by Alison Pace
“Alright,” he says, as if together they have reached some sort of mutual, beneficial-to-everyone agreement. He hauls his suitcase off the bed, wheels it across the hardwood floors. “Thanks, Stephanie, we can talk about this in three days.”
She doesn’t say anything. She waits five minutes, standing in their room. She thinks if she went downstairs right now that getting into her SUV and backing it over Aubrey, since he is already filled with prescription painkillers, would seem like a very viable option. She waits for the feeling to pass, and even after she’s heard his car pull away, it’s still lingering. And then it’s gone. And then she goes downstairs to get Ivy.
Once Ivy is safely secured in her high chair, making a game attempt at placing her entire plastic yellow dish in her mouth, Stephanie asks her favorite rhetorical question, “Do you want some mashed bananas?” and she wonders if maybe she could mash some bananas for Aubrey and then, when he gets back from Chicago, she could say, “Here, Aubrey, here, have some of this.” And maybe the potassium, because bananas are so high in potassium, could make it so that he had a little more energy, had a little more spring in his step, could give him that little bit of pep he seems to so desperately need. And then, the way you realize things in dreams, when you’re pretty sure everything might not be really happening, and eventually you’ll wake up, she realizes that these thoughts of giving Aubrey mashed bananas aren’t new. She’s thought them all before, when she didn’t know what was wrong with him, when she had no idea why he was this way. Now she knows. And she knows that bananas won’t help.
“Aubrey, honey, here, have a banana. It has some wonderful energy-giving qualities, and let’s talk about the fact that there are upwards of forty empty bottles of prescription pain medicines in your unplugged mini-fridge, let’s talk about the fact that in all likelihood what’s been going on here is that night after night, weekend after weekend, you’ve been taking every opportunity you can get to go down there, take Vicodin, and stare at the computer?” just doesn’t have the right ring to it.
The phone rings, and Ivy says, “Da,” and Stephanie knows at once that it’s Aubrey on the phone, that he hasn’t even gotten to the train station yet and he’s calling to say he’s turned around, and he’s on his way back. He’s calling to say that yes, he’s got a problem, as she has probably already surmised from the vast multitude of prescription bottles that he was hoarding down there in the workroom, or now we’re calling it a basement, in what had to have been a gigantic, enormous (really, Stephanie, it was enormous that’s what it was) cry for help. He’s calling to say, I want your help. He’s calling to say, with your help, we’ll get through this, we absolutely will.
“Hello?” she says.
“Stephanie, hi. It’s Caryn. Do you know Melissa Quinn? I think you’ve met? She actually lives right down the street from you, on the other side of Linwood? She and I are going to power-walk over to Starbucks? It’s such a nice morning. Do you want to come with?”
Stephanie looks at Ivy, drooling sweetly in her high chair. She looks around at her beautiful kitchen, opening up into the family room. And she can’t think of anything to say. “Okay,” she says, “okay.”
Once they’ve all power-walked and are sitting in the window at Starbucks, once they’ve moved one of the large, inviting chairs to make room for the three strollers, and once everyone is in possession of a large amount of caffeine in a white cardboard cup, Caryn turns to Stephanie and asks what must be a completely normal question. It’s the kind of question a person might ask another person whom they have recognized as normal, like them, as one-half of a perfectly normal, you could even say golden, couple.
“What are you guys up to this weekend?”
And the correct answer, the truthful answer, would of course be, “Oh, me, you know not a lot, I’ll just be swimming alone in a sea of despair.”
“Oh, you know,” Stephanie says, “not a lot, Aubrey’s at an Internet conference of some sort in Chicago.”
“They have conferences on the weekends?” Melissa asks.
“Yes, this one’s on the weekend,” Stephanie says as the pit in her stomach, the one that’s been there for a while now, gets a bit darker, more solid than it already was. She hadn’t thought of that. How many things has she not thought of? “I think they’re golfing tomorrow or something,” she continues, “and then on Monday and Tuesday they have meetings.” That could be it.
