Disclaimer: Scarecrow and Mrs. King is copyrighted to Warner Brothers and Shoot the Moon Production Company. The story, however, is copyrighted to the author. This story is for entertainment purposes only and cannot be redistributed without the permission of the author.
Title: Oxygen
Author: Ann
Written : Summer 2007
A huge round of thanks to my betas – Fling, Pam and Mary and to Vikki, keeper of the alphabet challenge on smkfanfic. And to Jobsies, who never let me forget that I'd promised her this story.
Oxygen
Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds – Shakespeare
Do you believe in life after love? - Cher
Okay. It's okay. Everything is going to be fine.
I lean back against my apartment door, gasping for breath, my leg muscles protesting against being forced into a mad dash up five flights of stairs. But waiting for the elevator simply wasn't an option; I needed to reach the sanctuary of my apartment as quickly as possible, someplace where I could calm down and get some perspective about what I had just seen.
Oh, who am I kidding - I need a drink. My still shaky legs somehow manage to carry me into the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of scotch from the cupboard over the fridge. Reaching into the dishwasher for the largest glass I own, I find it full of dirty dishes. Despite my best efforts this morning at jiggling the blue wire, the stupid contraption still isn't working.
At this point it occurs to me that pouring liquor into a glass would just waste valuable time anyway. Quickly opening the bottle I toss back as large a mouthful as possible.
Much better. As I walk back into the living room, I alternate taking swallows of scotch and gasps of air, trying to slow my still rapidly beating heart by getting as much oxygen into my system as possible.
Collapsing down onto the couch I gulp down yet another shot. Finally I feel myself start to relax. That was just . . . I mean, never in a million years would I ever have thought . . .
My glance falls on the bottle still clutched in my hand. Twelve year old Glenfiddich. A gift from Amanda's mother the Christmas before last. Amanda.
It's as if my hand suddenly burns from coming in too close contact with anything that reminds me of her. I get up, go to the closet, grab the nearest cardboard box and dump out its contents without even looking inside.
It takes me ten minutes to empty the apartment of all items that have any connection to Amanda. A menu from the restaurant where we had our first date. A picture of Amanda and her boys. The plaid shirt she said I looked so cute in. (She never did give me back the plaid jacket I'd left at her house that time – wonder where it ended up) Anything and everything that reminds me of her how things used to be. Or at least how I foolishly thought they were.
I only hesitate when I come to the snow globe she bought me on our fishing trip to Arkansas. I've been working on my collection for years, determined to own a snow globe from each of the fifty states (and I'm over the half way mark, thank you very much). But after only a short pause, that goes into the box too.
Next stop is the garbage chute out in the hallway. One by one I send the mementos of my relationship with Amanda down to the basement, finding a peculiar catharsis in hearing them crash into the bin far below.
After the last item is gone, I head back into my apartment, sit down on the couch and turn on the weather channel. At least there's one thing in my life I can count on. I try to lose myself in an update on a fascinating tropical storm building up in the southeast Pacific, but my thoughts keep returning over and over again to what has to be the most bizarre day of my life.
I'm positive my mother never told me there'd be days like this – mainly because I know she'd never have envisioned me following the course of action I chose today.
My mother is like that though - she's a woman of absolutes. One of her favourite maxims is that the past belongs exactly there – in the past. "You can't go back and change things," she's often said to me, "so once something is over and done with, there's no point in second guessing yourself."
So why had I found myself doing just that this afternoon – driving over the George Mason Bridge into Virginia in search of a part of my past that should have been over and done with a long time ago?
As I pour even more scotch down my throat I realize who's really to blame - Dr. Debbie. KBDC, the all talk radio station where I work picked up her syndicated show a few months back. "Ask Dr. Debbie", broadcast from Dallas weekday mornings from ten until noon, is a blend of pop psychology, insipid quotations, trite advice, and gushing stories from neurotic listeners. All of this has, of course, made it one of the station's most highly rated shows.
I'd voiced my objections to airing her show from the start. We should be presenting our listeners with news and information they can use – like weather updates every ten minutes so they can always be prepared. But in spite of my disapproval I found myself listening to the show this morning as it blared out of the break room speakers while I was fixing a snack.
