by Carr, Suzie
“Give me a break!”
“It’s always awkward when a girl discovers my penis.” She tilted her head and examined the base of her mug. “The girls I want aren’t interested in it. So, you tell me, how am I supposed to entice a girl who expects something far different between my legs?”
“People don’t fall in love because of your gender.”
“Give me a fucking break.”
“Love knows nothing about gender. Souls fall in love. We might be more physically aroused by certain body parts, but that’s just sex. That’s not love.”
“Maybe in your world.”
My cell rang. It was Jessica. I let it continue ringing.
“I miss Ruby.” I didn’t look up. “It’s like I’ve got this hole in my heart right now. Every time I take a breath it hurts.”
“Why are you still with Jessica?”
Because like a romantic fool, I hinged on the hope that she would’ve remained the old Jessica forever. “Who the fuck knows.”
“Do you love her?”
I rested on her question for a moment. “I do… I did… I love solving her problems.”
Shawna tossed her clay down. “Ladies and gentlemen, she finally admits it.”
I stood up from the table and punched my clay. It felt amazing. So, I punched it again.
“Go ahead and punch the shit out of it. That’s what you need to do. Get mad. Get mad about something that belongs to you. Fuck everyone else’s shit. Get mad because you want to get mad.”
I punched that clay over and over again, fueled by an insatiable tolerance for pain that rose in me. I owned this anger. No one else did. I punched it harder with each blow until Shawna grabbed me from behind and pulled me away from it.
“Easy does it there. I didn’t mean for you to break your knuckles.”
I wrestled out of her grip and grabbed my clay and tore at it, shredding it piece by piece with my fingers like an angry tiger clawing at its prey. I tossed wads of clay all over the table, feeding this anger in me, this relentless anger for wasting so much of my time on trying to be the right person for everyone. “I’m so tired,” I said, firing the shreds at the table. “So tired of putting myself last all of these years and letting people ruin the things I deserve out of life. Where does it get me?”
Shawna picked up her ugly mug and squished it between her hands, stretching and pulling at it. She grunted and dropped the clay to the table and rubbed it back and forth. “We’re in control of our lives. Just like this clay, you see, we’re in control. We’re reshaping it to what we want it to be. I say what it turns into. Nobody gets to choose that for me. It molds after me, not the other way around.”
I gathered all of my shredded clay and starting rolling it together, forming a long, snakelike shape. The cool, earthy clay soothed my hands, and I rolled it like I meant to roll it. It would become what I wanted it to become. I grunted as I worked it and pounded it, conforming it to my standards, my ideal, and my vision.
Shawna cheered me on, coached me to keep going, to keep pruning, and refining. “Make it yours.”
I swirled my snakelike coil into a circular shape, rolling it in on itself until I formed a round hotplate. Each curve smoothed. The top surface flattened. It reminded me of a braided area rug, so perfect and equal.
We both sat down and stared at my hotplate. “Why a hotplate?” she asked.
“Because that’s what I wanted it to be.”
She patted my back, leaned her head against my shoulder and continued staring at it with me. “Good enough reason for me, friend.”
* *
I returned home not more than two weeks later to find a used pickup truck in my driveway with a trailer attached. In it sat several lawn mowers, rakes, trimmers and other landscaping equipment. The truck’s decal read Jessica’s Landscaping.
I entered the living room and Jessica was sitting in front of a massive pile of paperwork wearing glasses. “Hey, you,” she said without rising, without looking away from her paperwork.
“What’s going on here?”
“I told you, I wanted to start my own company. So I did.” She finally looked up at me. “Cool right?”
“Shouldn’t we have discussed this first?” I stood holding my suitcase still. She eyed it.
“It’s done. There really was nothing to discuss. If prison taught me anything, it’s to work smarter, not harder. I just went for it.”
“So that’s it. You’re in business?”
“Yes. I got a CPA to draw up the LLC paperwork.”
She looked too much like a woman in charge. “How did you afford this?”
“Crystal from the club invested in it for me. She gets a percentage of profits and owns part of the shares to the company.”
She sounded like she was speaking a different language. How did she know how to do all of this? Why hadn’t she asked me to do this for her? “Am I part of this LLC, too?”
She tapped her cheek with a ballpoint pen. “We can add your name, sure.”
“Add my name? This isn’t an electronic flyer that you can just edit.”
She calmly placed her glasses down on her lap. “You’re mad?”
“Well, yes, I’m mad. This is absurd. I go away for a few weeks and suddenly you turn into Jessica, owner of a company?”
She stared me down. “I thought you’d be happy for me.”
I fumed. How dare she change our lives like this without even considering my opinion? I never would’ve chosen that ugly font for the decal and I certainly never would’ve bought a Nissan. I couldn’t get over that she met with a CPA and ironed out the details of her company name, investors, and equipment purchases without me. “I could’ve helped.”
She softened. “I know. I just needed to do this on my own.”
I nodded and broke the stare. “Okay.” I headed towards the stairs with my suitcase. “I get it.”
