Who Loves Her?

by Taylor Storm

  “Excuse me? I can’t hear you.”

  “Susan…..this is….”

  “Excuse me? I can’t hear you. You need to speak up.”

  “Susan, this is Anna….” The voice was barely audible and I could hear wind in the background.

  “Please listen…I…ve…somethi…you….” My heart was pounding loudly.

  “That’s a horrible joke, Billy!” I slammed the phone down. I was so pissed I instantly called Mrs. Carlson to give her a piece of my mind. It was a voicemail.

  “I don’t care if this is a damn voicemail, Mrs. Carlson, your son Billy is always trying to call down here and ask if he can rent a room. I mean I thought it was a joke, but this time he’s gone over the edge and when I tell you what he’s….!”

  “He-hello?” A garbled voice picked up like the person had been sleeping.

  “Mrs. Carlson?”

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “Sorry, ma’am, but I think Billy just…”

  “Billy is at school and I have a long shift. You’ll have to call him later, Sheila. I need to get some sleep.” She hung up. I let the phone just sit there in my hand until it started that beeping it does to let you know it’s off the cradle.

  I pounded the star sixty-nine code into the phone so that they would tell me the last recorded incoming call. The computer said,

  “Five five five, seven two three, zero nine eight one.”

  I punched in the number. “Mom?”

  “Yes, Susan,” my mother sighed.

  “Did you just call here?”

  “Well, honey that’s a silly question. Did you decide on what color of curtain you want for that office and apartment there at Uncle Lars’? I’m still going through old fabric, and Lars says he’d be glad for me to help you spruce it up.”

  “Mom, someone from that number called and said… “but I realized the joke would be even more cruel on my mother, and I didn’t want her to think I was reverting back to my asshole ways.

  “…and said what, dear?”

  “Oh, nothing. Um ,the light blue fabric would be fine for the curtains, Mom.”

  “With the yellow stripe or the little white flowers?”

  “Jeez, Mom you’ve got a fabric store. I guess the flowers. Bob liked flowers.”

  “Yes, he did, honey. Susan…”

  “I know, Mom. I just can’t.”

  “Well, you think about it.”

  “I will Mom. Mom?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “I love you, Mom. This all sucks.”

  There was a long pause and I was sure I had pissed her off or something.

  “Mom?” A slurping noise came through on the other line. “Sorry, Mom.” I whispered, and Mom hung up the phone so I wouldn’t have to hear anymore of her heaving sobs.

  “I need a break from all of this.” I pulled the cigarette out of the desk drawer and went outside. Bob made me promise to quit before we graduated, and I’d held it together pretty well. I’d relapsed here and there, so to try and get over the cravings, I kept my symbolic cigarette in the drawer. I’d take it out and wave it over the alley like a wand out of the movie, and then stick some licorice in my mouth instead. Sounds silly, but it helped. I went inside and tidied up. The sun was going down again and Mr. and Mrs. Vanilla came back from their walk to nowhere. They were still hand-in-hand and made their way to Room Fourteen, smiling into each other’s eyes and remembering their wonderful day.

  For a moment I watched. I remembered that feeling. The instance of togetherness when you have no idea where you end and your mate begins. Those moments don’t last long, fleeting really. I pushed the thought from my head and turned off the lights. I clicked the light off as I closed the back door to the office. It just happened to be the front door to my little studio apartment. It was a Wednesday, and so I’m pretty sure nobody was going to be piling off Highway 29 and checking into the Skylark. They all just zoomed in off of I-94 and the chains with their pretty continental breakfast would scoop them up. I was going to try again to figure out how to sleep with this suffocating hollow in my chest.

