by Zoe Fishman
“Why would we haul a box of broken glass to Virginia? I’m just going to rescue the photos real quick and dump the box. It’ll take two seconds.”
I slipped the remaining photos out of the rubble with minimal fanfare, miraculously managing to avoid slicing my fingers open. As I transferred the box to the garbage and the photos to my back pocket, I kept a close watch out for our landlord, Denise, who lived next door. Her maniacal attention to our refuse had given me heart palpitations on countless occasions.
“You can’t put Tupperware in the recycling can,” she would yell when I begrudgingly answered her phone call only moments after putting our bag out.
“But it’s plastic, I thought that—”
“No!”
It went on and on:
“Are those your empty boxes downstairs?”
“Is that your old air conditioner on the curb?”
We had gotten to the point where we only took our garbage out under the cover of night. She was watching now, I knew it. Glass in the recycling bin or no because it’s broken? What to do ? My heart began to race. Screw it. I dumped the whole thing—box and all—into the can and exhaled deeply. A point for Farmwood: no Denise.
I headed back up the stairs slowly. Our apartment was nearly empty. Five years of cohabitation all packed up and shipped out. In Farmwood, there would be no more bath-room attached to the kitchen, no more dust balls the size of cats, no more onion apartment smell weeks after cooking something that involved onions, and no more listening to our middle-aged downstairs neighbor rapping in his makeshift studio.
Who would I be without those things to complain about? Sure, I would find new things to complain about—I had a natural talent for that sort of thing—but it wouldn’t be the same. These were New York complaints, which by context alone made me cool. Farmwood complaints were not going to be cool. And what about the fact that I had no job? Who was I without that to complain about? What if all of the free soul-searching time that Farmwood was going to provide me with fulfilled my deepest fear—that I had no passion? What if there was no career option that excited me? I grabbed one of the last boxes and made my way back down to the street.
“Hellooooo!” Mona’s familiar, raspy voice shrilly pierced the air just outside my building’s front door. “Sarah?”
“I’m here! You’re just in time to help with nothing,” I yelled back from inside, smiling behind my box as I stepped blindly over the brownstone’s threshold. Mona had been in denial about my leaving ever since I had announced it two months earlier. I had been afraid she wouldn’t show up.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she answered. “I was hoping to help schlep your armoire down four flights of stairs this morning. So sorry I missed it.” I put the box down on the stoop and stuck my tongue out at her.
“I can’t believe you’re really leaving, Sarah. Can’t you change your mind?” She picked up the box and we walked down the stoop stairs together to the truck below. “Here ya go, Josh.” She handed it to him and he nestled it into our beige mass of belongings.
“Thanks. Anything else in the apartment?” he asked.
“One or two more boxes, I think, but that’s it,” I answered.
He looked at his watch. “Cool. I’ll take a shower, we’ll grab some lunch, and then we’ll hit the road. Sound good?” I nodded.
“Hey, Ben, call Kate and tell her to start making her way over,” he yelled. Across the street, Ben looked up from his phone.
“Nah, I’ll go get her. She’ll appreciate an escort. We’ll meet you at Bodega.” Kate was eight months pregnant— much to the overwhelming delight of Josh and Ben’s family, who had been eyeing my empty uterus with contempt as each year crept by—and painfully candid about the entire experience. Over chips and guacamole a few nights before, she’d told me that her labia were blue. Smurf blue, she had added for emphasis, before asking me to pass the hot sauce.
Josh disappeared indoors, and Mona I and walked back over to the stoop and took a seat.
“I’m not going to shower,” I announced. “It’s too much work.”
“Agreed,” said Mona. “You’re just going to start sweating again immediately afterward. What’s the point? Anyway, I brought us beers.” She reached into her giant bag and pulled them out. “And contraband cigarettes. I figured we should go out with a bang.”
Mona and I had both quit smoking on my thirtieth birthday. Well, I had. She claimed to have as well but always seemed to have cigarettes on her person. On a different day—one when I wasn’t about to move several hundred miles away—I would have given her shit for it. Not today. Today a cold beer and a cigarette on the stoop with my best friend sounded perfect.
“Thanks,” I said, lighting mine and taking a deep drag. I rubbed the beer bottle across my forehead. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
Mona gave me a sideways glance. “You’re such a weirdo, Sar.” We watched the Italian man across the street water his roses, a cigar hanging precariously from his lips.
“So, this is it, huh? You’re moving to freaking Virginia?”
“Yeah, this is it.” I took a swig. “Am I doing the right thing?”
“Sure you are. You’ve been over New York and your job for years now. It’s time.”
“I know, but what if I miss it? What if bitching is all I know how to do?”
“Sar, you certainly have other talents. Don’t be dramatic.”
“Like what?”
“Hmmm. Let’s see . . . Oh, I know, you’re very good at French-braiding.”
“That is true. It is a coveted skill. I was very popular in middle school.”
“Hey, remember our move from Union Square to Brooklyn?” Mona asked.
“I still have the scars to remind me.”
“How did you manage to fall directly into that mirror?”
“What did you expect? We were loading the truck ourselves during rush hour on one of the busiest streets in Manhattan. I was a little stressed.”
