A Familiar Conviction by Maiah Jezak

Charlie felt her stomach sink to her toes as she pressed her trembling finger against the weathered doorbell. It was 2 a.m. His shades were drawn. Maybe he was asleep. Please, God, let him be asleep. She clutched his novel to her chest, smothering the cover reading ‘Melting Hearts’. Such a stupid, sappy title for a Molotov cocktail. She hadn’t even remembered to put on shoes when she grabbed her keys and fled. The fire of rage roaring in her chest during the drive over had smoldered into ash the moment she’d unbuckled her seatbelt. Now, she cowered barefoot on his shadowed stoop, gasping as the hall light flicked to life and the door before her creaked open.

“Charlotte?”

There he was, in the flesh, Charlie’s personal ghost emerging from the moors. Arthur was the only person to ever call her by her full name. His silver-streaked black hair had grown to his shoulders in the months since his biography photo. Exhaustion shaded his face, but his familiarity still struck her.

Looking dazed, he reached out and grazed his fingers against the cuff of her linen blouse, as if to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

“Charlotte Demski. Are you really here?”

 “What is this?” she croaked, holding the beaten bestseller out to him.

“Do you want to come inside?”

She moved through the doorway into Arthur Okada’s foyer. Over the past three decades she’d spent more time than she was comfortable admitting picturing Arthur’s home, his life. His wife’s shiny hair and bubbling casseroles. His four varsity athlete-valedictorian sons, each popped out in quick succession one year apart. She’d pictured seashell wallpaper and marble countertops. A basketball hoop in the driveway.

Aside from the wallpaper (citrus fruits, not seashells), her reverie had been dead on. Impossibly gorgeous family portraits and golden trophies lined the hallway shelves as she meekly followed Arthur into the sleek kitchen.

“Tea?”

–

A few minutes later they settled on opposite ends of his mauve couch, their legs stretched across the cushions. They’d both remained silent in the preceding moments, Arthur’s eyes fixed on Charlie, and Charlie’s on her steaming mug. Her fingertips burned pink against the ceramic. She couldn’t seem to remember what she’d been so hell-bent on telling him.

It was ironic, she thought-thirty-six years ago their relationship had largely consisted of the opposite. She had always been rambling too much, laughing too loud. Arthur had never seemed to know what to make of her. He’d fall silent often, moods coming over him like a swarm of wasps cloaking him in shadows. What he couldn’t articulate by mouth he’d pour onto paper, slipping pages and pages of handwritten letters into her bedroom window after every fight. Almost every fight.

She brought the cup to her lips and took a careful sip. “Is this chamomile?”

“Yes. I believe there’s lavender in it as well.”

“Lovely.” She shivered as she finally met his eyes. He looked younger than he had a few minutes ago.

“Charlotte…”

She grabbed the paperback that had been resting in her lap and held it up for him like a schoolteacher.

“You changed genres.”

A nonplussed grunt escaped his throat. “I changed genres?”

“Yes! You’re a New York Times best-selling mystery author. Now you come out with a romance?”

“Did you read it?”

“Of course. I’ve read everything you’ve ever published.”

Arthur looked pleased at this. Charlie felt her face growing hot. She wasn’t here to feed his ego.

“I’ll have you know that I came here tonight to chuck this thing right at your head.”

 “Did you now? And why would you do that?”

“Because you wrote this about me! About us!”

He reached to snatch the book from her grip, thumbing through the pages aimlessly.

She could feel the familiar moody swarm coming over Arthur, only now the wasps seemed to have been replaced with moths. If twenty-two-year-old Arthur had been a mountain, fifty-eight-year-old Arthur had been eroded into a sledding hill. Her chest ached at the thought.

 He cleared his throat. “I suppose it is about us. But I sure as hell didn’t change genres. You know that better than anyone.”

Charlie bit her lip and took another sip from her mug. The tea had gone cold.

“How’s Harry doing?”

“Harry?”

“You aren’t the only one who gets to look people up on Facebook. Harry, the chef with the ponytail and wrinkled shirts. Your husband. How is he?”

Charlie recoiled at this, nervously fidgeting with the pear-shaped emerald on her ring finger. Harry. The man who had brought her lilies every Monday for the past fifteen years. Harry, who had painted their door lavender and let her name their pet tortoise ‘Seymour’, even though he’d never read a page of Salinger. Her Harry.

“Harry is currently in St. John’s Assisted Living with early onset Alzheimer’s.”

She let the uncomfortable moment stretch in front of Arthur. His stone face winced with regret. Well, if they were asking personal questions…

“How’s Elaine? How are your boys?”

Arthur’s wince turned into a grimace. “The boys are fine. At least, that’s what I hear.”

“And Elaine?”

“We separated last June.”

Now it was her turn to feel ashamed. “Arthur, I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”

“I’m sorry to hear about Harry,” he interrupted.

The absurdity of the night was sinking into her. She sat upright, Arthur following suit.

“How is this happening? How am I sitting here with you right now?”

“Well, if I recall, it all started when some crazy woman drove to my house in the middle of the night threatening to beat me with my own book!”

“Which I have yet to do, by the way!”

“I only get to visit Harry on Mondays. Ever since I retired I just spend my days drinking obscene amounts of Earl Grey on the porch with my tortoise.”

“Why the hell did you leave publishing? We used to call you ‘Midas’ because every manuscript you touched turned to gold.”

