Aftertaste

by Meredith Mileti

  I’ve left the door to the bathroom wide open, and suddenly the baby monitor jumps to life, picking up the static of a slammed door and the rumble of steps in the back hall. It must be my father, coming home at lunchtime to check on us. Sure enough, I hear his heavy step on the stairs, whistling a bluesy tune I don’t know.

  “Dad?” I call. “I’m in the tub with Chloe.” No answer. I pull Chloe onto my lap and sink lower in the tub, hoping to avoid shocking my father. “Dad?”

  But the man who rounds the corner isn’t my father.

  My scream startles him, and immediately Chloe begins to cry. I reach for the hand mirror, which I hurl at him. He barely manages to sidestep it as it crashes against the doorframe, scattering shards of glass and plastic all over the bathroom floor.

  He yanks the earplugs from his ears. “Jeez! Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think anyone was home,” he says, covering his eyes and backing out the door.

  “Who are you? How did you get in?” I scream.

  I put an arm protectively around Chloe, who is still screaming, and sink lower into the tub, noticing with renewed horror that the bubbles seem to have totally dissipated.

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Ben, Ben Stemple. Fi’s nephew. See? I have a key,” he says, still standing behind the door, but holding his key ring at arm’s length so I can see it from the tub.

  “Who?”

  “Fiona? I’m her nephew—I’m a plumber. She called me about the leak under your sink.”

  “What leak?”

  “You must be Mira, right? And that must be Chloe. Fiona’s always talking about her. She’s a cutie.”

  “Do you mind?” I ask, incredulous that this man who has just barged into my bathroom unannounced is now making clear that he got a good look at us in the tub. I yell at him, “The door. Do you mind shutting the door?”

  “Wait a minute,” he says. “There’s glass all over the floor. If you get out of the tub, you’ll step on it. I’ll get a broom, okay?”

  I crouch in the tub, Chloe still whimpering in my arms, and grab a towel, which I wrap around the two of us. A minute later, Ben is back with a broom. “I swear I’m not looking. I’ll just clean up the floor, okay?” he says, as he proceeds to sweep the glass into the dustpan while Chloe and I huddle together in the too small towel.

  While he sweeps, I study him, wondering if he really is Fiona’s nephew or if he’s going to ax murder the two of us as soon as he’s finished sweeping our floor. He appears to be in his thirties, with sandy hair and a scraggly beard. He’s wearing greasy coveralls, a heavy tool belt slung low around his hips, and an iPod on an armband, from which I can hear Warren Zevon playing. He’s also got a cut across his cheek, where a piece of flying glass must have caught him.

  “You’re bleeding,” I tell him. Ben looks at me, then remembering the skimpy bath towel I’m wearing, looks quickly away. “There, on your cheek,” I say, pointing.

  He reaches up to touch his face and then examines the blood on his fingertips. “You got me,” he says, with a trace of a smile. “I’ll just wait downstairs until you’re ready for me to fix the leak, okay?” he says. He waits a second for me to answer, but when I don’t, he leaves, shutting the bathroom door behind him.

  As I pull Chloe and myself out of the tub, I catch sight of our reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Both my hair and Chloe’s are still encrusted in bubbles, twisted into stiff strands sticking out like porcupine’s thorns from our heads. I stand there staring at our ridiculous reflection, dripping tiny bubbles onto the freshly swept floor.

  “You shouldn’t let leaks go, even tiny ones like this one,” Ben says a while later, tightening something with his wrench. “Didn’t you notice the puddle of water under the sink cabinet?”

  “Oh, that,” I say. In New York, a leak like that would go unnoticed by any self-respecting landlord in the city. Renters are conditioned to follow suit.

  “Come here and take a look,” he calls, gesturing with the wrench. “The bottom of this metal cabinet is starting to rust. When you wash your hands or use the sink, you have to be careful to turn the faucet all the way off.” He has a heavy Pittsburgh accent, pronouncing “wash” as “warsh.” He pops up from underneath the sink and demonstrates, giving the faucet an exaggerated turn.

