The Girl's Guide to Homelessness (28 page)

I probably should have been writing the book, but I couldn't bring myself to touch it. How could I? I had no idea where my own life was, or where it was going anymore. Matt had been gone for over a month, and still none of the crew had heard from him. I managed to track down his first wife via Facebook, hoping that perhaps she'd either heard from him, or could put me in touch with his mother somehow. Surely, his parents would be the first ones contacted if he had somehow gotten hurt, right? Victoria was kind to me, much kinder than any first wife could ever be expected to be, but she was sorry, she didn't know anything. She hadn't seen or heard from him in years.

I was also still bleeding heavily. Miscarriages were pretty common in my family, I knew. My mother had had at least two that I am aware of, and was herself the twin of a stillborn
sister. My great-grandmother had also miscarried a boy, the twin of a girl who had lived, my great-aunt Anne. Still, for all that miscarrying, I didn't know anything about the actual process. It had never occurred to me that I would bleed for three weeks. I ruined three of my pairs of pajama bottoms at Vicki's house, and soaked Alice's sheets until they looked as though someone had been murdered on them. Ashamed, I continued to sleep on them for a week and a half, until the bleeding finally stopped. I approached Vicki and told her that I'd accidentally had my period on the sheets. She must have wondered at the vast amount of blood, but never once did she even raise an eyebrow, or act with anything other than kindness and compassion. She assured me that she wouldn't say anything to Alice, bundled the sheets up in a wad, and threw them away. Then she asked me if I needed to toss my pajamas in the wash.

 

Sage was in touch, and was also shocked about Matt's actions, though she, too, continued assuring me that this
wasn't
him, she had
seen
the way he looked at me, she just
knew
he loved me and would turn up eventually. She would continue to talk me down from my skyscraper, so to speak, for several weeks. She still occasionally does. I'm lucky to have her.

Sage also asked if I was willing to allow another homeless man to stay in my trailer while I was gone. He was a friend of Emese's, another homeless woman at the ranch who lived out of a trailer with her daughter and a neighborhood girl from a dysfunctional family she'd “adopted.” Emese was the epitome of a giving person. Sage assured me that she and Emese would go through my trailer and put my belongings into one of the storage sheds. My mind flashed to the second pregnancy test, still sitting on the sink.

“Er…the trailer is a bit messy…of course I want to help out another homeless person…but, you know, it's kind of embarrassingly messy….”

“Really, it's OK! We'll take care of it. We don't mind at all!”

I felt like the worst kind of hypocrite. I was going to deny another homeless person temporary shelter because I was afraid that someone would find out I'd been pregnant? I sighed and told Sage that she and Emese could go ahead. I hoped that Emese would just sweep the test into the garbage with a bunch of other random stuff without noticing, so that I wouldn't need to talk about it.

A couple of days later, Sage emailed and tactfully brought the conversation around to asking if I might perhaps be pregnant. “I was. I miscarried in Scotland.”

Instinctively, she seemed to know what to do. She told me how sorry she was, and then changed the subject. She didn't leave room for self-pity, just buoyed the conversation onward and upward. That was Sage. Ever true to her name.

 

Just before Valentine's Day, I checked my email inbox and my heart stopped. There was a message from Matt.

I clicked it open, and there was only one sentence.

“Please accept that it is over, and perhaps we can both move on.”

Emails began to roll in from the Homeless Tales crew. He'd sent them all two-line emails, before he even emailed me, saying simply that he and Brianna were no longer together, he was sorry about the website and he'd be in touch. There was no further explanation of any kind. I had no idea how to answer their questions. I didn't know myself. For my part, I didn't know what exactly I was
supposed to be accepting—or why—or where he'd been or why our lives had just imploded.

Matt responded to my pleas for an explanation, after a couple of days. He was staying with Lori's family for the time being. They were together as a couple and were moving on. He was sorry: If it was any consolation, he hated himself right now, and knew that there was absolutely no excuse for his behavior, but his decisions were final and irreversible. He hoped that we could remain in contact and stay friends. He had very fond memories of our time together, and hoped that we didn't have to hate each other. But, he added, he had to request that I not try to come find him. He didn't want to involve the police in this matter, but if I came looking for him, he'd do whatever was necessary to protect his family.

