Surviving Goodbye

by Morgan Parker

  She chuckled, rolled onto her side, and her breasts shifted like water balloons while the words spun like a carousel. I blinked hard, and read her collarbone—never let me go—then moved my attention to her smile, a rainbow of blue and blonde hair washing across her face. I tucked the strands behind her ear, noticing the line of earrings there—three studs, nice without being a neon sign—and then kissed her lips because I needed to.

  “Wow,” she sighed, her eyes opening slowly, calmly. When her pupils narrowed back into focus, she seemed to study me. “I didn’t fuck Nathan, if that’s what you’re asking.” When a strand of hair fell in front of her face again, I tucked it away. Again.

  “I like your face,” I explained. “Can’t see it if your hair’s in the way.”

  “Why did you hone in on Nathan? Because he was in the video? And she fucked him in high school?”

  I gave a shrug, and she must’ve seen something I hadn’t intended, because her fingers walked across my chest, through the chest pubes, and then slid across my shoulder gently, tenderly.

  “My ex, Ava’s sperm donor of a father,” she started, her voice so soft it reminded me of the first snowfall of winter.

  “Erik,” I remembered.

  “Yes, Erik. I wouldn’t fuck him with my worst enemy’s pussy. When a woman lets go, she never comes back.”

  Goodbyes are like true love, they last forever.

  I started laughing because her hard words contrasted her gentle tone, right to the point where I nearly snorted from laughing so hard. And then she laughed at my laughter, holding me against her. It felt nice, and I missed this kind of companionship. Really, I did. But I also refused to trust it, refused to think for one simple minute that this could ever last, that we could ever become a couple.

  “I wouldn’t,” she continued. “So outside of what I know about Nathan and how he was away for that entire time when your daughter could’ve been conceived…I just don’t see why you think your wife would’ve slept with him.” She watched my reaction—Nathan made the most sense to me as Lena’s potential father. “I’m sorry, Elliot. That leaves us with Eddie, the seasonal junkie.”

  It felt wrong. A junkie? Some guy who went on the kind of multiple-month benders and squatted in the worst parts of town?

  I didn’t get to think too long about how Karen may have had a soft spot for a close friend with an addiction because the fire alarm started.

  “Shit!” Veronica jumped out of bed, still naked except for her panties, and rushed out of the room. “Stay here,” she warned me with the loudest whisper I had ever heard, peeking back into the room. “That was dinner!”

  I watched her disappear into the hall and waited a few minutes for the deafening siren to fade into silence. And then I heard her talking to her daughter:

  “Yes, I’m naked, I was going to take a shower…No, it’s not a real fire, the Fire Department won’t come over…No escape plan needed tonight, honey…Just something I was cooking and forgot about…Haha, yes, like the blackened chicken that uncle Khan makes, but not as tasty…Yes, so go back to sleep…” Kissing sounds and then, “I love you too. Sleep sweet, tight night.”

  A few seconds later, she appeared at the doorway, stopping there because it was now completely dark, moonlight spilling in through window, the lights above her bed pulsating and illuminating me on this glowing white comforter. I stared back at her, watching a lazy smile curl onto her lips. The areas of her body where there were words appeared to have smeared; they were now nothing but blurred lines of dark ink at this distance and under these poor lighting conditions.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “I’m more interested in reading and writing another story.”

  She laughed, making that odd sound again—and she sounded so incredibly young when she did it—before taking a running leap at me.

  Sometime after midnight, I lost the feeling in my arm and, when I woke up, I discovered Veronica’s head on my shoulder, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly ajar. She was beautiful. And very good at pretending to sleep, because her lips started moving, and her words came out as clear as the sky outside her bedroom window.

  “What was she like, Elliot?” she asked. “When she was alive.”

  I swallowed a couple of deep breaths, waking up from that half hour power nap that had snuck up on me. After such a dry spell, having sex twice in such a short span of time had obviously worn me down.

  “We’re not doing this,” I said. “Naked in your arms, after what we did, you want to talk about my dead wife?”

