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If you were looking for some sort of explanation or detailing of how Stella Maris was able to handle a scandal like that with minimal damage to their reputation, then you should remember what I clearly didn’t: giant universities like Stella Maris ride storms out all the time. It was just another Tuesday to them.
But did I think my alma mater was going to burn down? Never. I was more worried about Professor Evory and those individuals on the committee whose futures weren't so guaranteed. A firing always proves to be a quick way to appease an angry mob, and understandably, there was an angry mob. No one wants to believe that these things just happen, even if they unfortunately do. But while the anger simmered out, the most predictable thing happened, which was nothing. The rabble calmed when the initial offer was rescinded and my appointment announced. Whatever media circus there was, came and went. I didn’t even notice it, and my potential role, if there was one, had been taken care of by Erika, like the acceptance statement drafted by Erika’s PR team for my approval. Said approval came without comments because even on a good day, press releases were not my thing.
As for the part that I had to be concerned with–i.e., my presence in Dustford and when I could offer it–it turned out that the answer to my question was a soft ‘yes.’ I couldn’t go right away, but I could go soon enough. Or what Erika called ‘soon enough.’ Stella Maris was happy to have me, but there were some logistics to consider, like hammering out the details of the offer and getting my signature on something halfway legally binding. But everyone was willing to rush through that part. The hardest part was finding a notary who was available on a Friday afternoon. But for all my struggles with that, the housing was at least a bit more straightforward. The small cottage-style house that the university kept specifically for that purpose had already been vacated, but it needed to be deep cleaned as a courtesy. The same would go for my office, but I wasn’t too concerned about that. It wasn’t a priority for me. Not being in Chicago was the priority. For that, you need a home, not an office.
All in all, it took two weeks. And before the ink was even dry, I was scheduling my trip.
In the interim, in the two surreal weeks it took for my life to be transformed, every notification on my phone–Ellie-related or not–was regularly cleaned from the screen with no consideration or thought. First it was there, and then it was gone with nothing in between by a swipe of my thumb. Her calls–which she resorted to after numerous unanswered texts–were also ignored. They had to be. If I couldn’t handle her texts, then I couldn’t handle her phone calls. And for a while, I thought she should have been able to figure that out. I was never good with phone calls. What was she thinking? Then again, that’s not what she should have been thinking about. She only needed to be thinking about herself and what she needed. Closure had to be on that list. And she had a right to go after it.
Frankly, I should have been better about giving it. I owed her an explanation. And yet, I didn’t really have one to offer. The closest I could get was to simply say: I’m a fundamentally broken person.
Even though it was true, I couldn’t say it. It would suck to say, on one hand, but on the other, I could only have one breakdown at a time. Right then, I was focusing more on my surprise-sister and on the script or letter that I was struggling to draft.
There were reasons for the difficulty, not the least of which being that I wasn’t sure what method of communication I should be planning for. Lynette had my phone number, but given how I found her and how surprisingly not private the digital world was, any method of contact could be possible.
Maybe if I knew who she was, I would know what to say, I thought. And knowing her wasn’t an impossible thing to do. Ellie had opened that door for me by showing me how easy it was to pick the lock.
So I started to pick, but as I was typing Lynette’s name into the search engine, a sudden panic struck me, one triggered by a name thought in passing. The panic itself centered around an overly specific and tangentially related item: the vanilla coffee pods Ellie liked. She wouldn’t find them in the office kitchen anymore, I realized. And this small gesture of comfort that got her through the day (as she put it), this small dose of strength to power her through bad meetings and rude coworkers, was gone.
Or going to be gone very soon. I hadn’t checked if the box was empty before I left.
I cursed under my breath. The coffee pods were a small thing, a trivial detail that I should have been able to handle. I could have done something about that before I left, had I thought about it. Then again, if I had done any sort of thinking at all, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I wouldn’t have tried to go out in a blaze of what was definitely not glory and burned so many bridges in my wake.