At no point did he acknowledge the specifics or the magnitude of the events that he'd set in motion. He spoke in vagaries, as though it had all been a mere unpleasantness instead of having nearly killed a woman. A woman whose hand he'd held, whose eyes he'd gazed deeply into and promised to marry.

What?! What was he talking about? What had happened? “Protect his family?” I had never threatened him or Kelsey or even Lori in any way, and now he was acting paranoid when
he
was the one who had lied, who had abandoned me, who could have gotten me killed. He'd disappeared and sacrificed all of us on the altar of his selfishness—his crew, his friends, and me…the woman he said he'd loved more than anything. For all his supposed
love,
it was easy enough for him to trade my life as a mildly regrettable casualty, just to make his choices easier. I was shocked to realize that he'd rather stay with a woman he claimed to pity and loathe, just so that he wouldn't have to
stand up for himself. And he “knew there was no excuse?”
Fuck you, try anyway!
For all the havoc he'd wreaked, the
least
he could have done, I felt, was
try
to come up with an excuse, no matter how pathetic! He wanted us to remain
friends?
Fuck him. He could take his fond memories and shove them.

There would be no friendship, I told him. Indeed, why would he wish for us to remain friends? So that once Lori and he imploded, I'd still be around for him to weasel back into my life, so that I could support him again? Did Lori have any idea that he was sending this email? It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when he sent it. Wow, nice going, waiting until Lori's asleep to send a conniving, pitiful email, hoping to keep me in his life. I guess it was good for them to know they could trust each other. Oh, wait. They couldn't. Return my belongings to Vicki Day's address, immediately. My laptop, the engagement ring I'd bought and the Christmas photo album. The baby clothes he could keep. I no longer had any use for them. Go back to your whore. Douche bag.

He responded defensively that, by all means, I could go ahead and hate him. I was certainly entitled. He back-pedaled rapidly, angered at being called out. He didn't see any reason to keep in contact—it was just a
gesture
. A gesture? I had a gesture or two for him myself.

He would send my items at some point, but not until he was good and ready, he continued. He wasn't in Huntly at the moment and didn't know when he'd find the time to get back there and send my things.

I knew he was lying. He definitely wouldn't have left without at least my laptop, at any rate. I responded that I didn't care for his pitiful excuses. He would get himself on the first train to Huntly if he had to beg, borrow or
steal from Lori's family—I didn't give a flying fuck. But my items would be in the post immediately, unless he wanted me to call the police and charge him with theft. The ring, especially, could land him in a lot of trouble, I knew. I still had the receipt for it. There was no room for negotiation. He should have thought of that before he knowingly told me to wait for him in a snowstorm, and then left me to die.

As for hating him? Ha.

“I don't hate you
or
love you. I nothing you. You're worthy of neither hate nor love.” It was a lie, of course. I both loved and hated him. But he was no longer entitled to the truth from me, I thought wildly. He'd fed me nothing but lies. I hoped he choked on them.

“Vicki Day and Jon Glackin will facilitate the return of my belongings. Don't ever contact me again.”

 

Jon Glackin was in London, coincidentally, meeting with some English street folk in preparation for World Homeless Day, a global event we were coordinating, to take place on 10-10-10, catchily enough. He had amassed supporters from all over the globe, even including several high-profile celebrities. We were hoping to make it into an annual event, geared toward raising homeless awareness and combating negative, judgmental stereotypes.

Yet, he proved himself a true friend by putting much of it on the back burner to walk me through the next several days. We met up in person in Camden, and hugged like old friends. He was furious with Matt, and disavowed their friendship to high heaven. He was sickened by what he'd done. He'd make sure that Matt returned my things, and right quick.

