Taking a Page from My Book

Leo's scent slithers by my nose as I pull another one of my sun dresses from the plastic storage bin. Carmel brandy and ocean salt settle in a greasy cloud around my head. Typical. My own clothes smell of him. Impressionable linen never stood a chance against his penetrative charm.

I wipe the summer sweat from my brow and shake off the voices. My new therapist said collaging might help so I cut up our pictures. Last week, I filled six leather notebooks with craft glue, but after seven months, I still cannot seem to hold it together. The memory of that sun-kissed face keeps me up on even the darkest of nights. My Icarus love. I assumed we were building towards a future, but he knew four walls could never feel like a home.

Catching myself in another thought spiral, I bring myself back to "the now" like Dr. Cohen recommended at our last session. I close my eyes and focus on the papery texture of the dress’s fabric in my hands. The delicate stitches of the lily embroidering feel alien to me. My fingertips grope for the familiar in my own dress. I chase the threading down to the hem and back up to the shoulder strap like a railway set to carry me away from myself. My grip turns to fists.

Tossing the dress back in with the others, I stand up and lurch towards the only window in my apartment. I spread my hands on the windowpane and count the tree rings on the wood behind my fingers. My left ring finger taps involuntarily. One. Two. Three. Back to the now.

I grab the brass handle with both hands and throw the window open. From six floors up, a New York breeze hustles through my dampened hair, playfully pulling at the sweaty strands around my temples. I inhale the new air and exhale the old. Leo's staleness slinks out the open window and dissipates back into the stewing potpourri of Washington Heights below. Outside now.

I sit back down on the pleather couch and lean over to the end table. Édith Piaf's "Le Vie en Rose" spills from my mom's old record player, spreading like Parisian marmalade across the stillness of the room. I imagine the French syllables in my mind like cigarette smoke filling all the empty spaces, smudging the air with a passion and boldness I wish I had.

A small snowflake, no bigger than a breath, lands on my knee. Don't go. Don’t…

"Try not to love anybody else like that," Leo had said that November night seven months ago. He kicked his last cardboard moving box across the threshold of what used to be our shared Brownstone apartment. "It's too much."

The box tripped and sighed, hitting the gritty snowbank in the corner of the front porch.

"Just take the peppermint coffee creamer," I had said wrapped in only a cardigan and slippers. I handed him the bottle suddenly aware of how exposed I was with nothing in my hands. "It's your mom's favorite this time of year."

"Why do you even know that, Ruby?" he had asked truthfully.

I had said nothing.

"You're too much," he sighed turning away, taking his light with him.

Be here now.

Almost a year later and I still taste the silence in my mouth. Dr. Cohen did not prepare me for that. Even the memory of betraying yourself tastes like metal and dirt, like sucking on an old zipper.

The dull burn of heated faux leather on my thighs brings me back to June, back to my living room, back to my own walk-up studio apartment. Back to the now. The plastic box of dresses is still sitting patiently on the coffee table, waiting to be harassed again after my flashback. This time I hold my breath and start again at unloading the box of clothes. I lay each summer item out on the couch and analyze them for some elusive mark of worthiness.

The catalyst for this exercise in emotional regulation was not my idea or even really my choice. As of a few hours ago, I found out that my neighbor may be of the same opinion as my ex-lover about my being “too much.” When I checked my mailbox earlier today, a folded piece of notebook paper with this declaration of protest appeared:

Hello neighbor,

This is your neighbor in 162 Broadway #722. No more naked woman in the window! I work at home and see her obscene behind all day. No more! Please remove!

Thank you,

Arthur

Despite my troubling past and current predilections, the woman in the window is not me. The woman in the window is not even a woman. She is a half of a dressmaker’s mannequin that I brought home from an antique shop last month. Her cheeky size 8 plastic frame has been adorning my window for weeks without issue. Finally though, she must have caught the eye of some angry man across the alley.

