Limits

by Steph Campbell

  “I’d be there for him, if he’d just tell me that. Instead, he’s making me feel like this is all my fault, like I ruined everything.” The tears hang wetly on my lashes and threaten to jump.

  Marigold tips my chin up with her long finger. “Adam feels like things are spinning out of control just as much as you do, honey. When you’re caught up in a riptide, the natural reaction is to put all your energy in the opposite direction, as far away from the undertow as you can, and that’s true for both of you. You’re my doll, but you are a spitfire, Genevieve. I imagine Adam has his work cut out for him when you get upset. Anger, lust, and curiosity, all of those things are going to send you running toward someone. But it gets tricky with fear. Fear drives us away. Fear will send you running from what might just save you. Don’t let it, Genevieve.”

  She presses my hair back off my face and meets my eyes. “You and Adam are up against something that we can’t predict the outcome of, but you stand a far better chance of making it through this if you stop wasting your energy trying to swim against this thing that’s bigger and stronger than you are. Just like when you’re in a riptide, sweetie, you might have to hang on and move in the direction that feels counterproductive, but will save you in the end. And it will be a hell of a lot easier to keep your strength and courage up if you do it together.”

  I let the tears fall, and my voice shudders around a sob that’s half relief, half trepidation. “I feel like I’ll never know all of these things like you do. Like I’ll never be a real grown-up, capable of solving my own problems.”

  “Genevieve, you’re comparing yourself to an old woman. I’ve had life experience—I’ve had so many loves, so many lovers, so much loss. Why do you think you need to have it all figured out right now?” Marigold throws her hands in the air, making her bracelets jangle.

  I wrap my arms around myself. “I’m just ready to be done with feeling so lost all the time. And I sort of thought I was for a while, but now…”

  “We all have things that make us question our paths, Genevieve. We all have setbacks.”

  “Even you?” I ask, an eyebrow raised.

  Marigold laughs and claps her hands together. “Of course!”

  “Marigold, would it be okay if I maybe stayed in the guest room? I’m not up to driving to my parents’ place tonight.” I feel so drained, I could lay my head on this sky blue table and fall asleep in a few sweet seconds.

  Marigold strokes my hair back. “You’re always welcome to stay, love, but don’t you think you should go home? Kiss and make up?”

  I shake my head. “I think maybe I should give it a few days. I’ll just stay tonight, though. I can crash at Mom and Dad’s tomorrow.”

  I love Adam, I’m certain of that. And after talking to Marigold, I’m pretty sure he might love me, too. But I don’t want to push it. I don’t want to run back and have us fight again right now. I don’t want the stress of the immigration situation to crumble everything we’ve built. We just need a little time.

  “Stay as long as you need, love.”

  21 ADAM

  “Fuck my life.” I have so many petri dishes in front of me, scattered across the table, it’s just stupid. Beyond it being generally stupid, since there’s just too much going on to properly analyze any of it, there’s also stupidity in the fact that they’re out on the counter, exposed to temperatures dips and peaks I’m not in control of.

  “Hey, man,” Cody says, his voice cautious, like he’s sneaking up on a rabid animal. “You cool?”

  “Hey, Cody,” I sigh. I let my head bang onto the stainless steel countertop. “I’m fucked. How are you?”

  “Can I help?” He takes a long sip of coffee and squints just enough to let me know he’s a little hung over.

  I never had the days of easy college life Cody has, even before I was a married man facing deportation and possible legal action by the US government. Right now, I realize being hungover should be enticing. I should wish my biggest problem was making it through my day with a headache and a sour gut.

  But I don’t feel that way.

  Genevieve called to let me know she was safe and sound at Marigold’s house and was going to spend some time with her parents. She told them I’d be in the lab nonstop, and she didn’t like being home alone so much. Maybe it was my demented attempt to make things better between us, but I decided to make her cover story into our reality. I went ahead and parked my ass in the lab, going home only when I’d fallen asleep over my keyboard so many times, my forehead was doing more typing than my fingers.

