3. Three
Three
Standing over him, I study his face. Bulbus nose, spotty skin. Harold Griffin, ninety-seven years old. I can’t decide if this is a really long time or just a blink. Even with eyebrows so thick and wiry they basically form a single overgrown caterpillar across his forehead, he looks peaceful.
I take a seat in the floral wingback chair and read the paper in my hands.
Happily married sixty-eight years.
I scoff.
“I don’t know how you did it, Harold.”
I close my eyes and drop my head back before letting my next words come out the way they always do when I’m here: in an unfiltered stream of consciousness.
“I listened to a podcast. I’m getting a divorce.” I let the words echo in the sterile room of concrete floors and stainless-steel equipment. “I’m not getting a divorce because of the podcast,” I clarify. “Not really. It just made me see what I haven’t been able to. I told my husband last night. He just doesn’t see me. I don’t even know if he realizes what I’ve done so he can be who he is. I’m nothing. Nothing!” Anger thrums in my chest as my voice rises . “I drive kids around and wipe butts, and they don’t care about any of it. Volunteer at the school. For them! Nobody thanks me. Nobody says, Good work, June, let’s have a luncheon in your honor! Hell, nobody even takes their shoes off at the front door! Like, how many times do I need to ask?!” I huff out a breath and lower my voice. “Your wife probably never felt like that. You’re the kind of man that listens, I bet.” I look down at the paper. “You wear a lot of tweed; men in tweed always listen. Camp wears athletic clothes and either cleats or something called barefoot shoes . . .”
I imagine Camp’s feet, and a fresh shot of anger gushes through me.
“And you know, Harold, this isn’t what I wanted, but it’s what has to happen. It’s either him or me—and what? I’m supposed to just choose him, forever? I’m supposed to be some kind of unappreciated maid that does nothing with her life?” I scoff. “And don’t even get me started on the sex.”
I drop my head back and stare at the ceiling, snorting a kind of unamused laugh, like this whole thing is hilarious.
“I don’t know how you were doing it for sixty-eight years, but did it ever feel like a chore?”
I roll my eyes; of course Harold never felt like that. He’s a man.
“It doesn’t matter what you think, all I know is it feels like one to me. He’s the only man I’ve ever been with, and now it feels like a duty more than anything enjoyable. Sometimes I make mental grocery lists while he does what he needs to do . . .” My voice trails off with that confession. “You know, he’s the only man I’ve ever been with. I’ve seen one penis in real life!”
I wince at the shouted penis that echoes in the room, once again lowering my voice.
“Everything is just so . . . stale. And predictable. And the fact he doesn’t make any effort outside of the bedroom, I mean, what am I supposed to do with that? Just supposed to say, ‘I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off all day while you threw a baseball with your buddies but, hey! let’s jump into bed’?!” I shake my head. “I just can’t. I’m not wired like that, Harold. It’s all connected . . .
“Either way, I know you had sixty-eight years of marriage in you, but I don’t. And that doesn’t make me a bad person—or-or—selfish or weak or whatever your generation would call it. Some marriages aren’t made to last, Harold.” And with that declaration, I jam my palms into my eyes, nearly giving myself a paper cut with Harold’s now crumpled memorial bulletin.
Yes, I’m talking to a dead man.
Again .
But they seem to be the only ones that get it. My mother is off living her best retired life with my dad in their Winnebago, my brothers only live a couple towns away but are men with lives of their own, Camp doesn’t listen to me, and my best friend, the whole reason I’m in this room and didn’t completely hate the idea of returning to Ledger in the first place, is my person, but she doesn’t know—she can’t. She’s never been married, doesn’t have kids, and has no clue what it’s like to live a life shoved in a box. Not when she lives by her own rules, wild and free.
A tap on the glass window pulls me from my thoughts, and there she is, Scotty, standing in the jade-green-painted witnessing room. She points to her watch with a lift of her chin before holding up a hand with wiggling fingers. My five-minute warning.
I nod, blow out a breath, and look back at the tweed-covered Harold lying quietly in his box.
“I have to find a job now, I guess. I have a college degree that I’ve never used, and my resume might as well be a black hole, so this should be interesting. But my teenage daughter looks at me like I’m a wet rag, so maybe if she sees me working, she’ll change her opinion of me.”
I lift my chin, feeling a bit more confident in my decision.
“Now that I think of it, she needs me to do this. To leave my marriage and be independent so she knows how to do the same thing.”
I nod, smile, and for the first time think that this is what I should have done all along.
I stand up, sniff, and put Harold’s crumpled memorial bulletin in my purse.
“Thank you, Harold. I hope you rest in peace . . . you probably need it after sixty-eight years of marriage.”
Steps a little lighter than when I entered, I walk to the witnessing room where Scotty’s waiting and looking like an eternal badass. My best friend since we were kids, she owns the town crematorium, Happy Endings. She’s wearing her typical work uniform of black heels, fitted dress pants that cost more than my entire wardrobe, a blazer, red, and a band T-shirt. Today it’s Elvis.
