revision of roses are red
She turns the corner, barely slowing. It’s a neighborhood street, quiet in the dark. She doesn’t know where she is, although she has lived in Oak Park her entire life. The houses flash by the window, but she doesn’t notice or care. She just needs to keep moving.
There’s no one around this late at night. No one to see the thin chain interwoven throughout the fingers of her right hand, lily pendant swinging, or the half-smoked cigarette in her left. No one to hear her sobs mixed with her screams as she tries to forget everything she learned.
The lily pendant digs into her palm, and she welcomes the pain. He brought the pendant for her on their first date, smiling as she opened it. It’s meant to be ironic, he had told her. I figure with your name, you have enough rose memorabilia to last you a lifetime. I thought it’d be better to buy you other types of flowers. She had worn it almost every time she saw him, along with the perfume infused with violets and chamomile he got her on her 24th birthday. At the time, she had thought he was so special. Charming. Unique. Oliver always seemed to go above and beyond what she had expected in a relationship. He always put so much more thought into everything, surprising her time after time.
Of course he did, she realizes now, barely avoiding hitting a parked Honda. Of course he thought everything through. If he hadn’t, how else would he have hidden his wife and children from her?
The tears blur her vision, but still she presses down harder on the gas pedal.
---
Wednesday night. The bar wasn’t packed, but there were enough people that if you found a seat at the bar, you wanted to keep it as long as possible.
Rose’s roommate Alexis had gone to the jukebox, but her coat hung over the back of her chair. Which was why the last thing Rose expected was for someone to pull the chair out, making it drag along the tiled floor, and sit down.
The man looked to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. His brown hair wasn’t long, but it was long enough that the ends curled around the tops of his ears. He rested his left elbow on the counter, turning so that he faced Rose instead of the bar.
“You look lonely,” he said, smiling at her while taking a sip from his beer.
Rose tensed. “My roommate’s at the jukebox,” she said to him, avoiding eye contact. She didn’t like strangers, and she didn’t like being hit on. Rose normally didn’t go to bars precisely for these reasons, but Alexis had a crush on the bartender and had begged Rose to come with her.
“I know,” he said, still smiling at her. “The Bon Jovi fan. She always picks the same songs when she comes in.”
“I take it you come here a lot as well?” she asked him. He was flirting with her, and she didn’t want to flirt back, but it felt rude to just ignore him or ask him to leave. She hoped he wasn’t one of those guys that assumed if you talk to him, you want to sleep with him.
“My office is a block away from here. My buddy and I will usually come here after we get off and have a drink to forget about all the stress.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a lawyer,” he told her. “My friend and I opened a practice together right out of law school, and we’ve been there now for 5 years. If you have anyone you want to sue, I’m your guy.”
Rose looked at him again, and said the first thing that came to her mind. “You don’t look like a lawyer.” He raised an eyebrow at that, but before Rose could try to explain herself, Alexis tapped him on the shoulder.
“You’re in my seat,” she said to him.
“I was just keeping your friend here some company,” he grinned, standing up. “Although, I didn’t catch her name.” Both Alexis and the man looked at Rose.
“Rose,” she said finally, and he held out a hand to her.
“Oliver,” he said back. “It’s nice to meet you, Rose.” Instead of shaking her hand, he raised it quickly to his lips. She wanted to pull away from the gesture, but he had already dropped her hand. “I hope this isn’t the last time we run into each other.”
He took a final swig of his beer, set it on the counter, and walked away.
---
The headlights turned into their driveway at precisely 7:30. She should have known a lawyer would be prompt to the last minute.
“I still can’t believe you sold me out like this,” Rose muttered to Alexis, who didn’t look apologetic in the least.
“Why not? He’s handsome and smart, and seems nice. He was really polite about everything. Give him a chance.”
“You know why not. I’m not good with strangers. I don’t like dating men. This is going to be horrible.”
“Relax already, if you just chill out sometimes and let your guard down, maybe you’ll find people aren’t as bad as you seem to think they are. He might be good for you.” Alexis had seen Oliver again two days after Rose had gone to the bar with her, and Oliver had asked for Rose’s number. Alexis thought it was exciting and came home with a big smile on her face. After finding out why, Rose almost killed Alexis. Dating had never been on the top of her list. Dating someone she had met once for a few minutes seemed like a really bad idea, but she couldn’t back out now.
The doorbell rang, a high chime and a low chime, and Rose slid her feet into her shoes, spraying perfume in front of her before she answered the door.
“Hi,” she said to him, and her voice shook only a little.
“Hey,” he responded. “How’s it going?”
“Fine. Good. Okay.” Her cheeks started to burn, and he laughed at her.