  I’d always hold my breath for a few seconds when I turned the doorknob, hoping she’d be standing in front of the stove, cooking something that made the entire apartment smell like heaven. When that dream got shattered, I didn’t call her. Didn’t drive to her parents’ house and beg her to come home. I made myself a sandwich, took a shower, slept fitfully in our big bed, and went back to the lab.

  Because when my thesis was done, I could spend less hours at the lab.

  And then she would come home.

  Never mind that that was just the story she invented to keep suspicions down. Some deluded part of my brain was convinced that if I made the story true, the end product would be Genevieve, back in my life. My wife, back by my side.

  And I was desperate as hell for that endgame, because life without her was proving to be a totally pathetic experience.

  “So, nothing in any of the counts?” Cody asks, peering into one of the microscopes.

  “Nope. Every single number is too damn low. Every one. And I’m hungry. Starved.” I lean my head back on the rolling chair that’s got my body’s imprint embedded in it and spin it around. “So damn hungry.”

  Cody walks over and brushes the counterful of junk food wrappers into the garbage next to my desk. “Dude, seriously? It looks like you ate half the vending machine.”

  “It doesn’t fill me up,” I gripe, planting my foot to stop the chair from spinning before I make myself puke. “Nothing fills me up.”

  “You wanna take a break? Go out and get some real food? There’s this diner that has coconut French toast. I hear it’s pretty damn amazing.” Cody picks up the keys he just dropped into his desk drawer and shakes them.

  I drop my head into my hands. “Genevieve ruined any chance I ever had of enjoying anyone else’s breakfast cooking.”

  Cody chuckles. “Dude, you’re so damn wrapped up in that girl. I seriously doubt she’s such a good cook that no other chef in California can compare. This place got a write up in the Times.”

  I shake my head. “My mom had this recipe, and I loved it. You know how there are things from when you’re a kid, and nothing can touch them? Ever?” Cody nods. “Gen blew my mother’s recipe out of the water.”

  “Your mother’s recipe?” Cody has a soft spot for his mother, who’s a surf coach and organic gardener. “That’s serious.”

  “I know it,” I concede. “It’s the shape, you know? Of the bread. My mom had this pan she used to make this bread—it’s called challah bread—and I thought that was how you made it, you know? In the pan. But Gen took it and made it free form on a cookie sheet, and the whole effect was—”

  I look at the petri dishes.

  The little plastic, sterile worlds that trap my yeast and keep the numbers at researchable levels.

  The dishes that are killing my experiment.

  “Holy fucking shit. Holy shit.” I stand up. I sit back down. I jump up and pace. “What if—?”

  “What?” Cody grabs my arm, and I know the worried look in his eye is just because mad scientists in their crazed states have done stupid things. Like ruined masses of samples on one broken whim. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Let me start putting your samples back, okay? The temperatures are probably getting compromised and—”

  “Fuck the dishes!” I yell, triumphant. “I’ve been looking for an outcome that can’t exist in the environment I put it in. I need to disperse the samples, let them intermingle. Maybe a s
terile container with multiple cups? Maybe something I can keep cross-contaminated, but in a controlled way? I know what I can do. Cody, hand me that graph paper and the catalog with the latex gloves that don’t suck. You know, the one with the dorky goggle girl on the cover.”

  Cody has that face people must have when they’re rubbernecking at an accident they just can’t tear their eyes away from. He hands me what I ask for and puts my useless samples back, and I don’t stop him.

  I’ll need an extension, but this will be worth it. And I may not have to throw all my work away, because maybe—just maybe—some of my isolated samples can be made to integrate how I want.

  “Is everything okay, Adam? Do you feel okay? Do you feel…like you might want to take a break?” Cody asks, his voice like a worried school nurse’s.

  “I feel great, man. I feel so damn great. Get lost. I have work to do.” I have six screens open on my computer, looking at my data, deleting what I need to scrap, culling what I can salvage. I type a few lines to my adviser, minimize the tab, and grab my phone to call—

  Genevieve.

