“Seriously, sweet Levit, think about it,” Abbott continued to urge. “I was afraid to even ask you at first, because I know you’re always so preoccupied with your George, but, lo and behold, here you are of your own free will! My dream companion! It’s all in the kids’ rates, so you don’t even have to pay for anything…well, actually, we’d need you to pay some fees to change the ticket, but the rest—the hotels, the transfers, et cetera—that’s all taken care of! There’s even a musical in it for you! All you have to do is pack,” he grinned. He was directly in front of me now, his gray hair at my eye level, the smell of coffee and his trademark peppermint gum emanating out of his mouth, creeping up my nostrils. “We all have a meeting tomorrow, so come join us then. It’ll be in auditorium A—where Jamie teaches his guitar sections. It’s after school, so no excuses! Just say the word and I call the travel agent— Wait, you have a passport, right?”
“I do, I do, don’t worry. So, who else is going—you, Jamie and, let’s say, I go. Who else?” I asked, trying to suppress the nervous giggles bubbling in my chest.
“My girlfriend, Stephanie. She is also fluent in French, so that was easy to sell to the administration. She teaches at a community college, upstate. I figured this would be a great way for us to get some one-on-one time. You know, no ex, no kids,” Abbott winked, continuing to chew his gum with his molars.
I did a double-take.
“I thought you were gay!”
Abbott dramatically smacked his tongue and put his warm hand friendlily on my shoulder, gently cupping it.
“Is it my pixie Scottish accent, my dear? How is it that we’ve known each other since you were but a wee student teacher and yet you are so ignorant about my life?”
He said this with enough of a sigh for it to almost pass for genuine disappointment, but surrounded with student actors day in and day out, I knew better than to believe it—there was no commitment there. Good question, though, Abbott—why did I ever think that?
I never had reason to believe he was gay or straight, to be fair. And, I honestly never even wondered. Was I really ignorant enough to presume this based on the cut of his suits, his well-maintained fingernails, and a prissy accent? Though how prissy is Scottish accent anyway? I could defer to George again—perhaps I’m just not a very good friend—or person.
I removed Abbott’s hand from my shoulder and held it a few long seconds before releasing his fingers from my own. Gay, straight, he was good people, I knew.
“So you’re bringing your girlfriend?” I changed the subject without clarifying whose kids he meant they would enjoy not seeing around for over a week; there were never any pictures on his desk, so surely he meant Stephanie’s.
“And why not—pourquoi pas?” he laughed.
“How romantic will it be with a group of twenty-something high school students?” I made myself scoff, masking any hint of genuine inquiry, already having decided to go and see for myself. Suddenly, this trip seemed of paramount importance.
“Well, it’s only fifteen students. And most of them are graduating in two months, so they’ll hardly need us, really. That’s what I’m saying, my darling—this is practically a free vacation! You are but a spring chicken, so you have to enjoy yourself! You have your whole life to spend with that hippy-dippy-trippy Georgie-boy fiancé of yours, but this is a free trip to Paris—”
“And London!”
“Precisely! So what say you, sweet Levit?”
“I say, why not Scotland?” I laughed to buy time.
Abbott sneered with faux contempt as he took a step back and shoved his hands in the back pockets of his slim jeans. I guess he could afford to wear those around here.
“My heart, these kids don’t know where Edinburgh is, let alone Inverness. I blame the History department, if we’re being perfectly frank!” I could hear that he aimed to inject just enough humor into his tone to safeguard the remark’s official status as a joke, despite the biting words strung together so precisely. I was too dizzy to care one way or the other. “And quit stalling, Levit. What say you?”
Chapter Two: The Walk-Up
I said nothing.
Instead, I taught two sections of Government Participation to my (all but one) bored seniors (Major Elements of Federal Bureaucracy) and one section of honors World History to my (mostly) eager freshmen (the fall of the Berlin Wall). Then, I pedaled my way across town, to my Upper West Side walkup, the early spring sun low and cold overhead, serving of little comfort to my slowly swelling sinuses and a budding headache. It was a little early for seasonal allergies, I thought to myself as I discreetly wiped my nose. I hopped off my bike before walking it up to my front door to chain it. This was my second bicycle in New York City, but, contrary to what my parents would have all their suburbanite neighbors believe, my first one wasn’t stolen; George gave it to the homeless man who used to live two blocks down from us (I can only presume he’s relocated since). I’d only learned of the generous gesture when I was already downstairs and ready to go to work the next morning. I think George had offered to pay for a cab that day, but I took the bus.
Satisfied with the lock, I trotted back down to the street to fetch George’s shirts from the dry-cleaner two doors down, operating on muscle memory autopilot. Its neon sign glowed brightly in the window despite there being no need for it, given the daylight. The weekly chore took all of five minutes. Why he always insisted on wearing these to walk to the gym every day is beyond me to this day.
