Page 17 of Below the Shadow of the City
CHAPTER 17
I ’d dozed off in my seat, only waking when I feel a soft hand grip my shoulder. I bristle, momentarily, expecting familiar claws and a rough padded palm. I blink my eyes and my mom is softly smiling at me in the same way she had when I was a kid and had fallen asleep in the backseat of the car.
“Why don’t you go stay at home tonight?” My mom asks wearily once I fully wake. Home, I repeat to myself. When she says it, it does feel like more than just the house I grew up in.
“You can’t sleep here, mom.” The hospital chairs are a pathetic excuse for a bed. I’m encroaching upon the age where the roles are reversed. I’m the one who has to look out for my parents, make sure they’re happy, comfortable, safe. Her eyes are glassy with bags under them. She needs the sleep, she needs to be in a real bed. Convincing her of such is a hefty task.
“I’ll be fine, and I’m not leaving him.” Her tone doesn’t leave room for debate. I shouldn’t be surprised, mothers rarely say anything without a sense of finality to it. She fishes her car keys from her purse and places them in my hand, wrapping my fingers around them. My dad is sleeping peacefully, so I place a light kiss on his hand and give my mom a prolonged embrace before leaving. I slink through the hospital, ignoring the beeping and hushed frantic whispers among nurses.
It’s been a while since I’ve driven. Even being in Maddox’s car earlier was the first time I’d been a passenger in something that wasn’t a cab or Uber in a long, long time. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel, reminding myself of all the steps necessary to successfully start and drive a car. My mom’s newer SUV is much more complex than the older sedan I used to drive. After a few jerky movements and way too much time spent adjusting the seat, heater, and radio, I’m moving.
I find the alt rock station that carried me through high school and let songs of my youth soundtrack the half hour drive to my parents house. Maybe it’s for the best that the entire drive is in the dark, I can’t see my high school, or the Dunkin we used to walk to after class, or the houses of ex best friends. There was a reason I left, I’d outgrown this place and the Sigrid who resided here, and I’m far better for it now. The eighteen year old who was sad, lonely, and scared to move out still exists in me somewhere.
I walk into the house, the air feels still, my parents left in such a rush that there are still dirty dishes in the sink and a nearly full trash can. You never think to clean your house with the looming possibility of being hospitalized for a few days.
The place feels like a time capsule, in the decade since I left nothing has changed. The photos on the mantle are of a young, vibrant Sigrid, the armchair in the corner is perfectly contoured to my dad’s body, if I were to turn on the TV it would most definitely be set on ABC7. I fiddle with my mom’s car keys as I walk through the rest of the house. I’m being silent, sneaking around like I’m home after curfew. Next to the island my duffle bag has been deposited on the tile floor. My heart twinges.
“Maddox?” I ask the empty room to no reply. He wouldn’t still be here, he’s bound to be back in his apartment now, settled on his couch. Maybe not even thinking about me or the inconvenience I’d caused him.
You know that’s a lie.
Neatly sat on the counter is a vase of flowers, a store bought chocolate torte, and a few bags of groceries. Scribbled hastily there’s a note next to the bags.
Sorry I broke in, the back sliding door was left unlocked. There’s some fresh stuff in the fridge and a few cans of Diet Coke. - M
I fold up the note and slide it into my jacket pocket. It’s a small piece of him to hang onto. The bags are stocked with some staples for easy meals, and the fridge contains the same. I’m so warmed by the gesture I forget there must have been wild logistics for him to work through to be able to get all this.
His massive frame would look absolutely ridiculous in this kitchen, his horns would graze the light fixture above the island. I let out a soft chuckle at the vision.
I hardly deserve to have a stranger care about me this much, I mean, we hardly know each other.
Suddenly the realization smacks me over the head like I’m in a Looney Tunes cartoon and the Acme brand anvil dropped. Of course. His mom. He knows nights and days in the hospital, he knows the feeling of not being in control of anything, and the draining effect it has on you. He was young then, sure, but he saw it, he lived it. He knows what kind of meals are easy to make and choke down when you’ve spent three days straight in the hospital. He knows that I’d be spent entirely, and that having a few bites of my favorite dessert would help.
He’s a good man, and I think I want him to be my good man.
