Something Borrowed, Something Blue

wednesday afternoon. with the girl whose heart he broke.

Everything sharp and hard in the world is breaking, is coming undone at their rigid ends and spilling out into the ends of something else, but that’s an awful thing, because the ends what rip and tear and dissolve like they’re not supposed to start trying to piece themselves back together, but now they’ve got parts what don’t belong to them, and the parts what do have wandered so far away there’s no getting them back.

Jude was supposed to propose. He was supposed to walk up to your papa and say, “Sir, I’m affixin’ to marry your daughter. Would you be so kind as to give us your blessin’?”

And Papa, who’d be sitting in his study reading over the paper he’d picked out the articles for, would pause his reading, pull his paper down just enough so he could look out over the top of it, squint hard at Jude and then say, in that soft, easy way of his, “Well, if she loves you, then I suppose I might as well.”

Then, he’d rent a suit and tie, and you and him would get married at the church, and it’d be so pretty and nice, and you’d kiss him and love him and be with him for all the rest of your life. All he had to do was propose. All he had to say was, “Will you marry me?” or even, “I got a place we could live, the two of us, if’n you ain’t got other plans.”

Any which way he spun it, the answer would’ve been a categorical yes. Absolutely and unequivocally yes, Jude. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say nothing like that. What’d he say? What’d he tell you when you asked—you asked, set the pitch up for him and everything, and all he had to do was swing—if he was thinking about ever settling down, if he was thinking about marrying somebody? He ripped up that pretty little beginning you’d started wrapping, tore off its lovely red bow and broke its nice box in two.

You stare hard at your shoes, try to see them past all the tears filling your eyes, and you bunch up your handkerchief and curl your fingers tight, but your lips are trembling and snot’s running down your nose. Your head starts rising, and your gaze catches on your vanity and the pictures what you’ve got pasted on either side of the mirror, but Jude’s is up there, and his hazel eyes are staring back at you.

You frown at the picture, glare like it can see you, and something hot starts rising up your throat.

If he didn’t want you, then why’d he keep dragging you along? Why’d he let you hold his hand, let you give him so much sugar—so much time?

Why’d he ever kiss you?

“’I—I ain’t the sorta fella a girl like you should be marryin’, [Name],’” you say, and you try to mimic his tone, but your voice is all warbled, and hiccups interrupt your breaths, “‘You—You oughta stop wastin’—wastin’ your time on me.’” You ball up your handkerchief and chuck it at the photo, but the picture only waves a little, and the handkerchief falls to the top of the vanity with a soft little puff. “Why’d you wait so long to say something, huh? I’m not a kid. I know how I wanna spend my time; I know who I wanna spend it with.”

Why’d he say he loved you?

You glare hard at Jude’s picture, and before you know it, you’re sliding off the bed and stepping over to it, and raising your hand and wagging your finger like it’ll do something.

“You got some nerve, Jude Blackburn,” you continue, but the heat in your tone is feeble, and the flames in your chest are already seeping out your pores. “You think I can’t handle you, huh? You think I don’t got what it takes?”

Jude’s photo stares back at you, and he’s scowling in it, but the photographer what had taken it had asked him to take off his hat, and his dark brown hair sits in a wild mop atop his head. He’s got a scar on his eyebrow, and his lips don’t know all too well how to smile, but his arms can hold you nice and tight, and sometimes, when he uses it too much, his bad hand starts shaking something awful.

Your frown pulls harder at your lips, and you knit your brow and sniff and push desperately against the wave of tears what’s trying to pull you under. Your fingers find the edge of Jude’s photo, and you tear it down, but you don’t toss it—you can’t.

“Why’s it gotta matter, anyhow?” you mutter, but your throat’s full of lumps and rocks, and your voice falls in a croak from your trembling lips. You rub at your eyes with the heels of your hands, but those burning tears spill out onto your cheeks, and you reach for your handkerchief. “You don’t have to die a bounty hunter.”

But he wants to keep hunting down outlaws—wants to put his life on the line for a bit of money what can buy him another drink. He wasn’t going to ever stop for you, was he? Those were just pretty lies he told, and maybe he’d meant them in the moment, but the moments don’t matter if they’re forgotten in the long-term.

Maybe he wants to die as he lives: with a gun in his hand, and the barrel of a rifle pointed at his head.

