by Jade Sharma
“That’s disgusting,” I laughed.
“There was a pork chop on the counter. I mean, with no plate or napkin or anything.”
“Get out off the phone. The train is boarding,” Peter said, tickets in hand.
“I got to get on the train. I’ll call you,” I said.
“Okay. Have fun.”
The train would have made a great target for a terrorist attack. It was packed.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to sit together,” I said as we slowly made our way through the car.
“Shouldn’t we at least check the next car?”
“We could, but what’s the point?” I said, eyeing the car for an empty seat by the window. There wasn’t one. I collapsed in an aisle seat. Peter stood there like a wounded child. A woman in the next aisle stood up and offered him the window seat next to her.
I closed my eyes. If there was a bomb, it would be so fast. What would I feel? Probably heat and pain, and then nothing. It could happen any second. The train started bumping along. No such luck. Mom, in that big house in the suburbs slowly wasting away, always complaining of her failing body. The thought of a quick death didn’t seem like the worst thing. Age is meaner than death.
There were trees and sky, and the city receded farther and farther behind us. Another world. It was hot. I wanted to take off my coat. I thought that ten more times before I actually took it off. I’d worn my denim skirt and a red blouse. At home in front of the mirror, sucking in my stomach, it had looked elegant, but as I sat there, my fat rolls pushing against the elastic of my skirt and falling over the top button, it felt awful. My stomach growled. The worst was to feel both fat and hungry.
Peter came over. “Want to go to the dining car?”
“Yeah, okay.”
The only thing Suboxone didn’t help with was the sweats. The back of my head and neck were wet.
The windows were huge, and the air felt easier to breathe. We sat in a booth.
“Can you buy me a bottle of water?” I asked him.
“I only have two singles.”
“Just use your card.”
“I don’t know if they take cards.”
“For Chrissake, Peter, go and check. I’m dying of thirst.” He got up. Cheap bastard. Never wanted to spend a penny. He rolled his own cigarettes and refilled my old water bottles to take with him everywhere, even though he made good money. When we’d first met, he worked in the bookstore as a merchandiser and made next to nothing. “I make everything pyramid shaped,” he’d said on our first date. What good was all that nagging to get a better-paying job if he still refused to spend a dime? “But we’re making more money,” I would say. “Yeah, well, we need to save it.” I’d asked a million times but never really understood what we were saving for. He came back with a brown box and a can of beer, a bottle of water, two packs of M&M’s, and chips. He sat down in front of me. His eyes, as innocent and guilty as a child’s, tried to gain my forgiveness.
“I had to spend at least ten dollars to use my card,” he explained.
“Oh, thanks,” I said. He was trying to be nice.
“Are you mad?”
“You were just being so awful this morning.” All morning, bustling around like a maniac, sighing and cursing to himself. Annoying the shit out of me.
“I’m sorry. I just get so anxious. Can we please just try to be nice to each other? I don’t want to have a bad time.” As if I did? That was the implication, that I wanted everyone to be miserable. He popped open the Bud and took a long sip. Great, I thought, just drink. Go be fucked-up in your world, and leave me here alone to deal with reality.
Lily Tomlin once said, “Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.”
“Okay, well, don’t act like a jerk,” I said.
“Can we please just watch The Simpsons on the laptop?”
He opened the laptop while I looked out the window, trying to decide whether or not to let him off the hook. My brain was tired. The sky looked so open outside of New York, not just above, but all around. A few brown trees, open fields. People were always saying how crowded the world was becoming, but outside of that window, there was so much space left.
Grace, Peter’s sister, met us at the train station. She was wearing a flowered, matronly dress and, strangely, one white glove. She hugged us. I was pissed I couldn’t sneak in a cigarette before she came.
It was colder. I zipped up my coat and buttoned it. They walked ahead, Peter carrying my two canvas bags and his one small tote.
Christ, I thought. It’s happening. We’re really here.
“What happened to your hand?” Peter asked Grace in the car.
