Break Through
When your live-in boyfriend asks you to move to New York with him but suggests that you get separate apartments, it is a sign that things are not going well. A hint you do not heed. You insist. Demand. Wear him down. And then, the most convincing argument of all: you have a job and he does not.
But it’s only a matter of time. Because if you recall, he also suggested that you see other people. Which is exactly what happens when New York spits you out after just three months and you return to Seattle (together), get an apartment (together), and take new jobs (together). Looking back, he was angling for a way—any way—for you to not be together.
In the end, it’s not his weekend tryst with Christine from Loan Servicing that makes you leave. It’s the fight that happens later. You are drunk and so is he. You are only twenty-one but you know this much: wine burns. Gin is smelly. Vodka makes you feel tingly. And tequila makes you mean.
(You are not blameless—when you discovered that he’d gone to Vancouver Island with Christine from Loan Servicing—that’s not all she serviced!—you went to the bank where the three of you worked. You looked up her account and called her boyfriend. You suggested that you meet for drinks. The boyfriend was a crier, and in his grief, he suggested that the two of you move in together. You packed up all your things and moved them to the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, your boyfriend’s lover, which in a stunning reveal, is only four blocks away from the apartment you share with your boyfriend. You left a note on your door “I’m at Bob’s. You know the address.” You stayed the night and had really really lousy revenge sex. The next day your boyfriend arrived with your lover’s girlfriend and drove you back.)
Admittedly, there is a lot to fight about.
The tequila has made you mean-spirited and fearless. In a show of strength, you kick the thick glass wall of your balcony and it shatters. Blood spurts everywhere.
Four blocks away, Bob and his girlfriend are having makeup sex, which may be lousy or it may be great. The only thing you know for sure is that Christine gets pregnant. Something else your soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend holds over you. He can’t even go back to her after you leave him.
But back to the balcony and the soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend who should have never been a boyfriend to begin with. Not because he is ten years older or because he drinks or because other women find him scary. No. The only thing you knew when you met was that he could not arch his feet and that was a huge turn-off. Had you listened to your gut, he would have never become a boyfriend at all.
But here you are. Three years later. Bleeding on the carpet. Unable to walk.
“I can sew it myself,” you say, pulling out the sewing kit for your pointe shoes. Until you realize you are too drunk to thread the needle.
“I’m not driving you to the emergency room,” he says. And that’s when you realize you really need to go to the emergency room.
You arrive by taxi. A kind doctor sews you up.
“You got really lucky. Just a few millimeters deeper and it would have severed the tendon in your big toe.”
The doctor doesn’t know you are a ballet dancer and that this would have ended your career before it even begins. He asks if you are ok getting home and that’s when you remember your boss said something to you the other day. She mentioned—so casually—that if you ever felt unsafe at home you could call her. Any time, day or night, she will come and pick you up and you can stay with her. You don’t know what she saw that you did not. But you know her number and you call it.
And that’s when it occurs to you. You really need to get out of this relationship.
Kathy’s house has hand-crafted wood furniture sanded to soften the rough edges and polished to preserve its natural beauty. She has duvet covers that match the sheets. Your apartment doesn’t even have real furniture anymore because each time you moved, you sacrificed a few more essentials.
The bed is warm and the lights are low. As you drift off to sleep you worry. Maybe you aren’t strong enough to leave. Maybe you are too old to start over. And then you remember dancing on stage. The music moved through your limbs with a force more powerful than electricity. You shimmered and shined. And when your head whispered that you didn’t deserve to be this happy, your heart insisted that you did.
Janine Kovac (she/hers) is the author of Spinning: Choreography for Coming Home, which was a semi-finalist for Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Prize and a winner of the 2019 Indie Excellence Awards. Her other distinctions include: the Elizabeth George Foundation Fellowship from Hedgebrook, the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award for Nonfiction, and the Calderwood Fellowship for Journalism from MacDowell. Janine’s second memoir The Nutcracker Chronicles is forthcoming in Fall of 2024 from She Writes Press.
