Cold and S****y

A man deals with his ex-girlfriend and a common bond they share--one he wishes he could easily break.

“Eric! Where the f**k are you?” Sara’s voice tore at me, God how I hated her.

      “I am outside, chillax,” I responded, trying not to provoke the situation any further. “I will be right in.” with that, I turned off my phone, slipped it back into my pocket, and stared out my car window as soft flakes of snow began to dust the hood of my car.

      The weather seemed oddly appropriate however�"cold and s****y. I stepped out of the car and pulled my jacked closed to try and protect myself from winter’s painful bit. It did nothing for my cheeks or ears, which were being nibbled away at by the bitterly cold January air.

I froze in my place and watched as a young lady scurried across the parking lot with a heavily bundled infant clutched tightly to her chest. Curiosity begged me to follow her with my eyes and I watched intently as she worked to open the side door of an old green Dodge Caravan. She seemed to fumble with her keys as she adjusted her purse, a diaper bag, and the child, but then with practiced skill she managed to slide the door open, place the child in its car seat and situate her packages. The sputtered and roared to life, then backed out of the resident’s parking lot.

As the van turned in front of me, the two of us exchanged glances and in doing so, I realized I had absolutely no idea who she was, and that her life was probably not a show for my amusement. So, I once again, reluctantly, began making my way toward Sara’s new apartment. New apartment…s**t! I laugh to myself as I look around at the filthy weather-stained buildings lined up in a bland, generic, formation. Snowflakes of paint were falling from the warped shutters framing cracked window panes for which Jack Frost put no effort into. An empty white Wal-Mart bag blew past me as the wintery wind did its best to tear through my coat.

Even a covering of snow failed to conceal the absolute filth of this neighborhood. Speckles of litter also protruded into sight, as if to reassure passersby of their existence in snowy graves. Old cars littered the parking lot and side streets like tombstones. Their rusted bodies were the one thing the snow was capable of hiding as it slowly decomposed them beneath a wintery blanket.

The paper mill down the street expelled a rotten smell that weighed heavy in the wintery air. Oddly enough it smelt of old hot dog meat and caused my stomach slightly turned. It was a smell the residents had somehow become accustomed to.

This was no place to raise a family�"to raise a child! I thought to myself in utter disbelief. My God…

“What the f**k am I doing here?” I mumbled as I carefully stepped into the snow, now knowing what mysteries truly lay beneath. I have seen these apartments from the comfort of my car, but this was the first time I had ever set foot on the property. Until today there had never been a reason to, but today…well today there was a very important reason to be here�"whether I wanted to be here or not.

Sara and I had met about a year and half before, but I never every really knew her. Chris Rock once said in a stand up routine, “We do not ever really meet the person up front, we meet their representatives.” In other words, I think he was saying that people have a knack for pretending to be someone whom they are not. In Sara’s case�"deception was her “speciality!”

She was an attractive woman, of that there was no doubt. I have always felt that we have certain things we are attracted to in other people. For me there are three things that top the list. One is an attractive smile. To me, there is something about an attractive smile that simply causes a person’s eyes to glisten and glow. Therefore, it has been a policy of mine that I do not date people who cannot take care of their teeth, for if they are not taking care of their oral hygiene then I dare not fathom what else they are not taking care of. Speaking of eyes, they also make the list of top three qualifiers. Sara’s eyes were a very cliché’ sea-blue color; very much like that of an endlessly sparkling ocean for which I could eternally drift. I think it would have to be her eyes that won me over, especially considering the third category on my list.

I like breasts. I profess myself to be a nice guy�"but still I am a guy. Often, I have considered myself to suffer from, what I have perceived to be, a very serious ailment. I have booby blindness. For reasons unbeknownst to me, if I lay eyes upon a nice pair of breasts the world seems to simply go out of focus. I blame my father. I think it is a hereditary condition. Sara was in possession of a fabulous figure and, to this very day, it is the eyes that I remember the most. The one thing about sailing those seas�"there are great storms to be endured.

