So I stopped saying I’d do stuff. And after a while I stopped getting asked. And now, if I say I’ll do something, they look at me real hard and say, Really? Are you sure? They don’t actually expect me to show up, of course, and I usually don’t, but I want to. I really want to. Sometimes I even sit outside in my car crying because I know that if I went in, I’d just ruin it for everyone. Then I drive home to spend the night binge-watching Christmas movies, grieving for all the holidays I’d fucked up and the fuckups still to come.
My Christmases as an adult have always been weird because I made them weird.
For instance, one Christmas Eve I went to dinner alone. The boyfriend had wanted to take me somewhere, but he would have made me shower and change and, you know, talk to him. I loved him, or I thought I did anyway, but I didn’t want to talk to him, really. When the time came, I’d forgotten altogether what day it was. Once I realized it, I resolved to eat somewhere besides my car or my bed. I hated almost every restaurant, because of the people mostly, but I liked to eat, so I thought, Fuck all of you, why shouldn’t I be able to go to some gross chain restaurant and eat some nasty cheap food when I want to? It’ll give me the shits, but it’ll stop me thinking for a while.
The restaurant I chose that night wasn’t a fast-food joint, but it was packed, because it was Christmas Eve, and people were celebrating already. I had to beg them to let me in, even though I was clearly dining alone and possibly from another planet that didn’t have Christmas. I stood there waiting by the entrance, my nose pressed up against the glass like some Dickensian orphan, hoping I was invisible in my dirty coat and boots. Isn’t she that girl from that place? someone whispered, and I felt the most seen I’ve ever been.
We wouldn’t usually do this, they said, but it’s Christmas. They put me in the corner behind a plant, so I wouldn’t bum out the other diners. I should have gone to McDonald’s, I thought, but the thought of being surrounded by fry-throwing teenagers, unaware of the shitstorm that was life coming for them, was too much for even me on Christmas.
My clothes under the coat were vaguely smart for once—I didn’t have anything else clean that late in the year—but as I sat down, I realized I still had on my disgusting fingerless gloves from work. I’d cut my hand the day before on one of the old rusty kennels, and the gloves hid my bandage. It was a perk of the job, the tetanus shots. Most of my waking hours then were spent trying not to bleed on things. The hostess, a girl young enough to be my daughter if I’d been a teen mom—which my mother wouldn’t have minded—must have thought I was in a rush, and she offered to make my order takeout. No, I thought, it’s Christmas. I want to use cutlery. Besides, the gloves only added to my pathetic spectacle: the girl with the bandaged paw, eating alone on Christmas Eve.
Sometimes a mountain of nachos and a beer or two is all it takes to stop feeling shitty. I didn’t care if people stared or looked away; I had my book and enough melted cheese to make the world disappear.
Just as I was almost in a food coma, a waiter came over. I immediately assumed he was going to ask me to leave, or worse, try to take my plate before I was done, but instead he asked me what happened to my hand.
I told him my sorry tale, about how I worked at a decrepit dog shelter and the kennels were all falling apart and I’d caught my hand on something sharp. It was nothing, I said.
But you’re safe now, he said, and the combination of his tenderness and the beer and the painkillers I’d necked in the car earlier made me go a bit woozy. I believed, in that moment, that if a crazed gunman burst in, or there was a sudden zombie apocalypse, this waiter would protect me.
Most of the time I go around a little numb, but sometimes I feel things pretty hard, and these flashes of feeling are why I don’t want to be medicated.
Once, not long after Emma left for Ibiza, I was a little drunk and I decided to call her. Don’t you remember when we used to feel everything? I said. I was grieving our youth. I remember, she said. It was exhausting. That was when I knew I’d lost her. She’d grown up without me, and it was devastating.
But that Christmas Eve, alone in that restaurant, a not-ugly waiter was not only talking to me, he wasn’t repulsed by me. I felt like I might be human after all.
When I got home, the boyfriend was playing some computer game where you have to kill everyone. Have you eaten? he said, but not in an accusing way. I said no, because if we spent the night eating takeout, we wouldn’t have to talk.
Happy Christmas, he said when it came, trying to clink egg rolls with me like they were glasses.
It’s not Christmas yet, I said, and I thought he would try to argue, but he didn’t. The two of us not fighting about whether it was Christmas was really quite magical.
* * *
Once I’ve fixed the computer for my mother, I start edging toward the door. Just as I’ve almost made it, she looks up and notices what I’m doing.
I expect you have to go, she says. Yes, I say. She doesn’t get up or try to hug me, just looks at me and tilts her head like a bird, or an alien.
We did have some happy Christmases, you know, Janet. I think she’s going to say, Before you children, but she doesn’t. She just smiles, and I know a good closing shot when I see one.
When I reach the safety of my car, I close my eyes and just sit for a while. I know she won’t be watching from the window; we’ve already given each other all we can for one day.
She’s got me thinking about those happy Christmases.