Vicki wrote to Matt, instructing that he send my things back immediately, and that no excuse would be accepted. He didn't even do her the courtesy of responding. It was awfully chauvinistic of him, I found myself thinking, a quality I'd never before seen in Matt.

Instead, Matt tried his luck with Jon, calling him “bro,” and speaking intimately as though they were still the best of friends and allies. Jon was displeased by the feigned chumminess, and Matt's underhanded statement that “Obviously, Brianna and I are having trouble communicating effectively at the moment”—the intimation being that I was the silly, overreacting woman who just couldn't accept a breakup and move on.
Women, eh? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

What Matt didn't know was that Jon had asked to read all the correspondence that had gone on between us thus far. He wanted to know the full situation before taking a stand against his former best friend and I certainly understood. For all he knew, I really
could
be a woman just having a hard time dealing with a breakup. Once he read all our emails back and forth, though, there was no doubt. Jon took it
very
personally that his “friend” would not only treat his wife-to-be that way, but then try to play it as though he'd done nothing wrong, as though it were all perfectly sane and rational and understandable.

Jon ripped into Matt, and after reiterating that my belongings must be returned, ended his email with the following statement:

“You left our friend Bri out in the cold, at the mercy of nature, and relying upon the kindness of strangers to get by. For a ‘homeless activist,' that is shameful for sure. ‘Bro.'”

 

The following day, I began to receive emails about some story on me in a Scottish tabloid called
News of the World
. I
was confused. The
News of the World
writer, Siobhan McFadyen, had contacted me several weeks earlier and offered me £500 ($810) to interview me and Matt for a Valentine's Day story. He was still missing, and I still had no idea what was going on at the time, so I told her, “No, thank you. He's busy with personal matters at the moment and I'm doing business in London. But, again, thanks for the interest.” Besides, Matt had already told me, back when we were first navigating the media storm, that
News of the World
was a cheap rag of a tabloid, the British version of the
National Enquirer
. We didn't need to lower ourselves to that standard, he'd said. We wanted to keep our reputations clean. The paltry amount of money it might bring in would never be worth it in the long run. It would only tarnish the opportunities for advancement that legitimate, reputable news outlets would hold out. I agreed with him.

The writer had apparently gone ahead and contacted Matt. And he had accepted her offer. I located the article. Matt and Lori posed with Kelsey in a baby carriage. Most of the article was complete fiction. The writer quoted anonymous “sources close to Brianna”—none of whom existed. These “sources” were clearly bogus because as far as nearly everybody in my life knew, I was OK. McFadyen and her colleague Nicola Stow created a completely botched time line of events that included me coming to Scotland to be with Matt for Valentine's Day, and him dumping me. To be honest, simply by reading my blog they would have gotten closer to the truth. For
months,
my readers had been aware that I'd come to Scotland to surprise Matt for Christmas, even though I'd played everything cool as though it were all going swimmingly. The writers even got our ages wrong.

“There was no infidelity,” Matt lied to the tabloid. “We just broke up—that's life…I'm back with Lori for now.”

The
for now
caught the attention of a lot of people, though I suspect it flew right over Lori's head. In her photo, she looked thrilled and somewhat bewildered at being photographed for a tabloid. It was probably the most interesting thing ever to happen to her. Looking at her dull face, I almost pitied her. But not quite. They deserved each other.

The writer concluded by quoting an anonymous source: “[Bri] is devastated. She feels really foolish.” I didn't feel foolish, though. How could I? I had believed I could trust my fiancé, the one person I loved more than anyone in the world—a completely normal assumption, right? It had never occurred to me that there was any other option.

The tabloid photos were posed in Huntly. Matt had been lying all along when he swore that he was in Peterhead, fifty miles away, and had no access to my belongings. Jon emailed and called him out on it, and for selling his morals and ethics to a tabloid—and for such a paltry sum, too. He called it the “thirty pieces of silver
News of the World
article,” intimating that Matt was nothing but a Judas. Matt never replied. He seemed to realize he'd burned all his bridges.