Very Nice

by Marcy Dermansky

  I had the ring, the ring I’d used to propose to my fiancée. It was gorgeous. It was expensive. I had once considered returning it or reselling it, but I had taken too long. I found out that I could only get a fraction of what I’d originally paid for it, and so I held on to it.

  “She is still married, fuckface,” Kristi said, her patience for me completely used up. It was vexing to me that I had ceased to consult with Kristi about my private matters and I could still hear her voice in my head.

  It was as if my life were a fiction workshop and she was my most annoying student, had an answer for anything. I had no idea why Kristi Taylor was so invested in my future. Nor did I know why I was afraid of Kristi. She would be so angry at me for not taking this job. So incredibly angry. She would say that she had put herself out for me. I would say that I’d never asked her to. She would say it was the last time. It was the last time she would ever stick out her neck for me. And that I was a fool to think Becca would ever marry me. You are a boy toy, that is what she would say. She did not believe I could be this stupid.

  It was my writing time.

  I was arguing with Kristi in my head.

  I was staring at my Gmail, pondering what to do. Write to the university to tell them no. I could write Kristi to tell her that I did not accept the position but that I was grateful for her concern. I could write to my new editor. She had sent me a friend request on FB. I had ignored it. I could not be friends with her. I could not know about her daily life or have her know about mine. But I could write to her. I could tell her that I had one hundred new single-spaced pages. A new novel. That was an e-mail she would want to receive. I needed only to finish the book. There was a pot of gold waiting at the other end of this novel. I had spent the advance but that was only half. Half a pot of gold. There were people out there, waiting for my next novel.

  Kristi would think I was using Becca, but if I finished my book, if I finished it and turned it in, I would be solvent again. It had seemed impossible, but it was not impossible. I was one hundred pages away. My last book was long. I could write a short one. Genius. A short book. The idea filled me with glee. My book would be short. I was almost done.

  Outside the window, I could see the blue sky. I could walk over to the window, look down and there would be the swimming pool, my reward after a morning of writing. The aqua-blue water. I had done a good job taking care of this pool. I felt a small measure of pride. I had proven, too, that I was useful to Becca. I had reminded myself that I was a competent adult. This would not impress my mother.

  I did not send an e-mail.

  Not to the university, not to Kristi, or to Jane, my new editor. My mother. Certainly, I owed my mother an e-mail. She had given birth to me.

  I did not open my file.

  My phone pinged, a sign of what I was supposed to do next. It was from Myra Alice Finley. It was not a text that I needed, not in this moment. Myra Alice was an old college friend. She was married to Sean, another old college friend, and Sean had cancer. This was not new. He had been in remission, and now, almost five years later, he was out of remission. He had something new, a fast-growing tumor that the doctors did not think was worth operating on, at least not until the cancer cells were stopped. That was how fast it was growing. His chances, honestly, did not sound good, but Myra Alice was one of those people. Who did yoga, believed in holistic medicine, didn’t eat gluten, sprayed tea tree oil into the air, all of that woo-woo crap. She had put Sean on an anti-inflammatory diet and that had worked for a while. Now she was desperate. Back to Western medicine. But she was still Myra Alice, all about the healing energy. She sent a group text to her list. She wanted everyone who loved Sean to think, Die, tumor, die on the day his chemotherapy began. His second round would be starting soon and she wanted to enlist the power of their friends’ love.

  And now, when I had voluntarily sent myself back up to my room to write, I got this text. Now.

  I’d known it was coming. I had agreed to be on this list. But, honestly, I didn’t believe that the power of my thought would help Sean. I thought that this old friend of mine would die. His cancer was back. He had a fast-growing tumor. Jesus. I would be forty before long and my grandmother was dead and now my friends were starting to die, but right now, I was fine. I was healthy and young. I had one hundred single-spaced pages of a novel.

  I realized how selfish this was.

  I closed my eyes.

  I tried to concentrate.

  I turned off my phone.

  I did not have to write an e-mail.

  I would write my book. That was what I would do. I was alive. I had to live my life to the fullest. Here I was, thinking in clichés. If a student wrote that line in a short story, I would cross it out. Shut up. I actually said it out loud. I opened my file. I looked at the last sentence I had written and I deleted it. That was not useful.

  Instead, I tried to think healing thoughts.

  I did.

  Die, tumor, die.

  I put my hands on my knees, I closed my eyes, and wished for the death of the tumor killing my friend Sean. We had not seen each other in a very long time. He had been my freshman roommate. I had spent breaks with him in Vail, at his parents’ winter house. The whole family skied, whereas I was a clown on the slopes. After a while, I stopped trying. I sat by the fireplace at the ski lodge, drinking whiskey toddies, reading novels and going to bed with girls who could not ski.

  After graduation, Sean and I had gone in different directions. He lived in D.C. Myra Alice did something related to politics. Sean had not had a job for a while. He had been a rich kid and he had never gotten his shit together. He used to smoke an insane amount of pot, but apparently Myra Alice had made him stop. He arranged dinner parties and cooked Italian food. They took trips. It did not seem like a bad life. We did not have anything to talk about.

