Thread trick

Thread trick

My scheduled appearance had ended early. The three hour ride home was too daunting to start right away. So I took a detour. I had known the address. The internet made it impossible for me not to know …What would it hurt to stop…Who would it hurt.   We haven't seen each other in years. But from time to time, I skim the front page of her Facebook. She keeps most of the page blocked, but I am able to ascertain small details about her life. She married a postman and moved. We had lost something a long time ago. Disappearances …happen.

She opens the door like she had been expecting me. She leaves it open and turns and walks back into her house. No hug, no kiss just a turned shoulder. I close the door lightly and I follow.

I stand in the center of a pleasantly decorated living room.  She disappears into what must be the kitchen. A minute later she marches out and hands me a large rocks glass. The odor of Jimmy Beam surges into my nostrils. I look into the belly of the glass. Ice cubes jingle against the glass in a pool of coke and booze. It’d been awhile since I had a drink in my hand. I had reached a point where I no longer thought about picking up every day. I’d hardly thought about it at all actually.  I am told this when the demon is most dangerous.

Drinking never made me happy, but it made me feel like I was going to be happy just after the next shot I couldn’t understand why the happiness never came.  Alcohol kept me trapped in a world of slothful procrastination. I had all the answers when I was drunk. I’d figured the way out of the maze with each sip, gulp and belt.  Yes, whiskey gave me all the answers. I just couldn’t remember what they were when I woke up. I Next time, next time! Next time I drank it would be different, next time it would make me feel good again. Then I’d wake up in a piss soaked pants with vomit on my shirt and instantly panic that there wasn’t any booze left in the bottle. Those were the days.

I lower the glass below my waste and let it hang. It slides down to the edge of my finger tips and I pull it back up and let it slide slowly again and then I repeat.   I stand in the center in the living room and watit  for permission to move. .I think about the movie “Jerry McGuire.”

 “You know, I was good in the living room. They'd send me in there, I'd do it alone. And now I just... I don't know. “

 I think about stupid things like movie quotes when I’m nervous. . I think about stupid things all the time.

She looks at me.

“You were never good --anywhere. You sucked , as a matter of fact. You either took too long or were too fast…Wait, are you quoting damn movies again. You’re such a fucking moron..such a damn little kid…You always thought you were so funny…or at least you thought you were more funny than you were..dickhead.”

She points to the large brown leather sofa. I obediently sit down. I look for a coaster on the coffee table in front of me but there isn’t one. so I rest the drink on my knee.  

 “I don’t know why the fuck I let you in…asshole…

I should call the fucking cops on you……asshole.”

She lights a cigarette….

“You’re lucky I never got a restraining order on your sorry ass.”

A picture of a dog I remember with fondness hangs above  the mantle place behind her. A small cedar chest sat below the picture. The dog’s name had been engraved on a copper placard on the front of the little chest.  I didn’t dare ask when Poochy had died.

I sit back on the sofa and watch her pace. She still has that little girl pout that drew me to her way back in the beginning. Her dark red hair is cropped. Razor thin wrinkles appear and disappear as she squints her eyes and relaxed them. Her body was cloaked in an oversized blue and white fluffy bathrobe prevents me from seeing  her body.

“Trust me, I still look great underneath. ..Shit head.” She says. She tightens  the robe’s thick black belt.

“And the wrinkles are nothing compared to my friend’s, and don’t waste your breath making joke about the black belt ..yeah I earned it.”

I hadn’t said a word.

She sizes me up.

“Well- well-well- take a look at you….still got all your hair..maybe a few extra pounds but you look pretty much just the same as before…You remind me of  that story about the guy who sells his soul to keep his appearance but sees his real self in a reflection.”

She likes this idea and smirks. “Yeah, that’s you alright,..fat Elvis on the outside and Dorian Gray inside rotting, dirty, disgusting, diseased, putrid and pathetic on the inside.” She says.

I take it. And say nothing.

She begins to pace back and forth. She draws smoke and blows it out the side of her mouth.  I look down at the coffee table. An album of wedding pictures sat in the center.  The cover photo showed her in her wedding gown arm and arm with a heavy set balding man with a nice smile in a black tuxedo. They are waving either hello or good bye. She picks up the album and puts it on the other side of the room underneath a television set.

