There Will Be Lobster

by Sara Arnell

  After he left, I constructed a fantasy of what it would be like to be in a relationship with him. He could move in with me. We could coordinate our schedules and say things like:

  “See you later, at home.”

  “Want to meet up for a drink after work tonight?”

  “Can you pick up eggs on your way?”

  “Do you need anything washed?”

  “Let’s have brunch!”

  I quickly wiped this from my mind, knowing that as my aloneness escalated, so did my panic for intimacy. This wasn’t supposed to be about anything but touch and human contact and sex—sex that was supposed to relieve some stress and confirm that I could still be desired. It did the trick.

  I was coasting downhill and didn’t know where to turn for support. I was drinking more and more to numb myself. I would turn on every light in the house and put on The Real Housewives. I decided that reality TV star Lisa Vanderpump was my spirit animal. I wanted to be her and wipe my recent behavior out of my mind. I couldn’t make images of me stumbling drunkenly around my room and waking up fully clothed on my bed disappear from my memory. So not Lisa. I wished I’d blacked out more so at least I wouldn’t have to remember how out of control I was. I checked my email to see that the last eight messages I’d sent to my daughter in college had all gone unanswered. She hates me, I thought. Or maybe she’s just busy, I reconsidered. She is in college, after all, and has a lot of work to do. I tried to console myself with this belief, but it didn’t work. I decided to call her. She picked up unenthusiastically.

  “Hey Mom, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” I said, “I just called to say hi.” She said hi back, which is all it took for me to burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” I spat and began to sob uncontrollably. I told her I didn’t know why I was crying and that I just felt so bad and missed her so much. I reminded her that I was all alone in the house with only the three dogs. I called them her brother and sisters to try and get her to laugh, but she didn’t. I realized that there was nothing funny about this moment for me or for her. I continued to sob into the phone and blow my nose. She said comforting things like, “Please stop crying, Mama,” and, “It will all be all right.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t stop crying. I’m just so sorry.”

  She pleaded with me to stop crying. She said she had to go to class, so I needed to calm down so she could hang up. I tried to pull myself together for her. She told me to blow my nose. I listened. She’ll be a great mom one day, I thought.

  “I’m OK now.” I told her I just needed to get it out. I said I knew that she thought I was having a midlife crisis. She said she loved me and that she’d call after class. I knew she wouldn’t, but said OK and goodbye. I felt out of control, powerless, and lost. I felt like my daughter felt sorry for me and that this pity was, in itself, pitiable. I knew I had to pick myself back up…somehow.

  I Googled “midlife crisis.” 233 million search results were listed. At least I’m not alone, I thought. I began to like the idea of having a midlife crisis. It seemed like a normal thing. I needed to feel like there was a way out for me—that there was this tunnel called Midlife Crisis that I just needed to crawl through in order to come out on the other side, back to where I wanted to be, back to where I started. I liked the idea of being in crisis because that was at least something. Being in crisis meant that I had decisions to make and options to weigh. A crisis is awesome, I thought, because at least conflict, confusion, and emotional turmoil over life decisions are better than the complete paralysis of hope and spirit that I’m experiencing. A crisis, I concluded, was better than nothingness.

  I thought about what variables I should consider in order to speed my way through the crisis tunnel. Should I buy the convertible or enroll in a six-week cooking school course in Florence, Italy? Tattoo or piercing? Shoes or bag? I started with deciding that I needed to call my daughter back so she could hear that I had truly calmed down. I wanted to tell her about my Google search and its ensuing epiphany, but I remembered she was in class. I felt alone again and imagined the next time she saw “Mom” appear on her phone screen that she would roll her eyes and say, “Ugh, I can’t deal with this now.” I concluded that she wouldn’t come home during her next break and that she would stay at school for the summer too. I saw her drifting away into an abyss of avoidance and absence. I sat and stared ahead at nothing. Lips pursed. Eyes blank.

  I was losing the ability to perceive myself as present. Even on the rare occasion that I saw other people, I avoided participating in conversations and dialogues. I no longer tried to connect. I just nodded and half-listened. I felt like an uninvited guest in my own body. I could barely remember who I had once been. I hated past-life reminiscences that began with the phrase “Remember when” because I could never remember when. I was always surprised to hear from my sister what my former self had done.

  “Remember when we were kids and used to climb out the bedroom window onto the roof and hide? No one could find us.”

  “No.”

  “Remember when you wanted a leather jacket so badly that you put one on layaway for months? You worked every day after high school at Ben Franklin to get the money to buy it.”

  “No.”

  “Remember driving Grandpa’s Cadillac convertible with the top down and the eight-track tape player blasting? You always wore a straw hat with a scarf attached that tied around your neck so it wouldn’t blow off. You liked to sit in the back seat and sip Baileys Irish Cream from a small flask, while wearing white gloves.”

  “I wish.”

