You're Not You (37 page)

“I’m sorry,” she began. She seemed surprised. “I’m way out of line.”

She’d been indulging herself a bit, I realized, probably repeating the kinds of things she stewed about all the time. It made me feel a little better, to know she was doing just as badly.

I KEPT OFFERING TO
do more of Barb’s errands—getting groceries, taking the car in for an oil change. It was just an excuse to be alone. Her cheer could be downright virulent.

I spent the morning picking up little items here and there, a flashlight,
some Magic Markers, toilet paper. When I ran out of excuses to be away, I headed back to the house. There was another car parked in the driveway, yet another friend.

I headed to Barb’s room to let her know I was done for the day. Near the closed door to her room, I paused. I could hear a voice, tearful and tremulous, and someone making soothing sounds in response. A voice dipped to a hiss, then rose to a sob. I couldn’t make out any words. I assumed it was one of Barb’s friends crying, and for a moment I simply felt regretful. Who knew what problems people poured out to Barb, who believed in common sense and God and was probably comforting in a bracing way.

Another murmured exclamation came through the door. It sounded like Barb. The scene I had had in my head reversed itself: I saw Barb’s friend holding her good hand, stroking it, and Barb sobbing inconsolably. I stood for a moment in the dark hall, a stunned, panicky dread overtaking me. There seemed no logical reason for this to shake me the way it did. People cried, even cheerful religious people who had the comfort of God and husbands and schnauzers.

I backed away from the door, nearly tripping over one of the dogs dozing in the hallway. It leapt to its feet and stalked away.

I hadn’t realized how fragile the peace in Barbara’s house was for me, how much I had relied on its stability, the pure, boring momentum of her husband and her friends, with their casseroles and their roomy tunics and jazzy earrings. I felt as if I had just come upon a bag of heroin in the desk drawer. I didn’t have it in me to face that sort of anguish again. I saw what would happen if I stayed at this job. I’d be in her life more and more, till I couldn’t help colliding with that Something, whatever it was I didn’t know yet and that had nothing to do with me, but that I’d try to fix anyway.

“HEY!” JILL SAID
. “you bring the wine?”

I shook my head as I came up her steps. She and Tim had moved into one half of a duplex near campus. The neighborhood wasn’t like our old one. It was more like the one around Chambers Street: families, retrievers, SUVs. If anyone was smoking pot they were doing it indoors.

“Oh, right . . . I didn’t quite get it together. I brought money, though.” I had thought I would stop by the liquor store Kate and I used to go to on my way over, but as I had neared it I kept driving. I hadn’t bought a lot of wine in the last several months, and I didn’t want someone asking after Kate.

Jill looked perplexed. “All right. We’ll walk over to the store around the corner, okay?” She stepped out and closed the door behind her.

We put our hands in our pockets and started down the sidewalk, kicking leaves away as we went.

“What’s for dinner?” I asked.

“Oh, just pasta and some salad. Tim bought biscotti and ice cream. Nothing like you make.”

I snorted. “Boy, you haven’t eaten at my house in a long time,” I said.

“Oh, what, are you not roasting the beef bones before you make stock?” she teased. I was eating frozen okra and white bread spread with Nutella and bananas, but I knew she wanted me to laugh, so I did.

Jill said, “So how’s Barbara?”

“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s looking for a new caregiver but fine.”

“You quit?” Jill said.

“Yeah,” I said. It was a relief to say it, an even sweeter one to know I didn’t have to go back.

I had phoned Barbara, intending to invent something about a family emergency, or some incredibly well-paying job opportunity. The lie hadn’t come out once I heard her voice. “Barb—I’m not ready to do this again,” I said. “I thought I was but I’m not.”

I heard her sigh. “Okay,” she’d said simply. “Okay. My daughter can help out till I find someone. Good luck, hon.”

“It was going all right before,” I told Jill. “It was boring but it was okay. I thought I would be so glad to be caregiving again, but I can still hear that voice.” I zipped up my jacket. “Maybe if I’d heard what she was saying it would have turned out to be nothing. Maybe she’d just seen a really sad movie.”

Jill didn’t smile. “Are you going to try another ad?” she said. I lifted a hand, let it fall. “Maybe you need to give yourself some time, you know. Get some dumb job and relax for a while. Then you can do some more caregiving and see how it goes.”

