3
Keep Yourself Awake
Amanda
“Everything is going to be fine,” I assure myself. One deep breath later, I click on the contact and listen to the line ring.
“Morning, pumpkin.” My dad’s voice washes down the connection, and tears well up in my eyes.
Damn it, no! I am not falling into the little girl in trouble act!
“Hey, Dad.” I think I make a decent effort at sounding like a sane individual. I forgot that he’s known me for the entire 27 years I’ve been alive.
“What’s wrong?” His voice turns angry in a snap, just like mine. It’s as funny as it is sad.
“Oh, nothing,” I pick at a thread from the bare mattress I bought to sleep on and look around at the barren apartment.
“I call bullshit, pumpkin,” Dad assures me gently.
“Edward, watch your language,” Mom pipes up from the background.
There’s the sound of the phone shuffling around, and then Mom becomes louder.
“You’re on speakerphone. Tell me you're pregnant!”
Mom has wanted me to have kids since the day of the wedding. She would have been happy if I had dropped a baby on the walk down the aisle. I wanted kids, too, on my schedule. Justin kept putting me off. The reminder is a dagger through the back that makes me gasp.
Silence falls, which is a mistake. I usually snark back unless Justin is in the room. He doesn’t like my parents at all and has never understood our dynamic.
Red flag.
Either way, not replying at all is a sure sign that something is wrong. I’m too busy trying to force back tears to answer.
“Amanda?” Mom asks cautiously.
“What’s going on, pumpkin? Let’s work through this.” Dad is trying to be logical. That’s a first.
“I’m getting a divorce,” I burst out and then hold my breath. I know they’ve always had reservations about Justin, but they made great strides into accepting him and-
“Thank God!” Mom squeals with delight.
The tears come out, along with a choked laugh of disbelief. What the hell?
“Do you need help packing?” Dad chimes in next. It sounds like Mom is dancing around in the background, fist-pumping.
“I can’t leave town.”
“ What? ” They both bark, all happiness wiped away in an instant.
I have to explain everything, from the affair and the phone throw to the lawyer’s advice. My parents are not quiet about it. If they had popcorn, they would throw it at the TV for lousy production values and scream.
“So what are we doing?” Mom asks with grim determination. “We can set his house on fire. It won’t be abandonment, then. No one could fault you for needing to move back in with us.”
“Suzanne,” Dad interrupts in a warning tone that Mom ignores.
“What? She doesn’t live there. Freak accident. Bad wiring. Rats chewing through everything. Work with me here, Edward.”
“No fires,” I feel a weak smile work over my face at their unwavering support. The sheer happiness they feel at me leaving him is a little painful, though. They knew all along that it wouldn’t work out. They warned me. This is a told-you-so moment, but they’re being nice enough not to say it to my face.
“We break his knees first,” Dad starts, but I cut him off before he gets any further.
“I need a lot of money to get a lawyer and start the ball rolling. Since he took it, all I’m left with is my savings, and it’s not going to last long.”
“I’m already looking up… Damn you, Edward! I had that credit card paid off!”
I can hear Dad cursing.
“Busted,” I chuckle.
“Thanks a lot,” he mutters back.
“What did you buy?” Mom demands in a wrathful tone.
“Our daughter is emotionally distraught, and you’re asking about what I’ve bought?” Dad deflects like a champ.
She harrumphs and snaps, “We can’t help you yet, Amanda. Is there any way you can get a job and make it through for a while? We’ll start paying things down here and get the card worked off, right Edward ?”
“Yes, dear,” Dad says meekly. It’s an act he’s perfected over the years.
“In the meantime, you’ve got some work to do yourself, young lady,” she turns the stern voice on me next.
“I have a place to stay. Next up is a job. I’ve got this, Mom.”
My voice is determined, but inside I’m already wilting.
“That’s nice, but not what I’m talking about.”
Suddenly, Mom’s voice is right in my ear. She took me off speakerphone for this which confuses me. She’s never been afraid to share anything with Dad, no matter how embarrassing.
“You need to be smart about all of this. No more losing your temper.”
I gape in disbelief. “Would you like fries with that?”
The likelihood of me maintaining serene emotions is about as good as it was during puberty. She might as well ask me to find her a unicorn. I come by it honestly from both of them.
“Watch yourself. He’s going to come back, and he’s going to do anything he can to worm his way back in. Do not give in, Amanda Jane. Not ever. He might think you’re a Blake, but you have always been a Jefferson underneath it.”
“Damn right,” Dad adds.
“We’re Jeffersons,” Mom starts the old pep talk/war cry they started when I got into baton twirling as a kid. It became a motto after that.
“And we don’t stop fighting,” I say at the same time as my dad.
“That’s right. Now go job hunting while I yell at your father.”
“What?” Dad might as well have waved a red cape at a bull.
