Midsummer's Eve

by Kitty Margo

  “Eve, you know exactly who they were from!” he insisted harshly, seemingly unwilling to go along with my what you don’t know can keep you sane philosophy.

  No, I most certainly did not know whom the flowers were from! Although I did know they weren’t from Adam, as Justin seemed to be so callously insinuating. I should just hang up on him. The nerve!

  Adam wouldn’t send Chia roses!

  He couldn’t have!

  Not when he was about to propose to me.

  “What makes you think they were from Adam?” I strangled on the words, furious with him for even alluding to such an insane notion. He was way off base on this one! The roses were probably from Eric. After all, a 15 should be deserving of a dozen roses at the very least. But then again, who knew how many other men Chia was currently carrying on illicit affairs with? The floral arrangement could be from any number of devoted admirers.

  “They were from Adam.” The way he said this left no doubt. “Chia told my girlfriend Alicia.”

  I crumbled where I sat as Justin continued with his torturous tale of treason.

  “Alicia said Chia had ended it with Adam and had been seeing this other guy for awhile. Some young stud she was absolutely crazy about.”

  Eric.

  “Then yesterday at lunch this guy just up and dumps her. She told Alicia that she wasn’t about to spend Valentine’s Day alone, so she called Adam. Can you believe she told him she loved him just so he would get her a gift for Valentine’s Day? Is he really that gullible?”

  “Yes,” I whispered around rising panic.

  “She was also bragging to Alicia about how she had him wrapped around her little finger. And get this! During break he took Chia out to his car and showed her a package from a jewelry store. Alicia said she was jumping up and down hugging and kissing him and trying to persuade him to let her see what was inside. He told her she could open the package tonight. When they went back to her place.”

  When they went back to her place?

  He wasn’t going to her place!

  He was coming here.

  This couldn’t be happening!

  Again!

  On Valentine's Day!

  Something from a jewelry store?

  For Chia?

  “Thanks for calling, Justin,” I mumbled, suppressing the overwhelming urge to slit my wrist in an effort to avoid the head on collision with hell that I knew was fast approaching.

  “No problem. I just thought you should know.”

  I would wait to see what Adam had to say when he arrived at my house after work, before I jumped to irrational conclusions. This could all be nothing more than a huge misunderstanding. He had already promised that he was coming over tonight and that I would be allowed to open the little box that was safely tucked away in the trunk of his car. It was Valentine’s Day for crying out loud. Adam wouldn’t lie to me about something so important, on this of all days. No, Justin was wrong. Alicia was wrong. Chia was lying. Adam loved me and would be here shortly to ask me to be his wife and slip a sparkling token of his undying love on my finger.

  Striving to make since of Justin’s sickening lies and utter nonsense, I called Eric. “What happened with you and Chia?”

  “I couldn’t take it anymore, Eve.” He sounded as if he had decided to wash his hands of the entire situation. “That girl is crazy! All she wanted was sex.”

  “And that was a problem?” I attempted to laugh while swiping at a torrent of scalding tears.

  “That and the fact that she called every five minutes to tell me how much she loved me and wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. And did you know she has six kids?”

  “Yes, I thought I told you that.” I was becoming quite adept at fabrications myself. I should have heeded the Bible, especially the part where God says, “Vengeance is mine!”

  “No, you left that part out. Get this! She wanted me to take her and her six kids to Carowinds this weekend. Aside from the fact that I have no desire to develop a relationship with her children, there’s no way I could afford tickets for six kids and two adults! Is she nuts?”

  “Evidently.”

  “Then she came to my job yesterday and brought me a plate of rice and some kind of meat.”

  “When exactly did you end it with her, Eric?” I whispered as my body began to shake with uncontrollable spasms.

  “Yesterday, when she brought me the plate of food. I lied and told her I had met someone else and wouldn’t be seeing her anymore. She started shouting and spluttering words I couldn’t begin to understand, so I walked back into the plant before she could cause a scene.”

