Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single

by Heather McElhatton

  I sit down and the Zen teacher rings a gong. He tells us to sit cross-legged on our mats, hold our palms loosely in our laps, close our eyes, and push away all thoughts. He says our minds should be clear and pure, like a cold mountain brook flowing over the world without resistance.

  What unfolds before me is an unstoppable spool of horrible memories and vivid daymares. I remember every ex-boyfriend I ever had, every bad date, every mean thing anyone ever said to me. I remember fuck-ups at work I’d forgotten about, horrible fights with my mother and sister, and the haunting memory of a pet gerbil named Dice who died because I forgot to give it water. “Just follow your breath,” the instructor says. “Breathe deep.”

  I open one eye to see if anyone else might also be having a panic attack, but no, they all seem blissful and serene. I would be blissful and serene, too, if I didn’t have to spend all my time keeping Mrs. Keller from sneaking liver onto my wedding menu. I could sit here like a zombie smiling at nothing if my whole world wasn’t going to hell in a Jesus-fish handbasket.

  “Clear your mind!” the teacher says. “Focus on your breath. All your thoughts can be put on a shelf for now. You’ll get back to them later. Just breathe in and imagine you are filling yourself with clear blue water with each breath.” Okay, then we would be drowning, I think, but immediately I put that thought up on the shelf, although that shelf is getting crowded and things are starting to fall off. It’s hard to clear your mind when it unspools like synaptic copper wire, which tangles and chokes you.

  The more I try not to think of things, the more I think of them. Each thought sparks and fires, igniting the next and then the next, and they all crowd around with grenades and guns in a cranial coup d’état. My memories are out to get me. After the meditation, the girl with green eyes comes up to me and asks me how I liked it. “Fantastic,” I say, “really soothing. Really, um…” I’m fighting back tears and that’s just stupid. I’m at a Zen center for freak’s sake.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Life gets so stressful,” I say, my voice getting so high-pitched that probably only dolphins can hear it. “Sometimes I just want to end it all, you know? Just not wake up?” I look around. I sound a little hysterical.

  She smiles. “Life has a way of continuing,” she says.

  “Plus, killing yourself is not as easy as it sounds,” I chirp, forcing myself to pull it together. “I’ve researched it. You have to really, really plan it out. My old roommate’s cousin jumped off a building because he hated his life and he even wrote I HATE MY LIFE on a piece of paper and safety-pinned it to his sweater before he jumped. Turned out he didn’t kill himself; he just paralyzed himself from the neck down. Can you imagine? How much does he hate his life now, right?”

  The soothing girl tips her head the way the RCA dog does when he’s listening to a gramophone. I’m so far removed from her groovy vibe, she’s probably not even sure if I’m speaking English. I’m mortified and so I go out into the mediation garden and sit on a stone bench while I wait for Christopher to pick me up.

  I watch a little pebble fountain, which bubbles like a brook. A cheeky little sparrow hops down and starts to peck at the paved walkway. Poor guy. I know these little guys stay in Minnesota through winter, but how? He could fit in the palm of my hand and his heart must be no bigger than an almond. How could he live through a blizzard?

  I check my pockets to see if I have anything to feed it, like maybe I’ve stashed a whole-grain muffin in the lining of my coat. I even consider walking to the corner store, but I know Christopher will be here any minute. Poor little bird. What does it eat? It looks hungry. The sparrow finds a cigarette butt that has rolled to the edge of the path and starts pecking at it. It must look like bread. What’s a cigarette butt doing in a Zen garden? The sight of this little sparrow with his almond-size heart pecking at someone else’s careless trash is too much. I think of Mrs. Biggles and I start weeping.

  “I don’t think this counts as meditating,” Christopher says, suddenly coming down the garden path. He sits next to me and tucks an arm around my shoulder. “Although Buddha did say to live is to suffer, or something like that, so you’ve got that part right.”