  I did not know how long I would have to think this, about him, the tumor, sending the healing energy. I tried it again. Die, tumor, die. It was like meditation. I was bad at meditating. I always had been. My mind went everywhere. I was afraid that I was harming Sean. I found myself wishing that his chemotherapy had not coincided with my writing time. My file was open, but I hadn’t written a thing. I had lost a sentence. I had not written anything since going to Iowa.

  This was the wrong time to sabotage myself. I had just realized that I did not need Becca for her money, and this made me feel good. I would finish my book and then I would have money again. But I still needed Becca and this also made me feel better about myself. I did not want to use people. I wanted to be a good person.

  Die, tumor, die, I thought.

  I did not like the way the sentence sounded. There was nothing lyrical about it. Or powerful, even. It sounded foolish, inadequate, impossible. I wondered if I could write a better mantra and send it out to the group, but I did not know what it would be.

  So, I repeated the sentence again, three times, because I had promised Myra Alice. It was like clicking my heels together, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. I felt fortunate that I was young and healthy and not dying. I was lucky. I was not going to go to Iowa. I would not write a fucking word if I went there. I would be miserable there. Kristi wanted me with her. That was what it was. She wanted me to be her bitch. She knew that deep down, I wanted her, sexually, of course I did, everyone wanted Kristi, she was beautiful and talented and, for reasons I had never understood, completely off-limits. She had been living like a fucking nun since her last break up, Miss Fucking Perfect Writer Nun. Maybe she wasn’t. Perfect. Maybe, secretly, she wanted to tank my career.

  Paranoid thoughts. That was where I was going. I was not helping my friend. I hated that he was dying but I was not supposed to think that he was dying. His wife wanted me to send healing thoughts. I had had sex with his wife, Myra Alice, before they were married, before they were a couple even, my freshman year. She was one of those wh
ite girls. She had never considered me seriously as a romantic partner. With her, somehow, it hurt. Fucking Myra Alice. It had been painful to see them together. That was so long ago, another life.

  I was sitting at my desk on a beautiful day in Connecticut and I was filled with rage. My Die, tumor, die wasn’t heartfelt. Maybe my friend wasn’t my friend anymore, just someone I had hung out with when I was in college, and that didn’t count for shit. He had come to one of my readings. I could not remember the last time we had talked on the phone.

  I had wasted almost an hour, time I could have spent with Becca.

  I had done nothing.

  So I sent the e-mail to Iowa, turning down the job.

  There. I felt better. I had done something. I did not have cancer and I wanted to live my life to its fullest.

  I looked at my watch. Two more minutes had passed. I had done something definite, but I was not writing. I was going to admit defeat for the day. That happened sometimes. That was okay. It was just a day. I left Jonathan’s office, unsettled, unsure of myself, glad to be out of his room. For the first time, I found myself thinking about Jonathan. There were no pictures of him in the house, but I knew that he must be handsome. I wondered if there had been photos of him, family pictures that Becca had taken down. Becca, of course, was beautiful. Rachel was plain and awkward and somehow much more good-looking than she knew. She had good genes. Standing in the hallway, I turned on my phone and looked up Becca’s husband, and there was a picture of him in tennis clothes at a charity tennis match. I nodded my head. He was even better-looking than I’d thought he would be. A man who played tennis. A man who looked better older. Gray hair. He looked like money.

  I was standing there in the hallway, staring at my phone, looking at a picture of Becca’s husband, when Becca emerged from her bedroom. I had assumed she was downstairs.

  “Is that a picture of Jonathan?” she asked me.

  I had been caught. I clicked a button and I was back to my home screen, a picture of Princess and all of my apps, but it was too late.

  Becca squinted at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be,” she said, but she sounded annoyed.

  She had never been annoyed with me before.

  “I was curious,” I said.

  Becca did not say anything.

  She did not talk a lot, I realized. We did not talk a lot. I thought of a faucet. It was as if her faucet was closed, and maybe, once I opened it, if I were able to, the water would gush out. I felt so much restraint in her, even when making love. She turned away when she had orgasms, as if she did not want me to know. It was the strangest thing. I was not sure she was even aware of it. It made me want her more. It made me want another chance to make her come, just to get her to look at me, to hold my gaze.

  “I turned down the job,” I told Becca.

  “At the college?” she said. “You did?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I turned it down. I sent an e-mail. It’s done.”

  Die, tumor, die. It came into my head unbidden. I realized that I wanted off that text list. Could I text Myra Alice and tell her this without somehow going to hell? As it was, I was going to hurt my friend. My thoughts were meaningless, powerless. Why did Myra think she was allowed to disturb my state of mind this way? All of the people on the list.

  “Why?” Becca said.

  “Why?”

  “Why?” She sounded so angry. Only hours ago, we had been holding hands in a supermarket. “Why did you turn down the job?”

  “Because I want to stay here,” I said. “With you.”

