Wait! Did you read Part One: Hungry and Part Two: Angry?
Part Three: Raw
Claude left Tiff’s apartment and stepped into the windy night to prepare for a thirty minute commute back to her bed. She felt grateful for the time. Walking alone in the city helped her clear her mind, and she often took meandering walks after sunset. But on this particular night, she had a thought she couldn’t shake, one she couldn’t bear: a vision of Astra in handcuffs.
It wouldn’t be fair for Astra to be punished for that man’s disappearance. Rashid was charming, but he’d made Astra cry enough times. That he went missing was awful; but he was awful sometimes, too, and awful things happened to all kinds of people everyday, intervention or not.
Still, Claude refused to believe Astra would ever hurt him. She’d seen Astra angry before; if she had the capacity to actually harm the man, she would have done so a long time ago. Right? And the young parents were in a good spell ever since he’d called her to talk things through over that walk through the park. Those good spells usually lasted, on average, at least a couple of weeks—based on Claude’s calculations, the mean was ten days and median was six —and he was reported missing only a couple of days after their park date.
Staring at the sidewalk as she contemplated ways to be a fence for Astra, Claude lost herself in thought. Soon she realized she failed to follow the route back to her apartment. Instead, Claude stood right across the street from Astra’s baby father’s house. Well, to be more accurate, his grandmother’s house where he lived.
She looked up at the tall rowhouse, vines growing along its brick facade and wrapping around wrought iron gates that covered the windows. The front yard’s overgrown grass housed a family of rats, and tucked away in a corner of the small lawn was a neglected plot of what used to be a garden. The plot now held an assortment of weeds, dandelions, and buttercups. Claude picked one of the flowers and stuck it behind her ear. Many people considered them invasive, so she was sure they wouldn’t be missed. She was even more sure because she picked a flower most times she walked by this house, and no one had stopped her from doing so yet.
Her therapist wouldn’t be happy to hear that Claude was making this trip again. But the truth is, once she started “stopping by” the rowhouse about a year and a half ago, she never stopped. It was like she experienced a possession: she’d be in her apartment one moment, blink, and find herself at Rashid’s stoop the next.
Her therapist had a different idea about the mechanics of Claude’s stalking. Claude remembered a morning several months ago sitting in a hard chair in her therapist’s beige windowless office. “These kinds of things don’t just happen, Claudia,” the therapist said to Claude. “It's the small choices you make that land you at these extreme precipices. But even at these precipices, you still have another choice — to tumble over or to seek solid ground.”
“Huh?” Claude said. Her therapist came off a little woo-woo. Always speaking in metaphors. Being in that office each week wasn’t Claude’s preference, but after her assault charges, Claude had little say in the matter.
“You have to identify the small choices, Claudia — from entertaining a thought, to obsessing over that thought, to letting that thought move you to act. Move you to put one foot in front of the other, out the door of your apartment, through downtown, to the home of someone who doesn’t want you there.” The therapist paused to make sure Claude was still following her logic. “We have to interrupt that train of choices at the right juncture, before that train takes you to the top of a cliff about to topple over and crash.”
Blah blah blah, Claude thought as she mustered up an appeasing grin. They give just about anybody a license these days.
It didn’t take a PhD to perceive that Claude had issues with decision making. That much was obvious. What Claude longed for help with was figuring out how to overcome the impulses of her broken heart. Impulses that rendered any logic powerless.
Claude figured the last time her heart was whole was when she was around seven years old. Hers wasn’t the worst childhood in the world. Some would call her lucky. Always a roof over her head, even if the house under the roof wasn’t the safest. Two parents in the house, although it’d been years since the parents felt anything but contempt for one another. A job for each parent, albeit underpaid.
Despite her relative privilege, Claude felt her heart was weaker than others. It needed more than what it received. More love, more guidance, more understanding. In Claude’s eyes, the abusive tirades and subtle put downs weren’t what really broke her. It wasn’t the application of abusive force that crushed her heart, but the absence of affirming force. The indifference. The neglect.
Perhaps that’s why she was so attracted to the tall rowhouse and the small neglected yard laid before it. She stood in front of the house many times in the dark as an unwelcome, uninvited guest. Similar to the rats skittering in the low ambling bushes. Just like the yellow flowering weeds that took over the garden.
Claude pulled out a piece of cake wrapped in a napkin from her jacket that she saved from the potluck and tossed crumbled pieces into the bushes and grasses where the rats lived. A big rodent scampered out onto the stone path leading up to the rowhouse’s front steps, sat on its haunches and brought its front paws together over and over as if to clap, or to say thank you. Claude repeated the gesture to the rat, as if to say I see you, or you’re welcome.
Even unwelcome guests have needs. There were so many things Claude needed that she never had. By her teenage years she learned that if she needed something, she had to take it. Hold onto it for dear life. If she had a void inside her, she had to find something to fill it. And whatever she found was hers, and what was hers would be hers forever.
As she returned the napkin wrapped dessert to her jacket’s pocket, her hand brushed against something cool and sharp. Cake knife, she thought to herself. She must have accidentally taken it when she hastily snuck that piece of cake. That happened sometimes when she was rushing — she would occasionally, accidentally, take more than she needed. An honest mistake.
Rashid’s disappearance was an honest mistake, too. Astra would never hurt him. Not intentionally. Everything could be explained. And Claude would explain it that night to Rashid’s grandmother, who would have no choice but to understand. No other option existed. The vision of Astra in handcuffs could not come true. Claude would sooner trade places than let that happen.
Claude ambled up the short stone path to the rowhouse’s front entrance and knocked on the door, her other hand hidden in her cake pocket. Patient and still, Claude held her breath until the door started to creak open.
There was only one witness this time around: the large rat. Still sitting on his haunches, the rat started to clap again, thanking Claude for her generosity. As if to thank Claude for her care. For all she had done to make his house a home.