Blood rushed to her cheeks.

 “Why the hell haven’t you retired yet? You’ve only written a dozen best-sellers.”

“And have you miss out on my faint recollections of our own Greek tragedy? Never.”

“Ah, yes. The half-autobiographical, half-fanfiction edition of our thirty-year old love story.”

“Thirty-six. And hey, at least I changed our names.”

“Yeah, to Adam and Carie. Really?”

“It may be my most creative novel yet.”

“I’ll admit you got most of it right. I mean…” She reached to snatch the book from his hands, looking for the pages she’d marked.

‘The first time he saw her she was balancing three scoops of cookie dough ice cream in a cake cone for a red-faced toddler in a sagging aquamarine bathing suit.’

“I asked the Swirls Ice Cream manager for an application right then and there. I couldn’t leave that beautiful stranger to endure the sugar-crazed babies alone…”

“And you had to pay rent.”

“Ah, that too. But that detail isn’t very romantic.”

Charlie turned the page, laughing tears pooling in her eyes.Their knees were touching now. Charlie felt so dizzy from the laughter and nostalgia that she forgot to pull away.

“My only complaint,” she announced, “is the ending. Arthur, it’s ridiculous!”

“What’s so ridiculous about it?”

“Adam chasing Carie to the train station and proposing to her? It’s incredibly archetypal and starry-eyed coming from you.”

Arthur’s knee pressed into hers. “What if it’s just what I wish had happened?”

 Charlie shivered. “We never would have worked, Arthur, it just wasn’t in the cards for us.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a fatalist.”

“And I still don’t know why you’ve decided to torture me like this again!”

The warmth and ease between them vanished. In all of his care to retell their story, he had left out the most important part.

Three decades of weariness and longing appeared to drape over Arthur; erasing the earnest boy she’d once loved. His lips parted in a defeated whisper.

“I had to finish it.”

“Everything else in my life is finished. My marriage, raising my boys. I’ve traveled everywhere from Paris to Cape Horn. My career is stale. I’m 58 years old. You are still the only goddamn thing I’m stuck on, Charlotte. I just spent nine months sleeping two hours a night and living off of probiotic yogurt writing an entire novel about you. Trying to exorcise the memories out of me like a demon.

“What do you want from me? What did you think would happen when I saw this?”

Arthur seemed to be losing his will to fight. “I hoped you’d see it, maybe even read it. Maybe even show up to my house and beat me with it. Nobody ever tells you this about hope.”

“What?”

“It’s grotesque. It’s a red pill. Hope turned Jay Gatsby into an indulgent fool with a bullet in his back. You are my green light, Charlotte. This book is my roaring party. I just wanted you to read it.”

Speechless, Charlie felt her convictions unraveling. She leaned forward and tenderly caught his top lip between hers, soft as a whisper. Arthur reached to grab her face with his rough palms and pressed her into him, hard. Kissing Arthur hadn’t felt like this thirty years ago. Nothing had ever felt like this. It felt like she’d made contact with an electric socket. He slid his arms to her waist, scooping her underneath him and moving his attention to the sensitive spot below her left ear. She slid her fingers into his hair and tugged, her wedding ring catching on a snare in his tangled waves. Arthur groaned. Charlie froze beneath him.

 She could feel his breath shudder in his throat as she pulled away, spooked. Blood rushed in her ears. She grabbed the book that had been discarded between them, pressing it to his chest to create some distance. Neither of them dared to move, staring at each other’s swollen lips and flushed cheeks in shock. Charlie wasn’t sure how long it took for her brain to catch up with her tongue. Arthur was still clutching the paperback to his chest.

“It is very well written, Arthur.”

With that, she turned and fled for the door.

The sun hadn’t peaked over the horizon yet, but the morning air was warm and heavy. Charlie’s hands shook as she unlocked the car door, her teeth chattering as the engine rattled to life. She sputtered aimlessly down empty roads, eventually pulling into a gravel lot.

Muscle memory must have taken over. Rusty drip stains pooled under the bent cherry at the top of the old ‘Swirls’ sign. Someone had shattered the pickup window. Charlie held her breath like she was in a graveyard. Fatigue and nostalgia flowed through her veins like cement, her limbs turning to stone and her forehead dropping to rest against the steering wheel.

Charlie woke with a start, her temple smacking the window to her left. Rubbing at the tender skin, she noted the lustrous tangerine sunrise glaring in her rearview mirror. What had woken her? Shifting in her seat, she unbuckled and rolled down her window. A red mustang had pulled up next to her. Arthur.

He looked like he’d been crying; his nose red and eyes swollen. He didn’t speak, just peered out at her. Charlie could only stare back at him, dumbfounded.

He stepped out of the car, ‘Melting Hearts’ clutched roughly in his fingers. Taking a final, desperate look at her, he turned and hurled the novel through the shop’s fractured window. It sailed in and crashed with a rough thud, both their real and counterfeit histories disappearing into oblivion. Arthur’s back was facing her, his shoulders heaving with heavy gasps. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks. He had finally finished it. Charlie reached forward to press down on the car horn, startling Arthur to jump and face her. Shrugging shyly, she reached over and unlocked her passenger-side door.

Maiah Jezak

Image: A selection of love hearts sweets in pastel colours with little messages stamped into them from Pixabay.com