by Willow Aster
I stare at it a few minutes and then die laughing. I laugh for five minutes straight, glad that I don’t even have a pet who can see my manic flip.
I pull out another bottle of wine and can’t say what happens next.
A RAGING HEADACHE wakes me up before the alarm. The floor is wavy as I walk to the bathroom. I try to glide so my stomach doesn’t feel any movement. My throat feels like it’s been rubbed with sandpaper. I can’t imagine going to work, but I agreed to go in today and will be off the rest of the week.
I pick up my phone to double-check the time. I just feel so off. Awful. I feel awful. My phone dings with a message.
Dalton: I’m still smiling about our night.
What does that mean? I scroll up to see all our messages and drop the phone. Oh, holy cripe, what have I done? There’s a picture of him in various poses, all comical if it wasn’t so horrifying. It’s basically the evolution of his penis while looking at pictures of me on Facebook. By the last one, it’s standing to full attention.
And then, oh God! There’s a picture of my boobs. I sent him a picture of my boobs.
And at 1:07 AM, there’s a video of him showing me his happy ending.
Now I’m not only crazy and depressed, but I am one of those people. Any shred of decency I thought I had feels like it’s disintegrated like cotton candy.
THE SHOP IS non-stop busy all day. Ibuprofen is my best friend. Walking home from the subway, I think back on the day and know that I’ve walked the inner walk of shame all day long. I can’t wait to take a long bath and crawl into bed.
If it weren’t for all the cheerful carolers I could forget tomorrow is Christmas Eve, but nope. They’re everywhere, making me want to bang my head against a thousand walls. All that keeps me going is the fact that I have time off. I’ve covered every holiday all these years and we finally have extra help, so I snatched the days. Anna put up some fuss initially about Christmas Eve, but Liv, the perky girl working part-time chirped up that she was just dying for more hours.
I have 7 steps left before I reach the stairs to my apartment building when I see him. The sun is about to go down, but his smile takes over where the sun leaves off.
“Dalton. What are you doing here?” I slow down but really want to just keep walking.
He grabs my arm and pulls me into a hug. “Hey you. I thought you were off this week! I just wanted to see you.” He gives me his goofy grin and I have a hard time staying mad.
Really, he’s just so cute, it’s always been incredibly hard to stay mad at him.
“I still had to work today.” I give in to the hug. Hugging Dalton is like putting on my cozy socks when it’s snowing. It’s comfortable and a given that I would eventually welcome the warmth.
“I’m breaking up with Courtney.”
“You mentioned you might.” I pull away from him.
“Yeah. I’ve thought about you all day. I had to see you.” He draws me back in and leans his head against my forehead. He has gum in his mouth and smells like peppermint.
He’s only a couple of inches taller than me, which actually feels nice when we’re standing like this. Everything just sort of fits. But what he said finally registers.
“We can’t do this.” I back far enough away that he can’t reach me.
“This is so hard!” He steps forward and puts his fingers on my lips. “God, you were so hot last night.”
He ventures a look down at my chest and I bop him on the head.
“Dalton! It’s me. We cannot do this. I … I didn’t even remember last night when I woke up this morning. And when I saw the texts, I was mortified. And the video!” I squeak and put my hands over my eyes.
“I know. I’ve felt guilty about it too, but it was so fun, right?” He tries to see under my hand and gives me a huge grin.
I shake my head at him, but can’t stop a tiny smile. “Looked like it for you!” A nervous laugh sneaks out and I put a hand over my mouth.
“Come here,” he says, taking my hands and stepping toward me, “we’ve gone through a lot together. You are the first girl I ever loved. I’ve always regretted what happened between us.”
“Why now? I don’t understand why this is happening.” I look up to the sky like it will bring a great revelation.
He leans over and kisses me. His soft lips feel sweet and I lean in, despite myself, longing for any human touch. He goes for it and puts his tongue in my mouth, and I think maybe because of the gum, the whole thing is just a little too … wet. And not in a good way.
I keep kissing him, now almost more of an experiment than anything, but no. It’s not getting any better.
I lean back and look at him. Huh. I didn’t expect that.
He takes my silence as consent for him to do it again and when he comes back in for another kiss, I break it off and run up the stairs.
I don’t even say goodbye, I just run up all the stairs until I reach my door. Once I’m inside I lock the door and turn off my phone.
I didn’t count the stairs. I didn’t count the stairs. I didn’t count the stairs.
I’m too afraid to go back and do it again, though, because he might still be out there.
I didn’t count the stairs.
You know there are 36 stairs, I rationalize.
But I need to go back and be sure. I have to count them or my life is going to continue going to hell.
The burning in my chest is searing. The pain is acute. There is a weight threatening to bury me underground if I do not go back and count the stairs.
I pace my apartment. Back and forth. In a pattern. Counting. Faster and faster until I give up and run back down to the first level and walk back upstairs, counting out loud as I go.
THE REST OF my night is a series of prayers and curses. Whatever tangible grip on sensibleness I had has dissolved into minuscule pieces. Any hope of getting a good night’s sleep is out the window. I know what the night holds for me.
