CHAPTER THREE

HOLLY

 

“’But I don’t want to fall!’ Maple shouted, dangling from the branch he grew up on.’” A very cheery middle-aged woman by the name of Jessie flashed the page before swiveling in her chair for the collected children and smiling parents to see, and read the next line. “’I like it here!’”

Flash. Swivel. Repeat. 

The little girl at my feet stirred for a moment as she clutched her stuffed giraffe (whose name was Giraffe, for obvious reasons) closer to her chest, and settled once again into a deep slumber. With some quiet time to myself, I would have loved to take the opportunity to dive into the romance novel I had brought along—a real scorcher between a colonial settler named Christine and her rebel Red Coat, Thomas—there was something about the downer of a story Jessie had chosen that left me reminiscing on my own reluctance to let go. I slumped further into the bean bag chair I sat in and stared off into the bookshelves behind Jessie until I could see the life I had left behind in the city.

It was funny how quickly things could change. Just when you think it’s all going so well for you, or decent at the very least, an atomic bomb lands itself right on your head. Stephen announcing he was gay hurt, and being single for the first time in five years was more difficult than I thought possible. And then, as though the entire world was working against me, my boss at Teen Queen had fired me just days later, adding serious insult to an already serious injury. Apparently, according to that bony witch, a thirty-one-year-old woman was “too old” and “too out of touch” to give effective advice to teenagers. As though a whole lot had changed in the ways of teenage romance since I was of the more appropriate age. Right. 

Needless to say, without a steady paycheck, it was the nail in the coffin to keeping my precious apartment—my home—and after a phone call to my younger sister on Long Island, it was decided that I was moving in with her and taking over as her daughter’s babysitter.

A single babysitter at thirty-one. Living in my baby sister’s house.

Holly freakin’ Hughes. Living the dream.

Speaking of dreams, a little boy decided it would be a good time to start screaming for no apparent reason, and abruptly woke Anna in the process, bringing her immediately to tears. With a groan, I stood up and dropped the untouched book in my bag before reaching to pick Anna up and quietly excused myself from the group.

As I juggled the crying little girl and my bag in my arms, the owner of the store—an older guy named Bill with a particular love for argyle—took note of my struggling. He had been standing nearby, hanging up mangled-looking paper cutouts of leaves attached to fishing line on the ceiling. The leaves had been a project I had seen him working on for weeks and the progression had been nothing short of disastrous. Particularly the time he stapled one of the leaves to his own thumb.

“Here, let me help you with this stuff,” Bill said, stumbling off of his stepladder to catch Giraffe just as Anna released him. He also took the liberty of taking the sippy cup from my hand, leaving it free to hoist Anna up onto my hip.

 “Thanks, Bill,” I said through a sigh.

“Oh, it’s no problem at all, Holly,” he said in a hushed voice, eyeing his wife as she continued reading her stories to the rest of the group. “But don’t let Jessie catch me not hanging up these leaves.”

We walked a few feet to a child’s size table, cluttered with books and oversized building blocks. I sat Anna down in one of the small chairs as she continued to sniffle even whilst she proceeded to play with the blocks.

I thanked him once again, taking the sippy cup from him and shoving it into my bag amongst the toys, spare diapers, fruit snacks, and hand sanitizer. Once upon a time, I could carry cute little bags from my favorite knock-off designer brands. Now I was lugging around an oversized vinyl tote bag my mom used on occasion for beach days, which was made obvious by the picture of Winnie the Pooh’s very own donkey pal Eeyore moping on a mound of sand beside a lopsided sandcastle.

Holly freakin’ Hughes. A vision in vinyl.

He passed Giraffe to Anna’s grabby hands and smiled behind his eyeglasses. “Of course. I’ll see you on Thursday?”

“You know it,” I said with a smile and as he walked away to tend to his haphazard decorating, I wondered what the hell had become of my life.

“Come on, Anna Banana,” I mumbled to my niece. “Let’s go home.”

 

***

 

Home had transformed into a three-bedroom ranch-style house with a decent sized yard and a two car garage, a far cry from my itty-bitty studio apartment on the Upper East Side. The mortgage was just a little less than what my apartment had cost, but it had easily ten times the space. I mean, I wasn’t blind to the fact that two bathrooms, a living room, and a separate dining room were a serious upgrade from one bathroom and one small room with a stove and refrigerator. But without Stephen, the place had yet to feel like home.

I turned the wheel of my Mom’s ancient minivan into the driveway. Despite my protests to drive the piece of disintegrating scrap metal, she insisted on lending it to me until I could afford something else, as if that was going to happen anytime in the new future. She had said, “Holly, you’re going to need something to get you around. What if you meet a nice guy and he wants to meet you somewhere?” I did agree reluctantly, but not because of the possibility of meeting a “nice guy.” I agreed when I decided to take over as Anna’s babysitter. I knew I needed some wheels and I couldn’t afford to be picky, as much as I desperately wanted to be. It wasn’t exactly my dream to chug along in a minivan held together by rust particles holding hands.

