I heard Vlad smack his tongue again, but made sure to look away, out the window, taking in that achingly lonely time of day when you have no choice but to bear witness as daylight loses the battle and gets aggressively swallowed whole by dusk. It was tiring—living multiple versions of my life and being a disappointment in every single one.
In no time at all, I would be in Paris, I told myself as I fought past my own reflection in the glass to make out the block outside. I clung to the idea of this trip as if life as I knew it would simply no longer exist thereafter; as if I’d no longer need to think of a future upon its completion. It was easier to focus on Jamie Sola’s broad, toothy smile than on how to salvage my reputation with my own family.
Of course, I’d accepted Abbott’s invitation and attended that meeting. I’d entered the little practice room where it was being held with my ring already digging into the palm of my hand—its three tiny stones intent on branding my flesh. To my disappointment (and also, somehow, relief), Jamie could only stay a minute, hurrying out the door the minute I’d walked in, carrying his guitar case on his slim shoulder. We only had a fleeting moment to shake hands.
“Welcome aboard!” he’d greeted with a smile. He covered my hand with his for a quick second before releasing it altogether. “Helen, is it? Abbott told me that he’d try to get you to join us when I first signed up. I’m glad to see that he was able to. I’m so sorry I can’t stay right now, but I have to be in TriBeCa in about twenty minutes, which, I’m pretty sure is simply impossible at this point. We’ll catch up on the plane, though, right?”
That was the first I’d ever heard his voice. It was full of color and texture. I could feel it on my skin and, deep as it was, it was also soft against me, like velvet or whipped cream. Just like too much sugar would, it left me wired and dizzy.
He’d smiled at me as he stepped away, but I was too mesmerized by his full mouth, too distracted by his perfect, buttery lips, his cupid’s bow, to be able to utter anything other than an unintelligible mutter (accompanied by a feverish nod of the head) in response. Out of the corner of my eye, I’d registered extensive tattoos on his left forearm, his red, long-sleeve t-shirt rolled up to his elbow, but I couldn’t make out the artwork.
“Oh my God, Mr. Sola—GO! You’re so late!”
Startled, I had followed the voice to find Veronika chastising Jamie. Logically, given the girl’s talents, I figured that he was probably her new favorite teacher. As she gave him an effortless slap on the back when they parted ways in the doorway, I’d registered a pang of jealousy somewhere between my breasts, unsure if I was jealous of Veronika or of Jamie. I’d let my right hand travel to that burning spot in an attempt to sooth the sensation, but it, too, caught on fire.
“He has a session gig, downtown. Playing some riffs for some hot shot ‘musician,’” Veronika had explained to me, misinterpreting the dazed and confused grin on my face, illustrating elaborate air-quotes with her fingers, her nails covered in remnants of weeks-old, black nail polish.
“Well, you’ll have to tell them soon, one way or the other, Helen. What are you going to do—keep coming up with excuses for why he doesn’t come down with you anymore?” Vlad sighed, pulling me right out of the room smelling of magic markers and guitar picks. “He can’t always be at some retreat.”
“Don’t be daft—he is at a retreat right now! That’s why I have to move while I can. I have two days to sort things out before I leave,” I groaned, my finger tracing the minuscule raindrops sitting on my window.
“Daft?!” Vlad roared with laughter. “Are you English now? You’re taking this chaperoning thing a little too seriously, don’t you think? You’re a glorified babysitter for children who need no babysitting, you do know that, right? Because you really ought to know that. Do you have to pay your way, too?”
Teaching is a noble profession, but it’s reserved for perhaps third or fourth generation Soviet immigrants—no earlier, no sooner. At least this is what you’d gather taking a survey of my family. Father didn’t abandon his quasi-important engineering position at some antiquated factory in the country that no longer exists so that I could become a high school teacher; mother certainly didn’t suffer a heart attack during their six months layover in Italy on the way to the United States for her daughter to become a “nanny with a Master’s degree.” A shame to the family, I may as well have become a drug dealer or prostituted myself; maybe at least the money would be better.
