“What questions? It was clearly an accident.”
“I need to know if she turned off the propane tank.”
He nods at me to answer. “No,” I say, biting my lip. “I only turned off the switch. And it’s a really old grill.” I’m taking a dig at my dad with that. Mom wanted a new one. She was always cutting out magazine pictures of custom outdoor kitchens. She claimed the only reason Dad wouldn’t go for it is because he never did the cooking.
“There’s probably a leak in the line somewhere. On a hot day like today, that’s a dangerous mistake.”
“Yeah, got that,” I snap.
“Lose the attitude, Eve,” my dad warns, playing both sides.
The firemen look at the grill for another twenty minutes wearing full protective gear while my father and I watch in silence. Finally, the cute one declares the fire “accidental misuse,” citing that “something combustible must have hit the leak in the gas line.” They don’t mention what the flying combustible might’ve been, and my dad doesn’t ask. I can’t tell if they’re doing me a solid or suck at their job.
After they leave, we stand in the soot, looking at the mess. I ruined our patio. I could’ve burned down our house. Mostly I feel stupid, but there’s a small part of me that finds it funny. Mom would’ve laughed at this scene the way she laughed the day the washing machine hose detached and flooded our entire mudroom. She called it a this-situation-is-so-horrendous-it-is-absolutely-hilarious moment.
My dad looks beyond pissed, so I remove my smile. I guess you have to be my mom to pull that off. And as he so sweetly pointed out, I’m not.
Brady
My shrink looks like a cross between Albert Einstein and Abraham Lincoln. From Albert he inherited thick glasses and electrocuted hair; from Abe he acquired a lanky physique, hanging nose, and the stark impression that he’s usually right.
“Before we dig into a more natural dialogue, I’d like to run through a series of questions relative to your social history and spousal loss that will help me create a picture of your current state.”
I’m glad he takes immediate control. Now that I’m here I have no idea what to say. “Shoot.”
“Have you been sleeping well?”
“Yes,” I say, omitting bourbon’s role.
“Do you wear a seat belt each time you get in a car?”
“Yes.”
He carries on at a steady pace, reviewing my concentration level, work schedule, and eating habits. It runs like a legal deposition. Eve’s right. This is a waste of time. It’s not as if I’m going to tell this random man truths I’m not yet ready to confront myself.
“Has your interest level in other people changed during that time?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I no longer care about anyone except me and my daughter.” Dr. White stops firing off questions and makes a note. I’m pretty sure he writes it down as an exact quotation.
“Can you elaborate on that?”
“I used to joke around with colleagues, play squash, go to an occasional Patriots game. Maddy took care of everything at home, so work was my only real responsibility. The rest of our life was hers.”
He tilts his head to indicate he’s about to state something insightful. “Financial stability is a substantial thing to take on.”
“I thought so at the time,” I reply. He writes that down too.
“Do you work out?”
“Yes, daily.”
“Do you view yourself as a worthwhile person?”
“Yes, but I guess I probably shouldn’t.”
“Explain that.”
“My wife killed herself.”
“And that changes your value how?”
I consider what I’m willing to put out there. It might feel like a legal deposition, but it’s not. I can edit as I see fit. “Well … it’d be arrogant not to question what I did to contribute. Mostly I’m mad at her. I think, She did this to me. She left us. She had no right to do something that radical without informing me something was wrong in the first place.” The truth of it fills me with rage. No matter how much I neglected our home life, the salient point is that Maddy never said anything was wrong.
“What would you have done if she’d alerted you she was unhappy?”
“I would’ve fixed it.” Of that I’m certain.
Dr. White shrugs. “Okay, but she didn’t point it out, so you couldn’t.”
I can’t accept his easy out. Jesus Christ, I’m in a fight with myself. “I missed something. A hint. A clue. I didn’t pay enough attention.”
“Okay, we’ll circle back to that. What do you do for fun?”
“I don’t do fun.”
The click of his tongue suggests Dr. White doesn’t find my answer entertaining. “Be serious now, have you made any attempt to get out there since your wife died?”