  “And this,” he says, pointing accusingly at a stain at the back of the sink, waiting for the ominous nature of the offending stain to fully register. “Do you see this? It’s rust. Caused by a drippy faucet. Really,” he says, shaking his head, “this whole unit should be replaced. Good thing Aunt Fi noticed it. Hey, when I’m finished here, you want me to hang up your Waterpik for you? Might as well. You get it at Eckerd? I got one on sale last week, too. Works great.”

  “Thanks, but . . .” But what? I’m not sure I’m staying? I’m scared of commitment? “Sure, that’d be great.”

  “No problem. Which side do you want it on, right or left?”

  “Right, I guess,” I say, without even thinking about it.

  “You sure?” he says from under the sink, his voice slightly muffled. “Might be better on the left. Dentists recommend keeping toothbrushes at least five feet from the toilet.”

  “That’s a disgusting thought.”

  “Well, probably not as disgusting as actually hanging your toothbrush less than five feet from the toilet and not thinking about it. Know what I mean?” Ben says, emerging from under the sink to grab a wrench from his toolbox.

  “Eew,” I shudder. “Fine, whatever you think,” I tell him. Ben looks at me and shrugs before replacing his earphones and disappearing back underneath the sink, where seconds later he begins howling to “Werewolves of London.”

  It’s barely nine o’clock. Dad and Fiona are still at the Brian Greene lecture. Chloe is long asleep, and I’m already in my pajamas, teeth brushed and Waterpikked. But I’m unsettled and jumpy, so I pad down to the kitchen where I flip absently through a pile of junk mail on the counter. I sit down at the kitchen table and pour myself a glass of wine, even though I’ve just brushed my teeth. It’s prime dinner service, and I allow myself to imagine Grappa, first the dining room, the deep golden walls, the exposed brick, the white tablecloths and candles; then the kitchen, frenzied, pots steaming, braziers glowing, the scrape of a well-worn copper pan sliding over a burner, its contents tossed effortlessly with one hand by a line cook. Jake reaching for a splash of olive oil to finish a dish; the intensity of his gaze as he meticulously wipes the rim of the dinner plate, the small movement of his mouth as he places his composition, perfect, steaming, on the line.

  Renata and Michael aren’t home when I call, and I don’t bother leaving a message. I’m not sure what I mean to say, but when I hear Renata’s softly lilting accent I’m reminded of home and of Italy and I don’t trust myself to speak. Hope, though, answers on the third ring. “Mira, how are you, dear?” There is noise in the background, the sound of people talking and laughing. Hope is having a party in my apartment.

  “Just a few friends over for a housewarming,” she says. I try not to imagine the spread of crescent rolls and deviled ham, the Cheese Whiz dips and Ritz crackers arrayed on what once had been my dining room table. I tell Hope I’m not calling about anything important and she should get back to her guests.

  I finish the wine and pour myself a hefty shot from a bottle of brandy I find in my father’s liquor cabinet, a bottle that probably has been in there since I was in high school. Fortified, I call Grappa using my father’s house phone, which has an unlisted number that doesn’t show up on caller ID.

  I don’t stop until the brandy is finished and I’ve booked two Saturday night dinners on successive weekends and one banquet for twenty, occupying the whole upstairs room. I’ve made up names and given fake telephone numbers with which to confirm the counterfeit reservations. I’ve even used different voices, my repertoire increasing in direct proportion to the amount of brandy I consume. The highlight: a tour de for
ce impersonation of an Italian contessa Jake and I had met on a trip to Capri.

  The next morning Richard shows up with a large cup of coffee, a liter bottle of San Pellegrino, two Extra Strength Tylenol, and the Post-Gazette.

  “What, no Times?” I ask when he throws the paper at me.

  “No, you’re in Pittsburgh now. Pittsburghers read the Post-Gazette,” Richard says as he sits down on the side of my bed. Although he doesn’t play, he’s dressed as if he has just come from a tennis match, a white cotton sweater knotted nattily around his neck. “Here, take these,” he says, opening the sparkling water and handing me the Tylenol.

  I groan when I try to move my head, which feels like someone has removed the top of my skull and replaced it with the chittering lid of a pressure cooker.

  “Look, what you are doing here, it’s not good. You’ve got to get out of this bed.”

