The Lies within the Truth

They say nothing lasts forever, but they leave out the part about it breaking. The collapse before it disappears. It might dull out, at first. Become worn. Used. Eventually, it loses its integrity. The fine lines show up. It splinters to the heat or cold or indecision. With the cracking, the downward slide accelerates until you have nothing in your hand. Shards. Tatters. Hopelessness.

I can hear her pounding on the front door. It's followed by screaming. A primal noise that is transfixing. She moves a slow and steady gait around the rental house. Her voice bouncing off everything and nothing. I stand in the stillness. In the empty closet. Wide-eyed and distraught. I see her pass by the bedroom window through the cracked door of the closet. Almost like I am watching a picture show of someone else’s making. She throws an object against the house. A thud. Sensory overload.

I struggle to re-adorn my clothes. The little black dress on backwards. The peeling of my arms out of the sleeves. The left. The right one. Re-adjusting while the banging and yelling ensues.

Where is Luis?

My pulse is on heightened autopilot, careening toward a finality. I hear their voices, loud and staccato. In the distance. Outside. The Spanish clipped in hateful urgency. I cannot feign meaning, but it sounds like the worst affliction, like realizing you’ve been wrong about the most important thing in your life. The core of me is halted. A racing energy.

I must get out of here, but I don’t know the layout of the house. Only the confines of this closet, a disconcerting space, suffocating my thoughts. Silence. The scary quiet where you know you are defeated. My ears, listening for anything or something. In that moment, a survival instinct overplays its hand. I step out of the closet, cautiously.

---

It’s the first time I’ve been here. The first. And the last. Luis pays the rent on this place for his employees. The ones who bring you chips and salsa. Wash your dishes in the back of the restaurant. It’s newly acquired and unfurnished, except for the magenta couch out front in the living room. The place I was perched minutes ago, basking in the certainty that someone understood me. In a state of undress.

There is a screeching sound. Rubber angry with the asphalt. He turns to look out the window.

“She’s here.”

The words cut. They slice and sever any way back. The previous life blocked. Normalcy wiped off the map, as if it never existed.

“Go into the other room.”

He says it forcefully, but with control. The way men operate above emotion. Calculating. Indecent.

---

That's how I ended up here in this cataclysm. My ruin is self-inflicted. I want to rewind. Slow it down. Make the blur mean something. To choose my life over this faulty need to be needed. I am on the cusp of losing my family, friends, possibly my house, my job, the litany of things that define me. All because I like the feel of his skin against mine. The familiarity of his scent. The voice I know I've heard before. In another lifetime.

I have cast my dignity with recklessness.

I can see through the open curtains that his truck is gone. An empty space. A void that hurts. He left.

“He really left me.”

I mouth the words to no one. A sadness in the abandonment. Or is it entrapment? Words that feel equally the same.

I tiptoe across the hardwood floors. Gently. My chest heaving with anxiety. And then it lands - BOOM! Her fist against the door. She's still here and the panic eclipses rationale. There is nowhere to hide. That's when he sends me the text. Plain. Simple. Impossible.

-Just hide

Shattering vibration as glass breaks and I press my body tight against the wall, willing myself into a statuesque version of contempt. I loathe myself for not anticipating the outcome. I should have known it would break, fracture, fall into irreparable pieces. I've smashed my way through enough people and situations to recognize the pattern. Self-destruction, at its finest.

"I see you. I know you're in there!"

Her voice is hollow, but it roars with vehemence. The words clawing.

"I'm coming in there if I have to smash the glass out of this door. I will get in!"

Cornered, my body resorts to reflex. There is no exit, no path to flee. I walk toward the door. She can see the shadowy movement. A distorted image in the glass like looking into a crystal ball. She pushes her face against it, her eyes seeking out the content of the light.

"I want to see your face!"

The sound bellows, slapping and ricocheting. Something otherworldly propels me to the door. A burst of adrenaline. A fighting overture.

Here's my face. I shove it closer. No words, just reaction. An undoing of everything good.

She looks at me with an intentness, a recognition as she shakes her head. Our eyes stay locked for those brief seconds. I don't hate her. I just want her to feel as broken as everything else in the universe, on this wrecked planet, in this used up town. A collective hurt of indifference.

She says through clenched teeth, “I hope you thought it was worth it.”

The weight of a threat disguised as statement. My pulse ramps.

Then she is gone. Poof. As if the calamity never happened. I look down at the glass scattered across the floor and out on the front porch. Shaking, my hands reach for my cell phone on the table. Where I left it when I walked in initially. I fumble the hapless device but save it mid-fall. Grasping. Knowing I have to escape. There has to be a way to undo, or at least fix, the brokenness.

“Where are you? You have to come get me.”

My voice is low with fear.

“Did she see you?”

He maintains composure. I’m stunned at his ability to project a wholeness.

“Yes, I had, I had no choice,” I stammer through the recounting, “I mean she was breaking the glass, the glass everywhere, and I was afraid. She was out of her mind yelling, and I didn’t want to end up in a police report. I didn’t know where, what she was capable of, and you were gone. You were gone.”

“I’m here now.”

Through the harsh light, I see his truck. I run fast. Faster. My sandal, catching in the grooves of the yard.

I climb in the backseat, on the floorboard. I’m below the field of vision, and I cannot pace my breathing. He jerks the steering wheel, a hard right. My body suspended against the back of the passenger seat.

“She’s following me.”

A hard left, then a sharper angle with the tires squealing. He is stoic, moving through the tight turns. My stomach bottoms out. I reach up and place my hand on his shoulder, once strong, knowing it’s our last connection. For all the poignant moments, it is over. Illusory happiness shoved out by reality. A death.

“Please breathe. Try and calm yourself down before you go home. Okay?”

I shake my head. He glances back.

“Are you even sad? What am I supposed to do?”

The words come out in a whimper, a pleading for direction. An acknowledgment that I mean something to him.

“You think I don’t have feelings?”

From this vantage point his face looks crooked. A distortion. A cracking of his facade. Emotion surfacing.

I hesitate in the hurt. We both know.

I jump out, landing my feet on the pavement. My car in the distance. Sprinting. The sound of his vehicle in retreat. I am running away from it and toward it. Running against time and memory. Running because it is shattered, disappearing, behind me already. My lungs fill with short, raspy breaths. An ache in my legs, as I stretch farther, faster. Despising the lies within the truth. Trying to run out of my own skin, harder, one more step, until I am almost there.