Shows of Fealty

There were items that always had to be on hand to prove his loyalty. He made a list in his head:

-Her yellow prep school t-shirt from [insert fancy Connecticut prep school here] (Must be worn to sleep every night. It was allowable to wear a sweatshirt over it, but it must be worn and ready to be displayed at any time.)

-Her pink shorts (Also required to be worn to sleep every night. As with the shirt, shorts or pants could be worn over them since they fit him like boxers)

-A crab hat, purchased at Inner Harbor in Baltimore around Valentine’s Day one year

-A GIANT Microbes brand stuffed Tuberculosis bacterium (she either had Tuberculosis as a baby or got the vaccine that left a permanent scar around that time, he could no longer recall)

-A photo album containing favorite pictures of the two of them.

This is not necessarily an exhaustive list. In truth it was difficult to constantly keep track of all these items when he was constantly moving between dorms and apartments throughout their relationship. Mishaps occurred.

Once, when visiting his mother in Florida, he put the pink shorts in the wash. His mother, thinking that the shorts belonged to one of his sisters (why wouldn’t she?), put them among their cleaned clothes. He left them behind when he returned to Boston, not realizing what had happened. When he unpacked his bags and realized the shorts were not there he panicked. She would be furious. He told her anyways, figuring that not telling her would be far worse. She was still furious. He had failed another test of loyalty and suffered the consequences.

Another time he completely lost the stuffed Tuberculosis. A frenzied panic ensued, and he tore his room apart looking for it. He called his mother and father in a panic to have them tear their respective houses apart looking for it. No one was able to find it. The only option remaining was to order a replacement. In the meantime, he had to stall with her to prevent what he was certain would be a cataclysmic rage if she found out he had completely lost TB (the shorthand they used for it). She was angry enough that he had misplaced it; he couldn’t bring himself to admit that he had failed this test. When the replacement arrived, he pretended as if his father had accidentally placed it among things in the attic, and that seemed to be enough of an explanation once her anger subsided. He hated having to lie like that and, in a perfect world, he would not have felt the need to lie in the first place. It felt terrible, but he felt the truth would result in something even more terrible happening. He was afraid of her.

Just before their relationship ended, he misplaced the album with all their pictures in it. Once again, he tried to buy time to produce the album, but these items were always required to be available for display. This cannot be stressed enough. When he could not show the album in a particular instant he had once again failed. Eventually he did find the album somewhere in his disorganized apartment, but this did little to assuage her. She felt he was failing; that he displayed a pattern of failures that the album incident was just one part of a broader trend of failure. More importantly, no matter what he did in terms of showing how much he cared, when he misplaced these items he felt like a failure.

Looking back on these events he could no longer be sure whether these shows of loyalty were genuine requests to prove loyalty, or whether they were a ploy to see just how much control she could exert over him. The latter was a thought perhaps a bit too sad for him to face. Still, he did wonder…

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