original fic : the two of us are hung from the same twisted rope
the two of us are hung from the same twisted rope
As a child, Jamie hated the ocean. This sentiment has not changed.
r. 3636. original fic.
{I have a ridiculous amount of school work I should be doing, but this happened? Trying out a few different writing styles here; excuse my abuse of tenses. nevertheless, enjoy.}
Her immediate reaction is exasperation.
But this is nothing new.
Because Jamie loves Tom even though she never should have, and Tom will keep leaving Jamie because he loves her. And it will make no sense to anyone but them and maybe Sasha, but Sasha’s always been a bright one.
Back to Tom:
I’m leaving you for the ocean.
This is nothing new.
This bar is for the after hours strippers and the drunk ones sing feminist anthems and the sober ones sing Dylan and Jamie doesn’t want to sing. She just wants to disappear.
Except she can’t. Jamie was born mysterious, draws people into her dark corners with glances that aren’t hooded and gazes that aren’t lingering. Tom will sit next to her and order whiskey and with sad eyes.
My sister killed herself, he says to no one and she’ll look at him, really look at him and make the decision to take him home.
Not her best. But then again, not her worst.
Jamie was a twin, once. Was a daughter. Could have, and came very close to being a mother.
But all things she loves dies. That’s why Tom won’t let her meet Charlotte.
But I love you, she does not whisper in his bed, beneath his sheets. She does not say these things because she knows.
Tom and her, they're cut from the same stone. Rock cannot destroy rock, no matter how hard you bang them together.
In another life, she went by the name of Sadie and showered men with false affection. In another life there was Dean and he would see her, and only her, and he would tell her he was dying.
Fact or fiction: Jamie didn’t care either way.
But he had too much money and there were gifts and trinkets, but he never offered to take her away.
I’m dying, remember?
Sure you are, darling. Sure you are.
Sometimes they talk; by the dumpsters on her break. She wears a mens oxford shirt because there is a chill in the air and she smokes while he does not look at her.
What do you do for fun?
She smiles wryly.
I watch movies.
What kinds?
All kinds. Except westerns. I hate cowboys.
What profession do you like then?
Accountants, Dean, she answers, smiling.
(She does not take him home.)
The first time, Tom leaves her for Paris. Something about a fortune to be made and a heist and some dynamite, but Jamie listens, bored.
The second time; a safari, in Africa.
The third time; face pale and voice quiet.
My daughter.
Jamie saw a photo once. A blonde girl with his lips and a serious expression. Tom tells her she takes after her mother in that aspect and Jamie cannot imagine him with a woman like that at all.
(And she honestly can’t imagine her at all. She sees a silhouette; an umbrella in the rain; the curling of smoke from a cigarette. A delicate hand grasping a small one. Quiet lonely sobs.)
The third time he stays away the longest. She does not care if he never comes back.
Dean gives her diamonds that once belonged to his mother. He tells her it’s because he doesn’t want to see them go to his bitch of a cousin.
She tells him she always thought diamonds were for sad people.
You are a sad person.
There is no malice behind his words. Only truth.
You could have loved me, he says slowly as she dances above him.
Dying, remember?
He slips her an extra $50 and she strokes his cheek because maybe she could have loved him, but really he deserves more than the costly affections of a stripper with suicidal dreams.
He deserves so much more.
Jamie grew up on a farm with horses and chickens and honest to goodness flowers. Jamie had a twin brother named Patrick and he was the favourite. And she preferred it that way.
They would sleep in the field in the summers; chase fireflies and tell ghost stories, but they were never scared. Fearless for no reason, she smiled nostalgically and Jack would smile back.
Sounds nice.
It was.
Jack’s sheets are made of satin and his house is too homey. Too homey? He smirks and she smiles, shrugging.
It makes me sad to think of you alone in here.
This house; the one his grandfather built with his bare hands. The one he would never leave. There would be no Paris and no Safari’s and no daughters, except for their own that never quite was.
Jack was never a sad man. It was Jamie that made him that way.
(She’s cursed, remember.)
Dean doesn’t show up one night.
A week later his father does.
He’s dead, he tells her, in a coffee shop across the road. He adds too much sugar, Jamie notes and watches the old man’s wrinkled, shaky fingers.
It was difficult to find you.
My name isn’t Sadie, Jamie shrugs, that’s probably why.
