Something Wild

by Hanna Halperin

  He frowns. “What?”

  “I didn’t want you to do that.”

  “Um. Okay. It kind of seemed like you wanted to . . .”

  “Wanted to what?”

  “Fuck.”

  Nessa stands, yanking the blanket off the bed, pulling it over herself. “Why do you have to use that word?”

  “Fuck?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Why can’t you be nicer to me, Henry? You’re not very nice to me.”

  “Sorry,” he mutters. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

  “You knew what was a bad idea?”

  “Sleeping together. After what happened to your mom.”

  “Don’t talk about my mom.” She looks at his naked body splayed out on her bed and feels disgusted. His penis lies deflated, a soft little mushroom against his thigh. She takes the alarm clock on her night table and hurls it at his crotch.

  “Jesus,” he says, throwing his arms down to cover himself.

  “Is that what this is?” Nessa says. “I’m just someone you’re sleeping with?”

  “I like you,” Henry says, but he’s no longer making eye contact with her, and his face has morphed into something cold and unknown. “I’m attracted to you. But I’m not like . . .” He pauses. “Trying to be in a relationship. I kind of get the feeling that—”

  “Shut up,” she interrupts, and she turns her back to him. “Get out.”

  “Will do,” he says promptly, and his voice is laced with relief.

  When Dr. Janeski shows up on her doorstep with a massive lasagna, Nessa’s first thought is, Did Dr. Janeski make that lasagna herself? Does Dr. Janeski even eat lasagna?

  “Nessa,” the doctor says, pushing open the screen door. “Honey.” And then, to Nessa’s surprise, Janeski wraps one slender arm around Nessa, the pan of lasagna under the other arm, and kisses her on the cheek. Honey.

  She’s dressed the same way she does at work, in all black, with heavy silver jewelry that matches the color of her hair. Her posture is impeccable. Thin and petite without being frail, she reminds Nessa of an elegant insect.

  “Thanks for coming, Dr. Janeski.”

  “Of course, Nessa. And call me Janet, okay?”

  Nessa nods. “Do you want to come in?”

  “Only if you’d like me to. Am I disturbing you?”

  “No, no. Come on in. My place is a mess.”

  Dr. Janeski shakes her head warmly, averting her eyes of the cluttered hallway and the living room strewn with blankets and mail and half-empty water glasses. “Don’t worry for a second,” she says.

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  “No, thank you, Nessa. Shall we sit for a few minutes?”

  “Okay.” Nessa leads Janeski into her kitchen. Tupperware is piled on the counters and her sink is filled with dishes. There’s a funny smell coming from somewhere that she hadn’t noticed before, but now that Janeski is here it announces itself immediately. They sit at the kitchen table and Nessa brushes a few crumbs off the edge. “Sorry,” she says again.

  “Please.” Janeski waves her hand and leans over the table and looks deeply into Nessa’s eyes. “Nessa. I was heartbroken to hear about your mother.”

  “Yeah,” Nessa says softly, and then, without warning, she bursts out laughing. It’s something about the way Janeski said the word heartbroken—as though Janeski had known Lorraine, as though the psychiatrist’s heart had actually broken apart at the news, which, Nessa knows, is not the case. They’d never met.

  Janeski watches her, unfazed.

  “God, what’s wrong with me,” Nessa says, covering her mouth. “I don’t know why I’m laughing.”

  Janeski shrugs, smiling. “That’s perfectly normal.” She continues to sit, waiting for Nessa to say more.

  She wonders if this is what it’s like to be a patient of Dr. Janeski’s. The freedom to say or do anything, and just have her sit there and take it. Most of Janeski’s patients are young women, students from Smith with pretty hair and smart eyes, dressed in expensive jeans with holes ripped stylishly in the knees. They sit in the waiting room on their phones, waiting for Dr. Janeski to come get them, and when she does, they stand expectantly, anticipating Dr. Janeski’s smile—her warmth—which she doles out to those girls but never to Nessa. Then they emerge fifty minutes later, looking flushed and energized, as though they’ve just had sex or won money from a scratch ticket. Their lives are important, Dr. Janeski tells them. Their suffering real.