“Oh, I burned it. I was frying zucchini in a pan and put in too much oil, and I tried pouring some of the oil out into a bowl, and it dripped down my hand.” She laughed the way girls laugh, like, “I’m such an idiot, aw shucks.”
“That sucks,” I said. Peter shot me a look. “Sucks” wasn’t the right word. Should have gone with awful. “How awful”; that would have been the right thing.
It was an unspoken rule that everyone dealt with Grace with kid gloves. Grace was the type of girl who had “victim” written on her forehead. She was so trusting and so unsure of herself.
“So, what did you think of Sue?” Peter asked. His voice had changed already. A little bit more corny.
“Oh, she is so nice. Last night she helped with dinner, and she’s so much fun, which is good for Jake. You know how serious he is.” Her face relaxed in a little smile.
Helped with dinner? Oh god, this Sue was worse than I thought. When I came to visit two Christmases ago, I hadn’t helped with anything. I caught the flu on the train down and spent the entire four days of our visit shivering or sleeping in their clapboard house. Only one small TV in the enclosed porch, which the whole family crowded around. Peter’s mother bringing bowls of chicken broth, his father not knowing what to say, eyeing me.
“I thought you liked working at the bookstore,” his father had said when Peter told them about the new bartending job I had “encouraged” him to get. Jesus, why did he have to implicate me in it? So now I was this girl who made their son work himself to death in some sinful place so he could buy more stuff for his fat wife to stare at.
At least it wasn’t Christmas. On Christmas, Peter’s mother, Sandy, sat down and asked if I knew the story of how Jesus was born. “Like, in a barn,” I had said. And then she told the story with the wise men. It was long and didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Their depressing tree and his mother wearing a reindeer sweater would break your heart. I got thermals. Peter got socks. They talked with unabashed glee about how cheap the gifts they got for one another were. It was like upside-down world. “There was a bin marked 50 percent off,” Grace said as her father admired the gloves. “Oh wow, and they’re green,” someone said about their socks. You had to keep saying nice things. I wasn’t very good at it. There was a moment when my disappointment showed as I opened a present. The whole thing was so weird—to spend as little money as possible and to be as excited as little kids about receiving stuff that sucked. How was this fun? What was I going to do with these green paisley slippers made for a five-year-old? Without a word, I instantly put them on. Peter texted me; I hadn’t said thank you, so I said, “I forgot to say thank you. I love these slippers.” I couldn’t pull it off. I should never have said anything.
I tried every year to teach them about gift giving by giving them actually nice things, but this seemed to embarrass them, like I didn’t understand the cheapness rule. One time I gave them each an eight-dollar bacon-chocolate bar from Whole Foods in their stockings, and really nice bubble bath stuff for Sandy, perfume for Grace, an iPod speaker that looked like a panda for Jake, and for their father, an iPod shuffle. They eyed the bacon-chocolate bars but wouldn’t even open them. I tried not to get involved when Peter bought his family gifts, but it was hard not to interject and pick out better things.
We pulled into the dri
veway. The sky looked naked without any buildings to cover it. The house was small and yellow. Before I could figure out a way to sneak off to smoke, Grace nodded at me to follow her through the side entrance.
Everything was way too bright and way too noisy. I thought of the sanctuary of Elizabeth’s bedroom when she was strung out: darkness and a movie playing on a tiny laptop screen. Candles. Getting off dope was like coming back from the dead and like being reborn. The way to kick was to make the world as warm and womblike as possible. The birth experience of the bustling scene at Peter’s parents’ house was jarring and raw. Everything hit too hard, and emotions came out of nowhere. Their sad little house they were so proud of. How they had worked hard and done their best. How they loved their children. No matter where you went on Earth, there were parents who loved their kids and laughed at their jokes and wanted to know everything they did.
Behind me, Peter was carrying all of our bags like a Sherpa. Their skinny, tired son carrying all the bags while I walked in empty handed.