“How old were we?”
“Twenty-three, I think? Or maybe twenty-four?”
“Babies,” said Mona.
“Shattering glass must be a thing for me. I dropped an entire box of framed photos down three flights of stairs earlier today.”
“Yikes.”
“I wonder what that reveals about me psychologically.”
“What what reveals?”
“The broken-glass thing. Am I predestined for bad luck?”
“No, you’re just a complete spaz.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I took another swig from my bottle, relishing its fizzy chill, and placed it beside me.
“What am I going to do without you?” asked Mona softly. “I’m going to be so bored.”
“Nuh-uh. You have a million friends to keep you company.”
“Facebook does not a friend make. It’s not the same.”
“I know. But we’ll Skype and visit each other all the time. Flights are so cheap, Mona.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She lit another cigarette. I opened my mouth to protest. “Cigarettes don’t count today. Listen, if you hate—what’s this place called that you’re moving to? Farmtown?”
“Farmwood.”
“Right. If you hate Farmwood, you can always move back. It’s a one-year contract, right?”
I sighed in response and looked up and down the block. Over there was where Josh had kissed me for the first time—a lingering peck that had turned into more and from which I had broken away, flustered and talking a mile a minute.
From the beginning, I had known that he was special, that he possessed a kindness and reliability that no one who had gone before possessed. What’s more was that I still really liked him despite all that. Pre-Josh, I’d had a penchant for man-boys who couldn’t even commit to a sandwich.
I put my arm around Mona. I disagreed with what she had said. It just wasn’t true that we could move back here if Farmwood was a bust. Even if we did, New York would always know that we had strayed. She was the
kind of city that was entitled to hold a grudge.
2
Josh emitted a deep burp that rattled the cab of our moving truck.
“You’re not going to complain about the food we just ate for the rest of the night, are you? And blame me?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
We had just inhaled an entire aisle of a Quick Mart. I groaned as I peeled my sweaty thighs from the vinyl seat.
“Oh look, there’s a piece of Chex Mix in my bra.” I reached into my left cup and pulled out a tiny pretzel O. “Are we there yet?”
“Almost.”
I hung my arm out the window and undulated my wrist in the warm air. While Josh had been down to Farmwood a few weeks earlier to rent our house, I knew nothing about our new city, or the South for that matter. I’d never been below the Mason-Dixon Line before.
“Is it like Steel Magnolias?” I asked. “Lots of women in big-brimmed hats and tiny purses? Floral prints and in-home salons?”
“What’s Steel Magnolias?”
“You’ve never seen Steel Magnolias?” He shook his head. “You’re missing out.” I stared out the window. “Josh, what if we hate it there?”
“If we hate it, it’s one year, Sarah. One year. Do you know how quickly one year flies by?”
“Yeah, but then what?”
“It’s a year for you to figure some things out, Sar. You hated your job, right? You hated New York. This is a chance for you to spend some time figuring out what it is that will fulfill you, you know? I’ll be making decent money, and the cost of living is like, nothing. You can score a relatively relaxing day job and take it easy for a bit. We’ll make a baby.”
“Yeah, a baby.” I forced a smile.
Whenever Josh brought up babies, a giant clock descended from the sky and hovered over my head like a UFO. It was go time, despite the fact that I had about a million reservations about my maternal aptitude—reservations that I had not breathed a word about to Josh. Our plan had always been to have kids. If I waffled now, I would be reneging on my part of the bargain and breaking my husband’s heart in the process. I kept telling myself that I would get over it, that it was just stage fright, and as testament to that mantra, I had gone off of my birth control a month earlier. Still, every time we had sex, I uttered a silent prayer that my eggs were playing hard to get.
“As much as I hated my job, there was a sort of twisted comfort in it,” I said, changing the subject.
“You took comfort in the complaining?”
“Well, that, and also, I was good at it. Granted, I may not have reaped any creative fulfillment from it, but I got the job done and then some. Plus, it’s all I know. What if I can’t do anything else?”
“Sarah, of course you can do something else. You just need the freedom to figure out what that something is.”
“You’re right. It’s easier to marinate in the cesspool of your own displeasure than to actually do something about it. No, I’m glad we’re moving, I really am. I needed a kick in the ass, obviously. I’m just scared.”
“I am too. But I think this vulnerability will be good for us. I really do.” He reached over and squeezed my thigh. “Look out, here’s our exit!” He crossed one lane, and then two, and then we were officially off the highway and that much closer to our new home. A home that claimed more than one and a half rooms—that had a yard, even. I hadn’t lived in a home with a yard in eighteen years.
Strip malls, fast-food joints, farm stands, screened porches, and sprinklers passed us by in the summer twilight. I took a deep breath in, relishing the smell of grass clippings, barbecue, and heat. In the city, summer smelled like burned asphalt, rotting trash, and body odor. This was nicer. Much nicer.
“I’ll take you by the school tomorrow,” said Josh. “It’s such a gorgeous campus. Still bummed about the rents down there, but what could we do?” Homes closer to campus ran for a much steeper rent than those farther out, so Josh had picked accordingly.
