Invisible as Air

by Zoe Fishman

  She turned on the light and scanned the crowded but organized room. Short sleeves, long sleeves, pants, skirts and dresses faced her. Shelved on the side were her jeans and sweaters, although she hadn’t worn jeans since before Delilah. No, that wasn’t true, she remembered, thinking of the photo of herself in them that had been the impetus to stop wearing them altogether.

  Yes, there, she decided, her eyes landing on a red circular handbag hanging from a hook. Sylvie unzipped its interior pocket and carefully nestled the bottle inside.

  If Paul asked, she would just tell him that she had thrown out the pills.

  Good. Very good. All bases covered, thought Sylvie, feeling more than a little nuts. But it was okay. Just one bottle of pills her whole life, come on. Harmless fun. Did she not deserve a break from her brain?

  She walked out of the closet, back through the bathroom, to the hallway, right into Paul. How he managed to creep around stealthily on crutches she would never know.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she answered. “Just had to pee before the meeting.”

  “Meeting?” he called after her, as she made her way down the stairs.

  “Yes, the stupid PTA. For the end-of-year party,” she explained, turning around to peer up at him. Paul seemed brighter somehow, like someone had pulled the string to a light bulb inside his chest. He was radiant, Sylvie thought.

  The pill. It was working. She was so glad.

  “Oh. Before you go, would you mind helping me down the stairs?” he asked sheepishly. “I go up and down on my butt while you’re at work, but since you’re here, I—”

  “Yes, sure,” answered Sylvie patiently. Patience: another virtue of her new medicated self. Normal Sylvie would have sighed heavily, perhaps even barked about how she had had to rush out of work early just to get home to make sure dinner was on the table because God forbid Paul cook something for himself and Teddy and now she had to go to this ridiculous meeting she consistently hated attending, that they always started exactly on time, and if she was late she’d miss the wine—but. Not this Sylvie. This Sylvie took Paul’s crutches from him without so much as an eye roll, ran them down to the first floor and then trotted back up to become the human crutch her husband needed.

  “Thanks,” said Paul, as she snaked her arm around his waist dutifully, supporting him as he held onto the banister and slowly made his way, cast leg first, down to the first floor.

  “You okay?” she asked, hoping he would say yes. Pill or no pill, she really was late.

  “Fine,” he answered. “Teddy here can take care of me.” He glanced over to the couch, where Teddy was splayed out, watching Splash for the nine hundredth time that week. “Right, Teddy?”

  Sylvie walked over to him, shaking his shoulder slightly.

  “In five minutes, take a shower, T. Then bed.” He nodded, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  “Okay, I have to go,” Sylvie announced. “Bye.”

  She kissed the top of his head, gave Paul a peck on the cheek and then, finally, she was out the door and into the warm spring air. It was the perfect jean-jacket-at-night-and-short-sleeves-during-the-day, end-of-April-in-Atlanta night.

  Sylvie took a deep breath through her nostrils, feeling each particle of lavender oxygen filter through her as she walked briskly down the slight slope of the driveway. She had been enclosed in her tomb of an office all day, and then straight into the air-conditioned imprisonment of her car, and then into the house, running around like a chicken with her head cut off, scrambling to make macaroni and cheese out of a box and throw some fish sticks in the oven.

  The smell of damp earth and grass clippings clung to her, and she was happy. Happy for the first time all day, because she wouldn’t take any pills at work. That was crossing the line. That was cause for alarm. Not that she was performing brain surgery or anything—she was branding dog food, for God’s sake—but still. She took another blissful inhale in and made a left toward Erika’s McMansion.

  Ahead of her, a lean woman walked her greyhound, its legs as spindly as matchsticks. It was true what they said, that dogs looked like their owners, she thought. What would her dog be?

  As she passed them, she browsed through the limited catalog in her mind. She had never been a dog person, despite the fact that she forced Teddy to volunteer at a pet shelter. A bulldog, most likely, she guessed. Face folded into an accordion of frown; sturdy bordering on plump.