In the background, “Blue Suede Shoes” plays softly through a speaker.
She doesn’t look at me as I open the door, picking at a well-manicured fingernail from her spot on the leather sofa, as her wavy bob sits wildly perfect around her face.
“Wanna talk about it?” she asks, like she always does after I visit for one of my sessions, eyeing me skeptically. “Or your new haircut?”
What had Lyra said this morning when she saw me . . . ? Oh, yes: What happened to your face?
I shrug. “Camp and I are getting a divorce.”
“What the fuck, Joo?!” The words fly out of her mouth as she pounces to a stand, making me wince. “Who did he screw because I will slash that bitch’s tires and cremate her vagina.”
“Jesus, Scotty. Don’t be so dramatic.”
I drop into one of the chairs and pluck a tissue out of the box to blow my nose.
“How do you stay in business with a mouth like that? Harold’s wife will probably have a heart attack if she hears you.”
“It’s part of my business model,” she deadpans, slowly lowering back to her seat. “Now what the hell is going on?”
I sigh, heavy. When Scotty texted me this morning that she had someone to see me, I almost didn’t come because I wasn’t ready to face her.
“I don’t know, Scotty. He was late again, and Lyra called me simple and-and-and I listened to a podcast about how—” She groans. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I don’t need your podcast tirade today. And Harold made me realize that—”
Scotty barks out a laugh. “Harold made you realize? Joo, he’s dead, you know that, right? Like, I’m minutes away from bringing his family into this room and them looking through that window and watching him burn to ashes.”
The expression on her face tells me she does not agree with any of my life choices.
Which is why I listen to podcasts and talk to the Harolds of the world and not her.
I huff out a breath. “You wouldn’t understand. You aren’t married. It’s . . . complicated. Like you look at this person and think ‘is this all there is . . . forever?’ and finally, I asked myself that too many times and I just have to see. See if there’s a way to live a life where I’m doing something that matters and get my kids to, I don’t know . . . Lyra doesn’t even want me helping her because Camp is so much better.”
Her eyebrows pinch. “One, I’ve been married.”
I snort a soft laugh. “I’m sure that weekend in Vegas gave you all the monotonous marriage feels.” I rest my head on the back of the sofa. Stare at the ceiling. “I’m failing. At everything. The girl that once conquered anything she ever took on is a shitty mom, unwanted wife, and complete dud.”
“God, do you hear yourself?” she groans. “Do you think anyone thinks they are doing it right? Even those dick feathers on your podcasts?” I shoot her a glare; she ignores it. “Just because I don’t have kids doesn’t mean I don’t recognize how hard it must be. But nobody is perfect, Joo—nobody can be everything. Not even you. Especially not at all of this. Life is supposed to be messy. This just feels so . . . extreme. Divorce? You and Camp are fixtures in Ledger. Like, there’s me and you.” In her pause, I chuckle softly. “And there’s that big ice cream cone at Cone Heads, the lake, and then there’s you two. It’s just . . . wrong.”
“Maybe you should marry him,” I mutter, not looking at her.
“You’re so fucking dramatic, Joo. I love you, but seriously.”
I glare at her, every piece of our history connecting us like links in a chain. She moved to town with a life so different from mine. A dad that couldn’t stay away from the bottle, a brother that couldn’t stay out of trouble, and a mom that never showed up where she needed to. Compared to my life of doting parents, Taco Tuesdays, and two brothers who threw a football in the front yard, we couldn’t have been more different. And somehow, we became best friends. Sisters that neither of us had.
The day I told her in Mrs. Nettle’s English class I had a crush on Camp, she passed him a note that said: Hey Camp, your name is stupid, but my friend thinks you’re hot. Ask her out or I’ll knee your nuts.
I wanted to kill her as much as I loved her for having more guts than I ever would.
He read it, turned and looked at me—burning in my own humility—and smiled his lopsided smile, braces just removed from his teeth, and that was it.
She was there for the beginning, and now she’s here for the end.
I don’t argue with her, though. I stay silent, studying the shelf of urns—locally made by a potter a few towns over. Wondering how bodies and life can burn down and fit in one of them when it’s all over. I take a breath. Another. Silence our conversation until I’m ready to say something.
“I followed him to college, Scott. Put my dreams aside so he could chase his on the pitcher’s mound. Moved back here when those dreams fell through. What? I’m supposed to do that the rest of my life? Just let Camp be Camp while I hang out like his shadow and pick up his damn cleats?”
Her eyes widen and mine close.
“You know, there might be a middle ground. You being more of you without quitting him. Your podcasts . . .” I shoot her a withering glare, and she holds up her palms before continuing. “Hear me out. Your podcasts . . . might not be . . . awful.” Her lips twist like it’s an effort to say the words, and I groan until she speaks over me. “But they don’t know you and Camp. They aren’t the end-all. I’m just asking you to really think about this. Sometimes the people that drive us the craziest are who we need the most.”
