Chapter 11 – GLENNA #2
“I’d heard you broke up.” He exhales, blowing out his cheeks. “Should’ve known.”
“Should’ve known what? What am I even doing here?” I glance wildly from the pile of photographs to the wallpaper swatches to Cash in his boxers. I slept with him. What is wrong with me? Am I that hard up? Is Toby right—is my self-esteem that bad?
Cash’s face has gone hard. Mean. Like I’m used to it looking.
“Finally living a little,” he says in that familiar smartass tone of voice I haven’t heard in weeks. How did I forget so quickly?
I hug the framed rose to my chest. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you can’t act like you were just an innocent victim. I was in the wrong. I won’t deny it. I’ve been an asshole. No excuses. But you cut me out first. You, me, and Dina. We were friends, and you dropped us. No explanation. Like we didn’t matter.” He’s spitting words, eyes flashing.
“You wouldn’t even look at me.” He keeps going, faster.
Angrier. “You wouldn’t even respond when I said hi.
Yeah, I called you, what was it? The chairman of the itty-bitty titty committee?
But you knew me, Glenna. I said worse crap than that all the time, and you’d call me out.
You were never so fuckin’ delicate before, and then you gave up on everyone except Toby fucking Guilfoyle, your goddamn security blanket. ”
It’s a much more direct shot than the bullet to my shoulder.
It slams into my chest.
Snaps me off like a circuit breaker.
“I want to go home.”
“Glenna—” The anger is gone as quick as it came. He’s exasperated now.
I’m done.
“I want to go home now .”
He’s silent for a long moment while blood rushes in my ears.
He starts to speak and stops. He glares past me out the window.
“Okay. Fine,” he finally says. “Let me get dressed.”
He leaves for the bedroom, Granger at his heels.
I’m holding my grandma’s rose so tight, the frame bites my palms. I head toward the front door, and on the windowsill next to it, I see the keys to his truck. I grab them.
It’s cold outside. In front of his house, leading down to the stream winding past, there’s a meadow with late summer wildflowers still in bloom, glinting with frost in the sunshine. It’d make a perfect picture.
Another fat tear tickles down my face.
I kind of want to take the truck and go, but it’s a beast, and my eyes are bleary from lack of sleep. And at the end of the day, I’m not that girl, am I? I don’t fight back. I ignore the problem.
I rub my face with my sleeve. I’m still wearing Cash’s shirt. Well, I’m not going back inside. I hoist myself up into the truck and buckle the seatbelt.
I don’t have to wait long. Cash comes jogging out. He slows when he sees his truck is still here. Guess he noticed the keys weren’t where he left them.
He lets Granger in first and then he climbs up and glances over at me. He wants to say something. I turn my head and stare out the window.
Granger scrambles into the back seat. He doesn’t want any part of this tension. Neither do I. I want to fast forward. It’s an hour drive back to town.
Cash starts the truck.
“Glenna—" he says.
I cut him off. “I have shit I need to do today.”
He draws in a breath through his nose. “Okay.” He puts the truck in gear.
I swear he drives the speed limit all the way back to Stonecut. An old man in a rusty sedan from the 90s passes us on Route 7 and honks.
The whole ride, my brain churns through clapbacks and questions and protests and accusations, a deluge of garbage thoughts, punctuated with Cash’s voice, dripping with scorn, saying, “You were never so fuckin’ delicate before.”
Yeah, I wasn’t. I was a normal kid. The worst thing that had ever happened to me was a break-through case of chickenpox. And then one day, in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, my mom clutched her chest and toppled over. She’d been looking at the nutrition facts on a box of bran flakes.
I shook her and shook her and screamed until a man who was stocking shelves pulled me away so he could try CPR, but she was already gone. She’d had a congenital heart defect she hadn’t known about. She’d never been sick, and then in a moment, she was dead.
My grandpa passed a few months later, and then my grandma a few weeks after that. Adults whispered behind my back that they’d died of broken hearts, but they were really old and sick, and they would have stayed around for me if they could have. I know that down to my bones.
A part of me was comforted that they were gone. They were with my Mom so she wouldn’t be so lonely.
The tears are streaming now, and Cash is glancing at me uneasily. He clearly wants to say something, but he doesn’t until we cross the Old Mill Bridge into town. Then he clears his throat and mutters, “I don’t have any tissues, but there’s a rag in that toolbox behind your seat.”
I wipe my face again with the sleeve of his shirt. It’s gross and damp.
I can’t wait to get out of this truck.
