You're Not You

by Michelle Wildgen

  Maybe I was being patronizing, or naïve, when I was so delighted for Evan and Kate merely for living normal lives. And maybe I gave Evan too much credit for simply doing what had to be done. Friends were in and out all day and in the evenings, with varying degrees of formality. Sometimes this lessened my workload and sometimes it increased it. It depended on the visitor: With some I could absent myself and make fund-raising calls or file insurance forms while they exercised her limbs. They might not even need my help getting her to the bed. But I had also learned not to assume I could head off to the front of the house any time a friend arrived with a loaf of bread. Certainly when Lisa swept in, her black hair pushed off her face by her sunglasses and silver earrings swinging, I could run errands to the library or the grocery store. She was so well-versed in helping Kate that she was even backup for the caregivers. As Kate’s paralysis had progressed, Lisa had learned the physical therapy, how to move her or feed her, and she was almost as good at it as Evan. Her voice would fill the back of the house as she talked about her art supply store or her succession of boyfriends, Kate’s foot braced in her hand as she moved her knee back toward Kate’s chest, stretching the muscle, and pulled it forward again.

  Another friend, Helen, had originally been married to a close friend of Evan’s. She and the friend divorced, he moved to Oregon, and Helen, who was rail-thin and tentative, with an indistinct pink mouth and dark eyes that seemed forever on the verge of wincing, remained. When she arrived the first time while I was there I edged toward the door with a questioning glance at Kate, who waited till Helen had her head in the fridge to put away the fruit salad she had brought, and then shook her head almost imperceptibly.

  Helen needed slightly more help understanding Kate than I thought an old friend should. They stayed out in the kitchen rather than using the time for therapy, talking lightly about books and movies. I hovered nearby and repeated Kate’s words while Helen made tea. She always poured a cup for me. I was frequently the recipient of the extra muffin or cups from a full pot of tea. I believed visitors found it intrusive to walk into their friend’s house and make themselves a snack, so they made enough for two and placed the extras in front of me instead of her. I accepted them all, understanding that, generous as Kate’s friends were to me, I was only a stand-in for the person who was sitting right there.

  “I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT your job,” my mother said one Sunday morning in July, “and I would like you to take first-aid lessons. And this woman ought to pay for them.”

  “I’m planning on it,” I told her. I had the phone cradled between my jaw and collarbone while I peeled a carrot. Ribbons of carrot skin surrounded the wastebasket and I made a mental note to clean them up before Jill woke up. I’d repudiated the pre-peeled baby carrots, but these had their drawbacks. “I need to know how to do CPR and things like that. Though I’m pretty sure I could perform CPR just from television.”

  “I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” my mother said. “Anyway, I’m glad you’ll be schooled in it. Who knows what these people had planned?”

  “Who are ‘these people’?” I asked, the carrot peeler inactive for the moment, a bit of vegetable flesh dangling off its blade. “And what would they plan? What, do you think they were hiring a dupe to commit insurance fraud?”

  “Don’t be so sensitive, Bec. They don’t want agency people, so I want to be sure they have you thoroughly trained.”

  My mother made me sound like a terrier, which was typical of her. She had had a series of beautifully behaved dogs over the years.

  “Well, don’t worry,” I said, denuding the carrot completely and tossing the peeler in the sink. I chomped a bite off the tip. “I am trained within an inch of my life. Love to Dad. See you.”

  Actually I was learning quite a lot, though not in the way my mother would imagine. I had to learn the basics of moving Kate and helping her in the shower, of course, but the majority of my energy was spent learning her life.

  In some ways I settled in more quickly with Kate than I had at other jobs. But occasionally I felt certain I would never quite fit in. I was too gangly and uneducated, forever jarring figs from their bowls when I ran into the edge of the table with my hip, correcting the eyeliner I smudged beneath her eye.

