But I’m a human woman, so I just say, Yes, boss, and head off to my meeting.
There is a definite change in the room this week. People are humming at a different frequency. Someone brought in sugar cookies, and they look like shit, but there’s enough sugar in them to make your brain forget they’re essentially little drug delivery systems.
There have been some developments. It’s been five weeks now, so that’s no surprise. I still don’t know anyone’s names, but some people have bonded. I wonder what’s wrong with me, but only for a second before I remember how my brain is wired.
People really seem to be getting down with the whole Christmas thing. People are whipping out their phones, checking their calendars, talking about leaving early; it’s as though everyone has somewhere else to be. Shopping or caroling or whatever it is that normal people do this time of year.
The only one killing the mood is Brian, who says he’s been getting the shakes most mornings. Karen says that’s just his body getting used to the meds. She doesn’t ask how much coffee he drinks, but I’m guessing it’s a lot.
One thing is obvious: we’re all very sweaty. Some people think it’s the drugs, but I know it’s the sweaters, and the busted AC, and the stress.
Someone asks me if I’ve done all my shopping yet and I tell them I need toilet paper, which confuses them, so they laugh and say, Oh, Janet, you’re hilarious, and I think, Maybe I am?
Karen has a new haircut, but no one mentions it. I feel sad for her, but not quite enough to say anything about it either.
The pharma guy is not here. For a second, I think it’s because of me, but then I remember what my mother said once about how things aren’t always about me, on my birthday probably.
Karen asks if anyone is having any problems, and of course the girl with all the side effects raises her hand. Only this time her problems are not with the medication but with her mother.
For once, Karen tells her that’s not what she meant.
Everyone seems to be getting on well.
The pharma guy shows up late and waves and says sorry and sits by the door like he usually does, pretending to be writing stuff in his sitcom notebook. At one point I glance toward the door longingly, just as he happens to be looking up, and I think he thinks I’m looking at him longingly, but I’m not, and I feel bad for us both, but I don’t smile because I don’t want to be a tease, so I shrug and he just looks back down.
On the way home, I stop to get a double order of mozzarella sticks and I eat them in a car park and cry because it’s all too hard. Tomorrow I’ll get up and do it again.
* * *
The next day, my mother texts me.
Will you come to the mall with me? Mum x
I appreciate the x, I know it’s hard for her.
She knows I’m supposed to be able to do this now: Go to the mall at Christmas with my mother without wanting to murder her. It was on the TV ad. The girl who was me, but with better everything, was shown out in the world with her TV mum shopping and saying hi to Santa. It was some fucked-up shit. Good luck with that, I remember thinking. There is no pill strong enough.
This is the first year my mother has ever even dared to ask. I’m starting to think this pill was invented by mothers to get their daughters back.
I text her back: when?
Saturday, she replies. I should have known.
It’s the ultimate test: Saturday at the mall, two weeks before Christmas. I won’t be surprised if this is all part of the experiment and I get a point for every holiday activity I complete successfully. Truth is, I like my malls abandoned. Even teenagers don’t really want to go there anymore, they’re drawn to them out of some bullshit programming about what being a teenager means.
There isn’t enough space in a text box for me to remind my mother of all the failed shopping trips in our shared history. All those back-to-school outings that caused so much pain, just to find a sweater. I feel sad for all those sweaters. I assume parents today just buy shit for their kids online and save themselves the heartache.
My mother? She still believes in making memories in person, even the traumatic ones.
I didn’t know why things were so difficult with my mother. The mall was always supposed to act as a buffer for us, but it only highlighted how impossible our relationship was. She couldn’t make it either, which was why she took all those pills, but she’d pretend she could till she died. Sometimes I think she was secretly proud of me for resisting, for not even pretending. But not this time. Not when we have important gift buying to do, and Christmas right around the corner, ready to suffocate us all.
* * *
Melissa asks what I’m doing on my Saturday off. We only get one a month. I was never really that into them. People make such a big deal about the weekend, like it’s going to save us all, and has it ever?
When I had a boyfriend, we spent Saturdays doing the usual couple stuff, as if we were obliged to. We always picked going to the movies, because they didn’t require much of us, and it felt like we were together because we were sitting next to each other, even if we were miles away in our heads. Sometimes in the dark I would put my hand on his knee, because I could, but if he put his hand on my knee it would be too much. We would emerge bleary-eyed, like, What just happened?, and we’d go somewhere to eat, and then we’d go home and drift apart again. We’d done the bare minimum to keep us together another week. It was desperately sad.
I tell Melissa I’m going to the mall with my mother. Just saying it brings up bile in my throat. Melissa immediately goes all heart-eyes, telling me about every trip to the mall she’s ever taken, not just with her mother but with anyone.
I took my daughter to see Santa there last week, she says.
I’m not seeing Santa, I say, but I know I can’t avoid him forever.
She laughs because of course I’m not seeing Santa, I’m a grown-ass woman.
I want to say, You can go instead if you like, but I know I can’t.
* * *
Saturday comes around too quickly.
