Authors: Jacqueline Sheehan
Melissa
M
elissa was headed directly into her senior year of high school, and she was battling with the two and a half pounds she had allowed her body to gain since January, six months ago. That was slightly less than one half-pound per month, but the pace of it still took her to the crumpling edge of terror. She felt every ounce layered on her razor-sharp body, dragging her down like a set of iron weights that had to be accommodated in every move, every twitch of her eyelids.
She brushed her hair out of her eyes. She had just completed three hundred sit-ups, down from the five hundred sit-ups that she was doing one year ago. Five hundred sit-ups kept her warrior fit and tight, skin pulling over her pelvic bones. Three hundred sit-ups took her into the great swamp of unknown land, and it sometimes meant she had to find Cooper and press her body up against his black, furry bulk before her heart would stop racing. But three hundred was the goal, and she was there.
Melissa looked in the mirror. She saw an enormous face looking back, fat and horrible. She squeezed her eyes shut and fought off the image. Melissa decided to try what Tess had suggested. Tess was old, she didn't know how old, but grandparent old, and yet not like a grandparent. Tess was white-haired and oddly gymnastic, with rubbery bones and joints.
Tess had said, “When I wake up in the morning, I look in the mirror and say, âGood naked morning. My name is Gorgeous Goddess Babe.' ”
“Good naked morning. My name is Melissa.” She'd work up to the gorgeous babe part.
She sat down and gripped the sides of the chair and shook. Some days were harder than others. She had bailed out of the world of restricted eating. Now, if it would just leave her alone.
She put her camera in her pack and headed for the ferry. She had a part-time job at the YMCA for the summer, checking people in, handing out towels. But once she was done, she was free to take pictures on the streets of Portland. It was the last week in June, and the summer stretched out long and broad before her.
“H
ave you decided if you're going out for cross-country again in the fall?” asked Rocky. Her young neighbor had just returned from a run with Cooper. She hoped that Melissa would say no, that she would allow her body to continue to soak in the food that she had denied herself during her junior-year affair with anorexia. But she knew better than to state her preference. Melissa's battle with restricting food had been nothing short of heroic, and Rocky was her staunch admirer.
“I'm not sure. There's other stuff I want to do, like with photography. Mr. Clarke has said I could be his assistant for senior year. And I might still have to go look at more colleges, like I haven't looked at enough already.” Melissa put the glass in the sink.
“How are we going to break it to Cooper that you've got one more year at home and then, whoosh, you're out of here?”
“It's a good thing that a human year is seven years in dog time. Do you think that's true? Or does it just make us feel better because their lives are so much shorter than ours?” asked Melissa.
Rocky didn't want to think of Cooper getting shortchanged in any way, but it was true with dogs. No sooner did you start to really love a dog than you started counting the years that were left. Cooper was five, and already she wanted to slow down the clock.
“I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they don't fret about time the way we do. Hey, when am I going to get to see the âDogs of Portland' photo show by the famous photographer Melissa? Everyone except me has seen it. No fair. Your mother told me it was gorgeous.”
Melissa squirmed so much that she was in danger of sliding out of her shoes. “I've got it on my laptop. I could go get it. I mean, do you have time now? Or are you too busy?”
“The only thing that might happen is that Isaiah would come over and remind me for the tenth time that the truck needs to get repaired so it can pass inspection. Other than that, my date book is free for the rest of the night. Wait, I actually have food in the fridge. Would you and your mom want to come over for dinner?”
“This is Mom's yoga night, and it's her one non-negotiable time, which is sort of adorable. She thinks she has to be totally available to me at all other times. I had to practically force her to go to this class, which she has been dying to go to for a year. She won't eat until she gets home at eight-thirty, later if they stay for meditation,” said Melissa.
“Okay then, go get your laptop and I'll fire up my little grill. Tess is threatening to teach me how to make pasta prima something or other, but I'm in the mood for burgers. That okay with you?”
Melissa squeezed her face into a grimace. “Gack, red meat. Can I bring over a frozen veggie burger, or would something other than flesh contaminate your grill?”
“I can make exceptions. Go, run like the wind and bring me pictures and veggie burger abominations.”
As Melissa went out and slammed the screen door, Cooper looked inquiringly after her. He did not like his pack divided and was faced with the worst decisions of his day when his humans split up.
“Okay, big guy, go with her. Do whatever you do with her that makes her smile. I'll stay here and guard your fifty-pound sack of dog food from invaders.”
