Chapter Seventeen : The Music Room
Another installation of MTV’s The Inferno plays before my eyes, and if it weren’t for this thick quilt of guilt wrapped around my body, I’d probably wonder why Ashley and I still watch this mindless dribble every week. If I weren’t bombarded with living room picture portraits full of Glen's face between the frames, I’d probably lean closer to Ashley. Lean towards her in the way she’s leaning towards me.
“Well that was nothing short of riveting. Let’s review, shall we?” Giggling with adorable excitement, she faces me, counting off her fingers, “Tanya’s still a floozy. Robin’s still a moron. And Paula still needs to eat a cheeseburger...” Her laughter reaches for me “...actually make that five cheeseburgers.”
But I don’t reach back.
I merely smile a meek little pathetic smile. And she sees straight through it. She’s piercing between my lips, and breaking apart my already crumbled cover up.
The air becomes quiet. Too quiet for the intimacy we've shared. And she knows it.
“So...” Pushing gently, she's ready to gather all my broken pieces, knowing it's only a matter of time, “...where’ve you been all night, Spence?”
I fumble with my fingers, watching the way my bitten down nails blend into the surrounding skin.
“Nowhere.”
She sighs.
“Yeah?” My vagueness doesn't deter her at all, not one bit, as she continues pushing, sounding so safe and so comforting, “Where’s nowhere?”
Not able to help it, I give into her warmth. I give into her reassurance, knowing it's completely pointless trying not to. Mustering up a small but real smile, I lie. “I’m here...” Tentatively, I thread our fingers, still not used to being even the slightest bit forward. “I’m right here.”
She nods her head gently, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. There's nothing but disbelief between us.
“Good.”
“Yeah.”
Our airy replies float above us. We’re not fooling anyone, especially ourselves. We both know, more than we’d like to, that I’m definitely not here, and everything about this situation is anything but good. And I need a break from it. From the this rich room and expensive couch. From these pictured walls covered with my brother's eyes, watching me sitting so close -- too close -- to his wife.
“I’m just gonna use the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
So tired, mentally and physically, I lift myself from the couch. A shake taking residence in my bones, and I don't know if it's from my exhaustion or my fear over something I still can't put my finger on. Regardless, I stay still for a moment. Shaking in my fear, I remain in front of the couch, before I finally walk towards the hall. Before I finally walk away from her. Feeling like it's for the last time. And I think she feels it too. I think she hears goodbye in my footsteps.
I think I feel her heart sinking. Tying slippery hands with mine.
“Third door on the right.”
She lamely, but adorably, jokes from behind me, and it breaks my heart. Because I know what she's doing. I know she's reaching for our yesterday dreams. Reaching so far. Stretching toward our safe places. Stretching so hard. And as I laugh in a way that’s more like a weight of the world sigh, I realize it’s too late for reaching. Too late for returning to our bubble gum world.
That world’s gone. At some point, that world popped like a balloon blown too tight.
I almost want to cry as I pad along the hardwood floors of this long hallway, feeling the boards creak beneath my bare feet with my every burdened step. And suddenly it’s no wonder Ashley calls me in the middle of the night. It’s no wonder Ashley is so afraid to be so alone inside this haunted house.
It’s no wonder I hate my brother more than anything for leaving her inside it.
Before I make it to the bathroom, I stop at the second door on the left. I can’t help myself. I need to go inside, I need to revisit this place. Checking back toward the light of the living room, for really no reason at all, but feeling like I should. Feeling like I should make sure she’s not watching as I step inside her personal place. Her private sanctuary.
The lights are so bright in here. Too bright. They show off every spec of dust. Show it too easily. They shine on every instrument that hasn’t been played in a long time. Too long. They point and laugh at every CD gone untouched.
They fill my eyes with hard tears. Tears for what was and what’s not anymore. Tears for the dust. Tears for this room.
Biting back those in-the-past tears, I try and forget.
But it only makes me remember more.
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Standing by myself in the middle of this unpacked room, I hear my mother roaring with laughter, three doors down. I hear it bellowing and echoing from Ashley and Glen's hollow kitchen. Rolling straight down the hall, right into my hurting ears. Finding me, hiding from her. Hiding from it all.
Ashley and Glen just moved in here a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, and boxes still litter every room. A month ago and the bare walls still shine brighter than the sun.
I guess neither were ready to call this place home.
I sigh as I hear someone compliment Ashley on their beautiful new home.
I guess I’m not ready either.