“Oh, it’s so good to see you,” Peter’s mother said as she embraced me. His father asked if Peter needed help. Peter shook his head. “Where are we sleeping?” he asked.
“In Jake’s old room,” his father said. Peter walked to the back of the house, leaving me there with all of them. Sue walked in, thin-boned, wearing blue jeans and a tight black sweater, her hair in a ponytail. We shook hands. “You look so cold,” she said. Her body was perfect. Her smile showed ultrawhite teeth. She was a ray of sunshine. I was doom and gloom and could hardly muster a smile. I wanted her to like me. I hated her instantly.
“Yeah, I’m kind of cold.” I was still wearing my coat. I kept waiting for the warmth to hit me after I came in, but there was no heat.
“Oh, sorry about that,” Sandy said.
You couldn’t say, “Please turn on the heat because I can’t stop shivering in your freezing shitty house.” You couldn’t say, “I’m just going to go to a bedroom because I’d rather read than talk to any of you.” You couldn’t say, “This is my first day off dope, and all of this is overwhelming.” You couldn’t say, “Let’s cut the bullshit. You don’t give a shit where I’m from, just like I have no interest in any of the questions I will force myself to ask so I don’t appear rude. So I’ll just shut myself in your freezing porch and watch your shitty television until it’s time to go, and you can ignore me and hang out with your kid.”
“No, it’s fine,” I smiled.
Sue opened the oven door and looked in.
“Are you making something?” I asked.
“Yeah, a pie,” she said. A fucking pie?
“Like, from scratch?” I asked, trying not to look down her top at her tits. She was wearing a hot pink bra. But Jake was looking too, so whatever.
“Yeah, me and Jake found the recipe last night, so this morning we all went to the market, and I bought the ingredients.”
“Why are you still wearing your coat?” Peter, coatless, asked. How can any of them stand it, I wondered.
“She’s cold. Maybe I can ask your father to start the fire.”
Jake wrapped his arms around Sue and said, “Maybe just turn the heat on.” Why did they have to be touching? It felt obscene somehow, like they were so obsessed with each other they had to always be touching. I wanted to be touched. I was pretty sure I would puke if anyone touched me.
“What’s going on?” Grace asked.
“Maya’s cold, so we were thinking of telling your father to start the fire,” Sandy said.
“Or we could put the heat on?” Grace replied.
“No, I’m . . . it’s okay, I don’t mind . . .” But Sandy was already walking away, calling, “Rick,” and then I heard my name. I should have just taken off my coat.
“Yeah, but the fire will take longer to warm the house, and we can’t have her sit there alone in front of the fire,” Grace said.
Peter’s father came down. “What’s up?”
“We were talking about putting the heat on.”
“The heat?” He wiped his forehead.
“Maya’s cold,” Jake said.
“I can put the fire on . . .”
I wanted to literally vanish into thin air.
“We haven’t met, I’m Peter,” Peter said to Sue.
“Hey, Jake’s told me so much about you.” Sue put on Sandy’s apron. It had cherries all over it. I walked past Peter to Jake’s old bedroom and shut the door. I imagined my entire bag filled with heroin. Then all of this would have been very easy. Why did I even try to be clean? All my effort should have gone toward staying high all the time, I thought. I could smile and talk and be charming when I was high. I wasn’t self-conscious and weird. If not for me, then for the world. I started sweating. What could I do now? Tell them not to put the heat on and go through that whole hundred-year-long conversation. Sue and her amazing pie and her skinny waist and her smile—I wondered what it was like to be inside her head. She probably had her own insecurities. I needed a cigarette. I checked the time: five o’clock. Two hours of awkward conversations, and then just stuff your face and sit around the dining table for a while, and then off to bed. They went to sleep early, ten-ish. Just five hours. I fished out my cigarettes and my cell phone from my canvas bag.