  My wife.

  The only woman—the only person—I want to talk to. I want to tell her every detail, even if half of it will go over her head.

  And I have no business calling her. I’ve screwed that up. I thought there was one way to make our marriage work, and I screwed it up by insisting that was it. But I can fix it. I can fix anything.

  “Cody!” I yell, turning to find him. He jumps, because he’s standing right behind me.

  “Listen, man, you’re freaking me out. Go home, get some sleep. Whatever this idea is, it can wait.” He looks like he’s debating calling in for backup.

  “I’m fine. I am. I really am…fine,” I reassure him as I try to peel my lab coat off. I flap one arm, then the other, then finally manage to throw it on my chair. “I have to meet someone.”

  “Is it important?” Cody asks.

  “Life or death, man. Life or death.” I turn to walk out, and Cody grabs my arm, his usually laid-back features locked tight.

  “No. Let me take you to eat. Or let me drive you home to get some rest. You’re cagey as all hell, Adam. Whatever you want to do, you’re gonna screw it up if you go and try to get it done right now.” He pulls me back to my chair and forces me down. “Tell me what the hell is up.”

  I feel like I should try pushing him out of the way and making a run for it, but Cody is a semi-pro surfer. He’s in peak physical shape and could outrun me any day.

  “I just figured out my thesis,” I stall.

  “And no one you need to talk to is even on campus right now,” he says slowly. “The entire board is at the conference in Houston. So back up. Who are you running to see?”

  “It’s not Genevieve,” I admit. Lack of sleep and high amounts of processed sugars and sodium rioting through my brain don’t leave me with much more that makes sense. “I need to save my marriage.”

  “Whoa.” Cody takes me by both shoulders and shakes me. “Stop. You need to save your marriage? But you’re not going to see Genevieve?”

  “She offered to marry me for a green card. To save me from being deported. We had an interrogation. And I told them stupid, stupid things about our toilet paper and our curtains, so I have to just fix that. It’s like the yeast. Exactly like that. I just need to get them to see that it’s the petri dish approach that’s screwing things up, you know?” I kept talking when Cody’s jaw went slack, and I stop when his jaw clamps shut.

  “I hear you,” he says slowly. “I hear you, and I’m telling you this as a friend: you need to go the hell home and get some rest. You’re talking total fucking gibberish, Adam. I think you’ve been in the lab too long, and it maybe pushed you over the edge. No worries. Nothing some sleep won’t fix.” He’s trying to lead me down the hall and out to his car, I bet, but I manage to calm some of the adrenaline running hot through my veins.

  “Cody. Listen. I can’t stop. I can’t go home and sleep. First of all, I haven’t slept in days, because Gen left me.”

  Cody stops dead in his tracks, and his look goes from worried to pitying. Pitying in every way.

  “No kidding?” he asks. I don’t say a word, because I have zero game face, and I know it. I’m positive I look as wrecked as I feel. “Shit, man. I had no idea. I guess I should have known. Genevieve would never have let you spend such a crazy amount of time in this shithole, eating all that crap. I should have guessed.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but we were interviewed by immigration. We were separated for the questioning, and that’s not a good sign to begin with. Then we answered a few questions wrong. I’ve just been waiting for it all to blow over or for everything to fall apart, but I realize now that I need to talk to them. I need to let them know that their conclusions will be wrong if they don’t consider alternate factors—”

  “Adam?” Cody shakes his head. “No. No, I’m telling you. Bad idea. You don’t go all scientific method with the US government. No one who saw you and Genevieve talk about each other would think you had anything but a real marriage. It’ll work out. Leave it be.”

  “Can’t.” I push past him and call over my shoulder, “They’re looking at it all wrong! I have to tell them, or I’ll lose her! I can’t risk that!”

