Joy 1991

     I moved out of my parents’ house and into an apartment with Bob right after high school graduation.  I didn’t even know what the place looked like, only that there was a place and we were going to live there together.  That was enough, and spoke volumes for my decision making abilities at the time.  I would have lived in a tent with that man – in the middle of the woods– with no running water and spooning as our main source of heat.   Sick, really.  Bob’s mom had made the arrangements, finding us a low rent one bedroom apartment in an old house that had seen its better days decades ago.  It wasn’t in the best part of town, but Bob tried to reassure me it was safe, pointing out that a cop lived across the street.  Tactfully, I didn’t point out the cop was probably there to monitor the drug traffic.

            The apartment on Elm Street had a sun-faded kitchen with hilly linoleum, a cramped living room with windows overlooking the community circle driveway, an even smaller bedroom, and a tiny closet-sized bathroom.  I was elated.  I remember seeing it for the first time, taking in the few pieces of mismatched rummage sale furniture, the ancient stove and refrigerator, the grease-stained cupboards, and the mattress on the floor.  My delight could not have been greater if I’d just stepped into a mansion.  Bob and his mom had cleaned the place up and placed a few knick knacks and candles here and there to make it seem homey.  But the touch that meant the most to me was the bulletin board hung up in the kitchen for messages.  Bob had tacked up a handwritten note that said:  “Welcome home Nick, forever & ever & ever...”.  It was every Valentine I’d wanted, and never gotten.

            As for Bob, he watched me looking around, nervous for my reaction.  He knew it wasn’t much.  It was on the second floor, and stifling hot.  He’d set up fans in every room, but I could still feel little rivers of sweat beginning to gather all over my body.  It was small, hot, and smelled of desperation and fried food.  We didn’t even have a full set of dishes.  It didn’t matter.  Try as I might, I couldn’t get my head around the fact that I would be able to see him every day from now on and wouldn’t ever have to leave him at the end of the night.  I could fall asleep with him… and wake up with him.  If someone would have offered me this or a million dollars, I would’ve chosen him in heartbeat...talk about hormones.

            His mom took me around, talking about curtains and possibilities.  She’d stocked the fridge with a few things to get us started, and filled the bathroom with basic toiletries.  “I’m so happy for you kids!” she said with a wide and genuine smile, before kissing us each full on the lips.  I was too happy to be taken aback; I just hugged her back and smiled.

            When she finally left, I jumped into his arms, looked at him with wide, innocent blue eyes, and suggested we begin to christen every room and every piece of furniture.  He howled with laughter, picking me up and carrying me to our bed… or rather… our mattress.

            The next few weeks were a blur.  While I went around town filling out job applications, he kept busy talking with friends, smoking cigarettes, and making me fall even more in love with him.   I was carried to bed every evening like a princess.  He sang my name every time I walked through the door.  We stayed up into all hours of the night sharing secrets and giggling.  It was like the best slumber party I’d ever been to, except it was naked, co-ed, and full of hot sex.  At one point, I was so strung out I might have been screaming my own name…there’s really no telling.

            As time went on, and things changed between us, I would always try to get back to that sweet spot in time- the time when everything was new, and I couldn’t be happier than I was to simply belong to someone.  I yearned for the days when I could hear his voice ringing through the apartment, “Lovey!” as he called me to come sit in his lap or share something funny.  He was sweet, romantic, attentive to a fault, and sober. 

            Within a month, I’d landed a job making minimum wage.  I worked days- forty hours a week.  There were vast amounts of separation anxiety for both of us when we had to part ways.  It was time to get real.  The party was over.  It was either work or starve. 

            We had one car:  mine.  It was quickly decided, by Bob, that he would feel safer chauffeuring me back and forth to work each day.  This also meant he’d have wheels during the day…to look for a job, or so he claimed.  In my current state of pheromone induced love sickness, I would’ve chewed off my left arm and handed it to him…had he asked.  Borrow the car?  Go for it.  What’s mine was his.

