I Liked My Life(39)

Madeline

Rory is lonely, I repeat to Eve as they tackle “Chapter Three: Evaluating Limits.” Eve’s expression softens, but I can’t decipher what she’ll do with the information.

“Do you see how we got here?” Rory asks, showing a long workflow.

Eve purses her eyebrows. “Why can’t you test the limit by plugging in a value?”

“It’s a good thought. This is a hard concept, and that question proves you understand what we’re trying to calculate here.”

Rory knows the material. I shouldn’t have doubted her. Linda raised a daughter with flawless ethical boundaries; if Rory didn’t feel comfortable teaching calculus she wouldn’t have accepted the offer. My mom? Not so much. If I was taught anything it was that a good lie could ride you to the next argument.

The doorbell rings. “I’ll be quick,” Eve says, getting up from the table. It’s Paige.

“Whose car is that?” she asks, peering inside to investigate.

“My drug dealer’s—oh, errr—I mean, my math tutor’s.”

Paige smiles. “Feisty, are we? This is just a drop-off.” She hands Eve a bag of organic vegetables and a roasted chicken from the farmer’s market. “Just chop up all the veggies and sauté it for a nice succotash. The chicken will be fine in the warming drawer until dinner.” Eve gave up cooking after the fire, and I’m desperate to get her back into it.

“Thanks,” Eve says. “Hopefully I don’t burn the house down.”

“That grill was ancient. Don’t beat yourself up.” My message exactly.

“Oh, and here.” She hands Eve a Butterfinger from her purse. “I don’t know what possessed me to buy it, so don’t ask. But take it before I eat it.”

Eve’s heart pounds. Butterfingers were our secret obsession. We laughed about it all the time: of the candy bars on the market, Butterfingers seemed the most embarrassing one to love. It isn’t just the neon wrapper announcing from fifty feet away that you’re not indulging in, say, a protein bar; it’s the name. Butterfinger. Like butter fingers. Like you’re eating a finger-sized chunk of butter. We bought them every time we bought tampons, which we found doubly amusing.

Eve stares at the wrapper. She’s reading into it, exactly as I hoped she would. Our Butterfinger passion was truly an inside joke. If Paige felt compelled to buy one, I had something to do with it, which means my spiritual presence is real. “My mom and I loved these,” Eve whispers, more to herself than Paige.

“Really? I never saw her eat one.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.” Eve says.

Paige senses a shift in Eve’s mood, but doesn’t know what to make of it, so she gives her a hug and leaves. Eve returns to Rory, lighter with the perspective that I haven’t completely abandoned her.

Orchestrating mini moments of comfort is great, but Eve leaves in two months and I continue to ascend in little surges, so my timeframe to help is shrinking in both directions. So far, elevating hasn’t weakened my clout, but I’m nervous it soon will. I need to establish Rory as a permanent replacement while I can. I continue my initial incant. Rory is lonely. Rory is lonely.

Back and forth they go, evaluating wind speed, the efficiency of different containers, heat’s exponential decay.… Rory lost me during the introduction on the first day, but Eve leverages Brady’s gene pool to follow along. It’s amazing to witness Eve learning from her mind’s eye. She’s brighter than I appreciated. Eve always delivered good grades, but I assumed she had to work for it. She doesn’t, not really, not the way I did. Her brain operates in the fast lane, absorbing most concepts without much concentration, and once it’s there—zap—so it remains without notes or flash cards or zany mnemonic devices. If I hadn’t worked hard I’d have been a C student. I was motivated solely by the ambition to not end up like my mother (and, yes, I appreciate the irony of that). My father, who publically lamented having no sons, said he’d only pay for his girls to go to college if we earned straight As, no exceptions. Meg and I both knew he was the kind of man who’d look at a B + in wood shop and say, “Damn. You were so close,” completely ignoring that the rule was arbitrary. So we both got 4.0s. For Meg, it was a breeze. For me, English was the only freebie.

When I quit work to stay home my mom didn’t consider their college investment a waste. “She landed a great husband because of that degree,” she claimed, unaware people stopped valuing her opinion decades ago. “Brady wasn’t going to end up with some nitwit.”

My father wasn’t convinced. He pulled me aside and said, “You do realize what your mom has—the crazies and the drinking—is genetic. You squirrel away in a house all day long enough, you’ll end up a drunk. Don’t screw with your potential.” But there was no genius in me. I memorized information whereas Eve consumes it. It’s an important nuance. I could only recite what Eve understands.

Rory collects her papers to leave. I pick up the pace. Rory is lonely, Rory is lonely, Rory is lonely. “If you tackle the practice problems before Monday we can start in on chapter four.” Eve stares at Rory’s left hand, not responding. Typical of our society, she associates loneliness with lacking a man. “Earth to Eve,” Rory says, waving. “What are you looking at?”