Dear Emily (5 page)

I
t had been a disappointing day in more ways than she wanted to think about. She’d slept for eleven straight hours. It was almost midnight, and the Cayman Islands vacation was dead in the water.

Groggily, Emily tottered into the bedroom to see if Ian had returned while she was asleep. He hadn’t, the bed was neatly made, just the way she’d left it. It occurred to her then to look out the window. Her eyebrows shot upward. There was so much snow she couldn’t see across the street and it was still snowing, which meant Ian would stay at the hospital. The Chevy wouldn’t make it in this kind of weather and Ian hadn’t taken his boots. Ian would never trudge through snow, no matter what. He hadn’t called. Then again, maybe she hadn’t heard the phone ring. Anything was possible. Possible, but unlikely. Ian thought she was in the Cayman Islands. She wished now she’d had the guts to brave the turnpike. Now what was she going to do? She was on a week’s vacation with nowhere to go and no one to spend time with.

Emily marched into the kitchen and did what she always did when she was frustrated and angry. She ate. When she was finished, she said what she always said: “I wish I hadn’t eaten all that food.”

Emily stomped her way to the bathroom to fill the tub. A bubble bath eased some of the tension that was settling between her shoulder blades. A big glass of wine would probably help even more. Then some more sleep. She felt sluggish with all the food and candy she’d eaten.

An hour later she was in bed, dressed in her long flannel, granny nightgown. She slept till three the following day, when she got up, showered, and ate a monster lunch of fried potatoes, Spam, and a whole can of creamed corn. She finished it off with a half a tin of butter cookies and two glasses of chocolate milk. She watched soap operas for the rest of the afternoon. When the commercials came on, she switched to the local weather station.

At noon of the third day, Ian arrived home in the middle of the day. Emily was sitting at the kitchen table with the newspaper spread in front of her, a cup of coffee in her hand.

“Emily!”

“Ian!”

“Emily, what the hell are you doing here? I thought you were in the Caymans. I called you all night long and there was no answer.”

“I fell asleep, Ian. I guess I didn’t hear the phone,” she said. “I was afraid to go. Besides, I didn’t want to go without you.”

“Jesus Christ, Emily! You just blew two vacations. I better not hear you bitch about how tired you are and we never go anywhere. I had no choice; you did. Sometimes you are so goddamn stupid you boggle my mind.”

Emily gulped at her coffee, which was mostly cream and sugar. “How’s your patient?” she whispered.

“She died. A lot of people have died in the past few days. I worked around the clock and slept leaning up against walls, for ten minutes at a time. I just came home to get cleaned up. Mrs. Waller’s funeral is this afternoon. I had to leave your car at the hospital and walk. My feet are wet and cold. Couldn’t you at least have cleaned off the car?”

“I’ll do it now.”

“Don’t bother, Emily. The snow is frozen on it. I hired some kids to do it.”

“I’m sorry, Ian. Sorry about Mrs. Waller and sorry about the car. I should have done it. I don’t know why I didn’t. It’s so cold outside.”

“Tell me about it, Emily,” Ian railed. “If it’s not too goddamn much trouble, do you think you could make me an egg sandwich and some fresh coffee? I’ll take it with me. In case you’re thinking I’ll be here for dinner, I won’t. I have to go back to the hospital after the funeral.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Ian marched back to the kitchen. “Yes, Emily, there is. Make a chart showing how much money we lost. Tack it up on the refrigerator with a note saying, ‘I am never going to waste money again.’ I mean it, Emily, if I ever hear you bitch about not taking vacations or anything else for that matter, I’m leaving you. You had your chance and you muffed it.”

He was tired, saying things he didn’t mean. He wouldn’t leave her. She was his wife, in sickness and health, for better or worse. Tears dripped into the mixing bowl as she beat the eggs into a swirling yellow fluff. Her life, as she knew it, literally flashed before her. Her hand froze on the wire whisk. What would she do if Ian left her? Die. She would simply curl up and die. Ian was her reason for living. But was this living? She choked back a sob. She felt guilty, ashamed, and wasn’t able to look her husband in the eye when he reached for his sandwich and his Dunkin Donuts mug full of coffee, complete with sipping lid.

