disconnect

The Zone took my phone right out of my pocket yesterday morning on the 75. Now this computer is the only way I can communicate with the outside world.

I’m on the bus, Josie smelling like a pancake breakfast beside me. She’s bouncing from her seat to my lap singing the “Open them Shut Them/Itsy Bitsy Spider” dance medly. Curls her fingers into two little fists and uncurls them in my face. Tickles my lips with the tips “But do not let them in!”

I’m going through the hand motions and laughing with her; and in my head I’m working my way through everything I intend to tell Scott. Fuming. Calculating all the ways I’ve been wronged, because that’s what we do, right? We add it all up, keep score in a game that nobody can win.

That I shouldn’t be on the bus because the car sharing deal is the car goes with the kids. Package deal. But here I am bright and early after working late last night. Point for me. That he is inconsiderate and selfish for asking me to take two buses to Amelia’s school so I can walk her into class and then take two more buses home with Josie when he’s responsible for school today. Point for me. That he is an asshole for not even saying “thank you” after I do this one hour and 45 minute, four bus, round trip commute to help him out. So he can drop Amelia at the curb and pull away to be on time for an interview. Pointless points and this is all just stuff. The same old stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff – still piled everywhere, no changes here.

Why did I expect to change our relationship by leaving it anyway?

My mind is with the stuff and not the phone I’ve shoved into my pocket. I’m practically talking out loud to myself between verses with Josie. It’s been months since I’ve worn these jeans. Long enough that I forget how everything always falls out of the shallow pockets. And, I’m a pocket kind of girl. You can pull more crap from my pockets than a 10-year-old boy’s. Wrappers and old receipts, little toy pieces and coins collected from the floor, business cards and pen caps – I carry it all around. Just can seem to throw away old stuff.

But what have I thrown away?

I can’t keep up with the shifts. Leave for work Friday bouncing out the door; I’ve slept eight hours, made my bed, read, meditated, eaten two meals, cleaned the apartment and written before I go. Haven’t had a day like this in months. Something shifted while I was in Phoenix. I started eating again and sleeping full nights. Suddenly I can’t get enough food or shut eye. I’m gaining weight and there’s a sense of calm in me – a new ability to sit with things.

Friday night I take the late bus and while I stand at Burnside and Fifteenth watching the cops hassle a few kids and waiting for the next bus, self-pity floods that calm and me disappears into the fog. I’m 37, riding the bus home from my crappy job to my empty apartment at midnight.

Why Am I doing this?

I can have it all back whenever. Anytime. There are pictures of me, pictures of us, all over Scott’s place and it’s hard to remember why I’m doing this. He’s still wearing the ring. Even in leaving, I can’t completely leave. I have to leave it open-ended. Can’t bring myself to say the D word and finalize it. So I confuse things. Confuse him. The night before Thanksgiving I make Tofurkey and smash and greens. He brings gravy and apple pie and wine and we have a family dinner with the kids because I can’t take the thought of him alone. I still want the pretty picture. I want my vision and my freedom both.

He comes back early the next morning to take us to the airport. I know I should ask someone else, but he wants to and I let him. It’s awkward, all of us standing at the ticket counter, checking luggage, but him not going.

“I love you, Holly,” he tells me at the security stop, end of the line for him. “I wish I was going.” He’s hugging and I’m not hugging back.

“I know,” I say. I can’t say I wish he was going, too. I don’t.

“That’s it?” he says, his face cracking. “You know?”

“I don’t know what else to say.”

He’s crying into the glass wall of a news stand, head against the window, back to the airport, when I look back.

And, I hate myself.

~ ~ ~

There’s a memorial service for my brother-in-law the Friday after Thanksgiving, a day after Jeff would have turned 50. Almost two years after his death. The last five years were cross-country trips to specialists and three organ transplants and two amputations before diabetes completely overwhelmed his ravaged body. My brother puts the urn - a short, wide oval of amber colored wood - between a picture of them on a glacier, a snapshot of their dog Louie, a portrait of Jeff smiling and healthy.

“Jeff told me he wanted his ashes spread at Neiman-Marcus, and he was only half kidding. I think He’d be happy that this is the most expensive square foot of real estate in the city,” he laughs, tears down his face, splashing his shirt.

I’m surprised at the power of my grief. Stronger than it was at the funeral. Bigger than it was in that glass walled ICU when then erratic beeps ran into one alarming drone that I can still hear and the mountains on his monitors crumbled into a smooth streak. Where has it been all this time, this grief?

Amelia and Josie play with their cousins under the palm trees among the headstones outside, chasing each other in circles in the sun.

Have I ever grieved anything? I am mourning Jeff and I am just mourning. Mourning everything I have ever lost.

~ ~ ~ ~

Why Am I doing this?

It's easy to ask at Midnight. I get off the bus, round the corner of my complex, past the fountain I circled with Josie waiting for the manager to show me the apartment.

I ask over and over, calling it out the ceiling through tears that splatter the carpet. Lay on the floor holding my knees and crying loud enough for the neighbors to hear but I don’t care. All the peace of the morning is gone. I want to call Scott. I want to talk to my children, pull the covers to their chins and kiss sleeping cheeks. I want to lay on the rug and let myself fall apart. Cry until I can’t.

There's an old friend outside the door. I feel it lingering and twist the deadbolt. I can't pull the bed out for fear of what will crawl in next to me. Maybe I won't get out for months. There's a kind of peace in the center of depression - a quietness that settles during months in bed.

Only the edges feel like swallowing broken glass. It's calm at the eye.

I don’t know why I’m doing this and still that quiet voice inside persists. Insists. “Keep going. Keep going.” So soft it’s barely audible over the tears, so loud there is no other sound.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


We're off the bus at Sandy and 42nd, Josie greeting the cold with a little shake that rises from her purple rainboots to her red knit tomato top cap. I can almost still read the number "75" when I reach into my pocket and find nothing. Air.

The taillights shrink, disappear up 42nd.

I know what the zone is telling me this time.

Separate. Pull the rest apart. Ditch the phone that's still connected to a shared plan, let it disappear across TIllamook. Across Brazee. Across Freemont. Prescott. Let it go. Walk right down the street to Cricket and start fresh.

Stop sharing the car.

Stop sharing.

Let. It. Go.