This was a huge mistake. A leopard doesn’t change its spots. Neither does a douchebag. Or a dickhead. Or Cash Wall.
He rolls to a stop in front of the coffee shop.
“You can’t drop me in front of my place?” That’s fine. I can walk. I’ve already got my hand on the door.
He grabs my arm. The wounded one. I glance down. He instantly drops it.
“Listen. You gotta stay at your dad’s.” His eyes are sad. Apologetic. Or he’s full of crap. How would I know?
Besides, he thinks he can tell me what to do?
I can’t hang out with my dad. My face is blotchy. I’ve obviously been crying. He’d worry. “No.”
Cash clenches his jaw. “Glenna, you need to stay with someone until this Del Willis shit settles down. Don’t be stupid.”
It flies right out of his mouth. His eyes round like he’s surprised.
“Don’t call me stupid.”
He turns off the ignition. “I didn’t mean it like that. But you can’t stay alone. I’m not gonna let you.”
I actually sputter. “Let me?”
He balls his fists, wrists resting on top of the steering wheel. “ Glenna .”
It’s the tone that pushes me over the edge. As if I’m being unreasonable. Me, the person who respects others’ autonomy and doesn’t hoard their art like a weirdo. The person who actually thinks before she speaks.
I throw open the truck door so hard that it creaks on its hinges. “Everything that comes out of your mouth is bullshit.”
I unclick my seatbelt and throw it off. “You are bullshit.”
I slide down to the sidewalk and then tug my shirt back down when it rides up. “I’m going to my dad’s so that I don’t have to spend another second with you. You—you suck .”
And I stalk away, already mad that I couldn’t think of words that would hurt as much as his, and I never could.
My brain is too white hot. My heart is too stomped flat.
I stomp to the apartment entrance, and as soon as I’m inside, I collapse against a wall and sob.
What does he know about losing someone? Losing almost everyone. One year at Thanksgiving dinner, there are five of you, and you’re the center of attention, and it’s embarrassing, but deep down inside, it makes you feel safe and warm.
And then the next year, you have to wear a crappy bra that your dad bought for you from General Goods, you can’t manage to have a simple conversation anymore, and there is no one at the table because everyone died, and you and your dad eat convenience store fried chicken on trays in front of the TV.
Everyone loves Cash Wall. He has two families. A crew of friends.
And yeah, I know that Toby showed interest, and I clung to him like a barnacle—and he got off on that more than he should’ve.
I put up with a lot of garbage so that I could feel safe, like my feet were on solid ground again.
I know that was wrong and unhealthy and Toby did us both a favor by dumping me, but—
Fuck Cash Wall.
I drag in a deep breath and snort down the snot.
I actually should go to my dad’s. I promised him I wouldn’t be in my apartment alone, and I haven’t checked my phone, but I’m sure there’s a gentle text, a gif or a meme, or a link to an article.
He’s not overbearing, but he checks in. All he wants back is a thumbs up or a heart.
I can’t worry him. It’s bad for his heart.
I am so damn tired. I trudge up the stairs. Dad was always cool, so this isn’t my first walk of shame, but I was in high school when Toby used to drop me off in the morning after we crashed at his house. I feel like a real idiot now.
I’m twenty-three, and I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no idea what I’m feeling .
And I’m carrying a framed photograph of a hybrid rose that really, objectively looks exactly like a vagina. There’s even a bead of dew at the top where the clit would be.
I knock as I let myself in. Dad’s on the phone in the living room. He’s excited, ranting about jurisdiction. He has a big grin on his face as I speed walk past. He gives me a friendly wave and keeps on ranting. He must not notice my face. Thank goodness for small blessings.
I head for my old bedroom. I need a shower, a change, and a nap, in that order. For some reason, though, my feet carry me into my mom’s office. We keep the door shut, and I close it behind me. It instantly muffles my dad’s voice.
We didn’t pack away any of her things in here, but Dad’s used it for storage more and more over the years.
He has a tower of copy paper boxes in a corner.
He moved the plants she kept on a credenza by the window into the living room so he wouldn’t keep forgetting to water them.
He replaced them with stacks of books he says he’s going to take to the Goodwill but never does.
But the room still smells like her. Patchouli and sandalwood. She burned incense in here in a wooden box inlaid with crescent moons and stars that she’d had since she was a teenager.
I ease my tender bottom into her metal rolling chair. When I was little, I used to lie face down over the seat and spin ‘til I got sick. Her computer is still on her desk. So is her mug full of pens with chewed-up caps.
She’s been gone eleven years.