My son was wealthy, he sighs, you probably knew this. He was…troubled. His best friend growing up was this boy, Daniel. Had one of those learning disabilities. Or maybe it was schizophrenia. Took an ice pick to his brain one day. No one was quite sure why.
Jamie fidgets with her mug nervously. Dean’s father shakes his head.
Doesn’t matter now. He left you a bunch of things. Caused a great stir with the family…
Jamie doesn’t hear his words. Stares at her mugs and watches as the tears land on the plastic tabletop with a soft splat.
His father places his hand gently over hers.
I’m sorry, dear.
I’m sorry too.
They tell you you’re not supposed to fall in love with clients. They tell you a lot of things; like not to drink on the job and not to accept drugs and not too smile too much.
She never asks what that is. So she doesn’t smile much at all.
Jamie wasn’t that great a stripper.
She decides to become a secretary for an accountant instead.
After Africa and before Charlotte, Tom tells her the career change makes her less interesting.
And there’s too many books, darling. Far too many. You need shelves.
She tells him that she likes the clutter; that it reminds her of moving.
Packing or unpacking? He teases.
Jamie just shrugs and tells him it doesn’t matter.
He smiles sadly and replies to me, it does.
Jack is a junior accountant at a firm whose name she will forget immediately after working there.
This time round, she plays the role of secretary.
Her clothes are too provocative; pencil skirts and too high heels. Her idea of modest clashes with the world’s and the consequences are costly. Nevertheless, she is a good secretary; she works in codes and hidden messages; makes personal calls sound like business and knows to accidently hit the buzzer when he’s not working and the boss approaches.
Jack doesn’t quite know how to approach her. The sidelong glances from his male colleagues, the congratulatory well dones and he seems half afraid of her and half in awe - like she’s an untouchable, stunning, lawsuit waiting to happen.
Tom visits in all the wrong ways. His tattoos are too prominent and the HR lady gives her evil glares by the water cooler.
Boyfriend? Jack asks one day.
Some days.
She can’t help but think Jack looks a little too hopeful.
Awkward relationships are not her specialty. The boys were always confident and the men were always suave and Jack fumbles and stumbles she catches him staring at her through the glass.
She wills herself to blush. But she’s never been that type of person.
It is November and it’s starting to get cold out and she wears pants to work and the other women talk to her. It is November and Tom has been gone two months and she doesn’t know if he’s coming back.
You have a lot of books, Jack huffs. Jamie is moving and Jack volunteered and she’s not really surprised. Outside of a suit, he looks five years younger; only a few years out of college with Gap jeans and well-worn converses.
She likes that. She imagines that he sits in his little house and makes pasta for one and practices his guitar and watches too much HBO. She imagines that he’s lonely, but he doesn’t know it.
Yeah, Jamie pops a few in the shelf. A friend left them to me.
I’m sorry. He says and he means it. How’d he die?
It’s not the question that surprises her, but how he asks it. Like she might have been involved. And maybe she was; maybe she should have been the one to tell him to fight on. But that was months ago and that was Sadie and Sadie was just another sad stripper who didn't care.
Tom thought Dean was a sucker who fell for a spell. But Jamie can’t help but wonder what the fuck that makes him.
The thought makes her smile.
I never asked, Jamie answers.
She likes how he stays silent.
Long story short: Tom’s sister comes to stay.
Short story slightly longer: Tom’s sister Sasha; nineteen and rebellious, finds her address and shows up looking for him.
Tom is not there.
Well fuck, Sasha swears in that delightful British way and Jamie cocks an eyebrow as the girl throws herself down on the couch.
Where the hell is he then?
With his daughter.
Something in the younger woman deflates a little and Jamie has to look away.
How long has he been gone?
Jamie looks at the calendar. It’s December.
Three months.
Do you mind if I stay here for a while? I don’t have enough for a plane ticket…
Sure.
And that’s that.
As a child, Jamie hated the ocean. Hated sand and seagulls and once a jellyfish stung her brother and his foot swell to the size of a small balloon. And the seawater turned her then blonde hair green and the peeling of sunburn frightened her, new skin replacing old. Where did it come from, she would wonder and her parents would laugh and her brother would feed his chips to the pelicans in silence. The ocean was too noisy at night and she could hear her parents through paper thin walls - their heavy breathing and moans made her think of being murdered and she wasn’t old enough to understand, anyway. There was no rooster to wake them up and sleeping in made her itchy. Jamie’s great grandfather died on the beaches of a country she doesn’t remember and probably couldn’t pronounce and while her parents lie on the beach, Jamie and her brother build sand bunkers and watch the sky and wait for the bombs to drop. They never did. Patrick decides the ocean is his friend and that he’ll live there one day. In the future, when he’s old enough to know better but young enough to argue he does not, he’ll swim and swim and swim and never come back. As a child, Jamie hated the ocean. This sentiment has not changed.
