The Girl's Guide to Homelessness (22 page)

He often joked about getting Kelsey a passport, tucking her under his arm, and “making a run for it” to California with her. Lori would barely notice, he said. I would laugh and talk him out of it.

“I'm quite sure she would notice and mind very much if
you kidnapped her daughter, Matt. Besides, then you'd be leaving me with all the diaper changing, wouldn't you?”

“Well, that would finally be my chance to sleep.”

“Ah, yes, there is that.”

 

Right around this time, Matt seemed to begin developing unnerving fears about my becoming a public figure. It was a complete role reversal: I was gradually becoming more comfortable with the decision to ditch anonymity, and he was, seemingly out of nowhere, obsessing over whether he would be able to keep meeting my needs, or whether I would eventually leave him.

“Everyone leaves me,” he would insist. “You'll leave me, too. What if I'm not able to support you, to take care of you? All you've ever done for me is be the one person in my life who's always there for me. What if I can't even do the same for you?”

I had no intention of going anywhere, and had never considered that there was any possibility under the sun he was anything other than exactly what I needed, and said so. I couldn't understand why this was coming out of the blue. He was working himself into an anguished lather.

“You just don't understand, Bri. No matter how much you say that it doesn't bother you, it's going to bother
me
from now on. You're going to leave me. The thought's in my head now and I'll just have to deal with it forever….”

Finally, it dawned on me. “Matt…you've been taking your medication, right?”

Pause.

“Sweetie?”

“I ran out the last week of my trip in California. I haven't gotten around to going to the doctor and picking up more yet.”

I calculated quickly in my head. He'd been off his medication for
months
. What did this mean? I knew how my mom acted off medication; she'd never been on it. But I didn't know exactly what it meant for Matt. He'd once told me that it was a place he never wanted to go back to. He'd described his behavior off the meds as completely irrational—outbursts of frustration or tantrums. Plus,
sans
meds, he had trouble sleeping, and could be up for days, no matter how tired he was, and he experienced terrible memory problems.

“My wife could ask me to pick up milk from the store, I'd say yes, and then, later that evening, I'd swear up and down that the conversation had never taken place.”

“So you'd forget to pick up milk?
That's
what would cause huge arguments between you and your wife? You didn't have anything more important to fight about? You couldn't just laugh it off and one of you go get the milk?”

“Well, sort of. It's not just that I'd forget, but that instead of just realizing I'd forgotten, I'd never remember it happening in the first place.”

Forgetting the milk
became an “in joke” between us, a sort of code phrase for a massive overreaction to a petty mistake. I understood what he was driving at, though. But the problem was, he'd only
told
me about all this; I'd never had to witness it myself, so it never had the opportunity to become a deal breaker between us.

I understood mental illness, I figured. I'd known my fair share of people who grappled with it. I also knew, from firsthand experience, that it's perfectly possible and acceptable to love someone with a mental illness. And Matt had never seemed the type to lapse. He very much liked who he was on medication, he had remained on it since he was diagnosed and he had constantly claimed he didn't want to
return to the abject misery of being off it. I was always so proud of his bravery in admitting it up front; of baring the darkest side of himself to me and trusting me not to run.

“Besides,” he continued, “you know it regulates my sleep schedule, and I'm watching Kelsey. I need to be up all the time! I can't allow myself to sleep for the normal eight hours anymore.”

We just needed to figure something out for a couple more months. When we were married, we could share child-care duties during his visitation with Kelsey, and then he could get his full eight hours' sleep. I begged him to see the doctor, he promised to and the crisis was averted. He was still terrified, though, and nothing I could say soothed him.

“Maybe I'd better not talk to you about it. It'll just make you worry more. It's probably something I just need to deal with on my own. It's not your fault.”

I was hurt. The last thing I wanted him to do was feel as if he had to internalize any grief or pain or fear he was feeling. We'd always been all about being completely open and honest with each other. And of course I understood irrational terror.
Remember those demons I'm still terrified of?

“You know that I always want you to be able to talk about things with me, and this is important. I don't want this to be something that affects our relationship later, down the road. Please keep on talking to me about it. I'll keep reassuring you.”

