Unburying Hope (26 page)

“She was trying to show you the new little car
she just got with her lunch.
 
She
tapped your window, but you went crazy!”

Celeste heard her boss in her ear, “Back down,
Celeste, NOW!”

“I’m not crazy, you are!”
 
Celeste pounded on the window, which
felt suddenly strange.
 
The solid
see-thru glass had sat in front of her for years of her life and the only times
she’d ever touched it were when she felt the heat of Eddie’s hand as he’d high
fived her through the window.
 
Now
that she had him in bed and could get skin-to-skin contact, she didn’t need to
ignore the window anymore.
 
And
with as much force as she felt being used to yank her away from her desk, she
countered and blew out of herself, climbing onto her own desk, slamming the plexiglas
at the mother who now shrank back, yanking her little daughter’s hand, dropping
the small metal car out of it.

The little girl, instead of noticing the loss
and crying, lunging for her car, stood transfixed, mouth wide open in an ‘O’,
staring at Celeste as she pounded in rage until tears came and she let herself
finally be pulled back into her cubicle.
 

Her purse was grabbed and her refrigerator
opened, one small plastic container, her photos and her mug with the palm trees
on it, empty but for rivulets of dried morning coffee and half and half were
all shoved into the last space available, her purse was then shoved into her
hands and she was unceremoniously pushed towards the now open back door.
 

Her boss seethed, “No fucking drinking at
work.
 
You’re fired.”

She felt his hands release her, the
manhandling ended and she stood cold and alone in the alley between the office
building and a small parking lot.

If only she hadn’t sold her car a year back,
she thought, she could hide in it.
 
Instead, more sober from humiliation than actual sobriety, she realized
that she would have to catch a bus home.
 
She didn’t know the new reduced daytime schedule.
 
She have to sit on the covered waiting
bench, with cars of families going by who didn’t live in undecorated apartments
waiting for life to start, who didn’t have to choose between friends and
lovers, because for them there was a fullness in their hearts that came from having
two parents to see you, to listen to you, to help you when you felt lost.
 
Like Frank, whose father sends him
recipe clippings and whose mother sends him new slippers every year for
Christmas.

Celeste hunkered down in her seat, no bus in
sight.
 

She’d get a damn house.
 
And buy her own damn slippers.

Fired.

God Damn.

Chapter
Twenty-Eight

The apartment was empty, cold.
 
Eddie had been upset when he’d realized
she only heated it for him, but he didn’t realize that part of her was usually
overheated, probably from the liquor that used to be part of her life.
 
Nowadays, she was finally able to feel
cold, so she’d sometimes remember to turn the heater on, but it had been a few
days alone, so she’d preferred the cold comfort that reminded her of her
occasional solitary reality.

Her head was foggy.
 
She felt adrift.
 
No job?
 
She’d taken the job
to get over her mother’s death.
 
She’d walked in their door as a young, thoughtless kid and now been
unceremoniously kicked out that door as a distracted, inebriated, angry
bitch.
 
No part of her felt guilt,
she was relieved to assess.
 
The
little mouth of the girl staring at her, wide open in unexpected shock stayed with
her, but she didn’t care about leaving.
 
It was their loss.
 
She’d slaved there day after day, month after month, year after year,
for so many moments of her numbed life that she was fed up.
 
No more.
 
No more sitting.
 
No more clacking on a computer keyboard, no more lies and truths, both
of which she had to half listen to in order to dodge absorbing.
  

She’d probably started drinking to wash away
the stories, the evictions, the job losses, the bankruptcies, all the horrid
ways that a human being can be dragged down, decimated, devalued, just begging
for their goddamn phone to go back on so that, in today’s voice and text-only world,
they could keep contact with anyone who cared.
 

She sat, her feet on the crusty carpet, her
hands on her lap and she breathed, wondering if the prickling she felt on her
cheeks and ears was sign of an impending stroke or heart attack.
 
How perfect, to be so overwhelmed that
she’d die in this place, where nothing meant anything to her except for the
photos of her mother, the old lady and now the few pieces of clothing that Eddie
had left strewn on the side chair that still might have his scent.
 

The doorknob turned and she looked, watching
with detachment as the particleboard door opened, its edges rubbed down by age,
small holes showed the hollow interior.
 
Not much of a safety feature, she sniffed.
 

Eddie stood, key out, surprised to see her, a
warm smile crossing his face.

But she sat, simply staring around the room.

“What’s up, Babe,” he asked, closing the door
behind him.

She heard sounds so loud in her ears, blood
coursing through her head, that she didn’t immediately respond.
 
“I got fired.”

“You got what?”
 
He sat down next to her, took her hand and held it in his.

“Fired.”

“You’ve been drinking.
 
Are you okay?”

“Christ, I just had two drinks with Frank at
lunch.”

Eddie’s eyes narrowed.
 
“You two can’t drink your brains out
for the rest of your life.”

Frozen, Celeste felt her lips losing their
pulse.
 
It wasn’t the liquor, that
was really only 8 ounces with the mixers, she calculated, more hours ago than
would show up badly in a breathalyzer.
 
