The Living Expanse / Season 1, Episode 3
The Conversation
EPISODE 3: THE CONVERSATION
CHAPTER 1: WEAK TEA LIGHT
The porch bulb is the color of weak tea. 2:51 in the morning. Oyster shell pops under a boot that is not mine.
Dolly is inside. I shut her in. She has done enough of his hours.
I do not start with the door. The door is already open. The chain hangs against the frame and makes a small cheap sound in the salt air. Johns Island, not anywhere else. Marsh at the end of the yard. Live oaks. His truck still ticking in the driveway like it ran here on leftover heat.
Jacob Palmer stands one step down so he has to look up. Salt-and-pepper hair flattened on one side. Dark zip-up over a gray shirt. The cracked phone is in his left hand. He brought the evidence back to the scene.
“Baby,” he says.
“Don’t.”
He swallows that. Tries again.
“Jane.”
That is worse. He says it like it still belongs to him.
“How much did you read,” he says.
Not I’m sorry. Not let me in. Math.
“Enough,” I say. “Three months. Pictures. Soon. I just need to find the right time. I don’t want to hurt her.”
He looks at the cracked glass as if it might take the words back.
“It isn’t what it looked like.”
There it is. The sentence. Every time it looks like what it is, he tells me my eyes are the problem.
“Kayla thinks you are leaving me,” I say. “You told her we were already done. I am the last woman to know I was over.”
A frog starts up in the ditch and then thinks better of it. The bulb buzzes. He puts one hand on the rail and the wood is damp.
“Can I come up.”
“You can stand where you are.”
He does. For once he does what I say. That should feel like winning. It feels like I have been put in charge of a fire after it already took the kitchen.
“I was going to tell you.”
“When.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. The honest answer is never, and we both hear it land in the space where a date should be.
“Thursday,” I say. “You made eggs. You kissed me. You said Thursday. Then you left your phone on my counter like a man who still lived here.”
“I do live here.”
“You live in my driveway at 2:51 in the morning with another woman’s name on your glass. That is not the same thing.”
He laughs once, no humor in it. “You always do this. You turn it into a courtroom.”
“I am a veterinarian, Jacob. I hold still what is trying to kick me. I am not your judge. I am the woman who unlocked your birthday.”
The passcode sits between us. His birthday. The kind of kindness that is also laziness. He never thought I would use it because he never thought I would stop being the person who waited.
Dolly hits the inside of the door with one paw. Soft. Then again.
“Let her out,” he says.
“No.”
He nods like that is fair. He looks at the marsh. I look at his mouth. I used to like that mouth. I am not going to pretend I didn’t.
“Say her name,” I tell him.
“Jane—”
“Hers.”
He does not want to. That is the first true thing on this porch.
“Kayla,” he says.
The name does not get bigger for being spoken. It gets smaller. A person. A sunflower. A kitchen that is not this one.
“How long have you been in her bed.”
He flinches at the bluntness. Good.
“It wasn’t— it started as talking.”
“I asked how long.”
“February.”
Three months. I already knew. Hearing it in his voice is different from reading it. Reading it was a cut. This is the bruise coming up.
“Do you love her.”
He looks at the creek like it might clock in and take the shift.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you love me.”
That one he answers too fast.
“Yes.”
“Then you are a man who loves me and tells another woman he is leaving me. That is not a mystery, Jacob. That is a schedule.”
He comes up one step without asking. I do not step back. I also do not touch him. The cologne is the same. The night is the same kind of night we have used to forgive each other.
“Please,” he says. “Just let me explain the part you didn’t see.”
“There is no part I didn’t see. There is only the part you hid.”
CHAPTER 2: ABOUT TO
He wants the story of her. I can feel him lining it up. How she understood him. How I was distant. How work. How he got scared. How it didn’t mean. I have heard this movie. I have bought the ticket four times.
“She was just—”
“If you say she was just a person who needed a friend I will close this door and you can explain it to the oyster shell.”
He stops. Rubs the back of his neck. The gesture used to make me soft. Now it looks like a man wiping a print off a tool.
“I told her we were over because I couldn’t stand being two people in one week,” he says. “I know that sounds—”
“It sounds like you outsourced the breakup and then came home for eggs.”
“I was going to end it with her.”
“About to,” I say. “You are always about to. About to call when you said you would. About to show up when you said Thursday. About to put a name on me in a room with your people. About to be the man you promised three years ago. About to never happens, Jacob. It is a porch you stand on instead of walking through.”
The words come out cleaner than I feel. My hands are shaking in my pockets. I keep them there.