Maybe Patty and Mama and Audrey were right.

Why’ve they gotta be right?

There’s a knock on your door, then, and a moment later, Mama calls your name. She’s talking light and low, and you sniff and fall into your chair and mumble, “You can come in.”

You set your head in your arms, and the door opens. Mama’s got her hair pinned up, but there’s a frown on her lips, and her eyes have gone soft around the edges. She furrows her brow and stares at you, and she closes the door behind herself real slow and careful, looks at your vanity mirror, and then sighs. Mama steps over to you, and she sets her hand on your back and rubs gentle circles into the fabric of your blouse.

“It’s alright, dear,” she murmurs. “C’mon; dry your eyes.” She pats your shoulders lightly, and slowly, the hiccups that shake your shoulders start to subside. “There’s no use crying over him. Men of that sort have never been moved by water works.”

You sniff some, but your mama’s fingers are moving to your shoulders and lower back, and she presses at you until you’re sitting like a lady. There’s a firmness to her gentle touch, and when your eyes find her face, you spy the frown that sours the line of her mouth.

“It’s not fair, Mama,” you croak, and Mama’s frown deepens. The earrings she wears catch the sunlight what streams through the curtains, and the shiny metal bits and pretty jewels gleam. “I love him.”

Mama’s eyes are soft about the edges, but she’s got all her parts, and nothing what Jude did or could do would ever break her.

“I know, dear. I know,” Mama says. She dries your eyes, and then her stare settles on the photo in your hands. “But there are plenty more fish in the sea.”

She grasps the picture between her fingers and gently slides it out of your hand, and then, carefully, she folds it up. You watch her work, watch how Jude’s eyes and face and chest shrink and then disappear.

“And this one was certainly no cream of the crop,” she continues. She leans over and drops the photo into the wastebasket, and then she dusts off her hands, sighs, and turns back to you. “Here’s a pearl of wisdom, dearheart—a little gift for your troubles. You’ve a penchant for…thrills, I know, and you enjoy men what can bring them,” the line of Mama’s mouth is stern and drawn, but she leans down to you, brings her hands to your face, and cups your cheeks, “but the sort of man what you marry—what makes a good husband and father—is he who is, on all accounts, inoffensive and ordinary.

“Enjoy your escapades what you can, dear,” Mama adds, and she stares deep into your eyes, “but don’t be mistaken: men what thrill are not worth a single tear, let alone an ounce of heartache.”

You meet Mama’s gaze and blink, and a tear escapes your eye and starts trailing down your cheek, but Mama brushes it away with her thumb and then leans forward and presses a kiss to your forehead. The heat in your chest has fled, but the melancholy remains, and though you nod your head, your eyes are drifting to the wastebasket.

“Okay, Mama,” you say, and there’s a little bit of lightness to your tone—something what feels nice.

“Why don’t you come downstairs, hmn?” Mama says. She gives your cheek a light pat, and then she stands to her full height. “Here; I’ll fix up these little flyaways for you.”

She does as she’d offered, and then, perhaps as an afterthought, she pins in two of your prettiest pearl earrings—slips them right onto you, and they gleam like little moons in the sunlight.

“There’s my pretty girl,” says Mama, and when she kisses your cheek, a little bit of her warmth steals into your chest, but some words are just that, and your heart shudders from a draft what your skin can’t feel. “C’mon, dearheart. Don’t let some man make you into a hermit, now.”

Mama squeezes your shoulders, and, slowly, you rise to your feet. Mama holds the door for you, and you and her head down the stairs, but then, when you reach the foyer, she remembers something and hurries off. Suddenly, you’re alone, and you stand for a moment in the middle of nothing, looking at all the pretty things that line the walls, but then there comes a knock on the door.

Maybe it’s Jude.

Suddenly, there’s a light in your chest, a joy what chases out that melancholy like a pack of dogs, like a band of men running a criminal out of town. You rush to the door and fling it open and smile so wide and hopeful at the man that stands behind it, but the face you find isn’t Jude’s.

Addison Bishop waits on the doorstep. He’s wearing a hat, but his hair is reddish and curly—not dark brown, like Jude’s—and he’s got eyes as blue as the sky and no freckles what you can see. He takes care of his mustache, keeps it neat and trimmed and styles it like an Englishman, and even though he’s not but twenty-three, his eyesight’s poor enough to warrant a pair of glasses.