“He’s an honest, hardworking man and he is good to me, nothing like you. Nothing like you at all. But then who really is…Oh wait, No…that’s not true,” she says,

“That's not true;  do you still have that loser friend of yours?.. The one who used to fuck all the girls at the hotel. The one who everyone thought was good looking and I thought was ugly? Yeah, you were just like him..two fucking losers, back stabbers, thieves…You were just like him. ..Fucking predators.” She snuffs her cigarette out in an glass ash tray and lights another. And returns to pacing.

”Not in the beginning though,.  You were different way back.  It was after you turned thirty-five, or thirty-six. You turned on me. You fooled me pretty good.  You must be proud of yourself.”

She stops pacing suddenly and stands in front of me, over me.  The coffees table becomes my last line of defense. She points her cigarette at me. She’s finished warming up. Now the good stuff is coming.

 I guess I knew the moment she opened the door and let me in it would get to this point. I wonder how many times she’s rehearsed  what she was about to be able to finally say to me , to my face.  I imagine her molding each word every day in a furnace of endless daydreams into perfectly selected oral bullets.

 I realize that I’m actually glad for her. I raise my chin and wait. I deserve it.  I almost want to make a joke about asking for a blind fold.  Instead I grip the glass and notice the ice cubes have just about melted.  I wait for her to yell and spew.

 She lets her cigarette fall to the hard wood floor and steps on it with the heel of her bare foot.  

Instead she speaks with soft words.

“Remember…that night…When we went to Maine to tell your Mother the good news? She was so excited…She did that old trick, remember?..” with a needle and thread. Thread the needle and hold the string at the very end over a pregnant woman's belly, needle pointing downward. As you hold your hand still, the needle will, in most cases, begin to move. If the needle swings in a circle, the belly holds a baby girl. If the needle swings back and forth in a straight line, you have a boy.”

She looks away from me.

She takes some tissue out of the pocket of her robe and kneels down and cleans up the ash off the floor. She gathers saliva in her mouth and spits on the remaining ash and mops it up with the tissue. She squeezes the tissue into a ball and hands it to me.

“As I was wheeled into the operating room I pleaded with God. But… just like you, the selfish bastard wasn’t there.” 

She turns back to me. I want to look away . . . or never look away, I can’t decide.  Her blue eyes rip into me, with pain.., pain and loss. There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bruise, break or bleed.

“You threw it all away. You are shallow and stupid" 

I squeeze the ball of tissue paper with the ash inside and her spit inside and drop it in my glass of whiskey. I circle the glass a little with my index finger and mix it in.  I watch the tissue. It unfolds sand breaks apart in the dark liquid. I am somewhere else suddenly. I enter a room in my head that I haven’t been in years. I hold the glass to the light. I lick my lips and bring the glass to my mouth.  She reaches out across the coffee table and grabs my wrist. I look at her. I forgot she was there. She takes the glass out of my hand and goes into the kitchen. I hear the sink run and she returns wiping her hands with a blue dish rag.

I lean forward and bury my face in my palms. She is still for a minute. But then she gets down in a crouch and her face is in front of mine. She gets under and makes me look her into her eyes.  And she slaps me hard across my face. So slaps me so hard my ears start to ring. And she winds up to do it again and I don’t do anything to stop her but then as her hand reaches my cheek it stops. She holds her hand on my cheek. Her finger tips run up my forehead and through my hair.

 She seems surprised by what her hand is doing. She takes the loose sleeve of her robe and wipes under my eyes. A perfume I once loved  brings subtle memories with it.

“Are you satisfied now? Is that better? Are you happy?” she says.

She grabs my hands and pulls me up.

“Come on” She says.

I’m suddenly standing and towering over her and I remember how small a person she is.

“You selfish bastard.”

“Damn you.” She hugs me suddenly.

She buries her face into my chest and breathes in deep.

Then she takes my hand and leads me to the front door.  And she opens it. She grips my hand hard as If am hanging off the edge of a cliff and she is hanging onto me while I hang from the ledge. And then she let’s go of me. I look at her and we both smile and actually laugh for a few moments.

And then I turn and leave. I hear the door bolt behind me.