To Quench Our Love Pt. 01

"You know I value clear communication, but I can't deny that lie made me feel good."

"It wasn't a lie, it's just like, I don't know, it's hard to explain."

"Knight in shining armor complex, it's fine. I think you'd look good in armor. So will you and your trusty steed still pick me up at the airport Sunday? I might not be able to talk tomorrow."

I laughed. She hadn't been so funny since before the second heart attack. Maybe since before the first. Or maybe the joke wasn't that funny but I was just so desperate to hear some life from her. I told her I'd be there and we hung up.

I didn't text her that night or Saturday morning. Saturday night I texted "I thought about you all day. I hope you can have a good night after what must have been a miserable day. I'll be so happy and relieved to see you tomorrow." Texts in those days still got split up if they were more than 140 characters, but I didn't care, I'd rather her piece together the message I wanted that get a shortened one. She never responded. The next I heard from her was when she texted me that she was at the terminal.

I greeted her up at the airport Sunday afternoon with a long hug. She cradled the yellow roses I had brought her while I put her suitcase in my trunk. I asked if she wanted to grab anything but she told me she just wanted to go home and get ready for the week. She was quiet in the car, slouched in her seat with the roses held tightly in her right arm. I brought her bag up to her apartment, where Lauren was watching TV in their living room. "Welcome back," she called to Polly. "I see you brought my replacement."

"Hi Lauren," Polly said. The tone of exhaustion couldn't be missed. I didn't say anything. Tumble raced to the door and jumped around in excitement, but Polly just rubbed his head and moved past him. Lauren gave me a wide-eyed look with a nod toward Polly as if to say "this is going to be tough," and I just shrugged back.

Polly asked me to put her bag in her room and went into the kitchen. When I came back, she had a vase out and was cutting her flowers. I watched her careful cuts, the movements of a seasoned gardener trying to expel the stresses of the world by focusing her energy into the simple but delicate motions of her hands. The fingers of her left hand danced across the stems, deftly avoiding the thorns even though they had already been docked. The moment the stem was positioned, a crisp snap from her right hand left a perfect forty-five degree angle. "Is there anything you wanted to do today?" I asked her as she was finishing the last rose.

"I don't know."

"I can head home if you need to get ready for the week."

"Maybe. I don't think I'm going to be much fun."

"I'm never going to get you to stop worrying about me, am I?" I asked.

She smiled solemnly and looked at me. "Maybe that's my problem. I keep worrying about you when maybe it's time to worry about me."

"It definitely is. So what do you want to do?"

"I want a hug."

I hugged her. Then she put the flowers on the dining table. "Maybe you should go," she said. "It's not that I don't want you here, I'm just exhausted and I think I should be alone for a while."

"Yeah, no problem." But I didn't know what to do. Should I just walk to the door? Say something? I was frozen.

But she moved. She took my hand and looked down my chest or stomach, then started to look up and said "Yeah, I need to be alone." She looked into my eyes and pulled me to indicate she wanted a kiss. We kissed softly and then she said, "But we'll get together this week."

I smiled and agreed, then made my way to the door. She followed me and gave me another kiss as I left. We didn't talk again that evening. The next day I texted her and asked if I could take her out later that week, maybe Wednesday. She didn't answer me until Tuesday afternoon, around the time her school would have been getting home from school. Her reply was "Sorry, I've been really exhausted and I don't think I should go out on a weeknight." So I asked if I could make her dinner that night or the next. She replied that she hadn't had much appetite so that might not be a good idea. Right after came another text, saying "It's not that I don't want to see you, it's just been hard being back." I told her no problem, then sent another message to her to say, "But call me when you have some energy." No response.

By the time Friday night rolled around, I was starting to get worried. I attempted to call both Wednesday and Thursday, out of things to text. "Ghosting" wasn't really a word yet, but the concept was by no means new, and probably the preferred way to dump someone you weren't official with. I'd ghosted and been ghosted plenty of times. But the relationship with Polly was so different that I couldn't believe she would just cut off contact with me, not to mention doing that would violate her beliefs about clear communication. So Friday after dinner, I tried calling her, and when no answer texted "We should do something relaxing this weekend." No answer. Near bedtime I texted again, "Could you just let me know you're OK?" She answered "Physically yes, emotionally no." I replied "Would you like to talk about it?" She didn't answer.

