Searching For Meredith Love

by Julie Christensen

  "Then why didn’t you call?"

  "I can't call," he said.

  "I miss your breathing, at night, Ben. I can’t sleep." She stood. He was very close to her. “I miss hearing about your day. I miss your smell. Please, can’t we talk?”

  Ben continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “But I can’t see you any more, Meredith.” His voice cracked on her name. “You can’t keep calling. And you can’t come by.”

  “But...”

  “No.” His voice was quiet but firm. “No, I won’t do this to myself. I can’t see you and pretend everything is okay. You may be a bigger person than I am, but I can’t be friends with you.”

  “Friends?”

  “Maybe some day.”

  “I don’t want to be friends with you, Ben.” She pushed on, keeping her eyes on her goal. “I want you in my life. I want to wake up and see you every morning for the rest of my life.” She felt like she was breaking through the sound barrier. Sheets of fear rolled off of her. She tried to say the words again, to tell him she loved him. But she was afraid of his reaction, and the words wouldn’t come. Her heart, she thought, was constipated and all the pushing in the world wasn’t going to budge it. “I can’t see my future without you,” she managed.

  “I’m afraid of my future with you,” he said harshly. She stepped back in confusion and stumbled into the stairs, falling hard on her right wrist. She quickly stood again, feeling like a four-year-old. “I opened myself up to you,” Ben continued, ignoring her fall. “I didn’t hold back anything.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “But you. You couldn’t say you loved me. You were unreasonably jealous of other women. You lied to me.” He was yelling, in an undertone. “I thought if I clung to you and closed my ears to my doubts, you would eventually open yourself up to me. But you never will. I see that now.” He paused. “I know you’re a good person, Meredith. And I’d like to be friends one day...” he took a breath, “...but right now I just don’t want to see or talk to you.” He sidestepped her and climbed the stairs to his door.

  She shouted, “You said you don't run!"

  His back tightened for a moment. Then he unlocked his front door and turned around to face her. “You know that song, ‘The Sultans of Swing’ by Dire Straits?”

  Meredith was caught off guard. Unsure where he was going, she just nodded her head.

  “I used to love that song. Still like it, actually. But when I was a kid, I really loved it. And I know I owned the album. Do you know how I know that, Meredith?”

  “No.”

  “Because now, whenever I hear that song on the radio, I hear the skips. There aren’t skips on the radio,” he added. “I just hear them anyway. I hear all the skips my album had when I was a kid.” He studied Meredith. “No matter how much you love something, once it’s scratched...”

  Meredith held up her hand to stop him. “Okay. I understand. I’ve scratched our relationship. Relationships aren’t albums.” She knew she had only one more shot before he went inside. “Ben, your parents worked through their problems. We can too.”

  He looked at her a moment, then shook his head and disappeared inside.

  She wanted to heave her body against the door and knock it off its hinges. I won’t leave, she thought, feeling reasonable. He could go inside. He could tell her to go, but she was her own person and she could choose to stay if she wanted. She clung to this idea of staying and it held off the pounding of tears in her head. She took some Motrin from her purse and swallowed it dry, and this mundane move confirmed her belief that everything could go back to normal if only she would remain standing outside of Ben Abel’s front door.

  Five minutes into her vigil, she saw the hopelessness of her situation. Ben was being intractable, a quality she hadn’t identified in him before, but one that he had probably honed and strengthened during medical school and residency. Choose a course. Then suck it up and stick to it. No matter what.

  She turned, defeated, and as she trudged back to her car, which she had assiduously parked not in the driveway, but the street, so as not to assume too much, she felt her invisible tail, curled up under and between her legs.

  The next day her tooth hurt so much she could barely lift her head from the pillow. She called in sick to work and phoned Dr. Orvidas. Of course, her office wasn’t open yet. Probably not till ten, Meredith thought. She took four Motrin and went to sleep. When she woke in the afternoon her jaw wouldn’t open. She picked up her phone, trying to still her panic as she pressed redial for her dentist. They were closed for the afternoon. There was no emergency number. Meredith looked at her watch. It was 2:10. Those bastards, she thought. She called Kira at work. “My mouth is closed shut.” She spoke slowly so that Kira could understand.

