Once a year, I pilfer through my room and get rid of junk I’ve collected. Tonight I’m ridding myself of three, nearly four years of my life with someone. I thought I’d be upset when I buried this hatchet, but I feel cleansed, as though I’ve stepped through a fire and came out a new person. I’ve met someone who has accepted me just as I am, who doesn’t want me to fit his bill. I can see myself loving this person, and the blossom sprouting from the wreckage of a chapter closed is opening up. For the last six months of my life, I started to feel alive in a way I didn’t think possible a year ago. I want to shout to the world that I’m back, and I am so much better than I ever was.
Mar 7
It seems cruel when you meet someone you want to be with that they live five hours away. But I’m happy, happier than I’ve been in a very long time. Everything I went through was worth it if it prepared me for this.
Feb 14
I was closing up with my Mom at the Moose Lodge, a private bar, when I noticed an infomercial on the television for vibrators. I’m not normally uncomfortable with these situations with people my own age however watching an advertisement for self-pleasure (when my interest is slightly piqued at what the company had to offer) was exceedingly uncomfortable with my mother. So, I tried to nonchalantly turn the tv off, couldn’t find a remote, and had to ask, “Mom, can you please turn that television off? It’s in our own best interest, trust me.”
To which she replied, “Ooo-Kay.” And before she turned it off, she said, “oh, Katie, I’m not sure ‘in our own best interest’ was the best way to say that.” And she cackled and left the television on.
This is like the unfortunate time my Grandma was sick, her voice was hoarse, and told Amanda she was just using her “sexy voice.”
Going to sleep tonight wondering if my mother and I have reached Gilmore Girls, the post-college years.
Jan 20
“Did you have a good New Year?”
He shakes his head. He’s balding in ways only old men don’t care about, and he knows my name and my sister’s name. I have been taking his order for six years, and I still don’t remember his face. I remember his name, and I remember three years ago when he picked up his spaghetti for one that he told me to never get married. Marriage ends in loneliness. You should die before your spouse does, it’ll save you a lot of grief. “It’s 2013 now! Isn’t that exciting?” ”No.” “Why’s that?” “Everything in my fridge from 2012 is now bad.”
*
I had just gotten my first period. Her window had just been nailed shut two weeks before, and I watched as they unwrapped her Christmas presents for her. I asked for McDonald’s for dinner, and I was so mad at you when you cried on our way home over the bridges. Everything was a bridge, back then.
She had scars three inches long.
*
My grandfather died in 1997. I was taking a bath. I haven’t taken a bath since then. You got a phone call and I remember a lit cigarette and a quick retreat to the back yard. You two smoked inside, then. You had just opened a beer, and you had a full head of black hair. Dad was still in shape and he had a moustache. We had just finished dinner. One should only call with news after six-thirty or seven in the evening. I don’t know who called you, but you hung up the phone without a goodbye. I wish I knew who told you Grandpa was dead. Was it Grandma? Was she crying?
Dad talked about quitting smoking, but the smell had saturated my life by then, and I loved how the furniture smelled when you were both at work (the few times Dad had a job).
I used to leave my fourth grade class and sneak into the teacher’s lounge to call Dad to come and get me. I didn’t know he knew I wasn’t sick and he knew that I was sneaking around calling from different phones in the elementary school. He would pick me up, “Mrs. Norris, Katie’s father is here to take her home, please ask her to come to the front office with all of her stuff.” We’d drive the three miles to our house in silence. He’d take my hand and lead me inside. He always gave me a glass of ginger ale, and he’d say, “We won’t tell your Mom.” His hand on my face, a kiss on my forehead. I always cried. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want to be in school, I wanted to be at home with my father.
When you came home after Grandpa’s funeral, you gave me a box. You told me that my Grandfather was a great man. He was an inventor, a musician, and a writer. I wonder if you always thought highly of my Grandfather. I met him once, I was very young. I don’t remember him. Every time we go up to visit Grandma, I lock myself in the small upstairs bathroom, and I open his after-shave she has kept since his death. It smells horrible. When I’m left alone in her house, I look through her room and find his old jackets and shirts. I like to sit at the upright out-of-tune piano and wonder how many songs he had written there. I found the blue prints to so many inventions in the back corner of the basement where Grandma keeps her supply of food just in case another Great Depression occurs. She doesn’t want to go hungry like she did when she was a child.
My grandparents met at a dance before the war. My Grandma told me it was love at first sight.