I let her be Saturday. Sunday morning I called and got no answer, same with the afternoon. I was at a loss, but I decided that even though we weren't official, we were close enough that I could go by unannounced, so around sunset I did. I remember looking up the steps to her floor, observing how in the twilight the normally drab grey of her house seemed to fit, almost accented by the poor light. I rang her bell and heard someone inside shout a few things. Lauren answered. "Thank God it's you," she said.

I gave a confused look. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe if she sees you, she'll be more..." she paused and made a formless gesture with her left hand, "human."

I ushered Tumble in with me and asked, "She's not doing well?"

"Go back and see." She motioned toward the bedrooms.

I did. I knocked on Polly's door and she said "What?" as if the previous shouting had been directed at her and she didn't want to answer again.

I just opened the door slowly. She forced a smile when she saw me. She was sitting up in her bed, legs under the covers and wearing an oversized shirt from a charity run. I noticed her phone to her left. The color was drained from her face. "Hi," was all she said.

"Sorry to surprise," I replied so as to match her simple greeting.

She looked down and smiled, this time not forced. She held up her phone. "I was about to call you."

"Were you?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"How are you feeling."

"Thirsty."

"May I get you some juice?"

"No juice. I'll take a water though."

"Yeah."

I stepped out and shut her door. Lauren was in the kitchen cooking her dinner. "Since when does Polly not have juice?" I asked.

"Take a look at her shelf," Lauren told me, pointing to the fridge. I moved that direction and she said, "It's the bottom one."

The bottom shelf was mostly rotten fruits and vegetables. There was a carton of milk with a sell by before Christmas and a tupperware with some plain beans. Some of the food was fresh, but not much. "I guess she just hasn't cleaned," I said.

"Yeah but she hasn't bought anything either. Except two cartons of vanilla ice cream."

"So she's not eating well?"

"I don't think so. She's keeping to herself. But there's no way that's enough food in there."

"She made fun of me for only having vanilla on Thanksgiving," I said.

"That explains why it started showing up around that time."

"Is there anything we can do?" I asked her.

"Fucked if I know. I brought her dinner one evening and she took it, but the next she didn't."

"Well thanks."

She shrugged and I brought Polly her water. She was reclining against her headboard and didn't sit up to drink, just silently took the water and took a long but slow sip. I sat at the foot of her bed. Once she finished drinking, I said, "Please talk to me."

"I'm sorry. I can't explain it. Maybe I shouldn't have come back so soon."

"Are you eating? Because it seems like you're mostly eating vanilla ice cream."

"With cinnammon," she smiled.

I chuckled. I couldn't help it. She laughed too and then started crying. I put my hand on her knee. "I'm just empty," she sobbed. "Everything's so empty."

I watched her cry for a minute, rubbing her shin with my hand. She pulled herself together and said, "I'm sorry. This is how I've been. It takes everything I have to keep it together during class. Every recess I just cry in the teacher's bathroom. I come home so exhausted that all I can do is lay in bed until I start crying again, and then I cry until I'm too tired to keep crying." Her crying resumed.

She lowered herself and lay on her side, head on pillow. "I just don't know what to do," she sobbed.

I kicked off my shoes and lay facing her. I put an arm around her as much to comfort her as to make sure I didn't fall off the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry," she heaved. She took a few sobs to catch her breath. "I'm not myself." Another gasp. "This is why I haven't called. I've just been like this. I use all my energy so the kids don't see, but that just makes it worse." More crying. "I can't talk to my mom because we're both so broken. I'm afraid to talk to you. Nothing's the same. I'm not the same."

She cried for another minute or two then rolled over to lie flat on her back. She started taking the heavy breaths to end her crying. "You know what I keep thinking?" she asked weakly.

"What's that?" I asked. I hadn't said anything in a while. All I could do was watch her cry.

