Girls of a Certain Age

by Maria Adelmann

  Girls own the evening, but mornings like these make you question what happened at night, make you think it might have been a dream, make you wonder if you were ever really given anything in the first place.

  More Days

  I never thought that I’d be the kind of person who spends days on end in bed, but then again, I used to think I wouldn’t be the kind of person who got drunk on weekday evenings. As with most things I never thought I would be or do, staying in bed turns out to be very easy. The key is to position the essentials about you in a convenient way. I have my electronics: computer, cell phone. I need the computer to log on to the New York State unemployment website. I have to fill out a little form that says I am looking for work, and then they put money into my account.

  I have provisions too: water, walnuts. The walnuts are not ideal because my tooth still hurts and I can eat them only by sucking on them. On the plus side, they don’t really need to be refrigerated. I would go to the dentist (a different one), but like everything else, the insurance is gone.

  In the middle of my second day in bed I make a mistake. The heat is haphazardly controlled by the landlord, and my window is not close to my bed, so when I get too hot, I throw off my sweater, and it lands dangerously far from the bed. Later, when it gets cold again, I crawl out onto the floor on my hands, with my thighs still on the bed, stretching as far as I can. My mission is a success, but my arms are tired, and I am glad to inch my way back into bed without ever having put my feet on the ground.

  Jeffrey

  He doesn’t call.

  Jobs, People, Cities

  Nothing is ever really yours. I just want something to stick around long enough for me to leave it first.

  Eventually

  I have to get out of bed to go to a mandatory session at the unemployment office. I wake up several hours early. It turns out that getting ready to reenter the world does, indeed, take several hours. I try to eat instant oatmeal, but I can’t bite the raisins and I have to spit them out as I go. I start the coffee maker but forget the grounds and end up drinking part of a mug of hot beige water. I get dressed in one of my work outfits, then put on makeup, but it does not hide the size of my cheek. I tell myself that I could just be one of those people with unfortunate facial asymmetry, but how is that better than having a swollen cheek?

  The Unemployment Office

  In a matter of days I have forgotten all about people, and it is good to see them again, though I am overdressed. The man to my left is wearing jeans that seem ripped from actual wear and tear. He smiles at me, and I see a black gap on the left side of his mouth where a tooth used to be. I put my fingers to my cheek.

  The guy to my right is good-looking, probably around my age. “Hi,” he says when he notices I’m looking.

  I take my fingers off my cheek. “Hi,” I say.

  The man leading the meeting is small and gray-haired and hunchbacked. He looks as if he has been caged for a long time. “One place to look for work, during times like these,” he says (he says “times like these” a lot), “is a place like this. An unemployment office. That’s how I got this job, what, over a decade ago? During the last major economic downturn.”

  Opportunity

  There is a bulletin board outside the unemployment office that catches my eye. What I see first is a hot pink piece of paper that says GUY PROBLEMS? MADAME CAROLINA CAN HELP. The paper claims that Madame Carolina has “the blood of fortune-tellers running through her veins.” I imagine an earthy bandana tied around her head and large hoops hanging from her ears. In front of her is a crystal ball filled with pink clouds, but Madame Carolina doesn’t need it to tell me my problems or what I need to do. She points her long pink fingers at me and says that if I’m going to be so sensitive, I have to stop sleeping with guys who have only short-term interest in me. I want to tell her that sometimes you don’t know, that sometimes it’s better than having nobody at all.

  My eyes wander to a plain white sheet with pull strips, of which only three remain. The paper says,

  *Earn Up to $250*

  *Free Dental Exam*

  *Heavy Smokers Needed Now!*

  *Finally Quit Smoking*

  *New Clinical Trial*

  I once read an article about a man who, during college, earned money by donating blood plasma and sperm. I rip off a tab.

  Research

  Believe it or not, I have never smoked anything. Somehow I missed the window for trying it for the first time, and after that I felt too old to accept a cigarette or a joint without knowing what to do with it. I google things like “What does it mean to be a heavy smoker?” and “Can the dentist tell if you smoke?” To the latter, sometimes. To the former, I get no concrete numbers, in packs or cigarettes, but instead a lot of websites explaining chain-smoking. I haven’t put much thought into it, but I’ve always vaguely assumed that this meant people stood in a circle passing a cigarette around, one to the next, the way people pass a joint, but all it means is that as soon as you finish one cigarette you begin the next, sometimes lighting the latter with the former. I tack the phone number to the bulletin board above the desk that I never use because I use my computer in my bed.

  Jeffrey

  Finally, I call Jeffrey. I have been more or less following him online, but he hasn’t updated anything in almost a day. Last I read, he was still playing computer games.

  “Hello, friend,” he answers when I call.

  “What are you up to?” I ask. “I haven’t been out much recently.”

  “I haven’t slept in a day,” he says. I wait for an explanation, but he’s silent.

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’ve been playing Monopoly for twelve hours straight. Can’t stop until I finish the game.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” he says, and hangs up. I always wished I were the kind of person who could hang up first, but I also don’t want to be the kind of person who hangs up first on purpose, as if it were some kind of power play.