  “I can’t cry right now. We’ve got professional photographs tomorrow.” I dab at my eyes and we sit there for a minute, the fountain bubbling, the bird back in his tree. “I don’t want to get married,” I say. It just pops out like a beach ball that’s been held under water. I expect Christopher to look shocked or worried or even angry, but he just tilts his head against mine.

  “I know,” he says.

  “You do?”

  “I’ve known since he asked you. No happy bride gets a subscription to Good Housekeeping the week she gets engaged.”

  “They have helpful hints,” I sniff.

  “I know. You just don’t seem happy.”

  “What will make me happy?”

  He sighs, starts to say something, and then stops. “Shit. I got nothing. Can we just get some whiskey or ice cream?”

  “No aphorisms? Not one?”

  “‘When it rains it pours’?”

  “No good.”

  “‘Life is not about waiting for the storm to end, it’s about learning to dance in the rain’?”

  “Just shut up, and let’s get ice cream. I want rocky road.”

  “That’s funny!” he says, coming along behind me. “Get it? Rocky road!”

  “At least life can’t get any worse,” I say. What an idiot I am.

  It’s three in the morning two days before the wedding and I’m on the phone, pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

  “What do you mean, the police station?” I ask. “Was he arrested?”

  I’m told no, Brad wasn’t arrested. Not even formally charged. He’s just being held along with all of his other friends who threw him the bachelor party. It’s Brad’s lawyer on the phone, a myopic nasal drip who makes sure he says absolutely nothing every time he speaks. He tells me Brad will be released shortly and he’ll make sure he gets home safely. Brad can explain the rest.

  I’m panicked; I call Christopher. No answer. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to call my mother or Hailey. I can’t think of anyone else I can call at three in the morning, so I call Ted. He’s groggy and a little out of it when he answers the phone, so it takes a few times of me repeating myself before he starts to catch on.

  “Brad had a bachelor party?” he says. “Why didn’t I get invited?”

  “He got taken to jail, but they won’t tell me what for.”

  I hear a deep sigh as he readjusts the blankets or something. I never thought of Ted in bed before. “Well, it probably has something to do with girls,” he says. “That’s what usually does it.”

  “Girls?”

  He clears his throat. “Prostitutes.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Don’t panic, I’m just telling you I’ve had a few buddies who wound up in trouble at their bachelor parties and it’s either too much booze or a hooker.”

  “Oh, please let it be booze!” I pace up and down the kitchen floor. He tells me everything is going to be all right, and I always believe Ted when he says that. “God, I’m sorry,” I say. “This is so awful of me to call you. I just didn’t know who else I could tell. You know you’re invited to the wedding, right? You were always invited, I just thought you wouldn’t want to come.”

  “I am coming,” he says. “I’m Christopher’s date.”

  “You are?”

  “Yep. He said it’d be good for me and his boyfriend can’t go.”

  The other line beeps in and Ted says to call him back if I need anything, including a ride downtown to pick Brad up. I tell him it’s okay, I think it’s covered, and plus, Brad would never do that for him. “I know,” Ted says. “I wouldn’t do it for Brad either, but I’d do it for you.”

  On the other line is Brad. I’m hysterical. I’m crying. I start shouting at him I’m so fr
ightened and out of my mind, so he hangs up on me.

  He calls back a minute later. “Are you calm now?” he snaps. He’s been drinking. I can hear it in his voice.

  “What happened?” I ask, trying to keep all hysteria, worry, anger, disgust, judgment, and despair out of my voice.

  “It was just some mix-up,” he says, “no big deal. I’ll be home in twenty minutes. I think this cabdriver can find it. Can you find it, buddy? Yeah, he says he can find it.”

  I sit at the dining room table for what seems like an hour, staring at the napkin holder. It is the same napkin holder Mrs. Keller has in her house.

  Nickel-plated doves.

  This sensation in my stomach, this gnawing pit, is getting wider and wider until I feel like I’m being swallowed whole. I can’t do it. I can’t marry this man. I know I thought it was everything I wanted, but it isn’t everything I wanted.