  She opened her eyes and rolled them slowly toward me to see whether my face revealed some kind of hurt or disgust that might end the conversation. “Yes, we’re doing this. Tell me about your wife. Was she a good mother?”

  Another deep breath. “The best. She raised Lena in a way that my little girl believed—still believes she’s a queen. Like the only approval she needs in life is her own. Not approval from any man or friend or anyone else.”

  “Not even her father?”

  I almost fell into another one of those snort-laughing episodes. “Nope, not even her father.” I thought about my role, particularly over the past year and how absent I’d been. “No, not even me.” I snapped back to reality, to the moment because it seemed she wanted more. “Lena’s the most open and unfiltered creature I know. She pees with the door open, makes her own decisions about everything and truly owns her life. Her mother did a great job.”

  Veronica’s lips curled upward, her face tightening, and I wondered how many more years before the shallow wrinkles would appear next to her eyes. I remembered when I first noticed them next to Karen’s, those crow’s feet, and I thought they made my wife even more beautiful. It never occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t age, but the weight of carrying the worst-possible lie of humankind that had caused those wrinkles.

  “And my daughter never ceases to amaze me,” I allowed, distracting my thoughts from that big lie that had ended my love and admiration for Karen.

  “Definitely a free spirit,” Veronica whispered back, angling her neck so she could kiss me below my chin. “I’ve learned a few things from her too.”

  “Really?”

  Still grinning, she nodded. “Never knew such a thing as a sex wedge existed.” She giggled, and I nudged her in the ribs, the unwritten ones.

  Once we settled back into silence, both of us staring up at those pulsating lights strung from one bed post to the next, I asked, “What about your history, Veronica. Tell me about ‘I am your biggest what-if,’ about the your ‘happy and sad,’ and your ‘start and end.’”

  She allowed a little groan.

  I reached over and squeezed her. “Because until you do, I’m never letting you go.”

  “Hardy har har,” she said, faking it.

  “So tell me,” I encouraged.

  “They’re words that I believe in,” she confessed. “I always have and always will. When I believe, I never let go. When I believe, I’m in love. Because love inspires words. Well, love and heartache. But heartache is when I get the tattoos that were inspired by the love.”

  She laughed like it all made perfect sense, but it didn’t, not to me. I wasn’t the one with the paragraph strewn permanently across my body. I didn’t say anything though. I wanted to listen to her voice, to her words, her beliefs.

  I rolled the tip of my finger along I am your biggest what-if. “Tell me about being a what-if.”

  She smiled. “I’m your biggest what-if, Elliot.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  She shrugged and giggled. “You’ll wonder about me. Just like I’ll wonder about you, wonder if I really gave you a fair shot.” She shrugged again.

  I sat up, grabbed her foot, and kissed the top of it. “And ‘you are my happy and my sad,’ what about this one?”

  “Don’t be kissing me there again,” she warned, then reached down, touched herself between her legs as if looking to see if she were wet.

  I took her hand
, inspected her fingertips. They glistened (or maybe I wanted them to look wet, because it was dark now, only the pulsating Christmas lights provided illumination, so it was hard to tell for sure) then sucked her fingers clean. Just to be safe. She snapped her hand back.

  “Stop that!” she said, then shuddered as she pressed her arms to her chest and crossed her legs. And then her eyes took on a new character, a little darker with a lot more intensity. She liked the effect I had on her. “You don’t see it, do you?” she asked.

  I stared back at her, unsure how to respond. Like maybe this was the part where she pulled out her Certifiably Insane paperwork, but I figured I might actually like Veronica’s brand of crazy.

  “It’s all about my love,” she explained, “my views on love.” Now it was her turn to find the words, and she started with the statement on her one foot, opening those legs and arousing my salivary glands. I licked my lips and swallowed, hard.

