Christmas

One of the last things he ever said to me: You’ll never be able to forget me.

I didn’t realize at the time that it was a malediction.

It’s Christmas time again. How I abhor the Season.

I’m sorting through my collection of beach glass, thinking to make my sister-in-law a present.

I love beach glass, love it to the point of grieving, as I live now so far from any sea. I run my hands through it; the frosted colors glow in the weak winter light. Here is lovely, cranberry red, pale muted pink, deep heavy green. And here is cold, translucent blue, the precise color of his eyes.

I close my hand tightly upon it. My knuckles wash white. Is it anger, sadness, hatred or love that floods my eyes abruptly with tears?

I blink them away, furious at myself, and cast the glass down, back into the pile. I don’t have time for this dangerous nostalgia. There’s no profit in the past.

Still, busy as I keep myself, I am depressed. Towards dusk, it occurs to me that I am lonely, too. With him, I was never lonely. Or maybe it was simply that there were so many worse things going on that no room was left for loneliness.

If I had a close friend, I think that this would be the night I would confide in her about him. But then again, maybe not. It’s such a pathetic, ugly little tale, more shameful than unique.

And Christmas shouldn’t be the Season for confessions of adultery, suicide, and abortion - the Three Tacky Sins - should it?

**************

It is readily apparent that I am living under his curse. Why else would I broodingly run Google Searches for his name?

He must be old by now. Eleven years ago he was old. He must be really old by now. I wonder if he still has his wife. His kids must be grown by now. I wonder if he would still find me beautiful. Probably not.

It’s not doing me any good putting it off. It’s a story that aches to be told. A veritable abscess of a tale, spoiling for eleven years, fetid and foul, a poison on my soul.

I do not subscribe to the belief that Confession is Good for the Soul. Often, telling just swells the hurt further, spreads wider the infection.

But sometimes, we have to Tell. Sometimes, selfish and self-centeredly, we can’t not bludgeon others with our stories.

**************

Fa la la la la, I was pregnant by my married lover. Pregnant on purpose, a despicable deed, an act of desperation.

I could not stand living as I was any more. Something had to change. A change for the better would be good, but even for the worst would be okay.

The look on his face when I announced my pregnancy: Chilling. It confirmed everything I didn’t want to know. The rest is merely details.

His Abortion Campaign was nothing if not interesting. For too long, he’d told me that his children were the most important things to him. The reason he could not leave his wife. The reason I was merely his mistress. The child within my young womb terrified him. I told him I liked the name Bethany for a girl. He swore he’d “make it up to me” if I’d get rid of it.

I drove into the City that night, across the great dark bridge, to be with Peg, who loved me. I wish I could have loved her more.

We sat on her couch. She put her long cool hands on my bare belly. I was just slightly pregnant but she swore she could feel the heated aura of new life.

I told Peg of John’s reaction. She cried the tears I didn’t trust myself with. We kissed, and I took her tenderness and compassion in selfish comfort, still thinking of John.

Making love with Peg, I was demanding, almost rough. It was always like this between she and I. As submissive as I was with John, I was dominant with Peg.

After, we talked about the baby. Mentioned John not at all. For the first time, I felt happy about the baby, happy about my pregnancy. Peg was offering my baby a future. Offering me a future.

Of course I failed her, failed my child.

I left at dawn, kissing Peg goodbye as she sleepily walked me to the door, sending me off with a plate of cookies and her soft endearments.

**************

O Silent Night… drugged incoherent from pain pills, sleeping pills. I had vomited when I had tried to swallow too many pills too fast. I had found that taking pills in between nibbles of Peg’s cookies kept them down.

I telephoned John’s house before I passed out, unable to form words when he answered.

Of course he couldn’t come himself. He sent a mutual friend. Who took me to the E.R.

They strapped me in a wheelchair, like I was crazy. Made me drink syrup of ipecac. I lost my pills in a horror of chocolate chip cookies and bile.

I had to drink something made of charcoal that they explained would keep me from absorbing any of the pills that I hadn’t thrown up. I told them that it was unlikely that anything could remain in my stomach. My ribs felt cracked from the vomiting.

I had to make the obligatory promise to the attending doctor that I would not try to commit suicide before they would let John’s friend finally drive me home.

I was mute and miserable on the drive home. It was four a.m., the hardest time of an insomniac’s night. I had throw up once again into a towel in the car.

The lights were on in my apartment. Peg’s car was parked out front. Of course John had called Peg. She had filled in, too, when my cat had been run over and killed.

She ran a warm bath for me. Washed my long hair, combed it out for me. We all loved my hair back in those days.

She didn’t try to make me talk. She didn’t ask me any questions.

She dried me off, helped me into a tee shirt, tucked me into bed and gave me sips of cool water.

She stayed all day as I dozed in and out of consciousness. I woke groggily to hear the phone ring. Apparently John was calling as soon as he could. I heard Peg tell him that she was taking care of me and that I’d be fine.

Her voice was calm, pleasantly neutral, as she talked with him. I remembered back to a time in late summer. Peg was over at my apartment. We were cuddled in my bed watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, laughing about the both of us finding Troi to be pretty hot. My door banged open. John had used his key, come over unexpectedly.