“Glad to hear it. Ready to go?” She nodded and grabbed her jacket off the couch.
The car was black, a Lexus, with tan leather seats and a faint vanilla smell. Oliver opened the passenger door for her and she slid in, slightly in awe. Her own car, a 2004 red Volkswagen Jetta, had a few scratches in the paint and various CD cases strewn across her back seat. It didn’t smell like anything, except for when she was rushed on her lunch break and had to go to a drive-thru-then the smell of the fries tended to linger for a day or two.
Oliver got in, but before he reversed he opened the middle console and gave her a small felt box. “I got you a little something.”
The lily pendant sat in the middle, shimmering slightly even in the dim interior. He put it on her neck, fingers brushing against her neck as he did the clasp. It rested right between her collarbones.
“Thank you,” she said to him. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” he agreed, “but not compared to the other flower in this car.”
Rose grimaced at the line before she could stop herself. Oliver gave her a knowing smile and backed out of the driveway. When they were on the street, he reached over for her hand, and although she wanted to, she didn’t pull away.
---
The radio is broken, so she knows that the faint sound of music is coming from her phone, hidden somewhere in her purse. She doesn’t answer it at first, but the caller tries back. By the fifth time, annoyance wins out over everything else.
She reaches her hand over to the passenger seat where her purse is laying. The bag is thin, but deep, and it takes her a couple minutes before she feels the plastic. The music becomes louder as it emerges, and Rose finally recognizes the ringtone: Bon Jovi. Alexis is calling.
She clicks ‘Talk’ and brings the phone to her ear, trying to stop her tears. Before she can say anything, Alexis starts yelling.
“Rose, what the hell is going on? I come home and the stereo’s blasting but no one’s here. Your room looks like a burglar went through it, and it reeks. That perfume that Oliver got you soaked into the carpet.”
Her foot stays steady on the gas pedal, but hearing his name causes her eyes to close tight. She doesn’t want to think about the perfume. She doesn’t want to answer Alexis’ question.
“Rose? Hello? Where the fuck are you?”
Her eyes open in time for her to see the mailbox in front of her windshield that shouldn’t be there, and her mouth opens enough to let out a small gasp before her hood crumples into its base. The mailbox leans towards the ground, and only when Rose lifts her foot off the pedal does it stop tilting. The front right side of her car rests on the pole, elevating it slightly.
Alexis is still yelling into the phone, asking what that noise was, is she okay, where is she already.
“I don’t know where I am, Alexis,” she tells her.
“What just happened? Did you hit something?”
“A mailbox.”
“How the hell did you run into a mailbox? Rose, you’re scaring me. Are you okay?”
She doesn’t actually look at the house until a light on the first floor turns on. In shock, Rose watched as a shadow crosses in front of a window and a few seconds later, the front door opens.
“Oh god,” Rose whispers. “I have to go.”
Alexis is still screaming into the phone when Rose hangs up.
---
Chicago winters had no mercy on the people that chose to live there. Oliver took Rose ice skating at Millennium Park once, but Rose had shivered so hard that Oliver didn’t suggest it again. They went to the Field Museum one Wednesday, and a couple weeks after the New Year he took her to the Shedd Aquarium.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized to her as they walked under sharks and turtles. “Once it gets warmer I swear we’ll have more fun. Brookfield Zoo is one of my favorite summer hang outs.” Rose loved all sorts of animals, always wearing prints and smiling whenever any animal-dog, bird, squirrel-crossed her path. When Oliver noticed, he had started taking her places where she could see as many different sorts of animals as possible.
“This is fine, Oliver. I haven’t been here in ages. I forgot how pretty everything is.” She smiled at him, reaching for his hand. He smiled back at her, the same smile he wore when he greeted her at the bar. It was one of her favorite things about him, how easily he smiled.
“True, but the zoo is better. We’ll go as soon as it warms up, I promise.”
“You spoil me too much, Oliver.”
“I like to spoil you,” he told her, squeezing her hand. “I feel bad that my work interferes with seeing you so much. Besides,” he grinned, “spending time with you makes me feel young again.”
“It makes you feel young again, right, because you’re ancient,” she teased him. “Seriously though, as much as I love everywhere you’ve taken me, I wouldn’t mind if one day we just ordered pizza and watched a movie at your place or something. I’ve been curious to see your house.”
He shook his head. “I would love to have you over, but with the redecorating everything’s a disaster. The only functioning TV I have is in my bedroom, and I can think of better things I’d want to do with you there.”
The blush flooded her cheeks, and he traced her cheekbone with his fingers. “It never gets old, making you blush.” He traced her lips, barely touching them.
“I wish it would,” she muttered, voice slightly breathless from the feel of his fingers on her face. He laughed and gave her a quick kiss.
