Ten: Going Under

The following weekend, Meredith and I headed to her hometown for some more quality time with her family. Apparently, her grandparents had been asking when they would get to meet me.
Hard as we might have been trying to fight it, the glow of bliss we had temporarily managed to recapture seemed to be fading once again, and it didn’t help that PMS was wreaking havoc on my hormones… a fact of which Meredith was aware, having spoken to me after an especially hellish day at work. During my rant, it had occurred to me that it was about “that time,” and that perhaps that could have had something to do with my enhanced lack of patience with Jon and a few rude customers.
Now, determined to at least try to have some fun after a less than relaxing drive – the duration of which Choo-Choo had spent whining – we headed to the bar with Kelsey. As the alcohol flowed, however, Meredith grew increasingly antagonistic towards me… yet, when I confronted her about it, she first denied it, then claimed that if she was, in fact, behaving hostilely, it was merely an unconscious response to the effects of my bad mood.
I felt bad for Kelsey, caught in the crossfire, but she seemed relatively unfazed, sipping her drink and finally changing the subject announcing, “Melissa and Debbie want to know if you can bring Choo-Choo to the store one day so they can meet him. Maybe after lunch tomorrow?”
“Aw! Sure, we can stop by,” Meredith replied. “I bet they’ll love him… even though my girlfriend hates him.”
Ah, so that was what was going on. Apparently she was taking offense, both because I had been obviously irritated by his whining on the drive there, and because once we had arrived at her parents’ house, I had commented that the twin bed in her childhood bedroom probably wouldn’t be big enough for the three of us… hey, I certainly wasn’t about to sleep on the floor.
“Whatever,” I muttered like a surly teenager, rolling my eyes.
“Well, you do,” Meredith persisted in a singsong, seeing my surly teenager and raising me a bratty six-year-old.
“I hate that you and I are constantly bickering about your dog,” I corrected her, exasperated.  “And okay, fine, I wasn’t too fond of him constantly trying to bite my face before your mom started training him. Or ending up in my crotch during sex… did she tell you that story?” I addressed Kelsey.
Kelsey’s eyes widened and she snorted a laugh. “No!” she glanced inquiringly at Meredith, who crossed her arms and scowled. Shrugging, her sister turned expectantly back to me.
“Basically, we were doing our thing, and Choo-Choo decided he wanted in on the action,” I said simply. “It’s funny as hell after the fact, but let’s just say that was way more up-close-and-personal than I ever expected or wanted to get with a Chihuahua.”
“That’s awesome!” Kelsey exclaimed, laughing appreciatively. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about that, Mer! That’s almost as good as the fish guy… remember him?”
Meredith shrugged, continuing to sulk, so Kelsey opted to regale me with her tale of a random one-night-stand with a fisherman who had picked her up in a bar when she had been drinking alone after a fight with her last boyfriend. It wasn’t the first story of its kind; Kelsey had a seemingly endless supply of hilariously raunchy “sexcapade” anecdotes on tap, and she was anything but shy about sharing them.
So later that night, when Meredith reamed me out, icily informing me that “In the future, I would prefer it if you didn’t discuss our sex life with my sister,” as we got ready for bed, I was stupidly caught off guard. I should have seen it coming, I suppose, but shamelessly blurring the boundaries of socially acceptable public conversations with Kelsey had been just what I’d needed to snap me out of my cranky mood, so I had ignored the warning signs.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “It just didn’t occur to me that it would be a big deal. Besides, it’s not like I went into detail, and let’s face it… Kelsey’s hardly shy about sharing her own details.”
“Well, I wish she wouldn’t either,” Meredith snapped. “I don’t know why she tries to make herself come across as white trash, but that’s her decision. We don’t need to follow suit.”
“Okay, fair enough,” I held up my hands in surrender. “Like I said, I just didn’t think…”
“Yeah, but that’s your problem… you don’t think!” she reprimanded. “About anyone but yourself, that is.”
