Bad Habits

by Amy Gentry

  I shrugged and repeated what I’d heard others in the Program say, always tongue in cheek. “Paid to read, summers off.”

  “Huh.” She didn’t sound skeptical, just underwhelmed.

  “Now you.”

  “The life of the mind,” she said simply. “I thought that’s why we were all here.”

  Hearing the phrase without scare quotes opened up a little wound of longing in me. It was what I would have said myself only a few short months ago. That I couldn’t imagine saying it now was a mark of how fearful I had become. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means freedom to think. Freedom to follow an idea all the way, as far as it can go, without worrying that somebody won’t like it and you’ll be out of a job. In Los Angeles, it’s always about money. How much can you raise, what do the investors think, who’s in a position to green-light you or pull the plug?” She frowned. “It’s not getting told ‘no’ that kills you. That I can handle. It’s the projects you stop asking for because your instincts tell you the money’s not there. And then one day you wake up and realize you can’t even imagine something unless you can smell money in it first. You feel the smartest parts of your brain dying for lack of oxygen. Out here”—​Tess swept her arm, taking in the stores along the street—​“the oxygen follows the money, and there’s never enough of that to go around. But in there”—​she pointed toward campus—​“the oxygen flows toward the best ideas.” She inhaled deeply. “I want to breathe that air for a while.”

  Ideas. Everyone else had them, it seemed. I used to have them, too, back when they didn’t matter. Why, when I thought of the life of the mind now, was it Bethany’s apartment I saw, with its artfully arranged antiques and expensive rugs, instead of my project? It was because I had no project. So far, I was my only project.

  Then again, something in me resisted Tess’s idealism. I looked down at my new riding boots, now lightly scuffed from two long walks and splashed with mud I’d need to scrub away the moment I got home, before the road salt ate away the finish. “The life of the mind is expensive.”

  She looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “Freedom’s always expensive. Where’ve you been?”

  And then it hit me. I froze on the sidewalk, seized with panic. “No” was all I could say. “No, no, no.”

  “Mac?”

  I fumbled for my phone and saw with a dropping stomach that it had died overnight. “What time is it?”

  Tess looked at her phone. “Ten forty-five.”

  “I have to go. Right now.”

  As Tess waved goodbye, I unlocked the building door and raced up to the apartment, taking two stairs at a time all the way up. Yesterday’s shopping trip, making up with Gwen, the crazy dinner and its impossible but very real aftermath, the hungover morning, and, finally, meeting Tess on my walk of shame—​it had pushed the most important thing completely out of my mind.

  The Sunday double.

  I’d been in the building, for god’s sake. I’d walked all the way home.

  When my phone charged, I saw one new text:

  This is Derek. Pursuant to Nona’s employment policy as stated in the employee manual, your ass is fired. Your shifts have been covered. Have a nice weekend.

  * * *

  I lay flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling, unemployed.

  The Nona job was just a security blanket, I told myself. The other students did without jobs, or had part-time gigs researching for professors. That was the kind of job a grad student was supposed to have, the kind that built relationships and went on the CV, even if in practice it was only fetching library books. That was how this was supposed to work.

  And yet. And yet. Nona had been so concrete. Putting plates on tables wasn’t glamorous; customers sneered or snapped or, most often, ignored me, treating me like an automaton who existed to refill water glasses and fetch extra sides of squash blossom hollandaise for their farm-to-table egg benedicts. Nor was it an important job, in any sense of the word. I was a mere conveyor belt for the creations of a chef so far above my station, he would barely talk to me except to snarl when I was forced to ask him for a corrected order. The meals I laid before people were superfluous and bad for them, excrescences of obscene wealth they’d later, I imagined, pay handsomely to melt off their torsos at the gym. I had no romantic notions about Nona, except for one: I worked, I hustled, I moved as fast as I could, and at the end of each shift, I measured my success by the size of the bulge of cash in my apron. The work was hard but the reward immediate and gloriously tangible.