He sits on the step. Not invited. I let it go because I do not want him standing over me. The cracked phone rests on his knee.
“I never introduced you as my girlfriend because I didn’t want to jinx it.”
“You didn’t introduce me as your girlfriend because then you would have had to stop collecting other rooms.”
Silence. A truck on Maybank, far off, then gone.
“Four times,” I say. “We have broken up four times. Every time you come back at some ugly hour and I open the door because I am tired of being the woman who sleeps on the left side of a whole bed. I am not doing the fifth.”
“This isn’t the fifth. This is me telling you the truth.”
“You told Kayla the truth first. I got the leftovers.”
He puts his face in his hands. When he looks up his eyes are wet. I have seen him cry to win. This does not look like winning. It looks like a man who ran out of better ideas, which is also not the same as changed.
“I will stop,” he says. “I’ll block her. I’ll give you the phone. I’ll go to those meetings. Ray — there’s a guy, Ray, he doesn’t let me talk in circles.”
“You found Ray after I found Kayla.”
“That doesn’t make Ray fake.”
“It makes him late.”
I sit down on the top step so we are not a standing argument. The wood is cold through my jeans. The bulb hums. Somewhere a dog barks twice and gives up. Not Dolly. Dolly is a cat, and she is throwing her body against the door in small offended thumps.
“What do you want me to do,” he says.
“I want you to hear the sentence and not negotiate it.”
“What sentence.”
“We are done.”
He waits for the rest. There is no rest.
“Not the three-week done,” I say. “Not the done where you disappear and then you are on this wood at 2 a.m. saying you couldn’t stop thinking about me. The done where you do not park in this driveway. The done where Thursday is a day of the week. The done where if you leave a jacket here, you tell Shelby and she puts it in a box on this porch and you do not come up the steps to collect it.”
“Jane.”
“That is the sentence.”
He reaches for my wrist. I move it. His fingers close on air.
“You don’t mean it tonight,” he says. “You’re hurt. You should be. Tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow I will still have read the part where she asked when you were going to tell me and you said soon. Soon is a word men use when they have already chosen.”
He stands up too fast. The phone slides off his knee. He catches it. The crack catches the porch light and throws it back in a crooked line.
“So that’s it. Three years. A text. You’re just done.”
“A text is how I found the three years,” I say. “Don’t confuse the alarm with the fire.”
CHAPTER 3: THE CREEK DOES NOT ANSWER
We stop talking long enough for the marsh to come back. Insects. Water. The fridge inside kicking on. Ordinary sounds doing their ordinary jobs while a life comes apart on treated pine.
He walks to the end of the porch and back. Three laps. I count them because if I do not count I will get up and put my mouth on his mouth and the night will become a long apology and a longer sleep. I know that version. I have the t-shirt.
“I don’t love her the way I love you,” he says to the rail.
“I did not ask for a ranking.”
“I’m trying to be honest.”
“Then stop offering me a better lie.”
He turns. “What do you want to hear. That I was lonely. That you work late with horses and I sit in a truck and a woman laughs at my messages. That I liked being chosen by someone who didn’t already know every way I fail.”
“I want to hear that you understand I am not a house you keep and a fire escape you also keep.”
He nods. Small. “I told her I was leaving you because I wanted the story to be clean for her. I didn’t want to be the villain in two kitchens.”
“You are the villain in two kitchens,” I say. “You just wanted the lighting better in one of them.”
That one lands. He looks sick.
“Is she kind,” I ask, and I hate that I ask it.
“Yes.”
“Younger.”
He hesitates. “Younger than us.”
“Us,” I repeat. “There it is. You still want the word.”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
“That is not the same as loving me. That is inventory.”
He sits again. Closer. I can see the grit in his beard. Job-site dust. He smells like diesel and the soap he uses when he thinks he is coming over to be forgiven.
“Remember the cookout,” he says.
“Do not.”
“I’m just saying we were good.”
“We were good in the first six months. Then you got scared and you disappeared for three weeks and you came back on this porch and I opened the door. That is not a memory, Jacob. That is a method.”
He is quiet. The honest quiet. Rare.
“Kayla thinks I am leaving,” he says. “If I go back to her tonight and tell her I’m not, I don’t know what she does.”
“That is a problem you get to have in your truck. It is not a problem you get to put on my step.”
“She didn’t know about you. At first.”
“I know. I read it. He was single. He had been single for months. Then a friend said Jane and she stayed anyway because you cried and said we were habit.”
His head comes up. “You read that far.”
