Two People, Writing about Three People

This post was written in tandem by myself and paterson. It goes, first paragraph--me, second--paterson, so and so forth until you get to the dialogue when it gets a little hard to tell who wrote what. But that was the fun part, trying to seamlessly write a story with two people and have the tone and voice match. It took some editing but I think, for the most part, we achieved that, if that is all we achieved.


I knew Eddy would leave when it was raining. It was just like him to go out in weather like that; even if I did want to follow him, I would have to get myself soaking wet. He knows I don’t have a raincoat, or any boots or anything. I had been expecting him to leave, and I knew he’d do it when it was like this outside, with it raining so hard it sounds like someone’s frying bacon in the streets.

But fuck Eddy. I stopped needing him months ago, and when does one person really need another anyway? The only reason I kept him around was because he was funny. And, come to think of it, he wasn’t even that funny. Most of the time he would just do stupid little things. Lately, he’d taken to pretending he was having a seizure whenever someone came to the door. The most recent visitor to fall prey to one of his epileptic performances was my mother. She kept saying it was funny afterwards, but I know what she was really thinking. It was just mean. And stupid.

I decide to fix myself some tea and start the fire in hopes of forgetting about Eddy and wherever it is he might be going. All this would feel more important if I hadn’t done it a million times before. Eddy runs off, says he sick of me, sick of us, sick of work, or life, or whatever and then I go after him. I usually find him sitting at a bus stop jawing away at someone or trying to get served at one of the bars. Eddy, he’s so predictable, so constant.

I sit and watch the fire, the flames eat up the newspaper and kindling, and I throw on a big log, one that will burn for while. I like the fires you don’t have to work for, that burn long and slow.

I set down my tea on the kitchen counter and head upstairs, making a list in my head of all of Eddy’s things. Work pants, shirts, some gloves, I think he has some books lying around. I hear the door open and I can smell the rain like it is bouncing up the stairs after me. My daddy always used to say that rain was trees, pulverized and ground into a clear liquid, and that was why it smells so good when it rains. It’s as if you are being covered by forest, no matter where you are. I think for a second that maybe it’s Eddy but I know, not even that deep down, more like right on top of my throat that it’s not him. He wouldn’t be back so soon, wherever he is going this time it will be for a while, and I’m not running out after him.

“Hello,” comes a voice from downstairs. Eddy’s things have a way of stopping me in my tracks. His pants especially. I never knew how much I loved those pants until we broke up the first time and he came back for them. They are like Eddy himself, rugged and real. The first time we broke up I spent the night staring at them, thinking about Eddy. Now they make me wonder if it’s Eddy I loved or just the idea of him. I mean, if Eddy never came back for the pants couldn’t I just put someone else inside of them? And what about those gloves? His hands.

“Hello,” the voice calls, a bit louder this time.

I am snapped back into the world, someone is downstairs hollering at me and I am thinking about a pair of pants. I am certain I am a fool. I peak my head around the corner of the stairs and yell, “I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Take your time,” the voice says, and this time I recognize it as Tessa’s, and I think maybe I’ll never descend the stairs again, but just lock myself up here in this room with Eddy’s pants and gloves. These plain and solid things that hold his body. I have no patience for Tessa’s mouth at the moment, or for her eyes or chest or legs, every piece of her makes me want to lock the door and turn into liquid, pulverize myself like I am a tree. Make myself into rain.

And yet, I turn from the pants and gloves and Eddy, and head downstairs. “Hey, Tess.” I grumble as I turn the corner at the base of the stairs. I can see she’s going through my mail at the kitchen counter. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Oh, good. I was worried she’d come over with a purpose this time. “Eddy and I broke up again. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“Well, I’m not here to see Eddy.” She waves her hand at me.

“Well, then, what’s up?”

“I told you, nothing.” She lifts up an envelope and holds it up to the light.

“What are you looking for?” I snatch the envelope from her. “Tess, mind your business.”

Defeated, she leans against the counter. She is wearing a camel colored trench coat and one of those plastic scarf things that old ladies wear decorated by beads of water.

“Anyway, I saw Eddy,” she says.

I dump my lukewarm tea into the sink, “Oh yeah, where?”

“Walkin’.”

“Oh well, thank you Tess, I was worried he might be flying this time.”

“I’m just saying he isn’t do anything, you know, unusual.”

When was he not doing something unusual, I think.

“I just thought I’d check up on you, I guess. You know, make sure you were okay.”

“As opposed to what?”

“Nothing,” she replies, her voice coated in sugar.

“Tess, maybe you could come back later,” or never, “I just want to be alone for a little while.”

She tugs at her scarf and starts to head back to the front door. As she reaches for the handle she seems to freeze in place. I can’t see her face but I’d swear she was smiling.

“Remember that time Eddy left?” She turns back toward me.

“Specificity, please.”

“It was a day like today, and you went after him and you found him hauling a Christmas tree back to the house from Anderson’s Christmas tree lot?”

“Yeah, he’d stolen it.”

“And he drug that tree all the way back here and he let it dry on the porch—“

“He even brought down my hair dyer—“

“And when it was all dried out he put lights on it and made ornaments out of paper and you guys had a tree.

“A stolen tree.”

“I’m just saying, maybe Eddy’s gone to get you a Christmas tree.”

“It’s the middle of March, Tessa.”

“I know not a tree literally. But that’s the idea. Maybe he’s gone to bring back the idea of a Christmas tree. In whatever sort of form he can find.”

“Maybe.”

She lingers a second longer and then, of all the stupid things, and she’s done this all her life, she curtsies before exiting.

The moment the door closes my mind goes right back to the pants. It doesn’t take long for my body to follow. This time I grab a garbage bag as I head up stairs. No more sentimentality. Everything goes. By the time I’m back in the bedroom I feel exhilarated. First his pants. Not even a moments pause. They’re in my hands, then they’re in the bag, and just like that, they’re gone. Gloves next. Shoes, shirts, belts follow. It’s almost too easy. I’m having so much fun all of a sudden that I wonder why this didn’t happen sooner. I even find myself grateful to have seen Tessa, something that I never thought would happen.

I feel like there are moments in your life that have a prescribed reaction. There are the laws of cause and effect and I believe in that, more than I believe in anything else I suppose and this is one of those moments, when you can feel your life changing. These moments are our measure. They are all we have to go on, and I imagine that when your life flashes before you, like it supposedly does before you die, these are the moments that stand out: dumping your boyfriend’s pants into a garbage bag in exaltation. We can live forever in large gestures—small ones, like stolen Christmas trees, are whispers next to the roar of throwing away the pieces of someone you loved.

And as the bag fills up with Eddy’s and mine past, it really does seem to be opening up space for the future. I would have never expected it to actually end like this, but I guess that’s what makes it seem so final this time. It’s not the same. And it is. The same scenario, the same actions, but there is something different, a key turned inside me, or the a feeling in my finger tips and toes that Eddy isn’t coming back, not this time, not with a stolen Christmas tree, or beer on his breath, or even a bird with a broken wing (which he has done). And maybe someday I will see him across the street, or down at the other end of the bar, and I will smile at him and wave. But for now, as the moment tumbles on into another, like they do, ceaselessly, I just sit on the bed, still holding the garbage bag as if it were a rope, pulling me to safety, and I listen to the rain and let the forest cover me.