  “What?”

  Meredith started to cry. Her jaw was throbbing and her gums were vibrating, probably from all the Motrin she’d been ingesting. “I can’t open my jaw,” she managed. “My dentist is gone.”

  “For the weekend?” Kira asked.

  Meredith had forgotten it was Friday. She cried even harder. Each sob hurt. Her life seemed so hopeless.

  “Hang on,” Kira told her. “Calm down a second. I'm going to put down the phone and ask one of the doctors what to do.” In five minutes she was back on the phone. “They said it’s probably just from swelling. You’ve paralyzed a nerve, temporarily. You can stay home unless you get a fever. Then go to the ER. Do you feel hot?”

  “No,” she sobbed. She was so angry at her dentist that she wanted to track her down and throw a rock through her window.

  “I’m coming over after work. Can you hold out for two more hours? I’ll bring dinner.”

  “I can’t open my mouth!” Meredith wailed.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll bring my blender.”

  Kira’s first attempt to feed Meredith was a milkshake with eggs. Even flexing her mouth muscles to suck hurt Meredith. When the cold liquid hit her tooth she felt like she was being electrocuted. Reeling from the shock, she gave Kira back the milkshake and refused to drink it. She lay on the sofa, faint from hunger. She hadn’t eaten since the night before but the pain was so strong that she couldn’t work up the motivation to get any food down the little opening her mouth made.

  Kira returned with peas that were about room temperature. Meredith ate those, one at a time, wishing she were dead.

  On Saturday the pain felt worse. Her jaw still wouldn’t open. Kira returned first thing in the morning. “I can’t go through another day like this,” Meredith sobbed. “I can’t.”

  “What’s the name of your doctor?”

  “Orvidas.”

  Kira opened the phone book. “Elena?”

  “I think so.”

  “Let’s call her at home.”

  “No!” Meredith was mortified at the thought.

  Kira put the book down and leveled her gaze on her. “Why not?”

  “Because. I don’t want to disturb her at home.”

  “Meredith. Your jaw is locked shut. In the past thirty-six hours you’ve eaten thirty-seven peas.” Kira picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Dr. Orvidas please. Hi, Doctor Orvidas. I’m calling on behalf of your patient Meredith Love. You did a root canal on her? Her jaw is locked shut. She can’t eat. She’s also in a lot of pain. She tried to call you yesterday, but you were already out of the office.”

  Kira was silent as she listened.

  “No. Yes, lots. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you.” She hung up. “She’s going to meet us in her office in thirty minutes.”

  “I don’t want her to use the Novocain needle on me,” Meredith told her.

  “Whatever, Meredith. Come on. Let’s go.”

  Dr. Orvidas was professional and apologetic. “I’m sorry I wasn’t available,” she told her. “You should have called me at home last night. Our machine’s been on the fritz, otherwise you could have left us a message and someone would have called you back from the office.

  She peeked inside Meredith's mouth thr
ough the opening. “Probably abscessed. Let’s get you on penicillin. When the swelling goes down we’ll drain and you should be as good as new.” She wrote out a prescription and handed Meredith her card. “My home phone is on the back. Take these pills once every eight hours for seven days, even if the swelling goes down right away. If you have more problems, don’t hesitate to call me. Okay?”

  They were all out the door in less than seven minutes.

  By Sunday, her jaw could open almost all the way. The pain seemed improved too, although she still hurt all over. She spent the day in bed watching movies with Mendra. Life was too painful for living, Meredith thought as she watched Mendra curl herself up into a neat ball down at the corner of the bed. If she’d been hospitalized from an accident, Ben would probably have come to her side and admit he still loved her. Teeth could be deadly too, she reasoned. But they didn’t carry the drama of a car wreck.