  She hadn’t always been like this, she thought, picking up her pace and wishing she had changed into her sneakers. Before Delilah she had been more like a—more like a what? Was there a dog who had no concept of death and tragedy? A bichon what was it called? Frise? The ones with the happy eyes and the Princess Leia buns for ears. No, that wasn’t true. Sylvie had always been a bitch, just a clueless one. Oh, to be clueless again. Bubbles of drug-induced contentment popped in her belly. This was a close second.

  She realized that she had reached Erika’s house. It loomed above her at the top of an imposing hill of manicured lawn. Erika and her husband had mowed down the charming Craftsman that had once stood there and replaced it with what Sylvie was sure they considered mid-century modern but what looked to her like a schizophrenic bunker. Gray concrete, a steel stairway up to its apple-red double doors and a slab of cherrywood around its expansive middle like a belt. Paul shivered every time they drove by it.

  “Here we go,” muttered Sylvie under her breath, as she began her ascent. What would this meeting be like as the new version of herself? She was almost giddy to find out.

  Sylvie Snow had never been giddy in her life.

  “Sylvie! Hi, come in, come in,” Erika chirped, opening the door and motioning her inside.

  “Sorry I’m late,” offered Sylvie.

  She walked into their West Elm showroom. Erika’s commitment to the brand du jour, whether it be the clothes she wore, the car she drove or, in this case, the furniture in her home, was a hallmark of her personality.

  “Please,” replied Erika, swooping in to give her a perfumed hug. “How are you?”

  Erika’s brown eyes were wide. Too wide. Eye-lift, Sylvie thought to herself.

  “Oh good, you know, just—” Sylvie paused, hoping something clever would come to her, but her mind was as blank as Erika’s impossibly smooth forehead. “Happy about spring.”

  “Oh God, I’m not,” replied Erika. “No-sleeve weather is upon us, and my upper arms are as flappy as two flags in a hurricane.” Sylvie glanced at Erika’s arms, which were ensconced in camel cashmere.

  Who cares, Erika! Sylvie wanted to scream. We’re almost fucking fifty years old! Isn’t it our right to go sleeveless no matter the state of our triceps? Have we not earned that right just for simply existing for this long?

  But Sylvie did not scream; she just gave her weird, fake laugh, more like a hiccup than an actual laugh. She hadn’t always been fake. There had been a time when Sylvie would have said exactly what she felt without a second thought. That time had been three years ago. The her before this.

  A lot of people spoke and wrote about how grief cracked them open like lobsters, revealing their bare, obliterated essence. One blogger Sylvie had read wrote about the unexpected empowerment of her grief, how although answering someone’s “How are you?” with the truth almost always sent them scurrying away in discomfort, it actually gave her, the griever, strength. Because her truth was proof that her dead husband had actually existed. And every time she leaned into that truth, she was giving his life the recognition it deserved.

  Sylvie understood what this blogger was saying; she did. But for Sylvie, it was different. By folding her grief deep inside her like an origami scrap, it was hers and hers alone. Because people had let her down, in the wake of Delilah’s death. They had not been to her what she needed them to be. Not for long enough, anyway. And as she kept folding and folding that scrap, inevitably the rest of her had folded in on itself too.

  Until now. With these pills. They rel
eased bubbles into Sylvie’s bloodstream, and they were releasing something else: Sylvie. The old Sylvie.

  “Girls! Sylvie is here!” Erika announced, presenting her to the group like a gift.

  Sylvie forced herself to smile at the six women draped over Erika’s monochromatic furniture, all balancing on their laps tiny paper plates crowded with orange cheese rectangles and purple grapes and clear plastic glasses filled with pink wine in their manicured hands.

  She gave a small wave and darted right toward the kitchen island to pour herself her own plastic cup of chilled pink sociability. These pills were one thing, but these pills with a side of alcohol—that was something else entirely. Sylvie had discovered this the day before, when she had cracked open a beer while making dinner and shot into an atmosphere of goodwill she had never before known.

  She placed the bottle back in its monogrammed sterling-silver ice bucket. Because you had to monogram your ice bucket. There were so many sterling-silver ice buckets around, you wouldn’t want to get yours confused with someone else’s.

  Ellen Rhodes patted the tan leather couch cushion beside her. Sylvie sat. There was a conversation under way. Something about summer camp.

