Ordinary World by Elisa Lorello Read Free Book Online Page B

that moment?”
     
                I stared at the floor, my head swimming in confusion, trying to access the answer that lay in waiting on the tip of my tongue. Did I not know it, or did I not want to know? In that moment, a wave of terror broke on top of me, and I gripped the sides of the boat-like chair.
     
                “Oh God, Melody. How could I have done it? How could I have fucked up like that? I mean, my career was the one thing that I always held together. Before Sam, my love life was a train wreck. But my career was always on track. I had complete confidence. And I was good at it—my I’m cited in conference papers and scholarly articles. Nedra Reynolds would come up to me after a conference session and say, ‘Great stuff!’”
     
    As if Melody knew these people.
     
    “Even Peter Elbow, the Paul McCartney of rhetoric and composition, once introduced me as ‘The Next Big Thing’. I was trying so hard to get that back.”
     
                “The important thing is not to get stuck in what I call ‘The One Wrong Move’ syndrome,” she said. “You’ve got to accept it, forgive yourself, and move on. Don’t let it paralyze you. Otherwise you’ll never heal.”
     
                I looked at her, dejected, my insides fluttering with fear. How was movement possible when I’d all but thrown my career away, and the one who’d turned my love life into just plain ol’ life was gone?
     
                “I’ve lost everything,” I said, defeated.
     
                Melody nodded as if I’d just told her it’s raining outside.
     
                “So,” she said, a hint of optimism in her voice, “what are you going to do about it?”
     

                Later that evening, I sat in Sam’s study with yet another draft of his eulogy in my lap. Donny Most curled his plump, orange and white body beside me on the sofa and purred lackadaisically. He too now spent the majority of his time in this room. As I read through the draft and re-wrote above crossed out words and sentences and crammed notes in margins, I thought about what Melody said about getting stuck in One Wrong Move. No matter how many times I revised it, even if I turned the eulogy into a prize-winning piece of writing, it could never make up for the crappy draft I’d written and read at the funeral, no more than a leave of absence or a lifetime of therapy could make up for what I’d said to those students that day.
     
                I could almost hear the thunder of powerlessness so heavy I thought it would bury me alive as it collapsed on me yet again, while the incessant ache for Sam tortured and wrenched every muscle in my body.
     
    Too late , I thought. I was paralyzed for life.
     
               
     
               
     
               
     
               
     
               
     
    Chapter Eight
     
    July
     

                I WAS SPRAWLED OUT ON THE SOFA IN THE DEN watching a Yankees-Red Sox game while the air conditioning unit whirred obtrusively. Hideki Matsui just hit a triple, putting the Yanks up seven to four in the bottom of the fifth inning. One out. All of Yankee Stadium roared and jumped to their feet in the midst of the heat.
     
                Sam and I used to watch these rivaled games with a fierce, often arousing competitive edge. The winner had to “console” the losing opponent by performing some kind of pleasurable act: cooking a certain meal; a backrub; oral sex; you name it. One time Sam made me wash his car.
     
                A forceful knock at the door jolted me as I flashed back to the night Sam was killed. Tentatively creeping to the door, some part of me expected to see the police officers on the other side, waiting to address me: “Mrs. Vanzant?”
     
                I cracked the door ajar, then pulled it open when I saw Jeff, a milkshake