“Kissing you never gets old either, but you don’t seem to mind that.”
“No, you can kiss me as much as you want,” she told him, and leaned in towards him again.
His phone rang, and he glanced at the screen with a look of mild annoyance. “Sorry, I have to take this; it’s my partner.”
People milled around her as she watched the colorful fish swim above her head. Turtles drifted by lazily, blowing bubbles every few seconds. It looked peaceful in there, even with the sharks roaming around, and Rose wondered whether the real ocean was this calm.
Oliver came back to her after a few minutes, eyebrows scrunched together.
“What happened?” she asked him, watching his face. He shook his head angrily but pulled her in for a hug. Despite the tension in his shoulders, he wrapped himself around her gently and gave her a small squeeze before letting go.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he muttered. “My idiot of a partner ordered the wrong transcript for Monday, so now I have to go back to the office and try and figure out who to contact in order to get it to my office in time.” He gave her another hug. “Don’t hate me, but I need to get there as soon as I can.”
Rose pressed the side of her face into his jacket. She didn’t want him to go. Being with Oliver, wherever they were, made her happy in ways she didn’t know existed before. When he took her hand, she felt her shoulders relax and her heart stutter. Being wrapped in his arms made her feel safe, like he would protect her from anything. Sometimes it scared her, how close she felt to him, so unlike how she felt with anyone else, but she tried to just relax like Alexis had told her and go along with her emotions. Her emotions were tricky though. Right now, the feelings she got when she was with him made her feel like the luckiest girl in the world. She didn’t want to push it, especially since they’d been dating only for the past couple months, but she couldn’t lie to herself: Oliver was more than a crush to her, or a casual boyfriend. She had dated a couple guys in college, but only for a few months, and nothing serious. Oliver felt light years away from those boys. How she felt about him made her want to wake up to him every morning, made her want to cook him dinner and watch his favorite TV shows with him. Pressed against his jacket, she wanted more than anything to let him know that she loved him. But guys, as far as she could tell from movies and magazines, were cautious of love. So she just hugged him back, feeling the lily pendant press into the hollow of her collarbones, and willed the words to stay hidden inside her heart until the time finally came.
“It’s okay,” she told him instead. “Work comes first.”
---
Oliver’s birthday was in March, and Rose wanted to get him something special to try and match his gifts that he always gave hers. But she couldn’t think of anything. As special as he was to her, she didn’t know much about his personal tastes. She’d never seen his house so she couldn’t buy him anything for that. He never put the radio on so she didn’t know what music he liked, if any. He always wore nice clothes, button-down shirts, and she didn’t want to get him something he already had a million of. But she was out of options.
At least she could try to get him a shirt that was different than the ones she had seen him in, she thought sadly to herself as she walked into the mall. He usually wore solid or striped button-downs, and mostly either blue or white. She had seen him in green only once, and it had lightened his hazel eyes to a startling color of celery green. That’s what she would get him, she thought. Something flattering, but different, so that whenever he wore it he would always think of her.
Before searching for a store in the mall that would have flattering yet somewhat affordable shirts, Rose decided to grab a quick bite to eat. She hadn’t eaten yet today; it was Alexis’ turn to buy groceries, which meant the refrigerator would be empty for a few more days. Alexis wasn’t the best at keeping up with her duties, and whenever Rose complained, Alexis reminded her that there were plenty of restaurants within walking distance that served better food than either of them could cook.
The food court was busy, with kids running around tired parents and teenagers laughing as they ate. She stood in line for a slice of pizza when she thought she heard Oliver’s voice. At first she didn’t look, knowing it would be very rare for him to be in the same place she was, but then she heard it again and turned around.
He was in line at the sandwich place two restaurants down. She glimpsed his curly hair as he looked down and said something again. He then bent down, out of sight, and when he came back up he was holding a small boy in his arms. The boy was crying, his face scrunched up and red, and Oliver was talking to him, trying to calm him down.
Rose watched, frozen, as a small blonde woman next to him reached up to pat the boy on the back. Her other hand was laced with another boy, a few years older than the one in Oliver’s arms. She said something to Oliver, who then took his left hand and quickly brushed it along the blonde’s hair. A ring that Rose had never seen on his hand before flashed in the overhead lights. The kid in Oliver’s arms started to calm down, and Oliver placed him back on the floor while the blonde smiled and reached for his hand once it was free.
“You going to order or just stand there?” A rough voice brought Rose back to herself. There was a woman waiting behind the cash register, and it took a second for Rose to realize the voice had come from behind her, from a middle aged, heavy-set man. She looked at him but didn’t respond, didn’t move. He gave a loud, exaggerated sigh. “Come on miss, I ain’t got all day.”
