Paradigm

Amy watched her husband traipse through the door with an irregular hitch, his crooked smirk enhanced by the angle of his stance.  His teasing walk.  He lazily let the mail swing by his side, one pink envelop drawing her attention.  Craig stopped two feet from her and dropped it in her lap.

“Well isn’t somebody special…”

Jesus, she thought, picking up the envelop and studying its secrets.  Bobby.  Or was it supposed to be Bobbie now?  She couldn’t keep up with her ex’s self-reinventions, his lifestyle changes and paradigm shifts, nor did she particularly want to.  The past was the past, clouded by rubble and white trash.  She was stout—adamant—about that.  She discarded the envelop to her side and stubbornly turned to her husband, now sitting beside her, legs crossed and eyes stern, doing his best imitation of Freud.

“Well aren’t you going to open it?”

“No.” 

“Afraid of the outpouring of emotions?  Honey, you know I’ll hold you if you cry,” he said, his words cracked from withheld laughter.  He was loving this.  Smug jackass.  Amy had never set out to be a proper wife—a prude—but at times she was and knew it.  She was never cruel about it or cold, but always a bit odd, idiosyncratic in thought and action, out of beat with what she wanted to show and what she needed to feel.  Of course Craig loved her anyway, but when he saw a chance to crack her shell he always attacked.

“Fine!” she said stubbornly.  She felt silly as she picked up the envelop and tore through its flanks.  As Craig leaned closer, she stopped herself from spitefully pointing out he smelled of motor oil and must.  It would be a failed attempt to maintain control, something she suddenly felt short of.  She pulled out the card and opened it, jumping at the pop-up balloon and giraffe.

“A birthday card?”  Craig exploded in laughter, cradling his side.  “Wow, honey.  You sure can pick ‘em.”

Amy crumpled the card and threw it at his head.  She sternly stood, somehow maintaining balance, and then stormed to their bedroom, leaving Craig’s cackling and mocking behind.  Grease-monkey shrink…
…

She was ashamed she needed Google to find Tammy’s number.  A slight smile came when Timothy answered and recognized her voice.  There was a beauty in the way he called her Aunt Amy, as if he didn’t care at all that his southern drawl made the words sound foreign and indignant. 

“Your momma home?” she asked.  He hesitated slightly before telling her she was getting ready for a night out.  At least someone in the family lied badly.  They went on to talk about school and girls, baseball and other things that barely mattered.  She fended off his awkwardly placed questions about his father, and then finally worked up the courage to lie just enough that it was obvious she was doing so.  No, I haven't heard from him.

“Well, tell your momma I was thinking of her today.”  Tim said he would and they got off the phone.  Without a moment’s hesitation she dialed the number that had been written on the birthday card she’d memorized earlier that day.  Bobby answered the phone, his voice much deeper than it had been years before.

“You got my card!” he said cheerfully, triumphantly.  Old-school Bobby.  Down-home Bobby.  Not Bobby Mohammed, the converted Muslim, or Bobert, the Bohemian artiste, or Bobbie, the failed tranny, but the Bobby she knew 15 years ago with the faded jeans and scuffed boots. 

“I’m a new man, Ames.”

“Oh, really?”

“I’m me.  I know who I am, I know where I’m going.  Things are looking up.  I have this new business venture and…”

Amy listened to his spiel and thought back to the past.  That initial excitement had been more than a rush with Bobby, it had been a sky-ripping high.  Her control, her prim posturing, had been borne through their recklessness.  She had never really wanted Bobby, but she needed him to shed the shackles of being the dutiful daughter, the loyal sister, the graceful dilettante.  She had shattered the image imposed upon her and created something new. 

She had Bobby to thank, but listening to him now made her realize how she didn’t need him any more.

“You know, that’s all well and good," she said, interrupting Bobby's riveting account of swimming with sperm whales in the Atlantic, "but this new you should work on his dates.  You’ve mixed up birthdays.  Today is Tammy’s,  y’know, the other sister you fucked, the one you knocked up and left?”

There was an awkward silence, a one-sided heaviness that steeled Amy even more.  Bobby apologized and hung up, and Amy felt stronger than she had in years.