“One time. Last Sunday. I went to dinner and a movie alone for the first time in my life. I won’t be doing it again anytime soon.”
“What happened?”
I don’t want to get into it. There was a time when I looked at people unaccompanied at restaurants like it was their fault. They were the type to sue their parents or sleep with their best friend’s spouse. Why else would someone my age still be alone? Now I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of those stares. I sat there waiting for my food, looking at people until they caught me, and I realized something: going out to dinner has nothing to do with eating. It’s about the conversation, or the celebration, or the hope that something will happen after dinner. That’s why the person alone is so disturbing—if all you want to do is eat, you can go to a drive-thru or get takeout. But I’m not going to say all that.
“What’s the point in putting your solitude on display? I can eat and watch movies in the comfort of my own home.”
Dr. White doesn’t disagree. “Give me a little more color, if you don’t mind. Share one specific detail about the night.”
“I don’t know. I thought the movies would be better than dinner. Who cares if you’re alone or paired up in a dark room where everyone expects silence. I took an aisle seat, only to get a glare from a couple that apparently left one chair free to be closer to the center of the screen, assuming no one would sit there. The woman got up to use the restroom as soon as I sat down, then switched seats with her husband when she returned, like I was a high risk for a cheap feel.”
This he does find funny. “Hmmm,” he says, when he’s done chuckling. “I don’t think you are clinically depressed.” I frown. I definitely want to be clinically depressed. “You look disappointed.”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat at how perceptive he is. “Well, like I said on the phone, I feel depressed.”
“You’re appropriately sad, and justifiably angry. You’re in mourning. But you’re doing it with a clear head.” I have an overwhelming urge to cry. “That’s good news, Brady. It means we can talk through the changes you’re experiencing, the hurdles you’re facing, and get somewhere without medication.”
I voluntarily confess my recent temper in the hopes he’ll up the ante. I want a big fat fix-it-all pill that I can chase down with ten milligrams of Ambien every night. “Your volatility makes sense,” he replies, unimpressed. “You said it yourself, you only have the capacity to worry about you and your daughter. That means your patience is on a short string. Your brain now deems everything else unimportant.”
“But it’s not just work. I lose my temper with Eve too.”
“Of course you do. You’re in survival mode. Seventeen-year-olds are terrible at dealing with adults in survival mode. It goes against every desire your daughter has right now. She’s grappling for independence and you’re looking to keep her safe; you have opposing goals. When anything questions the stability you seek, it sets you off.”
“Okay, so how do I fix it?”
He combs a hand through his wild hair and sighs. “You don’t.”
“Then why the hell am I here?”
Forgive myself.
Tears fall. However implicitly, I let this happen to my family.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Madeline
Rory is lonely, I repeat to Eve as they tackle “Chapter Three: Evaluating Limits.” Eve’s expression softens, but I can’t decipher what she’ll do with the information.
“Do you see how we got here?” Rory asks, showing a long workflow.
Eve purses her eyebrows. “Why can’t you test the limit by plugging in a value?”
“It’s a good thought. This is a hard concept, and that question proves you understand what we’re trying to calculate here.”
Rory knows the material. I shouldn’t have doubted her. Linda raised a daughter with flawless ethical boundaries; if Rory didn’t feel comfortable teaching calculus she wouldn’t have accepted the offer. My mom? Not so much. If I was taught anything it was that a good lie could ride you to the next argument.
The doorbell rings. “I’ll be quick,” Eve says, getting up from the table. It’s Paige.
“Whose car is that?” she asks, peering inside to investigate.
“My drug dealer’s—oh, errr—I mean, my math tutor’s.”
Paige smiles. “Feisty, are we? This is just a drop-off.” She hands Eve a bag of organic vegetables and a roasted chicken from the farmer’s market. “Just chop up all the veggies and sauté it for a nice succotash. The chicken will be fine in the warming drawer until dinner.” Eve gave up cooking after the fire, and I’m desperate to get her back into it.