My brother, unlike me, had it all figured out. Perhaps having to sit, as a five-year-old, at his mother’s side while she lay recovering after that abovementioned (and terribly untimely) heart attack lit a stronger fire under his ass. He became a bankruptcy attorney, just like his hard working, immigrant parents always wanted. Well, they never insisted on the bankruptcy part; they are nothing if not flexible.
In significant contrast to Vlad, I insisted on doing what it was I actually wanted to do, which was to teach. This translated as not only impractical, but also selfish. I suppose my older brother could not be expected to appreciate this, considering that our mother put herself at risk by having me at all, what with all that scar tissue left on her heart; he didn’t almost lose a mother twice to have a sister like me. My being engaged to a non-Russian speaking man of suspect emotional health and minimal ambition only added to my list of indictments, of course, but breaking off the said relationship was potentially worse, given that the end result would be me becoming a single glorified babysitter with a Master’s Degree who wouldn’t be able to afford an apartment on her own.
“No, Vlad, I don’t have to pay. It’s all been taken care of. I just have to pack,” I protested, not reporting the small fee that I did have to pay in order to have some travel agent I never met change the name on the ticket so as to allow me to board the damn plane in the first place.
“And hotels?” Vlad insisted.
“Paid for. The only thing I’ll have to spend money on is a souvenir hairbrush for the beehive your wife calls hair,” I challenged back, immediately regretting the quip.
Maybe I should’ve told them all that George had been cheating on me. Or that he hit me. Neither would be that distant from the truth, depending on the phrasing. Surely there had to be a version of the truth that would make my family take my side.
I was happy to see the neon lights of what had for years been my neighborhood Laundromat up ahead, just half a block away. Eager to leave the confines of the car smelling of my sister-in-law’s overly sweet perfume, I hurried out of my brother’s Hummer as soon as we finally pulled up to the right set of brownstone steps. When I was almost at my front door, Vlad lowered the passenger side window and summoned me back.
“Look, I want you to have a good trip, Helen. You look tired. And, are you getting sick? You sound congested. Do you remember to wash your hands after public transportation and whatnot?” he asked, his brow wrinkled.
“I usually bike there and back, but yes,” I muttered, surprised by the rarely verbalized concern.
“Okay. Well, anyway, I want you to come back refreshed and with your head square on your shoulders again,” Vlad said, assuredly, with a nod and a smile that was inarguably of the infamous rubber band variety. Face-wise, we probably look more alike than in profile: we both have those soft lines around the chin, cheeks, and nose. We both have the same wispy hair. We’d been only occasionally friendly and kind to each other growing up.
I stood in the drizzle, ready for more.
“So you don’t think I should leave George?” I asked when he let his words hang without the follow-up that his eyes promised to hand down.
“I didn’t say that. That’s your personal decision—no one can help you make it because no one would voluntarily take on such a responsibility. I will say this—based on precedent, I don’t think this is it for you guys. But regardless of what you do, I have to say, it’s not okay to be twenty-eight and educated and not know how to make ends meet. It’s not okay to dread moving back in with your parents
because you’re embarrassed of your choices. What business did you have going into six-digit debt to get an education that only qualifies you to make a five-digit salary? You want to do it your way, then do it, but stop making people cover for you—”
“The only thing I’ve asked you to do for me since middle school is to let me store a couple of boxes at your place while I figure things out—”
“Eight boxes—not a couple. And that’s about, what, eighty percent of your life? It’s all in my basement. That’s not okay,” he groaned, empathically. “I’ll take the rest tonight so as not to make another run tomorrow. You can stay here. However, when you’re back from vacation, I’m warning you—Alla will be calling you daily until you collect all your crap. Since you get out of work at like three, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to comply. I won’t play the referee there, because she’s right—you can’t be involving others in your drama. This is your life, after all. You’ve always made sure that we are all keenly aware of that fact. You wanted to go away to school, you went away to school. You wanted a summer semester in Spain, you got a summer semester in Spain. You wanted to minor in theatre, you minored in theatre. You wanted to be a teacher, you became a teacher. You wanted to live with a new age vegan yogi—done! You wanted to get engaged and live off of his parents—ditto! But now you have to follow through. You can’t have it both ways—either stand on your own two feet, stand by your decisions, or shove your tail between your legs, admit that you’ve wasted the first ten years of your adulthood, and move back into your old room at mom and dad’s! I mean, what else are you going to do, become a nomad? Live like a traveling gypsy?” he mocked. “You say you want to do everything your way, on your own, but that’s not what you actually wind up doing in real life. What, milked George’s parents long enough and now it’s time to move on?” He chuckled toward the end there, but it was too late to take any of it back.