  Most nights I just hugged his pillow and cried. His scent was fading, so I made sure to wrap his pillow in one of his shirts. The scratchy wool would absorb my tears until I couldn’t feel anything else. Watching Mr. and Mrs. Vanilla, I could actually feel Bob’s hand in mine. I knew each wrinkle of skin, and each little scar from the badges of work. I could close my eyes and remember his scent, and the way his hair glistened when the sun shone down on him. Something else intruded on my memories. Something glistening, dark and evil, but still it was Bob. The phone started ringing, but I just let the answering machine pick it up. Mom would always try to call and tuck me in over the phone and I just couldn’t take it. The pain finally got too huge in the middle of the night and I took a pain pill. My head pounding rhythmically in my ears as I drifted off to sleep; a dark, troubling memory hanging on fearlessly at my soul.

  Bob was the one who got me to go to the doctor over this headache thing. He was really worried about me. Now I promised I would take just one pain pill if it started acting up. When some people get upset their stomach gets all tight. When some people get upset their back tightens up. When I get upset it just means that I get a killer headache. Maybe they’re right….

  “Susan…”

  “What?...”

  “You’re a coward, Susan.”

  I opened my eyes and realized with an odd detached sensation that Andy Griffith was over my bed, and I think he just called me a coward. Now I don’t exactly know why Andy Griffith was hovering over my bed, but he didn’t seem hostile. I’d been inside enough of my dreams to know it didn’t help to fight it. I would just fade in and out of black sleep and dreaming until it was morning. Why would be call me hostile? Suddenly there was McGregor’s fruit stand with his huge garden of corn there in the back. My nephew and Marvin and Mom were standing in the garden at some kind of party there. People were all laughing and having drinks to a brilliant sunset on a summer day. Mom looked straight at me. Her face wasn’t happy or sad. Just like she was the only one that knew I was dreaming or something. She was simply an observer, and she made no move to intervene. Marvin was a great musician and Mom was telling him to keep singing. He opened his mouth and it was like my head turned on a radio. “Bésame…Bésame mucho…” started playing from Andre Bocelli. My psycho band from the story I wrote this afternoon sat way off in the distance, and Andre Bocelli sat watching me with his blind eyes. I just kept wondering why I was such a coward.

  I mean, Andy Griffith watched me clean up all the stories I’d written and had rejected and tossed in the garbage. I kept one story about my family in an empty bucket. Well that one story and the one I just finished. Andy wouldn’t answer me. I came to just enough to register that it was pitch black and there were crickets. Well, not exactly pitch black. You could see that it was almost a full moon. I adjusted my pillow and about drifted off until the screeching cars from the crash flew back into my dream. I bolted awake and just sat up in bed. I clicked on the light and adjusted Bob’s shirt on his pillow. With no volume, I turned on the late night comedy shows. If I turned up the volume, RoomTwo could hear me and most of the time, they would pound on the wall for me to turn it down. RoomTwo was Harris Fielding. He was a traveling salesman that just ran a tab with us and paid at the end of each month. He had his own key and got in really late from DesMoines when he was running this way or back home. Guess it was a tough gig to be a seed and implement salesman here in the Midwest.

  One day I asked him if he had family back wherever he was from. He shrugged and said his wife was kind of used to the circuit, and she had a good job with a hospital back there, so she spent quite a few overtime hours making sure it ran like a top.

  Eventually, three in the morning rolled around and I turned off the TV again to see if I could at least have a couple more dreams before I had to get up and open the office for people dropping off keys. Who am I kidding? The first time I ha
d to get up was ten thirty to go clean rooms unless Mr. and Mrs. Vanilla decided to get busy on that piece of plywood covered with foam rubber Uncle Lars calls a mattress.

  It was always nice to feel myself back watching the movie of my dreams, because it meant I didn’t have to face all the real situations, like what to do with the house Bob and I bought or why I can’t get my car to start, and I still don’t know who to call.

  The fuzzy black blanket of my dreams took over again and the theme song to that cable show about superheroes started playing over and over in my head. Some eerie hum. Got to give it to them, they made a great serial killer out of that one dude that plays Spock in the movies. Somehow the memories of our house joined with the serial killer dude. I could see the Evil Spock tiptoeing quietly through the living room that Bob and I had shared. A part of me was horrified as the serial Spock reached up and jerked my drapes down off the window. I whispered at Spock.