It’s just as well. I don’t need to be thinking of all that I lack at Christmastime.
I stay up all night counting the whole apartment. Every variation I can think of. When I’ve exhausted myself counting, I organize the bathroom cabinet and work a little harder on the kitchen. When that’s done I get stuck counting again. The sun is coming up the next morning when I pass out, completely spent.
I WAKE UP late in the afternoon. The aloneness is almost a physical character lying next to me. Anywhere I look, there it is. I feel like a buoy, bobbing out in the middle of the vast ocean with not another soul in sight. Tiny and insignificant compared to the water, I can’t seem to let the water take me all the way under, no matter how hard I try. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be anymore. I pray God will untether whatever is holding me afloat and just let me drift off into nothingness.
I fall back to sleep and I see her. She’s smiling that smile that only she has for me. No one will ever love me like her. She had a way of making me feel like I was just fine. More than fine, really, I was special and beautiful in the ways that matter.
“Darling, remember that Christmas when you were little and you asked for a dad?” she says, with a sad smile.
I nod, not wanting to wreck the dream with my voice.
“There have always been some things I can’t give you.”
I open my mouth and she puts her hand on my arm. I look down at her hands because they’re one of my favorite things about her.
“You’re stronger than you think, baby girl.”
I look into her eyes and open my mouth again to argue with her. She smiles and shakes her head.
“Use the same fight that makes you want to argue with me right now and get better.”
She laughs and pulls me close to her. I nestle in her neck and hope that when I wake up I can remember exactly how wonderful this feels.
I HAVEN’T ALWAYS been like this. I’ve always liked to count things, but I never had to count. There’s a difference. The first time I became compulsive about it was 7 y
ears ago. I’d just turned 21 and decided to find my dad. My mom was more than enough, and I made sure I let her know it, but she encouraged me to find him to answer any questions I had.
I hadn’t really had a boyfriend and knew this was unusual for my age, to have so many reservations about letting a guy get close to me. I had always given my father a lot of thought and hoped if I actually met him, it would settle some of the fears I had about … everything. There’s something about knowing your dad wants nothing to do with you that does a number on a girl.
He was my mom’s college boyfriend and broke her heart when she told him she was pregnant. I wanted to ask him what was so important that he didn’t even have time to meet me. And once the shock wore off that he was having a baby, as an adult, why didn’t he find me? How was he capable of that and what kind of person did that make me, having that in my genetic makeup?
That was the key—determining how much of him was in me. I saw how my mother was all the things I aspired to be, and wondered if my dad was all that I was capable of being.
She warned me that he might not be receptive. She told me then that she’d tried a few times early on, to get him to see me, and he’d never wanted to. Still, I was determined.
I started with the last town she knew he’d been and was able to find his number with no problem. I called on a Saturday and hoped he’d be the one to answer. He was.
“Douglas Jacobs?” I asked.
“It is,” he said.
His voice sounded deep and hoarse, like maybe he smoked a pack or so every day. I don’t know if he did, it just sounded that way.
“This is Mabel Armstrong, your daughter,” I said, my voice wobbling with daughter.
He cleared his throat and said, “I wondered when I’d hear from you. I have a family. I don’t need any trouble.”
“I don’t want to cause any trouble, I just want to meet you,” I replied, my voice taking on an edge now.
“Look, I told your mother a long time ago that I wanted nothing to do with her. I’ve moved on, have a good life, and I’ve wished you both well. I don’t have any extra money to go around, believe me.”
There was a second’s pause where my heart felt like it was going to shake my chest open. “Well, isn’t that convenient for you,” I finally said. “I wish she’d told me what a complete bastard you really are, but she’s too kind to do that. Now I know.”
Before I could hang up on him, he hung up on me. And that did it. I lost it. How dare that motherfucker hang up on me. Red. Livid. Rage.
I got drunk and walked the city in circles. I counted steps to drive out the sound of the son of a bitch’s voice. When I was cried out and wanted to start all over again, I jogged up and down the steps of the Metropolitan, up and down, again and again, until I was ragged. I counted to 23,947 and then couldn’t move. I called my mom and she came and lifted me off the stairs, practically carrying me to the car.
It was bad for a few weeks. I know now it was adult onset OCD, but then it just felt like my brain had snapped and I’d been replaced by a lunatic. Some days—weeks and even months—were a nightmare. I failed a few classes, delaying my college degree by a year and a half.
My mom was able to reason with me and get me to focus on other things. When I got a little healthier, I started going out and had a couple of relationships that eventually fizzled out. And then I met Dalton and we clicked. My little quirks, he liked to call them, were almost a charming oddity to him in the beginning, but when we’d fight or if I was stressed, it didn’t become so cute anymore. It was harder to hide when we moved in together. I’d stay up all night working on the apartment. Or he’d catch me up, counting the tiles in the kitchen over and over.
We had a huge fight because I couldn’t use the same hand towel as him. He tried to force me to, and it did not go well.
