In my room, I found Henry fast asleep. I decided to follow his lead, and got into bed even though it was still light out. I don’t know how long I was there—it felt like years—but I felt worse and worse, going from anxious to clammy to feverish to so nauseous that I was certain I would vomit all over my peach and green bedspread.
Finally, I couldn’t take it for another second. I found my mother in her bedroom, sitting in an armchair and gabbing on the phone to one of her friends. She looked annoyed to see me.
“What is it, Marissa?” she asked exasperatedly, still holding the receiver.
“I don’t feel well,” I said, clutching my stomach.
“Oh, all right,” she said, although her tone was softened. She hung up the phone, then came over to feel my forehead. “You’re burning up,” she said, a concerned look coming over her face. “We’re going to have to get you some Tylenol and a cold washcloth.” Her unexpected kindness spurred a torrent of my tears.
“My goodness, what is it?” she asked, peering at me. “Are you okay? Was Sarah being mean to you?”
“Noo,” I managed to choke out between sobs. “There’s . . . a . . . pu . . . pu . . . puppy in my room.”
“Oh my good God,” said my mother, looking at me as though she expected me to yell “April Fool’s!” “Really, Marissa? Really? Where on earth did you get a puppy? And how long has it been there?”
And so I confessed the entire sordid affair to her. I felt so much better after telling her that I didn’t argue when she told me I’d have to take Henry back to the Toplers’ house the next day.
Turns out that keeping a dinner date with my ex a secret from Dave is not much different from keeping a puppy hidden from my mother. Because I have the exact same “I’m a horrible person who will surely rot in hell” feeling that I did twenty years ago. And so, after what seems like hours of torture in a plush, queen-size prison, I push back the crisp white sheets and climb out of bed.
Dave is sitting at the kitchen island typing on his computer. “Can’t sleep?”
“Not a wink,” I confess.
“You want a back rub?” he asks, pushing his wavy brown hair out of his eyes and giving me a look that serves only to remind me that this sweet, sensitive man is a deity that I, a mere mortal, do not even remotely deserve.
“I want you to throw me out on the stoop and call a locksmith,” I tell him glumly. “I am the world’s worst girlfriend and I think you should kick me to the curb.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” he asks. He walks over to the fridge, takes out two beers, and hands me one. “Here, it’ll help you relax.”
“Thanks,” I say, and even though I am not a fan of beer, I take a sip. The cool, bubbly liquid goes down easy, soothing my churning stomach.
My relief is short-lived. “I have to tell you something,” I say to Dave, and pull at the label on the beer bottle nervously.
“As long as you didn’t cheat on me, I think I can handle it,” he jokes, and I have to stop myself from cringing.
We walk into the living room and sit facing each other on the sofa. I take a deep breath. “You know my ex from college?”
“The stoner?” asks Dave, referring to Evan, a great guy who happened to be completely uninterested in any physical contact other than cuddling after he hit the bong (which was no fewer than three times a day).
“No, the other one,” I tell him. “Nathan.”
“The guy from the coffee shop? Sort of,” says Dave.
“I had dinner with him tonight,” I practically whisper.
“Um, okay?” says Dave, obviously irritated. “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”
“I don’t know.” This is the truth.
“Well, that’s ridiculous.” He looks at me and I see a light go on in his head. I’ll take good-for-nothing girlfriends for seven hundred, Alex. “Wait—you don’t still have a thing for this guy, do you?”
“No!” I say quickly. Although it’s cool in the living room, I am sweating up a storm, and wipe my brow with the back of my hand.
“Then why are you hiding things from me? That’s not our style, Marissa,” Dave says.
Unsure of where to start, I pause for what feels like the single longest minute in history. “Well . . . he showed up outside my office today. He’s in town for some work event. Asked if I wanted to have dinner.” I cannot bring myself to say Nathan’s name again, because every time I do, it feels like I’m releasing poison gas into my home.