I glanced in the rearview mirror at Anna, sleeping peacefully in her car seat with Giraffe tucked safely beneath her chubby arm. With a moment of hesitation, I exited the car, closing the door quietly behind me, praying she would sleep for just a few more minutes, and I wandered over to the fence where a little old lady stood, her hair barely visible to me over the wooden slats. 

“Hey Esther,” I said with a heaving sigh, standing on my toes to see over the five-foot fence. 

Startled by my voice, my elderly pal looked up from her daily yard investigation. “Oh, Christ almighty, Holly!” She clutched her chest and stared at me, wide-eyed with exasperation. “Do you want to kill me?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, tucking my lips between my teeth.

“Elder abuse, Holly.” She glared at me, but I caught that twinkle of amusement in her eye. “How was Story Time today?”

I shrugged. “Jessie read a book about a leaf afraid to fall, and ultimately had to accept its impending death, so there was that.” 

“Lovely. Well, hey, it’s something to do. That’s why I come out here and pull these fucking weeds. I feel like I do this shit every goddamn day.” She plucked another, using so much force that she teetered on her unsteady legs. “Gotcha, you little prick.”

I bit back the laughter. “You do come out here every day—and that wasn’t a weed.”

She waved the piece of greenery in my face. “Then what do you call this, missy?”

I threw my hands in the air. “If I was a botanist, do you think I’d be babysitting for a couple hundred bucks every two weeks? I have no idea what the hell that thing is, but I know it’s not a—”

“It’s a weed,” Esther stated flatly, ignoring the fact that her gardener had just been to her house days earlier. “But if you’re so smart, you should be over here doing this for me. I don’t know how you live with yourself, knowing your old friend Esther is over here, killing herself with these fucking weeds.” 

“Because they’re not weeds!” I laughed, shaking my head.

“Harry’s going to come over there and haunt you, if you don’t watch your mouth,” she threatened.

“Good. I’ll tell him all about your invisible weeds.”

“Uh-huh,” she muttered, bending to peer down at another sprig of something protruding from the ground. It looked identical to the one hanging from her hand, but she left it alone. “Where’s Anna? Sleeping in the car?”

I glanced back towards the van. “Yeah, she was rudely awoken at the bookstore. One of the other kids thought it would be a good idea to start yelling for no reason and woke her up.”

She shook her head. “When I was a kid, if you pulled something like that in public, it was a hand across the face for you. And you know what? You thought before you did something like that again.” 

I stifled a laugh. “Well, you know, different times and all that.” She grumbled in response. “Anyway, I guess I should get her inside, but really, do you need any help? After Liz gets home, I could come over and … “ 

She waved a bony, wrinkly hand over the fence. “No, no, if I needed help, I’d ask.” 

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d just continue to moan about the weeds that aren’t weeds, and lay on the guilt like you always do.” 

“Humph. Well, if you see me collapsed on a pile of weeds, assume I need your goddamn help.” 

 

***

 

Liz opened the carton of fried rice, spooning some out onto Anna’s plate and then her own. “So, then Dr. Martin told me there was no way he could let me take my usual lunch break after that family of ten came walking in. Can you believe that? I had twenty minutes to myself today and then I was back in the office, helping this woman fill out insurance forms for eight kids.”

If I’m being honest, I had absolutely no idea what she had been talking about before she opened the fried rice. My mind had wandered itself into memories of dinner with Stephen, grasping at the opportunity to remind me of everything I was missing.

Dinner was our daily ritual, the one guaranteed time of day when we would meet up together at the apartment and cook with the radio blasting. We would make eggplant parmesan with sauce made from scratch, and meat loaf with my own personal recipe, and pot roast rubbed down with Stephen’s secret sauce. We would sing along with Lady GaGa, as he chopped and I sautéed, and we would dance around to Bruno Mars while we waited for the timer to announce that the barbeque ham was ready. On occasion, when there had been maybe a little too much wine flow, Stephen would wrap his arms around me and kiss me to the tune of Sam Smith, and if the Red Hot Chili Peppers were playing, forget it. There was no keeping my hands off him, and the lasagna would burn.

Holly freakin’ Hughes. Horny sous chef.

I pushed the boneless ribs around my plate with my fork, wishing I could remember that one song we made love to on the kitchen counter that one time years ago. I don’t remember ever giving any memories permission to disappear, as if they never happened. As if we never happened.

“Holly, are you even listening to me?”

My eyes shot up from my plate to see Liz staring at me, aggravation blending with concern on her face. “Oh, right, yeah, family of ten. That sucks.”

Satisfied with my half-assed answer, she shrugged. “Well, I mean, it is more business for the office. Anyway, how was your day?” She took a bite of an eggroll, resting her chin in hand, eagerly awaiting my reply, and I thought about how lonely her life must have been before I moved in.

 

***

 

Moving from the city back to Long Island had been hard. Losing my job had also been hard, and becoming a babysitter at the age of thirty-one hadn’t been a walk in the park either. But nothing had been harder than going to sleep every night knowing he was out there, sharing his bed with someone else, while I shared mine with empty space.

