So Much More (22 page)

I would say I’m reeling from the news, but to reel you have to feel. And I feel nothing. My blood has gone stagnant in my veins. My heart seized mid-beat and decided function was no longer necessary. All synapses, in a split second, boycotted in unison making thought and action impossible.

Nothing.

Nothing slowly transforms, setting off an insidious barrage of emotion.
 

The shock and betrayal is staggering as if my entire body and mind have been concussed by the news, and I’m now left to process her actions with a shock-induced, modified conscience. Right and wrong are glaringly obvious in my judgment of her. Right and wrong blur noxiously in my reaction to her. I’d love nothing more than to exact revenge. Revoke her life, for revoking my child’s.

The hate blazing through me is making it hard to breathe. I feel claustrophobic. I need to go outside.

The air outside is considerably cooler than inside, but it does nothing to ease emotion. There’s too much and it feels like it’s gnawing at my insides. Feasting and gorging until soon I’ll just be a shell filled with nothing but rage.

Panic starts to set in, and the only person I want to talk to is Faith. Fuck Miranda if she still has a PI following me. “Fuck you!” I yell as I descend the stairs. “Fuck you!” I yell again as I conclude the stairs.

I knock on Faith’s door. It’s loud, both due to the absence of most other sound because of the late hour, and to my angry, heavy hand.

“She don’t live there no more.” The voice is quiet, meek, but nearby.

So nearby that it startles me out of my solitary focus. It’s the woman from apartment one, Hope. And then her words hit me, and I’m questioning and denying her statement all in one word, “What?”

“The girl, Faith, she left a few days ago.” She sounds mildly sad, but for the most part the words are delivered void of attachment or feeling like she keeps everything buried deep inside.

She’s sitting on the ground just outside her open front door smoking a cigarette. I walk toward her but stop when I’m several feet away remembering how skittish she was the only other time I talked to her. “Where did she go?” I ask.

She shrugs while she takes an ugly pull from the cigarette, her cheeks drawing in exaggeratedly, and due to her frail appearance she looks like skin stretched over a delicate framework of bones.

“Did she tell you she was leaving?” The inflection I put on certain words makes them sound accusatory, like a mouthy teenager who doubts the validity of what they’re being told.

My tone doesn’t change her demeanor. She’s no less timid, and no friendlier, than normal. She nods, still sucking on the cigarette like it’s a lifeline.

I shake my head, annoyed with her wordless responses, and turn to go back upstairs.

She speaks when I’m only a few steps away. “She’s the only person I talk to besides Mrs. Lipokowski. Faith,” she adds as if clarification is necessary. “The only friend I got.”

Maybe if you weren’t nuttier than squirrel shit and came out of your apartment more often people would talk to you,
is what I almost say, but then I realize that’s the rage in me talking, and it’s mean. So, I say, “Yeah, Faith was special,” instead.

She doesn’t agree. She doesn’t disagree. She just looks at me with her dead eyes and says, “I got to walk to the convenience store down the street. You wanna come?” The way she says it I know she won’t be disappointed if I say no, and she won’t be happy if I say yes, either answer will elicit a neutral reaction out of her.
 

Which is one of the reasons I say yes—no pressure. The other is I’m out of beer. I check my pocket for money and my keys and nod.

Without a word she steps inside her door, slips into some worn out, dirty flip-flops, and grabs her wallet off the floor. I notice she doesn’t pick up the keys on a key ring lying next to her wallet and a thick stack of mail.
 

When she begins to close her door, I ask, “Don’t you need your keys?”

“No,” she answers blandly.

“But you’ll lock yourself out,” I warn. I feel like I’m talking to a child.

She shakes her head. “I never lock it. I ain’t got nothing to steal.”

I want to argue her logic. This isn’t a small, rural town—crime happens—but I don’t because she’s a grown woman. Though the more I talk to her the more indecisive I am about her mental state or capacity. Socially, she’s awkward. Obviously, she’s a hermit, but I don’t know what’s driving it.
 
And although being around her makes me uneasy, I feel like I’d go mad if I had to go back up to my apartment alone, so here I am shopping with the crazy neighbor at two o’clock in the morning.

We walk there in silence. She walks slowly and matches my pace, which I appreciate and tell her so.

She doesn’t acknowledge my comment, and I didn’t expect her to.

When we reach the convenience store I buy a six-pack of the cheapest beer they have and a stick of jerky and tell Hope I’ll wait outside for her, but to take her time, I’m in no hurry.

She doesn’t take long, five minutes tops, and meets me out front carrying four plastic bags. The weight of the bags is dispersed unevenly and has her walking off-kilter as if she’s developed a limp under the weight.

“Let me help you,” I offer.

She doesn’t hesitate to hand me one of her bags. It’s full of canned goods: soup, Vienna sausages, and baked beans. I take it and couple it in my grasp with my bag.

As we start walking, I look at her other bags: cigarettes, chips, cereal, bread, and milk. She grocery shops at the convenience store. I don’t know why this makes me so sad, but it does. As if her deviation from the norm is hindering her somehow, limiting her choices to live a well-balanced life. Not to mention this food isn’t exactly healthy. And then I glance at my bag and think about my dinner tonight, and I disregard all judgment.

