Jennifer Houston

After Twelve Years...


There are nicotine stains on the living room ceiling above his Lazy-Boy recliner.  The smells of her dead father linger in the
house: stale beer and cigarettes, and a hint of Old Spice.
      
The day before her thirtieth birthday, June had found his dead body slumped over in his chair, a cigarette dangling from his
fingers, and a spilled beer can at his feet.  His lips were pursed as if he had given a goodbye kiss to that which took his life.  
Kneeling down to retrieve the empty can, June tried to move his body upright, but fell in the process, slipping on the wet
spot.  Only then did she cry out, collapsing at his feet and sobbing over his dead body.   

After her father's death, June came home from work to find that her mother had turned her bedroom into a sewing room.  In
her familiar position, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, her mother curtly informed June that she wanted the
house to herself and that she needed to start looking for a place of her own.  Until then, she could sleep on the couch.  Even
a decade ago, June's heavy body could not fit comfortably on the small, over-stuffed, flowered sofa.

June refused to sleep in the living room with that chair, a chair that she had pleaded with her mother to throw out.  But her
mother thought it was a perfectly good chair and saw no reason to throw it out.  June had no choice but to go to a local
motel where she stayed for two weeks until she found a small apartment that she could afford, north of Devon Avenue above
a Greek restaurant.  

Walking up the back porch stairs June stood for a moment, leaning on the banister to catch her breath before opening the
back door which led directly into the kitchen.  To her left was the bathroom; she was surprised to see that the tub was huge.
 She knew it must mean something.  How in the world would she be so fortunate to find such a small apartment with an
over-sized tub?  When she asked her landlord, he said with a smile that showed off his cracked yellow stained front teeth,
"We found it in the alleyway, why waste a good piece of steel?"  He spoke in hushed tones, looking her up and down as she
stood there in front of him feeling as if she too was a piece of useable steel, and he was thinking of a way that she too could
be of use.  

When June moved in the next day she only had a couple of boxes and a few clothes on some hangers.  She had no furniture
and her mother was not going to give her any from her family home.  She had offered June the Lazy Boy recliner, but June
had declined, cursing her mother's blatant show of hatred toward her.  She knew that June still had nightmares about her
father's death.

There was a time, she remembered far back inside her mind, that he used to tell her that she was a sweet girl, with her
chubby cheeks and long black eyelashes.  But those memories are clouded by her mother yelling from the kitchen that he
was a "good for nothing", and that is when June would retreat to the bathroom to run a bath.  This was her escape from her
family home with its crumbling walls, overbearing odors of moth-balls and bleach, and of cigarette butts left too long in the
ashtrays.  She could not hear her mother's shouts and accusations over the running water.

June liked the fact that her apartment had no furniture.  It gave her more walking space, and June did not like clutter.  She
liked to have open space -- more room to walk and not bump into unnecessary stuff.  All she needed was a bed and a
bathtub.  She was never going to entertain as she, like her mother, did not like strangers in her home, snooping around,
cluttering up her space, touching her stuff, commenting on her personal belongings.  No, it was better this way, she now had
the freedom to move at will in her own apartment.  Something she never had in her mother's house with its over-stuffed
couches, and bric-a-brac on the many undusted shelves, the discount store-bought paintings hung crooked on the walls, the
plastic fruit on the kitchen table.  Her mother was right; the house had become too small for two over-sized women.  June
did not want any of her mother's cheap clutter.  She had wished that her father had brunt the house down with his last
cigarette, June never liked the house or the memories it stored.  

When June had settled in her apartment, she went down to the Greek restaurant and had dinner.  She even let herself flirt
with her landlord, who asked her why she was not married at her age, and then smiling shyly he said, "You have a good body
for making babies."  June smiled back, showing off her perfectly straight teeth that never needed braces.  "Maybe one day, I'll
find the right man that will love all my ripples," she coyly said as she fingered her napkin.  He laughed.  The meal was on the
house.    
  
She smoked two cigarettes on her back porch when she returned from her meal.  As she looked out onto the cluttered
alleyway full of garbage cans, June breathed in the odor of used vegetable oil from the restaurant; the smell made her rub
her nose as she headed back to her kitchen.  She stood there for a moment taking in her small and bare apartment, stroking
her cat Sam as he slept on his favorite chair.  This was her place, she thought, a place far removed from her childhood
memories.
      
All her worries seemed to fade away, as she lit one cigarette after another as she lay back in her bath, dreamily thinking that
she was finally out of her mother's house.  Now, she was able to smoke at will without being interrupted by the pounding on
the bathroom door, telling her to put her cigarettes out, and how wasteful she was to linger in a tub for hours on end.

