Chapter 10: The One About Loss

In her loneliness and boredom, Roxanne is forced to think over her dark past, as well as her closeness with and dependence on Trevor.

During the forty-minute cab ride home from the office, Roxanne hears "Rosanna" by Toto on the radio, one of her favorite songs of all time. A small smile forms on her face as she listens to the lyrics and instrumentation, before she sighs and frowns again as she thinks about Trevor. Remembering how whenever they listened to the song together, he would always replace the titular name with "Roxanna", effectively personalizing the song for his wife.

It's just her luck that her boss has granted her the next few months off, giving Roxanne practically no choice but to miss her husband now. Out of everyone in her group, she probably has the strongest connection to her man. Whereas other women might have just met their husbands in high school, college, or by means of an easily preventable spill of the drink, Roxanne to this day feels as though meeting Trevor was meant to happen, like fate was throwing her a bone after all the tragedies and mishaps that made up her early life. Why, she doesn't just consider him her husband, but also her savior, and is clueless as to what she would do without him.

Every time she lays eyes on him, she is always enamored by his looks and the slow rate at which he ages. His hazel eyes accentuated by his glasses, the way he talks and smiles. Why, she even thinks he looks quite dashing in his new Air Force uniform, though sadly she can't see him in it nearly as often as she would like. She loves how he's always there to give her meaningful advice and help her reach high up objects. The way he grunts whenever she gives him a blowjob. How every single time they have sex, he always treats her as though she's still a virgin, and will willingly go down on her even when she's on her period or forgets to shave.

Trevor's job as a banker does not require much traveling, but whenever he does go out of town, his trips tend to last around a week or two, and his current endeavors overseas have already lasted over twice that long. To cope with her sometime loneliness over the many years of living with him, Roxanne has taken in various dogs and cats to look after, though by now, all of them have either died or run away.

No, what she really wants is a child, someone she can keep around for far longer, but that comes with its own set of hurdles. She can't adopt a kid without Trevor present, and would at least need his DNA in order to make one via surrogate. Not to mention all of the few friends she has are either on menopause, or already expecting children of their own. Roxanne herself has only been pregnant two times in her life. The second of which occurred while she and Trevor were still engaged, but she did not realize this until she miscarried out of nowhere, losing a baby she didn't even know she had. It was too early to tell, but Roxanne is still convinced the baby was a boy. This was quickly followed by a confirmation from a doctor that she would never be able to conceive again. From that point on, every menstruation served as a painful reminder; it was almost like her brain knew she couldn't have kids, but her body just never learned, ensnared by its own perpetual naivety. Quite a troubling experience, that is - not even being married yet and already knowing that you won't get any children out of the deal. Thank God Trevor wasn't one of those guys.

"Now you cut that s**t out right now. If all I wanted was to be a dad, I could've just knocked up any woman out there," she remembers him saying after the incident. "The reason I proposed to you is because I wanted to spend the rest of my days with you. The prospect of kids was completely irrelevant to my decision."

However, the first pregnancy would mark a major turning point in her life, occurring after a reckless, unprotected bedroom romp during a high school senior party, though she has absolutely no idea who the father was, and they never interacted again after doing the deed. Upon making such a discovery, Roxanne's knee-jerk reaction had been to get an abortion, a moment that remains prominent in her memory. She distinctly recalls walking into the nearest clinic, tuning out the deafening cries of Evangelical crowds and occasionally having to push a protester aside whenever they tried to block her entry. She can still feel the chilliness of that all-white room as she sat on the propped-up bed, her legs cuffed and parted as a vacuum sat there motionless on the floor before her. She remembers the doctor inserting an IV into her inner-elbow, first having to slap her arm a few times to make the vein bulge. Due to her small stature, she went under very quickly, the hot-button procedure occurring while she was out cold and couldn't feel a thing.

Even now, Roxanne still isn't sure whether she regrets that decision or not. Life is like one of those choose-your-own-adventure novels, and she just so happened to take that particular path out of all the options she had. Had she kept the child, then yes she would be a mother and probably wouldn't be struggling with loneliness as she is right now. Yet at the same time, she would not have gotten kicked out of her grandmother's house in New Orleans as a result. That sounds like a good outcome, but if it weren't for her grandmother throwing her out, she would not have found a voodoo doll lying around on the streets or become a hooker, and most likely would never have met Trevor. The only man she's truly loved, as well as her best friend. Had she taken a different path in life, someone else probably would've found that voodoo doll all those years ago, and Trevor would've instead become a part of their life, not hers.

"Rraagghh! Damn it, Roxy!" Roxanne angrily scolds herself. "Stop thinking about him! He's not gonna be back for a while, so you might as well get used to it!"

She just can't help it. No matter what she chooses to think about for the time being, her mind always feels the need to circle back to Trevor. Him being gone is filling her with a sensation of loneliness she hasn't felt since back in Bensonhurst when her parents first passed away, which then forced her grandmother to take her in. Oh God, that's yet another moment she could never forget if she tried.

Roxanne's parents, Rosie and Richard Romano, were just as loving toward their only child as parents should be. However, they were clearly incompatible with each other and it showed in how often they bickered, unable to hit it off, but hitting each other constantly. Why, they even fought in front of their daughter, who was the only thing keeping them together. Eventually, the tension between the two grew so heated that one day Richard shot Rosie and then drank himself to death. It was only after Roxanne came home from school and called the cops that their corpses were discovered. That poignantly gruesome image of her dead parents from when she was only twelve still remains permanently engraved into her brain; her father lying face down among a pile of rum bottles, with a handgun still clenched within his lifeless hand, and her mother bleeding out all over the master bedroom with a petrified look on her face.

To this day, Roxanne still berates herself for failing to realize their inner turmoil sooner and possibly helping them out. Though then again, her parents still being here, while working wonders in curing her loneliness, would've most likely altered her path in life and prevented her from meeting... Trevor!

Ugh!

Now with her eyes burning with tears, Roxanne sits back on the couch as she tries to fight back the urge to cry. She casually looks over towards the coffee table and picks up the lone picture on it. It depicts herself when she was only two years old, being gently held in her mother's arms while her father rests a hand on both of their shoulders. The three smile towards the camera, dissolving any and all suspicion of friction among the household. The words engraved in the ovular frame say "Daddy's Little Girl", stating it was meant to be for just a father-daughter picture, but it almost feels like Rosie intentionally inserted herself into the scene, just to let Roxanne know she loved her just as much as Richard did. Subliminally telling her that they weren't going to be with her for much longer.

And just like that, Roxanne is bursting into tears as she lays face down on the couch. It's been decades since she last sobbed over her parents' passing, even though it still hurt during all that time, but now she just can't help herself and cries herself to sleep for the rest of the night. She hates the fact that they're gone, she hates the fact that her husband is overseas and possibly getting killed with no way to check up on her. She hates the fact that she has almost no social life, barring her weekly video-chats with Katrina, and she especially hates herself for being so weak during these wartimes while everyone she knows is showing so much more resolve than her.