The Girl He Used to Know (Page 34)

I made endless lists to remind me what I needed to do every day. They were the things Janice used to do, in the order she’d always done them, and when we lived together, I followed her example. But Janice wasn’t there anymore, so I checked off each item on my list: Drop rent check into the slot on the metal box mounted outside the rental office. Pay utilities. Buy groceries. Take out the trash. On Sunday nights, I lined up a week’s worth of mugs containing a single tea bag. I put spoons in cereal bowls and stacked them seven high, taking one off the top every morning before pouring in the cereal and adding milk. Monday was for laundry. Wednesday was for cleaning. Eventually, I learned to love living alone. It was always quiet. My routines were solidly in place, and nothing ever interrupted them.

Though I had things mostly under control, the lack of companionship wore on me. Janice, I could speak to by phone, but Jonathan’s calls were a different story. I always called him back, but now I found myself returning his calls when I knew he wouldn’t be there and eventually, we communicated more with our answering machines than we did with each other. At the time, I told myself I didn’t want to interfere with his life and was doing it for him, but that was another lie. It wasn’t that I was still afraid of holding Jonathan back; it was what I needed in order to soar.

* * *

The milk I’d taken from the refrigerator to pour on the cereal I’d decided to have for dinner one evening smelled sour, because even though “buy milk” was clearly listed on the grocery list I’d brought to the store with me the day before, sometimes I still forgot to buy it. The sun had set and I didn’t want to go out, but the cereal was already in the bowl, so I shrugged into my coat and left.

On the way home from the corner store, I passed a man who was sipping something from a flask he pulled from the pocket of his dirty jean jacket. He looked older than me, maybe a worker from one of the nearby bars. He raised the flask in my direction and started toward me. “Come drink with me, beauty,” he said.

I quickened my pace, desperate to put more distance between us, but it only seemed to egg him on. “Come on, I won’t bite,” he yelled. “Unless you’re into that kind of thing.” His voice sounded closer now.

I wore a whistle on a chain around my neck, and as the footsteps grew louder, I pulled it out from under my shirt and put it in my mouth. It was silver, pretty, shiny. Almost like a necklace, although I never wore it on the outside of my clothes.

I felt a tug on my sleeve, and though it was gentle, I spun around, the shrill blast of the whistle piercing the otherwise quiet sidewalk. I blew as hard as I could, and I took a step toward him, stopping only to take a deep breath so I could blow it again. Bystanders and passersby stopped what they were doing and a few of them began to approach. But it wasn’t the man with the flask. The man who had tugged on my sleeve looked no older than me, and he held up his hands and yelled, “Hey, sorry! I thought you were someone else.”

“You shouldn’t sneak up behind people like that! It’s very rude.”

“Jesus Christ, chill out.” He turned on his heel and stomped away like he was mad. At me! I looked around and calmly dropped the whistle back down into my shirt. Then I went home and ate my cereal.

You might think the whistle was Janice’s idea, but it had actually been my mother’s. It was the last thing she gave to me before she and my dad got back in the car to go home after moving me into my apartment. “You must speak up if something should happen that frightens or endangers you,” she said. “If you can’t, let this be your voice.”

“I don’t want it,” I said, shoving it back into her palm. Why did my mother insist on scaring me like that? Giving me a whistle only filled my head with swirling thoughts of danger lurking on every corner, confirmed that the world was an unsafe place for people like me to navigate on their own. There’s no Janice to babysit you this time, Annika. So, here, have a whistle.

“Take it anyway,” she said, slipping the chain over my head. “Someday you might need it and you’ll be thankful you have it.”

My mother, as always, had been right.

* * *

Jonathan left a final message on my machine shortly before Christmas. I’d postponed my move to New York indefinitely by enrolling in graduate school. I finally felt like I was in control of my life, and I’d proven I could live independently. Leaving now would disrupt the routines that brought me such calm, rock the boat I’d worked so hard to keep steady. “I just need some more time,” I’d said into his machine. “I think I should complete my education before I move anywhere.”