Jamie gets Sasha a job at the strip club. The Brit doesn’t protest, but there’s hesitance in her eyes that makes Jamie smile.
There’s a sick kind of pleasure in pushing Tom’s little sister into a career of stripping. Even if it’ll only be for a week.
On the second night; her old boss calls her; new girl is all bark and no bite and spends more time backstage than on the floor and he’ll have to let her go.
Jamie’s not surprised.
You’ll be here longer, she reprimands. Sasha shrugs.
Tom’s not going anywhere.
That’s a barb if ever she felt one.
…or maybe not.
Celeste tried to kill herself again.
Celeste is Tom’s French wife. Never divorced, and probably never will. He loves her because someone has to.
She is small and she is delicate and she is beautiful; in that way that all French women are to foreigners. And she might have been a model once; or an artists muse, which Jamie finds funny because in mind, muse is always synonymous to whore.
All the women Tom love are broken, and there’s a deeper meaning in her voice that makes Jamie uneasy. She’s only been here for a few days, but the girl has already put her in a box. The same box as her, but a box nonetheless.
Jamie gives her the money for a plane ticket and sends her on her way. She does not see Sasha ever again.
She does not pretend she isn’t grateful.
it is January. Tom has been gone four months and Jamie does not care if he does or does not come back. Her life settles into a rhythm; work then home to her books. She takes a night course every now and then. This week, it’s pie making, and it’s gestures like these; bringing her baked creations to the office, that earn her an invite to Friday night drinks after work.
There’s no sad bar with sad dancers; it's cheerful and crowded and the music is loud. The secretaries drink too many cosmopolitans and pretend they’re somewhere exciting, like New York or LA and Jamie doesn’t have the heart to tell them that those cities bore her to death.
You’re so glamorous! The young ones slur, dolled up in their party dresses, ready to hit the next destination. They ask about her shoes, her hair and Tom, always Tom, and as they crowd and listen to her made up stories, her eyes meet Jack’s from across the room.
This would be the moment that she would look away and blush. Not that type of girl, remember?
One of the female accountants, the one who has two kids and an unsatisfying marriage corners her in the bathroom. Over the hand dryer, she yells you’re both just like Jim and Pam, you know!
And Jamie doesn’t know. She’s familiar with the show, and maybe Jack could be a Jim, but she’s no Pam and Tom’s no Roy and Jack deserves better than an unrequited and long dragged out crush.
So when she pulls him into the alley and presses her lips against his, she knows that this; spontaneous and forceful and unevenly paced, is ultimately for the best.
Tom once asked her what she wanted.
Jamie’s never really known.
Casual sex becomes a relationship without her knowing. One day there’s his toothbrush in her bathroom and his shoes by the door and his dog, a white fluffy thing given to him by his brothers as a joke, snuggles up to her when they watch HBO.
What’s more surprising, is she finds that she doesn’t really mind.
And forceful becomes gentle, and pasta for one becomes pasta for two and one weekend he surprises her with a trip to the country. And perhaps she would do anything that he wanted.
Tom comes home in March.
She’d forgotten about that.
How’s Celeste? She asks over coffee and the question catches him by surprise.
Sasha told you? He asks and she shrugs. Of course she did.
Jamie remembers how she rushed in and rushed out and she never cared enough to ask what was actually wrong.
I wasn’t going to come back, Tom says quietly, subtly adding something a little stronger to his drink. I thought it would be different. But it wasn’t. she only wants me when she doesn’t want to live.
I’m sorry.
You’re not, he chuckles, I’m not.
She hums in acknowledgement. Perhaps.
Sometimes she looks at Jack and sees Dean and looks at Tom and sees Patrick; in the way that Dean was so fragile and careful and Patrick was fearless and didn’t have a care. She wants to ask Jack why and ask Tom how’s your daughter and she has so many things she wants to say but doesn’t and it makes her want to scream. But Jamie doesn’t scream; not even that time when she was ten and there was a leak in her ceiling and the drips on her face made her believe she was slowly drowning.
