So Much More(47)

I need something, anything, to occupy me.

And then my eyes land on it and I’m backpedaling, taking back the word anything and just leaving it at something to occupy me; it’s Justine’s letter.

My name and address are still scowling.

I pick it up from the end table and walk into the kitchen to drop it in the trash. It lands amongst today’s still soppy coffee grounds and the mostly empty dip container. I watch as the stark white paper greedily wicks up the moisture from both, tinting one side deep brown and speckling the other side with spots of creamy curdle.

Satisfied I’ve stripped the letter of all its dignity, I return to the couch and flip through the Netflix menu. The futile act distracts me for about five seconds before I walk back to the kitchen and pull the disgraced envelope from the trash. Wiping the coffee grounds off of it with my hand, I open it over the bin and let the envelope fall back to its fate as compost.

The letter is only a single sheet of paper. Unlined. Each word, just like on the envelope, written purposefully with a heavy hand, as if the pressure used to write the words would translate into a dramatic delivery stressing the importance of the message. The stationary is lightweight, but the slickness in texture notes its high quality. It’s dry and unblemished on the right side, and the left side is a blotchy watercolor of various shades of brown that make the paper translucent, though still legible.

I walk to the sink and stand over it while I begin to read. I don’t know why because the paper isn’t wet enough to drip. Maybe I just need the counter to lean against and prop me, and my sanity, up.





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.