  Then the back door swings wide open and there’s Brad with his red parka askew and his hair messed up. He’s grinning.

  “Had a little trouble,” he says.

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, just trouble,” he slurs, waving his hand, “the guys got dancers and they…”

  He stops talking and stands there staring at the floor.

  “They what?”

  “Then the police showed up.” He stumbles. I lunge to catch him before he grabs the counter and steadies himself. My heart is rapid-fire pummeling in my rib cage. I can hardly breathe. “Did you do something with one of the dancers?”

  He starts to say something, raises his hand, and then pitches forward, cracking his head on the edge of the barstool and passing out on the floor.

  I rush to undo his shirt and put my ear on his chest. He’s breathing, thank God. That’s when I see something red below his navel. It’s like clown paint. Big, red, oily greasepaint. I undo his pants. It’s lipstick, smeared down to his abdomen. I fish his flaccid penis out, like a little, sticky hairless mouse in my hand. The base of it is ringed with red lipstick.

  He groans and I rush to the phone and call the big house. I don’t know what else to do. If I call an ambulance, they’ll see the lights anyway. We are fish and this is our bowl. Maybe I’ve already died. It feels like I have and I’ve been reincarnated as Ryan Seacrest, the doomed goldfish on the top of the microwave.

  Ed is the first on the scene. He’s wearing quintessential old-man striped pajamas with leather slippers. “All right,” he says, slinging an arm underneath Brad and hoisting him up. He walks/drags him to the bathroom and turns on the shower. Then Mrs. Keller arrives, her hair in a gauzy netted thing, her lavender bathrobe cinched shut.

  She goes into the bathroom, too.

  I collapse at the kitchen table and put my head down on my arms and weep. I can hear them in the bathroom, the happy family.

  “There, there,” Mrs. Keller says to me, returning from the bathroom. “Ed will take care of everything. You’ll see. Let me make you some tea.” She goes to the stove and puts the kettle on. Then she roots around my cabinets searching for tea. In a million and one years I would never touch anything in her kitchen without being asked, but she looks ready to prepare Thanksgiving dinner in mine. She clucks her tongue when she comes across the kangaroo salt shaker in the cupboard. “Honestly, Jennifer,” she says, “you have to give up these toys. I hope you’re not planning on cluttering up his beautiful house with these…things.” She puts the salt shaker on the counter like it’s a vile thing that might scurry away.

  “I think you should worry about Brad’s toys,” I say, my voice shaking.

  “Boys will be boys,” she sighs. “You can’t expect too much from them.”

  “Didn’t you see?” I ask her angrily. “Didn’t you see his…”

  She holds up a hand to stop me. “I saw.”

  “How could he do that?” I start to cry again. The fact that her son is comatose in the bathroom with hooker lipstick on his cock seems to be wildly unimportant.

  “Now, Jennifer,” she says. “Jen. You have to look on the bright side.”

  “What is that?”

  “You’re marrying a powerful man,” she says. “He’s not powerful now, but one day he will be, and he’ll also inherit a great deal of money.” The kettle starts to whistle and she turns the flame off.

  I sniff. “I don’t care about money.”

  She smiles and dunks an Earl Grey teabag in the cup. I wonder where my smiley face cup went. “You say that now,” she says, “but as you get older and your looks fade and your opportunities dwindle, security will become very important to you. More important than, say, situations like this.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that with the privileges that go with being safe come some responsibilities and some sacrifices.” She sets down a cup of tea in front of me.

  I stare at the small wisp of steam coming off my hot cup of tea.

  “Sacrifices?” I repeat.

  “Yes. But there are perks for making sacrifices. Lots of perks. For instance, Mr. Keller has an apartment downtown. He uses this apartment for certain meetings he can’t have anywhere else. I accept this fact and he in turn accepts that I buy myself a new car every year, among other things.”

  I’m staring at her, trying to comprehend what she’s saying, because I think it’s possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.

  I am in a cuckoo clock.

  Ed comes out of the bathroom. “Alrighty then!” he says. “Coffee on?”