Cooper stood at the door and waited for Rocky to open it. He galloped after Melissa. Was this what happiness felt like? Rocky planned to see Hill later in the evening, to surprise him on his first night back from man camp. She was learning the balancing act of retaining what she felt for Bob while making room for Hill. There was no denying the exquisite longing for Hill that made her twitch unexpectedly. This would be an experiment: how did he deal with surprises?
Rocky made a dinner of broiled hamburger and Classic Coke (for herself) and veggie burger and Diet Coke (for Melissa); she fed Cooper, and then they settled in to watch Melissa's slide show on her laptop. They squeezed their chairs together at the maple dining table to peer into the screen. Melissa had added music by a band that Rocky had never heard of. A procession of dogs came into focus with the special effects that Melissa had learned in Mr. Clarke's class. Rocky oohed and aahed, exclaiming and laughing.
“You really get these dogs. There's something very loving and touching about the photos.” Rocky knew she had to stop right there; Melissa would reject too much acclaim as idiotic, or she might simply call Rocky idiotic for praising something that she had created. Either way, Rocky might have already gone too far.
Melissa wiggled shyly, unable to contain a ripple of acceptance. “Yeah, I think some of these are okay.” She closed down the laptop.
“I have ice cream. Mint chocolate chip. Want some?” asked Rocky.
“Stop right thereâtoo much. My personal food borders are in danger of being violated.”
Rocky did not expect this repartee from the girl, the closeness that it suggested. This was the first time Melissa had acknowledged the war that she had fought with food. She was finally emerging from that conflict; Rocky had not seen the monstrous clutches of the eating disorder in months. Still, she knew that Melissa had wrestled the beast to the ground in her own way, sans therapists, and Rocky had accepted the job of watching from a respectful distance. She chose her words carefully and made them brief.
“Invasion noted. Cooper needs one more walk for the night. Want to come with us and we'll swing by your house at the end of the loop?”
At the sound of two of his favorite words, “Cooper” and “walk,” the dog arose from what had appeared to be a solid slumber beneath the table. He went to the door and then looked over his back at the two of them.
“Who can say no to this dog? Sure,” said Melissa.
The network of footpaths was extensive, and Rocky chose the one that dipped to the beach at one point. It was past eight o'clock, and the light still lingered in the sky.
“Can I ask you something personal?” asked Melissa.
“Okay, as long as I can always decline to answer.”
“I know you really loved your husband, and it was awful how he died and all, but now you've got a boyfriend, which I think is awesome, don't get me wrong. But does it mean that you stopped loving your husband? I was just wondering because my mother has never dated anyone since my dad left, and she told me once that she still loved my dad. Did it click right away with you and Hill?”
What was the girl asking her? Was there enough love in the world to go around? Was love finite? Did each person only have enough love for one good relationship? Rocky stopped picking her way along the boulders that sheltered the narrow strip of beach, unable to walk and think at the same time, given the weight of the questions.
“I knew Bob was different from anyone else when I met him. I was a lifeguard at a pool, and he was trying to learn how to swim, and he was awful at it. He was a weird combination of strong, vulnerable, nutty, dedicated to animals, and funny, and the sum total fascinated me. I knew he was fascinated by me because he told me every chance he had. And I loved his hands. They were big and square, man-hands, yet because he was in the medical field he had to keep his hands clean constantly, and they were just . . . beautiful. The man had beautiful hands,” said Rocky. She had no idea if she was providing good information about love or only her own idiosyncratic attraction.
“That's what love is?” said Melissa. She leapt from a boulder to the sand. Cooper launched into euphoria as soon as his paws touched the sand, bounding at a group of gulls that acknowledged his sense of power by flapping out to sea.
“What I want to say is that love got bigger over time. Sometimes love got smaller. If we tried to change each other and tried to blame each other for our own miserable perception of life, then love grew smaller. But overall, the capacity for love grew bigger, and I don't think that the bucket size is gone because Bob died. ”
“What about Hill? He's crazy nuts about you, and I think you like him. Is that love?”
Rocky's spine undulated at the thought of Hill, of the newness of their relationship that had recently gone from archery teacher and student to something else. Cooper brought Rocky a stick, and without thinking she heaved it into the ocean. “Damn, I didn't mean for him to go swimming. He tricked me. He waits until I'm distracted, and then he gets me to throw his stick into the ocean. My entire house will smell like wet dog again.”
“So, back to Hill . . . ,” said Melissa with her hands on her hips.
Rocky wiped her hands on her pants. “As crazy as it sounds, I can't wait to see Hill and he's only been gone two weeks. It doesn't make my great big husband any less important. There's got to be a physics equation for love. Maybe you and I can figure it out. Please don't tell me you're asking for a class assignment.”
