31
It has gotten to the point that no matter why I am on the 10 freeway, the minute I pass the 405 interchange heading west, I feel it. Fear, really. Dread. A kind of internal backing up. My body thinks it is going to the boxing gym, where I’ve been going twice a week since November, even if I’m not. Because I am going to get hit at the gym, and my body knows this. I can think all I want about mouth guards and body pads, big pillowy gloves that will never break skin, but the reality is that I am going to get hit. On purpose. Repeatedly.
The fear and dread feels kind of like as a kid when I had to learn how to swim. I was terrified of that. Though I loved playing in the water. I just didn’t want to learn how to swim. “Put your face in the water,” the swimming teacher would say. But I didn’t ever want my face in the water. To this day, I cannot take a shower without a dry cloth nearby. God forbid I am ever on a sinking ship—I’ll be grabbing towels to take to the lifeboat. Just keep my face dry. I have no idea why.
And not only am I going to get hit, but I am being trained to stay forward, closer to the hit. To move, certainly, away from the hits—run and hide is what I want to do, but I ignore that logical instinct and choose to believe my coach as he repeatedly yells to me that the closer I am to my opponent, the less effective his punches will be. No time or space for their impact to build up in. “For it to become something,” he always says.
So if something happens only once, it could be a fluke, an odd beat out of sync with time, but if that same thing occurs a second time, then a rhythm is established and from that I can kind of tell when it will happen again. This works for anything: scream dreams, right hooks, sex with someone. Andrew and I had been on an eight-week rhythm method thing, established by that first night we were together in December and then the second time in February that made the weeks in between those two dates mean something. Eight weeks without him that moved interminably forward through time suddenly landed and connected me on him. Him on me. Again. But now we have skipped what should have been our third time of seeing each other according to the eight-week rhythm we were on. Now there is a long, silent ten-week pause, which, God knows, rhythms can have—thank you, John Cage—but I am stuck waiting for the beat and hating this rhythm of waiting.
On my third try, I finally get the manager of Greeley’s jewelry department in Honolulu on the line.
“Right, Broussard’s Bijoux, that’s that line of pearls and semiprecious stones?”
That’s encouraging—maybe since she’s familiar with the line, everything flew out of there, too.
“Well, I hate to tell you this, but your line’s just been sitting in the display cases, not budging at all.”
For the first time, maybe to distract myself from the horror of her words, I can hear her Chicago accent. I imagine her gladly abandoning that wintery land with fantasies of starting a new life, only to have a similar one, sans snow, on the big island.
“It’s not a very sophisticated crowd we get down here. In L.A., I can see how this stuff would work, but Honolulu is mostly tourists and they aren’t going to spend upward of five hundred dollars for a piece of jewelry. And the locals, well, pearls are everywhere. Tahiti’s so close by, this market’s pretty flooded. I don’t know what that buyer in the forty-eight was thinking. I told them when they hired me to open this store to let me do my own ordering, but you know how these big stores are.”
“So will you put them on sale? What’s going to happen?” I want to fly down there and rescue them, as if they were a child who was left at an inappropriate house over night.
“I have to wait and see what they decide. They usually give stock a three-month cycle, so you have a couple more weeks till the end of May. And who knows, one customer could come in and buy the whole thing. Not that I’m counting on it.”
I hang up the phone and immediately call Reggie.
Driving on the 10 at one-thirty A.M. is like being among the die-hard dregs of a crowd after a rock concert has ended. Not many other vehicles are around, but the ones that are appear just as needy for this experience not to end as I am. I’ve made the loop past the downtown skyscrapers three times now and even that hasn’t made a dent in the despair and almost physical pain I am in, so I am flying on the 10 heading west to the beach. I’ll take the PCH up to Topanga, cut through the canyon, then pick up the 101 in the Valley and take it home. Hopefully that’ll be a long enough drive. I told myself that I couldn’t sleep because of the godforsaken news from Honolulu, but really it’s because I haven’t talked to Andrew in eleven weeks.
I can barely face what I am terrified this means. Maybe he isn’t ever going to call me again. He can’t be in New York this long. I’ve scoured newspapers and magazines for some hint of a project he or his wife could be doing, but there’s been nothing. I could just call his cell phone and hope that he can talk, but that feels risky for his situation and desperate about mine. He’s always called before. Even when I walked out on him that night at his house and stopped answering my phone, he called for a month, so why this silence now? Maybe he really did decide that we shouldn’t see each other. I just can’t believe he didn’t say goodbye.
Every time I check my phone messages, I automatically pray to hear that little “hunh” that means that Andrew called. Instead, this morning I get “Hi, Yvette, it’s me. There’s an opening at the museum tonight and I figured you might wanna go. Call me.”
For a split second I think how sweet of Michael to invite me, but then I am wearied by it. I wonder what will have to change in my life for him to stop calling out of the blue. Maybe getting married. If I ever do.
“We think your line will do better in other stores.” Linda Beckman’s voice over the phone is explaining Greeley’s decision to me.
“Stores? So the line’s going to be split up?”
“White Plains, Miami, and Houston. Those markets are much better for your work—more sophisticated. I’ll figure out who gets what. Don’t worry, I won’t leave it to the people in Hawaii to ship whichever pieces to whatever store.”
“Thanks,” I say, trying to sound like that’s a relief, though this situation is making my stomach sick.
After finding out from Linda when the stores will each get a third of my line, like a head here, the torso there, arms and legs way over there, I hang up.
Oh, Jesus God. A horrible remembered vision of my jewelry in Lizzie’s shop comes to mind. A few pieces in a jumbled display case with no context, just jammed up next to any old jewelry. I tell myself that Greeley’s, known for their high-end fashion, is not going to dump pieces somewhere and not display them well. I hope.
I walk into my studio to tackle my work for the day, and decide to check my e-mail while I finish my third cup of coffee. But instead of some wonderful, life-altering news, it is the usual spam, customers checking on commissions, and one “inspirational” note forwarded from Suzanne saying, Don’t tell God how big your problems are, tell your problems how big God is. Then it goes on about a little boy in Phoenix who had leukemia and wanted to be a fireman, and how he got to be one for a day, and then a week later as he lay dying, the fire chief came to his hospital bed, held his hand, and told the little boy that he was a real fireman now, because the big chief, Jesus, was waiting for him in heaven.
I feel even worse after I read it. Why does she send me these things? I never know how to respond. “Thanks for the reminder that innocent children are dying terrible, senseless deaths every day—hope your day is going great, too.” I don’t think Suzanne would appreciate that. Then I feel shitty because I know she means well, and I guess if she were capable of a simple, “Hey sis, what’s up?” e-mail she’d send that, so I guess she’s not. I suddenly feel so separated from her. And from my jewelry that is being sent all over the country. And a whole, whole, whole lot from Andrew. As I shut down the e-mail program, I have to fight the urge to go to the couch, lie down, and not ever get up.