Chapter Fifteen
DEAR SAMMY,
I’M WRITING TO SHARE A QUICK NOTE AND A BIRD FACT WITH YOU.
DID YOU KNOW DOVES AND PIGEONS ARE SCIENTIFICALLY THE SAME? THEY’RE BOTH COLUMBIDAE. THE SMALLER BIRDS ARE OFTEN CALLED “DOVES,” AND THE LARGER ONES ARE OFTEN CALLED “PIGEONS,” BUT THERE’S NO REAL SEPARATION BETWEEN THEM. I LOOKED THIS UP TODAY, AND THOUGHT PERHAPS IT MIGHT INTEREST YOU.
I ALSO WANTED TO TAKE A MOMENT TO REASSURE YOU, IN CASE YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS, THAT THE QUESTIONS YOU SEND THIS LIbrARY ARE COMPLETELY CONFIDENTIAL. THE TRUST BETWEEN OUR PATRONS AND THE LIbrARY IS SOMETHING WE TAKE VERY SERIOUSLY.
PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO REACH OUT TO US AGAIN. WHATEVER YOU’RE INTERESTED IN—BE IT BIRDS, BOOKS, OR BIGGER QUESTIONS—WE’RE ALWAYS HERE TO HELP.
A psychologist is leading a story time for children going through divorce.
She’s read two picture books to the room.
One is about having two homes, and another is about how their family is still a family even if they don’t live together.
I should be at the reference desk right now, but I stood up for a moment to peek in.
“My dad made me a new room,” a little boy tells the storyteller.
“Did you get to help decorate?” she asks.
He nods. “Yes. It’s green.”
“Mine is purple,” the little girl beside him says.
I look back at the reference desk. A man is hovering by it. From my peripheral vision, I can see that he keeps glancing at me. He’s pretending to inspect a stand with booklets about local events. I walk back to the desk and sit down.
While trying to put a brochure about the hot-air balloon festival back, he accidentally knocks over the entire display.
He swears, then kneels down to pick up the fallen brochures.
His pants don’t fit him well, so he’s yanking them up while he leans, to avoid exposing his butt crack; however, he’s unsuccessful. I avert my eyes.
After putting everything back, he says, “I’m sorry about that.”
I look at him. His face is bright red. I smile. “Oh, don’t worry about it. Thanks for cleaning it up. Can I help you with anything?”
He inches closer to my desk and mumbles something.
I say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
He glances around, then says, “Yes. Um. I-I’m actually the man who was watching porn here a few weeks ago.”
I blink. I didn’t recognize him at first, but I see now it is him. What am I supposed to say to this guy—
“I’m writing something,” he says.
I open my mouth. I don’t know the script for this one. I spit out, “That’s, uh, nice. Is it, like, erotica—”
“No. It’s psychology. I’m doing an analysis of vulva appearance in pornography.
I’m researching the impact that imagery has on people’s psychological well-being.
There are certain beauty standards in relation to genitals.
My internet was down, so I came here. I could have gone to the college library, but it’s a forty-minute drive.
I live right around the corner. I had a deadline.
I’m sorry for the trouble I caused. I wanted to offer to speak to the news. ”
His face is flushed.
I say, “The news?”
“Yes, I’ve been seeing all the hullabaloo it caused. I feel bad. I-I thought perhaps I could explain how this all started.”
He’s fidgeting, sweating, and stammering. I have an inkling, based on the way he carries himself, that appearing on the news might be his worst nightmare.
I say, “No, sir, you don’t need to do that—”
“I want you to know I’m not a pervert,” he says. “I’m not a very sexual person at all, actually. I’ve never really had any interest—”
I stop him. “I don’t need to know that.”
“Sorry, sorry.” He bats his hands. “I just want to explain myself. I was just absentmindedly working. I’m sort of desensitized to it. I’m constantly scouring porn for vulvas, and I just wasn’t thinking—”
“It’s okay, sir. Really. It’s fine.”
He sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. Please let me know if I can find any resources to help you with your work.”
“Hi, Darcy.”
I look up from my desk and see Brenda has entered the back room.
I smile at her. “Hello. What are you doing here?”
It must be raining out. She’s wearing a damp Gore-Tex jacket.
She approaches my desk. “I was going to call you but I happened to be driving through the area, so I thought I’d pop in and share the good news in person.”
“What is it?” I ask. Did Declan take back all his complaints and promise to stop disturbing us?
“You got it.” She smiles.
“Got it?” I repeat, confused.
She says, “The job. You got the branch manager job. HR will send a formal email and the letter of offer, but we’re officially offering you the job. I was so excited, I had to come tell you myself.”
“I got it?” I frown. How could I possibly have gotten the job? I only did the one interview.
“Assuming you still want it,” she adds.
I stare at her blankly, my mouth slightly ajar. “But I-I only did one interview… and it was months ago. I thought—I-I didn’t realize—”
“We just put it on hold while you were off sick, and then other priorities came up, but we all agreed you were the best candidate. The second interview was just a formality, really. We would have just taken that time to tell you the job was yours, frankly. If you need time to think about it—”
“No, no, I do want it,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m just surprised. I-I—”
Mordecai is standing behind Brenda in the doorway, eavesdropping. He’s beaming at me and holding both his thumbs up.