I stared at my feet as we walked. “I don’t think I want to,” I said slowly. “I don’t think it’s an issue of waiting. I just don’t want to dive back into someone else’s life again.”

Jill looked shocked. “It can be less involved than it was with Kate,” she said. “And you were so good at it. I really think that’s the thing for you. You’re just not ready yet.”

I had thought so too. There had been a period, before I moved in with Kate and once I was well settled with her, when I had felt as content and calm as I ever had, and though I hadn’t articulated it, I saw now that I thought I’d found what I wanted to do, and was already doing it.

“I
was
good at it,” I said. “I probably would have worked for Kate forever, but I’m not doing this anymore. I think that was my shot, and that’s it.”

“That’s so sad.” Jill sighed. “That’s such a depressing way to think of it.”

Maybe it was. Melancholy was a comforting, tranquil way to feel once you got used to it. But this felt to me more like being wise, like simply understanding what lay before me. I wouldn’t be a caregiver anymore, but it was true: I had been so good at it, for a while.

IN THE STORE JILL
looked around and then turned to me expectantly.

“Well, what do we need?” she said. A sales guy approached us and she gave him a bright smile and gestured at me as if I were on top of it. “No thanks.”

He started to turn away, but I was looking around at the walls lined with bottles, the crates filled with them, the labels incomprehensible blocks of color.

“No, we need suggestions,” I called to the salesman. I held up two twenties and said, “I have forty dollars and I need a couple bottles of wine. Can you just steer us in the right direction, please?”

As we walked back up to Jill’s house she got quiet. Finally she turned to me and said, “Listen, don’t get mad. But Tim invited Mark over.”

I stopped and looked at her. “And he said
yes
?”

“Of course he said yes. He liked you.”

“I haven’t called him in like six months.” Jill opened her mouth to
protest. “Whatever, four. In dating terms, that’s a lifetime. I can’t believe he said yes.”

“I thought you guys might like talking,” she said slyly. “You know, give it a shot for once.”

“Fuck off.” I said it automatically, because she wanted me to respond to being teased.

She laughed, sounding pleased. Then we started walking again and she said, “I bet he doesn’t mind. Or understands, or whatever. Come on. You can have a little fun.”

“I look like hell. I haven’t even worn makeup in months.”

“You never wore it until Kate forced you to learn how to use it. You don’t need it anyway. You look pretty. You have wine. On more than one occasion you fucked this guy’s brains out, so I bet he has some residual fondness for you. Now come on.”

WE HAD SPAGHETTI WITH
tomato sauce and prosciutto scattered over the top, salad with fennel and blue cheese, and biscotti and blackberry ice cream. When Jill set the bowl in front of me I just sat and breathed it in for a second. It was the nicest food I’d seen in a long time. When I looked up, Mark was watching me. He smiled at me, but I was hoping he wouldn’t ask me why I was teary over pasta, and he didn’t.

We walked out to our cars after dinner.

“I should have called to see if you wanted a ride,” he said. “It’s stupid to drive separately when we live right near each other.”

“You know I live there?” I said. Then I shook my head. “Of course you do. I’m sure Jill mentioned it.”

We came to my car and I leaned back against it. “I thought maybe you’d come by sometime,” he said. I didn’t say anything. I just nodded.

“So, you’re job hunting now, I guess?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Or I’d better. Once I figure out what. I guess I could just get something to hold me over. Go back to waitressing.”

“Oh. Well, good luck.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and glanced around. “My car’s down there.”

I unlocked my car door and got in. He bent down, his hands on the window. “Hey,” he said. “You know you have a big hole in the dashboard?”

I sighed and looked at the empty stereo niche. I’d stuffed all the wires back inside. The nuts and bolts and screws were in a plastic Baggie in the ashtray. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m aware of it.”

He rocked back on his heels. “Bec,” he said. “Why don’t you just come over for a while? It’s early.”

I looked up at him. One of the things I had come to like about him, or at least I had before, was that there was no roundness in his face. The streetlamp cast shadows beneath his cheekbones, at the corners of his mouth, alongside the straight line of his nose. I couldn’t think of any good reason to avoid him. I wanted to go to his apartment and turn off the lights and look at the fish tank.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.”

