Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 55.2: 1995, Ruiz

Chapter 55.2: 1995, Ruiz

 

There was no use sitting in this house alone. More and more I was finding myself alone here. My heart was stinging, because Ambrose was almost never here anymore. 

"The parties are getting more frequent, I'm sorry," he'd attempted to explain. It didn't work, because it wasn't satisfying to me.

"Why can't you just say no? You can say no."

"No, I can't."

"Why not? Its a job, right? Tell them you don't want to work so much."

"Its not exactly like... I just can't ask to not work so much. I work when I work. I'm sorry."

There was nothing else to say after that. Just confusion and hurt. There was no use in trying to get more information either. And the one question I had today wouldn't get answered. What kind of party is at 10am? And then the subsequent, unaskable question: are you going bowling in New Jersey again, not actually going to Queens at all?

There were other, harder questions but I couldn't bear to think them, such as: who are you working for? Why? When did you start doing this? Why? Why are you doing this? The stinging in my heart increased, thinking them. Ambrose. Love conflicted with the anger, the sadness, the longing for him, the needing him. It was too much to bear. I couldn't figure out how my body was even making so many feelings at once.

And the hardest, most painful question of all hovered in my head all the time, making it difficult to even function: is this job more important than me? I need you right now. I NEED you. 

But if he couldn't see that I needed him right now, then what... I couldn't comprehend that maybe I already had my answer to the worst question. Nothing in my body was willing to believe that ache or allow it to enter. So instead, I ignored it. I ignored it like the other questions, needing to ignore them as much as I needed him.

I couldn't sit here and mull this over like I had been over god knows how long, in perpetual motion. I needed a distraction to keep my drifting sanity. But where was I supposed to go? I refused to become one of those people who's seen every single movie because that's all they can do. What else was I supposed to do?

Desperation started at my heels and was rolling up to my head when my hand brushed against the pearls around my neck for comfort, scratched against the diamonds of the swirl.

Miss Audrey Hepburn. 

My lips pressed together. Visions of her dresses from her movies, the elegance. Longing. My hands gripped the pearls. Memories. A Halloween long ago. Ambrose...smiling at me with a construction paper crown on his head as he led me dressed as Miss Audrey Hepburn for the first time through the streets. 

How happy we'd been. What happened to us? What happened? My finger traced the swirl like a galaxy connected to my heart. All that pain, swirling out of my heart, gathering and creeping. 

We promised to perform together, compete together. We'd be together so much, we promised. But we changed. 

He left the house this morning before I was awake. But when I woke up, I found shedded lavender sequins in the bed like snake scales. They were on my back, too. They fell off in the shower. I watched them go down the drain. I'd shivered, thinking he'd hugged me in the bed before he left, dressed in his slinky sequin dress that made him look like a supermodel. Where had he gone in that dress? He told me last night where he was going, but where was he really?

The questions again, filling my head up and making my brain shrivel like sourness. 

I needed to talk to someone. Somebody, anybody. This thought was repeating again, as it had over the past couple of days. But there was only one person I could think of to talk to, and would he even care? What choice did I have? I couldn't keep this in anymore. I was going crazy.