As a joke, I root around in my closet and dress up like the girl in the drug ad, but it’s all lost on my mother. She tells me to meet her in the pharmacy beforehand—she needs hand lotion urgently, like if she goes one minute longer with her dry old-lady hands she’ll die. Right there in the drugstore there’s a poster for my pill, with Model Me wearing the same shirt and jeans, and I stand right next to it, but even then she doesn’t see.
Those posters shouldn’t even be up now, I think. I mean, even if you do want in, at this stage it’s way too late. Maybe they’re trying to soften up candidates for next year.
My mother asks if I need anything. She means hand lotion, or tampons, and I probably do, but having her buy them for me is weird. The old me might have said something snotty, like, A happy childhood, but it’s Christmas and I’m really trying not to be a bitch. And I don’t really even believe in happiness, technically, so actually I’m good, thanks. Some gum, maybe.
Why did you bring that coat? she says, looking at my overcoat like it’s made of an actual dead dog.
Because it’s winter, I say.
But we’re indoors, she says, then realizes that this isn’t the time, that she’s got me here now, and just shakes her head and heads out onto the sidewalk, talking about all the things she still has to buy and do before the big day, like it’s a wedding.
She’s walking and talking with tremendous purpose, but not going into any stores, and I’m just thinking about what I can scrounge up to eat to make this all worth it.
I made some Christmas cookies, I tell her.
She stops dead, and a woman and her child walk straight into us. You did? she says, mouth open.
I don’t tell her that I ate them all that night, all by myself. I think I was supposed to take them to work, or to a neighbor, or to eat just one myself before giving
the rest away, and I definitely think I was supposed to be listening to carols and not Metallica when I was doing it. But I made them, so take that, everyone who thinks I’m totally dead inside.
I start walking again, and she catches up to me. She starts telling me more shit she needs to buy and do, but this fails to hold my attention, so she tells me I look nice, which is a lie. I don’t return the compliment, but it doesn’t matter, because she volunteers that she thinks she doesn’t look that bad for a woman of her age. I smile and think about food. If that’s not getting down with the holiday spirit, I don’t know what is. Christmas is working its magic, helping me to hold my tongue. I just wish it would hold my mother’s shopping bags, which are full of crap she’s bought for people I didn’t even know were people, cousins I swear she’s making up just to highlight how empty my life is.
We walk into the Gap, and I walk straight out. She doesn’t even notice. Twenty minutes later, she comes out with a bag and says, Underpants! For your father. I don’t know why men can’t buy underpants on their own but they can’t. Then the Gap is the existential hole in all of us hiding in plain sight. I let her drag me into some women’s clothes store. She pretends to be looking for something to wear for some party, saying, This is nice?, and holding it up against me, and I keep saying, For you, yes. Then she tuts and says, If I had your figure I’d wear all sorts of things. She hasn’t seen my figure in years. She has no idea what’s going on with it and never will. Finally I tell her a really ugly dress is great and she buys it and thinks we’ve bonded.
At one point, I ask her why my brother never has to do this kind of thing with her. My brother, a stranger mostly, who I see on holidays and at interventions, is smarter than I am, and moved a good few hours away, which proves it. He likes cakes, that’s all I know about him.
Because he has his own family, she says, and it hurts because it’s supposed to.
I help her pick out a sweater for my father. He’ll like it as much as he ever likes a sweater, which is not that much. He doesn’t want gifts. He wants a different family, perhaps, or better still, to be out at sea alone.
It feels like I’ve been there for hours—it’s only been one—and I can feel Old Janet creeping back in, like the magic is wearing off. Finally I get her to buy me a disgusting Christmas pretzel, covered with red and green icing and glitter, which I proceed to get in my hair. My stomach makes a noise like, This isn’t food, Janet. My mother watches me eat it and drinks her coffee. I think she’s going to say she’s proud of me, but she says, Do you even own a comb? At least I know what I’m getting for Christmas now.
We’re breaking each other’s hearts over and over, which is exactly why I avoid this kind of unnecessary interaction.
Then it’s off to pick out some overpriced bath junk for her friend Jackie. You remember Jackie? she says. With the hair? Like I’m face blind but good with hair.
I need to leave soon, before I start ruining things.
My mother can tell I’m getting scratchy. I’m not done yet, she says, dragging me into another store.
Can I build a bear? I ask. Why? she says. I say, Why does anyone build a bear? She looks at me like, What planet are you on?, but then she just laughs, like I’m her hilarious gal pal and she can tell my father we had a hoot and I made a joke about a bear and he’ll say, What joke, and she’ll say she forgot but that Janet is doing great, she can see a real change, and my dad will sleep better knowing I’m less likely to murder my mother.
The last stop is a shop that sells only candles, which sounds like a fire hazard to me. Aren’t you going to ask me if I need any candles? I ask, and she can tell I’m done.
I walk her to her car, because I’m a gentleman, and she says, Only two more weeks, Janet. It sounds like a threat, though, coming from her. Like, Don’t you dare go backward now, Janet. Stay in the light.