  If they were still together, Ben would have written her a prescription for penicillin as soon as the lockjaw happened. He would have monitored her for fever. He would have made room-temperature foods beyond peas to feed her. He would have held her in his arms and stroked her hair while she sobbed. Instead she was crying in bed, alone. She thought about driving by Ben's house and throwing a rock through his window. The fantasy made her feel better. She could slash his truck tires, too. And write JERK on his front door. In pink. He was a jerk, for sucking her in and then shoving her out of his life. She was lucky, really, to know now how unforgiving Ben could be. Better to suffer the pain now, alone, than at some point in the future when children were involved. Another relationship that I’m lucky to be out of, she thought. Lucky that Ben revealed himself to me now. The third time will be the charm, she added.

  The room was silent. Mendra was sleeping. Meredith turned her head into the pillow. I’m grieving more for what I wanted Ben to be than what he was, she assured herself. The house felt empty and cold. She shivered and tested her jaw. It could still move. Life just really wasn’t worth mucking through, she decided, even with her jaw mobile.

  By Tuesday most of the pain was gone. Dr. Orvidas drained the abscess and gave her another prescription of penicillin to start after she finished the one she had.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t come in sooner,” she had said as she worked on Meredith's mouth. The hygenist was back in place, vacuuming away. Meredith couldn’t really defend her actions.

  “I had a lot going on,” she said.

  “Yes, but the pain. How could you stand the pain?”

  Meredith wondered how she was still standing the pain.

  Chapter Twenty

  Rachel was motionless in front of the critique wall. Meredith was getting a solo critique of her paintings over the class break. She’d been working like a maniac at home, which was why she had eight canvases hung on the white wall. Most of the students were outside smoking. The teenager was hovering in the back, studying Meredith's wall of work as if the paintings might bite her if she came any closer.

  “What’s the red monster?” Rachel wanted to know.

  Meredith had done paintings of women in different shapes and sizes, standing alone in the New Mexican landscape. Many of them had a small red monster hiding off in the grass or jumping around in the foreground.

  “Displaced anger.”

  “These are thick with literature,” Rachel finally told her. She had a way of speaking as if she had just lit up a cigarette and was preparing for a long, gratifying drag. Meredith leaned back on her heels and got ready to listen. “I’m seeing symbolism that builds a layer of story over what you’ve already painted. They’re multidimensional and what I mean by that is that the story I’m reading is not the story someone else is going to read. You’ve left enough missing pieces to allow my imagination to go in and start to build. Remember the block corner in kindergarten? I’m in that corner, and these blocks are very cool. I’m having a lot of fun, although it’s also a little frightening: the things I’ve built with your blocks tap into veins I’m not sure I want to explore.”

  Meredith let out some air. “I know they’re a little intense...”

  “They give an emotional response. It’s a great achievement. Have you shown before?”

  “Shown what?”

  “Your work. At a gallery?”

  “No. What gallery shows stuff like this?”

  “There are other venues for artists. Several cafes and bars in town hang artists.”

  “With only eight pieces?”

  “In some places, eight is enough.”

  For the second half of the class, Meredith didn’t think about Rachel’s words. She stored them like gold in the back of her head. After class, at home, she laid her paintings out across her living room, mixing them around until they were positioned to complement each other, to move the eye across the series and back again. Mendra walked in and out of the pieces, talking, uncharacteristically. To Meredith, it seemed like a small omen. She bookmarked this place in her life so that she could return to it again, later.

  “I just feel really shell-shocked,” Kira said. She and Meredith were sitting on top of a peak, in the Sandias. “It’s like the earth below me started shaking and no matter how hard I tried to keep my balance, I ended up sprawled across the ground with my face in the dirt, miles away from where I was.”

  “How’re things with Mike?”

  “They seem good. I guess I’m scared to trust my feelings now because I’m not sure how I feel about Mike.”

  Meredith surveyed the scene below her. She ignored an itch because she didn’t want to scratch off any of her SPF-30 sun block. She and Kira sat in the sun in silence for awhile. “How do you mean, you don’t trust your feelings?” Meredith asked.

