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There was an unmistakable sadness to my condominium that I did my best to ignore. I kept the place relatively empty with no pictures on the walls and the same furniture I had in my first college apartment because there had still been a chance George and I were going to get married, and he was going to move in. And when you move in with someone, you each have to take a sort of inventory of your belongings, complete with a value assessment. For the two of us, that would have been the easy part. George had real, “adult” furniture. The sort of furniture that some people have to get financing for, before you realize that getting financing for a couch might not be the best use of your credit. Furniture like that had to take precedence over mine. As for the wall decor, I wasn’t the type to let pictures of myself even exist, never mind be displayed, and I didn’t know enough about visual art to make myself spend the money on things I was probably going to forget about.
Empty walls above not great furniture: that was the definition of sad, I would say. I didn’t even keep plants despite my lingering urge to have my own herbs. I did like cooking, and an herb garden is a great thing to have if you do. But alas, I had not assembled one. I kept meaning to do it. But much like with my writing, knowing to do something meant very little.
Regardless, Ellie was not deterred. She burst in like nothing was wrong with the space and set the wine bottles on the counter. “Are we thinking ‘cheating partner’ wine or ‘investigating sister’ wine to start?”
As she unpacked the wine, Ellie mustered up the most encouraging smile she could for me. And I felt a bit better. I felt at least hopeful about the night. My world might have been falling apart, but hers was fine, and she could spare some glue.
With a deep exhale, I set the pizza boxes down beside the wine. “I don’t know if ‘cheating partner’ wine is going to become broken engagement wine. So maybe we should save that one until I know for sure.”
Ellie nodded and grabbed the same bottle of wine she was always going to because a joke was a joke. Meanwhile, I left her to it while I collapsed onto the old, sinking couch because I really couldn’t stand upright anymore. Which was probably rude of me considering I was the host. But at the same time, I was having a really terrible day, and this was not Ellie’s first time over at my place. She could navigate the mess with the ease of a part-time resident, though there remained some gaps in her knowledge.
“You don’t have a corkscrew, do you?” she asked.
I covered my face with my hands and called out through them. “Wrong question. It doesn’t matter whether or not I have one. I have no clue where it could be.”
Drawers were opened and closed methodically. I could hear the contents occasionally jostled about as she searched.
“Found it!” she called out, victoriously.
I released my face and started clapping. It was genuine applause, just weak because that was all I had to give.
“I could have gotten screw tops,” she said, which conjured images in my mind of a wine bottle that required a screwdriver to pull long metal fasteners out of glass. Not that it made sense, but as a mental image, it was amusing. “But I figured we could make do. When I was in university, we once got our hands on a bottle of okay stuff. It wasn’t great, but it was better than what we could usually get for our troubles. But then we brought it back to the flat, and sure enough, the corkscrew’s grown legs. Just walked off. Here we were planning a great night, and it’s all gone pear-shaped.”
While she spoke, I could hear her reaching into my cabinets for the stemless wine glasses I had picked up somewhere for some reason that I no longer remembered.
“But you know,” Ellie continued. “I had an almost brilliant idea. Well, not brilliant. More of a dangerous one, to be honest. But I took a long knife and drilled it into the cork. I twisted it about. Got it deep in there like a corkscrew would and pulled the cork out. Bit of a bodge job, it was. There was some cork in the wine, but it was nothing we couldn’t fish out.”
Then she went silent. I heard the pouring of the wine but nothing else. And I thought about saying something, but I didn’t know what to say in response to a story I didn’t want to end. But it did end, which was obvious because the narrative arc had run its course.
As I sat with that ending, Ellie came around to my terrible couch and stood in front of me with two wine glasses firmly clutched in her hands. “Tell me honestly,” she said. “Is it a bad idea to hand you one of these glasses?”
“I’m not that clumsy,” I told her.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
I actually knew that, but I did not want to deal with what she was actually asking me. Admittedly, I didn’t have an answer–good or bad.
“Be honest with me,” she said again. “If I give you this drink, is that going to be the first one of a downward spiral because I do see it having that potential.”
Jokes on you, I’m already on a downward spiral, I wanted to say. But of course I didn’t say that. How could I? She was genuinely concerned because she was standing next to someone lying flat on her back in a sad living room in a sad condominium on a sad couch (or maybe it was a futon) that was past its prime and should have been replaced by a cheating fiancé’s couch whose indiscretions had come to light in a pizza shop with an internet post that my estranged sister (the other woman) had on their feed. In other words, Ellie was genuinely concerned because I was lying there under the crushing realization that my life wasn’t what I thought it was, and there was no good way to deal with all of that. But there were plenty of bad ways. Drinking included.
I sat up and looked into her eyes. “I’m okay,” I said. “Or as okay as I can be. And things can’t get worse on the sister front, right?”
She twisted her lips. “I wouldn’t challenge fate like that if I were you.”