“What does your husband do again?” Melissa asks, and Stephanie would like to find a way to be able to say, it’s not a great day, really it’s not a great time.
“He works in sports marketing,” she says, and she wants to just leave it at that. Really, she does.
“Of course,” Melissa says, nodding happily, as if the whole world isn’t falling apart. “He’s very sporty looking. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but your husband is just so cute and sporty.”
“No, I don’t mind you saying that,” Stephanie says.
“That he is,” Caryn adds in, and Stephanie smiles, sure he is. Or at least he used to be, cute and outdoorsy and sporty, before he was someone who merely dressed himself in Patagonia and EMS to then spend the rest of the day in his workroom (or are we calling it a basement now?) taking pills and doing God knows what else. God knows what else, she thinks, and wonders if it’s possible that there could be more.
“You guys are originally from the South, right?” Melissa asks, and the word relentless pops into Stephanie’s head.
“Uh, no,” Stephanie says, “Aubrey’s from Connecticut and I grew up in D.C.”
“D.C.’s a great city,” Caryn offers, and this is just a conversation, this is just what people do, when they sit at Starbucks with their strollers.
“It’s nice,” Stephanie says.
“Are your parents still there?” Melissa inquires.
“My mom lives there,” Stephanie says. “My dad lives in France.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth almost automatically, she thinks, Except that’s not true, except that’s a lie. She thinks of how many lies there must be, wonders if anything she thought was real yesterday will actually turn out to be true.
“That’s so cool,” Caryn says, “I didn’t know that.”
Stephanie smiles. Yesterday she thought her husband was having an affair because she never lost the baby weight, yesterday she would have liked that to be a lie. Today she doesn’t think it would be so bad if that were true. She pushes absentmindedly at the stroller, sitting side by side with Caryn and Melissa, who are both doing the same thing. They all look alike. They look like suburban moms and how long has she been a suburban mom, and how long has she wanted to be?
“Do you get to France to visit a lot?” Melissa asks.
“No,” Stephanie says, “you know, not so much.” She stares out the window at the people strolling by on the street, the people not in here, not inside Starbucks.
Caryn’s daughter, Ashley, wakes up right then, and Stephanie thinks that’s good, that’s a blessing because she doesn’t want to talk about Aubrey anymore. And she doesn’t want to talk about France. For the life of her, she can’t imagine why she brought that up. Except that maybe it makes it easier to understand, easier to wrap your head around how much you have been lied to as of late, if you’ve been doing some lying yourself. Caryn reaches over and pulls Ashley out of the stroller and takes off her jacket. Stephanie watches, expecting the baby, once she has emerged, to be decked. She often is. She’s a baby frequently seen in smocked dresses, even just for a day around the house, a stroll, or a trip to sit in the front right corner of Starbucks. Today though, Ashley is resplendent in a long-sleeved white T-shirt that says NEW! written in white on top of a green field. The green field is one of those shapes so often associated with comic books. A cloud that has jagged pointed edges, and if it were a comic book you might see in it BAM! or POW! but here, NEW!
“Cute shirt,” Stephanie observes.
“Thanks,” Caryn says, her voice an octave or two higher than it
normally is, her gaze focused completely, adoringly on Ashley. She reaches out a hand, spreads her fingers wide, and places her outstretched palm on Ashley’s chest, right over the NEW! and leaves it there. Ashley never takes her eyes from her mother’s. She makes a few quick jerking movements, and says quickly, “Gah.”
“She is a cutie,” Melissa chimes in.
Stephanie wonders which came first, the drugs, or the rest of it, if there is a rest of it. Maybe it’s just the drugs, though somewhere in some other reality, perhaps the one she’s tried so hard not to be a part of, she can hear someone saying to her, It’s never just the drugs, Stephanie.
“Stephanie?”
“What’s that?” Stephanie says, confused for a moment, blinking, disoriented, taking a moment to make sure that it wasn’t Caryn or Melissa saying to her, “It’s never just the drugs, Stephanie.” She’s pretty sure it wasn’t because after all it’s not as if she’s told Caryn about the drugs. Of course she hasn’t told Caryn. If she’s not going to tell Meredith, if she’s gone to such great lengths (she can’t even think about it) not to tell Meredith, she’s certainly not going to tell Caryn.