Sometimes she thinks she still is.
One day there’s a baby and the next day there’s not.
Jamie’s x mistake? Telling Jack to begin with.
But she’s nervous and excited and this shouldn’t be possible, but the pluses all indicate that it is and she can’t raise a baby. Not in a house full of books by herself.
(Jack’s smile lights up a room and a baby needs a father that will protect her from the ocean.)
And he’s nervous and there’s a doctors appointment at lunch and, I’m sorry ma’am, but you’re not pregnant and her world comes crashing down.
I’m sorry, Jack murmurs over whiskey, and his house is not homey, oh no, she sees the cracks in the foundation and the replastering from where marriages nearly fell apart.
It’s okay.
I was going to ask you to marry me, he whispers and she wants to cry. He looks so sincere and she feels like a criminal.
In the waiting room. I kept thinking it over. If she’s pregnant I’ll marry her…
And now that I’m not?
He gives her a half look.
You don’t love me, Jamie, he says like it’s obvious and perhaps it is. And perhaps this home is not quite so homey; a prison of memories - some good, yes, but it’s the bad ones that suffocate you. It’s the bad ones you don’t dare forget.
I wanted to.
I believe you.
She quits the next day.
She gets a job as a secretary to a dying millionaire. His daughter regards her with something akin to disdain; as if she knows everything about whom she used to be. Who she still is.
But he regales her with stories and memories and she writes them all down, diligently. Stories of war and success and tragedy and lost love and Jamie likes the way her hand cramps; likes the way she gets ink on her fingers and the paper makes her hands dry.
My children don’t care, he tells her one day, they care about things. They don’t care about memories.
Jamie thinks that’s a shame.
And maybe she likes this job more than she should. Likes the way he tells her these stories like he’s telling her for the first time. When he struggles to remember names and dates and places and she likes the way that time can make you forget.
Sometimes I wish I could start anew, Jamie tells him and he smiles.
One day you won’t.
She hopes he is wrong.
Jamie considers her memoirs for a moment:
(ex-stripper with a dead brother who was second best in her parents' eyes; in love with a married man who will never fully love her back; in love with an accountant who deserves so much more. Lives alone in a house with too many books. Afraid of the ocean. Not afraid to die.)
With a chuckle, the millionaire regards her tale of woe critically.
Books, huh?
I dream of being crushed by them.
Scary stuff.
Not really.
And maybe he understands her; this old man close to death. And he taps his cane near her foot, as if he has reached a decision.
He dies the same day Tom proposes.
Jamie forgets how to breathe.
There is a will and there is a reading and there are too many angry people in their fifties.
And there are the crazy relatives; a sister who wears a red coat and tells them that this is what they deserve.
He had four children; two daughters and two sons, each with their own personal sense of entitlement. Each with a quick fix, an easy solution. And perhaps that was their mistake; the hiring of nurses and house keepers and depressed ex-strippers, to look after their ailing father.
The lawyer says her name with such clarity that it’s almost foreign to her ears. There’s a few items; an antique pistol that she remembers the origins of so clearly, a ring that is definitely an heirloom (the glares are intense here) and books, hundreds of books and she smiles.
There’s also the matter of a million dollars.
How about that.
Tom expects an answer and Jamie can’t give him one.
You love me, right? And this is not them; uncertainty and second-guessing and all of the horrid clichés.
Too much. She replies and Tom chuckles a little before entwining his hands with hers.
So you’ll understand why I can’t marry you.
The thing Jamie doesn’t expect: he doesn't understand. He takes away this information and mulls over it until it makes him bitter and he creates his own form of retaliation.
And he does, two days later, when he calmly tells her I’m leaving you for the ocean.
Jamie’s always been quick on the uptake. So she whispers sadly, strongly;
Don’t come back.
It ends like this: a visit from Tom’s daughter, 26 and poised and Jamie is old now; an old woman with her books.
She looks tortured and broken and Jamie doesn’t know what to tell her; she hasn’t seen or heard from Tom in years.
My father is-
Stop. Rewind. We can’t start from the end. So let’s go back to the beginning.
It begins like this: a plane ticket for a flight she never catches. Last minute decisions and her possessions in boxes. She leaves her next months rent but does not leave a note.
And there’s a house in the country. And that’s enough.