When we met, I was told of her grand master plan. Sara was a single mother struggling to rebuild her life after leaving an oppressive dictator of a husband�"as the story goes. Apparently she had had her run-ins with substance abuse issues and a short-term bout with alcoholism, to which she was now a full-fledged, dedicated, and motivated person in recovery�"again as the story goes. According to Sara, at that time, she was working through a local women’s advocacy group who were assisting her with her recovery efforts and they had helped her get a new home, a new job as a C.N.A. and were assisting her with colleges courses so she could become a registered nurse.

It had all seemed so admirable and ambitious. I had always believe that it is not how far we stumble or how many times we do so, but rather how fast we get up and how far we force ourselves to go after we do stumble and fall. From what she had told me, she had a plan. I felt blessed. I felt lucky to have someone with similar goals to my own.

Then the stories came. The stories were always so similar; however despite starting the same they would end differently….even when it was a story I swore I had heard before. The one constant was that Sara was always the victim and never at fault. A month had passed us by and I realized that we lived in two different worlds and hers was one of pure fiction. There was no job as a C.N.A., there were no college classes, and there most definitely was no recovery.

The first drunken stuper I accepted a temporary remission; like a dieter who loses five pounds and feels it is okay to supersize his value meal as a reward. The second drunken stuper raised a flag. The third was a strike to end the inning that was our relationship. It happened when I called her phone to tell her I missed her and was thinking of her and another man answered the phone. He told me Sara was in the room with some guy at a party and had left her phone in the living room and then he hung up. When I called back, her phone went straight to voicemail for the rest of the evening.

I did not sleep that night. I am not sure if it was fueled more from anger or fear. One’s mind can play such evil tricks. Not being able to sleep I called around trying to find her. In the process of doing so I ended up having a lengthy, three-and-a-half hour conversation with a mutual friend of ours. She began to inform me of the real Sara…the woman I did not know. Carol told me that she had debated on whether or not to warn me about the Sara that she knew because she felt as if I would be a “good” influence upon Sara.

“She has never had a nice guy like you, Eric.” Carol said. “I guess I just thought that maybe she really could or would change if she had a taste of normalacy.”

“Change from what?” my attention quite focused on what Carol would have to say.

The next day my phone rang early and it was Sara telling me that she was sorry she missed my calls, but she had gotten a little wasted with Carol and ended up crashing at her house for the night. Being that she did not expect to stay out late, she had simply forgotten her charger and her phone died. She was obviously oblivious to any conversation Carol and I had had�"poor planning for a professional liar.

I quickly put an end to the budding relationship and for awhile I felt as if I was one of the lucky ones because I had found out what she was like relatively early on. It turns out that it was not early enough.

The cold seeped through my coat and brought me back from my ill-timed recollection and I began working my way through the deepening snow until I heard the sound of frozen plastic crunching at my feet. I looked down to see a broken yellow truck beneath my foot.

“S**t! The doll!” I said aloud, realizing I had forgotten my package in the car. Fortunately, the car was not that far away, but in that frigid moment it seemed like it was miles. I got time I thought, and instead trudged through the snow, toward Sara’s door. The snow began falling in heavier clumps that made it more difficult to see through. I squinted as I looked for her apartment. “Where the hell is 6A?” I asked myself as if expecting an answer.

When I found the door, I shook my head. Even it was dirty. Not just dirty, but filthy. The white aluminum door was dented and a dirty brown color from finger and paw prints that almost seem to decorate the entire surface. The doorbell was broken and a burnt bulb hung loosely from inside its casing. The snow had not found its way behind the shrubs at the doorstep and a collection of empty beer cans acted as a barrier, preventing the snow from getting any closer to the house. Standing guard behind the beer-can-barrier was an army of cigarette butts lying about.

I knocked upon the cold aluminum door with my bare hands, which stung each time they made contact. God, how I hate the cold!

A muffled, “It’s open!” came from the other side and I reluctantly turned the door knob and slowly made my way into the inside. Like the ground outside, the floor within was invisible to the eye. Strewn about the apartment were toys, clothes, beverage cans, and dirty dishes. A heavy haze of smoke emanated from an overflowing ashtray on a coffee table and pressed against the windows, almost seeking its freedom. Cartoons blared from the television, yet the room seemed empty.