“I said, how’s it going on the Zone?”
“The Zone?” she repeats. Caryn smiles and nods. Stephanie looks for a moment at Ivy. She focuses in on her sleeping face, her little self wrapped inside a blanket, inside her stroller, and it does help, just to see her there, just to know that with everything else, she does exist. And if Caryn and Melissa weren’t right there, she thinks she’d thank her.
“Steph?” Caryn says again, and there’s a mixture there that’s so easy to point out, an almost equal division of impatience and concern. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, sorry. I’m just so tired,” she answers, willing herself to stop thinking, willing herself to take her own best advice, to not think so much about everything. Because, really, and she’s always thought so, it’s as good advice as any. Melissa and Caryn nod in agreement. And she thinks that’s nice of them, and she thinks, really they’re nice, they’re okay. “You know, I don’t think I’m doing so well with the Zone.” Only she was, she actually really was, but then everything happened. Even though it wasn’t as if anything actually happened, it was more that what had been happening for a long time (how long?) was finally revealed.
“Did you try the Zone Perfect Delivery?” Caryn asks. Stephanie looks to both of them again, and she thinks if she were a different type of person she could tell them. Maybe not the whole story, because she’s not sure she even knows it herself, but she could tell part of it, something.
“I’m having a little trouble with perfect right now,” she says instead and they think she’s just referring to the Zone, to the delivery service, but in a way she thinks it’s the biggest admission she’s ever made.
“It can get hard, figuring out all the ratios, which is why I’m a fan of the delivery service,” Caryn says. Stephanie nods.
“Do you know the Zone made my hair fall out?” Melissa offers.
“I thought that was the South Beach Diet?” Caryn asks her, quite seriously.
Melissa looks back at her blankly for a moment. “You know, maybe it was. It can get kind of hard to keep track.”
“It can,” Caryn concedes.
“Maybe it was the South Beach Diet. Either way, losing the baby weight is just really hard,” Melissa says.
And for a moment, a moment that maybe she’ll look back on as blissful, Stephanie forgets everything for a second and adds in, “I mean look at Grace, she never really looked as good after she had her baby.”
“Grace from Will & Grace you mean?” Caryn asks.
“Uh-huh,” Stephanie says.
“Yes,” Melissa says, “I know exactly what you mean.” And they all stare out the window, and Stephanie thinks that maybe, when this is all over, she and Melissa might be friends.
“Anyway,” Melissa says after a while, “do you know what I’m doing now, and I love it?”
“What?” Caryn asks. Stephanie is listening.
“French Women Don’t Get Fat.”
“I’ve heard great things,” Caryn says, nodding her approval.
“Hmm,” Stephanie says, “maybe I’ll try it.” As she says it, she thinks that maybe this, the baby weight, as hard as it has been to fix, maybe it’ll be the easy thing. Maybe out of all the things that need fixing, this is the only one she can.
As soon as they leave Starbucks, as soon as they each go their separate ways, to spend the rest of their weekends with their husbands or whatever it is they’re going to do, Stephanie heads right over to Bookends and picks up a copy of French Women Don’t Get Fat from the large kiosk right by the cash register. It’s a pretty book, pink with a nice illustration of a woman on the cover, a woman who isn’t fat. She pays for the book and they put it in a bag for her. She pushes Ivy’s stroller with one hand, and holds on to the book with the other. She has this feeling. This feeling like, with both hands, she’s holding on for dear life.
twelve
db sweeney
Meredith pulls on a sweatshirt. She pairs it with a pair of black microfiber/fleece combo pants that she ordered from the Athleta catalogue and has, ever since, been quite in love with. She laces up her Nikes, the same ones from before, the ones you could run in, were you so inclined. Athletic clothes. As she roots around for her keys, she thinks she should, especially with the weight loss goals and all, endeavor to be more athletic. An endeavor perhaps larger than an outfit. Not triathalon training or anything, she doesn’t think she’d have to go that far. Though it certainly wouldn’t fall inside the areas of her expertise, she imagines that what with the swimming and the running and the biking, and quite a lot of it, that training for a triathalon would take a fair amount of time. And, really, who has that kind of time? So, somewhere between an outfit and a triathalon.