She does not dream of the ocean.
[fin.]
As a child, Jamie hated the ocean. This sentiment has not changed.
r. 3636. original fic.
{I have a ridiculous amount of school work I should be doing, but this happened? Trying out a few different writing styles here; excuse my abuse of tenses. nevertheless, enjoy.}
Her immediate reaction is exasperation.
But this is nothing new.
Because Jamie loves Tom even though she never should have, and Tom will keep leaving Jamie because he loves her. And it will make no sense to anyone but them and maybe Sasha, but Sasha’s always been a bright one.
Back to Tom:
I’m leaving you for the ocean.
This is nothing new.
This bar is for the after hours strippers and the drunk ones sing feminist anthems and the sober ones sing Dylan and Jamie doesn’t want to sing. She just wants to disappear.
Except she can’t. Jamie was born mysterious, draws people into her dark corners with glances that aren’t hooded and gazes that aren’t lingering. Tom will sit next to her and order whiskey and with sad eyes.
My sister killed herself, he says to no one and she’ll look at him, really look at him and make the decision to take him home.
Not her best. But then again, not her worst.
Jamie was a twin, once. Was a daughter. Could have, and came very close to being a mother.
But all things she loves dies. That’s why Tom won’t let her meet Charlotte.
But I love you, she does not whisper in his bed, beneath his sheets. She does not say these things because she knows.
Tom and her, they're cut from the same stone. Rock cannot destroy rock, no matter how hard you bang them together.
In another life, she went by the name of Sadie and showered men with false affection. In another life there was Dean and he would see her, and only her, and he would tell her he was dying.
Fact or fiction: Jamie didn’t care either way.
But he had too much money and there were gifts and trinkets, but he never offered to take her away.
I’m dying, remember?
Sure you are, darling. Sure you are.
Sometimes they talk; by the dumpsters on her break. She wears a mens oxford shirt because there is a chill in the air and she smokes while he does not look at her.
What do you do for fun?
She smiles wryly.
I watch movies.
What kinds?
All kinds. Except westerns. I hate cowboys.
What profession do you like then?
Accountants, Dean, she answers, smiling.
(She does not take him home.)
The first time, Tom leaves her for Paris. Something about a fortune to be made and a heist and some dynamite, but Jamie listens, bored.
The second time; a safari, in Africa.
The third time; face pale and voice quiet.
My daughter.
Jamie saw a photo once. A blonde girl with his lips and a serious expression. Tom tells her she takes after her mother in that aspect and Jamie cannot imagine him with a woman like that at all.
(And she honestly can’t imagine her at all. She sees a silhouette; an umbrella in the rain; the curling of smoke from a cigarette. A delicate hand grasping a small one. Quiet lonely sobs.)
The third time he stays away the longest. She does not care if he never comes back.
Dean gives her diamonds that once belonged to his mother. He tells her it’s because he doesn’t want to see them go to his bitch of a cousin.
She tells him she always thought diamonds were for sad people.
You are a sad person.
There is no malice behind his words. Only truth.
You could have loved me, he says slowly as she dances above him.
Dying, remember?
He slips her an extra $50 and she strokes his cheek because maybe she could have loved him, but really he deserves more than the costly affections of a stripper with suicidal dreams.
He deserves so much more.
Jamie grew up on a farm with horses and chickens and honest to goodness flowers. Jamie had a twin brother named Patrick and he was the favourite. And she preferred it that way.
They would sleep in the field in the summers; chase fireflies and tell ghost stories, but they were never scared. Fearless for no reason, she smiled nostalgically and Jack would smile back.
Sounds nice.
It was.
Jack’s sheets are made of satin and his house is too homey. Too homey? He smirks and she smiles, shrugging.
It makes me sad to think of you alone in here.
This house; the one his grandfather built with his bare hands. The one he would never leave. There would be no Paris and no Safari’s and no daughters, except for their own that never quite was.
Jack was never a sad man. It was Jamie that made him that way.
(She’s cursed, remember.)
Dean doesn’t show up one night.
A week later his father does.
He’s dead, he tells her, in a coffee shop across the road. He adds too much sugar, Jamie notes and watches the old man’s wrinkled, shaky fingers.
It was difficult to find you.
My name isn’t Sadie, Jamie shrugs, that’s probably why.