“I read until there was nothing left to invent.”
He looks at the cracked screen. “She texted me an hour ago. Love you.”
“I know. I read that too. While it was still lighting up my counter.”
He makes a sound I have not heard from him. Not a sob. Something smaller. A man running out of rooms.
“I will sleep in the truck,” he says. “I’ll be here in the morning. We’ll talk when you’re not—”
“When I am not what. Accurate.”
“Angry.”
“I am not angry enough,” I say. “If I were angry enough I would throw the phone in the creek. I am tired. Tired is more dangerous for you. Tired doesn’t perform. Tired just locks the door.”
Dolly yowls. One clean note.
“She hates me,” he says.
“She is a cat. She hates the hour.”
He almost smiles. I do not.
CHAPTER 4: DONE
I stand up because my legs have started to bargain. Standing is a way to remember I have a spine.
“I need you to leave.”
“Jane. Please. Five minutes.”
“You have had three years of five minutes.”
He stays sitting. That is a kind of refusal. I can close the door on a sitting man. I have not done it yet. That is my remaining weakness and I can feel it like a loose board.
“I will go to Ray,” he says. “I will tell Kayla it’s over. I will tell her tonight. You can watch me send it.”
“I am not your witness.”
“Then what do I do.”
“You get in the truck. You do not come back up these steps. You do not text me from a new number. You do not send flowers next week like this was weather. If you see me at the Piggly Wiggly you can nod and keep walking. If you cannot nod, you can take a different aisle.”
He stands. We are too close. The porch is a small country.
“Can I kiss you goodbye.”
“No.”
He nods. Accepts it like a man accepting a fine.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “you were never the problem. The times I made you feel crazy — the late clocks, the screen in my thigh — that was me. You were always enough.”
I have wanted that sentence for three years. It arrives on the night it cannot be spent.
“It is worth a porch,” I say. “It is not worth a life.”
He waits for me to soften it. I do not.
“We’re done,” I say again, slower, so the air has to carry it. “Not a pause. Not a space. Done. If you love me the way you said two minutes ago, you will honor that like a fence.”
“And if I can’t.”
“Then you will prove me right, and I will still be done. The only difference is how tired I am when I say it the next time. I am not giving you a next time.”
He looks at the door. At Dolly’s shadow under it. At me.
“I don’t know how to go,” he says.
“You put your foot on the oyster shell. You have done it after better nights than this.”
He comes up onto the porch proper. One second I think he is going to grab me. He does not. He sets the cracked phone on the rail.
“Keep it,” he says. “I don’t want it.”
“I don’t want it either.”
“Then it can sit there and be nobody’s.”
He goes down the steps. The truck door. The dome light on his face for a blink — older, uglier, mine and not mine. Engine. Reverse. Oyster shell. Red lights getting smaller on the road until they are just two mistakes heading toward Maybank.
I pick up the phone. I almost smash it on the rail. I set it back down because I am not going to give this night a movie ending it did not earn.
I go inside. Dolly hits my shin with her head, hard, checking for breaks. I sit on the kitchen floor in the same place I sat when I unlocked the thing. The tile is cold. The coffee maker is a shape in the dark.
I say it out loud so the house has to keep it.
“It’s over.”
I do not feel free. I feel like a person who put down a very heavy thing and cannot feel her arms.
CHAPTER 5: 3:40
I text Shelby because that is what you do when you have finally done the thing she has been praying for.
He came. I ended it. Don’t drive.
The phone rings. Of course it rings.
“I’m already looking for my keys,” she says.
“Turn around.”
“Jane Grace.”
Mama’s name for me when the world is serious. Shelby stole it years ago and uses it like a key.
“I am on the floor with Dolly,” I say. “If you come you will make coffee and I will talk myself into a softer sentence. I need the hard one to set.”
She is quiet. I can hear her breath. I can hear a television in her apartment, some late infomercial selling a pan.
“What did he say.”
“Baby. Then Jane. Then how much did you read. Then it isn’t what it looked like. Then I love you. Then can I kiss you goodbye.”
“And you said.”
“No. And done. The real done.”
Shelby makes a sound that is not a cheer. Pride, maybe. Fear. She has watched me open this door too many times to throw a party at 3:40 in the morning.
“I’m proud of you,” she says. “I am also coming at seven with coffee. If he is in the driveway I will be the one who opens it.”
“He won’t be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know I will not open it.”
That is the only promise I have that is not made of hope. I hang onto it.