I nodded absently as the strip malls disappeared and the scenery turned to grass and trees exclusively. A little country living would be good for me. Maybe I would start an organic baby food business from the garden I would create—like Diane Keaton in Baby Boom minus the planting, gardening, or pureeing. Okay, never mind.
“Just how far out from campus are we?” I asked.
“It’s not so far. Once we have the car we won’t even notice.” He had purchased a used car from a fellow faculty member. He was so excited about it—finally, we wouldn’t have to schlep our groceries, dry cleaning, and laundry— but whenever he spoke about it I felt like I was listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher. Wah wah wah wahhhh, transmission, wah wah wahhhh, gas mileage.
The last time I had been behind the wheel, I was eighteen. I’d never had a car in high school, relying instead on the kindness (and sometimes resentment) of my friends, and when we went home now to visit my mother or Josh’s parents, they drove everywhere. I used my license for identification purposes only. Driving was as foreign a concept to me as those people who claimed they “forgot” to eat. My brain could not compute.
Once Josh had signed on for the job and our move was imminent, I had told him repeatedly that I was apprehensive about driving, but he always brushed me off. You’re better than you think, he would say. You just need some practice. I would nod absently in response, hoping he was right. I had never gotten over my first and last interstate experience, with my mother frozen in fear by my side. “YOU HAVE TO LOOOOK!!!!!!” she had screamed as a monstrous tractor trailer veered out of the way of my reckless merge.
As more greenery passed us by and Josh didn’t appear to be slowing down in any way, shape, or form, my anxiety mounted. Walking to civilization and any type of gainful employment did not appear to be an option. And forget about grocery shopping. The wheels of our trusty granny cart—our old neighborhood’s version of a Lamborghini— were not cut out for off-roading. Perhaps I could take up gardening after all. It could sustain us completely. Vegans in Virginia. Better yet, I would write a cookbook: The Virginian Vegans. I envisioned photo spread after photo spread of butter beans and lettuce wraps, Josh and I laughing uproariously over two jars of sweet tea on our front porch. Finally, Josh turned off the road.
“The house is fantastic,” he said, “which makes up for the fact that we’re a little farther out than I’d like to be.” A little farther out? “Sar, we have brand-new bathroom fixtures.”
“No!”
“I waited to tell you.” I had been dreaming about a bath-room that had been built post-1965 for what felt like my entire adult life. A faucet that didn’t leak; floor tiles that did not wear the grime of fifty years of bare feet; an actual bath-tub as opposed to a stall shower that could only be shaved in if the water was turned off—these were the things I pined for during my New York apartment-dwelling existence. Not to mention, a bathroom free of wildlife.
“Remember the pigeons?” I asked.
He laughed. “The image of you standing over me, white faced and shaking with a shampoo bottle in your hand, will stay with me forever.”
Before moving in with Josh, I had lived in my own studio apartment in the East Village. Grimy and tiny, it had reeked of chicken and broccoli from the Chinese restaurant next door, but it had been mine. For that reason alone, I had done my best to turn a blind eye to its faults and probable health code violations, the worst of which was the presence of two pigeons in my shower one morning.
They had squeezed through the partially open window and were happily crapping down the side of the wall when my bleary-eyed self had discovered them. Not knowing what to do, I had grabbed the shampoo bottle and waved it in the air like a maniac, which had no effect on the birds, who regarded me with Zen-like stares. I had run to the bed, where Josh slept like a baby, and hovered over him, shaking, until he opened his eyes shortly thereafter. Ever my hero, he had cranked open the window and basically shoved them out as I cowered behind the commode.
“I still worry that I contra
cted something from those beasts,” he admitted now. I reached over and massaged his neck.
“No pigeons in Farmwood, I bet.”
“Nope.”
At the end of a street of well-spaced-out homes with carefully manicured yards, there was our house. It was gray stucco with white shutters, and its airy front porch claimed a cozy wooden swing hanging from the rafters. The sweet smell of honeysuckle perfumed the pink air.
“I can’t believe this is home,” I whispered, taking Josh’s hand. “It’s so pretty.”
“I know, right? It’s a real house. Why are we whispering?”
“I don’t know.” I laughed as a firefly flitted by the wind-shield. “Let’s go in.”
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Acknowledgments
First and foremost, thank you to my parents, Sue and Ethan Fishman. Mom, it is from you that I learned to love the written word. And Dad, thank you for “summer school” and teaching me to never give up. Thank you to my brother, Brenner Fishman, for believing in me; my grandmother, Edna Horan, for making me the most popular granddaughter at the library; and my grandfather, Steve Fishman, for inspiring me with his curious mind. Thank you also to the rest of my family—your love and support mean more to me than I can possibly express.
Thank you to my wonderful, wise editor, Jeanette Perez. Without you, this never would have happened, and I am beyond grateful. Thank you to Carrie Kania and Michael Morrison for giving me a shot.
Lastly, thank you to all of the fantastic women in my life. Your strength, grace, and balance serve as constant inspiration. If you see just a flicker of yourselves in these pages, then I am doing alright. You were the source, after all.
About the Author
ZOE FISHMAN lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband. Balancing Acts is her first novel.
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Credits
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa