You Love Me(You #3)(54)
She did it. Not me.
She will never be coming around again and as it all sinks in, well, in some ways I could kill her for what she did to us. Her blood is on my fingertips, it’s on the walls of my Whisper Room and she was in this room because she attacked me. I grab her phone. I can’t call 911. I can’t trust the Injustice System—if only you knew—and I can’t bury her in my yard. Fecal-Eyed Nancy is a nosy Nextdoor app–addicted gossip and I crack a smile. Is there something wrong with me? No. Laughing at funerals is a common phenomenon. We laugh at death because we have to, because what is more ironic than being stuck with a very smart, opinionated woman who can’t weigh in with her thoughts at a moment when I could really use her fucking help?
I could take her to the dock and let her sink to the floor of the bay, but the tide gets low. I could put her in the trunk and drive to the footbridge by 305 but I like that footbridge. I could dump her in Murden Cove—the smell is bad enough there as it is—but once again with the low fucking tide… For her it was easy—Single White Female—but this is hell on me and unlike that daytime-soap-loving sociopath in Fargo, I don’t have access to a wood chipper. And why would I fucking want a wood chipper? It’s not like things worked out for him and we all know how it ends—chills—and I will not end up in the back of a fucking police cruiser.
Goddammit, Melanda, why me? Why my house? I know she had her reasons. I’ve read the phone—I had to know everything about you—and I read her journals—I had to know everything she won’t put in the phone. I know that as recently as two weeks ago she was sick about never having had a baby.
I want to have one but then I go into Blackbird and those mommies are so smug as if giving birth makes them more of a woman than me and they’re so BORING and they think they’re so INTERESTING and how can I want to be one of them? UGH MK is lucky she did it early before all these women turned into martyrs and HELLO they have husbands and ok so the husbands don’t unload the dishwasher unless they’re asked to do it but they do it, you know? MK is lucky and I’m not lol I know. Get over it! Sigh.
But she didn’t get over it and now look what she did to us. Single White Female.
It’s hard to be alone, I know. We all need to let it out. But she listened to that Carly Simon song about the hardships of relationships almost nine thousand times and did any of it sink in? That song is about crimes and misdemeanors. You break a window, you burn a soufflé, but you don’t break yourself. You get a new shrink. You move. Seattle’s right there and isn’t that what you all think is so great about this island? You walk onto the ferry and into the city and find Frasier for fuck’s sake, or even Niles, but don’t do this. Don’t leave the planet and don’t go in Blackbird when you damn well know there will be fecal-eyed mommies in there wearing their babies in a circle jerk.
I’m sad for Melanda—she just couldn’t come around—and I am sad for me.
What do I do with her now?
I’m frozen—the Seattle freeze is officially real—and I can’t bring her to her house. I can’t allow headlines in The Bainbridge Island Review—LOCAL FEMINIST SLITS WRISTS—because headlines will lead to investigations and whispers. You are all that matters and you can never know that she ended her life. Same way you can never know that she was down here while we were up there and I wish Melanda had never attacked me in the woods. I wish she’d moved to Minnesota years ago, when the time was right.
I roll her body onto a duvet and I wrap her up like a burrito and it helps. I don’t have to look at her corpse anymore. But then my eyes land on her bare feet—nothing stays the same—and oh, Melanda, why?
I take out her phone. She left me with no choice, Mary Kay. I have to make you despise her. I have to burn the bridge and tell you what you shouldn’t have to know so that you never want to speak to her ever again. She’s been your best friend for a long time. You didn’t fight over Phil. You remained close as sisters, jumping off the pier at Point White, spending Mother’s Day together, sharing your daughter, the way you unknowingly shared your husband.
I close my eyes. I picture Melanda falling in love with Imaginary Carl. It’s new for her. She tells him everything and he tells her that she has to end this toxic friendship. You stole her boyfriend and you were young—I know—but at some point we all have to own up to our past mistakes. People do this when they fall in love, when they think they finally found their person. I did that with Love. I told her everything about me. And now Melanda’s going to reach into the bottom of her oversized broken heart.
Me as Melanda:
Sweetie this isn’t easy for me and it isn’t going to be easy for you but that’s part of the problem. Life is easy for you. You breeze into things. Phil wanted you the second he saw you and I said it was ok because what could I do? He didn’t feel that way about me. He felt that way about you. You can’t make anyone love you. I know that.
And that hurt. But I was there for you. I said to myself you know what, she’s a good friend. I love her. So on we go.
After you had Nomi you told me you were happy I had an abortion because if I hadn’t, you might have gotten cold feet with Nomi.
And that hurt. But I was there for you. I said to myself you know what, she’s a good friend and I love her.
My thirtieth birthday and you threw me a surprise party and it was all families and I was a third wheel on my own birthday and you could have had the party at a bar.