French onion dip and damage control compost
present
Three more days pass until I’m able to pick up Justine’s envelope again. It’s Friday night, or more accurately Saturday morning, just past one o’clock. I’ve had a few beers, and I don’t want to take my sleeping pill. I’m restless. It’s restlessness that demands action of some sort or another. I’ve paced the living room. That wrapped up quickly because my legs hurt. I watched a movie on Netflix that was so unimpressive I can’t recall the plot thirty minutes after finishing it. I ate the rest of the French onion dip I had in the fridge with the crumb-sized pieces of chips left in the bag in the pantry. The French onion dip expired last week, I’ll probably end up with the runs; it wasn’t my best judgment call. I’m blaming the alcohol.
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.
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.