My son was wealthy, he sighs, you probably knew this. He was…troubled. His best friend growing up was this boy, Daniel. Had one of those learning disabilities. Or maybe it was schizophrenia. Took an ice pick to his brain one day. No one was quite sure why.
Jamie fidgets with her mug nervously. Dean’s father shakes his head.
Doesn’t matter now. He left you a bunch of things. Caused a great stir with the family…
Jamie doesn’t hear his words. Stares at her mugs and watches as the tears land on the plastic tabletop with a soft splat.
His father places his hand gently over hers.
I’m sorry, dear.
I’m sorry too.
They tell you you’re not supposed to fall in love with clients. They tell you a lot of things; like not to drink on the job and not to accept drugs and not too smile too much.
She never asks what that is. So she doesn’t smile much at all.
Jamie wasn’t that great a stripper.
She decides to become a secretary for an accountant instead.
After Africa and before Charlotte, Tom tells her the career change makes her less interesting.
And there’s too many books, darling. Far too many. You need shelves.
She tells him that she likes the clutter; that it reminds her of moving.
Packing or unpacking? He teases.
Jamie just shrugs and tells him it doesn’t matter.
He smiles sadly and replies to me, it does.
Jack is a junior accountant at a firm whose name she will forget immediately after working there.
This time round, she plays the role of secretary.
Her clothes are too provocative; pencil skirts and too high heels. Her idea of modest clashes with the world’s and the consequences are costly. Nevertheless, she is a good secretary; she works in codes and hidden messages; makes personal calls sound like business and knows to accidently hit the buzzer when he’s not working and the boss approaches.
Jack doesn’t quite know how to approach her. The sidelong glances from his male colleagues, the congratulatory well dones and he seems half afraid of her and half in awe - like she’s an untouchable, stunning, lawsuit waiting to happen.
Tom visits in all the wrong ways. His tattoos are too prominent and the HR lady gives her evil glares by the water cooler.
Boyfriend? Jack asks one day.
Some days.
She can’t help but think Jack looks a little too hopeful.
Awkward relationships are not her specialty. The boys were always confident and the men were always suave and Jack fumbles and stumbles she catches him staring at her through the glass.
She wills herself to blush. But she’s never been that type of person.
It is November and it’s starting to get cold out and she wears pants to work and the other women talk to her. It is November and Tom has been gone two months and she doesn’t know if he’s coming back.
You have a lot of books, Jack huffs. Jamie is moving and Jack volunteered and she’s not really surprised. Outside of a suit, he looks five years younger; only a few years out of college with Gap jeans and well-worn converses.
She likes that. She imagines that he sits in his little house and makes pasta for one and practices his guitar and watches too much HBO. She imagines that he’s lonely, but he doesn’t know it.
Yeah, Jamie pops a few in the shelf. A friend left them to me.
I’m sorry. He says and he means it. How’d he die?
It’s not the question that surprises her, but how he asks it. Like she might have been involved. And maybe she was; maybe she should have been the one to tell him to fight on. But that was months ago and that was Sadie and Sadie was just another sad stripper who didn't care.
Tom thought Dean was a sucker who fell for a spell. But Jamie can’t help but wonder what the fuck that makes him.
The thought makes her smile.
I never asked, Jamie answers.
She likes how he stays silent.
Long story short: Tom’s sister comes to stay.
Short story slightly longer: Tom’s sister Sasha; nineteen and rebellious, finds her address and shows up looking for him.
Tom is not there.
Well fuck, Sasha swears in that delightful British way and Jamie cocks an eyebrow as the girl throws herself down on the couch.
Where the hell is he then?
With his daughter.
Something in the younger woman deflates a little and Jamie has to look away.
How long has he been gone?
Jamie looks at the calendar. It’s December.
Three months.
Do you mind if I stay here for a while? I don’t have enough for a plane ticket…
Sure.
And that’s that.
As a child, Jamie hated the ocean. Hated sand and seagulls and once a jellyfish stung her brother and his foot swell to the size of a small balloon. And the seawater turned her then blonde hair green and the peeling of sunburn frightened her, new skin replacing old. Where did it come from, she would wonder and her parents would laugh and her brother would feed his chips to the pelicans in silence. The ocean was too noisy at night and she could hear her parents through paper thin walls - their heavy breathing and moans made her think of being murdered and she wasn’t old enough to understand, anyway. There was no rooster to wake them up and sleeping in made her itchy. Jamie’s great grandfather died on the beaches of a country she doesn’t remember and probably couldn’t pronounce and while her parents lie on the beach, Jamie and her brother build sand bunkers and watch the sky and wait for the bombs to drop. They never did. Patrick decides the ocean is his friend and that he’ll live there one day. In the future, when he’s old enough to know better but young enough to argue he does not, he’ll swim and swim and swim and never come back. As a child, Jamie hated the ocean. This sentiment has not changed.
