Piece of Mind

by Michelle Adelman

  I had to get away from him.

  “I need to sit,” I said.

  I filled my mug and headed back to the couch.

  “Are you ready to talk about you?” I said. “Because I am.”

  I gulped down my coffee and pills, and he resumed his place by the window.

  It took him a minute before he started.

  “I was never planning on going anywhere,” he said.

  He locked my gaze so I knew he was serious. I couldn’t take his eyes. They were so dark, and pleading.

  “Sure,” I said, looking away.

  “And I never really left you either.”

  “You didn’t?”

  Now he was looking out the window again.

  “Because it definitely felt like you did. It definitely felt like just one phone call and one note and that was it. Everyone assumed you were gone.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “Everyone! Harry, Frank, Enid.”

  “Who?”

  “Nate.”

  “I know,” he said. “I should have called more. I just felt so much worse after I talked to you.”

  “Why’d you come back then? Do you want me to leave? I can go this time if you want.”

  I grabbed Harry, refilled my mug, and lurched toward the door.

  I spilled a little as I went, but I didn’t fall.

  I was halfway down the hallway when he called after me.

  “Please, Lucy.”

  I stopped walking and turned around, but I didn’t move.

  “You’re the one who left!” I said.

  Harry wriggled out of my arms and snuck back inside.

  “But I’m back now.”

  “You didn’t even try to stick me in a home.”

  “Because you didn’t need a home,” he said, in his irritating calm. “You never needed that. Come inside.”

  I didn’t say anything for a minute. I didn’t want to leave, but I didn’t want to be near him either. I wanted to stay exactly where I was.

  “I was an asshole,” he said. “I felt like such an asshole that when I heard your voice, it was like—I couldn’t breathe. Like my whole chest was caving in. And then I felt like a bigger asshole. So I couldn’t do it. No matter how I approached it, or tried to rationalize it and reason my way out of it, I couldn’t call. I picked up the phone so many times. So many times, but after a while—it just felt like too much.”

  “I was the one in the dark, Nate, and it was really dark here. Black sometimes.”

  He took a moment to compose his thoughts.

  “It was only a few weeks,” he said.

  “It felt like more.”

  “I knew you had your pills and that the bills were paid. And I made sure Byron was around if you needed him. Plus, shit, Luce, I thought you were getting married!”

  “You told me not to marry him.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  I sat down in the middle of the hallway and leaned against the concrete.

  He squatted next to me, and I looked at him. He was genuine. I could see that, but—I turned away from him. “I want to sit here alone, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be inside.”

  I’m not sure how long I was out there. It could have been twenty minutes; it could have been two hours. It was confusing, all these emotions churning together—relief on some level to see him, excitement even, euphoria. I couldn’t wait to tell him all that had happened. But there was also uncertainty, aching, maybe a little dread.

  After some time passed, he came out holding an offering, a brown box.

  “It’s fudge. I met this guy who makes it custom, and of course I thought of you. I know it’s not coffee, but . . .”

  I appreciated that he didn’t say anything else. He just left me with the box, and for a second I thought, I could go now. For a night or two nights. I could wander with this fudge.

  But I was exhausted, and my back was starting to hurt, and it was so much easier to just go back inside.

  “I’D REALLY LIKE TO KNOW what happened,” I said.

  I took a seat on the far end of the cushions, though there wasn’t much room between us no matter how I positioned myself.

  He took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles. “It started when I saw her.”

  “Who?”

  “Mom.”

  He pointed toward the closet area.

  “She was there, in the shadows.”

  “Like a flash in the corner of your eye?”

  “You saw her again too.”

  “I’m pretty sure,” I said. “It seemed like her. When was this?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. It was a rough night, really fuzzy, but it all kind of went downhill after that.”

  He finished his cigarette and lit another one.

  “Before I saw her, I poured myself a scotch to help me sleep.”

  “I thought you drank beer.”

  “Beer wasn’t strong enough,” he said. “This went down so easy, Dad’s drink. I could almost smell it on his breath. For a minute, I felt a calm, like the kind that comes after the snow, when it’s just you and the crunching, and the wind across the powder. You know what I’m talking about?”