Feeling safe, as the warm bath water engulfed the fat folds of her body, June thinks of her friend Lillie.  They had not spoken
for the last twelve years, and moments like now, when her mind is at ease, allowing the warm bath water to hush the
clamorous tension in her body, she breathes in, trying to let the past go, trying to let all the hurt wash away from her skin as
she scrubs her arms and legs with her bath cloth...
  
Lillie was June's best friend in high-school.  They met sophomore year in French class.  Lillie always tried to cheat from June's
work.  Most of the time, she would let her.  Throughout high-school, and well into their college years, Lillie had sporadically
got June out of her house, showing her that there was more to the world then the lingering odors of cigarette smoke, and a
kitchen scrubbed clean with bleach.   

June rose up splashing water on her bathroom floor.  Her body trembled as she pulled herself out of the bathwater.  She put
her cigarette out in the ashtray at the corner of the tub, and then wrapped herself in a new lavender terry cloth bathrobe.  
She had gotten the robe at Sears that day, and she took in the lingering department store scent as she combed her black
hair.  She walked to her computer in the living room; it was the first thing she had set up, upon moving in.

June had found Lillie two days prior on the website "Search for Friends.com" when she was bored at work.  She had put aside
the mounds of paper work that were stacked on both sides of her desk and googled her friend's maiden name.  June had
tried finding Lillie after her father died, only to realize that Lillie no longer lived anywhere in the tri-state area.  Her heart was
beating so fast and the palms of her hands had grown moist when Lillie's website popped up.  June had clicked off the page,
unable to look through it at work, in her cave-like cubicle with her co-workers just shoulders away.

Now sitting at her desk in her bare living room, June grabs for the Rocky Road ice cream after reading that Lillie has relocated
to the Southwest, owns nine dogs and several cats, and still rides horses.  She sits staring at the front of her computer,
shoveling the ice cream into her mouth.  Sam, her cat, jumps onto her lap, depositing black fur and bumping her elbow,
making her drip some of the ice cream onto her brand new robe.  She scoots him away, annoyed.  Should she write Lillie an
email?  Should she tell her how funny she thinks it is that after all these years they had not really parted over the half-eaten
sausage?  Should June finally confess to Lillie that she always made her feel so insignificant when they were friends?

                                                                                               ***

Lillie had come over to June's house, unannounced and complaining that she was starving.  Out of habit, she opened June's
refrigerator, and took the last Polish sausage without asking.  June sat at the kitchen table watching Lillie go through her
refrigerator with no regard for her.  She watched as she pushed food aside, gabbing into the refrigerator about what she had
planned for them that afternoon.  Lillie wanted to go downtown to the Art Institute, but all June wanted do was sit at her
kitchen table and drink coffee.  And before June could say anything, June's mother walked in, screaming that it was very bad
manners to go into someone else's refrigerator and steal their food.

Lillie responded that she hadn't stolen the sausage, as she pointed at June with a greasy left index finger and said that June
had said it was OK.  At this, her mother screamed even louder that it was her house, therefore her sausage.  Lillie boldly
handed the now half-eaten cold Polish sausage to June's mother, and bolted from the house.      

It was at that moment that June, after watching Lillie rumbling through her refrigerator, realized she needed to end their
friendship.  It really had nothing to do with Lillie taking the sausage and then bolting from her house with a flippant "I'll call
you later" but because June had suddenly realized that she was becoming more and more like her father.  June had said
nothing to stand up for herself, she just let her mother scream and fuss over how rude her friend was, and how she never
wanted her in her house again.  June had tried to allay this fear of becoming like her father by not drinking, like him, but by
eating more and more -- like her mother.
June was scared to leave her house that morning.  She had no desire to walk through the crowds of tourists down on
Michigan Avenue.  She had no desire to even get dressed and enjoy the last days of summer with her best friend.   

Now twelve years later, June has fallen quietly into most of her father's obvious habits.  She now hates to leave her
apartment.  She feels uncomfortable speaking to people at work.  She tries not to speak at all, deluding herself that this
somehow makes her appear invisible.  She hears the mutters in the office break-room, about how odd she is and how she
never speaks.  Nobody understands her tormented soul, which she believes she has inherited from her father.   

And maybe this was why June always felt insignificant when she was around Lillie.  Lillie was like a hummingbird with all her
talk about the adventures and places she wanted to explore, the cities where she one day wanted to live.  Lillie would go off
on one of her tangents about how it did not matter that neither one of them had any money; they would find the way to
travel the world together.  They could be gypsies, vagabonds, live from campsite to campsite.  June just wanted to hit her,
and tell her to shut up with all of her plans for life, shut up with all of your energy for living.

June had once asked Lillie if she was ever afraid.  They were driving north on Sheridan Avenue, toward Evanston.  Lillie took
her hands off the steering wheel to search frantically for her cigarettes.  She found them quickly and grabbed back for the
steering wheel, right before a deadly S curve.  Once a cigarette was hanging from her chapped lips, she asked "Afraid of
what?"
      