Addison starts some when you open the door, and then, like always, he blinks and stares at you and says nothing. Nothing—just stares, just watches you like he’s never seen you before.

He must’ve forgotten his voice at home.

Your smile falls, crumbles like it was made out of sand and straw, and you frown at Addison, and prompt, as lightly as you always do, “Mr. Bishop?”

Addison blinks hard, and his cheeks turn a little pink, but he’s quick to compose himself.

“Oh, good afternoon, Ms. Little,” he says. He talks light, but he’s got a flat, droning voice, and he coughs into his hand and then asks, tentatively, “How, um, how are you?”

You furrow your brow, but perhaps editors don’t fare so well in conversation. Maybe all the time they spend with paper and printing ink makes them forget how to talk to people.

“I’m fine,” you say because it’s better to lie than to invite questions. “And you?”

“I’m well,” says Addison, and then he shoves one of his hands into the pocket of his pants. “Is your, uh, father home, Ms. Little?”

You frown.

“He doesn’t like discussing work when he’s home,” you say.

Addison shifts his weight from one foot to the other and then takes the hand he’d just put in his pocket out and waves it.

“Oh, no, I—I wasn’t coming to discuss nothing about the paper,” Addison insists. He clears his throat and his glasses start sliding down the bridge of his nose, so he fixes them. “I’m here about something…else.”

“Something else?” you echo, and even though he’s taller than you, Addison fidgets a little beneath your stare.

“Yes,” he says, and then he swallows thick and falls silent. He’s got such nice eyes, and they’re a little gloomy, a little darkened by those shadows what speak of nights spent burning that midnight oil, but he’s nothing like Jude. “That’s, uh, what I said. Yes.”

Addison’s never been a bother to anybody—never made a big enough nuisance of himself to be hated or loved, and that’s quite a feat, for a mayor’s son. He’s a real wet towel of a man; his personality would make a plain slice of bread look like a wedding cake by comparison, and if you could open up your heart and peer into it you would find a whole lot of nothing sitting next to a picture of him, assuming you could even find a picture.

Papa would say yes if you said you didn’t mind. Papa would say yes if you said you minded, but then he’d shrug and go back to his paper and say, “Well, I just said I’d bless the marriage—didn’t say I’d make it happen.”

You list your head to the side and peer up at Addison, and he reaches up and slowly takes off his hat.

“Why’re you nervous?” you ask abruptly.

Addison pauses, blinks—he must like to do that—and then tries to remember how to speak.

“Huh?” he says, but he heard you. He might have bad eyes, but his hearing is as good as yours.

“Papa likes you fine,” you say, and the stiffness what lines Addison’s shoulders now starts to seep out some. “You’re no bother to anyone.”

“Oh.” A little smile tugs at Addison’s lips, now, and it’s light and relieved, but maybe his hearing isn’t so sharp. “Thank you, I—I’m glad he doesn’t think ill of me.”

Addison’s nothing like Jude. He’s too good at making himself innocuous, at being plain and boring and flat, and you haven’t even a cause to be frustrated by him, to be anything but baffled and apathetic and unbothered.

You step back and open the door wider for Addison, and then you usher him in, and he crosses the threshold real tentative. Mama likes him. Papa doesn’t care. Maybe it’s good if you don’t, either.

You lead him up to Papa’s study and then, when you’re just outside the door, you take the little photo in your heart what holds Jude’s face and turn it to the wall. He won’t care—you know he won’t, and it twists up your insides and digs like a miner’s pick into the soft flesh of your heart—but you turn his picture anyhow, and then you say, real quiet and soft, “Mr. Bishop? Would you mind leaning down a moment?”

“Hmn?” Addison looks down at you, and his hand had been reaching for the door handle, but he pauses now and leans toward you and asks, just as quietly, “What’s the matter?”

You press a kiss to Addison’s cheek, and it’s quick and small and tastes like nothing, but when you pull back, Addison’s face is as red as his hair. He’s staring at you, and his glasses are starting to slip, but when he goes to try to fix them his hand is shaking so bad that it makes them slide down more, so you fix them for him.

“A little luck,” you say real light and even, and then you nod to the door, “for your ‘something else.’”

Then, without waiting for him to respond, for all the English lexicon had no doubt sailed right out of his head, you turn and set off to find your mama.