Jamie gets Sasha a job at the strip club. The Brit doesn’t protest, but there’s hesitance in her eyes that makes Jamie smile.
There’s a sick kind of pleasure in pushing Tom’s little sister into a career of stripping. Even if it’ll only be for a week.
On the second night; her old boss calls her; new girl is all bark and no bite and spends more time backstage than on the floor and he’ll have to let her go.
Jamie’s not surprised.
You’ll be here longer, she reprimands. Sasha shrugs.
Tom’s not going anywhere.
That’s a barb if ever she felt one.
…or maybe not.
Celeste tried to kill herself again.
Celeste is Tom’s French wife. Never divorced, and probably never will. He loves her because someone has to.
She is small and she is delicate and she is beautiful; in that way that all French women are to foreigners. And she might have been a model once; or an artists muse, which Jamie finds funny because in mind, muse is always synonymous to whore.
All the women Tom love are broken, and there’s a deeper meaning in her voice that makes Jamie uneasy. She’s only been here for a few days, but the girl has already put her in a box. The same box as her, but a box nonetheless.
Jamie gives her the money for a plane ticket and sends her on her way. She does not see Sasha ever again.
She does not pretend she isn’t grateful.
it is January. Tom has been gone four months and Jamie does not care if he does or does not come back. Her life settles into a rhythm; work then home to her books. She takes a night course every now and then. This week, it’s pie making, and it’s gestures like these; bringing her baked creations to the office, that earn her an invite to Friday night drinks after work.
There’s no sad bar with sad dancers; it's cheerful and crowded and the music is loud. The secretaries drink too many cosmopolitans and pretend they’re somewhere exciting, like New York or LA and Jamie doesn’t have the heart to tell them that those cities bore her to death.
You’re so glamorous! The young ones slur, dolled up in their party dresses, ready to hit the next destination. They ask about her shoes, her hair and Tom, always Tom, and as they crowd and listen to her made up stories, her eyes meet Jack’s from across the room.
This would be the moment that she would look away and blush. Not that type of girl, remember?
One of the female accountants, the one who has two kids and an unsatisfying marriage corners her in the bathroom. Over the hand dryer, she yells you’re both just like Jim and Pam, you know!
And Jamie doesn’t know. She’s familiar with the show, and maybe Jack could be a Jim, but she’s no Pam and Tom’s no Roy and Jack deserves better than an unrequited and long dragged out crush.
So when she pulls him into the alley and presses her lips against his, she knows that this; spontaneous and forceful and unevenly paced, is ultimately for the best.
Tom once asked her what she wanted.
Jamie’s never really known.
Casual sex becomes a relationship without her knowing. One day there’s his toothbrush in her bathroom and his shoes by the door and his dog, a white fluffy thing given to him by his brothers as a joke, snuggles up to her when they watch HBO.
What’s more surprising, is she finds that she doesn’t really mind.
And forceful becomes gentle, and pasta for one becomes pasta for two and one weekend he surprises her with a trip to the country. And perhaps she would do anything that he wanted.
Tom comes home in March.
She’d forgotten about that.
How’s Celeste? She asks over coffee and the question catches him by surprise.
Sasha told you? He asks and she shrugs. Of course she did.
Jamie remembers how she rushed in and rushed out and she never cared enough to ask what was actually wrong.
I wasn’t going to come back, Tom says quietly, subtly adding something a little stronger to his drink. I thought it would be different. But it wasn’t. she only wants me when she doesn’t want to live.
I’m sorry.
You’re not, he chuckles, I’m not.
She hums in acknowledgement. Perhaps.
Sometimes she looks at Jack and sees Dean and looks at Tom and sees Patrick; in the way that Dean was so fragile and careful and Patrick was fearless and didn’t have a care. She wants to ask Jack why and ask Tom how’s your daughter and she has so many things she wants to say but doesn’t and it makes her want to scream. But Jamie doesn’t scream; not even that time when she was ten and there was a leak in her ceiling and the drips on her face made her believe she was slowly drowning.