  It was the peace Mom had given me.

  “I think so,” I said.

  He took a drag.

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I kept promising one more shot. Just one more shot, and I’d pass out and be fine. But I was still awake, so I had another one and then another.”

  He was the one who kept all of his emotions inside, smothered them until they fed on his fat cells, his muscle, his hair. I imagined him standing in the middle of a shower, water washing over him, draining away all of the skin and bone and blood, his center, his spine, and I wished I could have been there to hold on to some of it, to stop it up and stuff it back into place.

  “I was eating cake,” I said. “I could have been here.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered,” he said. “I was messed up way before that. I remember seeing the bottle, almost empty, and thinking, Shit, I shouldn’t have had that much. Then, it was like as soon as I realized it, I looked up. And there she was. Of course she didn’t talk, but I almost thought I heard her whisper. Something.”

  “Like a whistle,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, dragging out the s for an extra second.

  “She was trying to save you,” I said. “Without her you could’ve died of alcohol poisoning, or—I don’t know, something else.”

  “Maybe, but I was pissed at her then for leaving so fast. ”

  “Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she’s here now.”

  We both paused to look around the room. He slowly made his way toward the closet and peeked inside. There was nothing.

  “You see her all the time?” he said.

  “I’m starting to think it’s only we’re really desperate, when she’s afraid we’re going to die.”

  “It’s a nice thought,” he said. “Though at the time it seemed like she was trying to kill me. When I reached out for her, I lost my balance and banged my head on the corner of the cabinet.”

  He gestured toward the front of his scalp. “Nine stitches.”

  “That happened when you were little too. I remember that.”

  “It was my chin that time,” he said.

  He ran his fingertips over the scruff to feel for the scar.

  “I figured I’d go home and sleep it off. But when they asked how it happened, I couldn’t explain.”

  He started walking around the room as if re-piecing the fragments of the night.

  “I was confused and drunk, so they kept me around for observation, and along the way, they did some blood work and saw all the other toxins in my system.”

  “My old pills.”

  He sighed. “You figured it out.”

  “I know pills,” I said. “I’m not dumb.”

  “No,” he said. “But I was sneaky.”

  “I should have figured it out so
oner.”

  “How? It’s not like I planned it. I thought I was just using enough to get through each day. They wanted me to stay, but I didn’t care. I was still going to go back to the apartment and crash, but when I thought about what I was going back to—”

  “Me.”

  “No, not you,” he said. “No Sabine, no money, no plan. A shitty job, a ghost, a dark apartment, cat hair. I couldn’t do it. I was suffocating. All I could think about was getting out.”

  “Grieving,” I said.

  He stopped pacing.

  “Just enough time to get back on track, and then I was supposed to get back to work, but I knew that if I did—I worried I’d end up in the same place.”

  “You could’ve called more.”

  He wiped his eye.

  I looked outside.

  It might have been a real tear.

  I sort of wanted to hug him then, but he was too far

  away.

  “But look at you now!” he said. “I mean, shit, Byron said you were stronger. He always said that, his stupid thing about glass, but—I see it now. You’re different.”

  “Yeah, well thanks, I guess. I do feel kind of different, in a way. Older maybe. But it’s not like I miraculously transformed. Don’t expect me to go work on Wall Street or keep the place spotless or anything. I just kind of figured out what I was supposed to do—I think. But I’m still not like you.”

  “Thankfully.”

  A LITTLE LATER, I moved so we were sitting together on the cushions. At first it was strange to be so near to him, so I could almost feel his leg hairs, so little space, so few words. But I didn’t shift from my spot, and neither did he.

  I looked at his bag on the floor and back at him.

  “So what now?” I said.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I ate fudge,” I said. “Are you staying?”

  “If that works for you,” he said. “I was thinking I could take some classes again, figure out a way to slow down. I talked to some people at school. There are scholarships out there, different loan options. We’ll have to start over, but it looks like they’re willing to work with me.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “You can fill up your cereal container.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And I won’t cost as much,” I said. “The zoo will be free, if I can get this position, which I think I will, and I’ll be busy with Enid. And I’ll have my disability checks and insurance. So you don’t have to worry about me.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me either.”