But maybe I could still do something about it, I hoped.
Once again without a second thought, I took out my phone, catching a glimpse of the worst message from Ellie I could have seen.
Why won’t you even talk to me? she asked.
It was a fair question, particularly after such a long silence following an outburst that needed to be explained. But I didn’t know what was going on in my head. Or rather, I did know, but I didn’t have an answer to her question. One doesn’t automatically translate into the other. Even while I was aware that my silence only left the air open to be filled by her fears and insecurities, which was a horror I knew all too well, I couldn’t choke out an answer. Human beings are just wired for certain self-destructive behaviors. This was one of them. This was one of the particularly painful ones. But that didn’t really change my behavior, and immediately, I was overcome with a resulting deep sense of shame. That only made it harder to act, but I still had it in me to do something.
I knew Ellie’s address from when her grandfather died. I would send over groceries or takeout meals to help her and her grandmother through it. The meals lightened their loads a bit, and it was all I could do, considering how emotionally unavailable I tend to be or how bad I am at expressing the emotions that are available to me. But I had been close to my grandmother, so I knew how much those deaths could sting and how it’s a pain that can’t easily be dealt with, just softened. So I tried to soften it by sending her gifts, leaving the address in my phone for me to use later.
Pushing through my burning sense of guilt, I went onto a very famous vendor of all goods’ website (you know the one) and put in an order for two dozen boxes of those vanilla coffee pods to be delivered to her address. All the while, my hands shook a bit. My entire body likely had a slight tremble from the weight of the moment pressing down on me. The knowledge that once again you’re a disappointment to someone you care about is, probably, the most crushing burden a human being could face. But that’s what I was, I was aware of what I was, and I was left trying to make it somewhat right.
I made sure to send this absurd amount of coffee pods with a gift receipt, obscuring the cost. But beyond just wiping that part of the record away, that type of receipt allowed me to include a short note.
Despite all the other problems I had with constructing sentences as of late, this one came easily, The only thing you did wrong was believe I could ever be a functioning person. I always implode. I’m sorry.
With the character limit so low, that was all I could do, but it got the point across. The problem was with me, not her. And while I was aware of it, that did not mean I could change. I didn’t explicitly explain the coffee pod situation, but she could put it together. The flavored coffee pods were phased out of the budget months ago, but the vanilla pods kept showing up. People remarked on it, but no one had ever claimed responsibility. And now, they’d be showing up at her doorstep instead. The pieces were there. The puzzle could be easily assembled. The only thing that remained was why, and I knew I should not answer that.
With that done and the ill feeling still lingering in my gut, I turned back to the computer. The name “Lynette Rhees” didn’t seem that common when Ellie and I had first looked it up, but maybe Ellie just had a magic trick up her sleeve or the social media deities that secretly run our lives are actually a lot more efficient than they let on. Whereas, the search engine demigods were not. They didn’t immediately show me my sister but gave me several different Lynettes instead.
The first “Lynette Rhees” was a lawyer just outside the city. Or a former lawyer might have been a more accurate term. Her practice had closed down recently, which seemed like a major loss to her community, if the reviews for her practice were anything to go off of, but I couldn’t judge that; it wasn’t my place to, even if there was an interview she gave a local magazine about how much she liked being an advocate for the underprivileged. Even with that, there were huge chunks of this story I didn’t know. Also, it was all irrelevant. But that Lynette took up an entire page and a half of the search results.
Once her sea was over, the next Lynette Rhees (Or Rhine, as it actually was written out) was an up-and-coming beauty guru from a small town in Idaho. Or so the local newspaper called her. And maybe that could have been my sister and niece, right? A young girl can use her mother’s name as a stage name, and human beings move all the time, but the timeline wasn’t right. The beauty guru wasn’t the right age for either relative, so much so that I couldn’t overlook the slight difference in her name. Because yes, stage/pen names are a thing (it would have been hypocritical of me to not acknowledge that), but if nothing else is adding up, why entertain that thought at all?
