Eat Your Heart Out (21 page)

He doesn't kiss her.

“I have to go to the bar and tell them I'm taking a week off.”

She turns her back to him again and gets dressed. After a minute or two, she leaves. As she hears her high heels and her steady measured gait against the wood floor, a walk born from a lot of leaving behind, she prays that this is it. That it can be over, that she can let it be over, this time for good.

He was never even here to begin with, she thinks.

“Be gone by the time I'm back,” she says.

She closes the door behind her.

How the fuck is she going to tell him she's pregnant now?

“Listen, man, I
know I'm boning you here, but I need to get a week off.”

Cheryl is standing at her boss's door. His name is Greg. She's just woken him up, and he's pissed off and confused. Nine o'clock is ungodly for anyone who works in bars. He's just gotten a haircut, his first one in five years, because he's getting married to his girl in two weeks.

Greg has known Cheryl since she was twenty-one, when she first started at the bar. He's good to her. He helps her when she needs it. They're friends, real friends. She has few.

“I can't just give you a week off, Cheryl.”

“Look, I wouldn't ask unless I really needed it.”

“Well, why do you really need it? What happened? Did someone die or something?” He laughs, attempting to make a joke but deciding it's too fucking early to follow through.

Cheryl says nothing. She lights a cigarette.

“What happened?” He knows it's serious.

“I don't want to talk about it, okay? Just give me the week.”

“Cheryl, tell me what happened,” he says, now very serious.

She sighs, angry. She has to tell him if she wants the week off. She looks up and exhales a large, silver cloud of smoke.

“My mom.”

He looks at her with a sickening pity. She's never seen him look so sorry for anything, and it scares her.

“Fuck. Cheryl, I'm so . . .”

“No. No, Greg. None of that. Don't feel sorry for me. I hated her, you know that. We didn't talk, it's fine. I'm not sad.”

“I know but . . .”

“Look, stop. She's dead and I have to go home, to deal with it. So that's what I'm doing.”

He won't stop looking at her.

“This is why I didn't want to tell you,” she says.

“Okay. Is anyone going with you?”

“You mean Ben? Yeah. Right.”

She laughs, always when she shouldn't. Greg doesn't. He puts his hand on her shoulder.

“You can be upset about this, Cheryl.”

“Oh, Greg, fuck off. I'm serious. I'm just taking a week off, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Thanks.”

As she's walking away he calls after her.

“Do you want me to come with you for a couple days?”

“No. Thank you, but no.”

“With your dad, I felt bad when you went back home alone. I should have gone with you then.”

“That was different, I was twenty-two. And I liked him.”

“Okay.”

She walks farther down the block.

“One more thing, Cheryl! One more thing.”

“What, Greg?” she yells, turning back.

“Cover up your tattoos when you go home. And your tits! They're busting out over there.”

This is genuinely his idea of being helpful, thinks Cheryl.

“Get fucked, Greg.”

She gives him the finger as she walks down his street.

“I'm pregnant!” she yells back to him, at the last moment, just before she's out of sight.

He laughs. He thinks she's joking.

When she goes
home to pick up her bags, Ben's gone. No note. No nothing. She changes into a blouse that covers her chest piece. Since she feels like walking, she drags her suitcase behind her all the way to the station, the scraping sound loud behind her on the quiet morning streets.

On the way, Cheryl wishes she could call her father.

“Mom died,” she'd say.

“I heard,” he'd say.

“You get the same hysterical call from Lori?” she'd ask.

“Yeah,” he'd say, raspy, slow, steady.

They'd be dates for the funeral, going for a farmer's breakfast after and ordering beer with it. They'd end up laughing at how morbid they look, dressed in black.

She wonders what he would think, if he could see her now: pregnant, aimless, in love with a ghost. What would he think, if he'd seen everything that happened since he'd gone?

Then she wonders if Daddy's waiting for Mama in heaven. They separated years ago, but maybe he's still waiting for her. She hopes he's waiting for her.

“Grow up,” she tells herself, disgusted for thinking like that, for being so sentimental.

It doesn't work that way.