  She seemed not to notice these things. When she saw me looking over a copy of A Passage to India, which I had picked up idly and didn’t particularly wish to read, she said, “Ooh, read that. But let me know what you think of it.” If she could have, she would have pressed it into my hand.

  I did take it, because I didn’t know how to refuse. Also because she’d implied I would enjoy this one more than Howards End, and I didn’t want to admit I hadn’t read that, either. I was afraid she would try to draw me into a discussion of literary theory, which I found incomprehensible when Liam talked about it. Instead she waited till I’d finished the novel and said, “What did you think of Miss Quested? I always want to hit her.”

  These conversations, in which I had far more to say than I’d have guessed but still had to ask a thousand questions just for background, had the effect of reminding me how much I still had to learn as well as how much I had figured out without trying.

  I realized even then that her approach to me was really very simple, even calculated. If I were writing a manual on how to win people over I would have made sure to recommend that attention and flattering presumption. It was that effective, all the more so because I had realized it might even be genuine. She adored her friends, but I had begun to see that Kate didn’t have a great deal of patience with people she couldn’t relate to. When my shifts overlapped with Hillary’s, Kate was as friendly with her as she was with me, but Hillary’s seriousness seemed to irk her, and sometimes when she left Kate breathed a deep sigh. Hillary never arrived returning books, or commenting on a borrowed video. It left me flattered and proud, as though Kate had shown me a secret door at the back of a closet, the safe behind the painting.

  ONE SATURDAY TOWARD THE end of July, I worked until two. I had been with Kate just about two months at this point, and I knew what to expect of a Saturday: the market, cooking, maybe a nap, dinner, and then I went home. It was just starting to hit the brutally hot period of the summer, even first thing in the morning, but I didn’t mind so much when I thought about the heat in terms of produce. (It was brought to my attention by Jill that this was unbearably geeky, but I stood by it.) The sun was relentless, but the tomatoes were ripening, the corn was bending its stalks. I bought so much at the markets that I could barely finish cooking it all. I tore basil and scattered it over everything, marinated eggplant and ate it as a snack, popped cherry tomatoes in my mouth like grapes. This must be the best part of the year for the lazy cook, requiring almost nothing to make a meal beyond salt and olive oil, a torn crust of bread to scoop goat cheese.

  We had stocked up that day on the first cherries and raspberries of midsummer, and then I followed Kate through the wine store and held bottles up for her to choose. I was hoping she and Evan would be generous with the wine again. I kept meaning to buy the same kind they’d given me at the party, but I hated going into liquor stores by myself. I thought my ignorance was obvious, so instead I always ended up with beer.

  Back at the house I put food away and readied a few things for dinner, but we weren’t talking. Kate was in a quiet mood, not even cheered up by the farmers’ market. We had little to say to each other. She was like this sometimes, maybe three or four times since I had known her. She was never rude or short-tempered—I would call it contemplative except that her expression lacked serenity. I could never tell the reason behind the mood, though the first time it had happened I assumed I had done something. Later I realized that if I had, she’d let me know. If it was something between her and Evan, I didn’t want to ask. When they had fought, or at least the one or two times when I believed they had, I could sense it in the house when I arrived in the mornings. The remnants of tension hung about like wisps of smoke. On those days I ha
d suggested we go out, to shop or run errands, as though we could air out the house in our absence.

  That day I just cooked quietly while Kate observed. One of Evan’s coworkers was coming to dinner that night, and I’d lobbied to do most of the prep work, which was not as difficult as it sounded: fava and mint spread; fresh tagliatelle with basil, mozzarella, and sugar snap peas; sour cherry crisp. The house was warm to keep Kate comfortable, but the heat left me indolent and shiny. When Evan arrived I was doing an apathetic job of straightening the kitchen and Kate was staring out the window at her garden. Whatever it was she and Evan had disagreed about, I didn’t want to get hooked into it.

  I was looking forward to going home that afternoon anyway. Liam had promised he’d come over for an hour or two. I didn’t recall the excuse he’d planned. It was probably something school-related, a meeting with a student, something like that. I preferred him not to detail the machinations.