  Whereas the work I did in the Program had to be believed in. It couldn’t be felt or seen except in fevered bursts of comprehension that faded just as quickly as they’d come. It was like a city that only existed when you closed your eyes, or like one of Rocky’s virtual museums. When I read an article, let’s say Derrida’s “Economimesis” or Sablev’s “The Eternal Modern,” I would, after an initial terrifying period of disorientation, begin to pick up the rhythm of the words and sentences, and then a sentence here or there would make sense, and then suddenly the brick and mortar of the argument would feel as steady under my feet as the tiled floor at Nona, and infinitely more beautiful. For a moment I would be dancing within the imaginary grid of ideas. And then I would look up from the article, and it would all vanish.

  I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the ceiling had turned into a round table at Nona, one of the large six-tops in my section. But it was also a seminar table, and Bethany was there with Rocky and Gwen and Connor and Tess and, for some reason, Quimby. They were all waiting for me to serve them waters that were also a paper I had to write that would explain everything. But Derek had just triple-sat me, and I had orders to put in and mimosas to pour, and out of the corner of my eye I could see a particularly insistent two-top waving their arms to get my attention, hear them shouting for me, louder and louder.

  Mom and Lily.

  I woke up to my ringing phone and reached for it, in my dream state half believing it was Derek calling to tell me it had all been a mistake. Then I saw the screen and was instantly awake. I took a breath and scrambled up to a seating position before pressing talk.

  “Hi, Mom.” It came out a croak.

  “That doctor came to the house yesterday. You didn’t tell me it was a woman.”

  “Oh,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Yeah. She’s a woman.”

  “Well, you could have told me that. When she showed up at the door, I thought she was a nurse. Once we cleared that up, though, things went well. She was very competent.” She didn’t say for a woman, but I heard it in her voice. Working for the handsome Dr. Donnelly had left her with a permanent prejudice against female doctors that I found grotesque considering the circumstances of her own termination.

  “How did Lily do?”

  “Lily was an angel. She was perfect, just perfect. She let the doctor do all these tests—​blocks and rings, baby stuff, then reading and math. You should have seen the music test! Lily did so well.”

  “How well?” I asked, suddenly nervous. “What did the doctor say?”

  “Diagnosis exactly the same,” my mother said proudly, as if it had all been her doing. “I signed the papers and she said she’d submit them from her office.” I’d checked this in advance, since I knew my mother could not be trusted to file the paperwork. “But, Mackenzie, honey, that lady is pricey. I barely had enough in my account to cover the co-pay. Lily and I are going to need more money while we wait for the appeal.”

  “Co-pay?” That didn’t sound right. I had checked and double-checked the insurance coverage for home visits. “There shouldn’t have been a co-pay. How much was it?”

  “Six hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Mom, that doesn’t sound like a co-pay. That sounds like the full cost.”

  “Well, you’re the one who said we needed a home visit.”

  “You did, but . . . there must have been some kind of mistake. Why didn’t you call me before you pai
d? I could have talked to her!” I heard my voice go frantic and knew this was the wrong tack, but I couldn’t help it. Six hundred and fifty dollars! Most of what I’d sent her after my last—​and now, as it turned out, final—​double shift. Gone in one morning.

  “Mackenzie Claire,” she said, icy. “I called you plenty. It went straight to voice mail, so I figured you were out at some frat party or something.”

  “They don’t have fraternities here,” I said with a surge of childish defensiveness, pricked an instant later with the thought of what I’d really been doing last night.

  “Anyway, it wasn’t an emergency. If it had been, I would have tried Gwen. I don’t enjoy parading our money problems around that one, I can tell you. But at least she picks up. Anyway, we had plenty enough to cover it in my account, and a full pantry too. Thank God I went shopping Thursday.” Her self-congratulatory tone sickened me, as if she had already forgotten the source of the “plenty enough” in her bank account, as if buying food were a special task she should be rewarded for rather than the bare minimum of what it took to sustain life. “But we’ll need something for the next couple of weeks until the appeal goes through.”