Sometimes she thinks she still is.
One day there’s a baby and the next day there’s not.
Jamie’s x mistake? Telling Jack to begin with.
But she’s nervous and excited and this shouldn’t be possible, but the pluses all indicate that it is and she can’t raise a baby. Not in a house full of books by herself.
(Jack’s smile lights up a room and a baby needs a father that will protect her from the ocean.)
And he’s nervous and there’s a doctors appointment at lunch and, I’m sorry ma’am, but you’re not pregnant and her world comes crashing down.
I’m sorry, Jack murmurs over whiskey, and his house is not homey, oh no, she sees the cracks in the foundation and the replastering from where marriages nearly fell apart.
It’s okay.
I was going to ask you to marry me, he whispers and she wants to cry. He looks so sincere and she feels like a criminal.
In the waiting room. I kept thinking it over. If she’s pregnant I’ll marry her…
And now that I’m not?
He gives her a half look.
You don’t love me, Jamie, he says like it’s obvious and perhaps it is. And perhaps this home is not quite so homey; a prison of memories - some good, yes, but it’s the bad ones that suffocate you. It’s the bad ones you don’t dare forget.
I wanted to.
I believe you.
She quits the next day.
She gets a job as a secretary to a dying millionaire. His daughter regards her with something akin to disdain; as if she knows everything about whom she used to be. Who she still is.
But he regales her with stories and memories and she writes them all down, diligently. Stories of war and success and tragedy and lost love and Jamie likes the way her hand cramps; likes the way she gets ink on her fingers and the paper makes her hands dry.
My children don’t care, he tells her one day, they care about things. They don’t care about memories.
Jamie thinks that’s a shame.
And maybe she likes this job more than she should. Likes the way he tells her these stories like he’s telling her for the first time. When he struggles to remember names and dates and places and she likes the way that time can make you forget.
Sometimes I wish I could start anew, Jamie tells him and he smiles.
One day you won’t.
She hopes he is wrong.
Jamie considers her memoirs for a moment:
(ex-stripper with a dead brother who was second best in her parents' eyes; in love with a married man who will never fully love her back; in love with an accountant who deserves so much more. Lives alone in a house with too many books. Afraid of the ocean. Not afraid to die.)
With a chuckle, the millionaire regards her tale of woe critically.
Books, huh?
I dream of being crushed by them.
Scary stuff.
Not really.
And maybe he understands her; this old man close to death. And he taps his cane near her foot, as if he has reached a decision.
He dies the same day Tom proposes.
Jamie forgets how to breathe.
There is a will and there is a reading and there are too many angry people in their fifties.
And there are the crazy relatives; a sister who wears a red coat and tells them that this is what they deserve.
He had four children; two daughters and two sons, each with their own personal sense of entitlement. Each with a quick fix, an easy solution. And perhaps that was their mistake; the hiring of nurses and house keepers and depressed ex-strippers, to look after their ailing father.
The lawyer says her name with such clarity that it’s almost foreign to her ears. There’s a few items; an antique pistol that she remembers the origins of so clearly, a ring that is definitely an heirloom (the glares are intense here) and books, hundreds of books and she smiles.
There’s also the matter of a million dollars.
How about that.
Tom expects an answer and Jamie can’t give him one.
You love me, right? And this is not them; uncertainty and second-guessing and all of the horrid clichés.
Too much. She replies and Tom chuckles a little before entwining his hands with hers.
So you’ll understand why I can’t marry you.
The thing Jamie doesn’t expect: he doesn't understand. He takes away this information and mulls over it until it makes him bitter and he creates his own form of retaliation.
And he does, two days later, when he calmly tells her I’m leaving you for the ocean.
Jamie’s always been quick on the uptake. So she whispers sadly, strongly;
Don’t come back.
It ends like this: a visit from Tom’s daughter, 26 and poised and Jamie is old now; an old woman with her books.
She looks tortured and broken and Jamie doesn’t know what to tell her; she hasn’t seen or heard from Tom in years.
My father is-
Stop. Rewind. We can’t start from the end. So let’s go back to the beginning.
It begins like this: a plane ticket for a flight she never catches. Last minute decisions and her possessions in boxes. She leaves her next months rent but does not leave a note.
And there’s a house in the country. And that’s enough.
She does not dream of the ocean.
[fin.]