After she hangs up I stay on the tile. Dolly climbs into my lap and becomes a warm, heavy fact. Gray. Long-haired. Cat. She kneads once, decides I am not dying, and sleeps.
The cracked phone is still on the rail outside. I can see it through the glass, a small dark rectangle with a line of light in the break. I leave it there. Let the dew have it. Let the morning find it and not know what it is.
I do not know if I will miss him when the sun comes up. I know I will go to Palmetto and hold a horse still with my voice. I know I will come home to a house that is only mine. I know Thursday is just a day.
I know I will not open the door.
The bulb on the porch burns the color of weak tea until the sky starts to argue with it. I watch the argument. I do not go back out.
If he turns around on Maybank and comes back, the chain will be on.
That is the whole night. That is the whole three years, finally standing up and walking to a truck.
I am still on the floor when the birds start. Dolly’s ear twitches. The coffee maker is still just a machine.
Shelby texts at 6:10. I’m in the truck. Don’t argue.
I argue. She is already in the truck.
She arrives at 6:42 with two coffees and a face that has not been to sleep. She does not hug me like a rescue. She sets the cups on the counter and looks at the porch through the glass.
“Phone is still out there,” she says.
“I know.”
“I’m getting it. Not for him. For the dew. And because if a neighbor takes it you will spend a week wondering if he came back.”
She goes out in my flip-flops. She picks the cracked phone up with two fingers like it might stain. She sets it on the table between the coffees.
“You don’t have to look,” she says. “You also don’t have to leave it for the raccoons.”
I do not look. I drink the coffee. It is too sweet. She always does that when she is scared.
“Tell me the sentence again,” she says.
“We’re done.”
“Again.”
“We’re done.”
“Okay. I’m going to believe you until you make me stop. If you text him today I will drive to the site and I will not be cute about it.”
“I have to go to work.”
“I know. I’m coming as far as the parking lot. Then I have a sister who thinks seafoam is a personality. Go hold a horse. Come home to a chain on the door.”
I go to Palmetto. Martinez takes one look at my face and assigns me the easy colic, which is not easy, which is his version of kindness. I put my hands on a mare’s flank and count kicks and I do not think about a bouquet that has not happened yet. I think about gut sounds. Gut sounds are honest.
At lunch I almost open the cracked phone. I put it in my locker instead. I eat a granola bar that tastes like paper. Martinez sits down across from me with a sandwich that leaks tomato.
“You look like a person who made a decision,” he says.
“I look like a person who didn’t sleep.”
“Those can be the same picture.” He takes a bite. He does not ask the name. He has never asked the name. That is why I have stayed at Palmetto. “If you need a day, take a day. If you need a horse, take the bay mare. She likes you better than she likes me.”
“I’ll take the mare.”
“Good.”
He leaves the rest of the sandwich and goes back to being a boss. I sit with the leaky tomato and the fact that a man can be kind without being a project. I had forgotten that was allowed.
Cody texts from California: Shelby said you did it. You good.
I send: I did it. I am at work. I am not good. I am done.
He sends a thumbs up, which is Cody for I love you and I will not make a speech.
Mama calls during my afternoon break. I let it go to voicemail. I listen in the truck before I drive home.
Baby. Shelby called. I am proud of you. I am also making a casserole I cannot legally mail. Call me when you can stand the sound of my voice.
I call her from the driveway. I tell her the short version. She does not ask if I am sure. She asks if I ate. I lie and say yes. She knows. She lets the lie live because the other thing is more important.
The cracked phone stays in my locker overnight. Palmetto can keep it. I can be a person without a rectangle of someone else’s bad decisions on my table.
At 9:00 p.m. I walk the house once. Kitchen. Living room. Bedroom. Porch glass. The rail is empty. Shelby took the phone. The wood is just wood. I say done to the empty rail so the night has to keep it.
I get up because work exists. I wash my face. I do not look at the rail.
We are done.
I say it one more time in the bathroom mirror, not as a performance, as a fact I am taking to the clinic in my pocket.
Done.
Cody calls while I am brushing my teeth. I spit, rinse, answer.
“Shelby said you locked it.”
“I locked it.”
“You need money.”
“I need sleep.”
“You need both. I’m sending a little. Don’t argue. It’s not a vote on your life. It’s a brother who is three thousand miles away and useless with a wrench.”
“You’re not useless.”
“I’m in California. That’s a kind of useless.” He is quiet. “He shows up again, you call me before you call him. Deal.”
“Deal.”
I hang up and look at myself in the mirror. I look like a person who told the truth at 2:51 and has to go hold a horse at seven. That is a face I can work with.