  Evan came in the front door calling greetings and entered the kitchen with his arms full of the library books I’d set in the living room and forgotten. He also had picked up a stray sock that had been in the hallway, and a pair of shoes that had been near the front door. Kate turned to him as he entered. He paused in the doorway and gave her a tentative smile, raising his eyebrows questioningly. She smiled back, a sweet, genuine grin, and shook her head slightly, as if to wave away whatever he was asking. Evan set his things on the table and took her face in his hands. As he kissed her, I looked away, wiping nonexistent crumbs off the countertop. Whatever the disagreement, it was apparently resolved.

  I always averted my eyes when they did this. It seemed unbearably public to me, these kisses he pressed into the hollow of her throat and the hand he laid on her cheek. It was as though they didn’t even care that I was there. I wrung out the sponge and glanced back at them. He was gathering up the books again, waving hello to me, and as I watched, it came to me. They weren’t excessive. They could even be called reserved. But after a few months with Liam and our cool hellos and good-byes, our feigned surprise at seeing each other and careful disinterest at leaving, that kiss hello seemed theatrical. I stood before the sink, the sponge still clenched in my hand beneath the cold running water. Was this what being with him was doing to me, then? Making simple affection seem rehearsed?

  The realization gnawed at me, and I ducked out soon after. Kate was lying on the bed for a nap when I left, while Evan told her stories about someone they knew whom he’d seen downtown.

  At home I poured myself a soda and sat down to wait for Liam. I picked up a book I had borrowed from Kate, but I didn’t open the cover. Our living room was a mess, still smelling of smoke from another party we’d had a few days before. There were bags from the sub shop piled in the trash, ashes strewn in the hollows of the crumpled paper. I was walking around sweeping things into the trash can when the doorbell rang.

  I let him in and kissed him. “How long do you have?”

  I liked to get that out on the table first thing. It changed the way we spent our time.

  “Two hours or so,” he said. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me a few inches off the floor. “Maybe less.”

  “YOU LOOK ROMANTIC TODAY,” he informed me, a little while later. “I think it’s something about your hair. And because your cheeks are flushed.”

  We were in my room, sipping from a pitcher of iced tea. My T-shirt and shorts were in a heap on the floor. His clothes were folded at the foot of the bed.

  “That’s me being mistressy,” I told him. “Romance is what we illicit lovers are good for.”

  He smiled in the direction of the floor, a smile as private as if he were alone. “You’re good for more than that,” he said. He pulled on a T-shirt and lay back to put on his shorts. “Do you think of yourself as my mistress?”

  “I think of myself as your guilty pleasure. I think mistresses have to wear garter belts.”

  Liam perked up. “Every girl needs a garter belt,” he crooned, stretching out next to me. “A nice, lacy, wispy garter belt to wear underneath your jeans.”

  I laughed. “I have any number of sexy dresses, for the record. Not that you’ll ever see them.”

  We paused.

  “I will,” he said wanly. We looked at each other, and Liam sighed. He tried to salvage it by adding bravely, “Someday I’ll come over and we’ll dress up and have a candlelit dinner.”

  I sat up, reaching down for my shirt. Earlier that week I’d set up the table for Kate and Evan’s ninth anniversary, with the silver and crystal at one seat, and the smooth linen tablecloth at the other.

  “You don’t have to say that,” I told him as I put it on. I didn’t even feel angry, I just felt sad that he’d even tried to envision it. What was he supposed to say to get away at night? Evening office hours? “You know we never will.”

  “ARE YOU STILL SEEING the same guy?” Kate asked. “You could bring him to dinner sometime if you like.”

  I froze in the middle of typing. We were at the computer, placing holds on the library Web site.

  “I would love to,” I said. I cast about for an excuse. How could I have been so stupid as to tell her about him? She was not a confidant, I reminded myself. “But he’s . . . he’s kind of out of the picture.” This was not really true. We had smoothed over the awkwardness of our last date with a meeting in the park and making out behind a tree. I was still nursing a scrape on the small of my back.