“Sorry,” she finally said, and moved so he could place his order. She looked once more at Oliver and his family, the family she had never known about, hadn’t even dreamed of their existence, and felt acid slowly start to burn in her stomach, and make its way up towards her throat. It became hard to breathe, and still the acid climbed and expanded inside her until she started to stumble towards the bathroom.
She made to a stall just in time to be violently ill, throwing up nothing but bile and bits of her broken heart.
---
The house is average sized, with minimal decorations, but it doesn’t look bare. The wallpaper is light and dark blue alternating stripes, the furniture dark brown.
“Sorry about the lighting in here,” the man mutters, bringing her a cup of water. “The light burnt out last week and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet.”
Rose nods but doesn’t know what to say. When she saw him come out of his door, she had braced for yelling, for astonishment, for anything but the old man that took one look at her lopsided car and tear-streaked face before offering for her to come inside and get something to drink. Sitting on the sofa, watching him stir his tea while sitting in an old recliner, makes her feel like she’s not quite awake.
“I’m sorry about your mailbox,” she blurts out to him, and starts to cry again. “I’m having a bad day.”
He smiles at that. “I would have been surprised if you told me you were having a good day.” He seems to wait for her to say something, but when she doesn’t, he sighs. “You’re acting like a woman with a broken heart. It might help you to talk about it some.”
Rose shudders before she can stop herself. The water spills over the top of the edge, splashing a little onto her jeans. She doesn’t know where to start, or even if she wants to, especially to this strange old man.
“It hurts too much,” she tells him instead. He pushes a box of Kleenex towards her but doesn’t say anything else. “I’m sorry, I appreciate you letting me into your house, especially after everything, but I can’t talk about it now. I’ll go crazy. I’m already going crazy.”
“I had a wife once,” he tells her, sipping his tea. “We were married for fifteen years. She was a director of a marketing company downtown, and was always working late, or having to go in on weekends to try and fix some crisis. Once, I decided to surprise her with dinner when she was late, only to find out her office was dark and no one was in the building.” He looks at Rose. “I went crazy. I completely trashed her office, ripped her chair to shreds, broke every breakable thing in there I could find. Then I came home and repeated the pattern. When she finally came home that night, she didn’t even apologize. She just packed up her stuff, left, and the next day I got a call from her lawyer.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose says to him, and she is. His story makes her feel that her problems are tiny compared to how it could have been. His story makes her heart hurt in a different way than it did when she saw Oliver, and it makes her wish there was something she could do to change everything, although she knows she can’t. But she tells the man about Oliver, thinking maybe her story will help him lose the sadness that crept into his eyes when he was talking. He doesn’t say anything when she’s done, just shakes his head as if that’s all he needs to erase all the injustice.
They sit there in silence, and Rose thinks about the past months. She hates everything that happened, how when she finally let her guard down she ended up getting hurt worse than she thought possible. It isn’t fair, she thinks. If this is growing up, she doesn’t want to do it. She would rather be a child again, where she never had to deal with hidden families and broken mailboxes. Her phone rings again, and Rose knows it is Alexis even without the ringtone.
“I should probably go,” she tells the man. “My roommate is worried about me.”
Rose stands up and starts to dig through her purse for her checkbook. She isn’t sure how much the mailbox will cost, but as she pulls it out and starts to write, the man places his hand on he wrist.
“Don’t worry about it,” he tells her. “If my mailbox is the only casualty of the night, it’s a worthy sacrifice.”
“I have to pay you back for it,” she says to him. “There’s no excuse for running it over.” But he refuses to take the money. It is the only time she heard his voice raise, and she finally puts the checkbook away, frustrated. It doesn’t seem fair to her to make him pay for it, but she can’t force him to take the money.
He walks her to the door. “I’m not going to tell you that it gets better, or easier. With time everything starts to fade, but you’re never going to forget, and it’s always going to hurt. But try to surround yourself with positive things: friends, your job, pets even help. Just keep moving, and don’t use this as an excuse to hide. It’s up to you whether this destroys you, but you seem like a smart girl. Deal with it, but keep living your life.”
She nods at him and considers giving him a hug, but she doesn’t even know his name and this makes her shy. He nods back, smiles, and tells her to have a good night before he shuts the door.
Before she leaves, she takes the necklace and places it inside the mailbox. She knows that he will not take money for the repair, but she hopes that if he needs to, he can take the necklace to a pawn shop and it will help with the cost. Then maybe later, a young man fresh out from college will walk past the same store and the light would catch the crystals just right to grab his attention. Buying the necklace will cause him to dip into the grocery money, but it will be worth it to him. He will bring it home to his girlfriend, to their small apartment on the poorer side of town, but they don’t mind this because they are together. Her eyes will light up as she opens it, and she will feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
There’s no one around this late at night. No one to see the thin chain interwoven throughout the fingers of her right hand, lily pendant swinging, or the half-smoked cigarette in her left. No one to hear her sobs mixed with her screams as she tries to forget everything she learned.