“So what brings
you to Wellington?” asks the blue-haired old lady Cheryl-Lee sits across from on the train. She thinks the lady's name is Ethel or Marge, but she can't remember because she wasn't really listening.

“My mother died,” says Cheryl-Lee. Then she smiles.

The old lady's hand comes to her mouth.

“I am so sorry.”

“Thanks.”

The lady reaches her hand over and puts it on Cheryl's knee.

“We were estranged.”

Cheryl moves her knee.

“Oh,” says the lady and nods like she understands. “Oh . . . well, that's, I'm sorry.”

The lady looks like she wants to ask what happened but knows it would be impolite. Instead, she sits silently, looking like she pities Cheryl.

“She was a drunk. And I hated her for it.”

The lady looks shocked.

Cheryl sighs and rests her head against the train window. She's tired. She's hungover. She wishes Ben were here.

She hears the lady porter ask her if she'd like coffee or snacks. She doesn't turn to say no. She feels wholly glued to the glass separating her from the outside, where everything blends together in a blur of green, sky, tracks.

Soon, she starts to recognize the scenery and her anxiety kicks in. She reaches in her bag, scraping lipsticks, money, smokes, and miscellaneous shit she should have thrown away years ago.

Where the fuck are her pills?

How could she forget her pills?

She thinks of ways she can get out of going home. She could get off at the next stop. She could jump off the train. She can't do this without her pills.

As the train inches closer and closer to home, sick is rising. She's sweating. Maybe it's the baby that's making her sick.

Cheryl's only two weeks late. She figures she has a good month before she needs to make any decisions.

Her eyes feel heavy. She needs to go to sleep. Maybe there's some doctor in town I can scam for pills, she thinks. She turns, avoiding eye contact with the old lady, and rests her head against the other side of her seat. She wakes up when the train rolls into the station.

On her way to the platform, she is hit by a sudden wave of nausea. She vomits, twice, in the train's washroom.

No place like home, she thinks as she raises her face out of the toilet bowl, shaking as she wipes the puke from the corner of her mouth.

With a sour
mouth, she calls Lori and writes down her address again because the piece of paper is lost in her purse. That could have been an excuse to turn around, she thinks.

She hangs up and, with ink staining her hand, tries to hail a taxi outside the train station.

Her insides feel empty when the smell hits her. It smelled the exact same way when she left. Like fresh-cut grass and tar. Burning tar. How can a place smell the same ten years later? It's not fair that it smells the exact same. She feels sixteen again and all she wants to do is run.

The air is thick. It's going to be a hot week, she can tell. She's nauseous again.

She gets in the taxi and tries to undo the window. It's jammed.

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah?”

The taxi driver is a middle-aged white man with no accent. Only here, she thinks.

“Does this window work? It's really hot back here.”

“Oh yeah, that hasn't worked for a good while now. Sorry.”

“Can you open your window up there?”

He laughs.

“Ha! I can try. Don't think it'll do you any good.”

He opens his window and she feels hotter.

“So what brings you to Wellington?”

“I don't want to talk,” she says, trying with everything she has not to puke.

He looks at her in the rear-view mirror and rolls his eyes.

All she wants is to be anywhere but here.

Cheryl-Lee is bear-hugged
by Lori, or someone she thinks might be Lori. She'd ask, but she can't breathe.

The possible Lori met her as she was getting out of the cab. She ran from her porch toward her like a bat out of hell. Cheryl, frightened by this stranger flying toward her, moved back against the cab.

“Oh my God! You haven't changed one bit!” says the woman as she hugs her.

Hearing her loud, hoarse voice, she knows for certain it's Lori. Jesus, she got fat.

“Lori, I was sixteen the last time you saw me. I think I've changed,” she says, gasping for air.

“No! Honest, not one bit!”

“Well . . . thanks.”

Cheryl finally struggles free. Lori takes her by the shoulders and looks at her.

“Cheryl-Lee, you are certainly a sight for sore eyes. I'm just . . . I'm just so sorry about . . . your mama and—”

Before she can finish her sentence, Lori bursts into tears. Cheryl doesn't know what to do with this sobbing, fat woman she spent childhood Christmases and Thanksgivings with.