  He put out his last cigarette and put up his feet.

  We stayed close, just staring in silence, almost like we were waiting for Mom to reappear.

  After a while, when she didn’t, I opened my sketchbook and started thumbing through it. There were sticky notes on a few of the loose pages.

  “What are these?” I said. “Who did this?”

  “I did, when you were in the hallway,” he said. “I tagged the ones I thought would really pop.”

  I examined his face. No signs of ridicule or condescension.

  “What?” he said. “Have you noticed there’s nothing on the walls? We can’t live in a home with nothing on the walls.”

  “I put a calendar on the fridge,” I said. “You can feel free to put stuff on it if you want.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Then he turned on the TV, and somehow amid all of the fuzz, he landed on one of the old kitschy superhero shows, one we both knew by heart. He knew not to change the channel.

  As long as we watched, there was no need to say anything else.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MY GREATEST THANKS to everyone at W. W. Norton who helped bring this book into the world, especially my editor, Jill Bialosky, for thoughtful insights and invaluable feedback, for asking the most difficult questions at the right times, and for continually pushing the story in the right direction.

  I am so grateful to my agent, Molly Friedrich, who guided me through this process with exceptional humor, wisdom, and honesty. Thanks, too, to Lucy Carson, who provided useful perspective when I needed it, and to the rest of the team at the Friedrich agency, for their tireless assistance along the way.

  This novel might never have evolved beyond scattered thoughts had I not received guidance from outstanding teachers and peers at Columbia University. My thanks to Binnie Kirshenbaum (and the whole of our thesis workshop), Sam Lipsyte, Rene Steinke, Aaron Hamburger, Jennifer Epstein, and Joanna Hershon for providing especially perceptive comments. To Clare Beams, Helene Wecker, Kara Levy, and Ashley Murray for overall support, friendship, and kinship from the start. And to Ruth Galm, for always getting it, on every level.

  I am indebted to Jessica Tuccelli for wonderful advice at a moment’s notice. And to Jane Ratcliffe, one of the finest readers I know and the first teacher who ever made me think that I could do this. I’d also like to recognize my friends in San Diego (and elsewhere for that matter) for offering respite from book talk; my colleagues at Francis Parker, for emphasizing the importance of continually learning and growing; and my students, especially my Craft kids, who inspired me more than they realize.

  I can’t adequately express appreciation to my mother, an expert proofreader, for a lifetime of cheer, care, and compassion. To my dad, who dreamed this before I did. To Tevin, for unqualified friendship and for understanding the big picture. To Bill, because I always want to impress you, and to Sue and Jen, because you’re always so encouraging. To Emily, Molly, Abby, Jake, and Dash, because you’re all beautiful and amazing and you remind me what matters most. And to Jeremiah, because I am the lucky one—for your genuine love, support, patience, and faith in me.

  This book would never have been conceived without my sister Caren, who sketched all of the pictures and whose brain helped inspire Lucy’s. I am intrigued, entertained, and awed by you every single day.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MICHELLE ADELMAN HAS an MFA in writing from Columbia University and BS and MS degrees in journalism from Northwestern University. She has worked as a magazine writer and an editor, a university instructor, and a high school English teacher and dean. She grew up in Connecticut and has lived in New York, San Diego, and the Bay Area, where she currently resides. Piece of Mind is her first novel.

  Copyright © 2016 by Michelle Adelman

  Illustrations by Caren Adelman

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this

  book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

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  please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at

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  Book design by Fearn Cutler de Vicq

  Production manager: Anna Oler

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Adelman, Michelle.

  Piece of mind : a novel / Michelle Adelman.—First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-393-24570-7 (hardcover)

  1. Young women—Family relationships—Fiction. 2. Domestic fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3601.D4667P54 2016

  813'.6—dc23

  2015032331

  ISBN 978-0-393-24571-4 (e-book)

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

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