In the shower, I run the water and step in with a deep sigh. Moving like an arthritic tortoise, I manage to soap and rinse. Again, turning so I don’t twist, I wet my hair and fill my palm with shampoo from the pump bottle, but I can’t raise my arms high enough reach the top of my head. The pain rises until it chokes me, and I’m terrified to push through it, scared I will re-break myself. I can’t do this.
A memory rises.
* * *
“Let me.” The ice cubes in the plastic bag rattled as I folded the dishtowel around them to protect Val’s skin from the coldness.
Her eye was already swollen. I helped her wipe away the blood from her nose, but her split lip still leaked crimson. She was lucky she hadn’t lost a tooth. Lucky, I thought, like luck had anything to do with this bullshit.
“Ouch.” Val winced as I put the bag of ice on her face. “Shit. That hurts.”
“You’re going to have a shiner.”
She rolled her good eye at me. “Think it’ll make me look tuff?”
She said it like Ponyboy in The Outsiders, the movie we’d obsessed over for years. Nothing about our lives was like the Curtis brothers’. No Darrel, no Sodapop, no Johnny. Maybe most importantly—for me, anyway—no Dallas Winston. Still, something in that book and movie called to us enough that we could quote it, line for line, because of how often we’d consumed both.
“Yeah. You look tuff.” I sat next to her on the bed and listened for any sounds from outside her room. Her father’s rampage had worn off before she called me. I got there as soon as I could, but wished I could have been there in time to stop him from hitting her. I wasn’t sure what I’d have done, but I liked to think it would have been impressive.
I took care of her this way. Ice for her eye. Chicken noodle soup heated on the stove in a battered pot. She didn’t cry about any of it. I mean, neither of us ever did. Tears don’t do any good. You deal with what your parents hand you and wait until you’re old enough to get out. At sixteen, we only had a few more years to go.
I took care of Val, my sister-friend, until it was late and both of us were yawning. The ice had long since melted, and I emptied the bag into the sink of the bathroom down the hall. I pushed the dresser in front of the door and crawled into bed next to her. I was careful not to shift her too much. I saw the bruises blooming on her back and shoulders.
“It’s the last time,” she said with her eyes closed. “I swear to God, he’s never going to hit me again. I’ll … I’ll kill him if he does.”
We didn’t talk about what we did together in her mother’s hospital room, or how what we did contributed to where we were now. I touched her split lip. She’d have a scar.
“I’ll always take care of you if you need help, Val. You know I’ll do anything for you.”
Val opened her eyes. She held up her hand so we could link our pinkies. “Same. Anything.”
* * *
Val should be here to help me wash my hair. To help me get into my comfy pajamas. To laugh with me at old sitcoms. She would have been, not so long ago, but everything between us has changed. After all I’ve done for her. After all she’s done for me. This is where we end?
“You’re the one who asked me to fuck him in the first place.”
Wine, Brooklyn, the check from my mother. Yes, I remembered the conversation. The toss-away comment I’d made over a year ago had come back to haunt me.
I’ve known about the affair since a few days after I got home from the hospital. My phone had been lost in the accident, so my husband got me another one. He even set it up for me—by logging in to his own Cloud account.
My husband, as it turns out, is a very stupid man.
I saw their texts. All of them. Ping, ping, ping, one after the other, until I managed to get to the settings and turn off the account. Using my arms hurt. Finding out Val was sleeping with my husband was worse. I don’t remember knowing before I read those texts … yet somehow, I was not totally surprised.
It explained why I hadn’t been able to get in touch with her about the accident, why she hadn’t visited or even checked in. I didn’t tell Jonathan I’d found out. Just home from surgery with busted-up bones, missing memories, exhausted and sick, how could I have been expected to deal with this too? Short answer, I could not.
I.
Could.
Not.
I still can’t. Seeing her at the Blue Dove last night, I’d been unable to stop myself from reaching out. If I could pretend I didn’t know, then she could pretend it wasn’t true. Right?
I’ve seen Val lie. I know she can do it straight-faced, not so much as a blink to give her away. She was not lying to me at the Blue Dove, and if she was telling the truth, that means this is far more complicated than I already thought it was. I remember that I no longer love him, but I have no recollection of ever planning to actually leave him. Is this how our marriage ends, just like that? How can it?
Weeping, I stand beneath the water until it goes cold.
I manage to get a towel around my waist. I take my comb into the bedroom to sit on the edge of the bed while I drag it through my wet and unwashed hair, but again, I can’t lift my arms high enough. I’m dry mouthed from the pain and shaking from the effort.
All I want is to have clean hair and a good night’s sleep. It’s almost eleven at night, but my husband is still not home. Harriett’s lights are on. I know she suffers from insomnia. I know she almost always waits up for his car to make sure he got home all right. She never says anything about it, and I’m sure he doesn’t know, but I do.
Harriett is always coming over the to the main house unannounced, but this is the first time I’ve ever done it to her.
“Diana,” she says when she opens the door. Her platinum hair is done up in her curlers, covered with a triangle of fabric. Without makeup, her face is soft and pale and not young, but younger looking. “Come in. What’s wrong?”
“I wanted … I wanted to wash my hair …” My voice shakes with sobs. I want so much more than that, but I don’t know how to ask her without telling her everything about Val and Jonathan. The carnage and ruin that has become my life. Once it’s said, I won’t be able to take it back. The end of my marriage will be real, and I will have to face it.
I’m just not ready.
Marrying Jonathan had been settling. I’ve known that for a long time. Harriett had spoken so glowingly of her son, a good man, a fine catch, and I’d been at a low point after the loss of my father, so I’d let her set us up on a date. One date had turned into two. I had found him, if not intriguing, at least unobjectionable.
And then we were married, and I’m not sure how or why, except that I loved his mother and I’d been alone for a good long time, and he asked. In the end, that’s what it comes down to. Jonathan asked, and I thought that if he was the kind of man I’d never be able to rely on, well … then he could never let me down.
I’ve cried in front of Harriett before, but it’s been a long time. No matter how frustrated I’ve been since the accident, this is the first time my emotions have up and run away with me. I may have forgotten a good four months of my life, but I haven’t forgotten how many times I’ve leaned on her in the past.