Catch My Fall (3 page)

I went about the bathroom, slamming every door and hinged object I could as I undressed and climbed into the shower. Despite my determination to avoid this very thing, the warm water felt good, like a baptism into a better humor. I washed my hair and face, brushed my teeth – hell, I even flossed, as though the crannies of my molars might hold untold twat shots that had yet to foul up my mood. When I tossed the penguin pajama in the hamper, I felt released – a little. I pulled the sheets off the bed and tossed them in as well, pulled mismatched sheets from the hallway linen closet and made my bed. Once I’d finished, I was ready to properly tear Stellan a new asshole.

My mother’s house has the blessing of wall to wall hardwood floors – deathly cold and merciless in the winter, but cool and inviting in the warmer months. It was late August and the central air was whirring away through the vents, a sign that outside was uncomfortably hot. For a split second, I forgot the shame of living with Mom, and was grateful.

I shuffled down the stairs in my bare feet and made my way to the kitchen. I collected a cup of coffee from the fresh pot bubbling in wait for me. I’d thank Stellan for it if I didn’t want to punch him. When I came back to the front room, I kept distance between us, curling up in my grandmother’s old club chair by the fireplace. The light from the corner windows poured in there all day long. I pulled a dog-eared book from the small bookcase and cracked it to the last page - read a month earlier - and began to read. The two of us sat in each other’s company, content to be together, but separate. It was nice – for about four minutes. That’s how long it took for me to remember why I’d left the book for a month. It was terrible.

I joined Stellan on the couch. So much for intellectual relaxation. “Remind me never to buy a book based on its title again.”

Stellan didn’t look at me. “Never buy a book based on its title again.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

We sat watching a documentary on the making of a Coen Brothers movie and quietly melted into the couch.

Stellan shifted. “What was the title?”

“Pussy King of the Pirates.”

“Well, if you’re not going to read it -” he said and went to snatch it out of my hands.

I swatted him away and laughed. “No, I can’t in good conscience let this book out into the wild. It must be destroyed.”

“Should I get the blessing salts?”

“No. This must be scoured by fire.”

The two of us silently rose from the couch and walked to the fireplace on the other side of the front room, my favorite room. It spanned the width of the entire house with windows on three sides. It was bright and open, separated at the middle by the bottom of the staircase, and along one side of the stairs was the hallway to the kitchen. On the other side of the stairs the front room curved around, leading to the office and dining room. Over the years, my mother had managed to gut the house of all remnants of carpet and seventies wallpaper, leaving it to look like a Home & Garden spread. Someday, I hoped to have my own house, just like it.

We hunched over the fireplace and Stellan started chanting, ominously, holding his hand out for me to hand him the book. I did and joined the chant.

Yet, when Stellan suddenly produced the fireplace lighter I snatched it back from him. “I’m not seriously going to burn this, you jackass!”

He feigned devastation. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Something about book burning just doesn’t settle right. Call me weird.”

“You’re weird. And no fun,” he said and crossed back to the couch. I tossed the book back onto the bookcase and promised to choose a different book the next time I felt like reading.

We wore divots into the couch for an hour. I hadn’t left the house in weeks and a part of me missed the outside world. Then, as evidenced by the embarrassing ‘splurf’ of my gastrointestinal workings, I apparently missed food as well. Stellan rolled an eyeball in my direction, and I smacked his arm.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

He hopped up off the couch, towering over me as he held out a hand. “I gotta get back to work, but come on. Let’s get you some grub.”

I followed him into the kitchen.

He’d gone a half hour later, and I found myself stewing on my mother’s couch. This felt rather pointless, given the battle it took to get me out of bed.

After an hour of soap operas and old game shows, I texted Stellan, Meghan, and Jackie in the hopes that one of them would be free for something – anything to distract me from the passage of time. I’d become dependent on them for human contact. I stood in the middle of my front room, sipping raspberry tea with honey when boredom inspired an unexpected thought.