  None of this was even vaguely familiar. None of it sounded like me. This was the me that would have been sitting in front of my makeup mirror putting on blue eye shadow and pink blush, checking the light settings and magnifying imperfections that needed to be hidden. This was the me that wanted to dance. This was the me that was overdressed and overflowing with possibility and hope—out with my younger sister, trying to figure out the world, wanting to leave the small town we grew up in for something bigger. This was not the me that just threw away all of my bottles and tubes of makeup and skin care because they had expired over a year ago. They had never been used. This was not the me that made up reasons why I couldn’t go out and needed to stay in for the weekend, every weekend. This was not the me who was always on the verge of a cold or flu and dressed in bulky layers for warmth and invisibility. This was not the me who wanted to crawl into my childhood bed and have my back rubbed so I could fall asleep.

  One day my son called from Utah and after listening to me sadly whine, suggested that I do my version of My Name Is Earl, the TV show.

  “Reconnect with your old friends.”

  “Make up with them for dropping out of their lives.”

  “Think about starting fresh,” he said.

  I figured that he didn’t want me to visit again anytime soon. I flew to Utah to see him the summer after my daughter’s first year at college—the summer when she rented an apartment in Vermont and didn’t come home. We went to a rooftop bar in Park City with a bunch of his friends and drank Mind Erasers until we couldn’t think straight anymore. I guess they worked. I continued by throwing back shots of whiskey for the amusement of him and all his friends. I acted like one of the undergrads instead of his mother. We ditched his car on Main Street and took a taxi back to his house. I imagined he wanted me to make a new friend and stop asking to come visit him.

  “So you don’t want me back?” I asked.

  “It’s not that. You’re always complaining that you don’t have anyone to do things with.”

  “I don’t.”

  “So go make up with your friends; find some new ones.”

  “You think I’m a loser.”

  “I love you, Mom, and want you to be happy. Do what you want. You can always come here and hang out—not even a question.”

  This My Name Is Earl thing
actually sounded like a good idea. Another TV show that I could model my life from. All The Real Housewives women did was fight with each other. At least Earl wanted to make up with people from his past and move forward positively.

  Reaching out to people I basically blew off for years in the name of work and motherhood and general carelessness was hard. Or impossible. I made list after list of people I should reconnect with. I found most of them on Facebook, some on LinkedIn, and others I had email addresses for. I didn’t want to call anyone. I was afraid of confrontation, of being bitched out and hung up on or, worst of all, just being ignored or blocked. I was scared. Email or messaging was the safer, more cautious (or cowardly) way to go. But I didn’t do either. I looked at the list every day. I had the names on a sticky on my desktop. It became a constant reminder that I was more alone than ever. My past friendships seemed to be just that: past—something gone forever that I couldn’t revive. I should delete this sticky, I thought every time I opened my laptop. But I didn’t. It was self-punishment, and I believed I deserved it.

  I caught my reflection in the mirror and saw something old and sad staring back at me. It was like a Hollywood makeup artist aged me for a role with a latex face mask complete with age spots, wrinkles, and an overall expression of lifelessness. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a few stringy strands greasily framing my face. How is it possible, I thought, to have turned from someone who got up, dressed up, took the kids to school, went to work, and ran a business into this dirty, unkempt mess? I thought about washing my face and hair, but even this proved too hard to initiate. Instead, I scooped up the dirty strands that were too short for the ponytail and tacked them up with a hair comb. That’s better, I thought.

  My days were starting to mimic each other and blur. Every day was like the day before. Every week was just like every other: I get up and go downstairs for coffee; I bring it back to bed and drink it while watching TV; I think about showering but don’t; instead, I change my underwear and put on a clean pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt (I make sure my clothes are clean, since my body is not); I mindlessly watch TV in bed for a few hours; I feel hungry so I get in my car, drive to the deli, and order a turkey, lettuce, and mayo sandwich on white bread; I ask for the child size since it has less meat—I don’t like that much meat on my sandwich; I bring it home and eat it in the kitchen in front of the TV, watching whatever; I do this for a few more hours.

  Then, I try to accomplish things: I shop for food, or stuff much less necessary than food; I go to one of the three garden stores where I live and look at plants; I buy a new plant a week (I have a house full of plants, half of which are dying because I forget to water them); I putter around until dinnertime then open a bottle of wine and swill it as I make something to eat or order in; I keep the TV on in the kitchen and go upstairs to get back in bed—I like hearing the noise from downstairs because it makes me feel like I’m not alone; I turn the TV on upstairs too, finish my wine, and fall asleep.

  Chapter 14

  Smile Therapy

  “Everyone thinks I’m sick,” I told my daughter when we talked on one of the rare mornings she picked up my call. “I look like I have a permanent flu. Every time I go out and see people I know, they ask me if I’m OK. They look at me sadly and say, ‘Oh, do you have a cold? So sorry.’ I guess I look like I just rolled out of bed to get a container of soup and medicine from the pharmacy. Like I only emerged looking this shitty because I was in dire need of sustenance and medical supplies.”

  I seemed like an unwell person. My clothes were soft for comfort. My expression was lifeless. My mood was sullen. There were bags under my eyes, and my skin looked dull and dry. Fine lines had turned into full-fledged wrinkles. The kind that needs more than cream to make them go away.

