Surviving Valencia

Con: Adrian was involved in Van and Valencia’s deaths.

Pro: At least now I know what happened. Plus, we never would have met otherwise.

Con: He only married me because I was the next best thing to Valencia.

Pro: Valencia is dead, so I am the next best thing.

I locked myself in the bathroom and sat in the corner to make my lists. I wrote them on tiny scraps of paper that I dropped into the toilet bowl as I went. It was the only safe way I could write the truth. Anywhere else would be dangerous. Just writing them down was more confession than I could handle.

“I’m losing it, little baby,” I whispered, rolling my pen over my swollen belly. The pen was a gift from Adrian, a beautiful silver pen with flowing velvet blue ink. It was engraved with my initials. It was funny to me that now I needed things that should only be wants. It was funny to me that a pen could become part of an equation that could add up to me wanting to stay with Adrian.

I had once heard it said that a person’s deepest fear is his greatest desire. My deepest fear and unshakeable expectation had always been to find that Adrian did not love me. I had sensed that this was all too good to be true, that I was living a life meant for some other woman. And now as I watched my life unraveling, and saw my deepest fears becoming reality, I wondered if somehow I had willed this to happen. Or was I simply a peculiarly unlucky person? Or, worst of all, did none of this, as usual, really have anything to do with me?

I felt like the neurons in my brain weren’t properly clicking together. It was all too tricky for me to get hold of. I couldn’t be sure of anything. I flushed the scraps of paper that had contained my list, wondering what my next move was. Probably nothing, scrawled the deep blue ink onto a fresh scrap of paper, the fancy pen taking off with its own free will. Probably just wait and see what happens it taunted, and then it added a smiley face out of spite. I threw these scraps in the toilet bowl and snapped the pen cap back into place.

But the longer I sat there, looking at the grooves on the back of the toilet that had never once been cleaned, the more obvious it became.

That’s it, I wrote on another scrap of paper. None of this, as usual, really has anything to do with you.

Unexpectedly, a tear fell from my eye and the blue ink fanned out into a watery blur. It reminded me of dying Easter eggs, many, many years ago. For a moment the constant art studio smell of our house was replaced by a poignant, acute memory of the smell of boiled eggs, the sound of Van and Valencia’s laughter, the feel of the metal wire ladle used to hold and dip the eggs.

“Let her do it herself,” Valencia was telling Van and our parents. She was wearing her red Coke Is It t-shirt and her arms were out as a protective barricade against my irritable family who did not so much believe I could not dye some eggs, but who simply did not have the patience to let me.

“She can do it. Look, she’s doing a good job. That’s the best one yet! I like the way the colors swirled.”

The memory, momentarily so clear, was slipping away like a dream. I replayed the bit I could remember again, letting the tears flow down my cheeks. Sometimes no memory could move me. Years of untouchable immunity rolled by, while I stood back, jaded and detached. Bored by all that had happened in the past. Over it. Then some sweet, forgotten moment would spring with the delicate vibrancy of a crocus through snow and break my heart.

“None of this. Has anything. To do with you,” I whispered, looking around me at the Turkish towels, the cool white tiles, the Italian towel drying rack. Then I uncapped the pen and wrote the words, and watched my tears distort them.

The toilet bowl came in handy for the times when the words on the little scraps made me sick.

We sat there one evening, a month and a half after Adrian’s trip to the Cities, trying to watch a movie when I brought it up again.

“Honey, please talk to me,” I said.

He paused the movie.

“I always talk to you,” he said.

“About Minnesota. About John Spade.”

He stopped the movie and turned to face me.

“I’m having a really hard time dealing with this,” I said.

“I know, but it will get easier.”

“Adrian, you killed someone.”

“Shh,” he interrupted. “The windows are open!” He stood up and went to close them, lock them, lower the blinds, turn on the air. I waited, trying to contain my annoyance, afraid that the conversation would once again be put on hold.

“As I was saying,” I whispered as he sat back down. “I am having a really hard time getting past this.”

“You don’t have to whisper. We’re all good now. You need to relax. It’s not healthy for the baby or you to get all worked up.”

“It’s just… It’s too much for me. I feel so alone.”

“I’m the same person I was before this happened. Don’t treat me like this. Everything I have ever done, I have done for you. You know that. Right?”