The rain had stopped and only occasional, singular drops falling from the branches of the tree above me stabbed my skull at regular intervals. It was the same tree that provided all that unnecessary shade upstairs.
I looked my brother in the eye and thought he looked tired; too old for thirty-five, anyway.
“Don’t worry about the remaining boxes up there,” I said, my heart cold and sharp in my throat.
“Helen, it’s fine—”
“It is fine, that’s why I told you not to worry about it,” I breathed. “I’ll pick up whatever is already at your place the day after I get home from my so-called vacation, I promise,” I recited, doing my best to keep my voice even, refusing the tempting tremble, feeling my nose begin to tickle inside and my eyes begin to sting. “See you later, bro,” I added as I tapped the roof of his car twice with my sweaty palm for no reason other than the fact that I think I saw detectives on TV do that sometimes.
Without waiting for a response that I knew ahead of time I wouldn’t like, I turned on my heel and jogged up the stairs. I unlocked the front door and, not looking back once, ran up the four flights, my wet tennis shoes squeaking the entire way. I had no intention of consulting my window, but I suspect my brother drove away soon.
Breathless, I turned the light on and immediately took to my phone.
“Abbott, hello! It’s your favorite girl—sweet Levit,” I rattled out the second I heard him yawn a greeting. “I’m doing your trip thing, so how about helping a girl out by way of providing temporary storage space and shelter for a few boxes?”
Chapter Four: Addiction
I restlessly tossed and turned in my bed, which was really just a slack mattress that George had insisted on taking off our old neighbor’s hands when they were moving out to the suburbs with their loud and colicky infant; we had it pushed up against the window that had the fire escape attached to it, and, since I slept by that window, my knees were always yellow from the perennial bruising caused by being pressed up against the wall on a nightly basis. I wouldn’t miss this place in the morning, I told myself as I hugged my pillow.
Sleepless, I stared up at the gate that was there to presumably protect me from a potential intruder but looked menacing enough to cause me its fair share of nightmares. I studied the shadows it created on the ceiling, too afraid to consult the clock for fear of actually knowing the time. Calculating the number of minutes left in the night never helped anyone fall asleep, I knew, though nothing else seemed to help either. Not that night, anyway. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw Jamie—imagined his weight on top of me. The guilt of it alone was enough to keep me awake, but the anticipation of it only threw oil on the fire. Every time I felt my hips push up against the cool air above me, I’d force my eyes to bolt open and resume studying the shadows again. Still, head spinning part from congestion, part from tiredness, it was the shape of Jamie’s mouth that I continued to think about in that dark room, no matter what I did. In fact, it was all I thought about my entire last night in George’s bed.
I rubbed my smooth, freshly waxed legs with the soles of my feet, alternating to give them equal treatment, now unsure why I thought that this trip was worth that kind of pain (and that kind of expense). One thing I had to hand to George—he’d never minded things that were natural. Unlike my friend Jessica, I was never shamed into biweekly rituals that transformed grown women into prepubescent girls with one yank of precisely positioned cloth. There was no way of knowing what was waiting for me out there in the world of “Jamies,” and since there was no survey I could conduct, spending a hundred dollars preemptively seemed reasonable enough at the time. Now I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to have such gall, to be so presumptuous. Jamie was still mostly a figment of my imagination—a beautiful illusion I had the luxury of accessorizing with a personality within the comforts of my mind. Real life surely couldn’t be as compliant as the pictures I drew in my sleeplessness.