The lily pendant digs into her palm, and she welcomes the pain. He brought the pendant for her on their first date, smiling as she opened it. It’s meant to be ironic, he had told her. I figure with your name, you have enough rose memorabilia to last you a lifetime. I thought it’d be better to buy you other types of flowers. She had worn it almost every time she saw him, along with the perfume infused with violets and chamomile he got her on her 24th birthday. At the time, she had thought he was so special. Charming. Unique. Oliver always seemed to go above and beyond what she had expected in a relationship. He always put so much more thought into everything, surprising her time after time.
Of course he did, she realizes now, barely avoiding hitting a parked Honda. Of course he thought everything through. If he hadn’t, how else would he have hidden his wife and children from her?
The tears blur her vision, but still she presses down harder on the gas pedal.
---
Wednesday night. The bar wasn’t packed, but there were enough people that if you found a seat at the bar, you wanted to keep it as long as possible.
Rose’s roommate Alexis had gone to the jukebox, but her coat hung over the back of her chair. Which was why the last thing Rose expected was for someone to pull the chair out, making it drag along the tiled floor, and sit down.
The man looked to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. His brown hair wasn’t long, but it was long enough that the ends curled around the tops of his ears. He rested his left elbow on the counter, turning so that he faced Rose instead of the bar.
“You look lonely,” he said, smiling at her while taking a sip from his beer.
Rose tensed. “My roommate’s at the jukebox,” she said to him, avoiding eye contact. She didn’t like strangers, and she didn’t like being hit on. Rose normally didn’t go to bars precisely for these reasons, but Alexis had a crush on the bartender and had begged Rose to come with her.
“I know,” he said, still smiling at her. “The Bon Jovi fan. She always picks the same songs when she comes in.”
“I take it you come here a lot as well?” she asked him. He was flirting with her, and she didn’t want to flirt back, but it felt rude to just ignore him or ask him to leave. She hoped he wasn’t one of those guys that assumed if you talk to him, you want to sleep with him.
“My office is a block away from here. My buddy and I will usually come here after we get off and have a drink to forget about all the stress.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a lawyer,” he told her. “My friend and I opened a practice together right out of law school, and we’ve been there now for 5 years. If you have anyone you want to sue, I’m your guy.”
Rose looked at him again, and said the first thing that came to her mind. “You don’t look like a lawyer.” He raised an eyebrow at that, but before Rose could try to explain herself, Alexis tapped him on the shoulder.
“You’re in my seat,” she said to him.
“I was just keeping your friend here some company,” he grinned, standing up. “Although, I didn’t catch her name.” Both Alexis and the man looked at Rose.
“Rose,” she said finally, and he held out a hand to her.
“Oliver,” he said back. “It’s nice to meet you, Rose.” Instead of shaking her hand, he raised it quickly to his lips. She wanted to pull away from the gesture, but he had already dropped her hand. “I hope this isn’t the last time we run into each other.”
He took a final swig of his beer, set it on the counter, and walked away.
---
The headlights turned into their driveway at precisely 7:30. She should have known a lawyer would be prompt to the last minute.
“I still can’t believe you sold me out like this,” Rose muttered to Alexis, who didn’t look apologetic in the least.
“Why not? He’s handsome and smart, and seems nice. He was really polite about everything. Give him a chance.”
“You know why not. I’m not good with strangers. I don’t like dating men. This is going to be horrible.”
“Relax already, if you just chill out sometimes and let your guard down, maybe you’ll find people aren’t as bad as you seem to think they are. He might be good for you.” Alexis had seen Oliver again two days after Rose had gone to the bar with her, and Oliver had asked for Rose’s number. Alexis thought it was exciting and came home with a big smile on her face. After finding out why, Rose almost killed Alexis. Dating had never been on the top of her list. Dating someone she had met once for a few minutes seemed like a really bad idea, but she couldn’t back out now.
The doorbell rang, a high chime and a low chime, and Rose slid her feet into her shoes, spraying perfume in front of her before she answered the door.
“Hi,” she said to him, and her voice shook only a little.
“Hey,” he responded. “How’s it going?”
“Fine. Good. Okay.” Her cheeks started to burn, and he laughed at her.
“Glad to hear it. Ready to go?” She nodded and grabbed her jacket off the couch.