See you at Christmas, I say, and kiss her on the cheek.
I get in my car, and I’m overwhelmed with relief. That was almost some Grade A mother-daughter bonding shit, I think. It’ll give me something to tell Karen at the next meeting anyway, if I feel like it, which I probably won’t. More likely I’ll do what I always do, which is pretend it never happened. Instead it’ll lurk below the surface, so that whenever I see a mother and a daughter on TV I’ll get a twinge inside that I’ll dismiss as indigestion but really it will be the pain of what might have been, and what’s still to come, and how I’ll never find the words for any of it, with my mother or with anyone.
Love is like gluten, I should have told the doctor. I can’t process it properly.
21
I knew my boyfriend would show up at some point. I knew someone would tell him what I was doing. All he had to do was read the news. Or watch the commercials on the news.
Our mothers have probably been texting each other this whole time, meeting for secret lattes under the guise of swapping books. I imagine my mother saying something like, Oh, she’s much more manageable now, I’ve just been shopping with her, it’s just wonderful. And she’d say, You know, I’m sure they can work it out, and his mother would say, I hope so, as I was really hoping to turn his room into a home office. Or maybe she’s hoping for an exercise room, or whatever else parents do when their kids leave to stop themselves from turning the kid’s room into a shrine. No one wants to cry on a cross trainer. I can, but you probably shouldn’t.
I have to find a way not to think about it all. For too long I’ve let my mother’s voice take up space in my brain—hers, and his mother’s, and maybe all the mothers’ voices, definitely a few TV mums. It’s not my job to make them happy.
I’m half expecting him to be there at my parents’ house on Christmas Day. Hiding behind the door, maybe holding mistletoe or some bullshit. I’ll have to swerve his kiss, tell him kissing is a symbol of the patriarchy and that I have no intention of touching him or any other man for some time, maybe ever. Then my dad will probably try to kiss me—on the cheek, relax—and I’ll have to give in because he’s my dad and probably holding a carving knife. My mother will say, Look, Janet! Look who’s here! Isn’t it nice? And I’ll look at him and look at her and look at my dad’s knife, and I’ll have to leave.
Thankfully, though, he turns up before that. Gets it out of the way.
I’ve just gotten home from another long day at work. My body aches. My dogs are barking, I used to say when I got home in this state, and he’d look at me like, What? My dogs! My feet! I would say, but he’d already ruined it. My one joke. That’s not a thing, he would say. It must be, because I just said it, I’d say, and it was like we’d forgotten how we even got here, how we ever thought this would work, but we couldn’t say that out loud because both our names were on the lease and he’d just ordered a pizza.
Tonight I don’t even have the energy to take off my coat and boots. I’m just lying fully clothed on my bed. It’s technically still our bed, but I’m not going to be the one to remind him that his mother bought it for us. That is weird on too many levels.
I could easily fall asleep like this and then just get up and start again tomorrow, I’m thinking. Taking off clothes just to get up and put them on again—that seems stupid. So does washing off your makeup just to put it on again, so I mostly don’t bother with that part. So I’m lying on the bed in my coat and boots, like a corpse at the beginning of Law & Order, when my phone goes off.
Are you home? he says. I’m outside.
I’m home, I say.
Can I come up? he says.
You can come up, I say. I’m already mad at him for making me get up.
Hey, he says.
Hey, I say.
We slept beside each other for three years, isn’t that weird? I want to say, but I don’t because I might not ever want to talk about that again. Cutting things out of my life is what I’m good at.
Our mums had coffee, he says, knowing it will make me uncomfortable, but to be
fair it’s also the only sensible way to start the conversation. I fucking knew they would, so I don’t act surprised.
So, you’re doing this pill, he says.
She told you, I say.
How’s that going? he says.
Fine, I say. I’m full of joy now, can’t you tell.
He lets out a big sigh then, like it’s the one giant sigh that sums up our relationship.
Why are you here? I say, because I want him to not be.
I just wanted to see how you are, he says, and he tries to touch my arm. Maybe he thinks no one has touched me in a while. When we were together, he was always touching me when I was trying to pretend I was invisible.
How am I? You fucked me up big time and now you’re sniffing around again because you think I’m taking something that might make me more like the girlfriend you wanted, I want to say but I don’t. Maybe he knows it all already. I definitely remember putting all that in a text to him, but I can’t remember if I sent it or not.
I’m fine, I say. Then, just to hurt him a little, I’m good.
I have never been good, my whole life. According to him, it’s because I won’t let anyone make me come. Boys are great.
I actually have to be somewhere, I say, partly so he knows I really am changed now, but also because I do have to get to my meeting.
So that’s it, he says. You’re just going to pretend none of this happened, all those years?
Yes, I say.
It’s only been a few months, but I’ve already cut it out of me. I maybe started cutting it out of me while we were still together, but I spare him hearing that. In a few years I’ll cut this stage of life out of me, and I’ll probably keep moving that way until I can’t anymore.
Once he’s gone, I sit down in the hall with my back against the door.
Sad Janet Page 16