My key stuck in the lock, as usual, and the stairs creaked one by one the entire four flights up. I sweated profusely as I heaved my school bag, heavy with my laptop, on my back, while balancing George’s pristine, French-cuff shirts over my shoulder. I breathed a sigh of relief when I threw off everything I was carrying atop a tower of three cardboard boxes positioned directly to the left of the cluttered entryway of our suffocating one-bedroom apartment; boxes exactly like those had been neatly stacked throughout the entire living room for at least a week now—little forts I’d began to build as soon as George left.
The room was a mess even more so than usual, given that it’s always been stuffed with too many furnishings for its tiny space. There was an oversized sofa by the bay window, a wall of bookshelves to its right, and a LED TV entirely too large in diameter mounted on the opposite wall, facing the obese couch. Closer to the corner known as the “kitchen” (named so only because of the appliances it housed) stood a minimalist dining table where I’d grade papers and copy/paste my lesson plans and tests year after year; that’s where I tossed the mail before returning to the front door to send it flying closed shut with my foot.
“Did you get my shirts?” George asked as soon as I reluctantly picked up my cell phone on the third ring. He sounded vaguely out of breath.
“Yes, George,” I answered, thinly, feeling my back sweat underneath my layers. With my phone wedged between my ear and my shoulder, I unbuttoned my caramel tweed coat and wrestled my arms out of its skinny sleeves anything but gracefully. Then, I unwrapped my scarf, finally exposing my neck to be able to scratch it with all the might of my nails—I’d been waiting to do that half the ride home. Behind me, I heard everything land on top of the plastic bags encasing George’s pressed shirts, which had managed to slide down to the floor where they proceeded to cower at the foundation of the tower made of boxes filled with my belongings.
“Still leaving?” he asked with lightly put-on calm.
“Yep,” I confirmed, kicking off my boots into the living room before walking down the hall to the bathroom. “Still leaving.”
“So this time is for real, then?” George asked, again. He’d been asking this daily ever since I’d told him that I’d made up my mind (for good) two and a half weeks ago. “You’re such a little ingrate, I swear to God. Who else will tolerate all this bullshit?! Why go through all that theatre when you know we always get back together in the end?” This was another routine question.
I picked up my limp hair into a loose ponytai
l.
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t know why. Tell me.”
He was probably hugging himself with the hand not holding the phone, his tan arms a harsh contrast against the perennial white tank top he always wore for yoga.
“Yes, you do know why, George! And we won’t get back together this time,” I groaned as I pumped anti-bacterial soap into my cupped hand and washed it off under scalding hot water, just like I’d been bred to do by my stoutly germophobic parents. Every time I let him change my mind, I lost credibility with myself, let alone those around us. This had to be it. “We are fundamentally different people. We’ve fooled ourselves for too long as it is,” I added, trailing off at the end, at quarter volume.
I heard George grunt in response and braced myself for what I knew was coming next. Repetition is key. As a teacher, I understood the importance of this approach.
“I’m going kill myself without you, you know that, right? I’m going to kill myself,” he stated, plainly. The delivery was as matter-of-fact as it could get, but maybe there was a sprinkle of romance in there, too, if you tried to hear it, if you cocked your head just right, listening. The words themselves, however, sounded empty; they’d been uttered too often over the last seven years to still be able to instill fear, guilt, or responsibility the way they audibly ached to do.
“You’re not,” I said, wiping my hands on a towel I should’ve thrown in the wash when he’d just left for his retreat. It still smelled of his cologne. And sweat. And lube. My nose wrinkled of its own volition.
“And what will you do if I will?”
I imagined him rubbing his naturally bare face up and down, feverishly, before taking to scratching his short-cropped hair with enough aggression to cause his hairline to bleed tiny burgundy dots. It’s been known to happen. I pictured him squinting his green eyes as he did whenever he got angry, painfully pushing his bottom row of teeth out and over the top row.
“If you kill yourself?”
“If I kill myself.”
“I’ll lay flowers on your grave.”
“I thought you Jews don’t do the whole flowers at the cemetery thing? Don’t you people just do rocks or something? Pebbles? Is it like a cheapness thing, by the way? I’ve always been meaning to ask.”
And there it was—a necessary reminder, just one of the many possible flavors.
“You’re back when? In a week? The fourteenth, right? I’ll be out by then—I’m going abroad on the ninth,” I hurried to say, in spite of myself, outrunning my brain trying to catch up with my heart. My extremities growing cold with anxiety, I shoved open our shallow closet and dragged out my small suitcase. “I’ll leave your shirts on the bedroom door handle. And the ring will be in the kitchen drawer.” This was precise enough of a description given that we really did have just the one kitchen drawer.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I snatched his shirts from their pathetic position on the floor and hung them up, as promised, before returning to the closet. Most of my clothes already sorted and boxed, I knew I’d need to unpack and then repack.
“Oh yeah? Where are you going?” he scoffed. “Finally returning to Seville to claim Hector’s heart?”
I could practically see his underbite taking over now; he was nervous.
“You mean Javier’s,” I mumbled, as if it were important—as if to George, Javier was anything but a reminder that I ever dared to exist outside of him.
“Where are you going, Helen?” he repeated, his teeth gritted. If I could halt my own breathing, I would probably be able to hear them grinding.
