Problems

by Jade Sharma

  “So, how’s it going?” I asked, stuffing my mouth. I started shivering again. Why did I have to wear the thinnest blouse in my closet?

  “You’re still cold?” he asked with genuine concern. “Someone opened the window,” he said, and then went over and closed it. “Who would do that?”

  That was when I should’ve confessed, but I didn’t. I couldn’t seem to get warm. I put my coat back on, and my scarf. I was shaking. My face hurt. My sinuses were congested. One day someone would pick up my skull and say, “This human has the worst sinuses I’ve ever seen. It must have been horrible to live like that.” Sweat poured out of my pits. I could smell the dope-sick stench. A kind of rotting.

  “I’m so glad you finally met Sue.”

  “Yeah,” I said. We sat there and smiled. Grace walked in. I hoped she couldn’t smell me.

  “You’re still cold?” I realized I was standing with my arms around me, crouched over. I stood upright.

  “No, no, I’m fine.”

  “Did you open the window?” Jake asked her.

  The front door opened. I braced myself to withstand a gust of wind. A middle-aged man wearing a snowflake sweater came in beside a short-haired woman in high-waisted light blue jeans.

  “Jake!” The man slipped his arm around Jake.

  “Hi, I’m Marcie,” the woman said. Aunt Marcie, Peter had mentioned her. The aunt who made that ratatouille Peter raved about.

  “Hi, I’m Maya, Peter’s wife.”

  “Well, it’s so good to meet you.” We smiled. It had been Peter’s idea to go off to Vegas and get married. I thought eloping would be like a fun weekend, but when I met his relatives, it felt like I was this mysterious woman they were all wondering about. “Darren,” the man introduced himself, smiling, his face friendly. “Wow,” he said. “It is so nice to finally meet you.” I smiled back. “So, huh, it must be, what, two years since the two of you got married?”

  “No, about four.”

  “Didn’t want to deal with the fuss of a big wedding, I guess?” he said, taking his gloves off and putting them on the kitchen table. The table had a plastic tablecloth on it.

  “I guess that was part of it, but it was more like we thought it would be fun, you know?”

  “Right, right,” he said, smiling, nodding, as if fun were something he had a working understanding of. Marcie stood and observed us.

  It felt like Darren was the talk show host; me, the guest; and Marcie, our audience.

  “We got married by Elvis,” I said. It was what I said every time I mentioned the wedding.

  “Huh! How fun! I would love to see pictures,” he said, still smiling. I believed him. He really would have loved to see pictures.

  “Oh, I don’t have any. We didn’t think to take any.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “We were pretty loaded,” I said. A moment passed. “I’m kidding,” I added.

  Darren burst into laughter; Marcie, a cautious smile.

  “Yeah, you guys just met that night, right?” Darren said, adding to the joke.

  “Actually, we met there at the chapel.”

  Darren laughed harder.

  Peter and his father came in. Nervous, I smeared goat cheese on another cracker and stuffed it into my mouth. I wanted to throw up, and I was sweating again.

  “So, what do you say, should I open a bottle of wine?” Rick said to Darren.

  “Can I see it?” Peter said. I loved how Peter acted as if knowing wine was an actual hobby of his, when it was just like what watching porn was for a sex addict. The culture of wine, learning obscure cocktails, having just a beer. He was a fucking alcoholic.

  “I say, sounds like a great idea,” Darren said. Peter walked over and put his arm around me, which made me uncomfortable. I hated the way he was always touching me. My stomach cramped. I was going to have the runs.

  There was only one fucking bathroom, and someone was in there, taking forever. You couldn’t say, “I seriously will shit myself if you don’t stop fucking touching me.”

  On the toilet, I doubled over in pain. I wanted to fucking die. When I stood up, my vision darkened. I sat back down on the toilet lid. I closed my eyes. Did I need to puke or shit? Did I need more Suboxone, or had I taken too much? I stood up. Shit on the floor and puke in the toilet, or puke on the floor and shit in the toilet? I lay down on the cool tiles with my eyes closed. Get it together. Grow up. Get it together. Darkness. Self-loathing. Regret. I was an addict. I wasn’t an addict; I was just in a fucked-up situation. I was going to end up homeless. Everything would be fine. I needed to use a lifeline. I needed to ask the studio audience. I needed to phone a friend.