  “Okay, Eric. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I felt dazed and dizzy as my world once again began the oft-repeated process of collapsing around me.

  “Are you okay, Eve?”

  “Yeah, I’m just tired.”

  Of life!

  Alicia had told Justin that Chia had been dumped yesterday at lunchtime. Eric had verified that. I could confirm that there was a package from a jewelry store in the trunk of his car. My package. Yesterday when I had called Adam for hours, he hadn’t answered. Today, he had taken a beep and told me it was his mother. Lies!

  “Bye, Eve.”

  Feeling like I might be experiencing one of Sylvia Browne’s out of body episodes, I removed the high heels, went to the liquor cabinet and made a Bloody Mary minus the tomato juice.

  Teri was spending Valentine’s Day with her husband. Tammy and Mallory were happily spending alone time with their current boyfriends. I could only wonder how my Valentine’s Day would turn out. At 11:36 I received the much anticipated and dreaded answer, when Adam called from work.

  “Hey, Eve.”

  I downed the glass of vodka and gasped as my throat caught fire. “Why are you still at work, Adam?”

  “I have to work over tonight.” He was talking fast, as if he only had a few minutes to waste with talking to me. “I really hate to, but we are shorthanded tonight.”

  “On Valentine’s Day, Adam!” I shrieked as I felt a tightening in my chest and the threatening approach of a full-blown panic attack. He wasn’t working over tonight, anymore than he had all those nights he had lied about in the past. How could I have been so blind!

  He was going to propose to Chia!

  Tonight!

  And place my ring on her finger!

  “You aren’t even going to see me? On Valentine’s Day, Adam?"

  “I can’t, Eve! Didn’t I just tell you I have to work over tonight? Besides, it’s just another day!”

  Just another day? In my estimation it was the most romantic day of the year and meant to be spent with the person you loved most in the world. Evidently that was Adam’s intent as well.

  Inching ever closer to my breaking point, I headed into the kitchen for a refill. “If it’s just another day, Adam, then why did you send Chia roses?” I needed to end this charade once and for all, before Adam succeeded in his vicious plot to see me institutionalized, or in the grave.

  A long silence ensued and then he asked, “How did you find out?” He sounded vastly annoyed that someone had gone behind his back and informed me of the floral delivery, while the pain in my voice didn’t seem to bother him at all. “What makes you think the roses were from me?”

  “I know about the roses, Adam! How could you do this to me? Again?” I hadn’t meant for him to hear me cry, but I was about to choke on the words.

  “It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, Eve. It just… happened.”

  I had to have some answers or give up my slippery grasp on the pretense of sanity and he was going to give them to me before he hung up the damn phone.

  “What’s in the box in your car, Adam?” I struggled to breath, decided not to bother with a glass and drank the vodka straight from the bottle. “The one from the jewelry store?”

  “An engagement ring,” he finally said.

  “When you bought it, who did you intend to give it to?” If we never spoke again I had to know t
he awful truth to this one burning question.

  “Well… you. I actually bought it for you. Then Chia called begging for my forgiveness and reassuring me of how much she loved me and telling me what a horrible, horrible mistake she had made with some guy named Eric.” He didn't think he had hurt me quite enough, so he added, “She was on my mind when I picked the ring out. It would have been too small for you anyway.”

  “Is she pregnant?”

  “She was, but she had a… miscarriage.”

  “Don’t you mean abortion, Adam?”

  “Whatever! It doesn’t really matter now. We have plenty of time to make more babies.”

  I could hear the anguish in his voice. Not from hurting me. Oh no! From the betrayal he felt from Chia having had the abortion.

  He took a long shaky breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay, I’m just going to be honest with you, Eve. I love her. I can’t help it. I know I could settle down with you and be content, but I don’t want to settle for mere contentment. Chia is like a drug that I can’t get enough of! When we are together is the only time I really feel alive and deliriously happy. You might find this hard to believe, but I have actually cried myself to sleep over her, especially the last couple of nights knowing she was with another man. I thought I would lose my mind!”

