Atonement from the Living Room Couch [Leland oneshots]

Leland Durrow

January - The Night of Lockdown

She’s finally asleep.

We made it up the stairs, and I spent a good while tending to the mess. Making sure that she hadn’t spent too long in the bathroom, door at least cracked open to let some of the light spill out onto the carpet in the hallway. Not that I didn’t trust Birdie to clean herself up after a night of drinking, but I felt like I had a responsibility to be on the other side of the door. There’d been too many nights when I’d been miles away, out on stage singing, or drinking with Arg and she’d been here, in front of that old mirror with nothing but herself.

I put a hand up against the door to feel the cool of the wood.

There’s a woman on the other side that’s been hurt, Leland.

You can judge me for it, you know. Putting myself out there while I had a little girl and a woman who’d tried to make the most of us being something. When we were kids things were a lot less complicated. I’d get a job and she’d look after Dam, and maybe when Dam went to school, she could get a job, too.

We’d listen to records in the living room and smoke a joint while Dam drifted off to sleep in her crib upstairs. I’d have Birdie's head resting on my shoulder and we didn’t have to think about all those dead kids, didn’t have to think about what we were going to do when she got sad, when we started to fracture under the weight of all the bullshit we did to one another. Those first few years boy, they look like the sunrise coming up over a lake, all fresh and endless, the start to something wonderful.

But then you’re sitting at the edge of a bed looking at the green numbers on her clock piercing through the darkness. Thinking about how she’s ready to tear herself apart all because none of use cared about who she really was. That’s the fact of it, even if no one had bothered to ever say it. You know, her family said she was queer but that was just how she was, almost like it was easier to wallpaper over all the warning signs than ever trying to do a damn thing about it. All those threats, all the times she lashed out, yeah, some of it had been justified. And I should’ve known that she wasn’t like me, ready to push off what I felt at arm’s length until it disappeared, and I never had to think about it again.

She remembered all of it, every last line, right up until the moment she closed her eyes. Could you imagine living that way? Every bad decision, every choice you made replaying over and over, hanging on your shoulder until you had to turn around and face it all over again?

I stepped out through the door all quiet, careful not to let the hinges on the door squeak. Each step on the carpet was slow, me not trying to grab the railing in the dark and gritting my teeth with every step that let out a creek. I didn’t hear her say a damn thing, so she either was ignoring that I was down the stairs, or that she was deep enough in sleep that it didn’t matter.

At the foot of the stairs, I stared a few minutes at the front door.

Yeah, I promised that I didn’t want her to ever be alone. But that was when I was drunk, and angry.

You promise a lot of things in the heat of the moment, and that’s the easy part. All the potential gets your dick hard and your head thinking that you can really do this, even if you’ve tried it a hundred times before. You smack yourself on your shoulders, hype yourself up, and of course you could swear your whole life away.

Then the moment passes, and you’re standing there, in the dark, staring at the front door of your ex-girlfriend’s house, trying to tell yourself that this isn’t the scariest shit you’ve ever done.

It wasn’t that it’d be hard to lay in bed and hold her until morning. Or even me putting that first kiss on her neck when she wakes up, scooping her in my arms and pressing back up against her. Playing a bit under the sheets until she scolded me, but then kissing her again, wanting to go down that road of – making up because the intensity of that touch. A hand against your chest, her ear, my cheek. Shivering awake in each other’s arms, the forgiveness that’d come from being together, from wanting to please her, to take away every bad thing you’d ever done if you worked hard enough.

But what about when things were quiet, when she and I sat over breakfast with a cup of coffee, and the radio telling us how the world was – as usual – going back to hell?

That her family would be blocks away, but always lingering over our shoulders, second guessing whether or not the two of us would ever make it.

I can around imagine Hilda’s face scrunching up at the sight of the two of us together. I wish she’d have been the type to have a heart attack at hearing the two of us patched things up, but that bitch was fueled on hate and spite, so it’d probably just have her live another five years when she got the chance to tell us what a disappointment we were. Or Pierre, high and mighty in his big old house asking Birdie if she was making the right choice, and how many times was she going to go down this road.

The front door was right there, Leland. How many times had you walked away and not looked back?

Pistachio’s collar jingles, and I turned to watch him in the doorway to the kitchen. His eyes held on me, tail flicking, waiting.