He went back to having upbeat chats with me from then on. Every time I asked him about his fears, he'd just say that they were still there, and that he was doing his best to overcome them, and no, he didn't feel like talking about it any more. I was happy that at least he was being honest with me. I'd reassure him that I loved him and
would always be there for him, and he'd change the subject. “Hey, have you decided whether you're going to go by ‘Brianna Karp' or ‘Brianna Barnes?'”

“
Barnes,
of course.”

“Aw, baby, really? Even though most of the world knows you as Brianna Karp?”

“Yup. I want nothing more than to take your last name. Who
wouldn't
want to be a Barnes instead of a Karp? Much more sophisticated!”

“I'm so glad. That's my girl.”

“…even though Brianna Barnes kind of sounds like a porn name.”

“What?! It does not!”

“Yes, it does. Haven't you ever heard of Brianna Banks?”

“Brianna Barnes is a lovely name. You'll only ever be
my
porn starlet.”

W
hile Matt learned to diaper a baby, back in the trailer I was dealing with an invasion of mice, spiders the size of a very small fist and giant crane flies—which Sage referred to as “mosquito eaters.” Despite her assurances that they were completely harmless, they freaked me out by swooping around my face, and I would dart from one end of the trailer to the other, screaming as if Satan and his demons themselves were after me. Goddammit, if I had to deal with giant pests, I wanted them to be in the attic of my own nice old Victorian house. Here in the trailer, it was just adding insult to injury.

Right around now, Matt and I decided to make his daughter's birth public. We knew that we'd have to at some point, but he worried about losing his crew's respect, or the implication that perhaps he had cheated on me, or on Lori
with
me.

Also, not even his own family knew about the baby, or about me. He had been fully estranged from his father for a long time, and there was no hope of reconciliation there. His brothers and sisters lived all over the world,
and weren't in touch. None of his family had ever even known that he'd been homeless. He still loved his mother, although they hadn't spoken for a couple of years, since he had been with his first wife. She was, he feared, in an abusive relationship with her second husband, and he felt guilty about that, as though he had abandoned her. He worried about his mother often, and talked about eventually calling her up or writing her a letter to let her know he was OK. I encouraged him to do it. He became deeply sad whenever he thought of her.

“But what am I supposed to do, Bri? Walk in there with you and Kelsey, and say, ‘Hi, Mom. This is my wife, and this is my baby…from some
other
woman,
not
my wife?'”

“She loves you. Don't you think she'd understand that these things happen?” I was hurt. Was he
ashamed
of me?

“I'm not ashamed of you. I'm ashamed of
me
. I want her to see that I've succeeded, that I've done something right. Maybe I'll contact her later. Soon. But later. Once we're married.”

I'd come to understand, by this point, that you just couldn't push Matt, so I let it go. I was getting good at letting things go.

He felt too embarrassed to write up his daughter's birth announcement for Homeless Tales on his own. He thought perhaps it would sound better coming from me. Perhaps if I wrote it, his crew would realize that everything was hunky-dory, I was onboard with the baby and nobody had cheated on anybody. So I wrote something up, he approved it and made a couple of minor alterations and additions of his own, and it was published on both of our websites. I tried to write it as delicately as possible, to take some of the inevitable heat and focus off Matt.

 

I was tight on funds since being laid off again, though I was picking up temp work. If I was careful budgeting my paychecks, perhaps I could bring Matt out to California for Christmas, as we'd planned, but it would be iffy from there, and we'd probably have to stay in the trailer. There would be no money for presents
and
a hotel or a similar rental for a couple of days over the holiday, especially if we wanted to eat. Matt didn't want to spend Christmas in a trailer. It would depress him, he said. He was already willing to leave his daughter with Lori for her first Christmas, so that he could come out here and marry me, but it was just too much for me to expect him to spend Christmas in the trailer
and
be away from his daughter. He wanted to rent a cabin in the mountains or something, to feel like it was a real holiday. I knew how important Christmas was to him—it was his favorite holiday and had always held a special meaning for him; it represented memories of better times for his family, in his childhood.

Granted, I'd never celebrated a Christmas before (my last attempt had, after all, resulted in Dennis breaking up with me two days before), so I didn't really comprehend the full magnitude of what was, after all, just another day. I mean, we were both atheists, and while there was definitely something to be said for tradition, and I
wanted
my first Christmas to be with Matt, I supposed I shouldn't make it an issue. I wouldn't be able to afford to give him a fairy-tale cabin in the snow for Christmas, so if he needed to spend it with Kelsey, then he should.