For the next several weeks I watched as Jessica morphed into Ms. Entrepreneur. She worked long days, and by the time she returned home, she barely had the energy to say goodnight, let alone kiss me. When we did speak, we did so in snippets. How was your day? Good. How was yours? Excellent? Any new clients? Yep. How many? So many.
At night, while she sneaked in full of grass stains and smelling of mulch, I sat on the patio and cried. I hated our routine. I hated not having a role. I hated not being included. She ran her business and thrived. Meanwhile, I worked out of the boring corporate office of The Gateway Suites and wanted to bury myself in a hole and suffocate. She bloomed to life, and every time I saw the twinkle of satisfaction in her eye, I cringed. She found life in the same spot where I found death, the death of us, of our future.
I turned into a weed, nourished only from her occasional request to pay a bill or call a client for her to let them know her crew was running late. Soon, I hated everything landscaping. I hated the pungent smell of gasoline, the relentless stains of grass, and the endless streams of mud that found its way into my foyer.
Somewhere in between exiting prison as an ex-con and wielding corporate paperwork, Jessica distanced herself from me, from us. “I just need to do something bigger than the old me,” she said one rare night as she joined me on the patio after dinner.
“I just want to be included. That’s all I’m asking,” I said, tossing out one last Hail Mary pass.
“I’ve got it covered. You need to just trust that.”
I stared up at a woman who I didn’t even know anymore. I didn’t recognize the serious tone of her voice, the cocky attitude, the confident stance. A stranger stood before me. She wedged this business in between us and allowed it to take my spot as her partner, her companion, the thing to which she turned.
One blink she clung to my every word, the next she spoke over me. We had nothing in common suddenly, other than enjoying a nightly cigarette together now. And, I hated smoking. So go figure. I bent to meet her needs and in the process I became addicted to nicotine and suffered serious mending withdrawals.
She was fixed, and I had no idea what to do with her mended soul.
This truth slapped me.
I was the broken one.
I was the fucked-up one.
I was the one craving to mend still.
I willed for her to stand before me, dangling her problems and broken spirit in my face like a tease. I wanted her to need me because that would land me in the sweet spot where purpose and direction merged and offered me something I could wrap my brain around and mold into something full of purpose again.
I craved the older version of Jessica, the worst of her.
I looked into her red eyes and allowed the silence to fill our space. Then, I took my first brave step out on the ledge. “You don’t need me anymore.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled. “We live two different lives now. And I carry around this enormous amount of guilt for my success.”
“Please don’t.”
“I do. You need me to be someone you can save. I can’t be that for you anymore.”
I bowed my head ashamed that I would want her to be any less.
“Now that I’m sober it’s even harder for me to play weak for you.”
“Play weak?”
“I loved how you used to take care of me before all of this happened. I leaned on you, and you were always there to pick up my pieces.”
“I loved being there to pick up your pieces.”
“That defined us. Now, we don’t have that anymore. I have no desire to have that anymore,” she said.
“Me either.” I kicked the dirt. “I care about you. I hope you know that.”
“You prefer me broken, though.”
We stared at each other. I did. I absolutely did. And like a freight train, it hit me that this wasn’t about Jessica. It was about me.
She exhaled. “I had these dreams of when I got home we’d start right back off where we left. No matter what I tried, nothing worked. I felt like you were waiting for me to crack. When I didn’t, I could see the boredom set in. You have no interests in my interests, any more than I have in yours.”
“You hate pottery,” I said.
“You hate discussing lawn equipment and shrubbery.”
“We have zero in common,” I said, flatly.
“Zero.”
We stood amongst the silent remnants of our tattered marriage, neither mad nor shocked.
“Knowing what you absolutely don’t want out of life is more powerful than knowing what you do want,” she said with surprising confidence. “At least in my case. I don’t want to be a drunk. All I want to do is stay on this upward path, where I can find myself, my true self, my best self.”
I exhaled. “Me too.”
* *
I packed up my belongings and drove up to Rhode Island to live with Shawna until my house sold.
I knocked on Shawna’s door. She answered wearing pink pajamas and hot rollers. “I am so glad to see you.” She shuffled me in and proceeded down her hallway to the guest room. “Just toss your stuff in there and we’ll settle you in later. Right now, I need your help.” She started pulling out the hot rollers as we headed back to her kitchen. She turned around. “Gosh, where are my manners? Tell me how you are, gorgeous.”
“I feel amazing.”
She stopped walking and tugging at her rollers. “You look amazing.”
“So what’s going on here?” I asked, taking in the living room. It looked like something out of a designer magazine with its fluffy pillows, lacy curtains, and wicker basket filled with yarns and knitting needles. A total chick room.
“She called me.” Her eyes sparkled. “Like thirty minutes ago! She invited me to go with her to tour Sakonnet Vineyards. She’ll be here in half an hour. I’m nowhere near ready.”
“What can I do?”
“Iron.” She spun around, biting on her nails. “Get the iron from the closet and iron my skirt while I fix my hair and makeup.”
“I’ve never seen you look so nervous.” I laughed. Her hair waved up all over and bounced along with her walk.
She pointed to the closet on her way by. “Closet. Iron. Go.”
Thirty minutes later, exactly, Eloise knocked on the door.