“Do you shop here often?” I ask. It’s small talk, but I have a feeling it’s the only talk that may turn into a conversation with her.

She’s staring straight ahead as if the journey is a task that needs all of her focus, and her eyes don’t veer off her course when she answers, “Every Saturday and Wednesday morning at two o’clock.”

“Why do you go in the middle of the night?”

“Less people. Everyone’s sleeping,” she says matter-of-factly.

We don’t speak for the duration of the walk. It’s a bit uncomfortable for me, but she doesn’t seem to mind. I hand over her bag at her door. She nods to address the exchange and then she shuts the door without another word.

My mind is muddled. Weary with tonight’s fucked up events. When I get to my apartment, I put the beer in the fridge, the jerky on the counter, and I go to bed and let sleep take me before I analyze anything further.

Because tomorrow I need my brain fresh.

The epicenter of hell

Present

I swore I would never do this.

Never go back.

Never.

Never say never.

My lungs feel like they’re punishing me for overturning my promise, my breaths are short and stunted. The compression of fear isn’t allowing for enough air. I haven’t had a panic attack since I’ve been in California. I’m convinced now that they were geographically induced. Kansas City is the epicenter of hell.

My legs are soldiers marching up the steps onto the Greyhound bus, determined to carry out their mission. By the time I take a seat near the back, the pain in my chest is swelling. It’s already reached that critical mark that brings the heel of my hand to press against it, praying for relief. My full backpack is sitting in my lap. I hug it tightly to my chest with my free arm and bury my face in the top of the rough canvas, and then I let the tears fall. And I hope the people sitting around me ignore my meltdown and let me muddle through it in peace.

They do.

I don’t know how long it is before the assault lessens and relents, but I’m exhausted in its wake. I sleep through a few hundred miles. I decide I like the unconscious approach, even though each time I awake it’s like a time warp that places me closer and closer to my adversary.

When the bus pulls into the Kansas City station, my body aches. Every muscle is protesting at the tense posture I’ve held the entire trip. Even while I slept I didn’t relax. I wait for everyone else to exit the bus and only at last call do I rise. My legs carry me out on a militant charge, and the thought briefly crosses my mind about developing blood clots in my legs from prolonged sitting and how that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go if it took me quickly before I stepped off this bus.

There are no blood clots.

Only numbness, that’s flushed mercifully through my torso and limbs in a deluge as if it’s being carried intravenously in my bloodstream.

The sidewalk feels more substantial under my feet when I land upon it. I huff under my breath. Everything is less forgiving here, even the concrete. The air is biting and cold, the sharpness of it pricks the lining of my lungs, and I tug Mrs. L’s scarf that I already had wrapped around my neck up over my mouth to repress the attack.

My fingers are shaky as I dial a number I haven’t thought about in years, Claudette, my caseworker.

“Hello?” her answer brings on the same rush of relief it always did. I always thought of Claudette as my guardian angel because she was the woman who rescued me.

“Claudette, this is,” I hesitate because I haven’t said my birth name out loud in years, “Meg Groves.” The words are acrid, and I swallow repeatedly trying to rid my mouth of the awful taste they’ve left behind.

“Meg,” she says it the same way she always did, soothing, setting the stage for what is about to unfold. She lived her life in crisis management mood, obviously she still does. “It’s been a long time, dear. How are you?”

“I’m good,” I lie. I’ve learned that lying when my well-being is concerned is easier than trying to navigate the truth. Nobody wants to hear,
I’m not good
. That just makes everything uncomfortable and then the fact that I’m not good would need to be addressed or ignored. Either option makes people squirm, so I lie.
I’m good. I’m always good.
Deep down I’m so scared I want to cry, but I continue. “I’ve been in California, and I just came back to Kansas City for a visit. It’s kind of late to get a motel room, and I was wondering if maybe I could stay with you, just for tonight?”

The pause that comes brings tears to my eyes. The silence sounds like denial.

“Never mind, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have called.”

I’m ready to press the button on my phone to disconnect when she calls out loudly as if she senses my looming escape, “No! No, of course you can stay with me tonight. I apologize for the hesitation. I think I’m just in shock hearing your voice. The good kind of shock, but still shock.”

She gives me her address and I Uber a ride to her apartment. It’s the same apartment she’s lived in for as long as I can remember. The same apartment that offered me refuge all those years ago.

Stepping inside, and into Claudette’s open arms, settles my nerves. She looks the same; her black hair smattered with silver and her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. I’ve always thought of her glasses as a sharp underscore to her intense owl-like eyes. She’s short in stature and heavy set in build. She’s a safe place. The only safe place in this city as far as I’m concerned.

Time yields results, even against the defiant

present

Justine’s letter is wavy and rigid now that it’s dry. It feels brittle, like the words it contains.

I read it again this morning as soon as I woke up. I think I was hoping it was all a nightmare.
 

It wasn’t.
 

If anything, it hurts worse in the daylight.
 

Last night it gutted me with intense anger.
 

This morning it gutted me with sadness—mourning what could have been.

What could have been…

I know Justine isn’t expecting a response—that she’s probably hoping against one—but I feel like I need to write her.