Author: julialindbloom

I will admit, sitting at the breakfast table watching you hold your queasy stomach felt like a conquest. Everyone busied themselves fetching you ibuprofen and gatorade, offering old wives tale remedies while I sat taking slow draws off my coffee. I secretly hoped your wife would come back to see you in your current state. As you forced your listless limbs to stir the scrambled eggs I bore holes into the side of your head. You had deep bags under your eyes and a five o’clock shadow that looked less kept in the early morning light.

In between bites of toast the others asked you about your job and wife. The first was going well, the second you brushed off by changing the subject. Unsurprising, I thought as I recalled last night. How quiet the living room felt, the early morning moonlight illuminating the plastic cups lining the windowsills. How grateful I was for the blanket the host had laid out for me on the couch. Your quiet footsteps on the stairs as you approached. Your hand in my hair as I lay pretending to be asleep, praying to God that you wouldn’t hurt me. As I squeezed my eyes shut I could picture what would become of you if I fought back, the waking of the drunken bodies around me, the panicked questions, the call made to your wife. As you wrapped your hand around my throat I thought of her, where was she? Why did she let you stay here? Did she know you were like this?

You had told me earlier in the night that you were in an open-relationship, I told you that you were full of shit. As you pressed your lips against my cheek I held my breath, my body quivering uncontrollably. I pulled the blanket tighter around my body. Only hours earlier you had whispered into my ear that you loved how I was shaking. I opened my mouth, unable to form a sharp retort, my cool indifference giving way to the fear rising in my chest. I wanted to brush it off, to say you’d had too much to drink. But I knew you meant it. Your steely gaze softened and fell away as my friend returned from the bathroom. What were you two doing she asked innocently, fumbling with the sliding glass door to the yard. I wanted to tell her I thought we were hiding behind the palm to scare her. That I was naïve and assumed the best of intentions but was wrong. That I knew this was only the beginning of a long night. To ask her to not leave me alone again. But she wasn’t really asking and he wasn’t really talking.

I felt the tears pool up and fall in rivulets down my temples. As I turned to my side I pulled the furry body pillow to my chest and buried my face in it. How could I be so naive? 

What would it have taken for me to leave? A raised voice? Physical violence? I had text him the night before saying I knew whatever had gone on between us was over and that I would bring him back his sweater. The beautiful navy blue one from Zara. It had a hole in the armpit that I had sewn for him and stashed in my car until I saw him next. Pulling into the compact parking space and killing the engine of my Mini Cooper I realized it had been days.

When I entered the coffee shop he stood by the counter and it took me a second to recognize him. I mumbled a quick sorry, explaining how I hadn’t recognized him, and stood in line with him pretending to study the selection of drip coffee. A cheery barista with red tassel earrings asked what he wanted, the dark roast.

As he emptied a sugar packet into murky liquid I suggested we sit outside after a quick glance at the surrounding tables occupied by young people. Each pecked away at Macbooks set atop loose-leaf paper scrawled with notes. Outside, I toyed with the sleeve of my coffee while we exchanged meaningless anecdotes and thinly disguised pleasantries. Finally the conversation veered in the direction I was waiting for. I met his eyes while he dryly explained that anything romantic between us was over and he wanted to see other people without betraying me. Nothing surprising. I earnestly promised that all I wanted was clarity and that I valued his honesty and forthrightness. I thanked him.

After an acceptable amount of unrelated exchanges had ensued I suggested that I get the final gift I had for him and be on my way. As we walked to my car I strode ahead, quickening my pace to retrieve it and bring the drawn out event to an end.

From the driver’s side I scooped up the small drawstring bag and handed it to him urging him that it wasn’t anything big,and definitely wasn’t a romantic gesture. Hoping I was successfully downplaying the thought that had gone into its purchase. 

After briefly turning the bag in his hands he reached out to embrace me and drew me in. I muttered into his shoulder that he was a good man and as I drew back I jokingly remarked that if he ever needed me to leave him a good review somewhere I would. The recoil was palpable in his face. He waved it off, suggesting I was making him feel bad. Good, I thought. 

He told me he was only a call away if I needed anything and, involuntarily, I replied that I was too. 

A funny look came over his face and he said that my perfume was really strong. He didn’t break eye contact, searching for how his covert criticism would affect me.

At a loss for words I simply shrugged.

And with that, I turned and opened the car door while he strode across the parking lot and out of my life.