“I just, oh, I am so sorry, I just, you know . . . your mama, this whole thing has hit me hard . . . but Jesus has her now, I just tell myself that Jesus has her now. But I just, I just wish . . . I wish . . .”

Lori cries so hard she chokes. Cheryl looks around, hoping to see anyone who can stop the crying. Then she puts her hand on Lori's round shoulder.

“It's okay.” Her voice is so monotone she doesn't even believe herself.

Lori wipes her tears, misses the snot under her nose.

“I know. I know it will be okay. It's just so good to have you back, Cheryl-Lee. I'm just sorry things stayed how they were with you and your mama.”

“It's Cheryl, now. Call me Cheryl.”

Lori looks taken aback.

“Oh, okay. Cheryl.”

Cheryl pays the cabbie and gets her bag out of the trunk.

“Do you need help with that there?” asks Lori.

“No.”

“Cheryl, look, I'm sorry I'm such a mess . . .”

Shit, she's crying again.

“It's okay,” says Cheryl. “Death's hard.”

Maybe there is a Motel 6 or something down the road, thinks Cheryl. She looks down the driveway at her aunt's house. The sight of it takes her breath away. It looks the exact same. The brick is still unfinished, the grass is still brown, the same junk litters the driveway.

Cheryl wants to keel over. It's not fair that everything looks exactly the same.

“Is Earl home?” Cheryl asks, still staring at the house.

“No. He's out getting some food for lunch. I wanted to stay and see you.”

There's no way she can face a meal with these people yet.

“What bedroom am I in?”

“The one you always had when you stayed over.”

Great.

“Oh, okay. I'll just take this up there and get settled then. I'm going to try to take a nap.”

“Okay, sweetheart. I think I'll just sit out here and wait for Earl, with this nice weather and all.”

Lori wipes her eyes again.

As Cheryl turns around and walks up the driveway, Aunt Lori yells, “Do you want me to wake you for dinner?”

No.

“Sure.”

“Okay, see you at supper then!”

She's almost in the door when she hears, “Cheryl-Lee! Oh! Sorry! Cheryl!”

“Yeah?”

“It is so good to have you back.”

Save me, thinks Cheryl. Please save me.

Cheryl is in
Lori's bathroom on the second floor. She is sitting on the edge of the bathtub trying to calm her breathing. The porcelain feels cold against her thighs. She wishes she had her pills.

She gets up, lights a smoke, opens the window just a crack, and moves back to the tub.

She looks at herself in the mirror. She notices the wallpaper is the same. White, with blue flowers, only wrinkled and browned with age. She used to hide in here, between the bathtub and the corner, from her mother.

Mama went raging mad when she got too drunk. Cheryl learned fast when it was best to hide from her mama. So when Mama and Lori really got going, she would hide between the bathtub and the wall.

Once she got into the position she couldn't move her legs much. Skinny, with knock-knees and long blond hair, Cheryl-Lee would pretend she was a princess hiding from a dragon, waiting for her prince to save her. She made sure to be very quiet and only get up if she really had to use the toilet. Mama never found her.

One night, Mama came into the bathroom. Cheryl-Lee didn't understand why she walked all the way up the stairs when there was a bathroom below, but that night, she did. Mama didn't notice her. Too drunk, Cheryl-Lee guessed.

What's more, Mama didn't use the toilet. Instead, she just stared at herself in the mirror, the same mirror Cheryl is looking in now, and started crying. It was quiet crying, but Mama stayed there for a long time. Cheryl had never seen her cry before. Mama was not a woman who cried. Neither is Cheryl.

She must have been five or six at the time. It's her most vivid memory of her mother. She never stopped looking at her reflection, didn't even blink, just kept staring and kept crying.

A part of her wanted to help her mother, to hug her, to make her stop crying, but the other part of her knew she couldn't give up her hiding spot, not if she wanted to be safe in the future. So she watched, for what felt like forever. Finally Lori yelled up to Mama, asking if she wanted another drink.