Page 59 of This Is How It Started
Later that night.
Josh: “Beth, where the fuck are you?”
Ten minutes later.
Josh: “Please call me and let me know you’re all right.”
Two hours later.
Josh: “Beth, answer your goddamn phone.”
Forty-five minutes later.
Josh: “I’m beyond panicked now. Don’t know if you’re lying dead in a ditch somewhere or just too inconsiderate to answer your calls.”
Josh: “Jesus Christ, Beth. It’s five o’clock in the fucking morning and I finally got a hold of Jamila, who says you’re okay. I’m going to bed.”
It appears that it was the beginning of the end. By late November, things were getting pretty dicey between my late husband and Beth.
Josh: “Can we talk before you do this?”
Beth: “There’s no more that needs to be said.”
Four days later.
Josh: “Don’t do this, Beth. Can’t we please try to work things out. I love you.”
Beth doesn’t respond.
Eight days later.
Beth: “I’ll be there at four to pick up the rest of my stuff. I’ll leave the key on the counter. I think it would be best if you weren’t there. The landlord says he has the place rented. You can just mail me my half of the deposit when you get it.”
Josh: “I won’t be there. Please leave me a forwarding address to mail the check.”
The last recorded text is December 10th at two in the morning.
Josh: “I mish you so moch. Come back to me, bootiful Beth. I will always loooove you.”
Clearly, Josh is drunk. Beth doesn’t even bother to reply.
The air is too heavy to breathe because I’ve already done the math. A mere two months later, Josh was trolling bars, looking for a new Beth. Me. It makes me question everything I thought I knew about us. Was I his rebound woman or the true love of his life, who made him forget Beth the minute he laid eyes on me?
This is the thing, either he didn’t love Beth as much as he thought he did, or I was her flimsy replacement. Because you don’t get over the real thing in sixty days. It took me years to move on after Campbell. I didn’t even date until a year after we went our separate ways. It took college, a career and an assortment of boyfriends before I could even consider being his friend again. It hurt that much. And I don’t think I really banished him from my heart until I fell for Josh, almost a decade later.
This all brings me back to why. Why didn’t he tell me about her?
“Hey, Rach, you know how you loved Campbell? Well, I loved a girl named Beth once. I thought she was the one until I met you.”
It would’ve been that simple. But instead I’m stuck in this place where everything I thought I knew feels like a lie. And the one person who’d always been my go-to reality check is gone.
There’s only one thing to do,I tell myself. And I grab my coat and white-knuckle it in the car all the way to Colma, the land of graveyards, dead people, and Josh.
The day is gray at the cemetery as I wend my way around the headstones, looking for Josh’s gravesite. It’s the first time I’ve been here since the funeral, which probably makes me a bad wife. But I don’t associate anything about this place with Josh.
The artificial flowers placed at many of the graves would’ve made him cringe. And the sound of traffic from the nearby freeway doesn’t exactly lend itself to serenity. It may be called Eternal Home, but it sure the hell isn’t Josh’s.He’s somewhere beautiful,I tell myself,like Barcelona, where his spirit is gliding through Gaudi’s neo-Gothic buildings or strolling The Bund, taking in the beaux arts architecture.
I find his marker easy enough, take off my coat, lay it on the ground and sit cross-legged at the foot of his headstone.