Emily ran to the living room window. She watched as Ian paid two boys and then climbed in the car. Even from the second floor she could hear the engine catch. Damn, why hadn’t she cleaned off the car?

When the kitchen was cleaned up, Emily sat down and made two neat columns of figures. Well, there was only one way to make this right. She called Heckling Pete’s and asked for Pete.

“Pete, I didn’t make it to the airport. If you need me, I can come in for the next four days. Okay, I have to get the car from the hospital parking lot. It might take a while to dig it out. The main roads are clear, aren’t they? I don’t have four-wheel drive on the Chevy. I’ll be careful. It’s hard to believe business is brisk after a storm. Everybody unwinding, huh? Guess that makes sense. You’ll see me when you see me. Thanks, Pete.”

If she worked till closing and then went in for the breakfast trade, she could even up the money they’d lost on the vacation. Ian wouldn’t be able to quibble with that or would he? She just didn’t know anymore. She prayed the tips would be good.

After working her shift, Emily drove home and crept into the apartment like a thief in the night. Ian’s car was in the driveway; he was finally home. She undressed in the dark, shivering in the cold apartment. She hugged the covers to her as she tried to still her quaking body. She didn’t dare wake Ian.

Emily and Ian both moved the moment the alarm sounded two hours later. Emily went straight to the kitchen, allowing Ian the bathroom. She made one cup of coffee for herself. When the door to the bathroom opened, she carried her mug of coffee and her clothes into the tiny cubicle. She locked the door, something she’d never done before in her married life. She turned on the shower and sat on the edge of the tub drinking her coffee.

Emily peeled off her nightgown and was about to step into the shower when Ian banged on the door and tried to open it. “Where’s the coffee, Emily?”

“I drank it,” she shouted as she lathered up under the warm spray.

“A whole pot?” Ian said in outrage.

“I only made one cup. If you want coffee, make it yourself. And on your way out, drop off your shirts at the laundry. And your other laundry too. I’m on strike. You can start eating out for all I care. Make sure my car is back here by noon or I’ll tell the police you stole it.”

“When are you coming out of there?”

“When I feel like it. Probably after you leave. I don’t want to look at your face, Ian.”

“You screw up your own vacation and you don’t want to look at my face. God, Emily, that’s just like you. How long are you going to pout this time?”

“Forever,” Emily shot back.

She stayed in the shower until the water ran cold. Then she stepped out, but let the water continue to run. She applied light makeup, struggled with her curly hair, brushing it till it was smooth enough to twine into a neat bun. She was dressed five minutes later, at which point she turned off the water. Her ear pressed to the door, she listened for some sound in the apartment. Her watch said she’d been in the bathroom for ninety minutes. Ian wouldn’t dillydally that long. Usually he gulped a cup of coffee and ran.

Coffee cup in hand, Emily wandered around the small apartment. First she checked the laundry basket. Ian hadn’t taken his shirts with him. She counted them, looked in the closet. Two clean ones. He’d probably go out and buy more. His suit was thrown over the back of a chair, ready to go to the cleaners. Ian probably didn’t even know where the cleaners was. She set her coffee cup down and made her side of the bed.

Petty, childish behavior. She didn’t care.

“Enough, Ian, I’ve had enough.” Two and a half more days until her “vacation” was over and she had to go back to the clinic every morning. Maybe she wouldn’t go back. Ever.

It was a full three days before Emily found out Ian’s reaction to her behavior to be no reaction at all. She sighed heavily; it was business as usual. He didn’t even comment on the money she’d left on the kitchen table with the list he’d ordered her to prepare. On Monday morning the list was crumpled and in the trash, the money gone. But things weren’t right between them even though they were both trying to act as though nothing had happened. Ian spoke in quiet tones, left early, and was asleep when she got home. At the clinics when he met her in the hallway or stopped by her desk, he smiled at her, but that was because there were patients milling about. It was clear to Emily that Ian was avoiding her and she did her best to avoid him, staying at Heckling Pete’s as long as possible.

On the fifth day of what Emily considered their armed truce, Ian approached her and said, “Enough of this crap, Emily. We’re like two tired warriors and I for one have had enough.”