  I hear Cody calling my name, but I’m already well on my way to the parking lot. I try to figure out what the hell I’ll say as I drive to the immigration office, but there’s too much to process in too little time. I’m on my way into the little office where all our troubles were born, debating whether or not I should start with a confession, when I bump into Carlita Johnson, briefcase in one hand, coffee in another. Her briefcase unsnaps and papers start to skitter across the gravel.

  I kneel down and grab at them, apologizing the entire time.

  “Mr. Rodriguez-Abramowitz,” she says, her voice a discouraging mix of wary and surprised.

  “Yes! You remembered me.” I hand her a pile of dusty papers, and she frowns as she takes them, attempting to smooth and organize the stack before she puts it back in her briefcase.

  “How could anyone forget you?” she asks dryly, nearly dropping the briefcase again.

  I tug it gently out of her hands, saying, “Please. Let me help. It’s the least I can do. I’m the one who knocked into you.”

  She nods, her braids loose and long today. “What brings you to the office?” she asks like she’d rather not know.

  “I wanted to talk to you, actually,” I announce.

  She stops shuffling the papers and says, “That is both unnecessary, as your final file review is in the mail, and against procedure unless you have an appointment.”

  I press past her firm voice and the rules and logic that would have put me in my place a few hours ago. A few hours before I realized stretching the limits of the rules is sometimes the only way to get anything done.

  “You’ll have to re-review. I know what you thought, with the toilet paper mess-up and the way I mixed up Genevieve’s birthday—it’s the thirteenth, by the way, and I already know what I’m getting her—but you weren’t looking at it from the perspective you needed to.”

  “I assure you, Mr. Rodriguez-Abramowitz—”

  “Adam,” I interrupt, not letting her get another word in, because she has to see it. She has to understand. “My wife makes this bread that my mom used to make, but she doesn’t use a pan. I’ve never seen anyone not use a pan, you know? And it hit me, today, with my work, that we’ve all been trying to put this marriage in the pan, as it were. But it’s not like that—”

  “Adam, you need to stop—”

  “And maybe it started out because I didn’t want to be deported if you look at it one way, but it was always something more than that—”

  “Adam, listen to me right now—”

  “And I know, you have a job to do, and people probably come to you all the time telling you how much they love the person they’re with and how you have to listen, but it takes me awhile, you k
now? I’m a smart guy in some ways, but I’ve been so dumb about Genevieve, because this was never a green card scam—”

  “Enough!” she yells, and I finally cut my explanation short, because I realize I’ve lost. And it feels like the wind is knocked out of me. “Enough,” she says, ripping her briefcase out of my hand. “I’m not even supposed to say this. I could lose my damn job! But, no, I have never had a person come plead his case like a lunatic in the parking lot, so I’ll let you know. You and your wife clearly have a legitimate marriage, no matter where you keep your damn toilet paper.”

  It takes a few seconds for her words to sink in. “What?” I reach out to grab her hands, but she snatches them back.

  “Do not place your hands on my person,” she warns.

  “I’m so sorry. But did you say it’s okay? Genevieve and I are okay?” I ask.

  “Keep your voice down,” she hisses. I shut my mouth and she lets out a breath. “This is highly unorthodox, but, yes. Your file was approved.”

  “Even though our answers didn’t match?” I ask.

  “You think any husband knows his curtain colors, Mr. Rodriguez-Abramowitz?” she asks, shaking her head. “Sometimes the questions we ask are to get to a bigger story. For example, I may ask who your groomsmen were, and you may tell me that you care deeply about your wife because you chose to stand with her brothers, who you don’t even get along with.” She raises one eyebrow high. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have my own family to get home to. And you do, too, Adam. Have a nice evening.”

  “Mrs. Johnson?”

  Carlita Johnson’s shoulders sag. “Yes?”

  “Thank you. Thank you so very much.” I salute her.

  “Mazel Tov, Adam.” The smile that flashes across her face before she gets in the car is so quick, if I’d blinked I would have missed it.

  I walk back to my car and get ready to go to Genevieve.