To Barnes & Noble, she thinks as she heads out the door, The Atkins Diet Revolution.
“Hi,” she says softly as she walks by the doorman. They don’t actually open the doors here. If they did, she’d have more to say, she could say, “Thank you,” of course, for opening the door. The doormen here, they more sit behind a desk. She’s not sure which doorman it is today, and it’s not because she’s oblivious, it’s more that she’s just never had a strong relationship with the doormen, porters, handymen, lobby staff who rotate through her building. She isn’t the type to require a lot of help in the apartment. She can change a lightbulb or unclog a drain as well as the next person, and the staff seems to change a lot, that happens in the big buildings. It all seems so anonymous.
The air is cool as she walks out onto Third Avenue, and she remembers that it’s now March. It’s actually very nice out, considering it’s March. Nice weather in New York doesn’t happen nearly as often as you’d think it would, especially if you get your ideas about New York weather from watching all the movies set in New York, so many of them taking place in the midst of some really beautiful weather. It’s not like that, not nearly often enough. Remembering her recent thoughts on athleticism, she decides to walk across the park, over to the West Side, to the Barnes & Noble right by Ouest. She wonders now if maybe there was a reason she kept getting out on that corner by mistake. And anyway, she does like the Upper West Side.
It’s true, she does long to call neighborhoods in New York other than the Upper East Side her own—she’s had her moments with many of them—but with the Upper West Side, it’s different; it’s more now than just longing, it’s crossed the line from longing to lust. Years ago, she never would have predicted it. Years ago, in fact, when she felt romantically inclined toward Gramercy, toward lower Fifth Avenue and University Place, she wasn’t particularly interested in the Upper West Side. She didn’t think there were any good restaurants there, even though that wasn’t actually true as Picholine had been there forever, as had Café des Artistes, and even Café Luxembourg.
But yet, she thinks, as she heads west, entering the park, and veering off the path, look a
t the restaurants there now. Ouest, of course, and Aix, Telepan, and ’Cesca, Per Se, and an outpost of Rosa Mexicano. She could do an entire series, a survey if you will, on Upper West Side restaurants. She should move there.
She fishes her iPod out of her bag. Have mini iPod, will travel. She pauses for a moment, considering if she should select a certain artist, album, or mix. She usually does, but there’s something in the air, the air that feels so much like springtime (and for someone who doesn’t exactly love winter that feels a little bit like freedom). As she heads through Central Park, in a burst of spontaneity, she selects Shuffle. That John Denver is currently playing does of course make her question the whole “leaving the music selection to chance” decision, but she doesn’t let herself regrab the iPod and rearrange it. Instead, she pulls her sunglasses out of her bag and puts them on as John Denver sings, “I’ll walk in the rain by your side.”
She approaches the large intersection at Seventy-ninth Street and Broadway, the one with the Apthorp building (which she loves) on one corner and a Gothic stone church on the other. Right as she’s crossing, suddenly her attention is caught. A small tent has been set up right in front of the church, in the small space that’s there, just to the side of the subway entrance. This tent, it’s the kind that doesn’t have sides or walls, just the top. It’s red and white striped and has red triangular flags hanging down from the edges, the types of flags that always put Meredith in mind of just-opened manicure shops. And also, this tent, it seems to be magnetic, the way it’s pulling at her. Meredith has to pause for a moment and very seriously contemplate if the metal poles that are holding up the red and white striped material, if actually they are made of magnets and it is she who is made of metal in the manner of the Tin Man. She’s not really the type to say, Oh, look at the tent, she’s always been the type to just walk past, and she’s always been okay with that. And yet here she is, feeling so pulled. If she were in a science fiction novel, the words “right into the center of its vortex” would surely make an appearance. And so she goes there, to the tent.