The smell of old hot dogs from outside was replaced by that of old garbage, nicotine, and stagnant beer. It was all so overwhelming that I had failed to take notice of the figure seated across the room in a roadside Lay-Z-Boy.

“Hey, you must be Eric.” his voice startled me. I had never met Keith before, and given that Sara and I were not really on speaking terms, I knew little about her new “flame.”

“Uh, yeah…Keith?” I asked, already knowing the answer. He was not a good-looking guy. His heavy hairy gut peeked out from beneath his small Star Wars t-shirt and I could not help but take notice of his decaying teeth as he smiled in my direction and reached out his hand. Awkwardly, I reached out my hand as well and we briefly shook and quickly retracted. His hand was sweaty and I had a overwhelming desire to go wash up after the contact. Instead, I began to scan the room with my eyes for a place to sit down.

Aside from his throne, there was a torn three cushioned couch pressed tight to the wall. Behind the couch was a window air-conditioner, still in place, which forced me to choose whether I would sit to the right or left of it. Once again I scanned the area to make sure I would not be sitting on a pop-tart or a half-empty pudding cup, and after pushing some questionably clean laundry towards the center I assumed the coast was clear to take a seat.

“Here, let me get some that stuff out of your way.” he spoke to late, but in a single motion drug his arm across the couch and pushed the clothes, toys, treasure trove of mystery items to the floor.

I watched him make his way back to his chair and thought to myself, “he is shorter that I would have expected.” Everyone always seems shorter than you expect. If our imagination controlled things, we would probably live in a land of giants.

After he had relocated the mess from the couch to the floor we sat staring about the room in a long and quite uncomfortable silence. It wasn’t so much as if we had nothing to say to one another. Actually, it was more a case of not wanting to say anything. However, we spoke because it was the polite thing to do.

“So, uh, how long you two been together now?” I didn’t really consciously care, but it was the first thing to come out.

“We met shortly after you two broke up. Things have been really great between us.” he almost seemed as if he was trying to sell me on something…paused, and then continued. “I’ve especially loved daddy duty.” he said with an instigating smile. “Some people just ain’t cut out for it, but I gotta say…I love it!”

I surge of anger shot through me. It felt as if he had just slapped me right across the face and I could feel my stomach tighten. My thoughts raced and visions of me striking him repeatedly were at the forefront of my mind.

“Ummm, yeah, whatever dude. Is Sara here or what?” I was amazed I was still able to ask this with even a hint of politeness. In my mind, however, I was sweeping the mess in this a*****e’s house�"and he was the broom.

I am not a violent person, but I hate to be goaded.

“Yeah, just a sec, I’ll go get her.” he replied as he began to get up from his chair once more. As he started walking down the hall he yelled up the stairs, “Sara, Eric’s here.” When he turned back towards me he accidentally kicked an empty, generic beer can across the floor. “F****n’ garbage all….” he mumbled under his breath as he turned to his left and disappeared into the bathroom.

“About time” I could hear her voice coming closer and she angrily stomped down the old wooden stairs, “what does he think, I have all God damn….” She abruptly stopped.

We stopped and stared for a moment. It was easy to go swimming in those eyes and a few good moments washed ashore in my head. While most of those good memories were sexual in nature…they were still good�"damn good!

She was dressed as if she was going out. I hadn’t really thought about it after seeing Keith. Her hair was a lighter blonde than I remember and she had just applied a fresh layer of make-up. Sara was quite good and doing herself up, after all she was a master of manipulation and deception.

Her white shirt was cut down about four to five inches from the bottom of her neckline exposing and ample amount of cleavage and whatever bra she wore pressed the girls up, almost bubbling over the top of her shirt. Once again I could feel the world going out of a focus for a moment and thankfully it was her voice that provided me with clarity.

“So, you finally decided to show up?” there was a slight slur to her voice.