“Shouldn’t you be overseeing downward dogs or something?” I huffed pulling my gray, cashmere sweater up and over my head; I heard my button-down underneath it strain at the stitches as I did.
“Where the hell are you going?” he repeated again, his tone unambiguous. I recognized the knife it always sent down my core. My heart galloped.
“France and England. As a chaperone, with my kids,” I reported. This was more due to habit and fear than pragmatism. The objective, after all, was to get out of that damned apartment before my fiancé returned from Arizona with all his yoga gear; giving the man my detailed itinerary was probably not a good way to try to further that goal.
“Ooh la la, Helen! You’re going to come back so pregnant from over there with all those hot French men around,” he chuckled as I threw three pairs of leggings into my suitcase, avoiding all jeans. I could hear him smiling his self-assured smile, his lips always chapped. Whenever he smiled, those cracks deepened, looking painful. I hated when he smiled. “Just remember—they’ll only be after your Green Card.”
I could only exhale exasperatedly in response.
“Yep, got it, thanks. I have to go. I’ll drop off my keys with your mom.”
The weak light peeking in from outside (though throttled by a leafy tree slowly coming to life directly in front of our window) drew pictures on the old parquet floor beneath my bare feet as I moved around my emptying home, feeling simultaneously determined and faint.
I really did have to go now.
Chapter Three: Gypsy
I rested my head on the side of the passenger door as my brother dramatically smacked his tongue at the wheel. Between his plump face, his goatee, and his slicked back, black, overgrown hair, he looked more like a gypsy than a child of Soviet Jews in the faint, draining light of day inside of his Hummer.
“You’re going to have to tell them eventually, you know,” he tried to reason. “Alla is getting annoyed with all your crap in our storage unit, so it’s only a matter of time before she tells.”
I was relieved not to have run into my sister-in-law on this particular trip to my brother’s Jersey City condo with another trunk full of my belongings. This was my third run that week alone. I didn’t know where I was going to live after Europe, but I knew I wasn’t ever going to return to that apartment once George was back; if anything was left behind, I’d just have to learn to go on living without it.
“I promise I will tell them when I get back,” I swore when we stopped at a red light. “I just need time to make peace with the idea of having to move back in with them in the first place. I swore I’d never be back in the damn suburbs, honest to God,” I groaned as I rubbed my aching head. I was definitely coming down with something.
“Oh, Helen, give me a break! You grew up in New Jersey, stop treating it like Timbuktu,” my brother reprimanded as the traffic light changed, illuminating him in a pool of green instead of red, softening his features in the process. Slowly, the car glided forward, following what looked like a rust-colored stream.
“Vlad, the last time I enjoyed being there was when I still enjoyed strolling aimlessly around a good ol’ mall. I was, what, about thirteen, then? And by the way, when you look out the windows of any of those, what do you see? I mean, your malls and IHOPs, what have you—what do you see outside? Highways!” I answered my own pretentiously rhetorical question before Vlad could so much as wonder if I was really expecting a response. “Whooshing, never sleeping highways! The noise alone is enough to drive you out of there. And it’s all because those are not destinations, my friend! No, sir! They are just places people stop over on the way somewhere else, somewhere better—like an actual city with a life that extends beyond multiplexes and chain restaurants,” I proclaimed, too proudly, sticking my finger in the air and wagging it. “It’s like a never-ending cycle, bro, I’m telling you. Parents with young kids get out of the city to move to the suburbs for those allegedly better schools, but then those kids grow up and want to move back to the city because, let’s face it, that’s where actual life happens! Then, lo and behold, those kids have kids of their own, blah, blah, blah, and so on and so forth. I was going to break the cycle, I guess—”
“Boo-hoo, you! What are you even talking about? Highways are how people get around! What the—”
“Okay, fine, I don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s not just the suburbs—it’s their damn dev
elopment of identical townhouses, the dull silence but for the hum of the highway on the other side of that lake. Or is it a pond? And the cemetery…. Whatever. And mom and her blood pressure measuring thingy—”
“Sphygmomanometer.”
“Yes, that thing is always out, occupying its own cushion on the couch as if it’s a fucking lapdog!” I was on a roll even though I knew in the back of my mind that this much sincerity was both foreign and unwelcome between us. “And the damn shoveling of the driveway in the winter, and the sharing of the bathroom with dad, who, by the way, spends entirely too much time reading in there—”
“So just move somewhere else, Jesus!” Vlad barked, impatiently. I could only imagine what my sister-in-law must’ve been buzzing about in my brother’s ear on nightly basis. He couldn’t be so cruel all on his own, I was almost sure of it.
“I can’t afford to live anywhere decent on my own, you know that, Vlad. I need a roommate, and I don’t know anyone looking. Besides, it’s in Alla’s best interests that I move in with mom and dad—then I can be the loser she always prophesizes me to be. And my boxes would be out of her crazy hair much sooner that way. You know dad will come running to get them the second mom hears about all this, so as just not to disturb your fragile marital bliss. Your nest, as she likes to refer to it.”
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