Chapter 8
8.
May 25-
How to describe the feeling. The feeling of almost finding something, only to be let down. To try and try and hope and hope so hard that it hurts. Only to be let down. To think that maybe you've finally found the one that will promise to stay forever, to hold your hand when you're scared, to keep you from feeling lonely and small, to never let you down. Only to have your heart broken again and again and again in a thousand different ways.
But you know what hurts most? Feeling so safe in his arms. Loving his smell. Offering him all of you-- body, soul and so much love-- and having him only want the body, the worthless body, and a smidgen of love. But he doesn't want you. Doesn't want to take the time to understand all the things that make you you. He doesn't want forever. And no matter how hard you try, how desperately, how unconditionally you love, he won't change his mind. He doesn't want forever. He doesn't want you.
You have been betrayed. He should have told you from the start that you would be transported door to door, from square one right back to square one. He should have told you before you pasted his photo over the drawings of Prince Charmings in your book of fairy tales. In your dream-come-trues. Before you edited him into your fantasies. He should have told you. Then you might have had a chance at escape. In your dreams.
Darling,
I write this to you as a farewell. Though our goodbyes have not yet been said and you will be with me, be inside of me, many more times, I have to say goodbye. The part of me, I know not which, that was finding a home in your somewhat accommodating body, has given up. I no longer offer you that part. Your body, I see now, is inhabited by another woman. I have given up on finding the solace that I seek, the deviation from emptiness, somewhere within you.
I can now only offer you my body. It's a worthless body. You may do with it as you will.
You cannot, and never will, live up to my dreams. You don't know how. Don't you see? Your dreams are not like mine. You are a very different creature that I. To say simpler would be insulting. Suffice to say that you, perhaps sadly, perhaps luckily, will never love as I do. As I will, one day, when I meet another dreamer like me. Your love with Veronica, with whoever, will reek of simplicity. My love will be bitter, will smell of sweat, of the body. But my love will fill, yours will empty.
And you shall always be empty. Like your love.
And one day, perhaps when I am dead, perhaps famous, perhaps when you look back on your life, trying to understand, to explain, you would say: I once knew her. And then you would realize how ridiculous it was for you to say that. You would realize that you never knew me. But it would be too late for you to take it back. You would try to qualify your statement, but the lucidity would remain: You never knew me. But that ignorance is blissful, isn't it? I ask you, for I have never been so deluded.
You don't even know what I'm thinking, because you don't know that I've read all these love professions. You don't know that I just stopped loving you. I want to pretend I didn't, to go on with business as usual, to tell you that you're special to me. But I wonder if I'd be lying. Because I'm hurt. I am. Because I put so much of myself, so much hope, so much love, so many dreams into you. And you let me down, though you don't realize it.
I guess I should just be happy for the fond memories. Of the way that you taught me to love. I learned a lot from you. The parts of me that I didn't think I could show, the parts that were weak and scared, you helped me to admit to them. I try so hard to be a big girl. To be someone strong who doesn't get hurt and doesn't cry.
But here I am hurting and here I am crying. Go figure.
So good-bye, lover. I'll see you when you get home.
-Ellie
The queen is coming! The queen is coming! All normal activities must stop as preparations are made for the impending arrival of the majestic and exalted queen.
Will she really come down from on high? Will she really set foot in this humble home? Will she allow this handmaid to kiss her hand?
The answer is a resounding YES!
Hooray! Hurrah! Hooray! Let's cheer for the coming of the queen!
He is making lasagna. The noodles are simmering on the stove. The cheeses are already grated or otherwise waiting. He is now adding spices to the sauce. I suggest garlic, but Veronica doesn't like garlic. So there shall be no garlic.
The table is painstakingly made. Each detail scrawls "I love you" in bold strokes across the living room. And though he kissed me in the kitchen by the stove, though he came up behind me and held me as I lit the candles on the dinner table, I know that I am just a substitute for his real sugar, the one that will be arriving any minute now.
"Hey, she'll be here any minute now." He says, running a hand through my hair. "Don't you want to go get dressed? I can finish up this stuff..."
"Are you sure?" I ask, looking to him for reassurance.
"Yeah, I want you to look beautiful tonight." He says. I thought I already was. "You should wear that black dress that you wore last week. You look like a real knockout in it."
I shake my head. "I'm not trying to impress her."
"No, you know what I mean. I just want her to see how beautiful you are." So beautiful, in fact, that I have to emphasize it so that she will notice. So so beautiful, am I. A real fucking beauty.
I undress and pointedly avoid looking in the mirror before stepping into the shower.
"Please let her be ugly." I pray. "Please God, let her be fat and ugly, but mostly ugly."
Dinner proved the bitch to be charming and graceful. She managed conversation and her food with an effortlessness that could only be envied. Sometimes she would tilt her head to just the right angle, so that everyone present would agree that she was beautiful.
Veronica was powerful and wickedly smart. The only delicacy about her was in her features. She was big, she was strong. She was confident while being unobtrusively sexy. And I watched in awe and fear as he fell in love with her all over again.
