A relationship is a lot like a hot bath. The more you get used to it: the more you realize it’s not so hot …
It was reassuring to watch Kip with his eighteen-month-old niece. He doted on her every gesture, changing her outfit when he thought she was chilly, warming her bottle in a pan on the stove. While Kip’s brother, Zach, and sister-in-law, Susan, spent the day visiting museums with Alex, we gladly played parents for the afternoon.
Walking down to the waterfront, we admired the reflection of the three of us in a furniture store window “This will be us,” Kip said. “We’ll take our kid on the road, let her hang out in the greenroom on the Tonight Show while Mom and Dad blow the audience away.”
“Yeah, right.”
But our future could be amazing. If we ever got through all these ups and downs. Love/hurt. Love/fear. Love/pain. If we worked through those, maybe we’d be okay.
At Ghirardelli Square, we held up toys and stuffed animals for Hannah to enjoy. We hung on her every emerging word. At Fisherman’s Wharf, we watched several street performers.
“Do you have to use a silencer to shoot a mime?” Kip whispered.
Later, we took turns feeding Hannah while sharing take-out noodles in the park.
An amazing day.
We walked back to Kip’s with Hannah sleeping contentedly in the Snugli around Kip’s neck. At the bakery next door, a woman lined up pastries in the window. As if he could read my mind, Kip went inside and returned with two chocolate croissants fresh from the oven. We climbed the stairs to his apartment, licking the warm chocolate from our fingers.
When I took off my jacket, two felt pens fell out of my pocket.
“I forgot—I got these for you the other day. For your paper towels.”
He stared at the pens I gave him. “These aren’t the kind I use.”
“Black felt, right?”
“Well, they’re black. And they’re felt. But that’s about all they have in common with mine.”
Accommodate. Ease. Smooth over. I was finally getting a handle on the skills I needed in the relationship. I told him I’d use the pens myself and would pick the right ones up next time I was at the office supply store.
He shook his head, still disappointed.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” He tossed his keys in the bowl.
“What?”
He stood there as if deciding whether or not to get into it. “It kills me,” he said. “I know everything about you, everything. How you like your chocolate warm, not room temperature. How you need it perfectly quiet to study, but only after you’ve listened to music playing full blast.” He lowered his voice so he wouldn’t wake Hannah, still sleeping against his chest.
“I pay attention. And you—the queen of detail in your act—can’t even remember the pen you’ve seen me hold in my hand every single day for almost eight months.”
I tried to lighten the tone. “Maybe I was focusing all my attention on you and not your pen.”
“Maybe you weren’t paying attention at all.”
I couldn’t believe it. We weren’t fighting over me moving to L.A. or about our future or about Mike being on the road with me next week; we were fighting about a pen. “Come on,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
“Obviously it is to you.”
“Hey, whatever happened to ‘It’s the thought that counts’?”
“That’s what’s bothering me, the thought. I mean, what were you thinking? First it’s going on tour without me, then it’s going to school four hundred miles away, then it’s not paying attention to the critical details of my life—”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind, okay?”
“I’ll tell you what’s not on your mind—me!”
I didn’t want this to escalate; I wanted both of us to calm down. “Look. I had a really great day. But I’ve got to go.”
“You’re not leaving.”
When I headed to the door, he tried to grab me. I moved out of his grasp quicker than I did last time. But when I stepped aside, he grabbed my hoop earring instead of my braid, ripping it right from my ear.
I yelped in pain and shock at seeing the blood spurting from my earlobe. My stomach churned when I reached up and felt the delicate flesh torn in two.
Kip threw my hoop across the floor. “Look what you made me do!” With his raging voice only inches from Hannah’s face, she awoke with a wail. He pushed me to the ground, Hannah swinging from his torso in her Snugli. She must have thought Kip was swinging her intentionally because she stopped crying and went back to sleep.
I couldn’t contain the bleeding; the shoulder of my shirt was covered in blood. “I have to go to the emergency room.” I couldn’t believe how calm my voice was, since my insides were screaming.
Kip grabbed his keys and said he’d take me.
“No!” I felt like I was going to be sick, the taste of chocolate still fresh in my mouth.
“Of course I’m taking you.” He took one of Hannah’s bottles from the fridge and stuck it in her diaper bag. He reached into the pantry and handed me a towel for my ear.
“Beck, come on. You’ll get there faster if I drive you.”
He was right, of course. I climbed into the truck and leaned as far away from him as I could.
On that ride to the emergency room, did I worry about an ugly scar? Yes. About what I would tell my parents? Absolutely. But what I worried about more was how this could have happened again. What kind of an idiot was I? I cried most of the way to the hospital.
Thankfully, the waiting room wasn’t crowded. When the doctor saw my ear, he recommended three stitches. While he cleaned the wound, he asked me what had happened.