Anxious, I finally caved and checked my phone for the time, reluctantly swiping it awake. Javier, in far away Seville, played a word in our game of Words with Friends only minutes ago, I saw. Hesitating for only a brief moment, quickly adding six hours to figure out the local time where he was, I dialed his number against my better judgment.
“Hola,” I whispered, as if he were next to me and I didn’t want to wake him. I threw my elbow across my eyes in shame.
“¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás, mi amor?” He was always friendly, always warm, in both voice and demeanor. We didn’t talk often, but whenever I heard his voice after a long break, I wished we could spend more time actually speaking (and not only so I’d always remember how Andalusians speak). He didn’t mean the “mi amor” part, I told myself; not really, anyway. Not anymore, in any case. He talked like that to everyone, I pretended. I pictured him getting ready to go to work, his crisp white shirt pristinely tucked into his ironed trousers.
“Hola…,” I repeated, dumbly. The realization that this call was going to cost me a figurative arm and a leg, albeit freshly waxed, only slowed my tongue.
“So you’re going to France today?” Javier asked when I continued to mutely run up the clock.
“¡Javier, no empieces conmigo!” I spat out by way of a toothless warning, swiftly turning over onto my stomach, my nightshirt twisting around my waist. “Please don’t start. We’ve been over this.”
“But—”
“Stop,” I whined, my own tone taking me back to almost a decade ago—the last time Javier and I saw each other face to face. “We talked about all this two days ago, no? It’s a paid-for vacation, or so my folks tell me, so be happy for me, won’t you? I don’t get what the big deal is. Don’t you like that our geographical proximity will be bridged a bit, if only for ten days?” I teased, smiling blindly into the cluttered darkness. This was just cruel, I knew. But at least I didn’t tell him about Jamie.
“No, no, I like the idea of that…very much so, actually. I so wish that I could, but there is no way I can come meet you in Paris right now—”
“I don’t want you to meet me, Javier, really,” I groaned before I co
uld catch myself.
I heard him sigh, grudgingly reigning himself in.
“Do you want me to call you back? On your landline? This is probably costing you a fortune,” he asked after a pause sufficient enough for me to fake a dropped call the way I’d been known to do with alarming regularity after I’d first returned from Spain.
“No, it’s okay. You have to go to work now, no? Plus, I wouldn’t want Señora Aiza to be mad at me for yet another thing,” I stung, heartlessly. “Tell your mom I said hello, by the way.”
~ ~ ~
Two and a half hours later, at five in the morning, still reeling from my brief conversation with Javier (part embarrassed to have called at all, part ashamed of the way I couldn’t help but toy with him, and part mad for having inadvertently spent a shitload of money I no longer had), I decided to give up on trying to fall asleep altogether. Goodbyes need time, after all. This narrow closet of an apartment had been my home since the very first day of graduate school, and I needed to pay it its due respect. It was going to be a long day as it was, so what was a couple of extra hours? If anything, perhaps such a night would help me sleep through the transatlantic flight ahead so I could be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a stroll along the streets of Paris on Jamie’s arm, I mused as I popped in my contacts and brushed my teeth with the last of the Kasun’s toothpaste.
Achy and tired, I took a brief shower, saving time on account of my legs needing no shaving, and triple-checked my suitcase. Giving all my shelves and drawers one last look-over, I left my engagement ring in the kitchen drawer, as promised, last. Since I only had about five hundred square feet to inspect, the whole affair didn’t take me more than twenty minutes. I can do this, I told myself as I zipped up my boots, my eyes stoutly on the floor. I remained by the door even as my spine uncurled and I brought my gaze back up. My fingers rigid as they struggled with the buttons on my coat, I felt a shiver crawl down my belly.
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