  “It’s nice of you to come,” Nessa says. “Don’t you have patients?”

  “It’s Saturday,” Janeski says. “Of course I wanted to come see you. I’ve been thinking of you so much, Nessa. How are you doing?”

  Nessa shrugs and, to her relief, her eyes fill with tears. “I’m not doing well,” she admits. Nessa hasn’t slept for days. She nods off sometimes, but never for more than twenty or thirty minutes at a time. And she dreads waking up—the realization all over again. She can’t bear the thought of crawling into bed, of changing into her pajamas, brushing her teeth, pulling the covers over herself, so she avoids the bedroom and has taken to sleeping on the couch with the television and the lights on.

  “Are you sleeping?” Dr. Janeski asks, reading her mind.

  Nessa shakes her head.

  “How about eating?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Janeski nods. “It’s important to eat a little, even if you don’t have an appetite. Can I fix you a plate of lasagna?”

  “Okay.”

  Janeski stands and Nessa watches the psychiatrist navigate her messy kitchen, pulling open the drawer with the knives and then washing a plate from the sink, drying it with a towel, then carefully extracting a healthy-sized portion of lasagna from the pan. Janeski puts it in the microwave and takes a step to the left so as not to be hit by the carcinogenic waves.

  “A few bites,” she says, putting the plate down in front of Nessa. “Whatever you can manage.”

  Nessa escorts a steaming bite of cheese and sauce into her mouth. “Thank you,” she says, swallowing. “It’s good.”

  Something about the way Janeski is squinting at her, nodding continuously, is putting Nessa on edge.

  “Why is it normal to laugh?” Nessa asks.

  Janeski bows her head admiringly, as though Nessa’s question is brilliant. “You’re in shock, Nessa. How could you not be? You, both you and your sister, have just suffered a tremendous trauma. Grief is a stress on your body and your emotions. Laughter can be a release from some of those stresses.” Janeski smiles and tilts her head. “I once had a patient who couldn’t stop burping after her grandmother died.”

  “And sleeping,” Nessa says. “Why do you think it’s so hard for me to get in bed? I don’t even want to walk into my bedroom. The thought of turning out my lights . . .”

  “Hmm. Have you slept in your bed at all since this happened?”

  Nessa shakes her head.

  Janeski’s eyes move from right to left, thinking. “Bedtime is such a hard time of day. How often did you speak on the phone with your mother, Nessa?”

  “Almost every day,” Nessa lies.

  “What time?”

  “I guess usually at night.”

  “So no wonder you don’t want to go into your bedroom at night! It’s too painful. Of course it is. Nessa, have you been talking to family or friends over the phone? And if you don’t mind my asking, do you have a therapist?”

  “No,” Nessa says. “I don’t have a therapist.”

  “Well, if you’d like, I can refer you to someone. I know some truly lovely clinicians in the area. A few who specialize in grief.”

  “I don’t think I can afford to see a therapist.”

  “I have several colleagues who I’m almost cert
ain will be able to work out a sliding scale with you.” She smiles graciously, as though the generosity of her colleagues reflects well on her.

  “Maybe,” Nessa says. “Dr. Janeski?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is it normal, during grief . . . to have promiscuous sex?”

  Dr. Janeski doesn’t bat an eye. “Certainly.”

  Nessa looks down and rubs a finger back and forth over a scar in the table. “He wasn’t very nice to me,” she says softly.

  She can feel Janeski watching her, waiting for her to say more.

  “It was that guy . . . Henry?” She looks up. “From your office. Henry Alden.”

  Janeski nods slowly and though she doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t move a muscle.

  It feels important to Nessa that Dr. Janeski know that Henry wasn’t nice to her. In fact, she wants it to be Janeski’s fault.

  “When did this happen?” Janeski asks. “With Henry?”