Before I could make up a ;story to answer the question, Kip went into a lively routine about Hannah trying to grab my large hoop earrings all day, how while Kip and I were kissing, she had reached up and yanked. He acted the whole thing out, imitating Hannah’s scrunched-up face and chubby fists, my shock, Hannah’s joy at finally retrieving the glistening wire. When he finished, I thought the doctor and two nurses were going to burst into applause. Even Hannah bounced in her Snugli with glee. By the time we left the ER, I almost believed the story too and knew it would be the version I would tell my parents.
As I walked down the hospital corridor, a thought hit me like lightning.
Kip and I had had the perfect day, projecting ourselves into the future, pretending to be husband and wife. Like one of the Zen epiphanies Abby and I tried to foster with our cards, I finally got it. This is my future, I thought. Lies. Injuries. Emergency rooms.
This is the husband he’d be, the wife I’d be.
Abused.
For the first time, I saw the situation for what it was. The flash card finally worked—I was awake.
In the parking lot, I didn’t get into Kip’s truck.
“It’s over,” I said. “We’re over.”
“Becky come on. It was an accident and you know it.”
“Maybe the first time was an accident. But this …” I could feel my tears burning. “I can’t do it anymore.”
When Kip walked toward me, I moved. “Get away from me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You need help.”
He leaned against the truck and bounced Hannah against his knee. “If you stay with me, I’ll get help. The two of us—”
“There is no us,” I whispered. “I’m out of here.”
“Becky—”
“Not another step, Kip. I swear to God.” I turned and ran toward the street.
For the next hour, I walked through the city like a zombie. I thought about my mother’s careful comments, about Abby’s concerns. I felt full of shame for letting myself get sucked into something like this. Incompetent and pathetic, that was me. Was I so desperate for love that I’d put myself in danger? Between the shame and the pain in my ear, the nausea never let up.
I walked for hours, finally resting on a bench down by Fisherman’s Wharf.
I had been here earlier in the day, hopeful and optimistic. Now I felt ridiculous. I looked across the bay to Alcatraz. I couldn’t tell if I’d just escaped from prison or entered one. One good thing about denial—it hurts a lot less than the truth does.
On the way home, I passed the shop where Kip had learned to braid my hair. Marla sat at the receptionist’s desk booking an appointment. She waved when she saw me through the window; I walked into the shop.
“Here she is. The girl with the prettiest hair in San Francisco.”
“Cut it off,” I said. “All of it.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
As an answer, I walked to the row of sinks and sat at the first one. Marla shrugged and took an apron from the cabinet.
Kip loved my hair. Loved to brush it, loved to reach across the table at the diner to touch it. Of course, some sick, screwed-up part of him thought it was a handle made for grabbing my head. I needed something tangible to tell myself I was serious, that Kip and I were over. No more wavy tresses, no more dangling earrings, no more toddlers taking the blame for an eighteen-year-old man.
Marla led me to her chair. I took the scissors from her hand. “May I?”
I lifted up a hunk of hair and cut.
“Honey, honey, let a professional do her job.”
But I wouldn’t give her the scissors. Through the mirror, I watched the other patrons stare at me as I hacked off my hair in giant clumps.
“I take no responsibility for how this comes out,” Marla said.
Only when my hair was a few inches long did I give the scissors back to Marla.
She reached over to the next station and handed me a box of tissues. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “Don’t cry. That’s the good thing about haircuts—they all grow out.”
I took a handful of tissues and wiped my teary face. The last thing on my mind was my hair.
5/8
NOTES TO SELF:
HOW COULD I BE SO STUPID ?!?
From the Paper Towel Dialogues of kip Costello
Something horrible happened.
No, that’s not true.
I did something horrible.
I was shocked when I saw Becky’s ear. The earring in my hand felt like a smoking gun. I DIDN’T MEAN TO HURT HER! She was leaving, and I was trying to stop her. If someone had asked me “Hey, do you want to tear off your girlfriend’s earlobe today?” do you think I would have said yes? I had to put on the happy act for my mother, Zach, and Susan when I got back from the hospital. (It didn’t work; Mom asked me ten times what was wrong.) Then I turned up the music loud, sat in the pantry, and cried. I know this is all my fault, but how can I make things better if there’s no relationships left to fix?
We can’t be over; we just can’t.
whatever happened to second chances, to working things out? I’ve got work to do—I know it—but it’s not fair for her to keep leaving whenever things get difficult.
They’re not just words, Beck, I really mean them—I am so, so sorry.
Mrs. Lawton called the shop today and ordered that kid’s rocking chair Mom’s had around for months. It’s a good thing her eyesight is bad so she couldn’t see my puffy eyes while I helped her rearrange the room. I lost my girlfriend, I wanted to say. I tried so hard to hold on to her that I hurt her. I need help. Tell me what to do. Somebody? Anybody?
But how on earth could Mrs. Lawton possibly know how to fix the situation, when I can’t even begin to understand it myself?
Why didn’t I tell my parents about the violence?
Shame? Not wanting to hear “I told you so”? Or in my worst fantasy, my mom going into attorney-from-hell mode and suing Kip, pressing charges? I avoided my mother for the next few days, as if she’d be able to read my mind with some maternal X-ray vision.