Melissa stuffed her hands into her armpits. “Nope. I just trust you, and someday I'll have to know the rules of the game. That wind is cold. My mom is probably home and all
namaste
by now. I should head back,” said Melissa.
Rocky was relieved that the girl seemed satisfied by her answers, particularly because she wasn't sure that she could offer even one more tidbit.
By the time Rocky and Cooper came home, it was nine. She looked immediately to her phone, but there was no blinking light. She called the number that Natalie had given her, the digits already engraved in her brain. This time a message machine picked up and she heard Natalie's voice over the tinny sound of music, “Leave a message.”
“This is Rocky. I want to meet you. Please call me.”
A
fter Melissa went home, Rocky walked to the ferry, put on a jacket for the fifteen-minute crossing, and picked up her Honda in the parking garage. There was only one place she wanted to be. Rocky wanted to be with Hill. She wanted to tell him everything about the girl who called, the odd catch in her voice, the terror of going one step further in the direction of meeting the girl. Rocky needed Hill's physicality; she wanted to hear his steady voice, the way he could equate all of life to archery. Most of all, she wanted his arms wrapped around her before she doled out the information. Hill lived in Brunswick, north of Portland, and Rocky drove as if she were swimming underwater, losing oxygen.
Hill gave off a cinnamon scent, with a background of pencil shavings mixed with something like wind and his own good sweat, which, when fresh, was nearly intoxicating. She imagined the scent of him as she drove. Rocky understood the unique function of the olfactory part of the brain, so tied to memories and emotions. This was the good dog part of the brain where scent carried all the information and all the emotions that she needed right now. She pictured a dog's brain evenly split between scent and sound, both leading directly through the heart.
How had Hill's scent wormed its way into her brain so essentially? As a couple, they were new, several months in the making. She had sniffed the majestic symmetry of Hill, and she was ready to let go, to rest in his arms. They had not yet made love together; Hill was keenly aware of the loss that she'd suffered when Bob died.
“We can go as slow as we need to,” he had said. “Your husband made the terrible error of dying, and I know that you're still sad and you'll miss him for as long as you live. I am 90 percent through a divorce, so you and I aren't exactly at the starting gate. But I don't want anyone except you.”
She reached his street in Brunswick, led by the scent of him on her lips, her skin, consciously skipping the part where she would have called him to say, “Hey, I'm thirty minutes away from your house. I'm coming over.” No, this was the next stage in their relationship, the natural stage with unimpeded connections between them, where her arrival at his front door would be unquestioned and he would sweep her in like the welcome tide that she was. This was what her life would be like without Bob.
Hill had passed all the tests with Tess and Isaiah. “You must have the good dude radar,” Tess had said. “You've found two good men, and for some women that doesn't ever happen. The same jerks keep reappearing.” Rocky had thought that was an unusually harsh comment from her primarily Buddhist friend and said so.
“I'm not being harsh, just descriptive,” Tess said.
Rocky was less than a block from Hill's house when she saw another car in his driveway. Something about the car, the unfamiliar angle of it and the silver glow of it nudged close to Hill's truck, said ownership.
I belong here
.
Rocky put her foot on the brake and stopped, turned off her headlights, and gripped the steering wheel as a sour note mixed with her saliva. Hill was oblivious about closing the drapes in his living room, and the kitchen curtains were perpetually open on the top half of the windows. The woman came to Hill's shoulder, petite and fair-haired, with a hand on his cheek, a tilt to her head. Rocky turned the engine off. Hill's arm rose, lifting the hand from his cheek. Exit stage left by Hill, followed by the woman, whom Rocky knew without a moment's hesitation. This was Julie, the wife who had been gone for two years.
She could hear her brother's warning. “He's separated from his wife. That doesn't mean divorced, and it shouldn't mean available. If they had grown up Catholic like us, they would know that adultery is grounds for purgatory, except purgatory has been banished from our lexicon of afterlife locations. Wait a minuteâthe pope did away with limbo, not purgatory.” Rocky was surprised that Caleb remembered anything from their spotty Catholic education. She had been confident that Caleb's hesitation about Hill would disappear as soon as Hill divorced.
The living room window offered a panoramic view. Words were spoken, not many, it didn't take many, and she was in his arms. No, it didn't take long at all.
Rocky turned over the key, put the car in reverse, and slowly backed up, away from the cul-de-sac, without her headlights on. She inserted the back end of her car into a driveway, turned around, and clicked on her headlights only when Hill's living room window was a dot in her rearview mirror. How could she have been so deluded into imagining that Hill spent every minute thinking about her? The man had been hedging his bets. She should have paid better attention to the guidelines for purgatory.