Instead of handing me the glass, she sat next to me. Together we were now facing a blank wall where a television probably should have gone, but I’d never purchased one. It wasn’t even because George was supposed to bring one or I had the 21st century cord cutting bug that so many people my age did. I just hadn’t done it.
Ellie and I didn’t need one though. We weren’t sitting in anticipation of some diversion. Rather, we were sitting in a moment the two of us needed to act out together.
It was my turn to start the conversation, but I hesitated. I knew I shouldn’t ask Ellie the question I was about to, but at that point, I could convince myself I was doing her a favor. After all, she must have felt helpless seeing me like that, and if I dumped this problem at her feet, then technically she wouldn’t be helpless anymore.
“Ellie,” I said. “Do you think I should...”
I trailed off. I didn’t know how to word the question in part because I didn’t know how far to take it. Whether it be breaking the engagement up or physically breaking things.
Ellie finally set the glass down in front of me on the small wooden table I got at a thrift shop several years ago. “I know you have to live with the consequences. And while divorce is very much a thing that you could do that I would never judge you for, it’s painful and costs a lot. Time, money, lawyers. All of it. Never mind if you have kids.”
And she was right. Obviously, she was right. In fact, even in the moment, I could hear the screaming of a thousand scorned women telling me to have some sense of self-worth and dump him as I should have done the first time he cheated. But honestly, this was normal to me. It’s what my father did and what my mother always seemed willing to accept. And I could blame that for my hesitation. I could say that was the reason I was so unsure, but it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. My problem was something else entirely.
I tapped my thumb against the band of my ring again. I didn’t even like the ring. To me, it was just a crappy diamond. Well, more gaudy than crappy because George had managed to get quite a big stone, but I didn’t like diamonds. They were expensive but plain.
Thinking aloud, I told Ellie, “I always thought my engagement ring would be a birthstone. Either mine or my fiancé’s. It’s weird, but at least, it would have been more personal than a diamond.”
She said nothing in response, so when the conviction that I needed to give up the ring and everything attached to it came to me, I knew it was mine. I took the ring off and gently tossed it on the mostly empty coffee table in front of us. It landed beside the huge crack down the center whose cause I couldn’t remember.
Newly exposed skin fell against the glass as I picked up the wine for a sip. The sensation was unfamiliar. It didn’t feel right, per say, but it felt free. And I found myself staring at the small shackle that should have held my heart now cast aside and discarded.
With a smile on her face, Ellie leaned her head against my shoulder. She didn’t rush me. We just sat in the moment that was this declaration of the end of my relationship. A decision that had been much too long in the making had finally been rendered, and it turned out to be, at least right then, a surprisingly simple act. But alas, if I had learned anything from that day, I would know that life didn’t stop from one person’s indecision or decision. Time kept marching on, and you had to be ready to go along with it. For your own sake. So even though I wanted to keep staring at that piece of gold with a rock that would have sparkled in anyone else’s eye, I couldn’t. I took a deep breath.
“No use dwelling on that,” I told her, slapping one of my knees. “I might second guess it.”
“Considering I would have been a bridesmaid,” Ellie remarked, “I think I have to at least offer to bring him the ring if that will keep you from backing down.”
I chuckled. I couldn’t even remember if we had confirmed that she would be a bridesmaid after her getaway driver comment. Maybe we had another conversation about it that I just didn’t remember. Maybe she had never formally agreed, and it was just assumed. Maybe some things didn’t need to be said.
Breaking it off with George was not one of those things. There was something I had to say to him, maybe. Maybe it went beyond, “Hey you cheating bastard, here’s this ring that I never wanted in the first place that you probably spent way too much money on. By the way I have yet another sister you could try to sleep with.” Or maybe only parts of that needed to be said. Maybe putting the ring in his hand was enough, and he wouldn’t really care about the reason why. Maybe he would correctly assume that I knew about what he did or that maybe we had never really reconciled after the first time. I had no way of knowing, but I could burn that bridge later.
Quickly, I gulped down two mouthfuls of what turned out to be a good white wine. Not that I was capable of appreciating such a thing. Ellie straightened up, potentially with alarm considering how much I downed at that pace. But I would be okay. I didn’t have a choice but to be okay. While I could have told her that, I didn’t suppose it was the sort of thing that could be proven with a simple verbal affirmation.
Instead, I redirected, “Let’s have some pizza and get to searching.”
Ellie thought about it for a moment before she answered. “I probably should have made you eat something before I gave you wine.”
“Well, I probably should have never given George the time of day.” I raised the empty glass to our shared tendency to err before starting to stand up. “But alas, the new day provides nothing but an opportunity for new mistakes.”
“Or not mistakes,” she added.
She said it as if she was finishing my sentence, but I had no desire to add that part. Because technically, by virtue of the limitlessness of human existence, there were plenty of things that were not mistakes that the future likely held. So she was right. Obviously. And there was no reason to fight.