SILVIO AND ANNETTE LOOKED
none the worse for wear. Mark disappeared into the kitchen. I heard the hiss of bottles being opened and then his footsteps returning as I was shaking some shrimp flakes into the water.

“Am I overfeeding them?” I asked. I stopped sprinkling. “I’m probably ruining their feeding schedule.”

“Oh, they’re resilient,” he said. “Maybe they’ll just get really huge, like tuna.”

I replaced the cap and set the bottle of fish food on the table. When I turned to face him we looked at each other awkwardly. He tapped the lip of his beer bottle against mine. We drank.

I sat down on his couch and put my feet up on the table. He seated himself on the coffee table, facing me. He set down his beer and picked up my foot, unbuckling the shoe.

My heart sank. I didn’t know why I had bothered to come here, but I knew I didn’t have the wherewithal to soothe some guy’s ego while I explained why I had no energy to fuck him. I took my foot away.

He looked surprised. “I’m not hitting on you,” he said. “I thought you might be more comfortable.”

I must have looked skeptical, because he chuckled as he unbuckled my other shoe. “I know it’s been a while, but we do have a little history at this. I’d just kiss you if that’s what I meant, Bec.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He set my shoes on the floor and sat down on the couch next to me, and we looked at the fish tank and drank our beers without talking. He picked up my hand and held it. He turned it over to see the palm and then turned it back, stretching the fingers out. I had a round maroon scar on one knuckle, the remnant of a burn on the side of a hot pan, and a faint pink line from an old cut. They were almost healed over.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“Nothing.” He pressed his thumb at the center of my palm and rubbed it in circles, loosening up the muscle. He wrapped his hand around my wrist and made a gentle rolling motion with his fingers. His hands were warm and large, the fingers callused, nails ragged. “Give me the other one.”

I did, turning toward him and leaning back against the arm of the couch. He pressed each knuckle lightly between his fingertips, then massaged each finger all the way out to the torn nails. He kneaded his way up my forearms and back down till they felt soft and relaxed.

“Who taught you how to do this?”

“Old girlfriend,” he said, concentrating.

“What was she, a manicurist?”

“Nope. Just touchy-feely.”

He pushed my sleeves back and rubbed my arms in long, oval motions. I leaned farther back, stretching out my legs while he sat on the edge of the cushion. He pushed my hair away from my face and I waited for him to try to kiss me, but he didn’t. The room was dark except for the watery light from the fish tank. I watched the silver light slither over his neck and shoulders. I couldn’t see his face very well. I closed my eyes. It was such a comforting couch. In my mouth lingered the bitter taste of the beer I no longer felt like finishing. I caught the waxy scent of a half-burned candle on the coffee table. Mark kept rubbing my hands, gently, matter-of-factly, saying nothing. Tears pooled beneath my eyelids, then mercifully receded, but sadness rose through me like dark water filtering up through the ground. I seemed for a moment to be all liquid, warm as seawater, a rushing, tidal sound faint in my eardrums. I let him touch my hands and then rub my feet until
the skin felt as though it had been roughened up, enlivened, and then he laid my hands carefully on my midriff. I heard him walk away, heard his footsteps return, and felt the light warmth of a blanket settle over me.

I
WOKE UP AROUND
seven the next morning. I was still on the couch, a blanket wrapped around me. I looked around, startled, trying to figure out where I was. The blanket was yellow flannel. I smelled the scent of the candle a few feet away, then saw the fish tank.

Once I realized where I was, I didn’t feel so frantic. It was Saturday. I was wonderfully comfortable. The blanket was soft and light, just warm enough to be cozy. The sun had come up. There were a few neighborhood sounds outside too—cars going past, a squirrel skittering along a tree branch near the window. I turned over onto my side, fluffing my pillow and wondering when I’d acquired it.

Mark was in the armchair across from me, his feet propped on the coffee table. He was still asleep, the quilt from his bed spread over him. His mouth was open, his beard shadowing his chin. His hair stuck up on one side. I watched him, the quilt rising and falling with his breath, and wondered why he hadn’t slept in his bed. Maybe he’d thought I might want it. Maybe he’d just passed out. Except there weren’t any more beer bottles than our two half-full ones, on the table.