Wait… what did I do? Was this still about the dog?
“Just like you didn’t think about how it would make me feel when you dragged your little boy toy into our discussion and made me look like a complete idiot?” Meredith prompted. “Or maybe you just get some kind of sick charge out of embarrassing me!”
“What? Where is all this coming from?” I was legitimately confused.
“From your actions!” she declared. At Choo-Choo’s anxious whimper, Meredith paused for a moment, and when she spoke again, she was calm and collected, her voice flat, “How am I supposed to be with someone who clearly doesn’t respect me at all?”
Okay… so was this it then? It sounded a hell of a lot like a segue to a breakup speech. The question was: why?
“Babe, I completely respect you! Where is this coming from?” I repeated, pressing on when she didn’t respond. “Look, I told you I was sorry about tonight, okay? I didn’t think telling Kelsey that story would embarrass you, and I promise you, that wasn’t my intention…”
“But you know what they say about intentions,” she interrupted coolly, absently stroking Choo-Choo as she heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe I should have thought all this through a little more. Us, I mean. Anyway, I’m too tired right now. We can talk about it more tomorrow.”
“What the fuck!” I blurted. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the fact that I was hormonal, maybe her words had triggered flashbacks of Hailey bailing on me without warning, or maybe it was a combination of the three that caused the tears of exhausted frustration to well up in my eyes. Whatever the reason, a feeling of panicked dread overtook me. I couldn’t go through that awful, agonizing self-analysis again, running over and over a situation in my mind, trying in vain to figure out where wrong had crept in, searching for explanation and closure where none had been offered.
Meredith shushed me frantically. “My parents are sleeping right in the next room, and these walls are paper thin! Now, will you please just come to bed? I already told you we can talk about this tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to talk about it tomorrow!” I tried – probably pretty unsuccessfully – to lower my voice; I was growing agitated and slightly nauseous. “You can’t drop a bomb like that and then just expect me to crawl into bed and fall asleep like nothing happened!”
“What happened,” she replied evenly in her explaining-something-to-a-slow-witted-child voice, “Is that you constantly seem to be going out of your way to embarrass me. And even if it’s not intentional, I still have to give some serious thought to whether or not I should be in a relationship with someone who treats me that way. Now please, please if you care about me at all, just come to bed before you wake up my parents.”
I shook my head resolutely. “No. If that’s how you feel, then I shouldn’t be here.” I wasn’t really sure where to go with that; it was the middle of the night, my car was in the parking lot of Meredith’s apartment complex, and her parents lived at least an hour from anyone I knew. I was beyond rational thought processes at that point though, and the tears spilled down my cheeks as I dug in my bag for my phone.
“What are you doing?” Meredith demanded. “You can’t go anywhere now. It’s after two in the morning!”
I ignored her and scrolled with trembling fingers to Gavin’s number, then remembered he had a gig that night and probably wasn’t around. On impulse, I wondered if his roomie might be willing to be my older-brother-figure-stand-in that night and scrolled back up in my contacts list. “Derek?” I choked out when he answered sleepily on the fourth ring.
“Hey… you okay, kiddo?” he asked.
I shook my head, then remembering that, duh, genius… he can’t see you, managed a tearful, “I’m really sorry to call this late, but do you think there’s any way you could come pick me up and bring me to my car?”
“Sure, just tell me where you are. What happened? Are you okay?” he asked again.                                         
“I’m at Meredith’s parents’ house,” I told him between ragged breaths as I fought for control. “But I don’t have my car, and I feel bad asking you to come get me because it’s gonna be like an hour drive from you, but I just… everything’s just fucked, and I don’t know why… it was out of fucking nowhere… but I can’t… I can’t be here!”
“Oh, fuck you!” Meredith spat from the bed, shaking her head at me in disgust.
“It’s okay,” Derek was assuring me as I turned away from her, cradling my phone against one ear while covering the other with my free hand. “Just give me the address, and I’ll be on my way as soon as I look up directions… she didn’t hit you or anything, did she?”