Dr. Debbie's topic of the day was people who have reconnected with past loves. One caller phoned in with a tale of how she'd gone to her ten year high school reunion determined to humiliate the boy who'd dumped her without a word of warning their senior year. Instead the two of them hit it off again and had gotten engaged that very night. "I'd only been looking for some closure," she giggled into the phone, "and instead I got the love of my life back."
I paused in the middle of sprinkling the flavour packet over my instant noodles. Closure. I had a prior relationship of my own that could use some of that.
The more I thought about it, the more the idea appealed to me. I mean, what did I have to lose? Logically there were a limited number of outcomes to the meeting – best case scenario, Amanda and I would start dating again. Worse case – she'd tell me in no uncertain terms never to come near her again. And in any case, I wouldn't be worse off than I was now.
Suddenly filled with determination, I headed over to Arlington as soon as my afternoon forecasts were completed. Driving down the quiet residential streets, I could almost believe that nothing had changed. The same houses, the neatly manicured lawns, the familiar sight of children playing – it was as if no time at all had gone by.
I parked my car half a block down from Amanda's on the opposite side and sat there for a few minutes, just staring at her house. Part of me wanted to rush right over and confront her, while another part wanted to prolong the moment – as long as I hadn't seen Amanda I could still believe there was a chance that we'd get back together.
I knew the odds of that happening were slim at best, but I couldn't quite bring myself to totally extinguish that tiny bit of hope.
Finally I got out of my car and headed down the block. Amanda and I had done this together so often when we'd been dating, taken a quiet stroll after dinner, the boys riding their bikes ahead of us.
In a word, it had all seemed so perfect that I still couldn't believe it was over.
Oh, there'd been signs that our relationship was going through a rough patch, I'll admit. For the last few months before our breakup, Amanda had been distracted. At first I'd just attributed that to the stresses of opening her own business.
Maybe that's where she'd met him – he'd been one of her pet or plant sitting clients. She hadn't mentioned anyone else but somehow I was sure of it. You know, the way you can just feel the barometric pressure dropping before a storm front moves in.
Not that I thought she was cheating on me – Amanda simply had too much integrity to do that. But as time went on she became more and more preoccupied, frequently canceling dates with little or no notice. Something definitely was up.
The end came not long after Amanda had been in a minor car accident. She said it had made her reevaluate her life and she just couldn't see our relationship going the way I'd wanted.
She was right – I'd hoped we were headed for marriage. Every once in a while I'd make a joke about it, mistakenly thinking she felt the same way. Obviously I was wrong.
I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath and continued walking. One way or another I'd soon have my answers.
Or maybe not. As I approached Amanda's house I saw that the driveway was empty. It was unlikely then that she was home. And even less likely that her mother was the one who had taken the car. Dotty had begun taking driving lessons around the time of our break up but they hadn't been going very well. (Then again, the station did send me out to do a remote broadcast last winter from Hell, Michigan during that big cold snap, so anything's possible.)
Still it didn't have to be a wasted trip. Even if I couldn't talk to Amanda this afternoon, it would be nice to take a quick look at a place that had been so important to me in the past.
I slipped around to the side of the house where there was less chance of my being spotted by nosy neighbours. (Edna Gilstrap alone could fill an entire tabloid each week with the gossip she collects.) Stepping carefully, I approached the kitchen window, trying my best not to crush Dotty's meticulously tended flowers and shrubs. There was a convenient gap between the plants just below the window and I stepped up to the sill, finding it to be at just the perfect height.
I gripped the windowsill and pressed close to the glass, looking forward to seeing Amanda's cheery kitchen once more. The sight that met my eyes though in no way reflected any of my fond memories. My mouth dropped open as I stood there, as firmly rooted as if Dotty had planted me with all her other greenery.
Both sinks were filled to overflowing with dirty dishes. Untended pots of pasta and sauce sat on the stove, dribbles of food overflowing the sides and down onto the burners.
There was no way Amanda would ever have left her kitchen looking like this, I thought in bewildered amazement.
I'd rashly assumed that everything in her life had continued on as always but maybe I'd been wrong. Maybe there really had been someone else in her life. Maybe she'd married him. But somehow I just couldn't picture Amanda with someone who had such untidy tendancies.
There had to be a more appealing explanation. Amanda could have sold the house and moved somewhere else - and the family that had moved in were the biggest slobs in the western hemisphere.