  “My mom made those for me and Bob! For our house!”

  “Well where are Mom and Bob? Where are they Susan? Will they save you now?” he hissed.

  I did not feel fear, I was only irritated and worried about the drapes. I rushed to pick them up and even jerked one from evil Spock’s creepy hand. “Now look what you have done! I am going to have to wash these things and hang them again! You can not just come into my house and mess up memories of my Bob!”

  The phone rang in my dream and I picked up, “Skylark Motel. Best skyline in the America’s best little town. Can I help you? Yes, that will be five hundred twenty five dollars a night. No problem. I have you down for Tuesday.”

  I looked up at the motel and it had turned into the Ritz Carlton they have down on the lake. Anna worked there as a maid when she was finishing her teaching degree, and I tagged along one day. Talk about plush. Even dirty towels smelled better than our rooms here. I turned to see Anna walking in with her toy poodle and turning her nose up at me as she scooted by with her rich husband, Jeremy, the stoner kid I kicked around with flashed through next, and we all piled through the hallway at school.

  I was starting to run everywhere and saw Bob’s helmet on the ground, he was in the game and I tried and tried to get to him to give him his helmet…then I handed the helmet to the volleyball bitch that almost got Anna fired and we were all laughing in the stands. Someone motioned me into the hallway and all I could do was feel this burning anxiety inside my chest as I chased first down one hallway and then another, only to find myself back at the front desk of my motel saying: “…Yes, that will be five hundred twenty-five dollars a night. No problem. I have you down for Tuesday.” I ran up and down streets and then down the main tourist strip with all the t-shirt shops and arcades and then again, “Yes, that will be five hundred twenty-five dollars a night. No problem. I have you down for Tuesday.”

  The sun finally annoyed me enough that I just got up. I was drenched in sweat. I thought about not showering, but that was a little too lame. I plugged in the coffee pot and grumbled at the mirror. It was the only coffee pot in the whole joint. Uncle Lars was too cheap. He just put a pixie stick of instant coffee with one pack of sugar and one pack of sweetner with a stir stick into the coffee mug. He figured if they wanted bad coffee bad enough, they’d figure out the sink or the microwave.

  For a while, when Starbucks was new, we had some coupons I could hand the customers who would complain. When those ran out, I would just shrug and give them a weak smile and a nod. I remember the first time Bob and I went to Starbuck’s he just about fainted. He spent three months trying to come up with money to buy a Starbuck’s after he paid for our two small coffees. He was really amazed that so many people value coffee to the level that Starbucks has defined.

  “I will have one medium coffee with sugar, please.”

  “That will be four dollars and fifty-five cents.” Gasp, choke, faint. Bob loved to act out the scenario, but I knew secretly he was trying to figure out how to get in on the coffee craze while it lasted.

  I showered quickly. I never did more than toss on a t-shirt, some of Bob’s boxers and my hoodie. When I scooted to the desk fast enough, nobody noticed.

  My mom tried once. “Susan, what if an important customer comes in?”

  “Like the President?”

  “Well, no dear! But what if the preacher comes by and needs a room? What will he think seeing you dressed like that while you are at work?”

  I laughed and coughed as my coffee shot through my nose. “Haha Mom, if the preacher comes by for a one hour special, I am sure he will be worried about lots of other things besides Bob’s boxer shorts!” I shook my head, giggling at the image of my preacher.

  “Well, little smart alec, what if there is a fire and you have to run out into the street?”

  “You always told me to have on clean underwear in case of a fire. These are clean…well kind of. Bob could really fart when he wanted to. Some of these look like he hit a deer.”

  “Susan! Will you please take this seriously!”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I have one of my thongs on under these, so if I get pantsed again by the boys in seventh grade gym, all the important parts are covered.”

  “Well, I don’t know about your ‘important’ parts, but I do know there is a lot to be said for dignitified behavior, and you running around in an old pair of Bob’s underwear is simply not dignified!”

