Jill Talbot - The Way We Werent

THE WAY WE WERENT

Copyright 2015 Jill Talbot

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Talbot, Jill Lynn.

The Way We Werent: a memoir / Jill Talbot.

pages cm.

1. Talbot, Jill Lynn. 2. Talbot, Jill LynnRelations with men. 3. Talbot, Jill LynnTravelUnited States. 4. Single mothersUnited StatesBiography. 5. Mothers and daughtersUnited StatesBiography. 6. Women authors, AmericanBiography. 7. Loss (Psychology) 8. Creative writingPsychological aspects. I. Title.

CT275.T215A3 2015

306.87432092dc23

[B]

2015007338

Cover Design by Kelly Winton

Interior design by Elyse Strongin, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

Soft Skull Press

An Imprint of COUNTERPOINT

2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

Berkeley, CA 94710

www.softskull.com

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-630-8

for

INDIE

CONTENTS

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room,

he leaves everything in it behind.

When a woman goes out

she carries everything that happened

in the room along with her.

Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness

MODIFICATION REQUEST

Stamped Received December 14, 2009

Boulder County Child Support Enforcement Unit

12/07/2009

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to you to find resolution regarding modifying child support orders for Indie as well as addressing the back child support amount and lifting the suspension on my drivers license.

My situation has changed drastically since the orders were set for child support in 2002.

Furthermore, I would like to state for the record that Jill Talbot (the mother of Indie) and I had a short-term relationship with an unexpected pregnancy. I offered to marry Jill and take care of her and Indie. She declined and didnt want anything to do with me. She wanted to move out of state and move on with her life. This was agreeable for both of us. The next time I heard from Jill, she called me in 2003 and asked if I was happy. I stated that yes I was. She then voiced she wanted nothing from me except to keep my cell phone number the same and let her know if it changed in case she needed to contact me. My cell phone number has always remained the same.

Considering the verbal agreement between Jill and myself, I ceased making payments as I had always struggled to make the child support amount. I moved on with my life and all of a sudden six years later, the issue of child support that we both agreed upon has abruptly resurfaced and I am now $40,000 in debt to her, my drivers license has been suspended, and I am entirely overwhelmed. Dealing with any of these issues could break a person and I need help rectifying this issue quickly so I may focus on my life before it falls apart.

Sincerely,

(3 ) 9 -3

She remembers a picture. Its not the one of them drinking and smoking on the patio of the pub, and its not the one of them shooting pool in the Trailhead Tavern, and its not the one of her in front of her Jeep on the morning she went back to Texas, knowing with every mile she would eventually turn around and come back for good. It was the picture they asked someone to take of the two of them on that June afternoon.

They had planned a camping trip for the solstice, and while he packed the tent and the sleeping bags, she snuck to the store to get a pregnancy test with dim memories of spending a whole day in May on the blue futon, watching one movie after another. She wishes she could remember what they had been watching, but she was drinking pretty steadily then, her wine consumption at a precarious peak of desperation. What had her so restless with escape, she can write now, might have been what was coming, what was charging toward them with the stealth and threat of a sudden downpourthe two of them who would end up ducking for separate cover.

But that afternoon, a shift in their lives rumbled within her as they drove the hour to Poudre Canyon then stopped at the little store just at the parks entrance. Inside, a dark bar, and a deck out back, where they stood above the roaring river, her in a tank top and shorts and him in a T-shirt, his long plaid shorts. Both of them in flip-flops. Someone took a picture of them: he stood behind her with his arm across her waist, and she leaned back into his large shoulder. And though a stranger held the camera, shes written that it was a man at the bar, a bearded, dark soul of a stranger she cajoled outside with her smile and an offer to buy his next beer. This just one of the scenes she reinvents, again and again, and why not? The man in the photograph is not around to tell her that no, it was not that way at all. His leaving freed her to write the story the way she wishes it to be read. And shes been writing the same story, all these years.

A friend recently asked when shes going to stop, write about something else. Surely he was asking how long until we can let go, move on. How long do we live in the fictions of our past? And how do we convince anyone that who we write is not necessarily who we are?

She receives a letter, the first words in eight years, so she goes searching through closets, suitcases, boxes, and drawers. She can see it, the pewter frame, her sunglasses, the squints in the sun, knows for certain that she keeps it in a box as an answer to a question. It was the picture they put in her nursery, a representation of who they were, who she was, the way the two of them held each other, an assuredness of we. But she cannot find the picture or its pewter frame, the black and white they chose instead of color. Why? Even that afternoon, perhaps, they knew they were already smiling back at who they would, never could, be again. The black and white of a truth it would take her years to see. The truest fiction.