I should have told him about Joan. I should have made a point of remembering to tell him, instead of allowing it to slip from my mind while I played ostrich with my head in the sand. Dana hadn’t done this. I had.
“It won’t even matter in a couple days,” I said. The silence weighed too much. I needed to exorcise it, drive it away with reassurances until everything was all right again. “I’ll have a new phone. She won’t have my new number. It’s a clean break.”
“Until you give it to her.”
“I’m not giving her my new number! You know what? Forget it. I made a mistake. I’m trying to apologize. You aren’t obligated to forgive me, but if you won’t even listen with an open mind, I’m going to stop trying.” Nothing would be all right on this car ride. Not with his refusal to listen.
And not with my back up. A piece of my heart felt chafed by Jackson’s constant worry that I’d cheat on him. I understood it, I swear I did, and I knew he had areally validreason to feel that way. Whenever he reacted this way, though, I wondered when I would have proven myself enough times. When I would have met my quota for devotion and loyalty.
How many more of these arguments would it take before I earned the Not an Adulterer Gold Star? The opposite of the scarlet A on Hester Prynne’s chest. A mark of pride that showed I would kick Jody to the curb if the military’s notorious Mister Steals Your Girl tried to seduce me. Did they sell those at the PX? What documentation did I have to bring?
We just had to get through the deployment. Then, he would see he could trust me with the final test of our marriage. I would wait for him, he would see, and we could put all this behind us.
I clung to that hope hard as we drove home, smothered by the hush, occupied by doubts that no one could bear to voice. Voicing them would validate them, make them real, and we had so little time in which to force them away.
22ASHES, ASHES
Jackson had leftfor the base when my alarm woke me up the next morning. Not a surprise, or at least it shouldn’t have been, but he’d stayed up late texting the night before and I’d wondered if he would sleep in. Part of me had hoped he’d be here so we could try to talk it out in the light of day. No dice.
I hurried to dress and get myself out the door early. I had a stop to make before I went to my classroom to prepare for the day ahead. In case you’re curious, the nervousness of walking into the principal’s office does not ever fade. Not when you’re an adult. Not when you’re a teacher. I am anxious without fail when I see the principal’s door.
He listened to my complaint about Dana and promised to investigate. His tone sounded a great deal like the tone my father used to have when he’d tell memaybewe could do a thing.Maybealways meantI am shutting you up and blowing this off in hopes you will forget about it.My statement that I would speak to my union rep if no action were taken bought me nothing. I suspected I was shit out of luck this time. At least she would have a complaint on record.
During the period before lunch, I let my students start their preparations for the final. That meant soft, classical music on the speakers and a quiet classroom while they copied notes into their spiral notebooks. Part of my finals are open book, because that’s how the real world works. The other half of the final, though, they can only bring their notes into. This is as much a lesson in how to glean the right information from reference materials as it is a test of what they’ve absorbed. I try to balance the two and don’t do the “one page of notes” nonsense. Their own preparations will buoy or sink them, not artificial restrictions.
I waited for the kids to bury themselves in their work before I pulled out my phone. It felt too warm and as I turned it over in my hands, I wondered if its dimensions had changed. The battery pack felt – thicker? Was it thicker? I couldn’t quite tell. Even so, I wanted to see if it would do me a solid today and let me send a message to Jackson.
Yeah, right. It did boot up when I plugged it into the outlet, a promising start, but another message from Joan popped up first thing. I put my thumb on the screen to swipe it away until I noticed the picture attached to the message.
My grandfather’s missing ring sat on Joan’s palm. Her message read,“Meet me for lunch. I just want to give this back.”
I have very few mementos of my family. Good times seldom came with souvenirs to remember them by. They were passing moments or quiet interludes where we felt like an honest-to-God family instead of a stable full of Van Horn show ponies. My grandfather, though. Hendrick Van Horn. Every memory I have of him is worth clutching tight. He is the reason I kept any part of my name when I ditched theVan Hornbit.
I had kept his name and his ring. When his ring disappeared, I had turned my house upside-down to find it. Now I knew why I couldn’t.
“Why do you have that?”I typed back.
“You wore it when we went out to dinner one night. I found it in my purse. I think you left it there.”
Naturally, when she said that, I remembered what had happened. We’d gone out for seafood. I’d ordered crab legs. Crab goo kept getting in the crevices of the ring, so I took it off and asked Joan to put it into her purse for safekeeping – where I promptly forgot it. Weeks later, she’d dumped me, and the ring had stayed with her.
This, then, was what she needed to talk to me about in person. The ransom of a family heirloom for her own emotional ends. Once more, I wondered what I had seen in her.
Had this been any other forgotten item, I would have told her to donate it. Give it to charity. Throw it away. I don’t care, as long as you stop using it to manipulate me, now leave me alone.
Not my grandfather’s ring. That, I had to get back.
“I will come by tonight with my husband and pick it up,”I typed back.
“No. You will not bring another man to my place. That makes me uncomfortable. It feels like a threat.”
Okay, fair.“Then leave it at the front desk of the school.”
“No. I want to know you got it. Meet me for lunch. Public place. You can watch me delete your number from my phone.”
I know what you’re thinking. This was a terrible idea. It was a clear manipulation and play to see me one last time. It would take up most of my lunch period. I wouldn’t get food, because I intended to take my ring and bail. She would try every trick in the book, and the entire excursion would be vastly uncomfortable.
Worst idea ever. I just couldn’t see a way that didn’t involve the police, and I was so tired of it all. Tired of Dana. Tired of Joan. Tired of dragging out the disembodied guts of a dead relationship.