The Girl's Guide to Homelessness (24 page)

H
untly was an adorable little town—I could tell that even in the dark. A tall clock tower, a charming square with cobblestone streets, an old library hundreds of years old, everything crafted of stone. It was exactly how you'd picture a sleepy little rural town in Scotland. It had a population of only four thousand people. I loved it on sight. Snow began to fall in great flurries. Snow on Christmas Eve. It was too perfect.

The car screeched to a halt outside Matt's flat, and the two men pulled my rolling suitcase from the “boot,” as they called the car trunk. Then they each kissed me dramatically on each cheek, loudly proclaiming, “Good luck to ye, lass!”

My heart pounded as I climbed the stairs to Matt's flat. Seconds to go. Somehow I had pulled it off!

I knocked.

Footsteps.

Then he opened the door.

He looked so good I could have jumped his bones right there. He had grown a stubbly beard, which made him
look a little rough and edgy. He was so sexy I immediately felt self-conscious of my tired, bloated appearance and blushed, staring at my toes. His eyes widened in shock. He just stood there. He didn't say anything.

Why was he just standing there?
Say something!

Finally, I shuffled my toes and looked up at him, smiling shyly. I had no idea why, after all this time, I was suddenly bashful, but my heart overflowed with love.

“Merry Christmas.”

He still just stood there, looking at me with the oddest expression on his face. It took me a moment to realize what it was. It was panic.

“You can't come in here.”

 

The overwhelming initial sensation was that of finding oneself in a Coen brothers' movie—like everything had been going absolutely swell, not perfect perhaps, but damn close to it…then one day, one tiny, seemingly insignificant thing goes wrong, and you barely notice at first, but suddenly it all snowballs and does a plummeting death spiral until before you know it, someone's bludgeoning your head open with a hatchet or feeding your body into a wood chipper, and you're too stunned to react or defend yourself, because you're busy wondering just exactly where and when life so dramatically shifted course, to bring you to this point.

Yeah. I was
there
.

“What are you talking about? Why can't I come in? I've come all this way to surprise you…”

He interrupted me.

“Lori's here.”

 

Nothing had happened, he started to explain. It wasn't what I thought. She'd just shown up, said it would be too
hard for her to spend Christmas without her daughter. He didn't feel right sending her away, and the buses wouldn't be running again until Boxing Day. He'd agreed to let her stay on the couch.

“You promised you'd never do that! You
promised!
”

“Look, I would have told you. I'm sure I would have, in a couple of days. But I had to make the decision
now
. She's Kelsey's mother. I couldn't be cruel! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to lie to you. It just happened. But nothing inappropriate has happened or will happen. You
know
I would have been happy to see you, if it weren't for these circumstances. But now you've put me in an awkward position.” He glanced over his shoulder furtively.

“Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do tonight? I brought a little money for the trip, but I haven't exchanged it yet!” I heard Kelsey stirring in the living room behind him, and tried to keep my voice to a whisper, even though my impulse was to scream at the top of my lungs and brain him with my Netbook.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out £40 ($65).

“The post office won't be open until Monday, probably. You can exchange your money then. Here. That's all I've got on me right now. Go find a hotel for tonight. There are a few in the town square. I'll try to get rid of her in the morning.”

I took the money.

“I'll come back in a few minutes and let you know where I'm staying and how long this'll buy me.” Tears were streaming down my face. None of this was going as I'd planned it.

 

The first two hotels I tried shook their heads.

“We don't take people in on Christmas Eve.” I figured it must be some local custom I didn't know about.

The largest (and most expensive) hotel in town, the Huntly Hotel, did give me a room. The girl at the desk looked like she was about seventeen years old, as if she was on her way home, and as if she thought I was the stupidest and weirdest person in the world for asking for a room on Christmas Eve.
Crazy Americans.
She took me upstairs and let me into a tiny, bare room. There was no telephone and no internet access, but that didn't matter. I'd only be here for a night. She handed me the room key.

I dropped my suitcase and ran back around the corner to Matt's flat.

“I'm at the Huntly Hotel. It's the only place that would take me on Christmas Eve. That's only enough money to pay for one night.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

“Does she know that it's me at the door?”

“Yes, I've explained it to her. She's not taking it well.”

“What the hell do you mean she's not taking it well? You're
my
fiancé! You've spent months telling her that you're my fiancé! Hell, you've spent months telling
me
you already consider me your wife!”

“I do—it's just—you shouldn't have done this! You shouldn't have come here.”

“
Why not?
Since when is it considered improper for a wife to surprise her husband, or even for two engaged people to surprise each other for Christmas? It's not! You're only upset now because you've been caught in a lie!”

“Look, I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you….”

Lori stormed up to the door. I turned my head. I didn't want to see her; didn't want to know what she looked like. Somehow it would just make it that much more painful. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I saw her throw a giant garbage bag of trash at Matt violently.

“
Take out the fookin' trash!
” she screamed. It was a possessive scream. As though she considered him hers. Kelsey began to cry in the background, and Lori ran back into the living room.

Matt looked away from me helplessly, turning to pick up the garbage bag. He didn't even notice me flee. By the time he looked back up, I was already down the stairs and gone. I didn't want him to see me fall to pieces.

 

There was no sleeping that night. In the morning, ordered to check out by 10:00 a.m., I headed downstairs with my luggage.

There was nobody at the front desk. The lights were out; all was silent. I decided I'd just leave the key at the front desk and slip out.

The front door to the hotel was locked. I was locked in. All the doors I tried in the hotel were likewise locked—no access to any other area. I'd mistakenly hoped that perhaps I could gain access to the manager's room behind the front desk and use the phone to call for help. No luck.