I went into the office and sat down at the computer. I pulled up a job search website, one I hadn’t even considered for a month or more now, and began searching. This act had become tedious over the months after I moved home, and I found myself despondent to the idea the longer I went without luck. I’d managed to find one job during that time, one possible savior onto which I clasped with every ounce of my being. All my hope, my gospel, my self-worth, lay weighted on that one position. Head of Marketing at Endine, a position that offered perks, sixty plus hour work weeks and a comparable pay grade to the job I’d recently lost. I played that interview like a fiddle, regaling my interviewer with ‘anything to please the client’ talk. I’d retold every extra mile I’d gone, every midnight meal, every last minute flight I’d managed to catch, just in order to please some client who I knew from experience, was just as desperate for business as I – as my firm was. When the bank called a dozen times a day, I sat in front of my computer, willing it to bring good news. I spent my days waiting, praying, assuring the mortgage company that my prospects were looking up and if all went well, I would be able to make my payment.

That miracle didn’t happen. They went with ‘the other guy.’ The bank stopped calling. They foreclosed. I was evicted. My condo sold at auction to some young single guy, perhaps even the guy who’d swooped in and stolen the only job prospect I’d had. What a cosmic glitch that would be.

I stared at the screen, my stomach churning out of habit alone as it saw the lines of job positions in bold purple and pink. This was my exit strategy, my road to reclaim my life. Yet, the life I built overworking myself, smiling through exhaustion - that castle was built on sand. One good wave and it was gone.

I held the cup of tea to my lips, letting the steam warm my face as I tried to focus on something else, something hopeful. I couldn’t. I was still mourning.

My resume and info was already programmed into my account so if something caught my eye, I was ready to pass my life along. There were random jobs, some temp work here and there; the same lines of repeated positions that were kept constantly open due to high turnover rate. These positions had been unacceptable to me once, but a few more months of mooching off of my mother and shoveling shit might start looking good. I highlighted a temp job, but something caught my eye.
Marketing Strategist
, the position read.

I took a breath. The position had opened at a firm still located in Concord. I quickly opened the link.

Bachelor’s Degree? Check. Previous work of at least five years? Check. Willing to travel? Check.

I stared at the ‘Click to Apply’ button for five minutes. Somehow, the promise of work, of the same, well paid, busy work that for seven years I busted my ass doing, felt almost ominous. I couldn’t decide whether this was Inertia having set in – an ass on the couch is inclined to remain an ass on the couch – or if it was the remains of my dashed hopes the last time I’d applied for something. I thought of the running tab of rent not paid and lunches bought by well-meaning friends and clicked the link. I attached my resume, rewrote my cover letter and a second later it was gone.

I stared at the screen a few moments, sipped the last of my tea, and made a decision. I was going for a walk.

The air was cool and damp from the chilly night before. It was only halfway into September, but the weather was beginning to hint at its intentions, scouring the earth with burning heat for a couple days, then leaving a frost the third night. Today was the first cool day that week. I was content to be out in it.

Autumn in New England is my favorite time of year – the leaves, the breeze, the smell of the air and the familiar whir of tourists sailing by on their mountain bikes. I reached Concord Center, crossed the rotary and headed down Main Street. I passed the Mill Dam that still traveled just under the street. My grandmother had once told me about the scores of musket balls they found when the town dug up the Mill Dam to lay a parking lot - hundreds of tiny musket balls once dumped there by villagers who refused to let the Red Coats have their munitions. Concord was an interesting town for stories.

I slipped into the Main Street Café for a cannoli and a coffee. Yes, it cost ten dollars – no I wasn’t working. Luckily, and much to the chagrin of my pride, I had a very generous mother.

I snacked at one of the corner tables, and listened to the voices around me. Someone had left a newspaper at the table, and I borrowed a pen to do the crossword. When I was stumped by four down, I found myself sketching a nearby child in the borders of the paper. I perused the Police Blotter for any criminals I might know, finding several reports of a quite possibly rabid raccoon roaming the neighborhood one street over from me. Apparently, Monument Street was turning into Wild Kingdom. Stellan and I would walk down that very road to climb trees at the State Park when we were young. Stellan climbed far higher than any non-primate should be able to, only to jump down from an outrageous height when it was time to go. Stellan was once reprimanded by a grandmother for pulling such a stunt.