I guess I’m not ready for any of this.
“Hiding, are we?”
Eyes still facing straight ahead, I don’t even bother turning to show her my small smile as I answer, “You know it better than anyone.”
She doesn't really laugh as she giggles, and it makes her voice so soft as she says, “That I do.”
I sigh again, for all the obvious reasons that I fear I'll never get over, as she comes to stand beside me. “Sorry I’m not hanging in the kitchen with the rest of them, but you know all that floral arrangement and dinner menu talk is just not my scene.”
And it’s the truth, it’s never interested me, even when I’m not stewing with jealousy and pain over the wedding. Even when I’m not seriously wrongly coveting the bride.
“Hey, you’re the Maid of Honor...” She nudges me softly with her shoulder, “...didn’t you know you have the one and only get-out-of-wedding-talk free card.”
“Oh see I thought it was the get-out-of-dancing-at-the-reception free card.”
“Sorry...” Puffs from her lips with a shrug, “...No such luck. You and your dangerous moves are just gonna have to try and harmoniously coincide with my smooth ones out on that dance floor.”
Lightly leaning into her side, I chuckle. Somehow I manage to genuinely laugh despite the pain of the situation. Despite the depressed and bruised muscle thumping inside my chest.
“So...” She finally walks further into the room, away from me, looking around at all the shelves “...pretty cool, huh?”
She’s of course talking about the music room I spent all weekend working on, while she was visiting friends in Cleveland. The music room that was going to be Glen's trophy showcase room. The music room I insisted he make for her.
The music room I ended up begging him for.
The first and last time that will ever happen.
“Yeah.” I nod my head, looking around with her, as if I’ve never seen it before. As if I didn’t muck up a pair of jeans and three irreplaceable thrift shop tees by painting these red walls. “It really is.”
“I still can’t believe Glen did this.”
She’s looking straight at me now, curiously, and I play dumb. Because I, of course, made sure Glen never told her it was my idea. I made sure Ashley would never know I slept maybe two hours the past three days, working so hard painting trims, hammering in shelves, and alphabetizing albums.
“I know. He actually did something nice for once.” With a shrug I turn from her, hoping she doesn't catch the smile creeping over my lips from my growing pride. My escalating excitement. I’m not sure why I don’t want her to know it’s me. I don’t know why I can’t let her know how much it means to me that she likes it.
“No, Spence..." She draws the words out slowly, and I can hear the smirk on her face, "...I literally don’t believe he could pull this off. He had to have had some help.” I don’t know if she really knows. I don't know, but I don’t care, because as I turn around, as I find her goofy smile and light eyes, I know she loves this room. And that's all that matters. It doesn't matter who gave her this room. Whose idea this room was.
This room with its rich wood floors, and black grand piano. This room covered in CD's and cassettes. This room inhabiting the love of her life; an acoustic six string Taylor. Or her love on the side; a bright red electric Fender.
It doesn't matter, because it makes her happy. And if she lives the rest of her life believing Glen, her fiance, her soon to be husband, did it for her. Then I'm happy too.
Even if Glen wanted to paint this room dark blue.
Even if he still doesn’t know her favorite color is red.
“So, I quit the coffee house."
If I were drinking something, I'd spit it out.
"You what?! Why??" I pull back some of my surprise, and replace it with composure, "I mean, that's cool and all, but..." Softer now, "...you loved that job."
She smiles, appreciatively, maybe even loving the fact that I know her so well.
"Yeah..." She nods to the ground, somewhat whimsically "...Yeah I did. But, you know, I'm twenty six years old, almost twenty seven. What am I gonna do, pour coffee for the rest of my life? Besides..." She shrugs, and I immediately don't like where it's going, "Glen doesn't need me to have that silly job. He can support me, support us. And now I have all this..." Her eyes roam over this room full of her dreams and passions." I can start doing what I've always wanted to do."
I can only nod. I can only think with trepidation. Because while it makes sense, and it all sounds like she means it. There's something about it that doesn't feel right. There's something that feels like a stranger inside her words.
There's too much Glen in there.
And it's not sitting well with me. At all.
"Ash-"
"It’s weird...” As if she knows where I was going, she cuts me off, "...all this stuff is just like, starting up, you know?" Leaning with what might be her uncertainty, she rests back against the piano, looking down into the center of the room, “...this house, this wedding, it’s like I have this new life that’s just beginning.”
A sigh flits past her lips, and I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or if she’s really talking to herself.