  Sylvie took a big sip of her wine.

  Paul couldn’t understand why Sylvie involved herself at all in the PTA, considering every time she went to a meeting she was miserable, but Sylvie wanted to stay connected to her son, connected to his life outside of hers.

  But what life? she thought now, sinking farther into the couch as the medicine flowed through her veins in a river of pink wine, undoing all the knots in her neck like a zipper, pulling the tab down as blue and yellow cartoon songbirds flew out.

  Teddy hated school and, as far as Sylvie could tell, had no friends. She hadn’t seen his two old faithfuls, Martin and Raj, in months. She’d been avoiding confronting this fact for so long that thinking of it plainly now was a revelation.

  Here she was, planning an end-of-year celebration for a class of little shits who made her son feel less than, at a meeting she herself dreaded attending. What was the point? And why did she stay so damn quiet about it? Why had she chosen to cut off the blood flow to a part of her personality that she actually enjoyed? Sure, it might have gotten her into trouble on occasion but so what? Trouble was fun. Trouble was interesting.

  “Ellen,” Sylvie whispered, feeling another wave of warmth undulate through her.

  Sylvie had known Ellen since her son, Elliott, had been with Teddy in pre-K. Her husband was an insufferable prick, and Elliott had had a biting problem for far longer than was acceptable. Sylvie had just seen Elliott the other day when she’d picked Teddy up to take him to Hebrew School; his long, unwashed bangs had hidden most of his face as he strapped on his headphones and clomped past her car, his mouth a tight line.

  Ellen’s life wasn’t perfect either, but she was pretending just like Sylvie was. And why? For what?

  “Mmm?” Ellen replied, leaning her head toward Sylvie but not taking her eyes off Erika. Her blond hair tickled Sylvie’s nose. It smelled like a salon, like air-conditioned hairspray.

  “Why are we here?” she asked Ellen.

  “What?” Ellen replied, still keeping her eyes on the room.

  “We’re going to have to bribe our boys to even go to this party. Why are we here?”

  The conversation around them had turned a corner toward hair removal. Lacey Ross’s hand was in the air as she showed her armpit to Erika.

  “I’ve been bribing Elliott to behave like a human being since he was in utero,” Ellen deadpanned. “I’m in it for the free rose.”

  “No, but seriously,” said Sylvie. Now Candace Mayhall had pulled up the leg of her pants to show everyone her lasered shin. “Jesus, what is happening here?”

  “If labia’s next, I’m out,” said Ellen. Sylvie laughed. Ellen was funny.

  “Teddy doesn’t have any friends,” she admitted to Ellen. Ellen put her hand on Sylvie’s knee and squeezed, looking at her finally.

  “Honey,” she said. “Elliott may be a bona fide psychopath,” she admitted back.

  “Shit,” said Sylvie.

  She had never had an honest conversation with anyone at one of these meetings. Not ever, not once. It was all lasered hair removal and who had an in with who for the school auction and where did you get those jeans, they’re so cute. But never this.

  When Delilah had died, Teddy had been nine. It had happened in the spring, and so mercifully Sylvie had been able to take quite a long PTA hiatus, through the summer and into the fall of his fifth-grade year, before returning.

  And when she had, not one of these women, not even Ellen, had acknowledged what had happened to her. Yes, they had all—well, not all, Lindsey Ferris, I’m looking at you, Sylvie thought now—sent well-meaning emails and brought over food in the immediate aftermath, leaving it at her front door in insulated bags, but then, five months later in person, it was like it had never happened.

  Sylvie had been pregnant, as big as a house the last time they had shared a couch with her, and then she wasn’t, but there was no baby to show for it, so you would think that one of these women could have at least mentioned it to her face after the fact, at the very least told her they were so sorry for her loss even though she hated when people said that.

  “I’m going to leave,” she said quietly to Ellen, as Erika rang her monogrammed brass bell. Everything in this house was fucking monogrammed.

  “What? Everything okay?” asked Ellen. Sylvie stood up.

  “Guys, I’m sorry, but I have to leave,” she announced.

  Erika rested her bell on her lap. “Is something wrong at home?” she asked.