  Join the club. “I bet you never cried over me, did you?”

  He gave a harsh little chuckle designed to let me know exactly where I stood. “I would never cry over an American girl. You are all so…ordinary. There’s nothing exciting or exotic or special about you. Now, you take an Asian girl, or a Mexican girl, or an exotic girl from one of the Islands and you see what a real woman looks like.”

  I had lost Adam, again. On Valentine’s Day! It looked like Valentine’s Day 2012 was shaping up to be every bit as hellacious as Christmas 2011 had been. Screw holidays! I hung up the phone, threw the empty vodka bottle into the trash and staggered down the hall toward my bed and my beloved bottle of Valium.

  It didn’t take long to discover that life without Adam hurt like the eternal fires of hell. Sinking deeper and deeper into a dark, suffocating depression, within a few weeks I was questioning my reasons for even getting out of bed. Getting dressed? Brushing teeth? What exactly was the point again?

  I worked, went home, ate and slept. Emotion of any kind was something I rarely felt anymore. In an attempt to convince myself that the pain would pass, my mind had stepped in and began to block the pain. I had erected a large concrete invisible barrier between myself and my friends, my family and anything outside the shelter of my bedroom. Blessed numbness had settled over me like a warm blanket.

  I had lost about fifteen pounds. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me, but Teri, Tammy, Mallory, and my family harped on my gaunt appearance as if I were a candidate for an intervention. Admittedly, my clothes were beginning to hang loosely and I would benefit from an entire new, two sizes smaller, wardrobe. However, I had absolutely no desire to go traipsing around a mall. I found it an almost insurmountable challenge to go food shopping.

  Without fail one of the girls was calling every hour on the hour with some ridiculous and boring anecdote, when their sole intention was to obtain a progress report on my sanity. I was sorely tempted to have my phone disconnected.

  I hadn’t been to a girl’s night in three months and unless some drastic changes occurred in my life, would probably never attend another one. Why couldn’t they just pretend I had moved to Alabama to my son’s current construction site and stop constantly harassing me? On cue the phone rang and with extreme irritation I wondered which of the Tiresome Trio it could be.

  “It’s time for you to snap out of it, Eve,” Teri droned in a seriously annoying tone.

  “Okay. I will.” I held my fingers to the phone and snapped. “Done! Gee thanks, now I feel much better. You should have demanded I do that months ago, before I had personally tripled the quarterly profits for the Kleenex Tissue Company.”

  “Thank God you never lost your sarcasm. Anyway, have your bags packed Friday.”

  “Why? I’m not going anywhere,” I was beyond bored with her monotonous and redundant get out of the house routine.

  As was usually the case, she totally ignored my comment. I was beginning to believe I might have to piss the girl off to get her to leave me the hell alone.

  “Yes, you are.”

  Much to my dismay, I could tell by the lilt in her voice that she was in one of those argumentative moods where she resisted taking no for an answer. She was convinced that if she yammered enough about a subject she could bend anyone to her way of thinking. Not this time!

  “The girls and I are taking you to the beach for your birthday.” This was uttered as if she expected me to flip out of bed and do cartwheels around the room at the mere thought of a fun filled weekend getaway.

  “My birthday is May 30.” I tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.

  “Duh.”

  Was it May already? Good grief! I guess it was. “I’m not going.” I was grateful they had thought to include me in their plans, although I truly wished they hadn’t, but I wasn’t in the mood to join in the fun of an exciting beach excursion. “Y’all go and have a good time. If you happen to stop at one of those souvenir shops along the way bring me back a pecan log for my birthday.”

  “Please do us both a favor, Eve, and spare me the wearisome litany of why you can’t go, because come hail or high water you are going to get out of that damn house for your birthday!”

  “No, I’m not! I am turning fifty, Teri! What about that is cause for celebration?” I hoped she missed the slight edge of hysteria that drifted into my voice.

