Julie Lekstrom Himes

Fairy-tale Endings

In the end, it would seem Julia’s fatal flaw was procrastination. And though not generally considered fatal, if sufficient space was provided on the appropriate blank of death certificates, typical explanations such as advanced breast cancer or acute myocardial infarction could be qualified, parenthetically, with comments such as, “too busy running the PTA to get that mammogram” or “didn’t want to spoil the daughter-in-law’s turkey dinner with a quick trip to the emergency room.” Indeed, the day before, Julia had spared enough forethought to run that errand to the hardware store, yet the prerequisite tools were buried under shoes on the closet floor and her purchase encased in plastic, sat in the corner of her apartment behind the umbrella rack. At some point that morning, her eyes would come to rest upon that bag branded with the store’s name, and she would consider for a moment that it did her no good lying there on the floor.

The appointed time was ten o’clock Saturday morning, a time as devoid of intimacy as any Julia could choose. He was punctual as always and when the apartment intercom rang, she heard his grainy salutation, “I’m here for the swap meet.” She pressed the button that unlocked the apartment lobby door and looked out her front window. Three stories down, his blue pick-up truck stood in the semicircle driveway in front of her building. Julia sat on the arm of the sofa. A discarded box from a case of wine sat on the dining room table.

Jasper entered without knocking, as if he still belonged there, carrying the box from a warm mist portable humidifier he had bought for his place, at Julia’s request, a month earlier.

“You brought the humidifier?” she said.

“No,” he said and smiled. “I kept that.” He set the box on the dining room table next to the box labeled with Cline Zinfandel. “I get the wine?” He said, peering into the box.

“There was only one bottle left. I kept it.”

Jasper slipped his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. His characteristic move—as if he had disarmed, but Julia knew better.

“So, I think I got everything,” said Jasper, nodding towards the box he had brought. “If I missed something, I can drop it by.”

Julia shrugged. “Or you can mail it.” She nodded towards the wine box and he peered inside. Julia had wanted to keep this exchange short. Not much changes hands over the course of a five month relationship. But he rummaged through it and so she waited.

“Where’s my left slipper?” Jasper pulled out its mate and waved it at her, as if the shoe had asked the question.

“Oh, I couldn’t find it. It’ll turn up. I’ll clean out my closet this weekend and mail it to you.”

“Yeah, I know how you look for things,” he said. He let the shoe topple back into the box and turned to disappear into her bedroom.

Julia sat on the sofa and considered her left thumbnail. “I already looked in there,” she called to him.

“Then maybe you should look somewhere else,” sailed back at her.

Julia didn’t move. She compared her two thumbnails, side-by-side. There was a small crash in her bedroom closet. When he was angry he wrecked things. She just wanted him to find his goddamn shoe. She considered that he had taken it with him the last time he had left her apartment. Such premeditation would not surprise her.

“Maybe it’s at your place,” Julia suggested.

His voice snapped around the corner into the living room. “I would walk home in one slipper?” She listened to him pull her storage containers from under her bed. She heard the opening and closing of her bureau drawers.

Jasper came around the corner and headed into the kitchen. His eyes glanced upon her, where she still sat on the arm of the sofa. “Any luck in here?” He asked, not waiting for an answer. She heard him open the pantry door and begin to unload the canned goods and cereal boxes from the shelves. She listened to the fury of soup cans and tomato paste crash onto her tabletop.

“You really think your slipper is in there?” She said.

“I don’t know where you put things.”

She listened to him throw her gelatin mix boxes and envelops of pre-measured seasonings onto the kitchen counters.

“Maybe you could explain to me again why we’re doing this,” Jasper’s disembodied voice floated into the living room.

“Looking for your slipper?”

Jasper appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Tell me again.”