“ How could you , Edward ? Our baby-”
Her voice cuts out, and I spare a second to pray for my dad’s safety.
Step one for the day is done. Now on to step two.
Me: I want a divorce.
My hands shake wildly as I send the text. I see that it’s sent. Then it’s read.
Nothing.
Not a phone call begging me to reconsider and talk it out. Not a text to ask what I’m talking about.
Just silence and pain.
I finish crying my eyes out, and then I get off my butt and go job hunting.
***
I get a job working as a waitress at a diner three blocks from my apartment. I lose track of time as everything starts blending into an endless monotony of work, sleep, and eat. The young kids hanging out in the stairwell harass me at first but back down when I offer to throw them down the steps. I have to break up a never-ending fight between Mrs. Danvers, an old woman on an oxygen machine with a cane, and Manny, a kid who lives on the third floor and always begs me for sodas. The woman is lethal with her cane, and my threats don’t faze her. Manny spends a lot of time in my apartment, hiding.
That ‘peace’ doesn’t get disturbed until I open my mailbox one innocent day, heading to work.
I’m thinking of my aching feet when I open the door and see the single envelope inside. It’s addressed to me but doesn’t have a return address or postage on it. A feeling of dread washes over me, reminding me of the texts on Justin’s phone. Someone comes through the front entrance, and I snap out of it.
The woman with blue hair who lives down the hall from me comes in with a determined walk that says, "Get the hell out of my way." It’s normal for her, so I dismiss it.
I stuff the envelope in my purse and head out, determined to look at it later.
Later comes that evening over a bottle of water and some ramen. The dinner of champs everywhere.
I look it over again to make sure I didn’t miss anything, that same dread feeling blossoming in my chest. It’s still my name printed out on a computer-generated label with nothing else. The manilla envelope is light, holding maybe one or two pages. It seems like overkill.
Unless it’s a legal document and it can’t be folded.
A part of me is hurt at the thought and the rest balls up in rage.
Justin finally found me and sent over paperwork for a divorce. Why the hell didn’t they deliver it to me in person? That’s what they’re supposed to do, isn’t it?
Whatever. I’ll sign it and be done with this bullshit. I’m ready to go back to my hometown. Living with my parents for a while is going to be humiliating, but I’ll do it. I’d like to be around some support. Even my best friend Janine hasn’t texted or called back.
I rip it open without mercy, and a single sheet falls out.
All it has on it is a name typed up in a huge font that I can’t miss.
Elliot Bernard.
I flip it over to find it blank.
Who the hell is Elliot Bernard?
My mind spins in useless circles during my evening routine of showering and tooth brushing. No matter how many angles I try to see it from, I don't know that name. It pisses me off enough to grab the stupid thing and toss it in a drawer so I can’t see it anymore.
I have too much other shit to worry about to start mystery teaming my way through life. I have real problems to face. And no team.
Fuck Elliot Bernard and whoever put this in my mailbox. That’s my final answer.
That continues to be my answer for every envelope that shows up in the weeks that follow. All I get is a single sheet of paper with different names that I don’t recognize.
They get shoved into the drawer of forgotten people, and I keep going.
Then, a different type of envelope shows up. This one is smaller and holds two or three things—photographs.
Three photos that are practically pornographic, and three different women. They show more of the women’s naked bodies than the man. I only get a hand with a wedding ring, but I know who it is.
I picked that ring out myself as a personal touch for him. It's a white gold band with a square-cut diamond in the center.
My soon-to-be ex has been busy.
The room is exactly the same in each photo—red wallpaper and black silk sheets. I can’t look at them long enough to make out any other details. It's a nice hotel. Is that where he met up with Annette?
This isn’t substantial enough to take to a lawyer. They would need his face in them. That ring wasn’t one of a kind or anything. If I remember correctly, the jeweler said it was a popular seller. This is an ego-flattening taunt that leaves me sobbing.
It isn’t over his infidelity anymore. It’s about how gullible I was to be so in love with him. Even when things weren’t good between us, I never saw this. And it’s a lot more than one woman.
I take the next day off and get tested for any diseases that I stayed awake thinking about all night. Everything comes back clear, but I can’t help feeling dirty. I didn’t see any condoms in use, and it makes me gag.
My self-confidence takes an abrupt nosedive and doesn’t recover. I spend more time avoiding the mailbox and feeling sorry for myself than I do working. When it gets to the point that the boss threatens to fire me, it lights a fire under my ass to suck it up and keep going.
It becomes a monotony of work, sleep, eat, a letter with a name I don’t know, photos of women that make me puke, and a growing hate that I can’t shake.
My natural snark has come back with a vengeance. The placid attitude I adopted as a soft-spoken wife gets thrown into the wind without a backward glance.
I keep going. More determined than ever.
The only things I have for entertainment are Manny’s slow descent into gerontophobia and the blue-haired woman down the hall.