Admitting all this while very much under duress feels ill-advised. When I throw myself onto the couch I type out nearly a dozen different messages to him. They range from sassy (in poor taste) to sincere (too vulnerable), and I end up settling on a simple thank you and a request to see him at some point when I get back. I stare at my phone for a while, watching the text bubbles materialize and disappear over and over.
Ultimately, he “likes” the message and says nothing.
Flipping my phone in my hands a few times over in hopes of a phone call materializing is fruitless and resign myself to getting some sleep.
I forget how crushingly tiny a twin bed is, and I flip over a few times on the starched sheets trying to get comfortable. There’s an ache between my legs that I decide needs to be addressed, it’s been quietly pulsing on and off since I left his car earlier.
Suddenly, I’m a teenager again quietly touching myself to pictures of the Jonas Brothers and Orlando Bloom.
It is an absolutely fucked up coping mechanism to dispel the stress I’ve held onto all day.
I question my morals for even thinking about being horny after the events that have unfolded. I get up and pace back and forth, feeling disgusting for pursuing a brief physical reprieve from feeling anything. I give up, and succumb to the fucked up side of me that hasn’t stopped thinking about the monstrous man who got me out here in the first place.
With one hand already resting between my thighs, I open a private tab on my phone. There’s nothing I can search that’ll replicate what I experienced with Maddox. To my detriment, no one has found others like him and made porn with it, I’ve searched high and low.
A few arrangements of keywords had brought back questionable results. Monster porn returns activities involving the energy drink (creative) and beast porn returns some of the most repulsive steroid-laden alpha males I’ve seen (cringe). I soon discover that there’s nothing that’s more of a turnoff for me than a guy in a monster costume. As funny as it may have been to watch.
Finally, I find a video of a large guy with plenty of chest hair and a man bun and think it’s close enough. This Jason Momoa lookalike doesn’t quite have the same effect on me, and after listlessly circling my clit with my fingertips and getting nowhere I close out of it.
I need Maddox’s scent, his primal growls, and the feeling of his body. I need to hear his voice, but when I close my eyes and think about him I only envision the closed-off guy in a hoodie from earlier today.
I have half a mind to call him up and practically beg him to walk me through it.
I give up, hardly half satisfied, and curl onto my side. It’s incredibly silly for a grown woman to be crying out to the universe about a curse she’s under. It’s silly to believe in a curse like this in the first place.
In the morning I wash yesterday off of me entirely. I find myself back in the hospital, my mom rubbing her neck from sleeping on a cot, my dad sucking apple juice from a straw.
“Mom,” I say sternly, like she’s the kid and I’m the parent, “go home, sleep, please. I’ll stay with dad.” She looks at my dad, and he nods at her.
After more coercing she relents and quietly leaves. I know she held on as long as she could, but it’s unfair for her to carry this alone.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, kid.” he rips apart the toast on his breakfast tray once my mom leaves.
“Pretty sure you didn’t choose to have a heart attack,” I quickly answer. He looks better today, more color back in his cheeks, his eyes are less hollow. I come to realize I don’t even know what a heart attack entails, or how it could have affected him.
“No, I didn’t. I told your mom not to tell you until I got home. The doctors say it was a mild one, a few days of rest and I’ll be back home and golden.”
“A heart attack is still a heart attack, dad, and you seriously didn’t want me to know?”
“You have a whole life to live without worrying about us.” Had the distance really grown that large between us? I hardly had a life in Brooklyn, most days I was focused on simple survival and hoping things would get better. Maddox is the first bright spot I’ve had in a long time, and even that feels fragile and too precious to make real by speaking of it.
My entire adolescence I’d worked to be “not a bother.” I didn’t want to inconvenience my parents with my emotional burdens, nor reveal anything that would make me primed to get in trouble. There was nothing worse than asking for advice or sharing something and getting a lecture in return.
I’m sure much of it was self-imposed. I couldn’t handle the smallest piece of critique or criticism so I’d avoid it entirely by revealing nothing at all.
When I was twelve I had my first crush on a girl, though I had no clue that’s what it was. Crushes on boys felt normal and encouraged, and when I got the same feelings in my stomach for a girl on my soccer team, I didn’t know what to do with them.