Brenda says, “I know you’ll do a fabulous job. Congratulations.”
I smile. “Thank you.”
“I’m so proud of you.” Joy beams.
We’re in the kitchen. I just told her the news.
She says, “You should have called to tell me. I would have made us something nicer to celebrate. Should we toss this soup in the fridge and order something? Do you want sushi? Do we have any wine? Or should we go out?”
There’s a large cast-iron pot of mushroom soup simmering on our stovetop.
“No, I love your mushroom soup,” I say. The kitchen smells earthy, like mushrooms, garlic, and butter. I have my arms around Joy’s waist. Her hair is up. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
She exhales. “If you say so. Well, this is so exciting! I’m over the moon— Oh, I forgot! I have a little news too. I found a home for Kyle.”
“Did you really?” I ask.
“Yes. Hodan and Ada said they want him.”
I frown. “They do? But I thought they wanted a dog.”
“Yes, well, they realized a cat would suit their lifestyle better.”
That’s such good news. I know he’ll be safe with them.
I smile. “I’m so happy.”
I jump into the shower. Hot water is hitting my back.
While I lather my hair with shampoo, I spot strands of Joy’s hair stuck to the tile.
She’s arranged the hairs into an outline of a woman’s body.
One strand forming the slope of her shoulder, another the dip of her waist. Rather than rinse the hair off, like I usually do, I leave it there.
“Did you write your letter to Ben?” Dr. Jeong asks.
I have it in my hands. I hand it to her. “Are you going to read it?”
“That’s up to you,” she says. “I don’t have to read it if you’d prefer to keep it private, but if you’d like a witness, I’m also happy to read it.”
I think about that for a moment.
“Maybe you could read it when I leave,” I suggest.
“Okay,” she says. “That sounds good to me. Shall we do some breathing exercises to get started?”
I feel the weight in my chest become lighter.
I nod. “Okay. Sure.”
Dear Ben,
I used to picture running into you in a store somewhere in the future. You’d be with your wife and kids. We’d both have a little gray in our hair. Fine lines in our foreheads. Our eyes would connect across the store. I’d smile at you. You’d smile back and nod.
It’s hard for me to write this. I’m having a hard time finding the words.
I feel a lot of guilt, regret, remorse, anger, but also, sympathy for you.
For several years after we broke up, I considered you someone I’d hurt, and I thought of myself as this grisly lesbian monster.
I tried not to think about you. I blocked your number.
But you turned into this intrusive thought.
I saw flashes of your face the way I imagine conscionable murderers see their victims. In quiet moments, when no one was talking and my mind wandered, my heart sank to the dark pit in my stomach where I kept you.
We broke up because I was gay. I didn’t tell you that because I thought that would wound you too severely.
Instead, I told you I needed to be alone for a while.
I’m sorry. I should have been honest with you.
For what it’s worth, I think I did need to be alone for a while.
And I think that even if I weren’t gay, we needed to break up.
I felt comfortable with you. You were a bighearted person.
I saw the good in you because there was a lot of good in you.
There were also times when I felt trapped and mistreated by you, though.
It’s hard for me to reconcile the complicated feelings I have about you.
You and I started dating when I was only eighteen, and you were a full decade older.
During our relationship, I was a staunch defender of our age gap.
I felt older than the people my age. I felt like you and I were peers, but we weren’t.
I’m the age now that you were when we broke up.
It’s hard to believe that was a decade ago.
I really buy into the idea that our frontal lobes don’t fully develop until we’re in our mid-twenties.
My brain wasn’t totally formed when I met you, but yours was.
You were your fully fledged self when we first met.
I was green to the world. I thought I wasn’t, but I was.
Easy to manipulate, and eager to be liked. I didn’t know who I was yet.
I’m around eighteen-year-olds at my job sometimes.
It would offend them if I infantilized them by calling them kids, so I won’t, but they are different than who I am.
I think of them as people I should protect.
I can’t imagine dating an eighteen-year-old when I was twenty-eight.
The thought of that not only turns my stomach, but it feels sinister and sad.
I feel guilty about the mistakes I made in our relationship, and I have a lot of compassion for you.
You were, and will always be, an important person to me.
I’m devastated that you died, and am haunted by the idea that I contributed in any way to the suffering you experienced in your life.
I really hope that you’re in a peaceful state now.
I learned a lot from our relationship and I’m grateful for that. If I controlled how things work, you’d be alive right now, living with a woman who really loved you, you’d get a dog, and you’d be happy.
You were a flawed person, like I was. I wish you were here so I could forgive you and ask you to forgive me.
Instead, I’ll share this poem by Rumi that makes me think of you:
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
Darcy
Joy holds the door open for me while I carry our drinks outside. Our wisteria is blooming; there are bunches of pink flowers cascading over the awning on our deck. We walk barefoot along our stone path toward the lake. The ice cubes in our cups clink against our glasses.
We sit down at the end of the dock; Joy kicks her Birkenstocks off and puts her dirty feet in my lap. We sip our drinks and listen to the grebes make weird bird sex noises.