Then there was an author who was not my sister. And then the same social media profiles I’d already seen.
So I had absolutely nothing.
Rather than process the ensuing emotions, I fled to the distraction-side of the internet for activities that I would not be able to remember later. I knew this wasn’t a good use of my time, but those mindless activities were things I knew I could do unlike everything else that was on my plate. I needed to be writing, but I was not going to write. I needed to figure out what to say to my sister, but I had nothing more to go off of, and technically, I had no way of knowing what my deadline would be. It was just going to sneak up on me one day, come in and hit me like a freight train whether I was ready or not.
Also, there was something comforting about turning to the internet, in a sort of nostalgia-driven way. That was a habit my dad had, but he had a justification for it. He worked with computers, so spending time on them was an investment, as he put it, no matter what specifically he was doing. It all was honing his skills, keeping him informed of current industry trends, etc., etc. And on paper that was fine, but that only means Dad’s work/life balance was really out of whack, and I was left without some of those experiences typically thought of as essential to any decent childhood.
I wasn’t ignored or neglected per say, and while Dad couldn’t go out into the backyard with me to play catch or coach the sports teams I never joined, it wasn’t only because of his computer. He physically couldn’t do those things. Even before his final decline, his health had never been that great. Often what he did instead was look up the books and television shows I liked, discovering the fan communities where he mined for theories and trivia in the same way a coach would do footage of past championship games.
And I did feel special when he was reading the middle grade books I loved so much or when I came home from school to see the newest VHS or DVD releases on the kitchen table. It wasn’t a traditional father-daughter memory, sure, but it’s like I told my dad at his coffin: I never doubted that he loved me. Not every kid could say that. So win some, lose some.
But then again, now the only thing I know to do when I’m stressed or tired or unsure or [insert whatever negative feeling is relevant here] is play on the computer, ignoring my larger problems and currently nonexistent children. Or more accurately, I was ignoring the friend who really wanted some sort of explanation as to my odd behavior, to my sudden departure from our previously shared workplace, and to the fact that I owed her Bubble Tea from a bet that came to fruition right before my meltdown.
It’s almost like there are multiple types of engagement one can have with life. There’s presence and substance. And occasionally, there’s a family curse that makes it difficult for some of us to get the “presence” part right.
It wasn’t a realization I fully had that night. I was just aware, as I lay in bed with a weight sitting on my chest, that I was dropping a very important ball: Ellie. But Ellie also represented every person I ever knew and every relationship I’ve ever had. All of them failed in one way or another.
My dad’s marital history was a great road map for my broader history, I realized as I tried to take in a deep breath despite the tightness in my chest in a darkened room alone and with no one looking out for me. It was easy for my dad to fall into a relationship. He had gotten many women to like him and fall for him and date him. A couple even married him. But beside my mom, no one had stuck around for long. Long enough to have children was an achievement for him, but then again, that only takes one time. And while any number of things could have happened that would have broken up those relationships, in the end, there was only one common variable: him.
I could attract people. I could meet people, make them think I was worth having around, but eventually, they would come to their senses. Or rather, I would drop the ball somehow. I would fail to uphold my end of the bargain. I wouldn’t do the simple things like answer a fucking text message. The breakdown of the relationship would come shortly thereafter. And while any number of things could also be at play, in the end, there was only one common variable: me.
At that point, Ellie had stopped texting me. It was late. And it would make sense to think that was the main if not only reason she stopped, but her choice felt more poignant than that. As far as I was concerned, she was gone. This light in my life, my dearest friend, was well and truly gone.
I felt a tear slip out as I took an uneasy breath. During it, my clenched throat made a wheezing noise. This was like a divorce without the lawyers. And honestly, at least lawyers will talk to you right? It’s a really expensive social interaction, but it was better than nothing. Until the fellowship started, I had nothing.