My mom, not knowing better, brushed them off when I brought those feelings up. “You’re just jealous of her, Sigrid, why don’t you focus on making yourself as good of a player as she is?”
Over the next few years, my worldview exploded when I realized those feelings weren’t mere jealousy. I didn’t want to be her, I wanted to be with her.
“Your mom and I do worry though,” he turns to me, focus off of the stale rye bread. “We know the breakup was tough—” My dad was the more understanding of the two when it came to my “flip flopping” as my mom had jokingly called it. He liked Perrie, both my parents did. She was incredibly proficient at making herself into someone likeable when she needed to.
“I’m okay, seriously. Don’t burden yourselves with being concerned for me.” I’m not giving him anything else to hurt that weak heart of his.
“It’s in our nature,” he reaches for my hand. His has an IV needle stuck in the back of it with tubes snaking up towards a saline drip. “I will always be concerned that you’re not as happy as you deserve to be. That’s what it means to be a parent, we don’t want the world to beat down our kids and steal their sunshine.” Coming from my dad post heart attack slumped in a hospital bed, even the corny sentiment is enough to make my eyes well with tears.
I transform into a different person. Not Present Sigrid, nor Past Sigrid, but someone else entirely. When my mom needed me to grab her coffee from the cafeteria, I agreed without a bit of the groaning I would have given ten years prior. I exist in an unrecognizable purgatory, straddling disparate parts of myself until I’m stretched too far. I try to be as helpful as I can be, which since I can’t fix my dad’s heart, or my mom’s stress, mostly looks like me being alone in their house cleaning when I’m not at the hospital.
I’d long put away the groceries Maddox bought us, and I try to think of how to repay him for such a favor. Nothing of value seemed to come to mind. Money is no object for him, he’s made that clear, so sending him fifty bucks would be insignificant. I haven’t texted him since that first night, and what else was there to offer other than gratitude? I’d continue to let it simmer and ruminate and hope that it would come to me in a flash.
I replenished my parents fridge and cabinets and the items I bought sit nicely next to the ones he had. I wipe, and I dust, and I mop, and I do laundry. I do all the domestic things that my mom will be too overwhelmed to do herself. I fiddled with their TV and speaker system to fix the quirky technical problems they’d casually complain about whenever I was home.
Throughout all of this I’d sneak bites of the chocolate torte, a small slice here, a forkful there. My mom hadn’t touched it, and my dad certainly wouldn’t be allowed to. So I considered the dessert to be a small gift only for me.
In my rummaging I find a jar of yeast stashed in the back of the cabinet. The bread from the Italian restaurant Maddox took me to lives rent free in my head. I keep thinking about the flaky sea salt, the herbaceous rosemary, and how soft and fluffy it was. I had asked Maddox if he could get Orion to get me the recipe, which he declined saying it would be a breach of bro code if he revealed proprietary information like that. I didn’t fight him.
Bread has never been a strength of mine. I don’t have a sourdough starter I lovingly nurture, and I often opt for quick breads and pastries instead. I have nothing but time now, my dad has appointments that will fill most of the day and I won’t be going back to the hospital until tonight. I whisk the yeast and warm water, searching for telltale bubbles to show that it’s activated. To my delight, it still is. My mom’s all-purpose flour is a good enough replacement for the higher protein bread flour I would have used if I was at home, and the mixer she got as a wedding gift still works as well as it did forty years ago. I form a sticky dough and leave it to rest on the counter while I dig through the cabinets for flake salt and herbs.
“Hey Marg,” I answer and click the button to put on speakerphone using my elbow as I knead the dough on the counter. It took a few tries until I got it. I’m surprisingly proficient at making do when my hands are otherwise occupied. She’d called me a few times already to check in on my dad and ask how I was doing. After the initial panic, things have settled. My parents and I are going through the motions and seeking out normalcy now.
“What are you up to right now? Are you at the hospital?”
“I’m at my parents’ house. Currently attempting a focaccia. If the dough behaves like it should.” So far, I’m optimistic. It rose like it was supposed to, but that’s only half the battle.
She chuckles on the other end of the line. “Wow, she’s actually baking again. Who would’ve thought we’d see the day.”