  Had Erika’s eyebrows been able to move, they would have been legitimately furrowed in concern; Sylvie believed that. Erika wasn’t a bad person; none of these women were bad people. Except for Lindsey Ferris.

  “Well, not really. Paul broke his ankle and is a complete pain in the ass. But that’s not relevant to why I’m leaving.” Sylvie took her last gulp of rosé. “I’m leaving because Teddy has zero interest in attending this party that we’re planning. I wouldn’t even know it existed if I wasn’t part of the PTA, and to be honest, I’m going to have to bribe him to go. And you know, he’s twelve, so shouldn’t my bribing days be over? Shouldn’t I just accept him for the cautious, shy, possibly antisocial but hopefully just not-comfortable-enough-in-his-skin-yet person that he is? Wouldn’t that make everything easier?”

  The women looked up at Sylvie, all their mouths slightly agape. She knew that as soon as the door shut behind her, Erika would take a sip of her wine and say something like, Well, that was interesting, and Monika Masuda would roll her eyes and utter something like, Crazy much? But Sylvie didn’t care.

  “Well,” said Erika. “I don’t really know what to say?”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” answered Sylvie. “I’m certainly not mad at anyone.” Sylvie paused. “Actually, that’s not true. Lindsey Ferris, I’m mad at you.”

  Lindsey brought her French-manicured hand to her chest, the enormous diamond of her engagement ring catching the light and beaming it back to them, so much so that Monika Masuda shaded her eyes, using her own, considerably less expensive, hand as a visor.

  “Me?” she squeaked.

  “How come you never even sent me so much as an email when my baby died?”

  Monika Masuda’s hand dropped to her mouth.

  “What?” asked Lindsey.

  “You heard me.”

  “Sylvie, I—I.” Lindsey took a deep breath. “I didn’t?”

  “No, you did not. You definitely did not. And I was just wondering why? I mean, you saw me pregnant, and then you saw me not pregnant minus the baby. Everyone else here at least had the decency to acknowledge what had happened.”

  “I sent you dinner,” Erika volunteered.

  “Yes, Erika, you did. Thank you. So what gives, Lindsey?”

  “Well. I could have sworn I did—”

&
nbsp; “You did not.”

  “In that case, Sylvie, I apologize. It’s just that—I dunno—we’re not friends. I didn’t want to overstep my bounds, maybe? Honestly, I don’t remember. It was what, five years ago?” Lindsey laughed nervously.

  “Three years ago,” said Sylvie. She felt surprisingly calm, the medicine still churning its pleasant Jacuzzi bubbles inside her. “Our kids have been in school together, Lindsey, since they were what, three?”

  “Yes,” answered Lindsey.

  “So we may not be getting pedicures together, we may not even like each other that much, but we share a common experience, right? We’re both mothers.”

  Lindsey stared at her blankly.

  “Right?” asked Sylvie.

  “Right,” Lindsey said quietly.

  “So the human thing to do when someone you know, even if they’re just an acquaintance, goes through hell, is to send a damn email. Say you’re sorry. Say you wish you could make it better. Say, ‘If there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know,’ even if you don’t really mean it.” Sylvie collected herself. She was getting angry, pill or no pill. “Ladies, back me up. Am I right?”

  The remaining six looked around at one another, mumbling their accords.

  “I’m sorry, Sylvie,” said Lindsey, her lip trembling. There was a tiny cracker crumb stuck in her pink lip gloss.

  “Thank you. Apology accepted. And just so you know, the next time something terrible happens to someone you know, I don’t care if it’s the guy who cuts your grass, tell them you’re sorry. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Sylvie cleared her throat.

  “Okay. Well, I’ll be going now.” She plunked her plastic cup onto the wood coffee table, avoiding a coaster on purpose. “Erika, if you want me to make my spinach dip for the party, call me. I can drop it off.”

  “The one in the bread bowl?” called Erika after her.

  “Yes!” Sylvie yelled back, and shut the door.

  Outside on the stoop, she stood in silence. The moon had arrived, filtering its silver light through the budding leaves on the trees. In the distance, an owl hooted as she began her descent down the driveway.