Written in the Scars(8)

“It’s just because I saw him. That’s it. Don’t let this spiral, Elin,” I say aloud. I miss him. My God, I miss him. Tears stream, an endless testament to the emotion, the dreams, the rejection, the failure, that swirl inside my soul.

Maybe that’s why he was eager to leave. Maybe that’s why it just took a simple shot from me to go, and he hauled ass out the door. Maybe it’s because after all these years, he realizes what a joke I am of a woman, one that can’t conceive. With me, he can’t play catch in the backyard with a little boy that looks like him or tuck a little girl into bed that looks like me. There’s no hope for any of that with me, and that’s the most humiliating thing anyone can ever experience.

Yet, here I sit, spewing hate his way, secretly wanting him to return. My words say how horrible he was for not being there for me, and that’s true, but my heart misses finding the rhythm of his in the middle of the night.

“I can’t do this,” I sputter, throwing the pillow across the room. It lands at the foot of the entertainment center, brushing against it just hard enough to rattle off a metal figurine in the shape of a coal bucket Ty’s grandpa gave him right before he died—one miner to another. I watch it freefall to the floor, almost in slow motion. It falls end over end, twisting and turning in the air before it lands solidly on the carpet.

I know what I have to do. Or, rather, what I can’t do anymore. The end of a journey of my own.

Racing to the garage, maneuvering the house by memory because I can’t see through the tears stinging my eyes, I grab a box. Coming in just as quickly, I start picking up what’s left of Ty’s belongings and shoving them inside. I don’t think about it. I focus on the fact that I can’t live in this perpetual state of uncertainty anymore. I can’t live loving a man that doesn’t want me, in a situation in which I’m doomed to fail. It’s time to accept reality.

Using the tail of my shirt, I sop up the wetness from my face.

The coal bucket figurine goes into the box. It’s joined by a picture of him from high school, holding the state title up in the air. My hands shake as I pick up his grandmother’s quilt off the quilt rack and lay it on top of the other items. The pale pink linen is darkened by the fluid dripping off my chin.

Sniffing up the snot that dangles onto my lips, I start towards the bedroom where a few articles of his clothing still reside in the closet. I stomp by the room that would’ve been the nursery with the practiced “eyes straight ahead” so I don’t break down. It’s a dream that will never happen.

I grab his Tennessee Arrows hat off the hook on the closet door and dig out his favorite t-shirt from the dresser drawer. Before I can toss them into the box, I catch the scent of his cologne, and that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

I fall to my knees, the box dropping to the floor in front of me. I hold his hat to my chest and sob.





TY

I rustle through a trash bag against the wall and find a clean t-shirt. Pulling it over my head, I notice the smell of the laundry detergent. It’s some brand I picked up at the laundromat yesterday. Waves of overly perfumed, cheap flowers drench my senses. It’s not so much what it smells like that drives me nuts, but what it doesn’t.

It doesn’t smell like home.

Elin always uses the same brand, the same one her mother used. Every time I do a load at a random laundromat with a box of suds from the dispenser, I’m reminded how much I miss her and how every little part of my life goes back to her. Even my fucking laundry soap.

Collapsing on the futon in Cord McCurry’s spare room, I rest my head against the rough material and close my eyes. Bracing for the onslaught of memories that floods me every time I don’t intentionally focus on something else, I’m halfway relieved when the sound of footsteps thud through the room.

“You all right?” Cord’s voice echoes from the hallway

“Yeah.”

A few moments later, his head pokes around the corner. His sandy brown hair is cut short, his jaw set as he takes me in and decides how to approach.

“There’s food and shit in the refrigerator. Washer and dryer are in the room off the kitchen.” He leans against the doorframe and waits on me to answer.

“Thanks for letting me stay here.”

“You’ve let me bunk with you a time or two. Glad to repay the favor. You can stay here for as long as you need to,” he says, a slight slant to his grin.

It’s one I return readily, an understanding between two men that met as a couple of rowdy boys in high school. Cord was a handful when he moved to Jackson, getting suspended for fighting on his very first day in school. I jumped in, not being able to stand watching the new kid from foster care—a fact I learned from my mother the night before—getting mauled by Shane Pettis, resident asshole, and got myself three free days to boot.