“I am on a deadline, you know.” I punch the dough down into a ball.
“So it’s for the cookbook?”
“No. It’s more of a precursor. Trying to prove to myself I can still do this.” I knead the dough on the countertop before shaping it into a loose oval. I frown when it shrinks back on itself in a lumpy shape. “That’s not why you called me though.”
“No, it’s not. How free is your calendar Friday night? Are you seeing mystery man?”
“I’m wide open.” I didn’t have set plans with Maddox, I didn’t even know when I’d see him again.
“You are still seeing mystery man, right?” Her voice is direct. Any answer other than ‘yes’ would likely lead to chastising from her. To Margo’s benefit, it would probably be deserved.
I sigh. “Yes. And that’s all I’m going to say on it for now. I’m over complicating things on my own here, there’s shit I need to figure out.” Understatement of the century.
“You don’t want to talk through it?” She asks tentatively.
“I’d be beating a dead horse.” It’s a me problem, and she’s heard so much about this curse that she could probably tell me what I’m going to say before I even say it.
“Got it.” She quips.
I change the subject back to why she called me in the first place. “What plans do you have in mind?”
“A preview of that new Broadway show, a gift from that actor from a few years back.” Once again, Margo and her endless connections across the Five Boroughs come in clutch. I could definitely use a night immersed in theater as a distraction.
“You guys still talk? Are you hooking up with him again?” I worry she’d mentioned that they’re back together and I’d been so in my head that I missed that crucial piece of information.
“No, he's very happy with his fiancé, Roger.” She answers, and I’m relieved.
“I see,” I laugh.
“But I’m still reaping the benefits. They’re good seats, sold out, too. We can go to Times Square, hit up Margaritaville, and see the show slightly buzzed.”
“The American Dream.”
I drizzle olive oil over the focaccia as we continue talking. She updates me on what I missed at work, not professionally, purely gossip. I bring up the groceries and flowers Maddox dropped off, which she immediately swoons over.
We hang up while the bread is in the oven and I spend the remaining time cleaning up and resisting the urge to open the oven and check up on it. As much as I love baking, it’s always a test of my patience. There’s a lot of trust you have to have in the process and yourself. There’s a lot that can go wrong, even if you follow a recipe to a T. Your oven temperature might be off, the weather or altitude may affect things, or sometimes, things just don’t work out. You have to trust that things will probably work out in the end, even if you can’t control the outcome, and if they don’t work out, you have to graciously accept defeat.
The timer dings and I rush to the oven. It smells divine, the entire house is filled with the scent. The rosemary I found in the cabinet may not be fresh like it was at the restaurant, but it still perfumes the air with herbaceous goodness. Admittedly, the focaccia looks a little flat. Trust the process, I think.
My patience is tested again as I wait for it to cool enough to cut into it. When I finally do, it's nothing like the cloud of gluten I had with Maddox. It’s chewy and tough. Not inedible. Definitely not good, though. I look through the recipe again to figure out where I went wrong. Too much kneading, I’d gotten distracted talking to Margo and went too heavy handed on the dough. I sigh dejectedly.
And then, Sunday arrives. I had gathered my things at my parents house and drove the car back to the hospital one final time.
“Mom,” I say when I enter the room again. She’s still off. I don’t have the tools to fix that myself, I can only hope that time will ease her angst.
My dad grins at me and responds on her behalf, “heya kiddo!” I give him a small wave.
“The train’s at 4:57, I’ll have to call an Uber around 4:30 to get back in time.”
“I can drive you, hon,” she says slowly, carefully. I wouldn’t make her, peeling her away from dad even with me to sit with him in her place has been agonizing. So agonizing that I’d only done it twice since Friday.
“No, Uber is fine, I promise,” I smile. I’m nowhere near as weary as I’d been on Thursday night. We’d fallen into a routine as a trio, despite these circumstances.
“Your friend can’t get you?” My dad chimes in. I glance at him and the look he’s giving tells me that he knows there’s more to the story there. I shake my head.
“It’s a long drive from Brooklyn for him, and it’s only a 10 minute Uber,” I gnaw at my bottom lip, I can’t make Maddox do more than he already has. “I’ll be perfectly fine. Promise.”