  I stared at Becca.

  Becca stared at me.

  “That’s what I want, too,” she said, still sounding angry.

  She took my hand, the hand that was holding my cell phone, the cell phone that contained the picture of her husband, the fool who had left her.

  We were stuck, standing there in the hallway. I was suddenly afraid of messing up, breaking a rule I had never been told. I could pull her into her bedroom and we could fuck away the ghost of her fool of a husband. It was probably five steps away. Or we could fuck in my room, her husband’s office, and that would work, too. We could simply fuck inside the house. That would be meaningful, a sign of progress. We had done it once before, a yoga session in front of the TV that had gone wrong. Princess had stood in the hallway, wagging her tail, watching us, and when we were done, she came over and licked Becca’s face. This was a good home for her. She had a yard, she had the beach. She had Becca, who she loved more than me. I understood that. We were lost, honestly, me and my dog, without her.

  “Did you write?” Becca asked me.

  I shook my head, ashamed.

  She had just told me she wanted to be with me and then she’d changed the subject.

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged. I had so many different reasons why. I realized that I did not want to share any of them with Becca.

  “Maybe you should.”

  I stood across from her, my arms at my sides. We had just told each other that we wanted to be with each other. I did not want to write.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “An hour,” she said.

  I did not respond. The idea of it seemed like torture. I was angry, angry at Becca for trying to control me like this.

  “Half an hour,” she said.

  That was better. I agreed.

  She opened the door to my room.

  “It will be good,” she said. “Really.”

  I felt like I was being punished.

  I felt sympathy for Rachel, for having a mother who would not embrace joy but instead would send you back to your room to work. I sat back down at the desk, in front of my computer. Die, tumor, die. Fuck. It was stuck in my head like a bad song, and so what? I would put it into my novel. I would profit from the slow death of my old college friend. Myra Alice wanted me to think about him. That was what I would do. I blocked the Internet on my laptop. I turned my phone back off and I typed. Somewhere in Brooklyn, there was an editor, waiting for me.

  I typed. One sentence and then the next.

  Becca wanted me to stay with her. She wanted me. She had witnessed her daughter hugging me and had understood the significance of that moment. She was not stupid. I was what she wanted.

  I typed some more.

  I typed effortless, well-crafted sentences, I looked down at my brown fingers, fingers moving across the keyboard. My dying friend was now a character in my novel. I called him Shawn. I could change it later. Already, he was changing the story; he was alive, in my book at least; he was going to start skydiving, not dying. I might finish this book, and here I was, actually doing something to keep my friend alive, and maybe this meant that I actually cared.

  And maybe, maybe I was not a son of a bitch. Which was an insult to my mother. It was a horrible phrase.

  I finished the scene and triumphantly shut my computer. I opened the door and there was Becca, sitting on the steps, staring out a small triangular window above the front door. It was such a beautiful house. The way the light floated down the hallway. She was waiting for me. There was a book lying closed on her lap.

  “That was more than half an hour,” she said.

  “You were waiting.”

  Becca nodded.

  “I wrote a lot,” I said.

  “You see,” Becca said, smiling. I loved her smile. “I am good for you.”

  I sat down next to her on the steps. I touched her cheek. She touched my face. We lay back on the steps, kissing.

  “Ow,” Becca said, laughing. I loved her laugh. “My back.”

  “A bed?” I asked. “Is that possible?”

  “It’s possible,” Becca said.

  We had done it before. In a hotel, of course, but it had been a bed. It had been a wonde
rful bed. We grinned at each other.

  I removed my weight from her body. I looked down the stairs, to see if it was safe. We were alone. The front door was closed, presumably locked. Still, Becca did not move. She was lying flat on her back on the stairs. It looked uncomfortable. I did not want to ruin it. I did not want to push too hard. The beds would wait for us. That was fine.

  “Do you want to swim?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Becca nodded, the relief flooding her face.

  “So do I,” I said.

  I took Becca’s hand, pulling her to her feet. We went down the stairs together, our bodies purposefully banging into each other. We walked down the hall, through the kitchen, and to the door through the living room that led to the swimming pool.

  At the pool, I realized that I had left my purple bathing suit upstairs, but I had waited so long already, to be with Becca. I couldn’t see myself turning around, going back up the stairs to get it. I had already gone to the supermarket. I had sent healing thoughts to my dying friend. I had written six single-spaced pages. I could not wait another second. I took off my clothes and dove into the pool naked. Underwater, I could hear the splash, and then another splash, the sound of Becca coming in after me, and she was pressed against me, also naked, our bodies pressed together, and then we came up for air. We were shiny wet seals, hands in each other’s hair.

  “I love you,” I told Becca.

  It was the first time I had spoken the words out loud. I would tell her this, again and again. She would believe me.

  She kissed me, which was clearly not the same thing as saying, “I love you, too.”

  She was kissing my mouth shut. That’s what it was. Stop talking. We climbed the steps out of the pool and made love on our pool chair, but this time, this time Becca looked at me as she came.