‘You should know better! My grandson thought that was the most spectacular thing he’s ever seen. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he breaks a leg trying to emulate you. You should be a role model at your age, not an idiot!’

She stormed away with her sheepish grandson, and the dare devil side of Stellan almost died. He might be huge, and he might be snarky, but put a screaming grandmother in front of him and Stellan shrinks like cooked plastic.

These memories made me feel drawn toward old haunts, and I found myself heading down Rabid Raccoon way toward the National Park. I stopped on the North Bridge to gaze down at the water, still and glassy today despite the passing kayaks and canoes. My Grandmother Jensen brought me there many times, even before my mother and I moved in. She was proud of her hometown, having grown up with a Historian for a father and a raging bitch for a mother (her words toward the end of her life when she stopped worrying about manners and decorum). To impress her, I’d managed to memorize the inscription on the Monument there.

By the crude bridge that arched the flood,

to April’s breeze their flag unfurled,

here once the embattled farmer stood and

fired the shot heard round the world.

I glanced toward the monument a dozen or so yards away, but couldn’t quite make out the inscription.
Oh well,
I thought
. It goes something like that.

I followed down the path, past the monument. It was the time of year when the fields were overgrown, the stalks of grass long and light, snapping and swaying in waves across the fields. The breeze kicked up, and I leaned my head back. I was growing fond of leaving the house with my hair still wet.

“Is that Faye Jensen?”

I startled, searching for the source of the voice. I met the gaze of a small park ranger with the cutest little button nose I’d ever seen.

“Patricia Hannity?”

She beamed, obviously pleased to be remembered. Of course I remembered her – she was one of the sweetest girls in school before she transferred to Concord Academy and points beyond. She looked almost exactly the same – tiny little upturned nose, perfectly curled dark hair that never grew past her ears, beauty mark on her right cheekbone. If you can imagine, the Ranger outfit just amplified her cuteness. “Oh my god, you look so great!”

“Oh, thank you! You too!” She said and smiled.

She laughed and it was as though pixies had scampered by. I had never imagined that the button of a little girl I’d once known would have turned into a button of a woman. Somehow, I felt cuteness of this magnitude was probably against nature.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “What are you doing around here? Last I heard you moved away?”

“I did. Went to college in Edinburgh.”

My stomach tightened. Somehow, whenever anyone mentioned living somewhere exotic and far off, I felt a pang of envy that was nearly overpowering. I’d never so much as seen Canada.

“Wow! That must have been something!”

“Oh yeah! Met my husband Geoffrey there,” she said and displayed a hand to me. That pang I mentioned before? Yeah, now it was downright excruciating - a Charlie horse of envy, if you will.

“Are you kidding me? That’s amazing!”

She smiled and her perfect, pearly white teeth glistened. My cynical mood of the past few weeks desperately wanted to hate her, but she was just so damn cute. Then the dreaded moment came – the one I’d found myself desperate to dodge in conversations like this for the past five or so months. There’s a reason why I don’t leave the house.

“So what are you up to?” She asked.

I fumbled for an appropriate response.
Oh, you know – living at home, vegging on Soap Operas and Cheetos, buying my coffee and cannolis with Mom’s money or letting my best friend buy me lunch when he isn’t holed up in his parent’s basement.

“Well, I got laid off a few months ago, so I’ve been in between things.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. You home with mom these days?”

That bitch. “I am, actually. Yeah.”

She nodded. “Nothing wrong with that. It’s been happening to a lot of people, recently. Damn economy, you know?”

“Don’t I?”

She smiled again, a pleasant redirection prepared. In the split second that I realized she wasn’t going to press further, I fell madly in love with her and decided she needed to be my new best friend.