"Afraid of getting out of bed, afraid of what people think of you, afraid of not being or becoming what you think you might
be, afraid of life!" June shouted, as Lillie reached for the radio and turned it up because she liked to jam out right before she
hit the S curve that turned into Evanston.  "Only death," Lillie shouted over the radio, and then took a huge drag from her
cigarette, and gunned the car up to fifty miles an hour where the speed limit was twenty-five.

June had not believed her until the night Lillie broke down in tears, telling June that her mother was dying.  It was the same
summer before she left for college.  Lillie was going out of state, and June was staying in Chicago to attend Loyal University.  
And, as Lillie cried about how unfair life was, that her mother was so young, June realized that her friend was not invincible,
and had troubles of her own.  Troubles, which she had never recognized until that moment, that influenced the way Lillie
acted toward life.  June had never bothered to ask Lillie what her mother was dying of.  What did it matter?  The woman
would be dead in a matter of months, and that is all that mattered, not what killed her.  The results were still the same.  Be it
a bullet or a fatal disease, she was still going to die.

June thought maybe now, Lillie would allow June to take care of her.  But most of all she wanted Lillie to become more fearful,
more cautious about life, like her.  But the opposite happened, she became more determined to meet life head on, and not
even blink in its path.  Reluctantly, June trudged along with Lillie that summer.  She let Lillie plan their days, she let Lillie be in
charge, always wondering what others thought about them: two white girls out of place, one fat and one skinny; as if they
were the modern day Abbot and Costello walking the streets of Chicago, misplaced and misguided.  But June was not the
funny one, just the fat one.       

And when the summer came to an end, June just stopped returning Lillie's phone calls.  She never called or wrote to Lillie
while she was away at college.  She just stepped away from the friendship, even when she got the last message that Lillie
had called to say her mother had died.   

The following summer June got a call from Lillie again: "June, there is this cafe I want to try out; will you come with me to
Evanston?"  Lillie had no resentment, no ill feelings for having been dropped.  Neither one said anything about how June did
not attend Lillie's mother's funeral.  Lillie acted as if it never happened, talking non-stop on the phone about her plans for the
summer, her sister's move, her father's new girlfriend that she did not like, but what was she to do?  She had her own life to
lead; she couldn't worry about other people's emotional problems.  "Life is to be had," she said to June, so June agreed to
meet her at the local cafe.          

As they sat outside, drinking their coffee and puffing on cigarettes, they talked about books and movies.  Then Lillie said to
June, out of the blue, "You know what I always liked best about you?  Your nose."  June thought for a second that Lillie was
stoned; it was such a bizarre thing to say to her.  But that was just how Lillie was sometimes, she just blurted out odd
thoughts.  And for moment as she looked at her friend take a sip of her coffee and give a little giggle, June felt maybe Lillie
does have a need for me; maybe June wasn't so inconsequential in Lillie's life.

But as they spent more and more time together that summer June would find herself complaining to Lillie about her lack of
tact in pursuing her desires.  "Be more subtle, more elegant in your approach toward men," June would advise when Lillie
complained about the latest break-up, or a guy she had her eye on.  "Why?  Life is too short.  I can't wait around for other
people to make up their mind.  I've got to grab it, at that moment, or it might be gone," Lillie would say.

"But what if you aren't meant to have it?" June would respond.

And that is how it was with Ethan, a friend that June never told Lillie about, who walked in the cafe one day and put his arm
around June.

They had met in their college English class, and had struck up a conversation after class.  Conversations had led them to the
cafe, and then back to Ethan's apartment.  Nothing had happened.  Ethan had put on music, thinking he was cool, and
brought out a bottle of cheap red wine to try and get June drunk.  He succeeded in doing so, then of course one thing led to
another, and he was whispering in her ear that he liked large women.  But before he could succeed with his entire seduction,
the wine had worn off, and June realized that she did not want to lose her virginity on a smelly college couch with a boy who
was half her size.

But, despite their first awkward encounter, they continued to meet at the cafe to talk about books and politics, and everyday
happenings.  They never went out.  It was always a meeting after class at the Cafe.  Ethan made June feel significant when
they talked and laughed over a cup of coffee.

Lillie looked at Ethan playing with his hair while he spoke, twisting it in his fingers, looking straight at June.  June noticed that
Lillie seemed especially enthralled by the way Ethan twisted his brown hair in his fingers whenever he was making a point,
letting go for a split second, and then resuming the twisting motion.  June always found the habit annoying and held back
the urge now to slap his wrist.  She just watched Lillie's expression change from a blank stare to an amused interest.