“It’s beginning, I know it's already begun, but...” She bites her lip and looks at me, “...I don’t know, I still feel like I’m waiting. I'm just sitting here waiting...” Blushing and somewhat timid, she walks toward a shelf, barely breathing her words, “...for a different beginning to another life.”
I don’t know to say to that. All I know is I have to say something. All I know is that is not a statement to be left out in the open, to be left in the cold. But before I can stumble and stutter some incoherent mumble, she beats me to it.
“But this place, this room...” Her fingers rest on a shelf, “...this feels right. This is the beginning. This is the home I’ve always waited for. You know?” She turns back to me, looking like the strangest mix of melancholy and joy, “...this is where my life starts.”
She finishes with a true smile, and I can’t help but return it. I can't help but feel the pride of giving her this life. Feel the pride over ride the anger with my brother for almost taking it from her.
We hold our smiles and eyes like always, never letting a moment go without some meaning, before she looks back in front of her. Looking over a sea of Cassette Tapes.
“Bet these confused you, huh?”
Laughing her words, she grazes her fingers over every case, and I can’t help but giggle too. I can't help but nod my head because they did confuse me. They actually baffled me. In a world of blank CD’s and iPods, who still used cassette tapes?
“Yeah, I thought they stopped making those years ago. Only a grandma like you would keep ‘em around.”
I chuckle warmly, and she laughs with me, nowhere near surprised by my joke. Nowhere near offended, because she knew it's one I’d make.
She always knows.
“Well, little girl...” Throwing on her best crippling and cracking old timers voice, she waves me over “...if you come over here, I’ll give you a golden piece of this granny’s music mind.”
Dribbling with laughter, I don't waste a second to stand by her. To smile by her side, looking out before me, right where she’s looking. Seeing what she sees. Wanting to see through her eyes, because I know she’s about to tell me something incredibly insightful. She’s about to give me another sacred piece of her life.
And once again, it’s something I’ll hold onto for the rest of mine.
“A lot people collect LP’s you know? Records. Vinyl. Because it’s...” She air quotes, “...’classic’. And I don’t disagree, not one bit. There’s something truly nostalgic about an old ’45. There’s something in the way a needle drops onto a turn table, scratching and cracking the music to life. Going from static to moving instantly. You just can’t get that something from a CD.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” I smile, nodding once, quirking an eye her way. We both know she’s always been the music one. We both know the only music I know is the music she shows me.
With a thoughtful smile, her head tilts to the side towards me, eyes glazing over the cassettes as if they were a photo album.
“Yeah, well, cassette tapes? These are my records. These are my nostalgia. People of our generation forget so easily. They forget the mix tapes we used to make. Back in the eighties and early nineties, these things...” Fingers trace over the outsides, singling out one in particular, “...these were our mp3 players. These were our gifts no one else could give.” Slowly and softly, she pulls out one cassette from a row of them, “These were our love letters.”
Her voice is so warm, so sincere, I have to believe she’s speaking from a place of knowledge. I have to believe she’s written a few mix tapes in her past.
“You know, growing up, starting when I was like, I don’t know, five or six, My mom and I would make a mix tape together once a year. All the songs we loved. All the songs that made us remember. Granted, I was still kind of too young to have any memories that meant anything, but my mom still included me.” Her voice becomes unbelievably soft, like she were truly feeling these words, “Mom. Mom remembered. She remembered for me.”
My eyes glaze down to where she fiddles with a tape, rotating it over and over between her palms.
“Pretty soon, I started making my own. I started recording my own memories with my own favorite songs. I did it every year. And I’ve never stopped.” Taking a deep breath, she stills the tape in her hands, finally turning her somewhat watery eyes on mine. Seeing a somewhat blurry vision of her through my own somewhat watery eyes.
Everything just went from lighthearted to intense in a single instant. And we’re both feeling it as she gently reaches for my hand, holding it open inside one of hers. Drawing another breath, she places her tape inside it, folding my fingers around it. Protecting it. Keeping it safe as if it were the lock to a treasured childhood bike.
“Here.”
My eyes widen, utterly moved, and eternally grateful for a priceless gift I could never keep.
“Ash, I can't take-“
“Please, Spence, take it. Keep it...” She nods once in a punctuating way, ending any chance of me giving back her gift. “I want you to have my 2005.” I can hear her breaths stuttering as they shake from her unsturdy lips, “I want you to have my hardest year...” Her hands squeeze over mine, “...because you’re what got me through it. You’re what saved me from it.”