  I looked at her and winked, “Hey Mom, have you seen the price of good underwear lately? I will have to float a loan if I ever outgrow Bob’s boxers.”

  “Honestly.” She shook her head and surrendered. She was usually trying to hand me food when I did that to her. Don’t know why I had to give her such shit all the time. The truth is that Bob’s boxers are the single source of comfort in my life. It may be a sad state of affairs or simply a reflection on my simplistic nature to state such a thing; however, after a bad day, my first choice is Bob’s boxers, and the second choice is a pain pill. The pain pills were definitely disappearing more quickly now after the accident, but the boxer shorts were always first choice.

  Mr. Vanilla came in the office and my reverie was lost. “Shit!” I thought. “Now, I have to go out there in my boxers.” I picked up my step as a thought flashed through my mind.

  “I’m not up to the desk yet. Maybe he won’t notice.”

  “Oh God, he noticed.” He did that little glance thing guys do.

  Here’s the key to Room Fourteen. We sure enjoyed it.” I looked him in the eye to see if there was any hidden reference to my boxers.

  I smiled dutifully when I saw nothing but love for Mrs. Vanilla.

  “Goodbye, I hope we see you guys again soon.” With that, the Vanillas were gone.

  I leaned onto the counter and watched as they disappeared down the road. For a guy with that weird Iranian beard like Omar, he didn’t strike me as that weird. Well he did wear oversize glasses with bright gold rims, but there were worse fashion choices for an old fart on a motorcycle. Got to admire his lady. Her bike was as big as his.

  Susan shook her head and thumped a pencil eraser softly on the counter. I wonder what makes some people find love and others do not. You know I never looked for love, and it just reach out and grabbed me…literally! Poor Anna on the other hand begged and prayed for love, but it was never to be found. Bob and I had been so deeply in love and happy, but for a very short time. Then, there were these lucky SOB’s like Mr. and Mrs. Vanilla who seemed to have figured it all out and would have eternity together as one. Strangely, this was one of the few times I could think of Bob and I, and not feel that empty place inside of me. Instead I felt blessed somehow. Blessed and superior to the screwed up people of the world, I felt like I was joining forces with the Vanillas of the world.

  “You know, next time I see a Mr. and Mrs. Strawberry, I am going to tell them!” I spoke outloud as I prepared for the day.

  I smiled as I thought of marching up to the Strawberries and introducing myself before giving them a good piece of my mind and the vanilla philosophy. />
  “You listen here, Mr. and Mrs. Strawberry, or Ms. Strawberry-in-Training, or Ms. Flavor-of-the-Month, or whoever you are! Love is a gift! Love is a gift that rarely finds two people. If you are lucky enough to have been smiled at by the love gurus of fate, then you should respect it. You should respect your mate and the gifts you have been given by taking every moment of every day to show gratitude for your blessings of love, and to show affection to the man or woman who loves you. Love is rare and it’s not very often people are blessed by it. If you are blessed in finding love, then as each year passes, you should feel more love and deeper gratitude because you have been given a love that lasts. Fate has not reached out and ripped it from your clenched fist! Instead, Mr. and Mrs. Strawberry, you look around with each growing year and blame each other. You find dissatisfaction and you instantly blame it on your spouse. Then because you feel bad inside you decide a new wife, a newer improved model, will make you happy. Then a third wife for your satisfaction. The result is that you go through life dissatisfied, angry, and broke because you have one unhappy wife and three healthy alimony checks and child support. There will never be satisfaction because you have deserted too many people who now hate you. I’m going to tell that next time I talk to a Mr. and Mrs. Strawberry. I’m going to say straight to his face: “You go back to your woman, ya’ horny bastard.” Of course, with my luck, I’ll tell him and then his new wife will be in tears. Then I’ll find out that his first wife died of cancer or something and feel like a nosy jackass again. Might as well start on a new story…where to begin.