I decided not to tell anyone Kip and I had broken up. I’d just pretend to keep meeting him and let the relationship die a slow death.
Like I was doing.
I used the Hannah story to explain my stitches, used the Improv gig as justification for my hair. My mother asked so many questions, I thought it was a deposition. But she actually loved my haircut. (She’d been begging me to cut it for years.) Delilah seemed a bit suspicious with both stories but, thankfully, didn’t add to the cross-examination.
I wanted to do one thing.
Sleep.
I slept as soon as I got home from school, slept so late in the morning, Christopher had to poke me with his toy spaceship to wake me up.
I changed the number of my cell phone. (The old number had thirty-nine unplayed messages on it, all from Kip.) I deleted his e-mails without opening them; I changed my password too. Every bite of food, every conversation took an enormous amount of effort. I felt diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
A few days afterward, I bagged school and hung out at Fort Point, one of the stops on our Vertigo tour. I envisioned Madeleine hurling herself onto the rocks below. For the first time I actually considered re-enacting the scene from the movie. I thought about Judy doing everything to make Scottie happy, how it never was enough.
I wondered what I should do about the Improv. Sure, the haircut would look okay, but that wasn’t the real problem.
I didn’t feel like being funny.
I had my material down but didn’t know if I could get up the attitude and energy I’d need by next weekend.
I scoured the Internet for information on abuse (deleting any e-traces when I logged off—I’d learned that lesson). There was a strange, sick comfort in seeing how many other girls were in my situation. But even looking at the “facts” didn’t begin to help me make sense of what had happened.
My feelings fluctuated as if I were channel-surfing my own psyche. ANGER—I hate him! He’s an animal, should be put away! CONFUSION—was it me? Did I do or say things that brought out the beast in him? HURT—didn’t he love me? Was he lying when he said he did? What will I do without him? But most of all, SELF-LOATHING—only an idiot would let herself get into this situation. Couldn’t I see the signs? What is wrong with me? These were the questions I asked myself over and over as I sat in the basement staring at the unblinking eyes of my animals.
Folding sweaters—left sleeve, right sleeve, back to front. My Goodwill job kept me sane. But it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened. It took five days until I heard the familiar “Hey.”
Kip’s voice sent a shock from the base of my spine to my brain. I’d been watching the door all week, knowing Goodwill would be the best place for Kip to try and see me. I mumbled something about being busy without looking up from the pile of sweaters.
“Your hair looks amazing.” He reached out to touch it, then stopped himself.
“This had nothing to do with you,” I lied. “I just needed a change.”
“Well, you succeeded on that count.”
In spite of myself, his opinion mattered. “Does it look bad?”
“No! I told you, it looks good.” He smiled, but I didn’t smile back. “How’s your ear?”
“It’s a part of your body you never think about until something goes wrong. It hurts like hell.” I finally looked up to meet his gaze, but I hadn’t anticipated the block of sadness that hit me when I saw him. He was unshaven and looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
He handed me a present wrapped in the beautiful paper from the frame store.
“I don’t want a present,” I said. “I want you to leave.”
“It’s for Christopher. His birthday’s this week, right?”
Of course he remembered. Christopher had asked me several times if Kip was coming to his party. I had lied and told him Kip was out of town.
“Thanks, but you have to go now.”
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s just … I was going to surprise you. Before we broke up, I mean. I booked gigs in Santa Cruz, Carmel, and L.A. so we could see each other while you were on
tour.”
“So you could check up on me.”
“No, I swear. I had the whole thing planned—we were going to play L.A., hang out on the beach in Carmel. It was supposed to be a nice surprise. I thought you’d actually like having me around. But now … I can understand if you don’t even want to be in the same city as me. I’ll cancel the gigs if you tell me to. I mean it, Beck.”
My feelings continued to channel-surf, but part of the reason I didn’t want Kip near me was because I didn’t trust me, not him. Even after the trauma of the emergency room, I knew there was a chance I might fall back into the relationship, buoyed by hope and good intentions. To be honest, it was more than that. During these past five days, it felt as if a piece of me had stayed behind with Kip in that ER parking lot. Sometimes it seemed almost easier to be with him than to move on without that missing piece. I knew I shouldn’t be with him, but leaving felt like swimming against the path of a well-worn tide.
On the practical side, it would be professional suicide if Kip canceled those gigs on such short notice. Booking agents had long memories; it didn’t seem fair to ask him to cancel his shows just because we’d be performing in the same cities. I told him I’d think about it.
He left the store, stopping on his way out to say hello to Harold. Kip was a nice guy; people liked him. But I didn’t want to take the chance of seeing him again, especially with so much at stake. I also didn’t want to make him turn down three big gigs for me. If only we could do our shows without running into each other, without the possibility of hooking up on the road. I needed to safeguard myself, make sure Kip didn’t try to weasel his way back into my life.
There was one way Kip could keep his professional reputation intact, and I would be guaranteed not to see him.
I’d come clean and tell Abby
“He what? He hit you?”
“It was more like grabbed.”
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