  “It shouldn’t take that long.” I flashed on my empty bank account. “If they file the paperwork Monday—”

  “The doctor said it’ll take at least two weeks, probably more like a month. We’re going to need money before that.”

  We’re going to need money. Always “we,” never “me.” The dark thoughts had already returned. The constant barrage of insults, the comments to make me feel guilty . . . It all felt so familiar. She wasn’t slurring her speech, but then again, each time had taught her how to hide it more thoroughly. I’d been through enough emergencies with my mother to sense something off about this one.

  Fury choked me. The fact that I even had to wonder whether my mom was cashing my sister’s disability checks for drugs and then asking me for money to cover the bills would always hold me back. But, of course, yesterday this would have been only a minor crisis. I had slipped up, just this once, and it turned out to be once too often.

  I rubbed my temples, tried to calm down. The first thing to do when I got off the phone was call the doctor to verify her story. I should call the Social Security office, too. In the meantime, I had to hold her off for a while.

  “Can you get it somewhere else? Things are a little tight right now.”

  “Where else am I supposed to get it? An ATM?” she sniped. “Mackenzie. You know I can’t work.”

  “I know you can’t get a—” I stopped myself and took a deep breath. “I know you have to take care of Lily.”

  “Someone has to.”

  Someone had to. All my arguments, all my defenses, broke down against that truth.

  “So, we need money until her disability starts up again. Period. The end.” Her tone was snappish but careful. Always careful. I was her cash cow, and she didn’t want to spook me. I could hear the next words before she said them. “Or I could go back to work, and you could come home and take care of your sister for a while.”

  There it was, the two-word threat. Come home.

  “I—​ No, Mom, I told you, I can’t. Not right now.” My heart was beating violently, the tears starting. The trips I couldn’t go on, the classes I couldn’t take. The catastrophes that had always coincided perfectly with some opportunity I couldn’t seize because I had to take care of things for a few weeks or months while my mom got her shit together. Not this time. I had to finish the Joyner application. After that, I’d go home for Christmas, I swore to whatever god was listening, even though with any luck the problem with the disability payments would be all cleared up by then and they wouldn’t need me. “I—​I told you why.”

  “So, you can hang out with people who’d rather go to school than grow up and make a living?”

  “Come on, Mom. I told you about my job.” I nearly gagged on the word. Don’t think about it.

  “Your job that makes so much money, but not enough for us.”

  “I had to buy some expensive textbooks this week,” I said, inspired by a distant memory of her bitching about how much her nursing textbooks had cost. “I’m sorry. I’m working this weekend and I’ll send you something soon. I promise. Just—​give me a week.”

  There was a long pause. “Well, we can make it another week, but that’s it. And, Mackenzie—”

  “What?” The thought of having to raise enough money in the next week to cover a month’s worth of expenses for my mother, Lily, and myself sawed at my nerves.

  “Thank you,” she said, her tone softer. “I know it isn’t easy for you to be in two places at once. I know you’re working hard. I can tell you’re stressed out from your voice.”

  Congratulations, I thought bitterly. You’re a mind reader.

  “I just wanted you to know, we do appreciate it, Lily and me. We love you. And we’re rooting for you.”

  Where I’d always been able to hang up on her martyr’s sigh, I found her gratitude unendurably painful. I had none to give her in return. “I love you, too,” I forced myself to say.

  “Just give me a call when the transfer goes through,” she said in the same tone.

  “Right,” I said, visions of what it would take for that to happen going through my head. “Give Lily a hug for me.”

  “She misses you.”

  I hung up. A muscle in my arm spasmed, but I managed to keep myself from throwing the phone.

  I stared down at the toes of my caramel leather riding boots, already faintly discolored around the edges because I’d forgotten to rub them with oil. These fucking boots had swallowed the last hours of my income. They were the expensive textbooks I had bought with the last fat roll of cash I would have at my disposal for the foreseeable future. Possibly ever.

