Yesterday Margot had decided to leave Ted over breakfast. This was, of course, the type of decision that never goes as planned.
First, there was the car accident. Ted wrapped her car around a mailbox coming home from the recycling dump. The burgundy crunch of her Maxima had somehow complimented the royal blue of the stand-alone dropbox. Strangely, the box seemed aloof; unaware, even, that catastrophe had struck.
Which was a metaphor for Ted. Unaware that their relationship had ceased to be anything but a wreck for quite some time.
Everywhere she looked nowadays, there were metaphors. Patterns, as if she had somehow inadvertently stumbled across freemason or sufi status. The Egg-Beaters she cooked for Ted every morning would coagulate in the pan, a gross yellow goo refusing to acquiesce to it's inevitable scrambling, all except for the area right in the middle. There, a circle of perfectly fluffy egg substitute scramble would rise up in rebellion, as if to say, "See, everything is just dandy. Go on about your business".
The newspaper hit the bay window of their three story Tudor house in Fairfax proper every morning with uncanny speed and accuracy at around five AM. The window never gave any indication of breaking, however hard or swiftly the pimply-faced adolescent boy with angst to spare hurled it. By all that was in tune with the laws of physics in this world, Margot believed the window should have shattered by now. But, no; it just kept stubbornly adhering to the frame, proud and sturdy, with the backing of a Sears lifetime warranty.
At least Margot hadn't had to worry about acquiring a lifetime warranty (for better or worse) where Ted was concerned. He didn't believe in the concept of marriage. He was wholeheartedly investing in the concept of denial, however. Like the bay window, or the pseudo eggs, or even the blue mailbox, slick with rain and interspersed with flecks of burgundy paint.
First there was the accident. Ted went to the hospital, miraculously unharmed, though her car had been totaled. She caught a cab from the house, grainy flashbacks of that morning replaying in her head.
Ted always insisted on taking her car to the dump, cheerfully reminding her that he had clients or supervisors in his car almost every day; he didn't need it smelling like anything that wasn't brand new. She could see his face in her mind now, patiently waiting for her to make her usual speech about how he should take his own damn car, or allow her to make use of the shiny plastic recycling bins the county had so generously provided them. She lingered on a particular moment in the sequence of memories: the way his eyes had squinted a bit, the skin around the corners crinkling in a split second of confusion, when she had remained silent.
Sighing, she paid the stoic cab driver and hopped out, the technicolor present of the shrubbery outside of Fairfax General taking precedence. Strolling in, she discovered him leaning on the information desk, smiling serenely, and humming a few bars of Vivaldi's Autumn.
Margot, in a foregone display of conditioning, smirked back, knowing that he had picked the Vivaldi up not from the CD she had in the five-disc changer at home, but from the most recent Infiniti commercial. Her grin faded a bit. They went to lunch.
After the accident, there was Margot's sister. Katherine called at three o'clock in the afternoon, and notified her younger sibling that she was stopping over for tea and conversation.
Katherine was glamorous and effete, something Margot had not managed to quite fit into, although Lord knows, she had tried it on enough times. Katherine was also a rabid Republican and an auto-pilot alcoholic, with a penchant for tossing words like 'fucking' and 'pugnacious' together in the same sentence in a controlled, husky voice. Margot was simultaneously awe stricken and contempt ridden when contemplating her eldest sister.
Katherine had arrived at ten past four, and arranged herself languidly at Margot's kitchen table, staring with bemused, heavy eyelids at the curtains; checkered red and white linen, and the matching tablecloth, a Christmas gift from Ted�s mother.
Pulling deftly at the tablecloth�s edge and polishing her wedding ring, she told Margot flat out not to disregard Ted just yet. Her view was that Ted had serious amounts of cash, was good to her, put up with her artistic temperament with an aw-shucks, Wally Beaver charm, and was an all around well meaning, if a little clueless, executive type. Why did Margot want to leave all that to go live some hippie inspired life in a one bedroom flat somewhere near Georgetown, with only her dog Ezra and her computer to keep her company?
Margot knew, of course, the way one knows that a MA is the appropriate level of education to aspire to, or that one must always travel to Europe before one turns 35, (Margot had been twice herself, and she was only 28) that Ted was appropriate to aspire to as well. Her sister�s thoughts were, viewed with the blinders of polite suburban society, completely accurate. Viewing herself as part of a joint set, he was sickeningly fitting. Not all consuming, she knew, even in the beginning, and not arrestingly... anything. He was dependable, and solid, and predictable, and boring. And the minute Margot had discovered this beyond a shadow of a doubt, she had begun to feel tendrils of self-loathing wriggling their way into her daily contemplations. At first, for understanding that this was far less than what she dreamed, but sufficiently more than what she needed. And then, for wanting to leave. And sometimes, deep down in the swells of her subconscious, she would skim on the dark waters of her innermost thoughts, and surface with the realization that she was personally acquainted with what love was not. His name was Ted.
So she took off around sunset, walking the neighborhood. Touching the rough bark of a maple; stooping to gather up random leaves of a dark, faded orange, sun-bleached yellow, or the occasional smoky red, as she had when she was a child. She would marvel at them then, sometimes; as if she was the only little child blessed enough to see the inherent, simplistic, almost heartbreaking beauty in what was, technically, a dying thing. Now she only absentmindedly twirled their stems, brushing the dry crispness occasionally across her face.
Finally, she strode towards the sight of the accident earlier that morning. Noting the miracle mailbox standing tall and proud halfway down the street, she stopped. And began to cry.
If she looked hard now, squinting through tears and the fine mist of rain, she could make out fragments of glass glinting on the pavement; the sole remnants of evidence to attest to the fact that something had once been out of place on this affluent suburban sidestreet. The glass, too, would most likely be gone by morning. Something inside her clicked on.
Ted, sweet Ted... the man who saved their old Chinese food soup containers in the name of recycling, but nonchalantly tossed empty soda containers and overflowing ashtays out of the car window on the freeway; the man who, for her twenty-fifth birthday, told her he had wanted to give her the Keith Jarret CD she had been wanting but couldn't figure out how it was spelled, so he had purchased the soundtrack to Boogie Nights instead. The man who, every morning, would kiss her lovingly, his tongue probing around her mouth as she struggled not to gag, her senses of smell and taste on morning breath manual override. Ted. She. Hated. Ted.
She walked home slowly, vacantly. It was dark, the evening thick with crickets and moonlight. When she arrived, she glanced at Ted's Audi perfectly parallel to her vacant parking space, as if the Maxima was expected home at any time.
Her eyes swept the familiar vista, over towards the neighbors yard, where there were two baseball bats and a plethora of gloves laying in the damp grass. She wandered towards the abandoned equipment, thinking briefly, insanely, that Lori would be pissed in the morning when she discovered her kid's baseball accoutrements slimy with morning dew. Then she was hefting the bat up, her grip slipping a bit due to the moist, almost squishy handle.
Ignoring the well-lit and inviting portico, she walked calmly towards the window.
12:22 a.m. - 2001-08-12
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