  I let myself cry for a minute.

  Eventually you had to say to yourself, “Get over yourself.”

  Peter’s father took Darren down the hall somewhere. Sue reappeared, humming, in her apron, ready to take out her pie. Jake was putting something in a pan. “Did you make something?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, just an apple crisp.”

  “Yeah, we bought some apples this morning, and we browned them with sugar,” Sue added.

  “Huh,” I said, deadpan. It had been only two hours, and already I was exhausted by faking enthusiasm.

  Peter’s mom chopped something and Peter left again. I was just standing there, in the kitchen. There was an empty chair at the dining table so I sat down, but then it was like I was sitting there while everyone else was doing something. I stood back up. “Do you need help?” I asked. No one heard me. So. Huh. I sat back down.

  The wine. Find the wine.

  I found a glass. “Do you want something to drink?” Sandy asked.

  “Where is the wine?”

  “Oh,” she said, and then she came closer, “about the wine. Grace is, well, you remember, over Christmas. She’s touchy about having wine in the house, you know. She has her beliefs. So we compromised; we’re keeping the wine in the other room.” She smiled, apologetically.

  Grace went to a religious college and lived in a “sober dorm.” If she was lame as a college student, how lame would she become as an adult? Or would the lameness build up until she reached forty, when she would become addicted to coke and rediscover God? Or would she maintain her lameness until she died? Or maybe she had a different measurement for lameness, and in her own world, eating ice cream past midnight and talking all night was her being wild. Was lameness subjective? Was it something we grew out of or something we eventually had to experience?

  A boy. She would meet the wrong boy, and then anything could happen. It was always like that: girl is fine, meets boy, falls in love, ruins life, boy leaves, girl straightens life out, dusts Bible, puts on lame dress, and goes back to church. At least then she would have something to repent for, experiences to regret. I wished I could have given her some of mine. I wished I were someone no one ever had to worry about. I should have been with my mother, who was dying of MS. I should have saved money and bought her nice presents. A knot in my stomach. I wanted to hug my mom. I felt the future me looking back at the selfish me, who spent all her time avoiding her sick mother, staying high, and being a huge disappointment.

  Last Christmas Grace and Rick got into a big fight with Peter about having alcohol in the house. They compromised and kept the alcohol away from Grace. They must have made the same arrangement. “Just don’t cross the line into the dining room,” Sandy said into my ear as she poured my glass. I nodded, like this was all very reasonable.

  Wasn’t part of Jesus’s whole thing turning water into wine?

  Two Xanaxes and two glasses of wine later, I felt amazing. Xanax was like a shortcut out of the woods of addiction and into the clearing of sobriety. Fucking Xanax. I could do this every month or so. Get clean, let my dope tolerance drop so I wouldn’t need to use as much to get high, save money, stay clean for long stretches—but still have dope when I needed it. I could use until Peter and I had babies and then slide right back into society, blend into Facebook with baby pictures, my hair in
a baseball cap, complaining about how tired I was in my status updates. Life would take over, and like a mountain climber, I would keep going. A stupid, idiotic mountain climber moving very slowly up a big, dumb mountain, weighed down by a bag of shit, finding one foothold at a time, just to turn around and do it all over again backwards. All this until I woke up one day and was old. My kids will have taken over, and I’ll have become part of the shit they’ll have to carry with them. Just like my mother, haunting me. If only she was kind enough to become a memory. Memories didn’t call. Memories didn’t nag. Memories stayed golden and young, and you kept the ones you wanted. Memories didn’t have lesions on their brains and chairs in their showers. She used to be young and pretty. Did she know, when she opened the oven to check on dinner, that taking care of kids was how she was wasting the best years of her life? That was what I was aspiring to do, but at least I knew it. At least I experienced college and watched enough television with female leads to know exactly what I would regret. She wasn’t stupid. Having a family was a popular way to waste your life, so maybe it wasn’t the worst way. You had to do something or do nothing. She knew she would have finite time to be in her physical prime, so why did I feel bad? Why did I have to be implicated? Why did I feel guilty that she had wasted it on me? She lived the life she wanted. It was her choice not to finish school, not to have a career, to marry an old man she didn’t love. She had her eyes wide open.