“Thanks,” Eve says. “Hopefully I don’t burn the house down.”
“That grill was ancient. Don’t beat yourself up.” My message exactly.
“Oh, and here.” She hands Eve a Butterfinger from her purse. “I don’t know what possessed me to buy it, so don’t ask. But take it before I eat it.”
Eve’s heart pounds. Butterfingers were our secret obsession. We laughed about it all the time: of the candy bars on the market, Butterfingers seemed the most embarrassing one to love. It isn’t just the neon wrapper announcing from fifty feet away that you’re not indulging in, say, a protein bar; it’s the name. Butterfinger. Like butter fingers. Like you’re eating a finger-sized chunk of butter. We bought them every time we bought tampons, which we found doubly amusing.
Eve stares at the wrapper. She’s reading into it, exactly as I hoped she would. Our Butterfinger passion was truly an inside joke. If Paige felt compelled to buy one, I had something to do with it, which means my spiritual presence is real. “My mom and I loved these,” Eve whispers, more to herself than Paige.
“Really? I never saw her eat one.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.” Eve says.
Paige senses a shift in Eve’s mood, but doesn’t know what to make of it, so she gives her a hug and leaves. Eve returns to Rory, lighter with the perspective that I haven’t completely abandoned her.
Orchestrating mini moments of comfort is great, but Eve leaves in two months and I continue to ascend in little surges, so my timeframe to help is shrinking in both directions. So far, elevating hasn’t weakened my clout, but I’m nervous it soon will. I need to establish Rory as a permanent replacement while I can. I continue my initial incant. Rory is lonely. Rory is lonely.
Back and forth they go, evaluating wind speed, the efficiency of different containers, heat’s exponential decay.… Rory lost me during the introduction on the first day, but Eve leverages Brady’s gene pool to follow along. It’s amazing to witness Eve learning from her mind’s eye. She’s brighter than I appreciated. Eve always delivered good grades, but I assumed she had to work for it. She doesn’t, not really, not the way I did. Her brain operates in the fast lane, absorbing most concepts without much concentration, and once it’s there—zap—so it remains without notes or flash cards or zany mnemonic devices. If I hadn’t worked hard I’d have been a C student. I was motivated solely by the ambition to not end up like my mother (and, yes, I appreciate the irony of that). My father, who publically lamented having no sons, said he’d only pay for his girls to go to college if we earned straight As, no exceptions. Meg and I both knew he was the kind of man who’d look at a B + in wood shop and say, “Damn. You were so close,” completely ignoring that the rule was arbitrary. So we both got 4.0s. For Meg, it was a breeze. For me, English was the only freebie.
When I quit work to stay home my mom didn’t consider their college investment a waste. “She landed a great husband because of that degree,” she claimed, unaware people stopped valuing her opinion decades ago. “Brady wasn’t going to end up with some nitwit.”
My father wasn’t convinced. He pulled me aside and said, “You do realize what your mom has—the crazies and the drinking—is genetic. You squirrel away in a house all day long enough, you’ll end up a drunk. Don’t screw with your potential.” But there was no genius in me. I memorized information whereas Eve consumes it. It’s an important nuance. I could only recite what Eve understands.
Rory collects her papers to leave. I pick up the pace. Rory is lonely, Rory is lonely, Rory is lonely. “If you tackle the practice problems before Monday we can start in on chapter four.” Eve stares at Rory’s left hand, not responding. Typical of our society, she associates loneliness with lacking a man. “Earth to Eve,” Rory says, waving. “What are you looking at?”
Eve blinks, embarrassed to have been busted. “Sorry. I’m out of it today. I-I noticed, I mean, I was surprised that … well, not surprised but, are you married?”
“Divorced, actually.”
“Oh, sorry.”
Rory slings a blue tote over her shoulder. “Don’t be. I’m confident you had nothing to do with it.”
“Do you have children?” Rory stops mid-step. Her expression sags. “I don’t mean to be nosy,” Eve backpedals. “You don’t have to answer that.”
