“Hey,” you say, and what a rush, to finally hear your voice out loud in person, to see your face. You murmur now, as if things changed for us over the past few days, because they did change. “I am… I have a little something for you.”
You’re holding a white box and there is a red ribbon wrapped around the white box and you motion toward the door and I follow you outside, where it is gray. Drab. As if January can’t fucking wait to get here. We didn’t go more than two hours and twelve minutes without talking over the last five days but now we sit on our love seat like strangers on a bus.
You hold your box. “Is this weird?”
“Only if there’s a bomb inside.”
You laugh. I always make you laugh. “Yeah… I got you a little something…” Because we bonded over Christmas. “You were so great with Nomi the other day and that meant a lot to me.”
“Well, that was nice of you.”
You nod. You’re still married and you feel guilty, which is why you can’t speak the truth and I get it. We’re at work. We have to pretend the last few days never happened, not because someone might be eavesdropping—we’re alone out here—but because you too are procrastinating. You look down at the box that sits on your lap. A corduroy skirt today. Black tights.
“So how was it? How was Christmas with the family?”
You look at me—you can’t fucking believe how good I am—and you crack a smile. “Well, it was our first Christmas without Melanda. So we didn’t have a buffer.”
You really do believe it’s her texting you and I smile. “And how was that?”
You rub the ribbon on my box, my box that is your box. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It doesn’t feel fair.”
“We’re just talking. And I do care about you. You know that.”
“Yeah,” you say. “I guess it’s that thing where even when someone is like family, which Melanda really is, well it’s still company. So you dress up a little, you know? You have a guest. And it was different without her. There was this moment, after we ate. Phil…” You gulp. “My husband’s playing his guitar, blasting his music, and Nomi’s wearing her headphones and reading her Columbine and I almost…” Got in the car to come see me. “Well, open your present already.”
You hand me the box and a car passes by and the windows are down and Sam Cooke serenades us—Darling you send me, honest you do—and Love sent me away but you send me and I send you. You nudge me. “Well come on. Open it.”
I pull the ribbon and I open your box—if only—and I count six red strawberries, all of them doused in chocolate and I bet Phil didn’t get any fucking strawberries. I look at you. “I wish I had something for you.”
Your cheeks are flushed and your eyes are glued to me and you missed me. “Yeah,” you say. “I wish a lot of things lately…”
I want your Murakami and I want your Lemonhead and we both stare at our tree. “I don’t want to be selfish, Joe.”
“You’re not being selfish.”
“Well, that’s not what Phil says…”
I can’t be the one you talk to about the rat and you’re the one who made the rules. I nod.
“See, Joe, I think Melanda’s mad at me. I think that’s why she blew me off at Christmas.”
I can’t talk about this either and my heart is pounding. Melanda. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s ancient history, but in high school… God, I’m too old to start stories with that sentence… Anyway, when we became friends, she told me that all these people like your neighbor Nancy… Well, she told me they hated me. And then one day I go into the bathroom, and I overhear her telling Nancy that I hate Nancy.”
So that’s why you stole her rat and that’s why you weren’t exactly sensitive about her pregnancy when you got pregnant. And you don’t know she’s in my basement. You really don’t. Do you? “You never told her you overheard her?”
You shake your head. “It’s weird to miss her and yet not miss her, you know? She might not even come back for a few months…” I know. “Melanda” texted you that. “She’s gonna start this new job. She met this new guy… I’m not so good with change. And it’s strange to feel almost jilted, as if I was being ‘possessive’ or something when I know I should just be happy for her and I know we were both dragging each other down. But it stings in some weird way, to feel… left.”
RIP Beck… RIP Candace… Love. I nod. “It is,” I say. “But ultimately, the distance gets you to a more honest place, you know?”
You’re contemplative. You need me because I’m the first person in your life that really fucking listens. I give you the silence you’ve been craving and you want me so much that you’re shaking. “Come on,” you say. “It’s getting cold.”
You open the door—you’re not cold, you’re hot, hot for me—and you look at the Red Bed and I look at the Red Bed and you blush. “Have a good rest of the day!”
I have a great rest of the day because of you. You love me and I oughta buy Melanda some chocolate-covered strawberries—ha!—because look what she did for you, for me, for us—and I carry your box under the crook of my arm and Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” is on repeat in my head and the world would be a happier place if more people would lift their souls with music instead of ugh-inducing podcasts. I make it into town and I take off my headphones and there is music in the café today—Bob Dylan in Pegasus—and there really is revolution in the air, strawberries in my hands. I get the chills.
We were tangled up in Phil’s blues and you were married when we met but you gave me a gift and you are soon to be divorced and I’m helping you out of the jam that is your bad, blue life. I’m saving you! It’s almost like you knew about my situation with Melanda, and now I don’t have to feel bad about it because you don’t want things to go back to normal.
Why would you? You have me.
I open my box and look down on my six, Red Bed red strawberries, Murakamis cloaked in chocolate. I reach my hand into your box that is my box but some asshole body slams me. The box goes flying and the Adidas–sneakered ass who did this mad-dogs me like I did something wrong.
“Dude,” I say. I am so mad I’m saying dude. “What the fuck?”
He doesn’t speak or move and I don’t like this, Mary Kay. I don’t like him.
“Sorry,” he says. “Small sidewalk… small world, too, my friend.”
I am not his friend and he’s not one of us. He doesn’t live here. I can just tell. I step toward him—this is my town—and he shakes his head slowly, like a B movie gangster, as if someone wearing Adidas sneakers and a battered old long-sleeve T-shirt—SOMETHING BOATHOUSE—could ever be remotely intimidating.
A kid on a skateboard runs over one of my strawberries and the man who knocked the strawberries onto the sidewalk steps forward. “Nice gift,” he says. “Nothing says forever like a fruit box. You really know how to pick ’em, Goldberg.”