Afterwards they had given Ethan a ride home.  As they were walking back to Lillie's car, she asked June what was up.  June
could have told the truth; put an end to the mystery by simply revealing to Lillie that nothing ever happened between them.  
Instead June said nothing.  So, knowing Lillie's nature, it was not surprising when June eventually found out that Lillie had
gone to the cafe by herself the next day and sought out Ethan.

Throughout their friendship, all June wanted was to have something that wasn't always about Lillie; her parties, her escapes,
her car, and of course, her emotional pain over the death of her mother.  All June ever wanted was to have something of her
own that Lillie could not touch, something that Lillie was not able to grab and make her own.  She wanted to have a secret of
her own: another person that Lillie knew nothing about.  Something, in a way, to hold over Lillie:  a handsome boy who liked
her for her mind, who didn't care that she was overweight.  It made June feel important, something Lillie could never do in all
their years of friendship; she never made June feel special.    

Her childhood had always been about her mother's rage at her father for not being the man she thought she had married.  
Her mother screaming as she circled around his Lazy Boy chair, shouting that she had married a drunk, "a good for nothing
drunk".  Then she would turn on June, and tell her she was just as bad as a drunk, for she had no energy for living -- did
nothing -- said nothing of importance.  June always wanted to ask, "What have you done that is so damn important?"  When
June took refuge in the bathroom, and drew a tub, sinking her heavy body into the warm water, she dreamt of things that
she could achieve, if only she had the right sort of body.   

Ethan had called June the next morning and told her that he let himself fall for Lillie, one thing led to another, and the next
thing he knew, the act had been done.  He confessed that he felt so bad about it all.  June knew it was trivial to think that
Lillie should have asked her permission to sleep with Ethan.  She knew it was irrational to feel any hold on Ethan.  They were
just friends, nothing more just buddies that drink coffee together, but it still hurt.  It still made June feel as if once again like
last summer when Lillie stood in front of her refrigerator chewing on the sausage, not bothering to ask June if it was o.k. to
eat it, not bothering to acknowledge June's presence as she rattled on about her big plans about life.  June once again felt
insignificant, as if she was only a tool for Lillie to be used and then tossed aside.   

June looked at her friend's skinny body, rosy complexion and auburn hair as she stood at her doorway asking June if she
wanted to take a drive to the lake.  June waited for Lillie to confess what she had done the night before.  She waited to see if
her friend would tell her or not.  But June already knew  that she no longer wanted to try and keep up with Lillie.  She no
longer wanted to tag along beside Lillie, and her adventures through a city that she was beginning to despise.  It was never
her city; it would always be Lillie's.  

Lillie sensed June's discomfort, reading something through June's body language, or maybe her face gave away her anger
because Lillie finally acknowledged that she might have done something wrong.

"Oh, Ethan called didn't he?" she asked with a wave of her hand.  "Are you mad at me, like when I took the sausage and your
mother yelled at me?"   

"You didn't ask, you never ask Lillie, that is your problem."

June stared past Lillie's small frame out to the side walk.  Lillie turned to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing,
just open space like between the two of them.

"I'll go then," Lillie said not bothering to apologize, not dwelling on the obvious.

When Lillie had left, June soaked in the tub until the water grew cold and her fingers and toes wrinkled.  Only when she ran
out of additional hot water did she get out.  And for the first time, her mother did not bang on the bathroom door.   

Now twelve years later, as she sits at her computer, she wonders if it was such a big deal that Lillie slept with Ethan.  What if
June had stopped Lillie from leaving, and told her how she was feeling, maybe they could have worked it out because right
now alone in her apartment, June needed a Lillie in her life.  She needed a friend to pull her back into the world again, and
make her feel a part of something.

June sits there for a moment, staring at the blank screen and wondering what Lillie looks like now after twelve years.  Is she
happy with her life?  Had she made the right decisions?  Would they still be friends if June had only yelled for Lillie to wait
because she would have loved to have gone to the lake that day to watch the boats float in and out of the harbor, to feel the
cool breeze brush against her skin?  But mostly to hear Lillie laugh at nothing except being young and unknowing as she
rattled on about her next big adventure, and how the two of them were going to travel the world together.   

But June knows better as she clicks off her computer and drops the empty ice cream container in her trash as she goes to
her porch to have one last cigarette for the night.  She knows that one day she will be found dead in her bathtub; a lit
cigarette still lingering between her right index and middle fingers, her head slightly cocked to the right. Her last image will be
that of her cat, Sam, contently cleaning himself on his favorite kitchen chair.  And, just above her dead body, on the
bathroom ceiling, will be a perfectly formed nicotine stain, from all those years smoking cigarettes in her bathtub.  She
wonders as she blows out the cigarette smoke from her pursed lips, and looks down at her alleyway: will anybody be crying
over her dead body?