Bonnie and Clyde live on.
Six
Beauty from the ashes
The adrenaline wears off with each passing block as we come to terms with what just happened. Lily sits silently staring out the window. Sunlight coming through the window glimmers in the pieces of glass in her hair., I have no idea where we’re going or what the plan is. Jah says nothing, driving in silence and probably wondering if he was just an accessory to a crime. After about ten blocks, she finally breaks her silence.
“You can just drop me off at this next corner, at the Walmart,” she says, unbuckling her seat belt.
“So, you’re not even gonna talk to me?”
“Just let me out of the car.”
“I said I was sorry, and I’m trying to make things right.”
Jah pulls into the Walmart lot and puts the car in park. Lily thanks him and gets out of the car, quick enough that my goodbye to Jah is rushed so that I can keep up with her. Poor guy got more than he bargained for today. “Thank you for today, couldn’t have done it without you Jah,” I say before calling after Lily.
“If I forgive you, will you let me leave?”
“Yes.”
“Ok. With the power invested in me, you’re forgiven and absolved of your sins,” she says and turns away from me to walk into the store.
Maybe I should let it go. In theory, I gave it a shot and did what I was supposed to do. But if I’m gonna let her go, I at least need to let her know why I came in the first place.
“I tried to kill myself,” I say abruptly, before she gets too far.
She stops in her tracks and turns back to face me, “Why?”
I’ve learned through the grieving process that saying something crazy disorients people long enough to get your point across.
“I had nobody else and couldn’t take it anymore,” I shrug, “then I got sent to therapy.”
Lily walks toward me, and I can see the tough facade breaking as she realizes that she’s is all I have in the world. “I mean why are you telling me this Miles?”
“Because, I promised my therapist that I would try and reconcile with you. That’s why I’m here.”
“Is that what you really want, or is it to get her off your back?”
“I had to call our mother to get in touch with you. You know I wouldn’t subject myself to her verbal waterboarding techniques if I really didn’t want to be here.”
There’s no sense in getting sappy with Lily. We both deal in facts, not feelings. Like going before the supreme court, we lay carefully reasoned arguments with the anticipation of rebuttal. Our mother needs one to grovel for forgiveness; Lily and I communicate through our vulnerability—we’re also stubborn.
“I want you to know that I never stopped loving you sis, even if I didn’t know how to say it,” I admit, moving past Lily and heading for the entrance of the store.
My phone buzzes and I get excited, hoping that it’s Melody returning my text. But my excitement quickly dissolves when I see it’s my mother wanting to know how it was going with Lily. She has a terrible knack for making her presence known at the worst time. I respond with an affirmative and check my messages one more time just to be certain I didn’t miss a response from Melody.
I should take this as a victory. Whenever you meet someone that you’re genuinely interested in, there are moments like this. You imagine what everyday life would be like. How is the pillow talk? Do they bite lips while kissing or just peck away? I want tell Melody everything, start to finish, and convince her that even though I’m broken I can be put back together into something worthy of her companionship. Hell, I’d take friendship at this point.
“Where are you going Miles?” Lily asks.
“I need clothes and toiletries, since I came here straight from the therapist. And seeing as all of your shit is strewn around a parking lot like debris from the Titanic, I can replace yours too.”
“Ok, but you need to tell me everything—the suicide attempt, their death—everything,” she demands. And before I can agree, she grabs my hand and leads me toward the entrance.
Walmart is a world unto itself. When Sara and I would fight, I would often go to a Walmart; seeing all the single mothers with sandals more worn than their bodies would remind me that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. As a matter of fact, there was no grass at all; just concrete with roots growing through the cracks. Hollywood makes divorce seem like a fresh start, like you walk out of court and run into your true soulmate in the elevator. But the reality is that divorce is nothing more than choosing the best women the local Walmart has to offer. You might find shit or you might find gold but, just like shopping at Walmart, theres no in between.
I would describe it but every Walmart is pretty much the same. The door is manned by an elderly woman, and I play the game of wondering if she’s here because she wants to be or if she wrecked her retirement. The other workers toil along in random conversations, doing the bare minimum of work.
Lily is walking through the undergarments and I try to stay at a reasonable distance. Her first question forces me to close the gap.
“So, what made killing yourself the best option you had?”
“Right for the jugular I see,” I speedup to close the distance between us, in hopes that she won’t talk so loud.
“Our mother used your porn habits in her testimony at church and you survived that, so it’s a wonder that you couldn’t power through this.”
The event Lily is referring to happened between our mother’s second and third marriage, when she was struggling to find “purpose.”. It’s a miracle Lily and I didn’t end up in therapy sooner. Our mother would go rummaging through our things while we were at school and found the cover of a porn dvd that, ironically, I’d found in the garbage with my stepdad’s discarded belongings. “Somehow that was more embarrassing than my failed suicide attempt.”
“I bet it was, I converted all my porn to digital after that.” She pulls out a leopard printed thong and holds it up, “What do you think?”
“I think your brother shouldn’t be the one commenting on your choice of underwear.”
She throws it into the basket along with a couple more pairs and moves on to the pants section.
“To answer your question, I had one of those days where it was easier to end it all than to fight.”
“So what happened?”
“Season two finale of The Office happened.”
“I don’t understand.”
She doesn’t understand because, looking back on it now, I probably could’ve chosen a better show to push me over the edge. In a nutshell, there was a love story developing during the season between two coworkers. The receptionist, Pam, was engaged and started developing mutual feelings with Jim, a slacker salesman. Over the course of two seasons the writers foreshadowed a love story that had me hooked. Thankfully the show itself had already ended, because I couldn’t imagine waiting week after week to find out what happens next. In the season finale, Jim tells Pam how he feels and the camera cuts to black—not in an artsy Sopranos type of way, more in a network television “your ass will be back next season” kind of way. Now, I could’ve just put in disc one of season three and kept the good times rolling, but it stuck with me. If there couldn’t be a happy ending on basic network television, where were the hopeless people like myself supposed to find it?