  Savagely, I yanked at the brass zipper on the left boot, pulled it off, and hurled it as hard as I could across the room. It hit the wall with a satisfying clunk. The other zipper snagged on my tights an inch above the ankle. After wrestling with it for a moment, I lost patience and forced the boot off, not caring if I broke the zipper or stretched the beautiful caramel leather. It came away with a ripping sound, taking a chunk of my tights with it. I aimed poorly this time and hit my dresser, which thumped the wall as it rocked back and forth, sending yet another stack of interleaved articles sliding to the floor.

  From down the hall, I heard the creak of bedsprings. Gwen was presumably sleeping off a hangover. I wasn’t ready to face her yet.

  I had to collect myself. I had to think of a plan.

  The boots lay slumped against the wall as if they’d been shot by a firing squad. Panic over my rashness washed over me. Gingerly, I picked them up and examined them. The right zipper was still stuck, but luckily the teeth weren’t bent, just clamped tightly around a fold of black fabric. I wiggled the little brass beetle of the carriage back and forth, easing the shred of tights gently out from between the teeth, millimeter by millimeter. Perhaps three minutes later, there was a satisfying click as the last thread snapped out, and the zipper slid smoothly. I let out a sigh of relief.

  The concentration required for the task had calmed me down, and an idea came to me. I hunted for the small bottle of oil I had purchased with the boots, mulling over something I’d heard Bethany tell Gwen early last night, before everything had gone sideways. So many years, what a shame. Inhaling the buttery texture and rich, wild smell of leather, I was suddenly glad I had blown the cash on boots before knowing that cash was about to become scarce. I rubbed an oily Kleenex into the boots, paying special attention to the salt-lightened patches where the uppers met the soles, as I called and left messages for the doctor and the Social Security Administration.

  I had a plan. But freedom was expensive. I’d have to look the part.

  * * *

  I couldn’t get out of the apartment without seeing Gwen. I showered and dressed as quickly as I could, zipping up the freshly oiled boots over my jeans, but it was afternoon
by the time I was rooting around in the fridge for snacks to throw in my bag, and then there she was, looking absolutely awful, her pale skin yellowed like old ivory around her eyes and mouth.

  “Hey, I thought I heard you.” She made a sour face. “I was in the bathroom, throwing up.”

  “Oh god, I’m sorry.” I watched her closely.

  “I drank way too much last night. It was just so”—​she glanced quickly at me, then brushed her hand through her greasy hair and looked down—​“awkward.”

  “You thought so, too, huh?” I said, with a hint of sarcasm.

  “I should never have had all that vodka.”

  “Rocky was very insistent.”

  She didn’t flinch when I said his name. “He was really drunk walking me home last night. Singing and—​he said some things, too. About his marriage to Bethany. He started crying at one point.”

  “What, it’s that bad?”

  “He was crying because he loves her, Mac. He worships her.”

  I suppressed a snort.

  “It was really sad. Pathetic, really.” She squinted, as if remembering slowly. “He’s never been able to live up to her. You know he was her student at Penn, right?”

  I shook my head, though of course Bethany had said so last night. It was eerie, as if our conversations—​and who knew what else—​had mirrored each other.

  “That must be a tough dynamic,” she continued thoughtfully. “Knowing he owes her everything.”

  The conversation was sinking me further and further into a fog. What did Gwen expect me to believe had happened last night? What did she even remember? Was it possible she was making all this up to distract me, throw me off the scent? I cut to the chase. “So, did you two talk all night, or what?”

  “Oh god no. The minute I got inside, I passed out.” She didn’t say he left, not explicitly, and I was too embarrassed to ask. She looked embarrassed, too. “Mac, I’ve never done so much drinking in my life. I mean, I drank at Columbia, but not like this. I’m going to slow down. I feel like I’m losing control.”