“What? No, no, it’s nothing like that,” I promised him. “I just can’t stay here.” As I began giving him the addresses, both of Meredith’s parents’ house and her apartment complex, Meredith, who had been muttering expletives at me in the background, burst out, “Don’t you fucking dare tell him where I live! He can’t come here! Stop giving out my addresses right now! You have no fucking right!”
“Is that her? She seems lovely,” Derek remarked dryly.
I gave a little giggle in spite of myself. “Well, tonight’s not really an accurate picture, I promise… or actually? Maybe it is, come to think of it. Who the fuck knows? Ugh, I feel like I’m losing my mind, seriously!”
“Well, sit tight,” he replied, “I’ll see you soon.”
‘“Kay,” I drew in one more deep, shuddering breath, calmer now.
“Wow,” Meredith was still shaking her head as I hung up. “Congratulations. I think you just beat Haven.”
For some reason, I decided to bite. “What does that mean?” I asked tiredly.
“Well… first you make me all these grandiose promises about how much I mean to you, how the last thing you’ll ever do is ‘bail’ and abandon me like she did, and now, not only are you walking out on me in the middle of the night – leaving me to tell my family God knows what when they ask where you are in the morning, might I add – but to add insult to injury, you call the one person you know will hurt me the most? That is so fucked up, Kristin!” Panting slightly from her impassioned and indignant speech, she glared at me accusingly.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I shot back irritably. “I just didn’t have anyone else I could call… not everything is about you!” Another wave of nausea rushed over me, and I made it to the bathroom just in time to empty my stomach of the pizza we had eaten for dinner and the three Madrases I’d had at the bar. When I returned after rinsing my mouth and washing up, Meredith was curled into the fetal position, her face buried in Choo-Choo’s fur.
“The only people in this world you can count on are the ones who have the same blood running through their veins,” she mumbled into the dog’s side, “And sometimes even they let you down. I guess I forgot that for a second.”
“I… don’t know what to say to that,” I replied honestly.
She turned to meet my gaze, “Know what the last thing I said to Haven was? It was the last email I sent her after we broke up. The only way I could think to sign off was with three words: what a waste. And a little sad face emoticon. I feel like that again. At least this time I didn’t waste two years of my life before I found out.”
Tears threatened to spill over again. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say…”
“You had me!” Meredith stated emphatically. “A hundred and fifty percent. After Haven, I thought I’d never let anyone in again, and then when I finally do…” she broke off.
“Okay… I’m completely lost here,” I replied. “You’re the one who said you didn’t want to be with me…”
“I never said that! I said I needed to rethink some things,” she countered.
“Well, maybe it was just a misunderstanding on my part then, but you seemed pretty firm and final to me…” I sighed, changing tactics. “Anyway, I had this conversation with Vanessa awhile ago… that maybe if we have to work this hard, it’s not working.”
“Relationships are hard work, though,” she replied. “Maybe it’s just ‘cause you’ve never really been in one. But it’s all about compromise. Haven and I fought all the time, but you work through it, you don’t just walk out. That’s fucked up.”
“So… you want me to stay then?” I asked.
“Babe, I never wanted you to leave!” she cried. “That was all you!”
We both jumped as my phone began to ring. Derek, calling to let me know he was about to head out. “It took me awhile to get online,” he apologized. “How are you holding up?”
“Better,” I said. “I think I might actually be okay to stay, if you haven’t left already.”
“You sure?” he inquired a little dubiously.
“Yeah, I think so,” I replied. “I feel bad enough as it is that I woke you up without keeping you out ‘til all hours driving me around on top of it.”
“It’s okay,” Derek dismissed me. “It’s not a problem though; I can still come get you, if you need…”
“I think I’ll be okay,” I reiterated. “But thanks for being here.”
“Anytime, kiddo,” he replied fondly. “Just touch base with me at some point tomorrow and let me know how you’re doing, okay?”