I say nothing. Reeling. Staring at the ceiling.
I knew she would do this. Try to convince me to stay. Take Camp’s side. Ironic coming from the woman who’s pathologically unattached to anything.
I didn’t mean to start talking to her bodies; it just happened. I’d had a bad day, one of the worst, and when I came to see her, she was on the phone. While I waited, I saw the door to the cremation room open with a cardboard casket waiting inside. I just wandered in, not planning on starting some weird therapy-with-dead-bodies situation, and the words flew out of my mouth as soon as I looked in the box. It was a woman in her seventies, I remember, and despite how thin she was she looked tough. She was in a powder blue pantsuit and had pearls around her neck. She’s about to turn to ashes , I had thought, maybe she’ll take my heartache with her.
And now, all these years later, I keep coming back. Sometimes I text Scotty and ask, others she texts me. On the days she does, it’s like she can feel a shift in the atmosphere and knows that I need the release. Knows I’ve become a kite in a hurricane.
Papers shuffle, heels click across the floor, and the couch shifts when she sits next to me, pulling me into a hug. Home in my best friend’s arms, I nearly come apart. The closest I’ve come since my bathroom divorce declaration.
“If this is really what you need, fuck those cleats, Joo,” she whispers into my hair.
It’s a line stupid enough it makes me laugh and wrap my arms around her, being all of who we are: bad words and hard truths.
We pull apart, and she hands me a certificate, Resort 765—the fanciest hotel in town that I’ve never once stepped foot in—written in gold across the top.
I blink.
“The owner gave it to me after his mom’s send-off,” Scotty says, using her token phrase for the cremation: send-off . “You need it more than I do.” She squeezes my arms. “Go. Clear your head. Take a day for yourself. Buy some clothes that aren’t also from a grocery store.”
I snort.
“I’m serious. I get that Camp hasn’t been the most attentive, but you’ve gotta be responsible for you too. Get a tattoo to go with those badass bangs. Go skinny-dipping in that fancy-ass pool they keep tucked in those trees at the spa. Something . Have fun; you need it.”
I chuckle softly. “Thanks, Scotty. For this. And Harold.”
She smiles, and we stand at the same time the door opens. An elderly woman shuffles in with a blue cardigan and the assistance of a cane in one hand and a younger woman on her other arm.
Scotty greets them with a kind smile, less severe tone than usual. “Hi, Mrs. Griffin. Abby. Right this way.”
Harold’s wife smiles, eyes slightly wet, hands trembling as she takes in Scotty’s shirt. “Oh, Harold loved Elvis. He’d like you.”
Scotty shoots me a wink as she leads Harold’s widow and, whom I assume to be daughter, to the window to see his tweed-covered body in his casket, all lined up to roll into the cremation machine.
As I slip out the door, I hear Scotty ask, “Do you want to go in and see him, Mrs. Griffin?”
The air, a mix of the fleeting coolness of winter and the pending warmth of summer, blows across my skin. Even in town, it smells sweet.
In the minivan, my phone dings with missed messages from Camp.
Camp: Sorry J I had to leave early for a meeting but I want to talk about this please tonight
I roll my eyes.
Camp: Please J
3-2-1.
3-2-1.
My stomach ties knot upon knot as I reread his words. It would be so easy to write okay. My thumbs hover over the keys, but instead of responding, I scroll to the other missed message, one from the boys’ preschool teacher.
Ms. Mitchell: Tyrus just pulled a lighter out of his backpack—did you know he had this? I’m quite sure I shouldn’t have to tell you it’s irresponsible parenting to allow four-year-olds to play with fire. We will meet after school.
Shit.
Add irresponsible to my list of parental shortcomings.
To Ms. Mitchell, I respond : No, I’m sorry. I’ll talk to him. I’ll be there.
To Camp : I’m telling the kids at dinner tonight. With or without you .
Camp : Ill be there
I almost laugh. If he was there , we might not be in this situation.
I sit in the minivan, my own personal asylum on wheels, without turning it on. Willing my heart rate to lower. Thoughts volleying between I have to do this and What am I doing?
Through the windshield, the buildings of Main Street in Ledger run parallel to one another with faded bricks, paint-peeled facades, and one lone, oversized ice cream cone. The town moves like a secret against the rolling slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the backdrop. It’s the same as it was when I was a kid. The changes here happen like they do in all small southern towns: So nuanced and slow they aren’t noticeable until someone points them out.
The street I walked with Scotty when we got ice cream every summer.
The street I walked holding Camp’s hand every Friday night in high school.
The big mural on the side of the brick building that welcomes everyone to town: Ledger, North Carolina, Life on the Ledge.
A bitter laugh escapes me—I’ve never felt so on the ledge in my life.
With a deep breath, ignoring everything that’s churning with the familiarity of it all, I turn the key and point my minivan toward the lashing that awaits me with Ms. Mitchell.