We agreed that he should stay in Scotland and celebrate with Kelsey while I continued to save up until we could afford to bring him back to California. I would have next year, and every year for the rest of our lives, after all.

I set out putting the extra temp money to good use instead, choosing Matt's Christmas presents carefully. For someone who was never allowed to celebrate birthdays or holidays, I've always prided myself on giving meaningful gifts.

We'd visited the Circle, a historic circular block lined with antiques shops and ice cream parlors, in the city of Orange on the second day of his very first visit. I wanted to show him something quaint and beautiful and quint-essentially American apple pie, besides a Walmart. We'd spent hours wandering through the antiques shops, pointing out the things we'd buy to furnish our fixer-upper one day, when we'd have no worries in the world, least of all about money. He loved anything Georgian, and I adored Victorian stuff, but not fussy Victorian. I loved overstuffed, tufted leather gentleman's club chairs, dark woods like mahogany and cherry, chandeliers and rich, deep colors. We zeroed in on all the same things, and he could tell just by looking at a piece whether it was truly of the era, or a reproduction.

He pressed his palms and nose against a glass case, like a little boy, and homed in on a first edition of Jules Verne's
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
He dreamed of owning his own library, as did I, but he didn't want the books to read. That was for me. No, he wanted a wall of only beautiful, antique, leather-bound, gold-embossed books. He wanted them so that he could feel like a classy, well-bred, rich gentleman. He wanted that first edition simply to own it, to smell its ancient pages and binding and know that he was, in a very small way, part of something old and grand, from a more nostalgic time and place, if not a better one.

“I'll buy you that book, one day!” I insisted. He laughed at my ridiculousness—that book may as well have been the
moon—but I repeated my assertion earnestly. And then we wrapped our arms around each others' waists and continued up the block, speculating in our most silly manner on the grand Victorian carriage we'd own one day, with a hefty Shire draft horse to pull it, and we'd let Matt drive it around in a top hat and a monocle, insisting that everyone in upstate New York address him by the title of “Lord Barnes,” as though he were a Duke or something. And he'd have a grand study that looked like something out of
From Hell,
the Jack the Ripper movie, with a cabinet of curiosities and a biology lab and exotic old instruments. I'd have a phonograph with a huge morning glory horn and a four-poster canopy bed, and an art deco vanity with a giant round mirror and guilloche hairbrushes and empty perfume bottles, and a window seat with long, green velvet curtains, where the sun spread over the bench like butter. I'd play the piano badly and he'd sit in his study full of old books without reading them, and bouncing Kelsey on his knee. It would be perfect, even if it was all a dream for now. We had agreed together, it was a perfect day.

“We're going to be New Yawkuhs, baby!” I'd squeal, intentionally mispronouncing the word to sound like I had a tough New York accent.

“New Yokers.” He failed miserably at the accent.

“No, honey. You sound more like a Southerner. New Yawk.
Yawwwk!
”

“New Yoke.”

We collapsed into gales of laughter every time we did this bit. It never got old.

“Yawk.”

“Yoke.”

I went back to Orange and, with a lot of haggling, bought that book. I also got us a
huge
110-year-old art nouveau
photo album, all bound in leather and brass, with softly browning pages and gilt edges. We'd talked about starting a scrapbook of our life together, and I figured that now was a good time to start.

Lastly, I picked out an engagement ring for
him.
I'd told him, back when he slipped mine on my finger, that I wanted to.

“I don't get why the woman has all the fun and gets all the tokens of eternal love and affection. I want
you
to have one, too.” He thought it was the sweetest thing ever, and told me that it was just another thing he loved about me. Never before had he been with a woman who would have even considered that.

He already had a signet ring that his mother had given him ages ago, upon his graduation. I'd asked him if he wanted to pick out his own engagement ring, but he asked me to surprise him. The only guidelines that he offered me were that it be unique, and preferably a Georgian antique.

It took ages for me to find. The Georgians weren't as big on rings as the later Victorians and Edwardians, especially not rings made of precious metals. In the Georgian era, I learned, those sorts of rings were liable to get you mugged and to get your throat cut. But finally, after an excruciating search, I found it. It suited Matt and his taste to a tee.