  “Tea,” Mrs. Keller says.

  “Well, I guess anything hot’ll do.” I get the strange sensation they’ve done this all before. I turn to look at Ed, who’s always been good to me, always been the relative voice of reason, and I’m praying he’ll say something that makes sense. Instead he shrugs. “Got to admit he’s doing better than before Hazelden.”

  My eyes widen. “Hazelden?”

  “He was in rehab,” Mrs. Keller says and sips her tea. “Didn’t he tell you?”

  Her face seems warped and waxlike. Someone has to wake me up from this nightmare.

  “Alcohol in general,” she says, “vodka in particular.”

  Ed shakes his head in disgust. “I told him he had to come home and beat it. I told him it was a lousy beverage, for crying out loud! A beverage! Like milk!”

  “Ed was traveling while Bradford was incapacitated,” she says. “I don’t think he ever fully understood the program.”

  “Some program,” he says. “All that twelve-step hooey.”

  “The twelve steps work for him,” Mrs. Keller says, and a photographic montage of all the drinks Brad and I have had together starts firing off in my mind.

  “Oh baloney,” Ed says. “We admitted we had become powerless to milk and milk had taken control of our lives. Blah, blah, blah. And those damn tokens! Should I give you a prize for every month you don’t drink milk? Hell, I should get a thousand prize thingies! I haven’t had milk in years!”

  “He’s lactose-intolerant,” Mrs. Keller says, “but really, Ed, I can’t say I appreciate the swearing.”

  “Ah, nuts,” he says and stands up. “I’ll go check on him.”

  My mind is unpinning, it’s hard to breathe, I feel like I’m wading into very dark water.

  “You’re upset,” Mrs. Keller says. “Drink some tea.”

  I take a sip, because, why not. I’ll try anything to make this roaring in my ears go away. Brad was in rehab? At Hazelden? That’s like a hard-core treatment center somewhere in Minnesota. I think the king of Dubai went there to beat heroin.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” I say and stand up.

  “Now, Jennifer, don’t rush. We’re all here to support you, dear, and besides, where do you have to go?” She smiles at me pleasantly.

  I sit back down.

  “I have places to go,” I say, “plenty of places. My mother’s, my sister’s, my friends’.”

  “Yes, yes,” she says, “of course anyone would be happy to have you stay
with them for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, but think about it, Jennifer, what about after that? When your anger is gone and your friends are tired of you sleeping on their couch? You have to think about the future. Your friends aren’t going to financially support you and neither is your family. Not for forever. Plus, haven’t they sort of, oh how do I say it, put in their time already?”

  That hurt. Possibly because it’s true.

  “My point,” she says, “is that even though Bradford isn’t perfect, he’s willing to support you for the rest of your life, and your children, too. Not just support them, but give them a life you never could give them on your own. Private schools, Ivy League colleges, medical care. Whatever they need they’ll have. And think about your family,” she says. “Your father signed a large contract with Keller’s, and young Leonard has become the loading-dock foreman.”

  “Yes,” I say miserably, “I know.”

  I picture my ratty old apartment, my dirty grout.

  It’s true, I never want to go back there. Never.

  “We went to great expense to get Bradford to come home. We told him we were going to stop supporting him if he didn’t come home, go to treatment, start working, and raise a family.”

  “Start a family?”

  “Oh, yes,” she says. “Getting married was part of the deal. We converted this house just so he could raise children. Added on the third bedroom. We told him we would cut him off completely unless he would abide by our rules. We even gave him a deadline.”

  “A deadline?”

  “Yes. Be sober and engaged by Valentine’s Day this year or else he was on his own. Cut off completely. No more help, no more money, no more bailing him out. We were so worried he wouldn’t find a girl in time, but then he took an interest in you, which made Ed terribly happy, as you can imagine, what with you looking like Ada and everything.” She pronounces Ada with a sharp a, as though she was trying to spit something out of her mouth. “He was always in love with Ada,” she says. “If it were legal, he would have married her.”