Rory regains momentum toward the door. “No, no worries. I don’t have any. Call if you struggle on those problems.”
Rory walks to her car with the same distant expression I observed that first day in the grocery store, only this time I intuit what happened. Her daughter is dead. Rory blames herself. She has more in common with Eve and Brady than I realized.
The usual lyrical flow of Rory’s thoughts crumbles into a litany of random observations as Rory tries to fend off her emotions on the ride home: what’s for sale, what needs to be repaved, what’s closed during normal business hours. She pauses in her driveway before going in, knowing she can’t afford a slump with her mother sick. “People need you,” she says aloud, willing herself motivated. The pep talk is well rehearsed but unsuccessful.
Greta is surprised Rory doesn’t ask for details about Linda’s day, but graciously takes the hint and leaves. After giving her sleeping mom a kiss on the forehead, Rory pours a tall glass of Chianti, and plops on the couch in the dark room. If you substitute the Chianti with chardonnay, the sight is similar to my early evenings after Eve got older and didn’t require as much doting.
Enveloped in a silence disturbed only by the steady click of Linda’s IV machine, Rory stares at a picture of her daughter smiling, revealing a first tooth popping through swollen gums. She has the same chocolate-brown hair as her mother. I cannot fathom the heartache and desperation of such a loss. Losing Eve would’ve taken me to that ledge without bait.
Rory looks older sad. Her mood deflates me. I’ve learned how to get through, but not what to get through. I wanted Eve to invite Rory to stay for dinner, not tip her into depression. I want—oh hell, I don’t know what I want. I guess to be better at death. It should at least be easier than life.
I turn my attention to Brady as he interviews new assistants, quick to notice that none of the candidates are over thirty or at all hard on the eyes. I’m horrified by the prospect of Brady turning into a gawking old man. I prepare to h
aunt some sense into him until I listen to his reasoning. His hypothesis is that, human nature what it is, The Fireman might be less likely to lash out at a younger, more vulnerable woman. The idea of it repulses him—he wants to be wrong. I find his analytical approach fascinating. It’s scientific self-awareness.
“What were the working hours of your last position?” Brady asks.
The stunning applicant looks rather peeved. “I already told the HR lady that.”
Brady is equally annoyed. “Her name is Meredith. Do you mind terribly sharing the answer with me too?” His tone makes it far from a cordial request.
“It depended on what quarter we were in, and also Mr. Breack’s travel schedule.” She wiggles in her chair like it’s tickling her.
Brady twitches at the immature display, happy to be irritated despite her good looks. “So your schedule is flexible?”
She folds her arms. “Not really. That’s why I quit.”
Brady pauses the interview to scan the rest of her resume. She’s been out of college five years and held four jobs. She never should’ve made it through the screening process. He makes a mental note to discuss the infraction with Meredith, then glances at his iPhone, pretending to read an important email. “I’m going to have to cut this short. Something’s come up.” He shoos the lady with the tight ass out of the room, relieved. He’s an asshole, but he’s an equal-opportunity asshole.
Watching the scene play out unnerves me. I recount all the times when, in the middle of a conversation and without any prompting, Brady looked at his phone, then dismissed me because “something popped up at work.” This lady was a rude, job-hopping idiot. What was my offense?
Eve
Rory looked so whacked when I ask about children there has to be more to the story. As soon as her car is out of sight I get on my laptop. It’s what everyone did when my mom died. They switched to a whisper as I passed, but teenagers don’t whisper well. They want to be heard so badly. Did you read The Townsman? She didn’t leave a note. Or, Go Boston said she might have been on meth. Or, The Globe said Wellesley College didn’t even pay her and she was there, like, all the time. My friends were happy to throw in details the articles missed. I assume it was Lindsey who made my dad’s excessive travel and my mom’s evening chardonnay common knowledge. And I heard Jake tell Noel that my parents had been fighting, a detail that had to come from John since they were bickering about a summer vacation the last time he was over.
I Liked My Life Page 12