The Unravelling, Chapter Three

My call to Christine Friday night was everything triumphant.  “I can’t believe you found a place,” she must have said at least a dozen times, and neither could I.  A hurricane had levelled my life, but I’d found shelter.  Now I just needed to come to terms with the destruction left in its wake.

On Saturday morning I set to packing my things, afraid I wouldn’t finish in time, only to be done by lunch.  Almost half of the boxes I’d bought from a moving company sat piled in a corner, unused.  Other than my clothes and art supplies virtually nothing in the house belonged to me.  Somehow I’d forgotten that Ethan’s mother had kitted out the house for him, and solely to his taste; as such, it was filled with the kind of modern furniture I could never figure out how to make comfortable, and things I’d used for years but never owned.  I could only lay claim to a couple of flowery mugs and the odd utensil.  On Sunday, when I viewed all of my worldly goods stacked in the little trailer I’d managed to rent at the last minute, I felt like a failure.  My life hadn’t amounted to very much in any sense of the phrase. 

I of course knew Ethan had done me wrong—that I should be grateful he’d spared me a lifetime of pain with someone who considered me so utterly expendable.   But years of living with my mother’s regret over her break-up with my unfaithful, yet otherwise wonderful father had taught me that infidelity shouldn’t on its own be a deal breaker.  Although she never spoke the words out loud, I knew my mom’s second husband—kind, dependable Dennis—never made up for the husband she’d left over his wandering eye.  “There is no such thing as winning,” she’d told me.  “Life is about trade-offs.  Make good and sure that what you’re trading for is worth giving up what you already have.”

Because I’d loved my father, too, I’d taken her advice to heart.  I’d turned a blind eye to Ethan’s occasional late-night hours and unwillingness to let me see his phone, convinced that the cost/benefit analysis ran in my favor.  If I’d had definitive proof he was cheating I might have felt compelled to leave, but I made sure not to look for it.  Not until the day he kicked me out of the house was I forced to confront my own complicity in knocking down the house of cards that I’d called my life. 

And now here I was, wandering around a futon shop like some kind of clueless college student setting up her first apartment.  I’d thought I could hold onto Ethan by letting him be who he was, rather than forcing him into a role that didn’t fit; I thought I’d learned from my mother’s mistakes.  Instead I’d suffered the exact same fate, with an extra dash of humiliation for good measure.  It was funny how my mother had never liked Ethan, even as she pined for my father.  Maybe she had seen what I couldn’t: that there was a difference between unfaithful, and just plain old untrustworthy. 

Daisy waited in the car while I picked out a futon.  She took up the entire backseat, but ever mellow, she didn’t mind the cramped conditions.  Life was looking up for her.  Ethan never warmed to my adorable brindle puppy—even a fish would have annoyed him.  He just wasn’t into the concept of pets.  It hardly helped matters when as a puppy Daisy chewed up his favorite pair of shoes, and the arm of his designer couch (it was the closest we came to breaking up in our earlier years).  Once she was out of the chewing stage he and my dog settled into an uneasy detente.   Daisy learned to go to him for nothing, and Ethan learned to pretend Daisy wasn’t there, quite a feat given her eventual size.  Neither one would miss the other.

Her enormous head resting on the car window, she eyed the two shop employees lugging my new futon over to my car with withering suspicion.  One look at her and they finished the job, lickety split.  I would have laughed, but nothing was funny anymore.  Daisy felt like the only bit of good left in the world; without her I would be terrified to live on my own.  With her I would just be terribly sad. 

I’d hoped the neighborhood would improve on second viewing, but it appeared even tattier than I remembered.  The same went for Rick, who emerged from the back of the bookstore just as I was letting Daisy out of the car.  I knotted up Daisy’s lead in my hand during his approach, marvelling at how someone like him could be a successful businessman.  He disposed of his cigarette before he reached us—because of course he smoked—and said, by way of greeting, “That’s quite a mutt you have there.”

My mouth went dry.  I hadn’t signed a lease yet, and if Rick changed his mind about the apartment I would have nowhere to go—or, at least, nowhere I wanted to go.  Trying to keep the accusation out of my voice, I said, “I told you she was big.”

“It’s fine.”  He gave Daisy a friendly scratch on the head that she accepted without complaint, an unusual response for my canine protector.  While she never bit anyone (bull mastiffs preferred to knock people over), like all bullmastiffs she took her role as a guard dog very seriously.   “What’s her name?” he asked me.

“Daisy.”

“And yours?”

“Oh, it’s Stevie.  Stevie Callaghan.”