The car was black, a Lexus, with tan leather seats and a faint vanilla smell. Oliver opened the passenger door for her and she slid in, slightly in awe. Her own car, a 2004 red Volkswagen Jetta, had a few scratches in the paint and various CD cases strewn across her back seat. It didn’t smell like anything, except for when she was rushed on her lunch break and had to go to a drive-thru-then the smell of the fries tended to linger for a day or two.
Oliver got in, but before he reversed he opened the middle console and gave her a small felt box. “I got you a little something.”
The lily pendant sat in the middle, shimmering slightly even in the dim interior. He put it on her neck, fingers brushing against her neck as he did the clasp. It rested right between her collarbones.
“Thank you,” she said to him. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” he agreed, “but not compared to the other flower in this car.”
Rose grimaced at the line before she could stop herself. Oliver gave her a knowing smile and backed out of the driveway. When they were on the street, he reached over for her hand, and although she wanted to, she didn’t pull away.
---
The radio is broken, so she knows that the faint sound of music is coming from her phone, hidden somewhere in her purse. She doesn’t answer it at first, but the caller tries back. By the fifth time, annoyance wins out over everything else.
She reaches her hand over to the passenger seat where her purse is laying. The bag is thin, but deep, and it takes her a couple minutes before she feels the plastic. The music becomes louder as it emerges, and Rose finally recognizes the ringtone: Bon Jovi. Alexis is calling.
She clicks ‘Talk’ and brings the phone to her ear, trying to stop her tears. Before she can say anything, Alexis starts yelling.
“Rose, what the hell is going on? I come home and the stereo’s blasting but no one’s here. Your room looks like a burglar went through it, and it reeks. That perfume that Oliver got you soaked into the carpet.”
Her foot stays steady on the gas pedal, but hearing his name causes her eyes to close tight. She doesn’t want to think about the perfume. She doesn’t want to answer Alexis’ question.
“Rose? Hello? Where the fuck are you?”
Her eyes open in time for her to see the mailbox in front of her windshield that shouldn’t be there, and her mouth opens enough to let out a small gasp before her hood crumples into its base. The mailbox leans towards the ground, and only when Rose lifts her foot off the pedal does it stop tilting. The front right side of her car rests on the pole, elevating it slightly.
Alexis is still yelling into the phone, asking what that noise was, is she okay, where is she already.
“I don’t know where I am, Alexis,” she tells her.
“What just happened? Did you hit something?”
“A mailbox.”
“How the hell did you run into a mailbox? Rose, you’re scaring me. Are you okay?”
She doesn’t actually look at the house until a light on the first floor turns on. In shock, Rose watched as a shadow crosses in front of a window and a few seconds later, the front door opens.
“Oh god,” Rose whispers. “I have to go.”
Alexis is still screaming into the phone when Rose hangs up.
---
Chicago winters had no mercy on the people that chose to live there. Oliver took Rose ice skating at Millennium Park once, but Rose had shivered so hard that Oliver didn’t suggest it again. They went to the Field Museum one Wednesday, and a couple weeks after the New Year he took her to the Shedd Aquarium.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized to her as they walked under sharks and turtles. “Once it gets warmer I swear we’ll have more fun. Brookfield Zoo is one of my favorite summer hang outs.” Rose loved all sorts of animals, always wearing prints and smiling whenever any animal-dog, bird, squirrel-crossed her path. When Oliver noticed, he had started taking her places where she could see as many different sorts of animals as possible.
“This is fine, Oliver. I haven’t been here in ages. I forgot how pretty everything is.” She smiled at him, reaching for his hand. He smiled back at her, the same smile he wore when he greeted her at the bar. It was one of her favorite things about him, how easily he smiled.
“True, but the zoo is better. We’ll go as soon as it warms up, I promise.”
“You spoil me too much, Oliver.”
“I like to spoil you,” he told her, squeezing her hand. “I feel bad that my work interferes with seeing you so much. Besides,” he grinned, “spending time with you makes me feel young again.”
“It makes you feel young again, right, because you’re ancient,” she teased him. “Seriously though, as much as I love everywhere you’ve taken me, I wouldn’t mind if one day we just ordered pizza and watched a movie at your place or something. I’ve been curious to see your house.”
He shook his head. “I would love to have you over, but with the redecorating everything’s a disaster. The only functioning TV I have is in my bedroom, and I can think of better things I’d want to do with you there.”
The blush flooded her cheeks, and he traced her cheekbone with his fingers. “It never gets old, making you blush.” He traced her lips, barely touching them.
“I wish it would,” she muttered, voice slightly breathless from the feel of his fingers on her face. He laughed and gave her a quick kiss.
“Kissing you never gets old either, but you don’t seem to mind that.”
“No, you can kiss me as much as you want,” she told him, and leaned in towards him again.