             Gradually, when I wasn’t breathless from the last kiss or plotting the next moment my bare chest would get the chance to touch his, I began to notice things.  When I’d lived at my parents, I’d never seen Bob drink.  I knew he drank, but I’d never really been around him when he did.  At first, he started drinking on the weekends- either at his parents when we visited, or with friends while I did laundry with his mom.  After a while, he started keeping beer in the fridge at home.  Eventually, it became clear he expected to open the fridge and find it stocked with beer or he’d know the reason why.  I also noticed Bob never seemed able to stop once he’d started.  Sometimes he got a little mean, but he was always back to himself the next day, just a little hung over, a little shamefaced, and full of sweet apologies.

            I remember starting to think it wasn’t quite right that I was working and he wasn’t, yet part of the money that should go to basic expenses was going for beer and cigarettes.  Dozens of little adjustments were being made and they all seemed to be on my side.  We saw his parents every weekend; I never saw mine.  He went over to his friends all the time, leaving me at the apartment without a car.  He didn’t like me to go anywhere without him, so I didn’t see my friends much at all.  If I wasn’t at work, I often found myself in the hot kitchen, doing the dishes he’d dirtied while I was gone.  The ashtrays, especially, drove me absolutely crazy.  I hated the stink of stale cigarette smoke.  I was constantly dumping the ashtrays, washing them, and drying them till they shone.  Then, he’d come right along and mess them up again.  It was senseless.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep them clean.

After a while, it seemed like I was always in the kitchen- cooking, cleaning, or both.   I was always waiting for him to get home, with the windows open to watch for him, and music on to keep me company.  I was lonely.  At seventeen, I was probably still more a child than an adult.  Was it so odd that I missed my parents?  

            Right about the time I’d get completely fed up and work up my courage to say something about him getting a job, he would sweep in the door to announce… he’d gotten a job.  For a moment, it would seem all our problems were over.  He would insist on going out to dinner to celebrate, while I tried to deter him every step of the way- he hadn’t the first clue how to manage money and didn’t believe in saving.  I was constantly working the calculator in my head to tally up what he’d bring home on his paycheck, and from there trying to rob Peter to pay Paul in order to stay one step ahead of the bills.  As I did so, he would help himself to the cash we kept in the rent box and then hustle me for the few bucks I kept in my purse.  It always seemed we were working in opposite directions, as if I was knitting some impossibly long, impossibly complicated afghan, and he was steadily coming up behind me, casually undoing all my careful, tedious rows of stitching.

            The crazy thing was Bob could always get a job, if he tried.  His charm and humor made him irresistible at interviews.  The problem was he could hardly ever keep one.  Several factors played into this.  First of all, Bob was not an early riser.  It became my job to make sure he was up and ready for work on time. Lucky, lucky me.  He was so ugly upon being woken up, I began to feel like I was taking in my life into my hands each time I woke him up- sort of like sticking your head inside the lion’s head to prove it was tame.   He wasn’t always cooperative, so he was often late to work, and then got mad at me because I hadn’t gotten him up and moving fast enough.  He also called in more than he should have, being suddenly struck with some mysterious ailment that rendered him unable to work.  And lastly, he did not like to take orders, and could be quite argumentative if the mood struck him, as it often did.  These weren’t qualities that exactly endeared him to the workforce. 

            He’d work for a stretch and then get laid off, let go, or quit because he didn’t like his supervisor.  They were all jerks and they all knew nothing.  What I knew is that I was getting a little tired of being the sole breadwinner.  He knew exactly how to charm his way out these uncomfortable conversations.  He did it with desperate kisses, with grand declarations, and with rich descriptions of how very bright our future together would be.  Pillow talk was his specialty.  He sewed my heart tightly onto his with sweet gestures- carrying me to bed, each night kissing the tiny ring on my hand like I was some sort of a pimp, comparing our hands palm to palm in the moonlight that spilled through our bedroom window, and a dozen other little acts that hypnotized me.  I was immobile.