“Wow. Well, that confirms he has a thing for you.” Dave puts his beer down on the coffee table with a thud. “You could have at least done me the courtesy of letting me know you were going to see him. It’s not like I’m the possessive type, but I don’t like to be kept in the dark.”
“I know, honey. I’m so sorry,” I say, practically in tears. Dave looks at me with clear concern—and yes, even love—in spite of his anger. And suddenly, it dawns on me just how much I stand to lose by indulging in this stupid mind game.
“I haven’t talked to him since college,” I tell Dave. “But after the accident, Julia started bringing him up again—a lot—and it turns out she’s been in touch with him since moving back. The thing is, she was the one who’d encouraged me to break up with him when I was in college.”
“Encouraged you?” Dave says with raised eyebrows.
“She claimed that she was in love with him, too, and that it wasn’t fair to our friendship for either of us to have him.”
“Nice,” he says sarcastically, and I realize with some degree of regret that my admission will go in Dave’s mental list of Julia’s mistakes. “No wonder you flinched when she mentioned him in the hospital.” So that didn’t go over his head after all.
“I thought that I was okay with it, but when I saw him today, I realized that I had a lot of questions about what was going on between them now, and that I needed answers.”
“Marissa, I adore you, but what is it with you and volatile people?” Dave asks, making little spirals around his head to imply that both Nathan and Julia are crazy.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s see. You’ve got a best friend who, even prior to her brain injury, is amazingly adept at pulling your puppet strings.”
“You think I’m Julia’s puppet?” I ask, now truly crying.
“You know what I mean. Now it turns out that your ex is a quasi-stalker who thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to park himself outside of your work until he ‘bumps into you.’ And somehow, these two tornado-like human beings have managed to intertwine and cause even more disaster in your head.”
He’s right, of course. For the first time, it’s apparent to me just how similar Nathan and Julia really are: exciting, unpredictable, and prone to making everything far more complicated than it needs to be.
“I may be boring and stable, but damn it, I think I should take priority over them,” Dave says. “I mean, I don’t get it. Isn’t our life together good, Marissa? Don’t we have exactly the kind of relationship that you’ve always wanted?”
“Yes,” I tell him, wiping my eyes with the corner of my sleeve. “You know that.”
“So if you’re really over this Nathan guy—and I’m going to take you at your word unless you give me another reason to doubt you—then stop trying to get answers about other people and start focusing on us for a change.”
I apologize profusely and promise Dave over and over that I’ll never jeopardize our relationship again. To his credit, he not only accepts my apologies, he comforts me until I stop crying. Kissing the top of my head, he tells me, “We’ve got our work cut out for us, but we’re going to be okay.”
Just as long as I stop playing Choose Your Own Adventure with my life, I think.
Twenty-four
Researchers at the University of Arizona recently discovered that the average toilet bowl is seven times cleaner than the average kitchen counter. While this fact doesn’t make me want to julienne red peppers in my bathroom, it h
as encouraged me to spend Thursday evening Lysoling every square inch of black and gray granite in our kitchen. I spray and scrub as though my life depends on it (which may actually be the case, as salmonella has been known to kill perfectly healthy women from time to time). But my frantic cleaning is really just an attempt to divert myself from the anxiety I’m feeling over Julia’s arrival this evening.
She called last week to say that she wanted to come to New York, and that her doctors had given her the go-ahead to travel provided she stay with a friend or family member. “So . . . I booked a ticket for next weekend!” she squealed. “I’m finally coming to visit you!” The short notice wasn’t ideal, but she’d seemed so disinterested in me since her shoplifting confession that I decided the uninvited visit was an improvement. Since learning that she and Nathan weren’t dating after all, I felt guilty for doubting her, too, and wondered if I couldn’t find a way to make it up to her while she was here.
At the same time, I fretted about how much could go wrong, even over the course of three short days. What if she pulled another Jekyll and Hyde—or worse?
Half an hour before I’m expecting her, Julia sends me a text message. “Plane early! I’m almost there.”