It was hard for me to believe that I had not seen her in almost a year’s time…and right it didn’t seem long enough to me.

“I’m only 20 minutes late and the weather is s**t, give me a break would ya?” I responded, doing my best not to provoke or feed a brewing fight. Today wasn’t supposed to be about us anyways. Hell, it was safe to say that she probably wasn’t even all that upset about me being late. She was just being….well she was just being Sara. She was just being a b***h. It was a game she really liked playing.

Personally, I myself have never been a fan of the “mind game.” However, if were to be a board game for sale, Sara could design and market the game and become an instant millionaire. She could make it a videogame the equivalent of Mike Tyson’s punch out and players would have to work their way up level by level to challenge her for supremacy.

It is a game I doubt anyone would ever win.

Sara was not an educated woman; however she was definitely not stupid.

“Well, it’s just that I told you I had things to do today and I wasn’t going to wait all day for you.” she just stood there, staring at me with a planted pissed off look.

I stared back silently.

“So, are you ready to see her?” the abruptness of the question startled me. Sara continued with her efforts to be forceful, perhaps hoping the constant assault would somehow intimidate me and she could get the upper hand. Maybe it was working, I don’t know….

“Sara?” I paused and my voice exhibited doubt. “Are you sure? I mean do you really think….” I was unsure as how to finish, unsure as what I should say, what I could say.

Her voice softened for the first time. It was the first time in a very long time that I could feel her gentleness. It was a gentleness I did not expect. “I know this is hard. I know it has to be confusing for you…I mean, how do you think I feel?”

I could not help but to shake my head. Sara was always so focused on her own perceptions. The softness was probably just another one of her games�"her manipulations. For Sara there was no difference between her perceptions of truth and everyone else’s reality. As a lifelong victim who refused to ever take responsibility for her own life she had become accustom to the truths of others being lies and her lies being the only truths.

“Look, I am not trying to be a b***h….” my mind laughed as she said those words.

Nope, you sure as hell don’t have to try….

“…but we all have to decide what is going to be best for her.” she continued on.

“Her?” I asked, fighting back the tears that welled in my eyes. “Her, Sara. Is it what is best for her…or is it really what is best for you?”

“That is not fair!” the softness quickly faded and was replaced with pissed.

“I don’t even know her name!” I said. “Does her have a name?”

“Lindsay,” she tried to say under her breath, “Lindsay Elisabeth.”

I was floored. It was truly unfathomable. At some point, as Sara-stories go, she dated a guy named Jason who was the “love of her life.” That is until the next one comes along. Well, Jason had two children, daughters, whom Sara was crazy about. Their names�"Lindsay and Elisabeth.

“After Jason’s kids?” I asked, exhibiting the first signs of agitation. This whole day had seemed like a continual assault. Every time I turned around, I received another slap in the face…the next harder than the one before. More and more I felt like an utter outsider trapped in a strange hostile world.

The stress of it all was overwhelming and the tears that welled now released and I sobbed. The harder I fought them back the more freely they flowed from eyes and I could feel my breath stutter as I exhaled. I could not allow her to see the weakness in me. I could not allow her to see any more pain than she already had.

Both of our attentions were diverted to Keith, who was finally making his way out of the bathroom and working to cinch his belt.

“Whew!” he exclaimed.

I suctioned the emotion back into me and stared hard a spot on the floor to regain my composure and when I felt as if I were once more in control began to scan the room once more. My eyes focused upon a tattered, unclothed, baby doll lying underneath the coffee table. One eyes was closed and the other only half open. Her once blonde hair was dirty, mangled, and sticky with gum. The brown nylon material that composed her skin was stained and torn. I reached down and picked the doll up from the floor, as if to save it, when suddenly a hand came in trying to take it from my grasp.

It was Keith. Our eyes met as we both applied even, constant, pressure in our grasps.

“Sorry man, we should’ve cleaned this place up a bit more.”

I did not release my grip.

“I got it Eric!” his tone became more firm and still I did not let go.

