A Little Hope(44)

There are seven cracks in the apartment ceiling, and a hole in the wall where the cable was ripped out (she stuffed a bandanna inside this in case a mouse could poke through). The apartment has a hint of garlic smell that never goes away, and she has a small kitchenette with a dish drainer that came with the place that she is never able to clear because there isn’t enough room in the three cupboards for her mismatched mugs and pots and pans. Now the yelling next door has died down. Or the woman might be crying. There is silence, then an occasional sob-like noise—as if someone is saying their last words through a gag. But she is proud to be here.

She found the apartment in early November. Luke went with her. The rooms echoed as they walked through it. “I like the high windows,” he said, and she started to imagine how the place could look like Carrie Bradshaw’s in Sex and the City with a little imagination. She pictured holding a coffee cup as the sun warmed her shoulders. She thought the far corner would be a good spot to set up an easel for the watercolor painting she was never great at, and maybe Luke would read the paper on a chair with an ottoman she imagined would fit perfectly in the carved-out nook by the small bookcase. She’d walk by him and kiss his head and that would be the start of her adult life. He would stay over more and more, wouldn’t he? He would play songs on the guitar while she made them pasta and poured wine.

She didn’t imagine the clutter she has now: the mismatched sofa and chairs that sag, the cheap coffee table with the split wood on the leg, the TV stand that serves as a catch-all for mail and her bracelets and hair things, the clothes she has draped over the coat rack in the middle of the room because her closet is too small. And the bed in the corner, with its rumpled blankets and shabby pillows. She didn’t imagine it this way.

She didn’t imagine waking up alone like this four months later.

Happy birthday.

She washes her face and fills a big glass of water, cracking ice cubes out of the plastic tray.

Is it odd she didn’t expect Luke today? Almost like she went to bed sad and broken but woke up with some of that washed out of her? She feels guilty for beginning to be over him.

Is that what the brain is programmed to do? Wait and wait and then finally give up—like the story of the dog she saw once on the news that would wait under the tree for its owner who died?

She looks in the freezer where she keeps the coffee (the fair trade kind that Luke always bought) and then remembers she used the last of it yesterday. Fuck my life, she thinks. Her grandfather hated when she didn’t plan. She closes her eyes and sees him—dead, like Luke. His pressed flannel shirts. His red suspenders he loved wearing. Her Pappy. She could use him now. She would love to be at his house while he put out a plate of those butter cookies he bought in a big blue tin. “You didn’t eat nothin’,” he’d say, and push a few more her way. She’d lick the sugar off the pretzel-shaped cookie and smile. He saved her so many times from her rotten mother. From all the times she’d fallen. “You’ll see it the right way one day, and it will all come together,” he said as he poured her coffee from a thermos and smiled.

She has eighty-three dollars and twenty-eight cents in her checking account. She is barely making enough money processing loan paperwork at the Kia dealership during the day, taking odd shifts at the restaurant to keep afloat. God forbid her car needs tires or the pain in her tooth gets any worse.

She shouldn’t have gotten this place. She was overreaching. She wanted Luke to be impressed. Was he? She thought the apartment could seal this deal, that she could keep him with a respectable home. She never had a respectable home before. With this apartment, she wanted to be someone he could admire and fully love, the one who could save him.

She wants coffee so badly. The space between her eyes starts to hurt, which seems ridiculous. But it does. Her body needs it. She closes her eyes and thinks of the smell, the hot dribble and slurp the coffeemaker makes. Maybe she has transferred everything, every craving over to coffee. She barely eats these days. And no funny stuff. She has a glass of wine here or there, but not a joint, nothing, nothing since Luke’s accident three months ago. She promised him that, but beyond that promise, she has no desire for any of it anymore. It ruins you. She doesn’t want to be ruined.

Three months with no Luke. It is March, and she is ready for spring and summer. She needs them to come.

She stands at the kitchen counter in her flimsy T-shirt and the scrub pants her mother found for her at a thrift store.

Scrub pants. The young doctor in his scrub pants in December who put a hand on each of her shoulders and explained carefully what had happened to Luke. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he said.

Yes, yes, she understood.

Understood that she had hoped for too much. The knowledge of this makes her numb, makes her half angry. When he died, the chances of her rising above who she was seemed over: the girl who the other girls called a skank in high school. The girl who got C’s and D’s and never thought of going to college. She always felt discounted, cheap. Yes, she was a cheap-purse, cheap-lipstick, forgettable girl. Worse when she dyed the edges of her hair pink, when she put in more than one earring and got that tattoo of her grandfather’s signature across her wrist.

Once she had shown Luke a brochure for an evening college program where you could get credit for life experiences and start to earn your bachelor’s degree. “Cool,” he’d said. “Go for it.” College was no big deal to him. He had a degree. His sister had a degree. They were from a good family. Upper middle class: a basketball hoop in the driveway, a green lawn. She imagined taking classes at night, holding a book to her chest in the apartment as she quizzed herself on art history or botany terms. She imagined furiously punching numbers into a calculator and saying something like, I’m just double-checking my stats. She imagined learning, finally, what the hell a sonnet was. Or getting further with her watercolor painting. She was relieved that Luke thought she could take on college, but at the same time, she wanted more credit for even thinking about it. Was he impressed, or didn’t he even care?