One of the happiest I remember—besides the one when my nephew took a dump—wasn’t a bullshit childhood memory where I got some kind of Sparkle Barbie or saw snow for the first time. I was fifteen, and I had a fake ID, so I went to this local dive bar where all the cool kids from school went. I liked this boy in the year above me who was popular. I already had needs. I was a little drunk, but I knew exactly what I was doing. I went there with the sole intention of seducing this boy. I had a teenage girl’s idea of seduction, from what I’d seen in magazines and movies—I knew I was supposed to look at him, then look away, lick my lips, mimic his body language, laugh at his jokes—but I really couldn’t be fucked with all that, so I just wore something low-cut and grabbed him. I dragged him outside and kissed him. I think that’s a crime now, but back then it was just what girls like me had to do if they ever wanted to kiss a boy.
Anyway, this boy had no idea who I was, but he went with it because it was Christmas and he was a little drunk too. The kissing was wet and rushed and disappointing, the way things with boys often are, but it was mine.
I stumbled home, but it felt like floating. When I got in, my folks could tell I was a little drunk, but it was Christmas and I was happy, so they let it slide. I gave them both a kiss and went up to my room and lay on my bed and I felt changed. I had gotten drunk, enough to feel invincible instead of my usual invisible, and I’d gone out and gotten what I wanted.
I felt happy that Christmas, in my bubble, for a little while anyway. I believed things could be different, that I finally had some power. Only now that I’m mad as hell do I wonder why my tiny, fleeting joys are always to do with boys. I don’t even like them that much.
I wonder if a pill might stop me thinking with my vagina.
* * *
My family never visit me at work, and I appreciate it. Why would they? It’s not like you can window shop for dogs, and if you were going to, you would go to one of the fancier shelters in the city, one that wouldn’t hire me because of my depressing demeanor, not that I would want to work there. They’re so bright and shiny. I feel sad for the dogs who don’t feel like wagging their tails, and there’s a lot of them. We don’t ask our dogs to put on a show for the public. If they want to hide indoors and shake a little, that’s fine by us.
I once mentioned to my mother that we always need volunteer dog walkers, and my mother said, Isn’t that your job, Janet? Yes, but it’s one of the nicer parts and I lik
e to share, I said, but she was my mother, so she knew I was lying. I think she thought I was trying to trick her into coming, so I could video her getting pulled down the street by a giant Rottweiler and stick it on YouTube or something. I wasn’t planning to, but it was tempting. She said she doesn’t have the right shoes anyway. My brother once told me he was thinking about getting a dog, but then he got a cat, so he’s dead to me. My father came once to bring me some mail. He said hello to every single dog, even the ones snarling at him. Call your mother, he said. Yes, boss, I told him, because everyone wants to be the boss of someone, even if it’s just dogs.
10
People are always surprised at what a tight ship Debs runs. Everything is by the book. My theory is that she murdered her husband and doesn’t want anyone snooping around. Maybe that’s why she keeps that cop around too. More likely, though, that this is her one shot at not screwing something up. Her kids might have no chance, but these dogs will get saved thanks to her.
A volunteer called Maggie does our home checks, where we visit the dogs’ potential new homes. The new owners seem really put out that we do these; they look at how run-down the shelter is and assume they’re just doing us a favor by adopting the dogs, which they are. But we like the dogs more than we like them, and we don’t want to fuck the dogs up even more by sending them to live with another shitty family when they already think most humans are the worst.
Debs always wishes she could do the home checks herself, because nowhere is good enough for her dogs—which is exactly why she can’t do them. Even if we had a corgi and the Queen of England came in her carriage to see about it, Debs would have to go to the palace just to check it was up to her standards.
I won’t do them, but for different reasons: I always want the families to adopt me too. I’m secretly jealous of all these dogs who are getting their second, or even third or fourth, chance at life. I’m so exhausted of taking care of myself that I’d happily curl up wherever anyone would have me. I’d be no trouble, really. I just want to be taken care of. When a home check needs doing, I pretend I have more important stuff to do, like clean a degenerate Yorkie’s anal glands.
It’s a problem. Me wanting people to adopt me when I pretend I don’t even like people. I’m not even an orphan; my parents aren’t that bad. (Don’t tell them I said that.) It’s just this feeling I have, that Good Janet might come out in a different setting, that Bad Janet is bad because nothing changes, least of all the feelings.
Which was why I finally gave in to this Christmas pill pressure. I mean, it was made for me. How many of us can say that? Soon, I’m sure, all our meds will be specially formulated just for us—or at least for our star signs, maybe—but for now it’s just us, the Janets.
I don’t tell anyone about my decision, and no one asks me, which I appreciate. I was sure my mother would be calling me every day to see if I’d come to my senses, but once I’d fixed her computer, I heard nothing for weeks.
The minute I decide this, I feel lighter. As if I might not even actually need the pills now. The decision itself is the change, a shift in my thinking. I am open now, instead of closed. I worry that Melissa will smell it on me and start planning fun activities we can do once I’m too drugged up to fight her off. I picture myself lying on her sofa, unable to move as she and her kid decorate me like a tree and force-feed me novelty cookies till I choke. Sometimes Melissa is straddling me, forcing a Santa hat on me, saying, Wear the hat, Janet, in an increasingly menacing tone, and I am powerless to it all.