“I’ve had enough too,” Emily said as she packed up her oversize pocketbook. It was one o’clock, time to get ready to head home to change her clothes and go on to Heckling Pete’s.

“Then give me a big kiss and let’s get back on track here.” Emily dutifully held up her face and Ian kissed her on the cheek. “What is it you want, Ian?”

“Well, now that you ask, I think the fridge needs to be replenished. I couldn’t find a grain of sugar or anything sweet in the whole apartment. I really hate to mention this, but the laundry is piling up.”

“I know,” Emily said.

“What does that mean,
I know
? Does it mean you know and are going to correct the situation or does it mean who gives a good rat’s ass? Or are you unaware? I prefer to think you’re unaware because we’ve both been uptight.”

“All of the above,” Emily said, walking toward the door.

Ian followed her to the door and walked outside with her. “Well?” he said, a smile on his face for the benefit of a patient who walked around both of them to enter the clinic.

“Well what, Ian?”

“You really have a pissy attitude lately, Emily. I don’t like it. At all.”

“I know,” Emily said, marching toward the parking lot. What was it her mother always said, don’t cut off your nose to spite your face? Something like that. And that’s exactly what she was doing. It was time she asserted herself where Ian was concerned. Right now the laundry was the biggest bone of contention. Grocery shopping the second. Their attitude toward one another. Slave-master relationships, Pete said, went out with the dark ages.

Maybe she had things out of order. She didn’t know anything anymore. She was a robot doing things automatically. She didn’t think anymore, didn’t exercise her brain at all. All she did was work, eat, sleep, and cry.

Things were going to change, Emily thought as she jammed the key in the lock of her apartment door. And they were going to have to change soon.

Someday I’m going to live in a real house and this rinky-dink apartment and all my problems will be over. If you believe that, Emily Thorn, you’re a fool. She sat down on the hard, wooden chair and stared into space. Someday…

E
mily stared at the laundry basket. in her eyes it represented an insurmountable mountain. Each day it got higher and higher. She stuck her foot into the basket and crunched down Ian’s white shirts. She didn’t feel any kind of satisfaction. Suddenly she wanted to count the shirts, needed desperately to know the numbers so she could calculate the days she and Ian had been at war. She upended the basket, kicking each shirt into the basket as she counted. When she was done, she jumped into the plastic basket and stomped with both feet. Forty shirts at three shirts a day meant thirteen and a half days. But then that wasn’t right either because Ian hadn’t come home for a few days during the snowstorm. She was stomping on two weeks’ worth of white shirts, maybe more.

The refrigerator was still empty, and there were no goodies or munchies in the cupboards. She still made only her side of the bed.

The Thorns were at war.

Emily’s nerves were in such a fragile state she no longer knew if what she was doing was right or not. If Ian would just say something, do something, make some kind gesture, she would react accordingly. Positively. She couldn’t go on like this much longer. Emily looked at the clock. Five minutes to midnight. She was home early tonight because Pete had decided to close early.

Emily raced for the bathroom and turned on the shower. When Ian wasn’t home, she could make all the noise she wanted. She could stand under the shower for hours or until the water ran cold. Tonight she’d be able to wash her hair twice with the new coconut shampoo and hopefully get the stench of Pete’s deep fryer out of her hair. The cigarette smoke she reeked of would disappear if she carried her clothes out to the kitchen and dumped them in
her
laundry basket.

“You are one screwed-up, mixed-up puppy, Emily Thorn,” she muttered as she lathered up her hair. In some cockamamie way she justified the feeling by telling herself if she recognized that she was half nuts she wouldn’t cross over the invisible line into insanity.

An hour later, Emily’s hair was dry, she was powdered and dressed in a high-necked, flannel nightgown and in between the covers. She was almost asleep when she heard Ian come in. She felt a tremor in her body and then another. God, how she wanted him. More than she’d ever wanted him. But more than anything, she wanted to rear up in bed and scream at the top of her lungs,
I’m sorry! Love me, Ian, please love me. I’ll do whatever you want. Say you love me, say this is just something married couples go through. Say it, say it even if it’s a lie and you don’t mean it.
She fought with herself, refused to give in. Instead she clutched the pillow and clenched her teeth.

Tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow there would be forty-three shirts in the basket.

“Emily.” It was a whisper.

It was the dearest, the sweetest sound. A sound she’d hungered for so long. Her name. Ian was ready to make peace. Thank you, God, thank you.

“Yes, Ian.”

“I don’t want to live like this anymore, Emily. I feel like I’m living in a war zone.”

“I don’t want to live like this either.” She didn’t move, waited for his arm to reach out to her the way he used to do. When she finally felt his touch, she rolled over and snuggled close, her breath exploding in a long, happy sigh.

“This was the worst two weeks of my life,” Ian said.

“Me too. Let’s not ever do this again, okay?”

“Okay. You smell good. New shampoo?”

“Hmmmnn.” He didn’t smell good. He’d smoked a cigar and he hadn’t brushed his teeth. “I haven’t been sleeping well. I tried to wake you last night, but you were in a deep sleep.”

“Really, Ian!”

“Really, Emily. Let’s go out to dinner tonight. Just you and me. Call in sick or switch your hours with someone, okay?”

“Are we celebrating something or are you just being nice?”

“Both. I’ll know more tomorrow. I’ll dude up and you gussy up and we’ll go out on the town. Your choice, Emily, where would you like to go?”

“Can I think about it?”

“Sure, honey. Listen, let’s make a deal, okay. If you make out a grocery list, I’ll get up early and go to that A&P that’s open twenty-four hours a day. You wash and iron my shirts.”

“Okay, Ian.” She knew at that moment if he’d asked her to climb to the heavens she would have searched out a hardware store to see if they made ladders that reached that high.

Moments later, Ian’s lusty snores permeated the bedroom. Emily waited ten minutes before she crept from the bed and out to the kitchen. She pulled on her down coat, gathered up the laundry basket as well as her soap. She let herself out of the apartment quietly and down the steps to the basement where the washer and dryer were located. While the shirts washed, she set up the ironing board and plugged in the iron. She’d gone without sleep before. She’d iron all night and surprise Ian when he woke to go to the A&P.

While she waited for the clothes to dry, she ran upstairs to make a pot of coffee, which she carried down to the basement. She switched on the landlord’s portable radio on a shelf above the galvanized sinks. Golden Oldies wafted softly throughout the basement. It was warm, and she was doing something she did well, something Ian appreciated. If she was going to call in sick, she could nap in the afternoon. This was more important than sleep.

As she finished each shirt, she hung it on the clothesline that ran the length of the basement. The heat from the furnace would dry the dampness around the double thickness of the collar and cuffs.

At five-ten in the morning, Emily made four trips back and forth to hang the shirts in Ian’s closet. Satisfied with her long night’s work, she made a fresh pot of coffee and was sitting at the table trying to imagine Ian’s reaction when he saw all his shirts hanging in the closet and on the back of every door in the apartment. She was about to take a sip of the freshly brewed coffee when she panicked and ran to the bathroom to check on the shirts, the last ones she’d ironed, the ones she hadn’t hung by the furnace to dry. She was too late.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Emily, these shirts are still wet. I could get icicles on my neck. It’s nineteen degrees outside.”

Stunned, Emily backed up a step and sucked in her breath. “I made a mistake, Ian, the ones in the closet are the dry ones. I thought you’d take one from the closet. You steam up the bathroom and it seeps out. I’m sorry. Here, let me get you another one,” she said as Ian ripped off the damp shirt and tossed it in the corner. Emily cringed as though she’d been slapped.

The phone rang as Ian was tying his tie. Emily picked it up and listened before she handed it to her husband. “I’m on my way,” she heard him say.

“Emily, I won’t be able to do the A&P bit. Joshua Oliver is having another series of seizures. Damn, I thought we had those under control.”

“I’ll do it, Ian. Hurry,” she said, holding out his winter jacket for him to slip his arms into.

“You’re a sweetheart, Emily. I’m sorry about the grocery shopping and I’m sorry for going off on you for the wet shirt. It’s gonna be one of those days. I’ll see you around five, okay?”

“Sure, Ian,” Emily said, tilting her head for his kiss on the cheek.

If you were keeping score, which Emily was, it was Ian Thorn 1, Emily Thorn zip.