It was amazing how I could get through the day without so much as a watery eye, but once I closed the door to my room and laid down for the night, my heart still ached the way it did when he first left me. The wound opened up the moment I turned out the light, reminding me of just how sad and lonely I really was without my Stephen to wrap his arms around me in the darkness.

I curled an arm around Camille, listening as she awoke from her sleep with a gentle purr. Her sandpaper tongue raked across my hand and I smiled through my heartache, nuzzling my face into her fur, grateful that I at least had her. I mean, she didn’t do much for me physically, but hey, I had my vibrator for that. And then, I found myself giggling, because well, I guess Stephen didn’t do much for me physically either.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. He was an attractive man, on the higher end of average with a few killer features that made him stand out. It was his eyes—those comfortable eyes—and smile that really clinched the deal for me at a meeting between my magazine and his graphic design company years ago.

I could still remember the first couple of years of our relationship. That delicious honeymoon phase when we could barely keep our hands off each other. Everywhere we landed was a place to make love. Everything we did inspired us to indulge in each other. Every moment, every look, every word was a reason to spread my legs and succumb to desire.

It hadn’t been until one year into our relationship that he confessed he had been a virgin, embarrassed that I would’ve been turned off by that bit of info. I had laughed. Not because he had never slept with someone before me, but because he had more skill in pleasing a woman than my college boyfriend, who had slept with a number of girls before being with me.

God, and he really was skilled.

Oh, the irony.

I remember telling a few of the ladies at work the less intimate details of our sex life, more because I was so excited to have something so carnally amazing and less because I wanted to make them jealous. But the conversations would always end with them wishing he were with them instead, and I would have a reason to hold my head up high, with the comfort of knowing that he was mine.

But like all good things, the consistent amazing sex came to an end, and I assumed we had just gotten comfortable in the relationship. We fell into a routine, occasionally making love before falling asleep. Spontaneity was rare, but I chalked it up to normal relationship stuff. The kissing never stopped, the making out still continued on a fairly regular basis, but the sex had slowed to a snail’s pace, and I told myself I was okay with that. Until it just didn’t happen at all, somewhere around our four-year mark, and I had to resort to buying a vibrator.

But I kept telling myself it was normal, because we were comfortable.

I giggled again into Camille’s fur, this time through my tears, and asked her how I could have been so stupid and blind. She could only purr her response; which I took as reassurance that I wasn’t in fact stupid. Just a woman in love with a man she knew would never want her in the way she wanted him.

 

***

 

Esther and I sat on her front steps, keeping our eyes on Anna. She had given the little girl the exciting task of collecting out of place foliage from around the yard, and Anna accepted with the promise of cookies. As the bubbly toddler ran around the lawn, the birds provided the cheery soundtrack for the grueling topic at hand—my love life, or lack thereof.

“I thought about You-Know-Who last night,” I cautiously mentioned as my hands twisted together. Esther’s eye roll was all the response I needed. “I’m sorry,” I said with a sigh, “but I needed to tell someone, and if I told Liz, she’d just tell me he’s not worth it.”

“And you think I’ll say something different?” She cocked a bushy brow and smirked, a gentle reminder that she had spent many conversations calling him every name in the book. “I thought you were doing better.”

My eyes followed Anna as she ran across the yard, squealing with arms waving. “I can’t just turn it off, you know. It’s only been a few months.”

“Right, and torturing yourself is obviously doing a hell of a lot to help.”

I threw my head back in frustration and groaned. “I don’t know what else to do. I know I sound like a broken record, but Christ, I loved him for five years! I’ve told you before, I can’t just act like all of that never happened.” 

“Nobody is saying to act as though none of it happened, but maybe you could give yourself a little nudge in the right direction. Have you even gotten dressed in the past week?” She motioned towards my yoga pants and sweatshirt.

“These are different pants,” I fibbed.

“Mm.” She twisted her lips, eyeing me skeptically, as she reached behind her to retrieve the plate of cookies. “Have one.” 

They were oatmeal raisin—my favorite—and they were still warm and chewy from the oven. I took one without hesitation and practically inhaled the damn thing. I could focus on my extra weight some other time, when Stephen wasn’t weighing so heavily on my mind.

I called to Anna, asking if she wanted to accept payment for all her hard work.

“Shock-lit chip?” She picked one up to inspect with the intensity of an FBI agent. I stared in disbelief at her and told her to “just eat it,” and with the first bite, she grinned and uttered an “mmm” before sitting on the step below to finish chowing down.

With a nudge in my ribs, Esther leaned closer. In a whisper, she said, “Maybe you should, you know, find yourself a handsome man and get yourself laid.”

With a roll of my eyes, I shoved another cookie into my mouth with little care that my yoga pants were feeling tighter by the second. “Oh, right. That’s exactly what I need,” I groaned.

She shrugged. “Hey, sometimes a jump back in the saddle is the best way to get over someone. Get some of the ol’ confidence back when you find you can still—”

“Esther!” I looked to the little girl sitting on the step below me, her pudgy fists wrapped around two halves of a second cookie. It had been easy for me to advertise myself as a successful advice columnist for a leading teen magazine, but what kind of man would find anything remotely enticing about a grown woman babysitting for a few hundred dollars a month?