His phone rang, and he glanced at the screen with a look of mild annoyance. “Sorry, I have to take this; it’s my partner.”
People milled around her as she watched the colorful fish swim above her head. Turtles drifted by lazily, blowing bubbles every few seconds. It looked peaceful in there, even with the sharks roaming around, and Rose wondered whether the real ocean was this calm.
Oliver came back to her after a few minutes, eyebrows scrunched together.
“What happened?” she asked him, watching his face. He shook his head angrily but pulled her in for a hug. Despite the tension in his shoulders, he wrapped himself around her gently and gave her a small squeeze before letting go.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he muttered. “My idiot of a partner ordered the wrong transcript for Monday, so now I have to go back to the office and try and figure out who to contact in order to get it to my office in time.” He gave her another hug. “Don’t hate me, but I need to get there as soon as I can.”
Rose pressed the side of her face into his jacket. She didn’t want him to go. Being with Oliver, wherever they were, made her happy in ways she didn’t know existed before. When he took her hand, she felt her shoulders relax and her heart stutter. Being wrapped in his arms made her feel safe, like he would protect her from anything. Sometimes it scared her, how close she felt to him, so unlike how she felt with anyone else, but she tried to just relax like Alexis had told her and go along with her emotions. Her emotions were tricky though. Right now, the feelings she got when she was with him made her feel like the luckiest girl in the world. She didn’t want to push it, especially since they’d been dating only for the past couple months, but she couldn’t lie to herself: Oliver was more than a crush to her, or a casual boyfriend. She had dated a couple guys in college, but only for a few months, and nothing serious. Oliver felt light years away from those boys. How she felt about him made her want to wake up to him every morning, made her want to cook him dinner and watch his favorite TV shows with him. Pressed against his jacket, she wanted more than anything to let him know that she loved him. But guys, as far as she could tell from movies and magazines, were cautious of love. So she just hugged him back, feeling the lily pendant press into the hollow of her collarbones, and willed the words to stay hidden inside her heart until the time finally came.
“It’s okay,” she told him instead. “Work comes first.”
---
Oliver’s birthday was in March, and Rose wanted to get him something special to try and match his gifts that he always gave hers. But she couldn’t think of anything. As special as he was to her, she didn’t know much about his personal tastes. She’d never seen his house so she couldn’t buy him anything for that. He never put the radio on so she didn’t know what music he liked, if any. He always wore nice clothes, button-down shirts, and she didn’t want to get him something he already had a million of. But she was out of options.
At least she could try to get him a shirt that was different than the ones she had seen him in, she thought sadly to herself as she walked into the mall. He usually wore solid or striped button-downs, and mostly either blue or white. She had seen him in green only once, and it had lightened his hazel eyes to a startling color of celery green. That’s what she would get him, she thought. Something flattering, but different, so that whenever he wore it he would always think of her.
Before searching for a store in the mall that would have flattering yet somewhat affordable shirts, Rose decided to grab a quick bite to eat. She hadn’t eaten yet today; it was Alexis’ turn to buy groceries, which meant the refrigerator would be empty for a few more days. Alexis wasn’t the best at keeping up with her duties, and whenever Rose complained, Alexis reminded her that there were plenty of restaurants within walking distance that served better food than either of them could cook.
The food court was busy, with kids running around tired parents and teenagers laughing as they ate. She stood in line for a slice of pizza when she thought she heard Oliver’s voice. At first she didn’t look, knowing it would be very rare for him to be in the same place she was, but then she heard it again and turned around.
He was in line at the sandwich place two restaurants down. She glimpsed his curly hair as he looked down and said something again. He then bent down, out of sight, and when he came back up he was holding a small boy in his arms. The boy was crying, his face scrunched up and red, and Oliver was talking to him, trying to calm him down.
Rose watched, frozen, as a small blonde woman next to him reached up to pat the boy on the back. Her other hand was laced with another boy, a few years older than the one in Oliver’s arms. She said something to Oliver, who then took his left hand and quickly brushed it along the blonde’s hair. A ring that Rose had never seen on his hand before flashed in the overhead lights. The kid in Oliver’s arms started to calm down, and Oliver placed him back on the floor while the blonde smiled and reached for his hand once it was free.
“You going to order or just stand there?” A rough voice brought Rose back to herself. There was a woman waiting behind the cash register, and it took a second for Rose to realize the voice had come from behind her, from a middle aged, heavy-set man. She looked at him but didn’t respond, didn’t move. He gave a loud, exaggerated sigh. “Come on miss, I ain’t got all day.”