  She didn’t.

  “I’m coming to spend the night with you Thursday night and we’re leaving first thing Friday morning for Myrtle Beach, whether you like it or not. So you might as well go ahead and start shaving the furrier parts of your body, the ones that probably haven’t seen a razor since Valentine’s Day. You know how you tend to ignore even the most basic hygiene when you are depressed.”

  “Screw you, Teri. Bathing is basic hygiene, which I do daily, thank you. Hair removal is not a prerequisite to cleanliness, regardless of what you think.”

  “Well, if I were you I’d go ahead and call a plumber ahead of time, because you know damn well all that hair is going to stop up the bathtub drain and I will have to bathe come Friday morning.”

  I started to give her a piece of my mind, but instead I burst out laughing. “You are a bitch from the depths of hell, Teri.”

  “I know. Don’t think you are the first to insult me. Kids started doing that in elementary school and by high school I was getting my head slammed in lockers and shoved in toilets daily, just because I was different.”

  It was true. Teri didn’t remember her childhood or teen years fondly. Her homosexuality had made her a prime target for the cruelest bullies in school, causing her to suffer terribly at the hands of fellow classmates.

  “You’re more than welcome to come and spend the night Thursday. But I can assure you that I am not going on a beach trip.”

  “I’ll see you Thursday night and pack your suitcase when I get there. Gotta go, love you, bye.”

  Good luck with that! Like I had anything to pack that would actually fit.

  Well, she was pissed. Good. Maybe she would delete my number from her phone. But honestly I didn’t really give a flying flip. No one was going to make me get out of bed, cover my atrophied body in something other than pajamas, unplug my Kindle Fire, turn off the Lifetime Movie Network, and close my bag of Reeses Pieces when I didn’t want to. So there!

  Now, if I could just think of a way to piss off Thelma and Louise. The phone was ringing and I could only guess that Teri had called the two remaining Musketeers for backup. She had wasted her breath, for Tammy or Mallory weren’t going to convince me to go someplace I didn’t want to go either.

  But it wasn’t Tammy or Mallory on the phone. I shivered involuntarily when I recognized the deep
Southern drawl. It was Justin. This couldn’t be good. Thinking back, it suddenly occurred to me that Justin had never once called me with good news. I held my breath as he casually asked, “Hey Eve, did you see the diamond Adam gave Chia?”

  “I saw the box.”

  “It’s some rock. One of those marquise styles.”

  Oh! I had often joked to Adam that when he finally proposed I expected at least a two-carat marquise diamond.

  “My girlfriend Alicia says she sticks it in the face of practically everyone she comes in contact with at work and squeals and giggles.”

  Well, wasn’t I was just tickled pink and positively ecstatic for the dear girl!

  “I asked Adam when the big day was and he said Chia wanted to marry him as soon as possible. To hear him describe it, it’s going to be the social event of the season with all his relatives flying in from Maine.”

  Like Twin Rivers boasted of a social season.

  “Eve, can you believe he had the nerve to ask me to be an usher?”

  Could we please continue this conversation at another time? I just noticed a new mound of fire ants in the back yard and I need to welcome them to the neighborhood.

  “I told him, “Hell no, I wouldn’t be an usher!” Anyway, Chia already has another man on the side, you know.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah, Chris at work. Every night when I go to the smoking booth he and Chia are whispering and getting intimately acquainted in a dark corner.”

  “Evidently she isn’t afraid of being caught by Adam.”

  “Not at all. She knows Adam believes every word out of her mouth, especially when spoken in the bedroom.”

  “And Adam will never receive accolades for his comprehension skills, will he?”

  “Nope, if he’s too stupid to see what’s right under his nose, he deserves to look like the fool she’s making him out to be. If he had one iota of common sense he would still be with you.”

  “Thank you, Justin.” His words brought a slight smile to lips that had all but forgotten how to turn upward. “That was nice to hear.”