It had not occurred to Julia that she may have broken off their relationship badly. She had never before played the role of “breaking it off” in the course of a break-up. She realized this as she reached back through her history of relationships, in search of some precedent of how to deal with Jasper, and it surprised her. Julia had had many romantic entanglements, but all had ended in one of two ways. Either “he” had left her, and her heart was broken, or, and this was, by far, more often the case, her disinterest had caused him to leave, as if other conversations or hobbies or friends had begun to collect around her feet, and in their growing accumulation, he was pushed out the door. Yet no one ever truly drifted away. There was always an antecedent event; a flash of lightening in the night that in one disastrous moment revealed the depth of her disregard. In her last relationship, she was hopelessly late to his annual work party, a critical occasion, arriving just as the last of the guests were departing. She embraced the singular look of loathing, then turned heel. Her ex’s never remained friends. She would be the woman that still set an edge to their voice, years later when they regaled their wives with their past romances.

“Tell me one more time that you don’t love me,” he said.

She had liked him well enough, at least at first; enough to give him a try. He was smitten by her, she knew that, and that effect she had on men fascinated her. She would try them on, like a coat in a store, to see if she looked as lovable wrapped up in them as they seemed to think she would. When she didn’t, she returned them to their hangers.

“Tell me,” he said.

She had met Jasper through a mutual friend, the childhood playmate of someone’s older brother, quite by accident, as he was leaving the bar and they were arriving. Despite their casual introductions, despite his other plans for the evening, he turned and followed her inside. Julia often wondered about those packets of time, the five minute search for a forgotten sweater or the filling of the tank of gas, that change outcomes, that foil chance meetings. The only thing she would remember about Jasper from that night was the grip of his fingers. At the end of the evening, as he returned her share of the meal’s tab to her, he held the underside of her hand with his; only it wasn’t her hand that he held, but rather her wrist. She remembered pulling her hand away, after her fingers had closed around the bills, only his hand was still locked around hers. The way one might hold back the hand of a small child reaching for a hot stove, she thought at the time. He called her that night, after she had gotten home, then twice more the next morning. He always wanted the specifics. What time would she call back? What time would she arrive? When was she leaving? What store would she shop at? What route would she take? Julia preferred to be vague. She began to see his questions as snares he laid in the grass. Places where she would stumble. Places in her he would come to despise.

“You can’t tell me, can you,” he said.

Julia disliked confrontation. Every other one would have been fed up and left by now. Only with Jasper, there was no final straw—no one-too-many broken dates or unreturned phone calls to push him away. He railed at her. Julia threw away his W-2 forms. Julia didn’t check the movie listings for the correct start time. Julia forgot to bring the hostess gift. Julia ruined his bathroom ceiling with her long, hot showers and it must be repainted. But he wouldn’t leave. He stared at her, waiting. For a moment she didn’t recognize him.

She considered her possible responses, like cards laid on a table. She imagined lifting each one by one. She considered the possible outcomes. Outcomes she could set into motion. Her pulse quickened.

She looked at him and saw herself trapped in the gridlock of a traffic jam behind a towering semi. She saw herself watch the truck inexplicably shift into reverse. She watched its red and white taillights close in on her, growing like plates in front of her eyes, her fingers frozen around the steering wheel. There was nowhere to go. She only had to call out, to press down on the horn, but instead she watched, her voice jammed in her throat.

She looked at him and said nothing. She looked away and shrugged.

Jasper picked up the box and headed for the front door.

“I want my key back,” she said, holding out her hand. He fished it out of his pocket. “It’s easy enough to make a copy, Julia.” He said evenly. He held her wrist in his hand as he placed the key into her palm.

Julia thought of the bag sitting in the corner behind the umbrella stand.

She watched through her window as he appeared below and loaded his box into the bed of his truck. She watched him get into the cab, then after a moment, get out again and close the door. He approached her building.

Her intercom rang for the second time that morning. “Hey, you’re not going to believe this, but I found my other slipper in the truck.” He paused. “Sweetheart,” he said. “I think we should try to work things out.”

Julia went to her door and locked it. She sat on the arm of the sofa. Peeking out from under the dust ruffle of the chair across the room, like a small child hiding, was the missing slipper. She stared at it, then walked across the room and kicked it under the chair. It skidded across the floor, rebounding off the back wall, hidden from sight. She went back to sit on the arm of the sofa. Within moments, she heard heavy footsteps, striking each of the steps that ascended to her third story apartment.