It wasn’t even getting fired.
 

It was the break with Frank.
 
She’d once again made someone the
centrifugal force in her life, pulling her out of her tight shell into a world
of conversation, planning, doing, collaboratively sewing together the threads
that tie friends together so that they each are better than they were alone.
 

She looked closely at Eddie.
 
His face did not look gaunt to
her.
 
He looked tired, tired of
this place, tired of fighting.
 
He
looked like days of sleep would heal him.
 
She knew it would heal her.
 
If she could just put her head down, time would slip by, she could wake
up and lay in bed, thinking about how to make herself the center of her life so
that in the future when things like this happened and the centrifuge gets
unexpectedly flipped off, she’d not find herself thrown out of everything she
knew.
 
“You came back.”
 

Of course he did, he said.

She smiled wanly.
 
Yes, of course.

He was flush with cash, large bills.

She half-heartedly mentioned going to a bank,
but he resisted, shaking his head.

“I don’t trust banks.”

“How can you not trust banks?”
 
The conversation brought blood flowing
to her brain and her lips, the numbing faded a bit.

“They took my mom’s house.
 
They destroyed the economy.
 
They’re killing every single country on
the planet.
 
They pay for all the
fucking bombs that went off around me.”

She cocked her head.
 
“I have a checking account and a retirement account.”

“Yeah, and when you use your credit card,
they’re lending you your own money at 25% and paying you interest on your
savings at 2%.”

Her brow furrowed.
 
The small part of her retirement account that was in stocks
through her local bank was half what it was three years ago.
 
Her mother had told her that banks
shouldn’t sell stock, it would be like chickens trying to give cow milk.
 
But in the last ten years, she had been
relieved to see she could do all her investing in one place, not realizing how
dangerous that was.
 
Like her
savings, she’d poured so much of her life into one place, undiversified until
today, when she was unceremoniously fired.
  

She imagined a kitchen with an island in the
center with lovely granite from the earth on one countertop so she could make
good piecrust like her mother had on the few Thanksgivings that she hadn’t had
to work.
 
Celeste had once made a
cherry pie but had only eaten a slice or two, a whole pie was too much for one
person.
 
The rest had gotten moldy
on the counter, until she’d pinched her nose and carried it out into the trash.
 
She’d find new friends and have them
over so that a pie could be eaten like it was supposed to be, shared by a
larger safety net, not thrown out in the black plastic trash bag under the
sink.

“So what are you going to do with your money?”
she asked quietly.
 
He’d already
given her half the month’s rent in cash, which she’d put into her savings
account.

“I’m saving it.”
 
He looked down sheepishly, tucking his wallet into his front
pant pocket.

She looked at him, curious.
 
“What are you saving it for?”

He looked at her, searchingly, and she
fidgeted, trying to hold his gaze.
 
“What?”

“I told you I want to start a business.”

She perked up.
 
“What’s your plan?”

“My plan?”

“Your business plan.”
 
She leaned in.

“What’s a business plan?”

“It’s what you show a bank, to get a loan.”

“The bank again.
 
I’m not dealing with banks.”

“Alright.”

“Back off, will you?”
 
He pulled away and moved over a few
inches.
 
“I have a plan.
 
I’m doing it myself.”

“How can you start a business without a loan?”

“I don’t need a loan.
 
I’ve been saving money.”

“You have?”
 

She could see that the shock in her voice
angered him.
 

“You don’t know me,” he challenged.

“You practically live here.”

He stared at her, as if she’d slapped his
face, his mouth agape.
 
“So it’s
like that?
 
You invited me.
 
I thought we’re partners.”
 
He took a few steps towards the door.

“Wait”, she said, unsure of what was
happening.
 
“You say you have
savings?”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

She felt the numbness still in her hand as she
patted the chair next to her.
 
“Sit
down, let’s talk.”

He shuffled back and sat down, but leaned the
chair back, two legs off the floor.
 
“I told you I want to open a dive shop.
 
In Hawaii.”

She burst out in a nervous giggle, “It’s the
beginning of winter and the snows are coming.”

He turned away, then looked back at her,
enraged.

She froze, stopped laughing and settled her
hands into her lap to calm herself down.
 
“A dive shop?”
 
She’d have
to get into that wetsuit again?
 

“Yes.”

“In Hawaii.”

“Yes.”
 
He was curt.
 
“We’ve talked
about this.
 
Are you too drunk to
remember?”

“No,” she said defensively, wondering why she
felt so off-kilter.
 
“Why a dive
shop, again?”

“You know I love to dive.
 
And I dove when I was younger.
 
A couple years back.”

“When you were in the military?”

“Not much.”
 
His face darkened.

“You never told me about diving in the Service.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Nothing worth remembering.”
 
His face clouded over for a moment.

She felt something in him was receding, like
the person in her nightmare falling away into the snow where she could no
longer grasp and hold a hand.
 
“Okay.
 
A dive shop.
 
When?
 
Were you
just going to leave me?
 
Were you
even going to tell me?”