  Rachel

  I call Rachel. “You sound sad,” she says. “Come to California. It’s sunny here.” I remind her that I am unemployed, and that New York is far away.

  When Ozzie comes home, she has to go.

  Mazdak

  I call Mazdak. “Yo,” he says. Sometimes I think Mazdak pretends that those three months never happened between us. These days, when I am around him, I think he pretends that I’m not even female. “We’re still playing Monopoly,” he says.

  “You’re playing Monopoly with Jeffrey?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “Did you get laid off too?”

  “Everybody’s gone. Didn’t you hear?”

  “We should all go out sometime, like an unemployment happy hour, you know? With the people who used to go.”

  “Sure, sure,” says Mazdak. “Tell me when it is.”

  “Well, I have to go,” I say quickly.

  But hanging up first offers no clear satisfaction.

  CARA

  There is no one left to call but my mother, so I call CARA, the Cigarette Addiction Research Association, concerning the clinical trial, and they tell me they’ll call back for a pre-screening interview. This makes me feel irrationally sad. I had imagined a receptionist dropping her current task and shouting “We’ve got one!” to a laboratory full of researchers in white coats.

  I wait around, pass time by refreshing my email, but with each refresh I feel a little emptier, and I end up reading through my spam and deleting it piece by piece.

  The lady who finally calls back has a voice so husky that for a moment I think she’s a man. My plan is to sound sane yet addicted to cigarettes. When she asks, I tell her that I smoke “nearly a pack a day.”

  “More specific?”

  “Four to a pack a day, probably,” I say.

  “That’s quite a range.”

  “It’s more like halfway between four and a pack,” I say.

  “All right,” she says aft
er a pause. “Can you come in for a dental and physical next week?”

  Out of habit, I check my calendar. It’s as empty as a snow day.

  Research

  I am nervous about pretending to be a smoker. Online, I read message boards and how-tos that seem to be written by people much younger than myself. One page explains smoking in seventeen steps, plus twelve tips and thirteen warnings. I feel like I’m reading instructions on how to fold an origami crane. A long, heated debate on a message board does not reach consensus on whether the position and rotation of the arm while smoking is gendered. “It is more feminine,” reports one user, “to move your arm away from your face and hold your cigarette out to the side with your arm in a V.” Apparently, “smacking the pack” is not just some kind of tic among smokers. Also, there are twenty cigarettes in a pack!

  The people at the deli know me well. They have been eyeing my purchases: broth, soup, yogurt, juice. “You on a diet?” they ask, though I explain that it’s a problem with my tooth. This time, when I buy two packs of cigarettes, the manager shouts, “You are trying to lose weight!,” as if he has just found me out.

  On my stoop, I smack my pack, take a cigarette between my lips, and light it with a restaurant match. I inhale, cough, and try again. I do this several times, until I feel dizzy and kind of nauseous. I notice a woman sitting on a stoop across the street. She is looking at me as if I am an idiot. I stub the cigarette out on the steps before even half of it is gone and promise myself I will try again in the afternoon.

  It isn’t better in the afternoon. I’m just going to have to power through.

  More Research

  It isn’t that hard, I decide a week later. I can do three a day, easy. I feel like an old pro. When I go out on the stoop to smoke, I look for that woman. I imagine she is watching through a window, and I hold the cigarette between my index and middle fingers and tap ash nonchalantly off the side of the steps.

  The Dentist, Take Two

  The dentist says my teeth are doing quite well for a smoker of my caliber. When I ask about my toothache, he says he’s not allowed to examine anything else, but the look on my face must be pitiful because he furrows his brow and asks, “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. No. My tooth,” I say. I am not one of those girls, but things have been going in such a way these past few weeks that I think I am going to start crying.

  I chomp on a little piece of sandy paper, and he drills down the fillings in my teeth and then I chomp again. “That’s it,” he says. “They just weren’t quite finished. When they’re uneven like that, it’s like your whole head is off-balance.”

  I can’t believe that’s it, but that’s it. My headache starts to fade, the tension leaves my jaw. I click my teeth together with a joy I haven’t felt in weeks.

  Well Researched

  How could I have never smoked, not in all twenty-three years of my life? How many hours of work have I spent working when I could have been on a cigarette break? How many friends might I have made, standing around that ashtray, a happy tingle in my brain? How many times (all of those evenings at bars!) have I said no? I must have said no a million times!

  With coffee and a cigarette in the morning, I can avoid food until noon. A cigarette after lunch, then one in the midafternoon, and one in the evening. I check the time and think about which cigarette quadrant I’m in. It’s like having marking periods, or a job, or a schedule.

  Quit It! CARA Clinical Trial: Fine Print

  To get my $250 I must: seriously try to quit smoking with the help of a nicotine patch, fill out hourly craving and mood charts, attend a support group once a week for two months.

  Maybe this isn’t worth $250, but I am so thrilled that I’ve passed the pre-screening that I don’t really care. I feel like I’ve passed an important exam. I myself feel important.