As much as he encouraged my relationship with Peg, as much as he counted on it to keep me busy when he was at home with his family, I don’t think the reality of what she and I shared together sunk in until he saw us together that evening.

Something spiteful, something ugly crossed his face. The smile he turned to us was more a leer.

“Jammie party, girls?” he all but sneered.

I was glad, fiercely glad, for him to see Peg and I together. I still bore the hope, back then, that loving Peg could free me of my thrall to him.

I also wanted to hurt him. Wanted him to feel the pain I did daily, knowing he was with his wife. Knowing his wife and children were his constant choice over me.

I glared at him, hit the mute button on the remote, moved closer to Peg, and he was laughing suddenly, seeing clearly through me.

He told me he needed to have a word with me. I let him beckon me into the large walk-in closet. I had a studio apartment; there was no real privacy.

Closing the closet door, he pushed me down to my knees. The sound of his zipper seemed appallingly loud.

What depravity made it an excitement for me, knowing that Peg realized what he was forcing me to do? Had I been infected by John’s omniscient cruelty, so that I could savor hurting Peg? Or was there a latent malice dwelling within me, drawn to John’s malevolence, an apprentice to his immorality?

I sucked him, making him gasp my name loudly as he came in my mouth. When he departed, smiling his satisfaction at Peg, having shown her who mastered me, I climbed back in bed.

Peg was shaking. I thought she was crying and I was filled with remorse. But she kissed me, surely tasting what I’d just done, and seized my hand, thrusting my palm deep between her legs where she was wet to the thigh.

After sex, she fell asleep in my arms and I lay awake, too sad to sleep. Too depressed to cry, knowing only, desperately, that all of this could not go on much longer, wondering how much worse things would get before it did.

**************

My first words to Peg, that day as I recovered from my over-dose, were to apologize for using her cookies to take the pills with.

She sighed and stroked my hair away from my face. “He’s not going to change. Making him think you’re going to kill yourself won’t change his mind.”

She knew I didn’t want to die. I just wanted John, though he was surely a fate worse than death.

**************

…Born the King of angels, vacuumed from my womb.

John told me that he felt forced to be there for the procedure. And it’s true; I coerced him into being there, standing behind me as I lay on the steel table, my cold feet propped in the stirrups, as the doctor aborted my baby.

Prior to that, I had been quietly hysterical, weeping to the nurse. I told her about my over-dose, kept asking her if the pills had hurt the baby. She replied that she did not know, kindly refraining from pointing out the current irony. She said that it seemed as though I was not quite sure about getting this abortion.

But I was, I was.

I knew that I would never forgive myself for this. But I also knew that I would never forgive John. I knew this would release me from John. This would give me the anger and hatred to leave. How horrible that I could only find strength through killing my baby.

Afterwards, he helped me to his car, started driving me home. He made his resentful remark about my punishing him by making him attend the abortion. He gave me his bottle of Xanax. He was late for work, dropped me off at my apartment where Peg was waiting.

She fed me Cornflakes. After vomiting them up, I took two Xanax and went to bed. I asked her to leave, knowing it hurt her, not caring.

**************

Those are the main details, I suppose, the rest merely epilogue.

But in this epilogue, John dropped off flowers, cheap grocery store carnations. This, I was to suppose, was “making it up to me.”

I began the fascinating process of starvation. There was something almost spiritual about it, it seemed. I was vaguely surprised at how pale I got, at the sharp, hollow look of my face. My eyes amazed me when I stared in a mirror, how dark, so dark, they were. Nothing seemed real anymore.

On Christmas, I opened all the windows, lay in my bed uncovered, imagining myself turning to ice. I was softly astonished that I felt nothing of the cold, though a frigid wind blew my curtains and sent the spiders in their ceiling webs scuttling.

Peg was there, closing the windows. I told her to go.

John was there. He clasped a gold bracelet on my arm, told me we would have another baby someday. I laughed. I think it scared him. He left.

But, ultimately, starvation takes too long.

I eventually rose weakly from my bed. I ordered Chinese food. I began to read the new Stephen King novel. I slept through a whole night.

When a friend from my last, lost job called, wanting to set me up on a blind date, I agreed, went to the tanning salon, bound my still bleeding body, drove up to meet him on a bright January day.

As blind dates go, this one went far. I moved in with him within the month, then married, moved to a strange, ugly state, had babies.

And eleven years have passed. None of this in my past should matter. None of it should still be able to touch me. The shame of the events is certainly compounded and not lessened by allowing myself to be effected even now.

And why do I still think of him, and wonder where he is? He hurt me more than I can even express, but I cannot hate him. Myself, I can hate; that’s always been easy. But not him.

I wish I could break this stupid curse. I wish I could forget him. I wish I could look at Christmas with joy and hope.

But not yet. Not when depression comes with the cold, short days. Not when he is alive in every bright blue sliver of beach glass from of an ocean I also cannot forget. Not when some secret shadow within me longs for what has hurt me the most, and would rather I turn back to pain than live in the plainness of my present.

That’s it.
( Added : 20 Jan 2002