  “‘You are my happy and my sad,’” then she switched to the other foot, “’my start and my end.’ It’s all about what love should be. The person I love should be the only one who can push me to the one extreme of happy and to the other extreme of sad. He is the start of everything and the end of everything, including me, my attention, my days, and my life.” She kissed me at that point, then pointed to her collarbone, her finger-tracing off-center, but I didn’t correct her, I watched how she touched her own skin, the way she took care not to press too hard. “‘Never let me go.’ That one seems obvious, and it is, because if you can push me along the edges of both happiness and sadness, then I need you to hold me, and hold me tight, never let me go because we’re in this together.” She looked at her rib cage and touched the words there. “And ‘what-if,’” she sighed, then frowned and seemed to have a quick change of heart. Her finger dropped away, and she looked up at me. “I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself.”

  I didn’t quite know what she meant, so I traced the words myself. “Do you mean, ‘what if’ you’re wrong about Eddie, and I’m stuck starting all over again?”

  She punched me in the arm. “How about, ‘what if’ I fall for this girl who’s just a little older than my daughter?”

  I groaned.

  She continued, “’What if’ I’m your happy, and your sad, and each day begins with the thought of me, and ends with that same thought?” She chuckled to lighten the words, but I sensed that maybe that was what she wanted, what she was hoping to achieve with this: for me to feel, really feel for her, to confirm that I felt something deep and strong, something that had no logical reason to exist, but was unmistakable all the same. “You’ll ache for me, Elliot.”

  And the irony here was that Veronica had reintroduced me to this concept of truth. Because she knew the truth, and it seemed to frighten her as much as it frightened me. I had no response to her comments.

  “What about your daughter?” she asked, her tone changing. “How does she feel about this pregnancy thing? Is she coming to grips with it?”

  Veronica peeled back her cotton-cloud comforter and slid underneath. I saw the digital display on the clock at my end of the bed—1:18AM—and realized I should probably leave, go home.

  “Here,” Veronica said, yanking one of the pillows free from behind her head and slapping it into my face. “Take this one.”

  “I, uh, I…”

  She shrugged and snuggled her face into the pillow with a nice smile. “I sleep better on my left side, so I’d like to fall sleep while staring at your ancient face, Elliot Fitch.”

  “But…”

  “And hearing you tell me about your daughter’s pregnancy.”

  “Oh, all right,” I agreed, sliding under the silky soft sheets. The sensation alone nearly put me to sleep. “She doesn’t like the morning sickness in the middle of the afternoon. And she’s scared about money, how she’ll survive. But I repainted a few bedrooms this past week, and she’ll move her things back upstairs, which is nice.”

  “And the wedge?”

  I glanced up at the lights, their slow blinking even more hypnotic than before.

  “The wedge will stay in the basement or get reassigned to the dump,” I admitted.

  She smiled, blinking. Her eyes stayed closed, though. “Kiss me, Elliot.”

  I complied, my stomach growling. I hadn’t eaten since lunch, but I didn’t care. Placing my head on the pillow, I watched this woman, who was so incredibly different than me, with the tattoos, youth, and blue streak in her hair. She slipped into sleep with a smile on her face so big it was nearly as huge as the happiness in my heart.

  Chapter 14

  Love never crossed my mind. Not a week ago when Veronica burnt dinner, not the morning after that special night where we had sex twice and I woke at 5a.m., pulled my arm out from underneath her neck, grabbed my clothes and left (but not without first unplugging those pulsating Christmas lights, which I felt were probably a bit of a fire hazard). And not now while I mowed the lawn after allowing a full week to pass without hearing a peep from her. Mostly, I didn’t think of love because I didn’t believe in it.

  She’s on my mind because it’s not every day a geriatric forty-two year old gets to hang out with a woman in her mid-twenties. In her bed. Naked. And with his face between her legs for some of that time.

  But what if…

  I finished the lawn and started pulling weeds from the garden, surprised that by the time I finished, three hours later, there was nothing left but a few dead flowers, a brown bush (definitely dead), and a weeping willow tree whose growth seemed stunted and sad. I hated to admit it, but the garden looked better with the weeds.

  “What are you up to, Papa Bear?” I heard, and by the time I could turn around, Lena sprinted past, her hands over her mouth before she lost it. On the front porch.

