Page 7 of Deep Gap

“I feel like an idiot!”

“You shouldn’t. Trig shut off the hot water on me as a joke when we roomed together in the Army. And these videos are posted for anyone who is stuck with a problem or learning how to master a skill. Now that you’ve got water valve opening down, I’m counting on you to be the official second set of hands for plumbing issues at my house.”

Greer snorts. “Doubt you live in a hole like this.”

“I can assure you, Greer, I’ve lived in places worse than this.”

“Yeah, me too… Obviously.”

I won’t bite. Having a who-had-it-worse contest with Greer is an insult to both of us. Instead, I sit back down on the couch, rub Tallulah’s ear, and ask Greer to tell me more about the shop she wants to visit.

The subdued excitement Greer gives off is a one-eighty from the pensive and polite woman who mops and scrubs the training center until it shines. I like both sides of her quiet personality. However, the enjoyment she seems to get from showing me the products at the store is like a part of her is trying to unravel a knot that she’s stuck in. Telling me about all the things she could make with beeswax, Greer makes me interested in seeing it for myself.

Her past troubles aside, she’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s creative and a quick learner. And based on the sink repair and the green paint for the glass dishes she’s attempting to create a pine tree out of, resourceful.

It hits me that if I change the course of the conversation ever so slightly we may both get something we need out of a trip to the western part of the state.

Motioning to her assemblage of bowls and plates I ask,“Did your family ever cut down a Christmas tree?”

“No, we got them from the Christmas tree lot in Brighton. Why?” She gives me a queer stare.

I rub the scruff on my chin as if there’s something caught in my whiskers. “I don’t have one and Christmas is coming up. The best place to cut your own is in the mountains. We could drive out there next weekend. Chop down a tree for me and stop into this shop for you.”

“I’ve only cut wildflowers. Do you trust me with a hatchet?”

“Whoever said you’d be cutting it down?” I nudge Greer’s knee.

Her lips twist to the side and she casts her eyes away. I see in an instant that she worries a lot about a lot. Including people’s perceptions of her.

“I trust you,” I say to ease the sting of rejection I hadn’t meant for her to feel.

My words make her turn her head and she refocuses on my face. It’s unusual that someone in her late twenties doesn’t seem to know how to respond to kindness. Until I touched her knee, I couldn’t have told you that it was an attempt at flirting. It’s obvious that concerns her, too. I’ve pushed too far. Yet, I still really want to do something nice for this woman.

“I’ve never cut a Christmas tree myself either, so maybe two friends can figure it out together?”

________________

When my parents moved away from Brighton, my mom kept my bedroom set. The bed I sleep in was in my childhood room. A much larger room than this is. On a much different side of town where the lawns are lush and green year-round and the neighborhoods twinkle with thousands of lights on every house at the holidays.

Some mornings—in that space between asleep and awake—I think I’m some place else. I don’t always think I’m going to sit up, stretch, and slide my feet over the edge of the bed, my toes wiggling into the plush carpet. A lot of times, I’m confused as to why the mattress in my cell is plush and firm or why my body wants to cozy down under the thick comforter. When the previous day has been especially trying and I’ve slept fitfully, my mind places me stiffly back in a hospital bed with tense muscles, sore from broken bones… And the sinking sensation that my heart is about to swan dive off a cliff.

Even at rest, I’ve never been able to shake the knowledge that Ellis is gone. Although, my brain attempts to shield me sometimes. I’m both thankful and resentful of those moments because when the blinders are pulled off I feel the echo of my wailing bouncing off the hospital walls in my chest. Thinking back on my mom telling me about the accident, piecing together that I was responsible for taking my best friend’s life, still has the air rushing from my lungs.

The alarm interrupted me today at the tail end of a dream. I was at the prom, but it wasn’t the one I remember attending. Ellis was holding my hand. Ilona, who I bunked with at the correctional institution, had on a gorgeous blue dress that sparkled under the mirrored globe in the center of the dance floor. Her hair was pulled up in a chignon. She touched my forearm, telling me with the slightest hint of glee that my bees had escaped, which made no sense. The bees belong to Mac. But in a dream not a lot makes sense, does it?

Byron was there too. He kept trying to talk to Ellis.

I kept saying, “but he’s dead.”

Ellis and Byron would listen, then turn back to their conversation. I don’t know why I knew Ellis shouldn’t have been talking to the people I’ve met after his death.

However, Waylon showed up in the dream as I was failing to silence the alarm buzzer and the reason why he appeared is one-hundred percent believable.

I stewed on it before I went to bed. I tossed and turned trying to put it out of my head while falling asleep. I scrubbed my face and my teeth with a vengeance getting ready for work. I shoved everything I needed today in my backpack as if my clothes had personally offended me. My boots hit the pavement hard on the way to the five am bus and stomped the last few minutes down the road from the bus stop to the training facility.

I stand straight, angling the mop away from me with one hand and placing the other on my hip. My biceps ache from scrubbing the floor in the kennels with vigor and after holding my shoulders so tight they’d count as earmuffs.

I want to go back to bed and when I wake up I want a mulligan; on my life, on this week, I’d even bargain just for the split second when I stupidly agreed to go to the mountains with Byron. Yet, I have a keen understanding that’s not the way it works.

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