  “That’s too bad,” she said, sounding genuinely disappointed. She looked up from a catalog of tools for the disabled—reachers and shower bars and feeding tubes. “Was it recent?”

  I glanced back down at the list of titles she’d dictated to me. The Professor of Desire. Open Secrets. “Kind of. It was just the usual.”

  Kate nodded and tactfully dropped the subject.

  “Do you need me to cook when I’m done here?” I asked. “You’ve already placed fifteen holds on library books, by the way. It won’t let me do any more.”

  “Damn,” Kate said. “And actually I don’t need cooking today. Thanks.”

  I was disappointed. I had been making only simple things—a roast chicken stuffed with lemons, tomato sauce with butter and onion, a fruit crisp. (I would have liked to make a tart but was still afraid of tackling a pastry shell.) I screwed up a dish at least once a week, burning butter I’d forgotten to temper with a drop of olive oil, or forgetting the shallot. If I redid the dish at home for Jill, however, I usually got it right. The night before, I’d redone the chicken and lemon, this time getting the skin crisp and brown. “This is so cool,” Jill said, helping herself to a drumstick and pouring lemony drippings over it. “I wish I had a job that taught me how to cook.” She was still temping, and seemed to take pleasure in denigrating it as creatively as possible. “Though I don’t need that, now that you do. You’re never moving out, by the way.”

  Maybe this sort of cooking could have been approximated by, say, buying a roast chicken or ordering red sauce in a restaurant, but I didn’t think so. For one thing, I was becoming a good cook. I even liked to think I was a natural: The transformation was so satisfying, from white flabby chicken skin to a golden, crisp shell over the meat; cool, starchy vegetables I could coax into satiny translucence. Who wouldn’t want to have a hand in this? I switched from chicken breasts to whole birds, from canned vegetables to fresh, trying to get in as early as possible on the whole process. I had come to believe that cooking gave ingredients all their context. It was the difference between a photo of a painting in a book and the real, textured thing.

  I enjoyed it enough that I didn’t question whom I was cooking for. Other guests, for Evan, for me. Sometimes Kate was so vague about who would eat it—suggesting she just wanted “to have things on hand”—that I realized she was letting me cook mainly because I liked it, and because she enjoyed directing me to new recipes. But I guess it was mostly for Evan in the end, who reheated dishes when he came home. I left food wrapped up in the refrigerator and in the morning it w
as gone, as though I’d left cookies for Santa. I stayed with Kate until eight many nights, giving her the last two nutrition shakes and some water an hour before I left, but as often as not Evan wasn’t home by the time I drove away.

  “The wheelchair people are going to be here soon,” Kate said. She sighed. “I’ll warn you now this guy is an idiot. But he’s the only distributor in this area so I’m stuck with him.”

  When the wheelchair man arrived he strolled past me to Kate. His assistant followed, clutching a catalog. The wheelchair guy greeted Kate like an old friend, grabbing her by the shoulder and giving her a hearty jostle. “How are we?” he boomed. His assistant cringed.

  “We’re great,” Kate said, deadpan. I repeated it.

  Now he shook my hand. “Name’s Ted. Now what can we do for you?”

  I told him which headrest we wanted to see. He stood next to me, re-tucking his aqua polo shirt into his waistband, nodding thoughtfully.

  “Well sure,” he said. He cocked one hip. “But you know what the problem with that is?” Then he stared at me expectantly.

  I glanced at Kate, who was watching with a long-suffering look on her face. “What’s the problem with that?” I asked.

  He made a little half-moon with his hands, holding the base of the palms together and curling his fingers outward. “I don’t have to tell you, Rebecca, that different headrests are made for different chairs.” He clasped his hands. “If your chair isn’t working for your needs, then we should look at a new chair that will keep us more comfortable.”