I glance out the front window and sure enough, Julia’s climbing out of a black town car in front of my house. I quickly wash my bacteria-encrusted hands and throw open the door to find her grinning like a maniac, her arms outstretched toward me and her oversize suitcase resting on the cement stoop next to her.
“Yay!” she yells in lieu of a greeting. “Best friends, reunited again! It’s going to be just like old times.” She walks in the apartment without bothering to grab her luggage.
I haul the fifty-pound bag behind her. “Just like old times.”
Inside, Julia flings herself down on the sofa, causing her wispy chocolate hair to fan around her head like a mane. “Is it too early to raise some hell?” She giggles. “Let’s have a drink.”
Looking at her, I’m instantly transported back to our first year in New York after college. Everyone warned us not to move in together, saying that it would be the death of our friendship. We blithely ignored them and signed a lease for a tiny two-bedroom in a seedy section of Alphabet City. The apartment was dim and dingy, but Julia managed to infuse it with charm by repainting every square inch from the cupboards to the molding, strategically hanging mirrors to add light and placing vases of fresh-cut flowers in each room.
As it turned out, we had little opportunity to irritate each other. Our starter jobs kept us busier than we could have imagined, and the scant spare time Julia did have was taken up by her recreational ballet corps. And yet, every night before bed, we managed to squeeze in time to talk. Julia would serve us each a nightcap—to “preserve tradition,” she’d pour even the cheapest beer into crystal goblets—and we’d sprawl on either end of the Ferrars’ hand-medown couch. “To living our dream,” she’d say, clinking my glass with hers. “To living our dream,” I’d repeat.
More often than not, we’d sit there for a good hour or more, recounting the day’s events. If my horrendous boss at the alternative weekly where I was working berated me, Julia would give me just the right comeback to use. When she couldn’t seem to master a ballet sequence, I’d help her visualize so she could nail it the next day. It was us against the world, and we truly (and perhaps naively) believed that there wasn’t anything we couldn’t figure out together. Two years later, when Julia moved into the apartment the Ferrars bought her and I settled into my new Park Slope studio, I was so unmoored that I slept with the TV on for weeks.
Tonight, however, there will be no pre-bed chatfest: The shot of whiskey Julia requests instantly triggers a migraine. She goes into the guest bedroom to lie down and ends up sleeping until the next morning, shattering any illusion either of us had about reliving the past.
Despite my assurances to Grace that I’ll keep a close eye on Julia while she’s visiting, I’m forced to leave her alone in my apartment when I head off to work the next day.
“These are delicious,” Julia says. She is perched atop my counter, spooning Lucky Charms into her mouth from the oversize salad bowl she’s poured them into. I can’t remember ever having seen her consume that many carbohydrates in one sitting, and for some reason, this makes me happy. That is, until she announces, “Ever since Nathan started cooking for me I’ve had the biggest appetite. You really need to let him whip something up for you, Mar.”
“Jules, I don’t think that’s the best idea,” I say, speaking slowly as I search for the right words. “I saw him a few weeks ago—”
“I know,” she says, her mouth full of food. “I was the one who told him he should try to have dinner with you while he was in town.”
“You did what?” I ask incredulously.
“Marissa, if there’s one thing I’ve realized over the past few months is that you’ve got to grab life by the horns and just go for it.”
“Okay,” I say, not really following her.
“You and Nathan are meant to be together,” she says, waving her spoon in the air.
So that’s why you sent me his photo and have been dropping his name constantly. Well, you’re about ten years too late, my friend. “I really don’t think so,” I tell her, thinking back to the conversation I had with Dave after seeing Nathan. Since that night, Dave and I had been doing great—better than ever, really, although I don’t say this out loud for fear of jinxing things.
I look Julia straight in the eyes. “You know I’m in a relationship with Dave. I love him.”
“I know you love Dave,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean he’s the one.”
“He is the one,” I say defensively. Best friend or not, she already meddled in one relationship of mine; I’ll be damned if she’s going to screw this one up for me, too.