In the beginning, he’d steer me back to bed and distract me there, but when that stopped working, there wasn’t much hope left. That’s when he said I had to get therapy or he was breaking up with me.
I should have just broken up with him right then, but I blamed myself for every problem we had. I didn’t see how he belittled me all the time, even in front of our friends. I just felt the rejection and thought it was all my fault.
I started seeing Dr. Still and she was great. Very understanding and helpful. She gave me an antidepressant that was effective with anxiety disorders. We worked each week on revaluing each compulsive thought that came through my mind. She said to tell my mind when I was struggling that this was a symptom of OCD and I didn’t really need to do x,y,z. It sounded simple but was so difficult. Eventually it did start to help.
Next week I will try to go see her, I tell myself.
Right after I have this massive shutdown.
CHRISTMAS COMES AND goes. And the day after that. And the day after that. I’ve ignored my phone. Dalton and Saul have called and so has Anna. I only listen to Anna’s message in case it has anything to do with work. It does, so I work a bit from home, and then don’t look at my phone again in case she wants me to do something else. Let the ones who are actually at the shop do the work for once.
I get desperate for La Colombe’s coffee, so I force myself to get out of bed to go there.
Coen is working as usual.
“Hi Mabel,” he says.
“Hey, Coen.”
“You okay?” He immediately starts preparing my regular order.
“I-ugh. Don’t ask.”
“Okay.” He chuckles, but looks concerned. “Sometimes it can be liberating to tell everything to an absolute stranger.” He leans his chin on his hand and bats his eyelashes at me.
I smile in spite of myself. “You’re not an absolute stranger.”
“There’s that smile,” he grins, “now, come on, spill. Since we’re friends and all…”
“You do make it tempting.” I take my coffee and before I walk out, I thank him. “You know, the small kindnesses you show me do help make things just a little … better.”
“I’d like to make it a whole lot better,” he yells as I walk out the door.
I drink my coffee and crawl back into bed as soon as I get home. I know I need to get out more. I know I need to make friends. I just … can’t. I’m going under.
THE SUN SHINES through my window early Saturday morning, and when it hits my face, I don’t turn away. I let it warm me through and through until I’m completely toasty. Then I think about what my mom would say about me wasting away the sunshine.
If you’re gonna laze the day away, at least save it for a cloudy day, she’d say. Otherwise, the sun will stop shining on you…
I jump out of bed. I’ve laid around long enough that my hair feels like matted dreadlocks are forming in places. It’s time to get up. It doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to die today.
I have two more days off work. I’d planned to spend all of my time reading, embracing my hermitdom, but the familiar stirrings of guilt rise up. I take a shower and have a frank discussion with myself about at least reading at La Colombe. Instead of staying there, I order a coffee to go.
“We have some new books in,” Coen mentions.
When I don’t answer, he says, “I just … noticed you like to read … a lot.” He throws a cookie in the bag even though I didn’t order one.
“Thanks for the cookie.” I smile.
“Anything to make you smile,” he says.
Gosh, he’s cute.
From there, I walk to a salon that I’ve always thought was probably too expensive for me.
“Oh honey, come in,” a tatted up guy says. “We will fit you in.”
I haven’t even said what I wanted, but he can see the desperate situation that is my hair.
“I just had a cancellation,” he whispers. “Your timing could not have been more perfect.”
Paschal leads me to a chair and sets me down like I’m his new toy, promptly throwing a cape over me. He fingers my dirty blonde hair and has the decency to keep his exp
ression neutral, even though it’s obvious to everyone with eyeballs that I’m way overdue.
“What did you have in mind today?” he asks, lifting up my mop.
I shrug my shoulders, studying myself in the mirror. “You know what? Cut it off, please. And I’d like to go blonder.”
“When you say off, what do you mean exactly?”
“All of it. All the way … off. Longer on the top, but I don’t even want it on my neck anymore. Maybe I could donate it?”
He brightens up. “Yes! A touch longer-on-top pixie,” he whispers. “Love. It. You have the face for it … it’s just hiding under all this hair!” He swivels me around in the chair. “And when you say blonder…”
“Marilyn Monroe blonde.”
He gasps and puts his hand to his chest. “I love you. People who just want a trim are dead to me.” He shakes his head and laughs at himself. “Okay, not dead, but … yeah … dead.” He swirls me back around and points toward the sink. “Let’s get your makeover started, little darlin’.”
I smile at him, thinking I’d go anywhere Paschal wanted just for calling me little darlin’. When he washes my hair, my commitment to him is further confirmed. I hold back the moans that nearly escape my lips. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a hermit. I’m like an attention starved kitten who purrs as soon as they’re stroked.
All too soon we go back to the chair. He dries my hair a little and puts it in a ponytail. And chop. It’s off.
He takes my picture holding up the ponytail.
“I cut off 15 inches,” Paschal says, excited.
I close my eyes and lean my head back. “I feel a thousand pounds lighter already.”
“I like the sound of that!”
He bleaches my hair. He has nail polish on his counter and I ask if I can use it while we wait for my hair to process. I paint my nails with OPI Road House Blues and Paschal finishes the haircut.