I want to be powerless to it all. I want to give myself over to Christmas. Take me, Santa. I hate how horny I can get about the wrong things. Let’s hope these drugs kill your sex drive the way the regular ones do.
I have to tell my doctor the news. Part of me thinks it’s all a prank—part of me thinks most things are a prank—but the rest of me suspects he’ll get some obscene bonus or something. I make an appointment, feeling smug because for once I’m doing what everyone wants me to do. It’s good news for him and capitalism and my mother, bad news for any scrap of self-worth and integrity I was clinging to.
* * *
When I walk into his office, I expect him to hug me. Balloons, maybe, a piñata filled with drugs, some sort of celebration. Congratulations! Welcome to the world, baby girl!
But there’s nothing. As usual, everything is more fun in my head. People think it’s all storm clouds and the Smiths up there, but really it’s happy storm clouds and the jangly Smiths songs you can dance around to holding a branch.
He doesn’t even remember why I’m there, has to look through his records. Oh yes, here you are, Janet, filed under Beyond Help. After all those years working on me! Trying to get me to take some pills, any pills. For his sake, for my mother’s, for my poor long-suffering boyfriend’s, for the world’s. He did everything but hold me down and force me to take them. Now he just hands me a prescription, which says:
1 tablet to be taken once a day for 8 weeks starting November 1.
½ tablet to be taken once a day for 1 week starting December 26.
Mandatory group meetings.
I find this last bit most disturbing of all.
What’s this about group meetings? I ask, wondering if I can still change my mind.
I am not a group person. Once I thought I’d join the Brownies, until I realized it was a front for evil. I think I was hoping for a coven, but all I got were more opportunities for other girls to make me feel like shit. I had to be dragged there kicking and screaming every week. It put me off of church halls for life. The words group and meeting have been my trigger words ever since, along with five-year plan.
But my doctor doesn’t know any of this. Because he doesn’t actually know me, just that I have janky ovaries and a reoccurring urinary tract infection. He wrongly assumes that I’m basically human, that I must like hanging out. Sure, in parks when I was fourteen, but not in the last decade.
There’s a song that goes I’d like to hang out but who doesn’t.
I doesn’t.
He sees the group-meeting panic in my eyes and dismisses it with his hand. If he weren’t a doctor I’d probably punch him. I’m trying to start over, and punching a doctor is not a good start to anything, except a movie, maybe.
It’s nothing, he says. When you get your prescription, they’ll tell you what to do.
Why can’t you tell me? I say, but he ignores me.
The meetings are for your own good, he says, like he’s sending me away for a rest cure.
Will you be giving me a pill for my birthday too? I say, only half-joking.
Would you be interested in that, Janet? he says, scribbling something on his pad. If he ends up patenting my birthday pill idea, I want full credit, or blood.
Maybe that’s how it will be from now on. Maybe this is the world now and I never saw it coming. Maybe I’ll get a pill to take before every occasion that requires a show of happiness: Christmas, birthdays, weekends, sexual encounters. Just to make sure I feel like I’m supposed to. Or to make sure I stop making other people feel bad.
My mother thinks I do it on purpose. A few years ago, I wore my dog-shelter clothes to her wedding anniversary dinner. I had no choice—I was coming straight from work—but she thinks I did it on purpose. I wasn’t even going to go, but I had no food at home, and I thought it was better to show up as I was than not at all. I was wrong. On the way I even stopped and bought them a gift—a new pair of kitchen scissors; they’d been needing one—but apparently this was the wrong gift. Symbolism, I guess.
My mother tells me all the time that I’m never appropriately happy. As if there’s a list of things in life we’re supposed to be happy about, and I forgot to memorize it. Once I told her I didn’t really think too hard about when it was okay to be happy, because most of the time I was sad. She didn’t like that either.
It actually makes me a tiny bit happy how clichéd my re
lationship with my mother is. Makes it easier to navigate, like a textbook exercise.
When I was younger, I thought I might want to be happy when I grew up. It was something I might at least want to try, like making my own bread, or a home enema. I quickly came to realize, though, that it’s the kind of thing I could never sustain in my regular life, like bangs or a gym membership.
I had a boyfriend once who never smiled, and I never minded. When I asked him about it, he said he tried it once, but it just felt weird and looked weirder and people wanted to punch him when he did. I said I could see how that could happen. So he just stopped. Even though everyone was doing it, and people did sometimes comment on how he should smile more or at least once, it just wasn’t for him. I wonder now if I should have tried harder to make things work between us, but turns out sometimes you do need your boyfriend to smile at you now and again, just so you know your outfit isn’t too awful or they like how you’re touching them or that the food they’re eating isn’t poisoned.
It’s a phenomenon anyway, not smiling. Most women have had some man tell them to Smile, love, as they walked by, or some bullshit like that, so maybe he was trying to change the gender stereotype. Or maybe he thought women actually still liked moody tough guys who were too cool for smiling. I have no idea. Boys are weird.
I’m not miserable, not really, any more than the people on all those happy pills are actually happy. We’re all somewhere in the middle. But no one wants to talk about it.
Sad Janet Page 7