A smile graces her lips, showing me that this is actually a good thing instead of a sad thing, and I don’t hesitate in smiling back. I don't hold back the graciousness I feel inside her gesture. Making sure my eyes look straight into her, mustering all the strength I have in me to say two words stronger than I’ve ever said anything.
“Thank you.”
“No,” The left corner of her mouth turns up. “Thank you.”
I can't stop myself from rolling my eyes, from sighing, because she always does this. She always deflects my gratitude. And this time I need her to take it. I need her to hold my sincerity and feel it. Really feel it. “Ash, I’m being serious, you don’t’ know what this means-“
“I’m not talking about the tape, Spence.”
My eyes squint in confusion, my lips pinch in baffledness, and she smiles even more because of it.
“I’m thanking you for this comfort. I'm thanking you for giving me one of the only things to feel right inside my new life.”
I’m still somewhat lost as her lips turn knowingly.
“Oh, come on, Spence. You think I actually believe Glen did all this?” Arms lightly lifting to either side, she displays her new life room, “Because I don’t. There’s only one person who knows me well enough to do all this and I believe I know exactly who she is.”
Before I can say anything, anything at all, whether to deny her truthful accusations, or to accept them and take full credit for my gift, she’s walking away. She's walking away with the warmest smile on her face.
“I know you hate it out there, but I'm begging you to please come back. Do it for me, please? Because I’m like fresh meat amongst a pack of wolves, and your mom is pretty much the hungriest one of the bunch."
She giggles suggestively, with a tinge of something I can't read, before she walks out into the hall.
Leaving me inside the life I’ve made for her.
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Through blurry and wet eyes, I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. I’m not sure what I’m crying over more. The dust covering the room her life was supposed to start in, or the dust bleeding from my crumbling heart. Bleeding from the life I was supposed to start.
From the life that was supposed to be so much more than the one I’m living now.
More tears rush from my eyes with that thought. More tears drown me. Holding me down inside the swirling sea of What If's and What Could Have Been's. I’m reaching and grabbing onto slippery walls to pull me out of them. Out of this life. This life where I've done so little right, and so much wrong.
I hiccup, and suddenly the sound is muted and swallowed. Taken away from me as a familiar mouth -- one that’ll never become too familiar -- softly blankets my quivering lips. Steadying them between hers. Keeping them warm and safe.
And only making them shake harder. Only making me crumble more.
She breaks away before I’m ready, causing my forehead to fall forward, softly resting with hers. Hands cupping my cheeks, she wipes away the thick tears like I’m so inconsolable that I’m incapable of doing it myself.
And the pathetic thing is she’s right. I am that incapable. And I’m more inconsolable than I’ve ever been.
I hear her release a lungful of air between her moist lips, and while she’d normally ask what’s wrong, while I’d hold my breath waiting for it, I know it’s not going to come. I know this is not a normal moment. We haven’t had a single normal moment these past two days. But then again, we’ve never really had a normal moment. Ever. For the past two years, we’ve been anything but normal, and I’m not holding back anymore. I’m breathing shallow and stuttered, keeping my eyes on the ground between us, tears spilling down to the pretty hard wood floor.
“This is it, isn’t it?”
Her voice, solemn and defeated, pulls my eyes from the floor. Pushes my face back. Back and away so I can see hers. So I can see if she means what I think she means. What I hope she doesn’t mean.
But her eyes reflect mine. Her breaths stilt in time with mine. And the meaning written across her face is everything I think it is.
Because her meaning is the same as mine.
“I don’t want it to be.” Squeaks from my blubbering lips, suddenly out of breath. Suddenly without a voice. And as tears now flow from her eyes, I have to do something. I have to take her hand in mine.
“But this...” Gently, poignantly, I direct our joined hands between us, “...isn’t how this...” Hands now placed on our chests, above our respective hearts, I whisper through a swallowed sob, “...should be.”
Her lips are quivering now, shaking so hard, like an earthquake, and I’m just waiting for when she completely breaks. For when she cracks from the inside out. Taking me with her.
Eyes filling with the tears she’s held back for so long -- tears I share with her -- she looks down on those same rich floorboards I was just looking at. Those same floorboards I gave her so long ago.
“I know.” She whispers down into the dark wood, instead of into my breaking heart.
“It’s only been two days, Ash. Two days and I already feel like I’m suffocating.” Dark eyes shoot up to mine, from those wrongly interpreted words, words that bit too hard, words I never wanted or meant to bite at all, ”Oh, no, no. No, I didn’t...” Through overwhelming tears I try to articulate myself, "...I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t. It’s just...” I take a deep deep breath, winding myself up for a knock out. “...He’s my brother.”