I moved to take a seat and let the loveseat swallow me up. I took the beanie off my head and gripped the thing in my hands, twisting it back and forth. What about tomorrow, would she just be mad at me again? Was she going to change her mind and just think that this had been another drunken mistake? What about the truth? Would she care about Shauna? And how many other guys had it taken to fill the space that I’d left? We didn’t owe each other explanations, but neither of us were the types to let water run still under the bridge.

I put both hands on my face and count to ten, and then ten again.

She’s up there, and she’s hurting, worse than I’ve ever seen her. And I don’t know if I’m going to be the one to put all that back together, either. It’s like time took a hammer to her spirit and cracked her right open so that what remained was just – pieces of who she was. And I don’t think it’s right to say someone can be mended, like a sewing machine could just patch her back together, that she’s just going to be fixed by a little bit of love and time.

I knew well enough that there was loss, and pain, that couldn’t be mended. That a chunk could get taken out of you and you’d just have to keep on walking as though a part of you hadn’t gone missing. They like to think all this shit about kindness makes us whole again, but it’s just like someone’s plastered over the hole. A lot of us are good at pretending that nothing’s wrong, either, so the same people that tell you all it takes it time are satisfied. That way they can smile to themselves and feel better that we’ve gone in whatever direction they thought we should have, and not have to deal with the hard fact that some things weren’t fixable.

I want them to be fixable, though – I guess that’s half the reason that I’m here, hands on my face, waiting for Birdie to wake up. That maybe it could take one of us to figure out if there was a better fix for those holes. That the gaps in our memories, the times when I should’ve been here for her, and for Dam, we’d find something new to fill them.

I don’t want her to forget about it, either. I was a shitty guy; said things I shouldn’t have. And she did, too. We hurt each other, and it’s not good to forget what someone else was capable of. We wounded each other, and all of it was still raw, still needed triaging, even if we said we loved one another.

Pistachio flits between the coffee table and in between my legs, and I lean back against the couch. I moved a hand to pet him and he freezes, head back away from my hand for a sniff.

The clock above the door to the kitchen ticks away, reading a bit after five.

Maybe I could give it a few more minutes, see how I felt. See if I could make it to sunrise.

Was that childish? Make a game of how long I could keep myself on the couch and not a break for the front door?

I press a hand back through the tangles of my hair. I’d turn the tv on to distract myself, but I don’t want to threaten Birdie’s sleep. She needed to get through the morning to have half a chance at not being a total wreck tomorrow.

The kitchen was a collection of half open cans of cat food and yellowed pieces of mail. There was still a tin of coffee and some filters in the cabinet above the sink, and for once I had to not hate Blackston for doing his best at keeping things stocked. I spent a few minutes scooping spoonfuls into the container before filling up the coffee pot from the faucet. I dunked out the water into the machine, and set the little alarm for ten thirty, late enough that at least one of us should’ve been up. There was a half-loaf of bread in the fridge, some questionable butter, and a half dozen eggs. Not a feast, but enough to scrounge up a brunch for her.

I filled up Pistachio’s water bowl and took a broom to the floor to get up the scattering of dry food and dust. The burst of manic energy had me scrubbing away at the countertop, rearranging the cabinets, and tossing out all the spoiled things I could find in the fridge. I organized the mail from past due notices to junk mail (that’s what I called notes from any of her family members).

By the time I set myself down on the couch again, it was already half past six.

There was still time to get out the front door, you know? January and the sun still wasn’t up, which meant I had a chance.

But even as hard as it was to sit still, I couldn’t help but think about the woman asleep in her bed upstairs. I tapped my foot against the carpet and wondered what sort of state she would’ve been in if I’d gone home again. Probably not too bad, seeing as it wasn’t unexpected. She might not have even remembered half of what we said to each other in the street, you know?

She deserved better; I think.

Better than the man wringing his hands on her couch.

That’s just bullshit.

You know, it really is.

Talking about how I couldn’t deserve Birdie, or that we’re too much of a mess. Fuck it.

God I – I spent so much time doubting who I was or what I wanted and now I’m sitting here thinking about leaving all of it again after just telling her that I could do it. And I spent so many years with her and Dam trying to be invisible, now I was close to a second chance and I was afraid I might not be worth it? Who got to decide that, if it wasn’t me? And if all I ever did was listen to the people who doubted us, then yeah, we’d never have made it. We’d just keep falling down and tearing each other apart because we let them tell us who and what we were allowed to have.

I’m tired. Tired of waking up without her.

Sunrise comes just as my eyelids are starting to get heavy. I think it might be one of best I’ve ever seen, even if the blinds have been closed the whole time. But the few stray lines of sunlight hit the carpet, and I can’t help but smile.