  “I’m sick,” I tell him. “Go away.”

  “No, you’re hungover. Or maybe you’re still drunk. It’s a wonder you don’t have alcohol poisoning. A disgusting display from what I heard of it.”

  Richard proceeds to outline in excruciating detail how my father and Fiona found me head down on the kitchen table, the phone still clutched in my hand. When they’d tried to rouse me, I’d insisted on speaking only in Italian, unleashing a torrent of epithets that, although my father understood them, were fortunately beyond Fiona’s meager grasp of Italian conversation. It had taken the two of them to get me upstairs to bed, and I’d woken Chloe in the process.

  What I can’t explain to Richard, to my father, or heavens, to Fiona, is that there is something wrong with me.

  “I’m dying,” I tell him, hoping that he will hear the desperation in my voice.

  Richard snorts. “Oh, please, you are not. You’re depressed, and that makes you feel tired and sick. Mira, Chloe needs you. Do you expect Fiona to quit her job and take care of your daughter?”

  “No, but . . .” I let the sentence hang there unfinished because there’s a lump in my throat. I can’t tell Richard that I think that Chloe is better off without me. If I say it, it might be true. “That’s probably what she wants anyway,” I snap at him, deciding that the best defense is a good offense. “They hardly even let me see her,” I tell him, pulling the covers over my face. “Look, I’m reduced to listening to my own child on this damned baby monitor.”

  “You need to go and see someone, Mira. A therapist. You’ve been through a lot, and all of us can use some help every now and then.” I sneak a look at him from under the covers. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed. His voice is tight, and his head is in his hands, his fingers gently pulling at his hair. “One of the problems is that you’re bored. You don’t have enough to do.”

  I don’t respond. I don’t trust myself. Suddenly, I’m furious with Richard for not understanding. I feel him get up from the bed. He walks to the door, and I think maybe he’ll leave me alone when he says, “You know, that was the root of her problem, too. You don’t want to become like your mother.” His tone is sad and, to make it worse, he lets his words hang there for a second, long enough to suck every ounce of air from the room. A moment later I hear his heavy step on the attic stairs.

  You don’t want to become like your mother. Richard, having exhausted all traditional means, has delivered this last blow in order to shock me into action. But what he has failed to realize is that he’s just given voice to something I’ve long feared. Now that it’s been said, I can do nothing but lie here, stunned and sapped. The baby monitor beside my bed suddenly kicks in, and I can hear him in the kitchen, talking to Fiona.

  “Well, I suggested it, but she’ll never go to therapy,” Richard is saying. “Mira is too proud.” My father doesn’t say anything in my defense. I know he’s there because I can hear him crunching his Grape-Nuts.

  “I gave her a name,” Fiona says. “But I guess she never called. I didn’t want to ask.”

  “Look what happened when she was court-ordered to take anger-management classes!” says Richard.

  “I worry about her poor little girl,” Fiona continues. “There are some people who just never get over these sorts of things. My cousin’s sister-in-law never got over her husband’s leaving her. Her kids were running wild in the streets. They got into all kinds of trouble until finally she just couldn’t take it anymore. Gave all three of them to her ex-husband and let them be raised by the woman he left her for. Now, how about that?”

  Finally, Dad pipes in. “Well, Mira doesn’t even have that luxury, Fiona.” Gee, thanks, Dad.

  “She’ll get out of bed eventually. She’ll have to, if you stop feeding her. I’d start marking the liquor bottles, though. That would be the next step.” This from Richard, whose voice is suddenly louder, as if he is standing right next to the baby monitor speaking directly into it. I can almost see his tight-lipped grin.

  chapter 16

  As soon as the house is quiet, I venture downstairs and take out the phone book, intending to make a list of all the therapists within walking distance. As it turns out, there are quite a few, five by the time I’m finished with the Ds. I’ve stopped at the Ds because I’m intrigued by a small ad proclaiming in an elegant typeface: DEBRA DOBRANSKY-PULLMAN, PHD, CERTIFIED LIFE COACH. ARE YOU READY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?