  Nessa shrugs. She knows she should be careful not to give up too much information. “A few days after the funeral.”

  “Is this a new development, with Henry?”

  “He ran into me at the bus stop, asked to bum a cigarette.”

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  Nessa shrugs, expressionless.

  “Anyhow,” Janeski continues. “He must have recognized you from the office?”

  “I guess.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  “Not at first.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, not now. But yes, Nessa, engaging in promiscuous activity, in dangerous risk-taking, is all, I imagine, related to your grief.” Her tone has become wholly professional—the Janet who cooked the lasagna has vanished. “There is someone in particular, a Dr. Roberta Hughes, who I think would be an excellent match for you. If you’d like I can give you her number and give her a call today to let her know you’ll be reaching out.”

  “I probably can’t afford to pay more than fifty dollars a session. Especially right now.”

  “Something you can discuss with Roberta. I do believe she’ll try to arrange something with you, though I don’t want to speak for her.”

  “I appreciate it, Dr. Janeski, I really do. And the lasagna. I’ll eat more later.” She nods to the plate where the lasagna sits, now cold.

  “Of course. You know that if you need anything you can call me, right?”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  Janeski stands. “When you’re ready, you’ll sleep in your bed. And if you’d like, you can call me and we can talk. Only if you’re comfortable, of course. I want you to know I’m here for you. We’ve gotten close over the years, haven’t we? I care about you, Nessa. I care about you tremendously.”

  “I care about you, too, Dr. Janeski.”

  “May I give you another hug?”

  “Sure.”

  They hug. Up close Janeski smells like a bar of lavender soap.

  “Here,” Janeski says, opening her purse. She hands Nessa a card. “Here’s Dr. Hughes’s number.”

  “Wait, so is it Dr. Hughes or Roberta?” Nessa asks.

  The psychiatrist’s eyes flash. “Something you should probably ask her.”

  “Will do.” Nessa walks Janeski to the door. “See you later, Janet.”

  * * *

  —

  AFTER JANESKI PULLS out of the driveway, Nessa storms down the hallway, into her bedroom. It’s a mess, still thrown apart from that night she’d raided her closet in search of a dress to wear to her mother’s funeral. Her anger, which she imagines as a big, blood-filled ball, dense as a tumor, flexes its muscle inside her stomach.

  She sits on the floor and calls Tanya.

  “Hey.” Tanya’s voice emerges almost immediately from the phone, as though she has been waiting for Nessa to call.

  “Hey.”

  “Are you crying?” Tanya asks.

  “No. Fucking Janeski just showed up at my house.”

  “Really?”

  “After two years of working for her, she asks me to call her Janet. What the fuck does that mean? I’ve earned it—now that Mom’s gone?”

  They don’t say the word dead to each other. They don’t use the past tense. Not because they’re in denial, and not because it upsets them; but they both worry about upsetting the other.

  “I don’t know,” Tanya says. She sounds distracted. “She’s a bitch. But she was probably just trying to be nice.”

  “And then during our conversation I kept calling her Doctor Janeski. I probably said it five times, and she didn’t correct me once. And then she tells me about some shrink she thinks I should see and she refers to her as both Dr. Hughes and Roberta practically in the same breath. She’s a sadistic, manipulative fuck, that’s what she is. She’s probably a terrible therapist.”

  “That’s fucked up,” Tanya says into the phone. And then, fuzzily, “Eitan, can you check the oven?”

  “What are you guys eating?”

  “Lasagna. Eitan’s mom is here. She brought it over.”

  “That’s what Janeski brought.” In a flash, Nessa is overcome with loneliness.

  “Ness, can I call you back? Bina, like, just got here.”

  “Sure.” She tries to sound upbeat, pretends that this doesn’t hurt.

  “You okay? You don’t sound good.”

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  Nessa hangs up the phone and starts to sob.

  Tanya hangs up the phone and puts a hand on her belly, breathes in, counting to three, and breathes out, counting to five. My mother is dead. It’s the sentence that’s been running through Tanya’s head every second of every day since it happened. Her mother was a victim of a heinous crime, which makes Tanya a victim of a heinous crime as well. Tanya has no interest in being a victim. She has no interest in being a survivor. Even those words—the gentle way attorneys use them when they’re around clients, always careful to hear which one the client prefers, as though it makes some huge difference—infuriate her.

  Jesse is sitting in a jail cell in Concord, Massachusetts, waiting for his arraignment. And if Tanya has anything to do with it—which she will—he’ll remain in a jail cell for the rest of his life.

  She’s been speaking to Nessa every day on the phone since the funeral, usually multiple times. They don’t speak directly about what happened. Instead they speak about the people who’ve reached out to them—old boyfriends and distant relatives, friends from summer camp, elementary school teachers. They talk about what they’re eating for dinner that night, the tuna casserole that Nessa’s neighbor brought over that instantly stunk up the apartment, the entire loaf of chocolate chip banana bread that Tanya ate in one sitting. They complain about their various physical ailments—headaches and stomachaches, aching muscles. They’ve both been experiencing tooth pain. They watch old episodes of Friends—their favorite TV show as teenagers—and sometimes they watch the same episode together over the phone, dipping in and out of conversation, laughing at the same jokes. That’s one thing that’s surprised Tanya. Despite how sad they both are, she and Nessa laugh often with one another.

  She still hasn’t been able to tell Nessa about the baby. Nobody in her family knows, except for her father, who has promised to keep it quiet for the time being, even from Simone.

  So here she is, carrying this literal secret, heavy with guilt. And all she can think is that it isn’t fair to Nessa. Tanya has a whole other family. A brand-new one, waiting in the wings. It doesn’t make the pain any less, the loss any smaller, but it dampens it. She’d be lying if she said it didn’t dampen it.

  * * *

  —

  ON HER FIRST DAY back at work, Tanya finds a pale green envelope on her desk; inside, a card: With Deepest Sympathy, it reads, in lavish cursive, signed by everyone at the courthouse. Most people have writte
n little notes. Thinking of you. Praying for your family. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.

  No doubt it was Marjorie who bought the card and circulated it around the office. Marjorie is the mother of the courthouse, the one who brings in cupcakes for birthdays, who organizes the Yankee Swap in December, who always remembers the names of everyone’s spouses and children. Tanya tucks the card back inside the envelope and puts it in her desk drawer, then opens her laptop and begins scrolling through the docket for that morning. The words swim on the screen in front of her and the image of Lorraine in the casket resumes its now-familiar spot in the forefront of Tanya’s mind.

  Her phone vibrates on her desk—it’s an unknown number, a telemarketer probably, but she grabs it.

  “Hello?” Tanya says into the phone.

  “Hi, is this Tanya?” asks a woman’s voice.

  “This is she.”

  “Hi, Tanya, this is Lily calling from Graze Salon. I was calling to see if you wanted to reschedule your appointment with Amanda from a few weeks ago?” The woman’s voice is loud and bubbly, blissfully unaware of the recent events in Tanya’s life.

  “Oh,” Tanya says. She’d forgotten all about the appointment. She fingers a lock of her hair and examines the ends, which are dry and starting to split. “Yes,” she says. “I’m glad you called.”

  “Great,” the woman chirps. “When can you come in?”

  “What does she have next week?”

  “Amanda will be out on maternity leave starting next week, but I’m happy to set you up with another stylist then.”

  “Really?” asks Tanya, surprised. She thinks back to her last appointment with Amanda and tries to remember if she’d looked pregnant, but she can’t recall. “Does she have any openings this week, then?”

  Tanya hears the tapping of computer keys. “Amanda just had a cancellation tonight at six thirty. Would that work?”

  “Perfect,” Tanya says, though this means she’ll have to leave work early. “I’ll see her then.”

  She hangs up and jiggles the touchpad on her computer, stirring it to life.