  Support

  I am overdressed again, wearing slacks and a blouse. Maybe I am pretending I have a job, even though I don’t want one.

  In group, I see the attractive guy from my unemployment meeting.

  “I recognize you,” he says, sitting next to me. “I’m Carlos.”

  “Hi,” I say. “I’m April.”

  “A month all to yourself,” he says. “Ready to give up smoking?”

  “Less than I thought I’d be,” I admit.

  We get our nicotine patches and a packet of poorly photocopied mood and craving charts that remind me of fifth-grade worksheets. The group leader, Nancy, tells us how hard it is to quit smoking. We discuss reasons to stop, personal and otherwise. All of this talk of smoking just makes us all want to go out for a smoke.

  Out

  Someone from R & D organizes an unhappy hour for the recently laid off. Even the older employees, men and women with families at home, come out and drink. We laugh about our misery and toast one another and argue about resume formatting, but Jerry, the former head of logistics, starts crying halfway into his second drink, and we take him out of the bar and pat him on the back and remind him that the company can go fuck itself, that essentially it has already gone and fucked itself.

  All evening I have been surreptitiously supplying my Long Island iced tea with vodka from a flask to save money at the bar. I have already prepared my room at home, as I often do before I go out, by clearing the path to my bed, closing my blinds, turning down my sheets, and putting a glass of water and two ibuprofen on the nightstand. Today this took longer than usual, what with my bedside accumulation of coffee cups and cereals.

  Jeffrey has been standing behind me, talking to Lillie from logistics. I am smiling off into a corner because I’m drunk, but it’s nice that it looks as if I’ve been nursing my drink. “Smoke break?” I hear Jeffrey ask Lillie.

  “I’ll join you,” I announce.

  “You don’t smoke,” says Jeffrey.

  “You know everything I do?” I say, and follow them outside.

  We stand in a circle puffing. Lillie and Jeffrey glance back and forth at each other, and I look down to be sure I haven’t done something stupid, like left toilet paper coming out of my skirt or spilled liquid down my front.

  I take a puff, then hold my arm out to the side in a V. “What?” I say.

  Jeffrey shrugs, taps at his cigarette. “What’s that?” he asks. I look at my shoulder, where my sleeve has moved up just enough to reveal the white corner of a patch.

  “A Band-Aid?” I say.

  “Is that a nicotine patch?” he says, confused, almost annoyed. “You don’t even smoke.”

  I shrug. More glances between Lillie and Jeffrey, and I realize this is a smoking circle I was not invited to. I crush my cigarette with the toe of my shoe and return to my Long Island iced tea.

  In

  I am not very hungover, but I stay in bed most of the next day. I stick on a new nicotine patch, limit myself to one cigarette. I do not limit my coffee intake—I make a full pot and find myself shaking by noon. I eat off-brand Frosted Flakes straight from the box, little bits falling into my bed so that I live in a sandbox. The heat isn’t working or is on very low, so I wear a hat and gloves and let the laptop whir on my lap, but it’s impossible to get warm. Even the heat of a shower fades the instant I get out of it.

  Support

  We look like we are in the same gang, with our nicotine-patched shoulders. “How are you doing?” asks Carlos. “I feel insane sometimes! It’s hard.” I nod in agreement but feel guilty because I’ve already had two cigarettes today. They might kick me out if I don’t seem to be trying. I don’t really think I’m trying.

  My hourly mood chart worries me. It looks like a toddler drew zigzags all over it, except that when I look closer, there appears to be a pattern: up every time I smoke, up more every time I drink, and then down down down, below sea level.

  More Support

  Even better than group is the bar we go to after. Eventually, Carlos and I excuse ourselves and wander a little around the city until he has to catch his train. “We should go out sometime,” says Carlos
. “I guess we’ll have to do something cheap. Or wait until we have jobs.”

  Opportunity

  It is nice that I can apply to jobs from bed. I look for the wildest jobs I can find in New York, write witty cover letters, and send them out with peppy subject headings: Re: Mycological Assistant—Mushroom lover with strong morel compass; Re: Doggie Blogger—Aspirational dog owner captures voice of a species; Re: Fact-Checker—I’ve already fact-checked my resume, and I’m your perfect employee. I expect results like I expect lottery winnings.

  Jeffrey

  “Do you want to come over?” I ask.

  “I can’t,” says Jeffrey.

  “Do you want to go out?” I ask.

  “I can’t,” says Jeffrey.

  “All right,” I say.

  “Look, I like you a lot. We’ve been friends for a year, and we’ll still be friends. I didn’t know this would happen, but things just happen. I’m kind of seeing Lillie.”

  I hold my breath for just a second. What is it that you have to do to be kind of seeing someone? Why is no one ever kind of seeing me, even when they are? It is as if I’m unclaimable. I tell myself that it is stupid to care, stupid to be mad. Nobody promised anybody anything.

  “And you don’t want to ruin that,” I say. “You want to see where it goes. I understand.”