  I skim through the other ads and don’t see any other psychologist in the book advertising as a “life coach.” That she answers her own phone and has an opening this afternoon at two o’clock probably should make me a little uneasy, but, I tell myself, she has a legitimate office, a PhD, and is close by. Besides, one session certainly won’t obligate me to continue. Even if she’s a total flake, how much damage can she possibly do in an hour?

  If “proud” was code for stubborn, then Richard was right. Which means I’m more than a little troubled by the thought that I have been so predictably vulnerable to his obvious use of reverse psychology. At least I can take some small comfort in the knowledge that Dr. Dobransky-Pullman isn’t really a psychotherapist. She’s a life coach. A life coach sounds to me like someone who might not focus too closely on past events, but who might be a sort of paid cheerleader, helping to get you back on the path you had somehow wandered away from. Less embarrassing somehow, like a personal trainer or a makeup artist.

  I’m on my way out the back door when I see the note left on the kitchen table in Fiona’s loopy hand. Took Chloe to Gymboree. Back for nap time! Fi. I know I should leave a note, but I don’t because I’m still stinging from Richard’s comments and my father’s failure to muster even a pathetic defense of his only child. Let them wonder where I am.

  Dr. Dobransky-Pullman’s office is in the Highland Towers apartment complex. There is no receptionist to greet me when I arrive, just a large, windowless waiting room with a beige linen sofa, a brass and glass coffee table, and a couple of simple, but expensively framed, lithographs on the wall. There is a door at one end, which I presume leads to her office. I’m alone in the waiting room. I take a seat on the sofa, and nervously leaf through a copy of People magazine while silently rehearsing what I might say about my life and what has brought me here.

  At precisely two o’clock, the door opens, and a tall, beautifully dressed woman emerges, carrying a clipboard and wafting some sort of expensive scent. “Mira? I’m Dr. Dobransky-Pullman. Before we get started, would you mind filling out a short questionnaire?”

  It’s technically a question, but she delivers it like a statement.

  She hands me the clipboard, flashes me a saccharine smile, and, without waiting for me to answer, returns to her office, shutting the door behind her.

  In addition to requiring the usual contact information, the form also includes several questions about my behavior and mental state over the last six months. “Six months” is written in italics, so for some reason this must be important.

  Are you currently experiencing any sexual difficulties? It’s been so long, how would I know? Mark that a “no.”

  Have you
ever been a victim of domestic violence? Ha! Domestic violence, yes, but I hadn’t exactly been the victim. “No” again.

  Did you ever feel as if your emotions were out of control (e.g., do you ever have trouble managing your anger or do you ever find yourself crying for no particular reason)? “Out of control,” I decide after several minutes of deliberation, is a relative term. Sure, I’ve lost my temper a bunch of times in the last six months, who hasn’t? But I don’t necessarily think I was out of control. On the other hand, some might consider having to be handcuffed and hauled away in a police cruiser evidence of, if not a total loss of control, at least a significantly diminished capacity for it. However, when I mentally calculate how long it’s been since the attack on Nicola I’m relieved to find it falls just outside the six-month window. “No” again.

  Do you ever think of harming yourself or others? I haven’t ever really considered doing myself any harm, and it has been a few weeks, practically months, since I harbored any serious violent feelings toward Jake or Nicola. Good enough. “No” again. Skimming the rest of the questions, I check off the rest of the “no” boxes and flip to the other side of the form. On the reverse side there are four questions, each separated by a large expanse of white paper.

  1. Why did you choose a life coach?

  2. What areas of your life do you feel most need to be improved?

  3. What is the source of your greatest disappointment?

  4. What is the single thing you want most in life?

  In response to the first one I write: I have recently made some significant changes in my life, and I would like some help in deciding where to go from here. Good—short and to the point. For the second question, I briefly consider simply naming the areas of my life that are going well, since that would take up far less space. Instead, I settle on targeting two main areas for improvement: I would like to improve the professional and social aspects of my life. The third question is much more problematic. My initial inclination is to note my divorce, but it seems too whiny, and I don’t want her to think I’m one of those pathetic women, like Fiona’s friend, who is wallowing in self-pity, so I write losing my restaurant. But will she think I’m callous for putting business over a relationship? So, I go back and add and my husband.