  All the pain went back to my mother. Freud didn’t seem that deep. It was natural to contemplate the very beginning and the first person you ever met, whose job was to keep you alive when everything was brand-new, and you were perfect with all kinds of perfect futures. I popped another Xanax. Things were going to be absolutely fine.

  Peter’s father, at the head of the table, said, “Okay, I guess we’ll start.” I nodded, but something was wrong because I was the only one still standing up. Then I realized Darren had my hand, and I looked around. Oh, right, the praying.

  “Thank you, Lord, for the food we are about to receive . . .”

  It was just like the movies! “And for the animals who gave their lives for us to have this meal and . . .” This struck me as hysterical. The animals? Like they agreed to be sacrificed? Then that feeling hit me, the one where you knew you weren’t supposed to laugh, so all you wanted to do was laugh. I bit down on my lip, hard.

  After the prayer, I shot straight up to the buffet and filled my plate with green beans and a heap of mashed potatoes, and put the plate down to slice some meat. “Maya, don’t forget about the onions, they’re over there,” Peter’s father pointed across the room.

  “Did you make them?” I asked.

  “I grew ’em,” he smiled.

  I couldn’t tell if he was being serious. “Wow, that’s, um, I didn’t know you could do that,” I said, meaning growing food when the ground was so cold, but it sounded like I didn’t know anyone could grow anything.

  “So, Sue, how’s medical school going? Tackling cadavers?” Darren asked. I burst into laughter. Everyone looked at me.

  “No, I’m sorry. I just didn’t know it was a phrase, ‘tackling cadavers.’” There was a general laugh. Darren cracked up, putting his hand on my shoulder like we were old friends. Was that mean to say? Was I making fun of him?

  When my food was gone, I got more.

  Later I crouched in front of the toilet and put my fingers down my throat and dry-heaved and did it again and again and finally it all came up. I sat on the floor, exhausted. Then I ate vanilla ice cream because when you threw it up it didn’t burn. I wasn’t just throwing up because of the calories; I was trying to take care of the future me who was going to wake up dope sick with a stomach full of food. I stared at the mirror. My eyes were watery, and my face flushed. The Xanax had faded. I would have to keep taking more, and then it would knock me out. I couldn’t go on like this. I would sleep forever, be high forever, and be broke forever.

  After dinner I thought about helping clear the table, but Sue and Grace beat me to it.

  Peter’s mother handed out pens and sheets of paper. “I don’t know if the boys told you,” she said to me and Sue, “but we have this tradition of writing down what we’re thankful for, and then we put it in that vase.” She pointed to a shiny blue vase. “Then we go around the table and everyone takes one out and reads it, and everyone guesses who wrote what. It’s just this silly tradition . . .” As she walked away, I noticed she was kind of waddling.

  Sue looked thoughtfully at her paper. Close up she had bad skin, with makeup caked over the blemishes. Sometimes the thing that solved the problem was the bigger problem.

  “I’m thankful I have this glass of alcohol,” I whispered to Sue. She giggled.

  “I’m thankful for having locked in a low interest rate,” I said loud enough for Darren to hear. He snorted. I was making fun of this family tradition. I had never realized how jokes were always a little mean. That was why these people never joked around. My mother and I and Raj were always laughing, when we weren’t screaming at each other.

  “I am thankful I have a cozy apartment to come home to every night.”

  “Peter!” I yelled. No one else said anything. I guess we were not supposed to literally shout.

  Peter nodded, “Yup.”

