I knew I was acting
so prideful, but I didn’t care.
“Please. Let me explain—” Drew spouted. His eyes
were nearly brimming with pain, with fear that he would never see me again.
“No. No, I won’t allow it. Just leave me the hell
alone. I don’t need your charity.” I spun back around, removed my shoes and
rushed through the cold, hard sand, all the way into the darkness. I ran until
I was certain that Drew was out of sight. When I turned around, something like
three hundred yards later, I peered into the darkness and discovered that I had
done what I wanted in that moment: I had made him disappear.
CHAPTER
SIX
I made it back home, finally, after a long night of
walking toward the L in my heels and finding the right stop, even in my haze of
anger and alcohol. I sat on the train feeling so silly in my beautiful dress. I
felt something stick, collected from the seat, on my leg, and I allowed my head
to fall back in exasperation. It seemed nothing was going right.
I collapsed into the chair at my kitchen table when
I arrived home, throwing my heels into the corner and pouting toward my cat. He
sauntered toward me, meowing. He leaped up on my lap and tapped his nose onto
mine. “I know, I know, cat. I liked him, too.”
I removed the dress and walked naked through my
apartment, feeling the dead weight of disappointment on my shoulders. I hadn’t
fallen in love with anyone maybe ever, but this had been the closest time. I
had felt like I could actually know him, maybe. I had felt like maybe I could
change him, make him into a boyfriend—rather than a
player. But I had been wrong, just as I’d been wrong
so many, many times over the years.
I poured myself a glass of wine, feeling sad for
myself. I sipped it, wondering what had happened after I’d left the nice
restaurant. I wondered if Drew had allowed the food to rot on the table, if
he’d run home as well. Back to his empty hotel. I
wondered if he’d found another woman, a nobody to
sleep with that night, even as I slept alone in my apartment.
As I sat there, feeling sorry for myself, I dove
into many, countless other things—other things to feel sad about. I felt so
many things at once, so certain I was that I was about to lose my home in
Chicago. No matter what, there would be another bill. No matter what, there
would be another asshole to walk all over me.
I had another glass of wine and felt my head spin
around, over and over, as I listened to the beeping and traffic from the
street. I dialed the number almost without thinking, and placed the phone
against my temple.
Her voice on the other end of the line was strained,
perhaps drunk, as well.
“Hello?”
I paused before I answered. I heard so many things
in her hello. I heard panic; I heard sadness. I heard the image of the woman I
would ultimately be unless I worked hard for a different life.
“Hello?” she tried again. She sounded like she’d
been crying.
“Mom?” I whispered back. I hadn’t heard her voice in months.
“Molly,” my mother said. Her voice felt comfortable
then. Like something I’d known my entire life. Like the way you know what pop
tarts taste like before you taste them; like the way you know what your home
smells like before you enter.
“How are you?” I tried. I wasn’t going to tell her I
was going to fail in Chicago. I wasn’t ready to hear her disdain.
“I’m—I’m fine, darling. Just
fine.” She sniffed, making me worried.
“Mom. What’s going on? You sound upset.”
“No, no. Honey. It’s just
that me and Brett broke up, is all.” Brett had been her boyfriend of the
previous two years. I had met him a few times, but I’d never liked him a great
deal. A beer belly and a raucous laugh.
“When did this happen?”
“Two weeks ago. I know. It’s pathetic, me crying at
home every night. I just feel like my life is over, you know? I mean. You
probably can’t imagine. You’re up in Chicago, living the life of your dreams.”
My mother