartment was empty, cold. Eddie had been upset when he’d realized she only heated it for him, but he didn’t realize that part of her was usually overheated, probably from the liquor that used to be part of her life. Nowadays, she was finally able to feel cold, so she’d sometimes remember to turn the heater on, but it had been a few days alone, so she’d preferred the cold comfort that reminded her of her occasional solitary reality.
Her head was foggy. She felt adrift. No job? She’d taken the job to get over her mother’s death. She’d walked in their door as a young, thoughtless kid and now been unceremoniously kicked out that door as a distracted, inebriated, angry bitch. No part of her felt guilt, she was relieved to assess. The little mouth of the girl staring at her, wide open in unexpected shock stayed with her, but she didn’t care about leaving. It was their loss. She’d slaved there day after day, month after month, year after year, for so many moments of her numbed life that she was fed up. No more. No more sitting. No more clacking on a computer keyboard, no more lies and truths, both of which she had to half listen to in order to dodge absorbing.
She’d probably started drinking to wash away the stories, the evictions, the job losses, the bankruptcies, all the horrid ways that a human being can be dragged down, decimated, devalued, just begging for their goddamn phone to go back on so that, in today’s voice and text-only world, they could keep contact with anyone who cared.
She sat, her feet on the crusty carpet, her hands on her lap and she breathed, wondering if the prickling she felt on her cheeks and ears was sign of an impending stroke or heart attack. How perfect, to be so overwhelmed that she’d die in this place, where nothing meant anything to her except for the photos of her mother, the old lady and now the few pieces of clothing that Eddie had left strewn on the side chair that still might have his scent.
The doorknob turned and she looked, watching with detachment as the particleboard door opened, its edges rubbed down by age, small holes showed the hollow interior. Not much of a safety feature, she sniffed.
Eddie stood, key out, surprised to see her, a warm smile crossing his face.
But she sat, simply staring around the room.
“What’s up, Babe,” he asked, closing the door behind him.
She heard sounds so loud in her ears, blood coursing through her head, that she didn’t immediately respond. “I got fired.”
“You got what?” He sat down next to her, took her hand and held it in his.
“Fired.”
“You’ve been drinking. Are you okay?”
“Christ, I just had two drinks with Frank at lunch.”
Eddie’s eyes narrowed. “You two can’t drink your brains out for the rest of your life.”
Frozen, Celeste felt her lips losing their pulse. It wasn’t the liquor, that was really only 8 ounces with the mixers, she calculated, more hours ago than would show up badly in a breathalyzer. It wasn’t even getting fired.
It was the break with Frank. She’d once again made someone the centrifugal force in her life, pulling her out of her tight shell into a world of conversation, planning, doing, collaboratively sewing together the threads that tie friends together so that they each are better than they were alone.
She looked closely at Eddie. His face did not look gaunt to her. He looked tired, tired of this place, tired of fighting. He looked like days of sleep would heal him. She knew it would heal her. If she could just put her head down, time would slip by, she could wake up and lay in bed, thinking about how to make herself the center of her life so that in the future when things like this happened and the centrifuge gets unexpectedly flipped off, she’d not find herself thrown out of everything she knew. “You came back.”
Of course he did, he said.
She smiled wanly. Yes, of course.
He was flush with cash, large bills.
She half-heartedly mentioned going to a bank, but he resisted, shaking his head.
“I don’t trust banks.”
“How can you not trust banks?” The conversation brought blood flowing to her brain and her lips, the numbing faded a bit.
“They took my mom’s house. They destroyed the economy. They’re killing every single country on the planet. They pay for all the fucking bombs that went off around me.”
She cocked her head. “I have a checking account and a retirement a
ccount.”
“Yeah, and when you use your credit card, they’re lending you your own money at 25% and paying you interest on your savings at 2%.”
Her brow furrowed. The small part of her retirement account that was in stocks through her local bank was half what it was three years ago. Her mother had told her that banks shouldn’t sell stock, it would be like chickens trying to give cow milk. But in the last ten years, she had been relieved to see she could do all her investing in one place, not realizing how dangerous that was. Like her savings, she’d poured so much of her life into one place, undiversified until today, when she was unceremoniously fired.
She imagined a kitchen with an island in the center with lovely granite from the earth on one countertop so she could make good piecrust like her mother had on the few Thanksgivings that she hadn’t had to work. Celeste had once made a cherry pie but had only eaten a slice or two, a whole pie was too much for one person. The rest had gotten moldy on the counter, until she’d pinched her nose and carried it out into the trash. She’d find new friends and have them over so that a pie could be eaten like it was supposed to be, shared by a larger safety net, not thrown out in the black plastic trash bag under the sink.
“So what are you going to do with your money?” she asked quietly. He’d already given her half the month’s rent in cash, which she’d put into her savings account.
“I’m saving it.” He looked down sheepishly, tucking his wallet into his front pant pocket.
She looked at him, curious. “What are you saving it for?”
He looked at her, searchingly, and she fidgeted, trying to hold his gaze. “What?”
“I told you I want to start a business.”
She perked up. “What’s your plan?”
“My plan?”
“Your business plan.” She leaned in.
“What’s a business plan?”
“It’s what you show a bank, to get a loan.”
“The bank again. I’m not dealing with banks.”
“Alright.”