What was he going to do with this doll? Would he clean her or would he simply toss her to the floor with the rest of the trash? Would he kick her down the hallway like an old beer can when she got in his way? Who would be there to fix the tears? The tears? What would happen when he got tired of playing with her? What then? Would he throw her away and find a new toy?

“Eric?” Sara’s voice brought me back. It was tinged with impatience. “What are we going to do?”

I looked back down at the doll in the midst of our tug-o-war. My grasp was firm�"but I did not pull, and yet the doll was taught in our grip. Was this what it would be like? I could almost hear the seams of the fabric tearing under our pressure, under the stress. Here was this dirty, tattered, old doll with only one eye open to the world around her…and what could she see? No one could ask her what she wanted. No one could ask her to choose. The choice was to be made for her, and it was one she would have to live with. One she would have to accept. One I would have to accept. My grasp tightened for a moment and then I simply let go. I let go….

Sara’s voice once again softened. This time, however, it was not a game. “Do you even want to see her?

Once again tears welled.

Once again my breath stuttered.

“No. No, I don’t.” my voice cracked as I held back the emotions that beat against the fragile walls of my heart. A hard lump worked its way up my throat.

“Keith…” Sara turned towards her prize and seemed to motion him away with her eyes. He stared at us both with an expression of concern and then made his way down the hall and up the stairs. Sara turned back towards me and spoke again.

“Eric, are you sure? Are you sure this is what you really want?” her voice too began to break and for the first time there was no doubting her sincerity.

“No, I am not sure…I am not sure of anything!” with that I opened the door and could feel the tears instantly freeze upon my face.

“Eric…?” I pulled the door closed behind me.

I took a deep breath and could feel the mucus in my nose freeze along with the tears upon my face. Coupled with the change in lighting and the ferocity in which the snow was coming down I was blinded as I made my way back towards my car.

My coat offered me little to know protection from this weather and I the cold stabbed at me again and again. By pure chance, and perhaps even a bit of luck, I made my way through the blizzard and found my car buried beneath inches of snow. Sliding my hand inside of my jacket sleeve I reached across my windshield and wiped the snow from my car as if it were garbage on a couch.

The heat only seeped from the car’s vents and I felt as if I would never be warm again. The wipers worked with all of their might to keep up with the onslaught of snow, but it seemed as it was a battle they were not destined to win. I decided I may need to brush the snow from the car’s windows and looked in the back for a snow brush. It was in that moment that I was reminded of the doll, which sat in the back of the car waiting to be gifted. I grabbed the toy and looked into its bright, wide-open eyes. My heart shattered.

There was no longer a need to hold back, for in this storm I could not be seen.

I cried.

I screamed.

I yelled and cursed God for his doings.

“Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy” my screams echoed in the cab of the car.

“whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”

No answers were to be had.

The numbness began to wear off and I could once more feel heat emanate from the vehicles vents. Through intermittent moments of visibility I could see the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. I watched as the vehicle approached and recognized it as the same van from when I had arrived earlier.

As the driver began to turn into the parking lot her van fishtailed on the icy roads and abruptly stopped. She placed the van into reverse, straightened out the angle of her entry and made her way back into the parking lot. Again, I continued to watch her as she made her way out of the vehicle and worked against the elements to try and situate her groceries, diaper bag, purse, and child.

I found myself shocked when I noticed her grab two handfuls of grocery bags and her purse and rush towards her apartment…leaving her baby in the van. Moments later she reappeared and repeated this action, grabbing another bunch of groceries and leaving her child behind. I looked down at the baby doll in my hand and watched as one more time this woman grabbed a couple of bags, some juice, and a package of toilet paper. As she made her was from the van I grabbed the doll and jogged across the parking lot. The side door of the van was open and baby was wrapped in a blanket that was now covered in snow, despite being on the other end of the van’s bench seat. I placed the baby doll in the car seat with the child and began making my way back to my car.

It was so cold out. Cold and s****y. God, do I hate the cold!

Author's Note

I would like to know about the symbolism that I used in this writing. Was it too subtle? Was it over the top?