  “I don’t know how to explain. It’s like a layer of cotton is between me and my feelings.” She started to warm up to her analogy and sat up so she could see Meredith’s face. “Have you ever seen those boxes with holes where you reach in and try to guess what’s inside just by touch? That’s how this feels. I can’t quite feel how things are between Mike and me. I think things are good. It seems like they are. But I don’t feel plugged into my own emotions. I’m trying to make judgments with only one of my senses.”

  “I’ve felt that way most of my adult life,” Meredith said. They contemplated the scene in front of them for a while. “How do you stop that?” Meredith asked.

  Kira shrugged. “When you figure out why you started it?”

  Meredith called Doug and invited him to lunch. They met at a busy cafe near the University. He looked genuinely happy to see her, but gaunt. “How’s the job?” he asked. Guilt underlined his question.

  “Terrific,” she assured him. “How’s your new programmer?”

  Doug laughed. “You’ve obviously been in the private sector for too long if you think we would have rehired that fast. It’s only been three months,” he added.

  “Good God!” Meredith exclaimed. “How have you been managing?”

  Doug shrugged, nonchalantly. “Managing. Corky is in my office twice a day asking how the hiring process is going.”

  “Are you getting good applicants?”

  “They look okay on paper. It’s hard to know until they start. Corky wants to be part of the interviewing process, which slows us down because she’s hard to schedule.”

  And she’ll scare everyone away, Meredith thought. “Is there a temp there now?”

  “Not really. How do you hire a temp with programming skills? But enough.” He motioned as if to wipe an invisible slate clear with both hands. “Tell me about your job.”

  If Meredith was afraid that Doug would cry on her shoulder, she was sadly mistaken. She felt like she was more likely to do that, especially if he brought up Ben's name. She hoped he had enough of the male distaste for personal topics to avoid it.

  ““It’s very different,” she began, “but fun.” For the rest of lunch they compared the two positions. She considered asking about Marcia, but didn’t.


  “Rio Rancho is a hike from the South Valley. Do you think you’ll move out there?”

  It was a hike, but the thought of leaving her little adobe rental for something like Peter's house made her scowl.

  “I guess I have my answer,” Doug laughed.

  “I may consider Corrales,” Meredith conceded, although it was the first time she’d ever thought about relocating closer to work. “I love that town. And the commute would be short. And with my salary hike I could probably buy.”

  Doug nodded. “Just remember you’ll have a lot of expenses, in addition to the mortgage. Make sure you budget for that.”

  She almost said, “Spoken like a true dad,” but caught herself at the last second. She was appalled by her near slip, so her voice was a little flustered when she said, “Yeah. Time to settle down and be a grown-up.”

  Doug stood, pulling his sport coat back on. “Thanks for calling,” he told her. “I’ve been wondering how you are. Glad to see you’re doing so well.”

  “Thanks,” Meredith replied. She wasn’t sure how to reciprocate.

  “Will I see you at graduation?” He meant the residency graduation, which was in a month and a half. She nodded a polite smile, pretending that she hadn’t understood his words and was just being agreeable.

  “Great,” he told her, clasping her hand with both of his. “See you there.” Then he turned and left.

  She couldn’t stop painting. Painting was the only way to let her pain escape without screaming. She now had nine paintings. Each new one felt like a gem in a crown. She gloried over each alone, but derived a special pleasure from viewing them all together. A rusty-orange patch in one, next to the cobalt patch of another, enthralled her. She found it hard to believe the paintings came from her. At Rachel’s suggestion, Meredith had begun a mental list of cafes and bars that displayed art, ranking each location by wall color and clientele. There was a cafe with a population of doctors and residents (future buyers), but the walls were a pistachio color. She glanced out the window. Sarah was coming over, an out-of-the-ordinary event. She’s probably worried that I’m not managing well on my own, Meredith thought. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted Sarah to see her paintings or not. She could be wildly encouraging or unthinkingly critical. Meredith gathered up her paintings like children and stowed them behind the couch.