Only Children
by Caroline Tanner
Once I dated an only child. One night he drove home blackout drunk from a party I wasn't invited to. He lived down the street from a Montessori school and I only saw him after his parents went to sleep. He always told me to park my car in the lot and sneak in the back. The night he drove home drunk he called me from that parking lot, begging me to come get him. Leave my car there, drive his home. Tell his parents I was there and we had planned it that way. So I did. When we got to his house I lied to them and they caught me in it. They scolded me while they laid him on the couch with two pieces of buttered toast and a cup of honeyed tea. They didn’t offer me anything, not even a place to sit, so I walked back to the Montessori school and sat for an hour on the playground woodchips before driving home.
Once I snuck in the back door with a bottle of wine I had just bought at Big Y with my fake ID. I felt so small in front of the pinot noirs and the syrahs and the bruts so I grabbed the first thing I saw and ran. I don’t remember what it was. A girl from my high school checked me out and we both looked the other way as she did. When I showed him the bottle he kicked me out for buying one with a cork. He told me not to come back unless it was with a twist-off or a corkscrew. I don’t remember which one I bought. I just remember trying not to set off the motion lights or slam the gate as I shadow-walked back in.
Once I caught him cheating. I was supposed to stay the night, but I caught him cheating so I decided it was best to leave. He was shirtless drunk and started crying in the kitchen when I confronted him. When I picked up my bag and opened the door he slammed it shut and pinned my face against the wall. Somehow I got away and ran to the front but he did too, slamming the door and pinning me against it a second time. Then a third, then a fourth. When I finally got outside he jumped on the hood of my car, screaming, telling me it was all my fault. When he jumped on the hood of my car I got out and started running down the street, and so he did the same. We were always doing things together, him and I. In harmony. Always predicting the other's next move. He chased me, barefooting the pavement, pants at his ankles, begging me to come back inside and hear him out. He could explain everything. It would make all the difference. I was a bitch and a whore for thinking he would ever do something like that to me, the one he so loved. I don't remember what happened next but I do remember driving around town for a couple hours, not wanting to go home, not wanting to go anywhere at all. Wanting to crawl so far outside of my own life and so deep into someone else’s. Someone who knew the kind of love she deserved. Someone who knew this was not it. Someone that knew when to leave and would actually do it when the time came. The next morning I woke up to him and let him hold me as I cried. He told me that things weren’t okay now but they would be again soon. He thanked me for forgiving him.
Once we found a loaded gun on the playground woodchips. Things were never the same after that.
Today I went for a run on the east side and I was followed by a tall man in a black baseball cap. He was there, ten feet behind me, at every red light. Eventually I felt his hand close cold around my wrist. He said I looked so beautiful running away that he just had to catch up.