When I brought her home at the end of June, she had called to be placed by the window. Long gone were her glory days of boutique shops and department stores, but she still wanted to be seen or at least to be useful. Her factory-issued white jersey was faded to a smoky yellow. Scratches and nicks gave her the look of spider veins and gentle wrinkles. Still, she carries it all so well.

After hours of rearranging my apartment to make space for her elegance by the window that day, I turned her inward into my living room. Even with no head or torso, her presence was like a dream board in quasi-human form. She was proud of who she was and so I left her nude in the window, my looking glass self. That is how her rear end caught the eye of this grisly Arthur in the first place.

Be here now. My hands dig through the summer outfits for something to hold on to. Summer dresses, rompers, tank tops, lacy blouses dance like water around my flailing arms. I fish out a blue lace dress and step over to the window. I throw the loose garment over the place where a mannequin’s head might overwise be. It slides over her slender frame and slopes defiantly to one side. Too big. I scoop up a tiny halter top and shimmy it over her chest and stomach. Despite the elastic, her tiny 1940’s bust line refuses to fill out the cups. The blouse falls to the ground, adding to the growing rejection pile. Too sexy.

Pushing aside more risqué pieces, my hand touches a velvet shawl. The deep purple of the cotton and its witchy beaded tassels tangle in my hands. With a dramatic whoosh, I spread the shawl over my plastic friend’s shoulders. I watch the sun catch in the iridescent beads, sending hazy rainbows across the room. The shawl hangs like a bedsheet for a moment, then the weight of the beads pulls the fabric down her back like a lavender waterfall. Too much.

“Who does this guy want her to be anyway?” my own voice shouts, bursting through the cemented wall of quiet in the room.

Then it hits me. I am literally trying to put labels on this woman. Here I am covering her up and changing her to fit someone else’s proscription of who she should be.

“Do not let them tame your wild, girl!” I say more to myself than to the mannequin.

I run to my desk and pull open the heavy bottom drawer with a full-bodied lean. I rummage through the bloated black notebooks looking for one that I have not filled with jagged pieces of my past with Leo. One crisp black leather notebook peeks its head from under the rubble. I grab it and tear off the first page from the fresh stiff binding. All the while, my other hand is excavating a roll of clear tape and a thick black marker from the desk’s other little drawer of junk.

Almost shaking, I write on the notebook paper with a fist: CENSORED!

I jump over to the mannequin and stick the piece of paper on her bare behind, pushing her rear end further into the summer light.

“I am not changing for anyone,” I say to myself.

Almost like magic, a folded piece of notebook paper slides from under my front door. It is the same distinct lined paper from earlier this week. It is from Arthur. Bracing for this next fight, I shake the blood back into my hands and pick up the note. It reads:

Hello again neighbor,

Thank you for the sign. Your boldness has inspired me. I am a writer and have been blocked for months on this dreadful project. I called my agent and I’m walking away from my publishers.

You reminded me that I must be myself. I took a page from your book and always credit my sources.

Thank you,

Arthur

I read the note out loud again to myself, playing with each word in my mouth. The black and white of the paper blurs into an ashy grey when I notice it. Folded into the thin piece of paper is a banker’s check. Arthur has scribbled “twenty-thousand dollars and 0/100 cents” in brassy black ink. In the “For” section, he briefly describes how I have just earned such a gift and reward. The old man’s scrawling is clear here: “Being You.”

Looking through hot fog as I tear up, I notice the glaring detail that has been forgotten. Arthur had left the “To” section entirely blank. My shoulders start their usual slumping retreat into my chest. Be...I stop and exhale a slow certain breath. I raise my head and flip over the letter. On the back, in the same macabre handwriting, Arthur had written:

P.S. Write your name on the dotted line, friend. I had to void the first check I wrote because I absentmindedly made it out to “the lady in the window.”

I lean over again to the turn the volume up on the record player. Edith Piaf’s smoky rose voice booms the final heart wrenching line: “Mon couer qui baaaaaat.”

I finally remember what the line means in English and I can taste the words like freedom on my tongue: My heart beating.

Be here now. Be me now.