19Clearest Blue || CHVRCHES
ROXANNE
I letout a string of French swear words loud enough to alarm my neighbours as the picture falls off the wall for the fourth time.
“Merde alors!What am I doing wrong?”
This apartment doesn’t want to be mine. My limited attempts to decorate the pre-furnished place have all failed. Even the bedspread I bought myself to make it seem more personal turned out to have a huge rip in it, and yesterday I knocked a pot of flowers I had just bought out of my kitchen window.
Luckily no one was passing by on the street. Manslaughter would just be the icing on the shit cake that is my life right now.
I don’t know what I’m doing here. Toronto kind of hates me, and I kind of hate Toronto. I just don’t feel like I fit. No one at work has given me a hard time about it, but I still get self-conscious about my accent and occasionally not knowing what a word means or how to say a certain huge number in English.
Even the streets themselves make me feel lonely. I miss all the crooked wizard turrets and quirky stone figures on top of the buildings in Montreal. I miss the sense of intrigue, the way even ordinary strangers managed to look like they had some wildly fascinating past. I miss bumping into people I know.
I feel more than alone here; I feel like I’ve lost one of my limbs. That’s what leaving Cole was. It was like walking away with only one of my arms.
I still see the pain in his face every time I close my eyes. I still wake up in the middle of the night and watch the minutes tick by on my clock, each one of them prompting a fresh pang of guilt.
I hit him where it hurt. I knew exactly what watching me take off to Toronto would do to him, but I had to make him understand. He had to know that I was really ending it this time.
My therapy has helped to reinforce the necessity of leaving him. I’ve realized just how truly unhealthy the two of us were. Both individually and apart, we were sick, and we were only ever going to make each other sicker. We were like alcoholics nursing each other with bottles of whiskey; eventually, we would have just drowned.
I know that, and yet somehow, I still feel like I’m sinking.
I give up on hanging my picture and leave it propped against the wall. It’s long past a normal person’s dinnertime now, and I hunt around my mostly empty kitchen for something to fill me up before bed. Canned soup and frozen edamame turn out to be the offerings of the night. I throw the edamame in the microwave and get started on opening the soup.
I’m curled up on the awkwardly-sized loveseat the apartment came with when my phone starts lighting up. Monroe’s name flashes across the screen, and I bring the phone to my ear.
“Salut, ma belle.”
“Salut, ma petite choue,” she greets me. “What’s up?”
“Just hanging out with some Campbell’s soup and soybeans. Wild times in The Six.”
She indulges me with a laugh. “Glad to hear it. I just called to check in on you.”
“You’re such a mom.”
“Hey,” she shoots back, “someone’s gotta do it.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“Oh, shit, Roxanne, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I swear, I—”
“C’est correct, là,” I tell her. “God knows mymamanwas not the greatest at her motherly duties. I’m lucky I have you, no matter how weird that is.”
She chuckles. “Okay, good. So tell me, how are you doing?”
“Honest answer? I’ve been better.”
“Is it the job?” she asks.
I set my empty soup bowl down and pop a few edamame into my mouth.
“Sort of. It’s kind of...everything. I just—God, Monroe, my life is a fucking mess.”
The brave-faced, I’m Rebuilding My Life attitude I’ve been trying to talk myself into having every morning shatters in an instant, and the full weight of how hard this all is hits me like a damn flowerpot crashing down from a window.