The ring dated to the 1820s. It was gold with a dark patina and an oval bloodstone, a deep green stone flecked with shimmering bits of red. Either side of the shank boasted two serpents, twisted into figure eights that called to mind the infinity symbol. Serpents, I learned in my research, were Georgian-era symbols of eternal love and commitment. In other cultures, they also represented fertility and wisdom. The bloodstone, on the other hand, was
used in healing and protection by the ancient Egyptians, Aztecs and Greeks. It used to be the birthstone for both March and December (our birth months). It is also known as the “Stone of Courage” and supposedly revitalizes love, relationships and friendships. This was Matt's ring, all right. Symbology was important to the Georgians. He'd love it.

Right around this time, a neighbor also held a garage sale. Included among the boxes of random junk were hundreds of her granddaughter's baby clothes. I bought as many of the cute ones as I could afford. Some still had tags on them; some had clearly only been worn once or twice. I stocked up on outfits in sizes ranging from newborn to two years old. Matt would be putting a lot of his money into child support for Lori, who had never had a job in her life and would, he assured me, be living the rest of her life in a council flat and receiving benefits. I was sure that these clothes would come in very handy. Perhaps Lori would even see them as a peace offering. Over gtalk that night, I listed all the new clothes to him and told him I would try to get them shipped over in time for Christmas. He was excited about the clothes, sad that we wouldn't be together for Christmas, but at least he'd get to be with Kelsey. We'd waited this long to be married, though, and we could hold out a smidge or two longer. All the waiting and hassle would be worth it.

 

I'd noticed, a few months earlier, that I'd been putting on a lot of weight, and that my skin, already not in the greatest state, had erupted into the worst series of acne breakouts I'd ever had. I was also tired and listless a lot, and when I wasn't doing temp work, I stayed in bed sleeping for up to eighteen hours at a time—instead of sending out résumés
for permanent jobs, as I should have been doing. I just didn't want to move. Half the time, I felt too exhausted to drive back to Riverside from my temp job in Irvine. At one point, I pulled off the road into a post office parking lot, crawled into the back of my car and slept for hours until I felt as if I could make it home without veering off the road.

I figured it was a residual effect of the crummy diet I'd been on for nearly a year. Living off affordable stuff like ramen noodles and fast food had taken its toll. I had been slowly gaining weight over my year of homelessness, but now my weight was skyrocketing up. I was bloating all over, and my breasts and thighs and stomach were beginning to boast the beginning of stretch marks. Even the bones in my nose felt as if they were spreading across my face—I felt paranoid and gross. I cut out coffee, sweets and burgers altogether, and forced myself to drag my ass to Costco, stocking up on every type of fruit and vegetable I could fit into my shopping cart, along with cartons and cartons of fruit juice and water. Surely, this would help.

But as the months floated by in a quasi-haze, I was still putting on weight, and I was still exhausted. None of it made sense.

My belly, in particular, was expanding, and it didn't feel squishy and wobbly like fat, but hard and distended. I laid flat on my back in bed one night, staring down at it. Could I have cancer of the belly? Was there even such a thing as cancer of the belly? I pressed my finger into it as hard as possible. It felt numb. Numb and hard. A terrifying thought flashed across my mind, but I pushed it out as fast as I could. Surely I couldn't be. I had my IUD. Those suckers were more reliable than the Pill. They were, like, 99.9999 percent reliable, right?

Just to put my mind at ease, I decided to take a pregnancy test the next day. It was stupid, really—a complete waste of money. There was absolutely no way. I'd made sure to cover my bases. But then, I'd take the test and I'd feel better, and you can't put a price on peace of mind.

 

I stared down at the pink line on the test.

There was absolutely no way this was possible.

I took a second test the following morning. It was supposed to be slightly more accurate in the morning.

That little fucking pink line was still there. I wanted to go haywire on it, smash it in a million pieces like I was Arnold Schwarzenegger or Chuck Norris.

Hysterically, I thought of what Matt had told me, that he and his first wife had tried to have children, but couldn't. Though the doctors did tests and told him it was she who was infertile, he secretly harbored a ton of guilt and uncertainty over it. He was always half-sure that they had been wrong, that he was the one to blame. When we found out about Lori's pregnancy, I had tried to lighten the mood by laughing nervously.