  I looked away, noticing an older couple walking their dog along the sidewalk. They both watched my daughter puke her guts out, then looked away as if the smell couldn’t reach them that way.

  “She’s alright,” I promised, and they kept walking.

  And then I noticed the orange and blue delivery truck making its turn onto Fairfax, heading toward my house.

  “Great,” I muttered under my breath.

  I started toward Lena, who had dropped onto her ass now that she had finished getting sick, her face blotchy and her jaw slack. She didn’t look happy. Her cheeks, smeared with tears, lacked color. I wanted to hug her, but her eyes were so venomous they seemed to dare me to touch her. Like she wanted a reason to throat punch someone.

  “I can’t do this,” she said with a bit of a defeated whine.

  My voice softened. I heard the delivery truck drawing to a stop behind me, but I didn’t look back. I stepped up to my daughter, put my hands on her knees, and stared straight into her face. “I can’t help with the sickness,” I told her. “But I can help by telling you that once you’re through the first twelve or thirteen weeks, you probably won’t have this issue anymore. You got this. You’ve survived so much, Lena, this isn’t going to conquer you.”

  “I needed that, Papa Bear,” she sobbed, the tears rolling down her face.

  The delivery truck’s engine stopped. A door rolled open. I gave Lena a supportive grin and leg tap. “I’ll clean this mess up. Go get yourself changed. And showered, you stink.”

  She stared past me with her puffy red eyes. “A delivery lady is walking up our driveway.”

  I smiled—bigger on the inside than on the outside—and patted her leg again. “I’ll deal with it.”

  Lena considered me for a beat before semi-smiling and getting up. She wrapped her arms around me, thanking me before turning toward the door and disappearing inside. I heard Veronica’s footsteps creep up behind me. Turning around in time to watch her smile at me, I noticed her attention shift to the pile of puke on the patio.

  “Still dealing with that morning sickness?” she asked, giving a gentle nod at the patio.

  “I think it’s really getting to her.” I checked m
y watch. “She normally makes it to the bathroom, though. This is earlier than normal.”

  Veronica gave an understanding nod and pointed at the sad garden, less interested in the patio mess and more intrigued by the dirt and few remaining plants. “You pulled the weeds.”

  “It was overdue. When Karen was alive, I remembered it being a little more lush, more abundant than just a few—”

  “You haven’t called me, Elliot,” she said, her eyes soft and probing. “You just left.”

  “I’m older than you are,” I told her like that might explain it all.

  “Then act it,” she said, shaking her head. When my eyes found hers, I saw the disappointment in them, maybe a touch of hurt too. “I fell asleep in your arms, woke up, and you were gone, nowhere to be found.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I really thought she would’ve texted or called if she wanted to engage in a conversation, arrange another dinner or any other kind of date. The age difference, my obvious lack of adventure compared to her inked-up body and blue-streaked hair, those triple-piercings along the line of her ear…I was worse than vanilla, I was ancient vanilla. Expired, gross, and completely unworthy.

  She stepped closer to me, tilting her head to the side as she studied me. “You’ve seen my body, you’ve tasted me, you’ve read me. I’m not a mystery. And I’m not your dead wife. I’m here for you, so why didn’t you call or text or even drop by?”

  “I know that your goodbyes are forever,” I told her.

  “You’d survive my goodbye,” she snapped back without even thinking about it.

  But I wasn’t so quick. I stared back at her, reached for a strand of hair drooping out from underneath her uniform ball cap, and studied it between my thumb and forefinger before letting go and staring back at her hurt face.

  “No,” I said. “I really don’t think I could survive goodbye. Not yours. I didn’t want to hear it.”

  She let out a long, deep breath, then reached to her back pocket for a letter-sized envelope. “I’m not going to walk away from you, Elliot. Even though I don’t know where you stand, whether you’re some old guy looking for a quick fuck from a younger woman, or you’re the sweet, caring, and genuine guy I think you are.” Another long, deep breath. She didn’t want to have this conversation right now, no more than I did, so she slapped the envelope into my hand. “Eddie Walton. He has a place on Lansing, probably not the safest part of town.”