"I keep thinking how I still have so much, a dog, friends, roommates, my mom, you. But losing my dad is taking over my life. Why? Why?!" She seemed exasperated with herself, but then answered herself. "And then I realized, I made a mistake. You know, when I was a kid, I always used to wonder why my dad still ate meat. It made no sense. How could a vet still eat meat? Why? You save animals all day, then come home and eat a steak. So much fucking steak too, that's part of what killed him. But how can a vet still eat meat?" She took a breath, still staring at the ceiling. "But then I realized. If he lost an animal, he would always eat my dinner that night. He wouldn't say anything, but over the years I noticed. And this last week I've realized that he wasn't being perfect. He still had something more to give. And so when he couldn't be the perfect vet, he could honor an animal's life some other way. But me, I never learned that lesson. I had the perfect life. A great family, a fun house with a silly dog, a fun job that makes a difference. All that was missing was a cute boy. And then I didn't just get a cute boy, I got the cute boy. And so then when my dad died, I had nothing more to look to. I already had everything, there is nothing to make me better."

"But does it feel better to get that out?" I asked. Her crying seemed to be fully stopped.

"I think so. I don't know. I just feel like every time I feel better, I fall apart again. And the few times I don't, I feel guilty."

"I'm worried that you're letting yourself spiral. I mean, you need to eat, you need to do stuff. I mean, it's OK if you don't want to do anything with me, but if all your free time is idle, you're not getting anywhere."

She propped herself up on her arm. "You're right. It's just hard. And I do want to do things with you, I'm just embarrassed."

"But I know what you're going through. It's not an embarrassment, it's healing."

"I guess so."

"Now can I get you some real food?"

"Well I don't really want to go out."

"That's fine. But I saw your fridge, can I bring something back?"

"I guess so. I am hungry."

"Taco Bell?" I asked sitting up. Taco Bell was her go-to for easy food because they had good vegetarian options.

"Mmm, I've been eating a little too much of that," she mused as she also sat upright.

I laughed. "So that's how you've been surviving."

She smiled. "Some Jack-in-the-Box too."

"You want that?"

"No, it's too heavy. You were right, vegetarian food is shit when you're too lazy to cook for yourself."

"I'm lazy, you're grieving. But I am running out of ideas."

"We can order a pizza."

"Alright. But tomorrow I'm bringing you groceries and making you dinner."

"Deal."

"And cleaning your shelf in the fridge."

"Dammit."

"What?"

"I was hoping you would forget about that."

I laughed and hugged her. "Now tell me what to order," I said, pulling out my phone. We had never done pizza together.

"What you think I have the number memorized?" she asked and picked up her phone. "They're in my phone, I'll call. Vegetarian supreme OK?"

"I don't know what that is, does it have mushrooms?"

"Yeah. Of course."

"Uh, can we do half without mushrooms?"

"Alright. But you'll need to learn to like mushrooms to be a vegetarian."

"Just call."

She did, and when she told me forty-five minutes, I said, "Do you think I can clean your fridge in that time?"

"You don't want to stay with me?"

"I do, which is why you'll sit at the table while I work."

"Bossy much?"

"Yes, it'll feel good to get out of your room."

"Fine," she said as if to feign defiance, but with a hint of energy that showed she agreed. She was jumping out of bed as if her muscles were itching to move despite her feelings. She started looking around.

"What do you need?" I asked.

"Shorts," she said. She had let her laundry turn into a bit of a mess, her normally tidy room looked like mine when I got my first apartment.

"That shirt's like a dress and it's just me and your roommates."

"Clearly you don't know Lauren at all," she quipped.

"Maybe find sweats," I joked back.

She found her shorts, which didn't show when she stood. Cleaning her fridge would have been easy if she weren't a gardener. Instead I dumped most of the rotting food into her compost bag, which was pretty gross. The beans were from Tuesday, when she had only wanted half a can, so we decided to chuck those too. I offered to take out her compost, but she told me the pile would have to be turned, so she'd "get back to doing [her] own chores" after school. The milk didn't smell nearly as bad as I had expected. I gave the shelf a quick wipedown with some cleaning spray and even scrubbed some grime off the shelf of one of her roommates. Lauren came out at one point and observed, "Oh she's alive and morphed into a slavedriver." Polly scolded her that slavery was not a joking matter and Lauren told me, "She kills my fun but someday she'll get me out of a bad mistake."