  Sue dug one out. “I am thankful for having a mother who taught us the value of sacrifice.”

  No one said anything. Finally Sandy said, “Marcie.” Marcie nodded. So Marcie was Peter’s mother’s sister. They didn’t really look alike. Marcie was as skinny as a jackrabbit, with a dyke haircut and a warm smile. Sandy’s face was as long as Sunday, and her body was wide and heavy, like mine would be if I ever had kids and got to sixty.

  “I am thankful to Jesus,” some number or chapter of the Bible I didn’t really hear, “and have been thinking and praying on the idea of judgment and hoping the Lord will guide me to a state of mind where I will not cast judgment on anyone.” I pointed to Rick. “That was you, huh?” He nodded. I told myself I should quit guessing and give other people a chance.

  I wished I could stop talking. I couldn’t stop talking. I had nothing to say.

  “I am thankful for not living in poverty, being in pain, or having too little or too much, but most of the time feeling all right, and even good, full of good food and wine, and good company like tonight.” There was a general mmm and aw.

  “A writer wrote that,” Darren said, and everyone nodded. “Maya, was that you?”

  I nodded. When in doubt, just ramble a little, Kerouac style.

  Peter’s mother gave me an approving nod. “Very nice,” she said.

  It was Peter’s turn. “I am thankful for friends, new and old,” he read. He refilled his wine glass. He was obviously wasted.

  Grace guessed, “Sue?”

  Sue nodded. Friends new and old. Hallmark bullshit.

  It was my turn. I took one out. “I am thankful to the Lord for keeping me safe and well during my travels.” Grace had just come back from Italy.

  I had completely lost interest. I mentally replayed how impressed everyone had been with what I wrote.

  “After dinner the men sat on the living room floor and sang songs while the women cleaned up the kitchen,” I told my therapist a week later, and then buried my head into a pillow.

  “Where were you?”

  “I lingered in the kitchen, but every time I grabbed a pot and took it to the counter, there was no space for it, so Sandy had to move this huge, heavy blender, like, just so I could put down the mashed potatoes. I was making things more difficult for her. I started doing the dishes, but she said, ‘Don’t worry about it. There’s a dishwasher.’ Sue was loading the dishwasher and made me feel dumb for not thinking of it. I am not good that way. I don’t know how she seamlessly blends in and knows where everything goes. Some people can just get into the rhythm of things, but I never know how. But then I feel bad that I’m not helping, like I’m being rude. The truth is I don’t really want to help. I just don’t want to
look like an asshole, and it’s not fair, because men aren’t expected to do this stuff, like there’s this rule if you have a vagina you are programmed to wash dishes or sweep the floor or whatever. Also, you know when people say, ‘It’s okay, I’ll do it.’ Are you supposed to do it anyway or take their word for it? Because I always take their word for it. Some people really don’t want you to be all up in their shit, so how are you supposed to know?”

  “Were you this anxious the whole time?”

  “No. Once I just gave up on trying to help, I went and sat on the living room floor and listened to music, and everyone was so happy. It was weird. I didn’t know people did stuff like that in real life. It made me so uncomfortable.” I talked with my hand over my face.

  “What about it was uncomfortable?”

  “I am jealous he grew up in this warm, loving environment where people cared about things, like writing, and people just liked each other. Whenever my family got together for the holidays, all the kids just sat in front of the TV while our parents talked about money, houses, the prices of this or that, real estate. It was awful. No one in my family even knows I can write, but I write a few lines on a piece of paper and Peter’s family is impressed.”

  “Every family has their problems. They were probably on their best behavior for the holidays,” she said.

  “No, I mean, maybe, but at least they could fake that well. I felt it. It was nice; they actually listened to each other. At first it made me anxious and crazy, but once I got drunk, it was really nice.”

  “What about a family being warm and polite makes you anxious when you’re sober?”

  “I always have this feeling I’m going to fuck it up somehow. Like I’m walking on eggshells, and then it’s this impulse control thing. I keep thinking, What if I just said ‘Fuck’ really loud? What would happen?”