Since there was no phone in my room, and no internet access, I couldn't call or email anybody. I kept checking downstairs all day to see if anybody had showed up to the hotel, but there was nobody. It's as if they'd all gone home, forgotten that they had a guest and taken Christmas Day off.

I went back to my room, sobbed some more, showered and drank all the coffee creamers in the little basket on the nightstand. There was no other food to be found. I hoped that Matt would come looking for me; perhaps call the police when I didn't show up. But everything was silent—for the rest of Christmas Day and all that night.

 

On the day after Christmas, the front door to the hotel was unlocked, though there was still nobody at the front desk.
Does anybody actually come to work in this town?
I left the room key on the counter and left with my luggage, figuring that at least I'd gotten an extra night's stay for free in exchange for the hassle. It was freezing outside, so I pulled on an oversized, shaggy blue coat that made me look like the unholy spawn of the Cookie Monster. It was the warmest thing I had found at the thrift store.

I walked back to Matt's flat and knocked. There was no answer. It was about 11:00 a.m., so I figured he shouldn't still be asleep. I waited a bit, and then knocked again. I could hear some shuffling around inside, so I knew
somebody
was there. I had no intention of leaving. I kept knocking, at five-minute intervals, until I heard a door slam inside, and Lori screaming in her thick Scottish accent for him to answer the door. She threw in a few curses for good measure. Matt came to the door.

“Wow. She's…charming,” I spat, looking him dead in the eye. He pulled his jacket on.

“Let's take a walk.”

We wandered until we found an empty church parking lot.

“I got locked in the hotel all day yesterday. They locked up for Christmas and forgot about me.”

“Oh, my God. You poor thing. I'd wondered where you were!”

But you didn't come looking for me.

“Yeah, well, I guess at least I got a free night's stay. So… Lori sure made a point of coming to the door the other night.” He smirked a bit. I couldn't see why. I didn't find any of this funny at all.

“Yeah, she sure did, didn't she? Your being here really winds her up, for some reason.”

I can tell you exactly why it's winding her up.

“I looked up and you were gone,” he continued.

“You wanted me to go.”

If circumstances had been different, he insisted, he'd have been ecstatic to see me. He'd have happily taken me in and we'd have celebrated Christmas and I'd have met Kelsey. He still hoped I'd get to meet Kelsey soon. He was so sorry about all this. He hadn't meant to lie to me.

He started to shiver violently from the cold.

“Oh, my god, you're freezing…I want to hold you, but…I don't know if…”
if you still love me.

He opened his jacket and pulled me into him.

“I love you so much. And now I've fucked everything up.”

“It's OK. We'll figure it out. Will she be leaving soon?” He looked uncomfortable.

“Last night, she called her entire family and told them to come down to Huntly. I only found out this morning. They're arriving later today. I don't know how long they'll be staying.”

What? What?!
But it was
his flat!
She'd had her Christmas with Kelsey; now it was Boxing Day and she was supposed to be going home. He hadn't even invited her to stay this long in the first place, had he? I was his
fiancé!
I'd spent the previous two days in panic, freaking out, because I had no idea what was going on. He'd just shoved me off his doorstep and treated me like a near stranger. We had made
every single possible concession
in order for Lori to feel comfortable, but this was the part where he was supposed to put his foot down and stand up for me, for us.

That's when he lowered the boom on me.

“It's not my flat anymore. That's the problem.”

Oh, my god. Oh. My. God.

“You didn't. You didn't sign over the flat to her already.” Silence. “
When
did you sign over the flat to her?
Why?
”
Why, why, why would you be so fucking stupid?

A couple of months back—he couldn't really remember exactly when. She was getting paranoid and starting to push him. Asking when he was leaving for California already, when she could have the flat and be with her daughter. Her aunts were freaking her out, too, saying that Matt would go back on his promise. So he'd put the flat in her name to keep her from worrying. It was a gesture of good faith, he insisted. So that she
knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could move in after we were married.

How could you not tell me this?!
Every single major life decision I had made since we'd been together, I had talked out with him. We were partners. He had gone on and on about how he could never be with someone who didn't treat him as an equal, wasn't completely honest with him. And yet he'd hidden this from me for
months
. It was too much to take in all at once.

He started to cry.

“I'm sorry. It was supposed to be a surprise. The
good
kind of surprise, to show you how serious I was about making a life with you. I was going to tell you when I came out to marry you. Everything would have been all taken care of already.”

Oh, for fuck's sake. It was like a perverse, not-at-all touching version of
Gift of the Magi
. We'd each planned a surprise for the other and now everything was all shot to hell.
Still, my surprise would have been relatively harmless if he hadn't broken his promise and let her stay,
I thought.
My sur
prise was sweet and romantic and thoughtful. His was dangerous. Reckless disregard for our future.

I didn't want to rub it in, though. I mean, the guy was weeping in front of me. I was really starting to resent having to be the sane, rational, pregnant one, though. Pregnant women got to throw tantrums and demand foot rubs and be smug and self-righteous and bitchy, and then blame it all on their fluctuating hormones, from what I'd seen. I thought of a former dance teacher, who'd brought his eight-months' pregnant girlfriend to the Big Bear Jazz Festival with my swing team when we'd performed there. She spent an entire weekend making nineteen people crammed into a six-person cabin absolutely miserable, tiptoeing around her like she was some dormant dragon not to be awakened. And everybody took it for granted.
She's pregnant. That's what pregnant women do.

Not that I wanted to be a sanctimonious bitch. But I was really beginning to see the irony—and feel the strain—of holding it together, as Matt fell apart in front of me. What could I do, though?
By the way, I'm pregnant, you well-intentioned dimwit. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Mull
that
one over, in addition to all the angst you're feeling right now.
No, it had to be a happy occasion, when I told him. It had to be right. Now was not the right time. We had to tackle this first.