You were in every moment now. In the elated pounding of my steering wheel on the way home from seeing you. In the pulsing in my head when the music in the bar drowned out all thoughts. In the rising tide in my eyes on nights spent in empty sheets. Waking life was now a series of rhythmic tasks to be completed in between encounters with you. Breezing through billable hours, commutes, assignments, errands. And before I knew it I would be opening the door to you, a cheeky smile affixed 6 feet above worn sneakers. The rush of warm air from your idled car signaled the onset of an adventure I surely had been looking forward to all week. Miles of road would splay out on the highway. And then time would fix and I could let myself catch sidelong glances at you from the passenger seat. Losing myself in the way the passing streetlights cast a shadow along your jaw and recollecting myself at your knowing smirk when you caught me. It made me snap back to the tail lights ahead but they could never keep my attention. You held that power over me. But you seemed to know better than to wield it and we both continued in our lonesome trajectories.

When I was young, I remember being enraptured by the idea of living in a glass house. I imagined erecting my glass home deep in the woods, able to view the going-ons of nature intimately while being safe from the elements. It need only be a single room, blending in with the environment rather than breaking it in. The concept is fundamentally childish in its construction. No one can live in a glass house.

As a young adult, I find I still long for this glass house. A glass house actualizes my yearning for safety and adventure; a haven amid unbridled wilderness still brings out the excitement now that it did then. I could sit cross-legged at twilight and read and write and watch the nocturnal animals in the dying light without fear of finding shelter. The safety of the glass instilling in me a god-like sense of mastery of my environment. The prey meeting the predator in a sacred moratorium. Nothing I could imagine could top this moment, it would be ethereal.

But what of it? Surely reality has thrown the first stone at this pipedream of mine. Creature comforts and rich spiritual experiences rarely coincide. As it goes, I have found a compromise. My dear friend and mentor lives in a peculiar little mid-century modern with a network of decking and platforms. The top platform houses a square room of glass sliding doors and parquet flooring. The room is lined with bookshelves and cluttered with the tools of his life’s hobbies. The drum set suggesting his distaste of age-appropriate pastimes, the sun-bleached spines of books detailing the history of French film, the telescope piled amongst tattered star charts.

He let me stay here when he would leave on his trips. I think knowing that I shared in his appreciation for the space bonded us. So I would sit, alternating between writing and staring through the glass. On clear days I could see the skyline, and if I wrote into the evening, I could see the flickering lights of the valley.

Eventually I would have to leave my laptop on the floor and scurry down to the main house to use the bathroom or cook something or feed the dogs. I could feel it beckoning me back and a relief always settled over me when I returned, re-reading the last few sentences I had typed out before slipping back into a peaceful rhythm. The quiet whir of the laptop fan, the headlights of a passing car, the sounds of my fingers pecking my stream of consciousness onto the plastic keys. It was my glass house. It was never a permanent place of residence, but always a restful space of deliverance. It was just as my mentor had designed, a place of creative liberation in nature.

I would never see a passing bear or trace the raindrops rolling down the sides of my house with my finger. Instead, I could escape, if only for hours at a time, to this glass room. To sit in the dark and listen to an owl coo in the night while my fingers played notes on the laptop keys, immortalizing childhood dreams that stirred in me.

The steam wafting off my tea was beginning to lessen before I finally worked up the courage to ask about the sullen mass on the counter. Its skin was blistered and pocketed, its once vibrant orange reduced to a dingy bronze.

I inquired after it casually, careful to keep my voice level and slightly disinterested. Mom flicked her hand dismissively toward where it squatted on the granite and said nothing, returning her attention to the vegetables she was cutting. I watched as her chef’s knife glided with a quick snap through the thick of the carrots, gradually increasing in speed and intensity until the knife was brazenly cracking through and ricocheting off the marred cutting board.

“So you now have a problem with my fruit too, huh?” she scoffed.

The hostility in her voice didn’t take me by surprise.

“No mom. I was just wondering why it wasn’t thrown away, that’s all.”

She kept her eyes down, glaring at the vegetables.

“Your father didn’t raise you to act like this.”

“He didn’t raise me, you did.”

I watched her eyes harden and felt my breath catch in my chest as they met mine.

“THROUGH NO FAULT OF HIS OWN,” she screamed. She tightened her grip on the knife as I pushed my chair back from the table.

“Look mom,” I stammered, “I never said it was his fault. It, it wasn’t.”

I was standing now. My outstretched palms felt clammy and I prayed she wouldn’t sense my fear.

“Can we, can’t we put this behind us?” quickly adding before she could protest, “Just for tonight.”