We ate the pizza on her bed and actually had what I thought was a nice evening. We watched some of the B-rate shows that Hulu used to stream for free on her laptop, and while there was clearly an underlying sadness to her, we were able to joke and talk and give her the closest to normal evening she had had since before the first heart attack. She did insist that I go home so that I could start my week right - I would either have to leave and come back to get clothes for the next day, or I would have to go home early to change and get my stuff. I tried to protest that staying was no problem, but Polly won that battle of the wills and really, there was no point in staying if Polly didn't want me to, although I worried her insistence was another symptom of her apparent tendency to shut me out during stress.

I checked her fridge before I left to make sure there was enough for breakfast, and there was, so rather than get up early and disrupt her morning, I brought her groceries after work. I cooked and we ate, and she told me that work was still almost unbearable. Her compost was still on the kitchen counter, so I insisted that we go out and turn the pile, even if the sun was already down. I picked up the bed and asked if I should also take the roses I had given her, which were now fairly wilted on her table, sitting in very dirty water. She said she wasn't ready for those to go. So I carried the bag out but she turned the pile, a small woman showing a surprising amount of strength with a shovel. I put my arm around her as we walked back up. "I don't mean to push you, but I think you need to get back to doing these things."

"No, you're right," she said. "It's nice turning the pile. Honestly, when it's winter and most of your gardening is supervising kids, you can forget that you love it."

"I thought you love your kids too."

"I do, but it's been different. I'm so fragile that I can't focus on the joys of the job. I keep thinking some kid is going to go crazy and I'm going to melt down. But we're not even doing that much gardening right now."

"If you need to, you won't be afraid to melt down in front of me, will you?" I asked after we reached the top of the stairs.

"I hope not."

"I just don't want you to feel any sort of pressure with me." I released her so we could open the door.

"I'm trying, I just don't know who I am anymore." She paused and I let the words linger as we walked toward her room. My social instincts thought I should say she'd get through this, but some instinct told me that maybe she was changed forever, and she had to meet this new version of herself. She continued, "I felt so free with you before I left, and now I just have all this anxiety that I'm going to screw things up."

"Why would you think that?" I asked.

She was quiet until we were in her room. "Because I have been. Except it's because of my anxiety, so it's all backfiring." She threw her hands up and hopped onto her bed, landing upright.

I sat next to her and put an arm around her waist. "No you haven't. If anything, it's giving me some reason you would look my way, even if I'm still completely unworthy to even walk on the same ground as you."

She exhaled a laugh and rested her head on my shoulder with an arm around me. "Just don't hate me if I disappoint you," she said.

"I don't think you're capable of doing something to make me hate you."

Another exhaled laugh and she pulled me closer, wrapping her other arm around me and interlocking her fingers. "I just don't know what's going to happen," she muttered.

We silently sat in that position for a few minutes. I wasn't very comfortable and I can't imagine she was, but there was an intimacy that our embrace afforded us. She finally stood up and said, "Look, it's been a long day, I kind of need to decompress."

She picked up a t-shirt from the floor and took off the one she was wearing. "Are you saying I should GTFO?" I jokingly asked.

She threw the oversized t-shirt on over her bra and had a big smile on her face when her head emerged. She walked back to me, took my face in her hands, and gave me a kiss. "Not exactly," she said as she began to work her bra under her shirt. "You can stay if you really want, but I think some time alone would do me best."

"Another time," I said, and stood up. She slipped off her sweats and walked me to the door, gave me another kiss, and we said goodnight.

Tuesday was similar but I didn't need to bring groceries and Polly did most of the cooking. We watched an hour of free Hulu after dinner in her room, then I went home again because Polly had had another long day. Wednesday she told me that she was a wreck and asked me not to come over, she needed to put herself back together and she would tell me everything the next day. I agreed but told her she could also call me tonight if she needed. She didn't call.

Thursday she asked me to meet her for dinner out and I agreed. She kept her promise and told me that the day before, one of her students was acting up and when she had tried to have a discussing with him, she snapped then had a breakdown in front of her class. She was able to pull herself together but not before her class went silent in shock. After the class, she went to her principal and had another breakdown, so the principal told her she'd cancel her classes so she could go home for the day (her classes would just stay with their regular teachers). They agreed that she'd also take Thursday off if she wasn't ready, which she wasn't.