Once again, I was a voyeur. I was observing the overtures of a male and a female. But this scorned woman was not going to sit still through their courting rituals. So I laughed, I chatted, I tossed my hair and batted my eyes. I tried to be captivating for an inattentive audience. I was desperately trying to be included in this exclusive duet.
But I think I was trying too hard, and in my trying, I knocked my own foundation and it's rather tentative scaffolding. Perhaps it's because I was being too flamboyant, too painstakingly carefree, that every note in my laughter rang false.
He leaves the room to make coffee. The serpent rises like mercury from her shoulders.
"I've heard a lot about you, Ellie." Her eyes glow, yellow with venom.
"Really?" I smile, trying to anticipate where she will strike.
"Yeah. Ezzie really thinks you're amazing. Artistic, dark and exotic, all the things I'm not."
"Really." I reply, ever watching her.
In attack, the chin juts, it's sinews locking like steely jaws. "Yeah, we talk a lot, you know."
"Yeah, I know." I reply with what arrogance I can muster.
"Heeeeeere comes coffee!" Ezra's voice precedes his entrance. "You two gals getting along?" He smiles.
She recoils. We both smile back. The serpent sleeps. It's rattle bobs in lulls, sounding its clandestine warning.
"Shit, forgot the milk... be right back!" He says as he runs back to the kitchen. She looks at me demurely.
A voice cries from the kitchen. "Honey?"
Two voices reply, "Yes?" in unison. She just smiles that demure smile, full of fangs. Asshole.
Ezra's head pops out of the kitchen doorway. "Do we have any more milk?"
"No, I think we finished it this morning, darling." I reply.
He jogs out of the kitchen and grabs his coat. "Okay. I'll be right back." He starts toward the front door, then pauses. "You still like milk in your coffee, don't you?"
Her smile is unwavering and self-satisfied. She nods.
"Okay. Be back." The door slams behind him.
Assholes.
She follows me into the bedroom. I plop on the bed. She walks, almost dances around the room, stopping in front of the mirror. She runs a hand through her hair and examines herself, leaning forward to get a closer look. She is beautiful, with short blond hair and a butterfly's face. She is really beautiful. And I am really feeling insecure.
"Well, I am absolutely stuffed!" I say to break the silence.
"Yeah, Ezzie can really feed a girl, huh?" She laughs.
I laugh too, awkwardly. "Yeah, he sure can..."
She is playing with the handles on the drawers, drawers that probably used to hold a pair of her silken underwear, hidden among the boxers. She looks at me, then furtively at the chair next to the bed.
"May I sit?" She asks.
As if she hasn't sat there before. As if she hasn't made love in that chair, as Ezra and I have. As if the room isn't every bit as much hers as it is mine.
"Please..." I say, placing a pillow posessively behind my head.
She sits and looks at me, an odd smile playing on her lips. She hesitates, then speaks.
"You know, Ez told me that you were...having problems with body image. I used to be anorexic. Did he tell you that?"
"Mmmmhmmm." I murmur, moving my pillow closer to her.
"It was the most horrible time in my life. I had no control over myself, so I tried to control what I ate. My first year of nursing school almost killed me, literally..."
She is so pretty. As I sit on the bed, listening to the story of her suffering, it's all I can do to stop myself from kissing her. I feel like a chastised puppy, the moral of her anecdote being "don't throw up". Yet her words are so beautiful and impersonal that her lips are able to still weigh heavily on my mind.
As she tells me of how my same pain once consumed her, I watch her thick eyelids drop in shame. But how noble she sounds! She has seen so much pain, so many sick people, that it doesn't seem unnatural for her to have inflicted this suffering on herself.
I wish that she were my woman, wish that pretty pink mouth knew the contours of my body. I wish her blonde hair could fall on my face in wild tickles and jokes that only we could share. I wish that she would show me, instead of telling me, that I don't have to be perfect to be loved.
But it's late and I fear rejection. My outstretched hand has more than once been swatted away. But how I want to be her virgin, her winged flower. Her girl.
And the word crush rings faintly in my ears.
How sad she had sounded tonight. How in love.
And here I am, breaking her heart by loving the man that was hers.
I lay in bed, the glow of the bedside lamp illuminating Ezra's sleeping face. How sad that he was too weak to love either of us the way that we wanted to be loved.
I realize now that I don't understand anyone besides myself. That I don't understand my lover's world, don't know what makes him tick. Some girl has found in him everything that she needs. Some girl has fallen in love. And here I am again, ever alone, even with Ezra's body, warm, next to mine. Alone, as I've always been, always will be.
I turn off the light and say my prayers.
Dear God, please don't let me hurt like this for the rest of my life. Please let me one day find something that fills me rather than emptying me. I have so many dreams, so many hopes of one day giving all this love to one person. I don't want to spend the rest of my life making love and making a fool out of myself almost simultaneously. I don't want to be taken for granted, nor taken for a ride. So tell me, God, is there anyone out there who will ever know how to love me? Please let there be, Lord. Please, please. Please. I ask this in Thy name. Amen.
When I look back, I think I was wrong. I was so wrong. The boy I thought couldn't melt my heart has now broken it."