I moved around to the patio and peered through the French doors. The sheer curtains obscured my view and it took a minute or two to see that the messy state of the kitchen extended into this room as well. Envelopes had been torn open and tossed aside, their contents strewn over the surface of the coffee table in no apparent order. But that definitely was Amanda's furniture so she hadn't moved.
I leaned a little closer to the window pane. Surely that wasn't . . . Amanda would never . . . I mean, it wasn't even close to five o'clock! Yet there it was, a lowball bar glass, half full of an amber liquid that to all intents and purposes certainly looked like alcohol. And even more unbelievable, it was sitting next to an ashtray brimming with cigarette butts.
At the sound of someone coming down the stairs I stepped back, not wanting to be caught spying. In my state of shock it took a few moments to recognize that the person who came into the room actually was Amanda.
For starters her hair was so much shorter than it had been. On someone else the closely cropped curls might have been attractive. But they didn't suit Amanda nearly as well as her previous hairstyle.
Amanda sat down on the couch, picked up a pack of cigarettes from the coffee table, took one out and lit it, all with an ease of movement that showed that she must have done this many times in the past. Unbelievable.
If anyone had been there with me, I would have asked them to pinch me. Really hard.
By then I was sure I was beyond being shocked. Then again, I'd thought I'd known Amanda before. I never would have predicted her taking up smoking or drinking.
It had to be a bad dream. Or maybe Alan Funt was about to leap out from behind the bushes.
At this point I seriously considered confronting Amanda directly. What kind of example did she think she was setting for her two impressionable sons!! Or was she covering up all evidence of her vices, duping her mother and boys about her secret life, just as she'd hidden it all so well from me? I raised my hand, intending to knock, only to be cut off by the ring of the telephone.
It turned out to be a good thing that I hadn't interrupted Amanda's afternoon of debauchery and dissipation – whoever it was calling didn't seem to be very welcome. I could only hear the odd word of her conversation but whoever 'Gordon' was, she was pretty angry with him. The harsh tones of Amanda's voice were like nothing I'd ever heard her use before.
She hung up the phone with an empathic bang only to have it ring again almost immediately. This caller got a much friendlier reception. She perked right up, cheerful and smiling, the soft southern lilt back in her voice as she chatted with 'Lee'.
But the expression on Amanda's face as she hung up the phone sent a chill through me. The only time I'd ever seen a woman even come close to displaying that much smug self-satisfaction was Joan Collins in those trashy TV mini-series Dotty was so fond of.
With the languid motions of a cat stalking its prey, Amanda reached under the couch and removed a long narrow case. Despite all the changes I'd seen in her that afternoon, I still would never have predicted what happened next. Unzipping the case, she carefully removed the last object I'd been expecting - a rifle.
Unbelievable – I'd heard Amanda sound off on more than one occasion about how she disapproved of guns being kept in the same houses where children lived. And yet here she sat now, her fingers moving up and down the stock and barrel in almost a caressing motion before reaching for a box of ammunition.
I'd seen enough. More than enough. Slowly I began to back away from the window, trying to make as little noise as possible. Unfortunately one of the boys had left his skateboard out (probably Jamie, I should never have fixed the darn thing for him) causing me to trip. There was a sound from inside the house and I could only assume Amanda had heard me and was coming to investigate.
Scrambling to my feet, I broke into a run and raced for my car, afraid to take the time to even glance over my shoulder. My exit from the neighbourhood was just as hasty – under circumstances like this, surely no one would be expected to obey the speed limit.
Now as I sit in the comfort and safety of my apartment I still find it hard to process what I had seen. How could anyone have changed so much in so short a time? Unless Amanda had had a lobotomy. Or our breakup had hit her much harder than I ever could have predicted. Perhaps I'd been deluding myself all along and I'd never really known her in the first place. Maybe no one and nothing is truly how they seem.
Despite myself I can feel the panic begin to build up again – I mean . . . she'd been smoking . . . and drinking . . . and that gun. . . I start to gasp for air, a cold sweat breaking out on my forehead, my heart pounding as if it's going to burst out of my chest.
It's okay, it's okay, calm down. I'm just hyperventilating, nothing to worry about, just breathing too quickly and getting too much oxygen into my system.
As I stand in the kitchen, breathing slowly and carefully into a paper bag, it occurs to me that closure, like oxygen, is something you can just have too much of.