Shawna’s eyes popped. She ran towards the bathroom. “You answer.”
“My God, you’re acting like this is the first time you’ve ever met her.”
“For a date it is!” She ran down the hallway and slammed the door.
I stood alone to face the welcome. I opened the door to Eloise. She wore her dirty blonde hair in a French braid and wore a light shade of lipstick to match her fair, freckled complexion. “Hey I remember you from The Rafters,” she said with a low, sweet voice. “Nadia, right?”
“Yes. That’s right. Come on in.” I invited her into my new temporary home.
A moment later, Shawna emerged. Her eyes erupted into a smile as soon as they landed on Eloise. “You look so pretty.”
Eloise blushed equally as red.
Love definitely floated in the air.
* *
Our house sold within a month. At the signing over of the paperwork, we acted like two professionals completing a project. Then, when we said goodbye, we hugged and she cradled my head the way I used to do for her. “Take care of yourself, my little Butterfly.”
A lump formed in my throat. “You too,” I managed to say.
“Don’t be a stranger,” she said.
I smiled and waved goodbye.
* *
I sat on a good down payment for a place of my own, but decided at the pleadings of Shawna to take my time and stay on as her roommate for a little while longer. Eloise visited often and the three of us would cook up these gourmet spreads and pig out until our stomachs hurt.
Every once in a while they’d slip about Ruby and her pilot girlfriend, and I’d mentally ball up in pain. I attempted to call her a few times, but failed to hit send. Her life had taken off, and I didn’t wait to screw it up for her.
So instead, I focused on something I could positively affect. I visited with her grampa every day that I knew Shawna or Ruby could not. I begged him to promise me not to tell Ruby.
“Our little secret,” he’d whisper.
“Yes,” I said. “Our little secret.”
I’d sit on his couch and talk to him about his younger days. He would talk about the farming and the mill work he did, about his younger brother dying from pneumonia, about his mother falling sick to heart disease, and how his older sister had to quit school to take care of the kids after that. He loved talking about school, and how he only managed to get to eighth grade because he too had to quit and work the farm.
He laughed when he talked about his old house, about how they lived on a hill and their house sat below the well, and about how the outhouse sat above the well. We laughed so loud at this I feared he’d choke.
The man lived a fascinating life. He used to brew his own moonshine. Sew his own clothes. Grow his own food. Raise chicken and cattle. “There were no grocery stores around us,” he would say, gazing off as if looking out over those beautiful fields again. “We’d race to see who picked the most corn or tomatoes, and the winner would always get to hand off a chore the very next day. Life was simple back then. You know?”
“It sounds hard to me.” I laughed. “I’m tortured when I have to go to the grocery store and buy produce.”
“It was tough. Tough was good. Tough forced a person to get strong. We got to horse around out in the fields and get all that fresh air. Nowadays all the younger ones do is sit in front of the television. Kids don’t know how to play.”
Each time I visited, his fragility got worse. He’d have a hard time seeing me. We’d spend much of my visit going over the same memories. Each time I arrived, his spirit came alive. I enjoyed seeing the smile and color return to his cheeks when he’d talk about young Ruby, about his wife, and about his beloved Grace.
Each visit ended with at least one point of recognition where he’d look at me and
smile like a little boy.
Shawna accused me of using him as a crutch, as that next person to mend and fix. Maybe at first I needed him that way. Yet, as my visits grew, I started to realize I couldn’t mend a man who wasn’t broken.
My visits became less about trying to find something to fix and more about learning to just let be.
We sipped tea. We slurped Jell-O. We read books. We sat in silence staring at the tree outside of his window. We prayed. We reminisced. We developed a trust and a friendship, one rooted in the present moment, and not ugly past failures, hurts, or expectations.
When he would go into his foggy moments, I’d ramble on about work and about the weather. Sometimes, I’d even indulge in the trust he provided and tell him how much I missed Ruby and how I had no idea how to get back into her life. I confessed to him, staring straight into his hazy eyes, that I wanted to call her several times but chickened out. “I lost a good one,” I said on my latest visit. He stared straight ahead, completely in his own world. “I just want to know if she’s okay. I’ve completely failed by not calling her.”
Grampa looked over at me finally and said, “Sometimes you just got to let them go so they can learn to fly on their own. When they learn, if they come back, you’ve got someone who will always return and land on your heart like a whisper.”
I stared at a glass of ginger ale on his bedside and admired the way the bubbles floated to the top. When they reached the air, they popped, freeing themselves. The bubbles aided one another, lifting each other to this freedom.
It dawned on me, suddenly. Just like these bubbles, Ruby lifted me up and pushed me out of the way. She set me free so I could learn to fly.
“Ruby is special,” he said.
“Yes, sir, I know that.”
“She’s unconventional and can’t be trapped. You can’t clip her wings. She’ll fall flat. She needs room and plenty of air under those wings. Watch out, because when she starts to soar, she gets up there really high and just whoosh, takes off like a bat out of hell.” He laughed so hard he started to choke.
“What’s to say she won’t just keep on flying?”
“In time, I have faith that my Ruby will land where she needs.”
I took a deep breath.