“Sorry,” she finally said, and moved so he could place his order. She looked once more at Oliver and his family, the family she had never known about, hadn’t even dreamed of their existence, and felt acid slowly start to burn in her stomach, and make its way up towards her throat. It became hard to breathe, and still the acid climbed and expanded inside her until she started to stumble towards the bathroom.
She made to a stall just in time to be violently ill, throwing up nothing but bile and bits of her broken heart.
---
The house is average sized, with minimal decorations, but it doesn’t look bare. The wallpaper is light and dark blue alternating stripes, the furniture dark brown.
“Sorry about the lighting in here,” the man mutters, bringing her a cup of water. “The light burnt out last week and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet.”
Rose nods but doesn’t know what to say. When she saw him come out of his door, she had braced for yelling, for astonishment, for anything but the old man that took one look at her lopsided car and tear-streaked face before offering for her to come inside and get something to drink. Sitting on the sofa, watching him stir his tea while sitting in an old recliner, makes her feel like she’s not quite awake.
“I’m sorry about your mailbox,” she blurts out to him, and starts to cry again. “I’m having a bad day.”
He smiles at that. “I would have been surprised if you told me you were having a good day.” He seems to wait for her to say something, but when she doesn’t, he sighs. “You’re acting like a woman with a broken heart. It might help you to talk about it some.”
Rose shudders before she can stop herself. The water spills over the top of the edge, splashing a little onto her jeans. She doesn’t know where to start, or even if she wants to, especially to this strange old man.
“It hurts too much,” she tells him instead. He pushes a box of Kleenex towards her but doesn’t say anything else. “I’m sorry, I appreciate you letting me into your house, especially after everything, but I can’t talk about it now. I’ll go crazy. I’m already going crazy.”
“I had a wife once,” he tells her, sipping his tea. “We were married for fifteen years. She was a director of a marketing company downtown, and was always working late, or having to go in on weekends to try and fix some crisis. Once, I decided to surprise her with dinner when she was late, only to find out her office was dark and no one was in the building.” He looks at Rose. “I went crazy. I completely trashed her office, ripped her chair to shreds, broke every breakable thing in there I could find. Then I came home and repeated the pattern. When she finally came home that night, she didn’t even apologize. She just packed up her stuff, left, and the next day I got a call from her lawyer.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose says to him, and she is. His story makes her feel that her problems are tiny compared to how it could have been. His story makes her heart hurt in a different way than it did when she saw Oliver, and it makes her wish there was something she could do to change everything, although she knows she can’t. But she tells the man about Oliver, thinking maybe her story will help him lose the sadness that crept into his eyes when he was talking. He doesn’t say anything when she’s done, just shakes his head as if that’s all he needs to erase all the injustice.
They sit there in silence, and Rose thinks about the past months. She hates everything that happened, how when she finally let her guard down she ended up getting hurt worse than she thought possible. It isn’t fair, she thinks. If this is growing up, she doesn’t want to do it. She would rather be a child again, where she never had to deal with hidden families and broken mailboxes. Her phone rings again, and Rose knows it is Alexis even without the ringtone.
“I should probably go,” she tells the man. “My roommate is worried about me.”
Rose stands up and starts to dig through her purse for her checkbook. She isn’t sure how much the mailbox will cost, but as she pulls it out and starts to write, the man places his hand on he wrist.
“Don’t worry about it,” he tells her. “If my mailbox is the only casualty of the night, it’s a worthy sacrifice.”
“I have to pay you back for it,” she says to him. “There’s no excuse for running it over.” But he refuses to take the money. It is the only time she heard his voice raise, and she finally puts the checkbook away, frustrated. It doesn’t seem fair to her to make him pay for it, but she can’t force him to take the money.
He walks her to the door. “I’m not going to tell you that it gets better, or easier. With time everything starts to fade, but you’re never going to forget, and it’s always going to hurt. But try to surround yourself with positive things: friends, your job, pets even help. Just keep moving, and don’t use this as an excuse to hide. It’s up to you whether this destroys you, but you seem like a smart girl. Deal with it, but keep living your life.”
She nods at him and considers giving him a hug, but she doesn’t even know his name and this makes her shy. He nods back, smiles, and tells her to have a good night before he shuts the door.
Before she leaves, she takes the necklace and places it inside the mailbox. She knows that he will not take money for the repair, but she hopes that if he needs to, he can take the necklace to a pawn shop and it will help with the cost. Then maybe later, a young man fresh out from college will walk past the same store and the light would catch the crystals just right to grab his attention. Buying the necklace will cause him to dip into the grocery money, but it will be worth it to him. He will bring it home to his girlfriend, to their small apartment on the poorer side of town, but they don’t mind this because they are together. Her eyes will light up as she opens it, and she will feel like the luckiest girl in the world.