Rick arched an eyebrow, the usual reaction of those old enough to remember Fleetwood Mac.  I tried not to flush, but it was hard, because my name was a constant source of embarrassment to me, something my normally sensible mother never understood.  In her fan-addled mind she’d bestowed a great blessing on her daughters by naming us after Fleetwood Mac’s celebrated female members.  For Christine it wasn’t a problem—her name was so normal no one made the connection—but I’d spent my life suffering for it.  My only consolation was that as Stevie Nicks faded from public view, and parents found ever stranger things to name their children, fewer and fewer people noticed my mother’s misguided homage.  One day, I hoped, no one would.

“Is someone with you?” Rick asked, peering past me into the trailer.  “You can’t move all of that by yourself.”

Whatever gratitude I felt at his bypassing the name banter instantly gave way to another wave of embarrassment.  Over the course of my relationship with Ethan I’d lost touch with almost everyone I’d been close to in college.  Because I’d felt lucky to have a boyfriend and a sister, I hadn’t cared much.  But now that my social life was suddenly halved, my friendlessness had proven both mortifying and inconvenient.  I’d called every mover in El Prado, only to discover no one was available, and Christine had apologetically told me she had to work.  There was no one left to ask for help, but I’d told myself that I could handle it.  If the Egyptians could build the pyramids before the advent of machinery, surely I could deal with a little move on my own.  “It’s mostly boxes,” I told Rick.  “I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t have any furniture?”

“...A few things.”

He gestured for me to elaborate.

“Well—a futon,” I said, very much against my will.  “And a work table and an office chair. But I’m sure I’ll be able to get them up the stairs by myself.”  Never mind that back at Ethan’s my neighbour had helped me load the table into the trailer, once it became obvious I couldn’t do it alone.  What little personal dignity I had left demanded I not concede that to Rick.  “It will be fine,” I told him.  “Really.”

“Right,” he scoffed.  “I’ll send a couple of my guys to help you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I protested, but Rick was already on his way back to the bookstore and no longer paying attention. 

A part of me was grateful for his intervention.  Too bad it also felt like just one more indictment of my incompetence. 

I was frowning at the trailer when two guys joined me.  The older was dressed in business casual, suggesting he held a managerial type of role, while the younger could have wandered straight out of a university class.  The manager treated me to a dazzling smile.  “Hello, there,” he said, his dark brown eyes twinkling with the hint of friendly conspiracy.  “I’m Malik, and this is Mike.  Rick told us you need help moving some things upstairs.  He had to take off for a meeting so here we are.”

I nodded miserably.  “I’m sorry about this…”

“Don’t be.  It’s good for a man’s fragile ego to help out a damsel in distress.  Besides, you can be damn sure we’ll demand a bonus from Rick to cover any resulting aches and pains.” 

I laughed gratefully.  When Malik and the student also chuckled, I gave in and showed them the furniture I needed help with.  It wasn’t as if I had any hope of managing on my own, anyway.  Maybe Rick and his staff would know I had no friends, but at least I would have my stuff.

And have my stuff I did, because after they finished with the heavy pieces Malik and Mike insisted on emptying the trailer of the boxes, too (“It’s better than doing inventory,” Mike grunted).  All in all the venture took them twenty minutes.  Not sure what was appropriate, I offered them each $20, but Malik refused.  “We do what the big boss man tells us to do,” he answered, in a faux Southern accent.  “And better yet, we now have leverage against him the next time he annoys us.  Welcome to the family!”

Charmed, I thanked them several times, even as I wondered exactly what kind of family I’d been welcome into.

 Once Malik and Mike had returned to the bookstore I brought Daisy to a conveniently located grassy area to do her business.  She sniffed at a palm tree as I thought about Malik and Mike and the skinny server who’d encouraged me to look at the apartment.  They’d been everything kind and understanding—in other words, nothing at all like Rick.  It was as if he made a point to hire people with good personalities to compensate for his own deficiencies…either that, or no one else would put up with him.  Whatever the reason, at least there would be a few friendly faces around. 

Back upstairs I stood in the living room and surveyed the space around me.   Unlike both the neighborhood and my new landlord, the apartment looked just as good as it had upon initial inspection, although woefully bare.  That was nothing a shopping spree couldn’t fix, but I refused to consider buying anything beyond the essentials, just in case.  When Ethan returned home and I wasn’t there…well, he might decide he’d made a huge mistake and beg me to come back to him.  I was still angry and hurt, but I hadn’t reached the point of no return.  I would give him another chance if he truly wanted it.

Like the deluded idiot I was, I made sure to have my phone on me during my trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond to purchase the few things I absolutely couldn’t live without.  In a whimsical moment I chose a stupidly expensive ceramic bowl in a beautiful royal blue for my morning yogurt.  Otherwise I kept to the basics, just like at the grocery store.  I wouldn’t need cheering up for long if Ethan and I got back together again.

But that first night in my new apartment, even though I checked my phone repeatedly, he never called. 

The Unravelling is now available to purchase on Amazon Kindle for only £0.99/$0.99! For details click here: The Unravelling