Now, I listened to the message he’d left for me, tears running in a torrent down my cheeks. It should not have been a surprise; even I knew he would not wait forever.

Though my heart felt like it was splitting in two, I did not regret my decision. But I paid a steep price for my independence, and losing Jonathan was harder than all the things that had come before it, combined.

32

Annika

THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

1992

Will showed up at my apartment to drive me home for Christmas. I’d been expecting my parents, but when I opened the door I found my brother instead.

“What are you doing here?”

“Happy holidays to you too, sister.”

“Mom said she and Dad were coming.”

“Yeah, well. Mom’s busy cooking and Dad’s busy … being Dad. The roads are shit and I was bored, so I volunteered.”

“You never come home this early.”

“Clearly, I did this year.”

Will picked up my suitcase and I locked the apartment and followed him out to his car.

“Is Jonathan going to join us over break?” Will asked as he merged onto the snowy highway.

“No. That’s over.” I had never said it out loud. Now that I had, it meant that it was real and it hurt. I played Jonathan’s last message again in my head. Definitely over.

“By the way, in case you were wondering. It wasn’t that I couldn’t hold on to Jonathan. It was that I decided to let him go.”

* * *

Will had never been home in time to go get the tree. My dad and I were usually the ones who cut it down and dragged it back to the car, but it was bitterly cold and Will told our parents to stay home. “Annika and I can handle it.”

We drove to the same tree farm we’d been buying our trees from my whole life, and we walked down the rows until I found the perfect tree, a seven-foot Canaan fir. I waited patiently while Will sawed it down.

“I got fired,” he said as we watched the tree fall.

“Oh.”

“Don’t you want to know why?”

That felt like a trick question. “Do you want me to know why?” We each picked up one end of the tree and headed toward the parking lot.

“I made a mistake. A big one. It cost the company a lot of money. I didn’t tell Mom and Dad. I just said I quit because I didn’t like the job.”

I didn’t say anything. It was cold enough for us to see our breath as we panted and dragged the unwieldy tree through the snow.

“Do you have any thoughts on this?”

“I make mistakes all the time, Will. Been making them pretty steadily my whole life.”

“Yeah, well, when you make them in investment banking, it’s a big deal.” He set down his end of the tree. I couldn’t carry it without him, so I did, too.

“I didn’t take my birth control pills the way I was supposed to, and I got pregnant.”

“I know that. Did you think Mom and Dad wouldn’t tell me? They said you could have died. I was worried about you.”

“You never told me you were worried. You didn’t call me. Or come home to visit me.”

“No. I didn’t and I should have. I’m sorry.”

“So, what are you going to do now? Just give up?” I asked.

“What? No. What’s that supposed to mean?”

I picked up my end of the tree again. “It just means that life goes on.”

* * *

After we got home, we decorated the tree. Will didn’t like the way Dad and I did it last year and convinced me to do it the old boring way. “That’s just not very creative at all, but whatever.” It was a nice way to spend the afternoon, though. I liked hanging the shiny ornaments, felt the thrill of plugging in a strand of lights and watching the resultant burst of color. My mother kept offering to throw another log on the fire crackling in the hearth; to bring cocoa; to ask if we’d like her to put on some Christmas music. I said yes to the cocoa but no to the music.

“Mom’s so happy,” Will said.

“How can you tell?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No.” I pulled a chair over next to the tree so I could place the angel on the top. “Isn’t Mom always happy?”

“No one is always happy.”

* * *

When we finished decorating the tree, Will sat down next to me on the couch. I covered my lap with the old wool blanket that my mother always kept folded over the back of the couch in the winter. Will balanced a paper plate of Christmas cookies on his knee and cracked open a beer. He took a bite of the cookie and a drink of the beer, and my stomach turned over.