I wanted a bag of dope so fucking bad. If I was sick, I could convince them to take me to the train, and then I’d go back home and get a bag. A rush of excitement filled me at the thought. It was okay, I would get high again. This was not for forever. This was like a job. A bad shift at a bad job.
After being numb for so long on dope, when I was finally faced with reality, I couldn’t handle the emotions. Not just the bad ones. The in-between ones too, like envy that Peter got along with his family, gratitude that these people were being nice to me and were willing to love me just for being there, and nostalgia when they played that Dylan song Peter sang on our first date. They wanted to like me, and all it did was make me feel lonely and insecure. I wiped the tears away and told myself to get it together. I was a grown-up and needed to act like one.
Back in the kitchen, Peter’s mother stood in front of a pot of some kind of meat, Sue and Peter chatted it up, and Rick held a plate of the cheeses Peter and I had bought yesterday at Whole Foods. That was the difference; Peter and I bought expensive cheese from Whole Foods while Sue baked a pie from scratch. That Sandy’s apron looked so cute on her was also troubling.
No one noticed me open the window. I was sweating through my clothes. I smelled like something that had died in the trash. At least if it was cold, I wouldn’t smell as bad.
“I should really go and call my mom,” I said to no one in particular, holding my phone as if they needed a visual aid. I turned and walked out, trying not to look at Peter’s face.
“Can you just not smoke for two fucking days,” he had said when I asked if I had to keep up this charade that we didn’t smoke.
I opened the door. Couldn’t stand right there, so I turned the corner and then realized there was a window, and they would see me from the dining room. I walked back toward Jake’s old room, fished out a cigarette, and then hit “mom” on my phone.
She picked up right away.
“Hey,” she said weakly.
“Hi.”
“Where are you?”
“We just got here.”
“How is it?”
“I don’t know, Mom, I feel so out of place.” The cigarette tasted so good. My body started to feel right as the nicotine hit me, but then I felt a little woozy from not smoking all day. I crouched down.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re just so nice.”
“So?”
“It’s weird. I don’t know what to say.”
“Raj wants to talk to you,” and before I could protest, my brother was on the phone.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, Raj, it’s like, they’re like a normal family,” I said as I lit a new cigarette from the one I just smoked.
“You’re lucky. I bet the food is good. Mom couldn’t cook, so we’re having leftover lasagna and watching Colombo.”
“Yeah, it seems like there’s a lot of . . .” and then I heard Mom in the background. “Tell her not to eat too much, she’s already gained so much weight.” Why did she always have to be awful?
“Mom says not to eat too much.”
“I heard.” I heard my mom again, “Potatoes, tell her,” and then she got back on the phone. “Don’t eat the potatoes, you know, carbs. Just eat some turkey and the vegetables.” You would have thought someone with her kind of medical problems would realize how silly something like counting calories was, but somehow after she got sick, she’d become even worse, like she was clinging to these little things as the last fringes of her mom-hood or person-hood. The whole thing was so depressing.
“Yeah, okay”
“Where are you?” Raj again.
“I’m out smoking a cigarette.” I put it out on the cold ground and stuck the butt back into the pack.
“You should probably go back in there.”
“Yeah, okay. Bye.”
He said good-bye. It could have been worse. I could have been with them. A small leafless tree stood in front of me. Another house, blue against the gray sky. Peter hated winter. He said it was like death all around. But there was something beautiful about this naked tree in the wind.
Samuel Beckett said, “Nothing is more real than nothing.”
I walked back into the house and took off my coat. I was covered in sweat, and the house was so hot it made it hard to breathe. I opened a window. I made my way to the plate of cheese we brought, and the crackers. Whenever I saw food, I felt compelled to eat it, even if I wasn’t hungry. Jake came in. I nodded, but he went in for a hug.
“Hey,” he said, looking at me, smiling. Jake could be so handsome it was almost startling. There wasn’t even any sexual tension between us because it didn’t feel like we were the same species. It was kind of a relief to hang out with people where you didn’t have to think about if you wanted to fuck them or if they wanted to fuck you.