“Whatever you say, Marissa,” she tells me, but she is smiling like a cat who just swallowed a whole flock of canaries.
I glance at the clock. Crap. I’m really late. “Jules, I hate to cut this conversation off, but I really have to get to work.”
“You can’t play hooky?” Julia says, a hint of a whine in her voice.
“I wish I could, but I have too much work to tackle today to call off.” Not wanting to sound like a stern parent instructing their teen to suck it up and deal, I add, “I’ll sneak out a little early.”
I expect Julia to continue to give me a hard time, but she just shrugs. “Okay.” She grabs the cereal box next to her, and instead of filling her empty bowl, she sticks her hand directly in the box to fish for marshmallows. “I’ll watch some talk shows and maybe go for a walk. I could use some exercise.”
“That sounds good,” I tell her, although the thought of her walking around my neighborhood, which is unfamiliar to her, worries me a little. “I should be home by five or so. If you need anything, call.”
Around two, I make a coffee run to fuel up for the rest of the day. When I return through the lobby, I find Ashley standing next to Gladys’s desk. Across from her, Julia is sprawled in a leather recliner, tissue paper–tufted shopping bags hanging from both arms.
Sensing my confusion, Gladys explains, “This young lady asked for you, and since I knew you ran out, I called Ashley to come greet her.”
Julia jumps up to greet me. “Marissa! I got bored, so I went shopping, and then that got old, so I decided to come to your office.”
“You remembered where it is?” I ask her. In the five years I’ve worked here, she’s never once actually stepped foot inside the building where Svelte is housed, so I have no idea how she found her way today.
“Sure,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I?” Because you can’t remember the word “marker” or what a hard drive is, I think, although I’m also sort of impressed.
“Listen, I better go,” Ashley interjects. “Lots of work.”
“Oh! That’s too bad. It was so nice to finally meet you in person,” Julia says. She jumps up and gives her a huge hug like they’re o
ld friends.
I look at Julia quizzically; I don’t recall ever mentioning Ashley to her.
“You, too,” says Ashley hurriedly. “Marissa’s told me so many great things about you.” This is a nicety, but it’s also a blatant lie; I know for a fact that I’ve deliberately mentioned as little as possible about Julia to Ashley, even in relation to the brain injury story. I have no interest in sharing the details of my life with her when she’s likely to use them as ammunition later down the line.
“Well, if you need me, you know how to reach me!” says Julia, waving at Ashley.
As I watch Ashley book it down the hall back to her cubicle, I get a strange sensation that something, somehow, isn’t right.
Twenty-five
I’m still tense when Saturday rolls around.
By all accounts, the day goes smoothly: Julia and I have lunch at a Thai restaurant near my house, then the two of us spend the mild and dazzlingly sunny afternoon roaming around Brooklyn. That night, we watch a Meg Ryan marathon on Oxygen, which is exactly the type of thing we used to do before Julia’s accident. But I find myself downing the better part of a bottle of wine in order to dampen the nails-on-chalkboard pitch of Julia’s voice.
Sunday morning, Dave, Julia, and I are sitting around the kitchen eating the slightly burned but otherwise delicious frittata that Julia insisted on cooking for us (“A friend taught me this recipe,” she informed me with a wink, and I quickly changed the subject, knowing full well that said friend was Nathan).
“Do you think Sophie’s lost weight?” Julia asks me quizzically, pushing a stray piece of tomato around her plate. “Because on Friday night, she looked very thin to me. Like, skeletal.”
“I don’t know, Jules. She’s always been tiny.”
“Huh. Well, I hope she doesn’t have an eating disorder again,” Julia says. She stabs the tomato with her fork and pops it in her mouth emphatically.
“What eating disorder?” I ask, skeptical. Given Julia’s newfound love of hyperbole, and the fact that Sophie—a vegetarian and champion rock climber—has always been slim, I’m prone to think that this is a figment of Julia’s imagination, influenced by her own history of incessant dieting. “Actually, you know what? I don’t want to know.”
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