  My daughter had finished her first year at college and stayed in Vermont for the summer too, which I had predicted. I knew her winter break and internship at home were enough for her. I was not easy to be with. But she promised to come home for New Year’s with her new boyfriend. Two months and counting and I would have her here again, and this time, I told myself, I would be the mother she expected.

  “Maybe you should try to smile more,” my daughter said kindly after seeing my inanimate expression on FaceTime. “There’s something I read about called smile therapy. It’s a real thing. All you need to do is smile, and it triggers hormones in your brain that help you feel happy.”

  “Why do I want to trick myself into feeling happy?” I asked her.

  “It’s better than nothing. It might be helpful.”

  “Helpful for what?”

  “Just…life.”

  I went to the market to buy prepared food, and when I was checking out, I felt my eyebrows furrowing for no reason in particular. I immediately worried that my sadness might look like anger on my face. I burst into a huge smile to counteract my frown. The woman behind the counter looked at me quizzically and smiled back. It felt good. I felt happier in that moment. I thought there might be something to smiling. But by the time I got to my car and loaded in my bags of food, I could feel the frown coming back. One brief moment of uplift and already I was back on the floor.

  I tried to find the words to explain how I felt each morning, waking up without a job to go to, without kids to mother and drive around, without people to talk to, without meetings and conference calls and lunch from the greasy take-out place across the street. I looked at the shower on my way downstairs, mentally noting that I would not be using it today or tomorrow or the day after that. I timed how long it took to make a Keurig coffee—pod to pour—and established four minutes as the approximate time I needed to be out of bed before crawling back in, hot coffee in hand. I propped myself up on three pillows, spread out my legs, then slumped to a half-sitting position. I watched myself do this maneuver in the blank, black screen of the large TV that popped up electronically from the foot of my bed when I hit the “on” button. I balanced my coffee on my stomach like it was a tray and stared at my reflection. I was too lazy to get an actual tray so my body would have to do. I continued to try and come up with words or phrases to describe how I felt. I wanted to say things like:

  “This is the first day of the rest of your life.”

  “Now I can do all the things I’ve dreamed of doing.”

  “I’m making a bucket list and knocking it out.”

  Instead, I was only able to come up with single, meaningless words like:

  “Fine.”

  “OK.”

  “Good.”

  I tried to find a clever, easy answer to “How are you?” which was becoming a very difficult question and one that rendered me speechless every time someone waited for a response. I thought about how I really was as I stared at my dark visage in the TV. Looking at myself this way, I knew that I was unlike any version of me that I had previously encountered. There was something dirty about my very being. Something a little grungy and spoiled, like rotting, clotted milk. It was a feeling that came from deep inside me, unaffected by any surface or physical change I made to my appearance. I imagined I smelled sour from every pore and fleshy fold. I could wash and perfume myself, but like Lady Macbeth, I could never feel clean. Was this lingering grossness the manifestation of who I was and how I treated people? Was it karmic revenge? I couldn’t stop thinking about a conversation with an acquaintance I ran into at a business event, right before I stopped working.

  “My, how the mighty have fallen,” he said, when I let him know my business was going to close. He quickly tried to backpedal by saying he didn’t mean it that way and that he just meant that he was sorry. He asked if he could get me a drink, and I said, “Sure.”

  “So you really think I have fallen?” I asked when he came back with my wine.

  “I’m sorry. You know what I meant.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “C’mon…don’t make me feel bad.”

  “My
, how the mighty have fallen,” I repeated. “Well, at least the only place for me to go now is up,” I lamely joked.

  “Right,” he said a bit too cheerfully.

  I couldn’t keep up the banter required for any further conversation. We couldn’t get away from each other fast enough. I downed a few glasses of the free wine and left.

  That had been about a year ago, but those words echoed in my head.

  My, how the mighty have fallen.

  I realized I couldn’t shake this comment. It was stuck to me. It was a part of me—an extra appendage that was always there, in the way, in my line of sight, in my psyche. It was hanging from my side, slapping me with every step. Punishing me. This is why I feel dirty, I concluded. I feel gross because I’m the cause of my own mess and undoing.

  My, how the mighty have fallen.

  It was beginning to make a little sense. It was beginning to sink in. Memories from years and years of work life came flooding back, playing themselves out like videos on the blank TV screen that I was staring at.

  I remembered a time when my assistant came into my office to update me on something that I had asked her to do, and I barked at her. I said, “I’m busy. I can’t talk now. You should know better than to just walk into my office and interrupt me. Get out.” And I remembered her face—it had the look of pain mixed with confusion mixed with sadness. That face has never left me. I couldn’t shake how I made her feel. I couldn’t shake the look on her face.

  I remembered that I could have cared more.

  I remembered that I had a temper.

  I remembered that I pointed fingers.

  I remembered scene after scene of my own shameful behavior, cringing and sinking further down in bed, under the covers and out of view of the TV screen. I pressed the power button on the TV remote to make it retreat down into its hiding place at the foot of the bed so I wouldn’t have to look at myself anymore.