“I will,” I promised. “I’m sorry. Sweet dreams.”
“You too. Now get some rest,” he instructed.
It was well after three when I squeezed into the twin bed with a still standoffish Meredith and Choo-Choo: “I need him with me right now,” she claimed. “I’m still recovering from everything that happened tonight.” Choo-Choo was actually the more affectionate of the two, licking the salty traces of tears from my cheeks as Meredith rolled over facing the wall, her back turned to me.

***

After a fitful few hours of sleep, I was roused by the late morning sun streaming through the open window, my bleary eyes focusing on Carrie Wakefield who poked her head into the room with a cheerful, “Good morning, Sleeping Beauties! I’m about to let Derby out, so I figured I’d come get Choo-Choo, too.”
Meredith mumbled a thank you as Carrie beckoned Choo-Choo who jumped off the bed and trotted toward her, tail wagging. “Was everything okay last night?” Carrie asked us as she turned to go.
Meredith gave me a told-ya-so glower and quickly replied, “Yeah, Kristin just had a few too many and got sick.”
“Yeah, I’m never drinking again,” I played along. “Sorry if I woke you guys up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Carrie said kindly. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” Addressing Meredith, she added, “Grandma and Grandpa are expecting us at noon, so you girls have a couple hours yet if you wanted to grab a shower. Come on, boy,” and with that, she exited with Choo-Choo at her heels.
We dressed and got ready in silence, out of words. Derek texted me to check in while Meredith was in the shower. Still a little mindfucked, but okay, I texted back. Everything felt wrong and off-kilter, and I was the odd woman out; this was her family after all. Wishing I had taken Derek up on his offer the night before, I shut down and avoided eye contact with Meredith as I had after her first inexplicable explosion on Alex’s birthday. The Wakefield family chalked it up to my being hung-over, and I forced a polite laugh when Meredith’s grandfather made a joke about the blood in my alcohol stream.
“Look! You get to meet Satan!” Kelsey exclaimed suddenly, elbowing me and pointing as a massive, fluffy, long-haired tortoiseshell tabby made an appearance in the hallway.
“His name is Satan?” I asked her.
“Technically it’s Muffin, but I call him Satan ‘cause he’s a demon cat,” she explained. “See? Look at his eyes! He just looks evil.”
“He looks like an oversized dust bunny,” I decided, after observing the cat for a second.
“Aww!” Meredith squealed suddenly. When I glanced over at her, she was fixing me with the same look of adoration she usually reserved for Choo-Choo. “Baby, that was so cute!” Turning to her parents and grandparents, she announced, “Did you hear what Kristin just said? She said Muffin looks like an oversized dust bunny. How cute is that?”
What was I, her four-year-old? I wondered, smiling and shrugging a little awkwardly as Wayne, Carrie, and the grandparents chuckled their approval. Finally catching my eye across the table, Meredith mouthed, “Are you mad at me?”
I shrugged again and shook my head. I was confused, mindfucked, completely thrown off balance… was there even room for anger in there?

***

Mindlessly watching TV later that afternoon, Meredith slid in behind me on the couch and drew me close. “I love you,” she whispered, “And I don’t want to lose you. I think maybe I just need to feel more secure; I need to know you’re really committed to me, and that you won’t walk away when things get hard. That was the worst feeling last night.”
“If it makes you feel any better, it was no picnic on my end either,” I told her. “But I love you, too, and I’m not going anywhere, okay?”
“You promise?” she asked in a small voice.
I actually had a whole cynical diatribe that revolved around promises; I frequently claimed that I didn’t put much stock in them because I’d seen too many broken ones. I rarely – if ever – made promises myself, and then only when I was one hundred percent certain I would be able to keep them. But even on the heels of the hellish events of the night before, in that moment, looking into Meredith’s hopeful, expectant, and childlike face, I meant it with every fiber of my being when I answered, “I promise.”

© Kristin Despina, (2010).
Reproduction Prohibited Without Permission.