A few days later a large package addressed to me waits on the kitchen table when I get home from work. I pick it up and flop on the couch. It’s from John. His large, exaggerated scrawl on the wrapping is unmistakable. I open it with apprehension. Inside rests photos in a mound almost two inches high of our times past. They are of happy times when we smiled and cuddled, camping trips, romantic moments at the beach and mountains, the tintype of us as a couple from Knott’s Berry Farm, and lots of photos of Thor. On top of the pile of colorful photos is a small, stuffed, brown Chihuahua with a note attached that reads:
Dear Mommy
I miss you very much and you were here.
Daddy is taking good care of me.
I Love you baby!
I melt. The armor protecting my emotions for the last few months is cracking. Picking up the photos carefully, one by one, I relish the tender, happy moments they represent. My mind floats on the clouds of happier times. Times I remember as the best I’ve known in my life. Pictures that pull me back into the vortex of John. After all, there are no photos of the bad times, and God knows how badly I want to forget them, pretend they never happened. I miss Thor terribly. My little, brave guy who loves me so much he’d stand up to John, a figure he loved too. I hope he’s okay.
The phone rings. Perfect timing. I know it is John. It’s his routine late-night call he makes after I get off of work—the call I have always ignored. This time, though, I deliberately walk over and focus on the receiver. The ringing is constant, beckoning; I can almost hear John’s voice whisper, Pick up the phone, Dawn. Pick up the phone.
On impulse, I grab the receiver. I am silent.
“Dawn?”
He knows it’s me.
“Are you there?”
I still say nothing. Silence.
“Dawn? I, I can hear you breathe, baby.”
John’s words cut through my very being. They’re familiar, they fit, it’s me, and I love it… and I hate it. Flooding memories cause my body to react, and I taste the chemistry we shared, bittersweet in the back of my throat. “Yeah? I’m here. What?” I’m not going to give in that easily!
“Dawn.” His voice is low and sweet, with a faint whimper to it, as it was when my name was dear to him, when he told me it was beautiful. “I’m so sorry, baby. I told your mother I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” John sobs, a self-loathing wail, the way he did those times in the bathtub after beatings. “I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know. It was the drugs. I w, want you back, baby!” He loses his words; his crying catches in his throat. He sounds so frail and weak.
I am quiet a long while, listening to his sobs, checking to see if they are real. “How can I believe you’re off the drugs, John?”
“You gotta believe me, baby. I want you back. I want our life back. The way it was in the beginning. I just can’t, can’t be without you. I don’t know what to do. I’m so sorry!” I can hear him pull away for a second and blow his nose.
“I gotta go, John. Is Thor okay?”
He clears his throat. “Okay, I understand, baby. You have every right to be mad at me. I fucked up, I know. But it’s the dope. It’s the fucking dope. I’m quitting that shit!”
“Tell Thor I love him. I gotta go.” I hang up. I didn’t like the tone his voice was taking. I’ve heard this shit before.
Berrrrring! Berrrrring!
“Yes?” I know it is him.
“I forgot to tell you. Baby? Dawn… I love you,” he breathes, sounding lonely and sad.
“Yeah,” I whisper and gently place the receiver back on the wall.
John’s apologies are getting to me, and as much as I’ve resisted, I begin to anticipate his calls. Sometimes I answer, and sometimes I don’t. I am enjoying the control I have for a change and a chance to vent some of my anger. In the months to follow, John times his phone calls for the late evenings. He has discovered from my sister what my work hours are and knows when I’ll be home. He also knows that my family will be asleep by then.
So I answer and allow him to speak to me of happier days and take me down his dream road of loving memories. Time is taking the sting out of the horridness of our most recent past. Reminiscing about our love, we slip into soft whispers and knowing silences, relishing the sound of each other’s breath again. We fantasize that those days have never left us, and we live in the past via telephone wire.
“Dawn. I want it back… back to the way it was in the beginning. I want to get out of here, out of LA.”
“But where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. Somewhere. Somewhere… with you?”
I don’t answer.
“Dawn. Dawn, you’re so beautiful… I miss you so much.”
I hear an odd popping noise in the background, and my skin prickles. “What’s that?” I ask, suspicious.
“What… uh, nothing. It was Thor. Here. Do you want to talk to him?”
A tiny breath sniffs the receiver and I soften, crooning his name to hear his voice. “Thor. Hi, boy. Oh, I miss you.” A faint whining sounds through the phone line and then a yip. John is laughing in the background, and I ache for the laughter we once had.
“It was the drugs before, baby. It wasn’t me.”
“I know.”
“I just want to start over—you and me and Thor. Somewhere new.”
“What about Sharon?”
“Sharon too.”
I think for a moment, trying to picture how John can possibly make it better with Sharon. Then my mind shuts down; the shaping image too painful to visualize. “I gotta go, John.”
He pulls in an injured breath. “I love you, Dawn.”
“I love you too, John.”
Falling into a pattern of a long-distance relationship, John and I speak regularly. I look forward to telling him about my day at the convalescent hospital, the way we used to share our news with Sharon. His days, he lets me know, are dedicated to getting healthy and clearing up his prior arrest for stealing the computer at the Marina.
He wouldn’t be able to call me every night if he’s still on drugs, I rationalize. It has been over five months already, and he’s only missed calling a few times. I’ve even heard the pattering and barking of John L, Pokie, and Thor, so I think, Oh, good. He’s at Sharon’s. He must be telling the truth.
I’m still not comfortable telling my family the whole story of abuse. I am ashamed, and forgetting seems less painful. But the more John sounds like his old self, the more I want to have those moments of earlier times again. I believe, finally, in his sincerity and allow myself to enter into conversations about a future together.
On an almost summer evening, John calls, barely able to contain his excitement.
“Dawn, baby! The best thing has happened!”
“What?”
“There’s a big job coming up… and it will take care of everything! But… but I need you here with me.”
“Why?”
“So we can take off together as soon as it’s done. We can start over again. Go anywhere… the Grand Canyon, maybe? Anywhere you want.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! It’s big, baby! Real big. We’ll be set. I hate this fucking place. I hate these fucking people and their fucking drugs. I just want you back, baby. I just want to start over with you again… like it was in the beginning.”
“Oh, John, I want that too. Really, I do. But… but you gotta… gotta promise me—promise—no more hitting! No more streets. No, no more… abuse, John!”