And there it is. The word I’ve been fearing. The word I’ve been running from. The word that has stopped her from running -- from anything -- grabbing her by the shirt collar, and snapping her back to reality.
”He’s my brother, Ash. He’s my brother, you’re his wife, and I’m sleeping with you.” My eyes close with new fresh tears brewing from the fresh confessions I’m about to make, “I’m sleeping with you and as if that weren’t bad enough, as if sleeping with my brother's wife weren’t going-to-Hell-worthy, I'm - I’m...” Stuttering over the truth, fumbling around with the honest words, the words that have never left my lips. “I’m in love with her.”
I hear Ashley gasp lightly, and it's not out surprise from my confession. No, it's out of relief, for finally hearing it.
"I'm so in love with her. With you, Ash."
And I can't stop talking. I can't stop the words pouring straight from my heart. Like a roller coaster dipping over a tall edge, I'm in motion. I'm in speeding unbreakable motion, and even her arms trying to wrap around me, can't stop it.
They can't stop me from giving it all away.
I need her to see my face as I say everything she's deserved to hear for so long.
I need to see her face as I say the words I've kept from myself for too long.
“I've always known it. I've always felt it. But, God, these past two days, these days of having you, of feeling you, of kissing you, it's just...I can't even put into words what it's done, what it's felt like..." I shake my head, truly incacapble of articulating how much she means to me. "I just - I love you, Ash. I love you so, so much. So much it hurts." Nodding my head, my trembling voice becomes a whisper into the quietest air I've ever heard, "Because I - I can't be with you. Not like this."
And, somehow, the air stills even more. The air silences more than before. Because it's the silence of inevitability.
"I just can't. I can't do it to my brother. But mostly, I can't do it to you. I can't do it to us. Because it's only been two days, Ash, two days and I already feel how tainted we're becoming. This pure and beautiful thing we have, this amazing love we've uncovered, it's becoming wrong. It's becoming the direct opposite of what it should be. What it always should have been. If only, if only I wasn't so..." Coming to a complete stop, my voice slides away from me. I can't go there, not now, not yet -- maybe ever -- I can't realize who's to blame for our predicament.
The room is so silent from my confessions. Not because Ashley doesn't know what to say. Not because she's been stunned into silence. It's quiet because Ashley knows there's more. She knows I'm still in motion.
"I'm dying inside, Ash. It's killing me because I can't imagine going on like this. I can't imagine Glen coming home tomorrow, and still...still sneaking around with you like this."
I hear her sigh, troubled and knowingly. I hear her heart breaking in agreement with mine.
"But then...then I think about not being able to hold you anymore." Whimpered like a wounded puppy, I keep sputtering and stuttering, "...or...or not kissing you, or sleeping beside you..." The tears are back in full force, mirroring the ones spilling from her eyes, "...I think about not being able to love you anymore, Ash, and I feel like I literally can't breathe."
We both stand there, practically breathless from my honest rant. From my biting confessions. From my blazing tornado of words.
Leaving us motionless inside its wake.
"I know."
Until her words slice into the thick air. Until her words send me back into motion. Lips fumble for the words. And like a little girl so far and so lost from her home, I try to talk through that stifling air.
"What are we going to do?"
She remains before me, just a few feet away. For a moment, she looks around this room. This room full of her dust covered dreams, before her safe and direct eyes spear into mine.
"We figure it out." So simply stated she strides to me, holding my neck strongly between her shaking hands, lowering her mouth to mine, whispering inside it "Because I'm so in love with you too, Spence, so much it hurts..." Our trembling lips tremble together, "...and you can breathe. You can breath because I won't let you suffocate."
My eyes are so red and swollen and watery, I can barely look at her. I can barely see her as my resolve slips. As my hopes rise and rise despite my feeble attempts at pulling them back down to the ground.
And I can barely croak out the one word I need to ask more than anything.
"How?"
One word smothered in child-like desperation and she sees my need, my unbelievable need for her to make this better. For her to make this right. She sees my need to breathe. And with eyes never leaving my eyes, with thumbs rolling over my chin. With her forehead leaning against mine, I know she's opening her mouth to give me breath.
She's releasing the weight.
"We tell Glen."
But the air only feels more heavy.
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Chapter Eighteen :: PB&J Giveaway