Like pizza. Pizza was not a mistake. We ripped into the veggie delight pizza that (maybe as a gift and maybe not) had a surprise extra serving of cheese piled on. And while you could cheer for the extra cheese, said cheese had remelted after being cut and the slices became impossible to distinguish. We each had to lightly grip the crust in our fingers and tug to see where it would start to give, where the lost crack would start to reappear, revealing a piece we could then claim and eat. We managed it, though and enjoyed a slice or two before Ellie pulled out her laptop with the loud proclamation that we needed to get to “work.”
Work, I realized, screaming curses at myself in my head. The word sparked a memory, a situation I should have asked her about already. I was a worse friend than I thought because it took Ellie being knee-deep in my turmoil to even think to do the most cursory check into her wellbeing.
“Hey, that project manager position you put in for,” I started. “Have you heard anything about that?”
The most annoyed sigh I had ever heard came flying out of her mouth as she twisted up her face. “Yes and no. I’ve only heard that Aidan is now on the hiring committee.”
To keep it simple, Aidan was the “Perry” of Ellie’s life but worse. I call him worse because while Perry’s only skills were being miserable and doing well in interviews, Aidan was competent enough to have a position of some influence in the company. Or so you have to believe in order to sleep at night. He did have influence. The question remained as to how he had gotten it. It certainly wasn’t something he earned. And that influence was going to decide whether or not Ellie got the promotion she was really hoping for. And that was a terrible set up because even though Ellie was undoubtedly the best candidate for the project manager role, he was never going to see it or admit it.
Why? Well, he was incompetent. No other reason, really.
I turned to the bottles of wine on the counter. “Which bottle is the ‘screw Aidan’ wine because we can get straight to that one, if you want.”
She chuckled while she logged into her machine. Her fingers flew about the keys with ease. “This evening is not about me.”
“Well, I don’t like him, either, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” I assured her. “But seriously, how much can he screw this up for you?”
“A lot, I guess. Because I thought I had it in the bag, two weeks ago but then they tapped him to replace Philip after he left for that DC job. And now, I have no clue what’s going on.”
My mind raced. If there was something I could do to help Ellie’s odds, I wanted to do it. But I never cared enough for office politics, and even if I did, my first move if I had any influence at all would have been to move myself away from Perry. So I had no clout to spare and no leverage to offer.
“Well, you know I’m rooting for you,” I finally said because I didn’t have anything better to say. “And hey, maybe helping me is going to get you some cosmic brownie points.”
Her ponytail bounced a bit as she nodded. “Hate to break it to you. Or me. Or some cosmic force. But considering your niece gave out her full name. This is going to be fairly easy.”
I poured myself another glass of wine and shook my head. “Suppose my niece doesn’t have social media? I mean, I wouldn’t let my kid have any. Maybe that’s genetic somehow.”
Ellie took the notepad that we had technically smuggled out of the office. “Well, her surname didn’t come out of the blue. It’s some combination of her parents’ names. Rhees-Assen,” she read.
And I thought in tandem. It was already burned into my memory.
“So maybe she’s Lynette Rhees or Lynette Assen or Lynette Rhees-Assen,” I mused.
Ellie bit back a chuckle. “If I were her, I’d just be Lynette Rhees to be honest. Assen is the sort of surname that doesn’t always work. Ass in, some might say.”
And that was unfortunately funny. I choked down my laughter with a bit of wine.
The basic strategy was just that: basic. Do an internet search and see what comes up, hoping specifically for a social media profile where Lynette’s life would be more fully on display. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but this was the definition of an imperfect situation. At some point you just have to make the most of whatever scraps you have.
Ellie did the typing because despite the two glasses of wine, I was still shaking. Pacing the floor seemed to be a good way to redirect that energy, but when I tried, it only did so much. Eating yet another slice of pizza took more of the edge off, but really, I had a growing feeling that the most effective thing I could do was drink more wine. Which would make Ellie nervous, which would then only make me pace more, and that was a dangerous cycle we couldn’t let ourselves fall into.
But then she said it. She said what was probably my sister’s name, firmly and confidently.
“Lynette Rhees,” she declared.
Ellie looked up at me when she said it. While I was not an emotive person, she felt the shift in the room that signaled this moment of reckoning. And she had the rare and likely unwanted honor of ushering it in. Her eyes were the only thing that moved, looking me up and down, trying to find that first crack before I completely broke down.
‘Was I ready?’ she silently asked me.
Truthfully? No. And I doubted I would ever be. But that’s not what I said.
Instead, I nodded. And with that, Ellie turned her laptop around, and suddenly I was looking at my sister’s face. Or her face behind large sunglasses. That was the only picture available because of her privacy settings.
“You have the same chin,” Ellie pointed out, attempting to soften what she thought was disappointment that I could only see half of her face.
However, I wasn’t sure what I felt. But I did appreciate her trying.