Evvie Drake Starts Over(80)

“I’m fine.” She scratched the carpet with the fingers of her free hand. “How are you?”

“Busy. All over the place. I had a craft fair, and that went very well. And I saw a very good play, you know, it was on Broadway last year, it’s touring now. It’s about an affair, do you know the one I mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

“It’s wonderful. You should see it. It’s so moving.”

Evvie closed her eyes. “Listen, Mom, I don’t have a lot of time, but I wanted to get back to you about what you said about being in town.”

“Yes! Yes, I’m going to be around at the end of September. What would be a good day for you to come down to Portland for lunch? It’s been ages. I know we’ve both dropped the ball a little on staying in touch.”

Evvie clenched and unclenched her fist and played with the pink laces on the glove. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to get together this time.”

There was a pause. “Oh? You’re not in town then?”

For a second, she thought that maybe for once, her mom had thrown her a rope. She opened her mouth with such gratitude, she was about to say yes, yes, she was traveling, that was it exactly. But she remembered being in Dean’s truck with him on the way back from Thanksgiving, and she remembered him saying she had to start telling somebody the truth.

   “No, I’m not traveling. I just don’t want to, Mom. I’m not saying forever, but not right now.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I don’t want to get together right now.”

“Don’t be silly. I haven’t seen you in ages. We’ll check in.”

“No. No, not right now.”

Now Eileen’s voice got tighter. “Well, now I really don’t understand. What’s all the drama about?”

She kept her eyes closed. “It’s not drama. I don’t have the energy to bring you up to speed on everything that’s happened to me in the last two years in two hours just because you think it sounds interesting. I just broke up with somebody, I might be selling the house—I have a lot going on, and I’m not going to add to it.”

“I’ll make time whenever it’s convenient for you,” Eileen said, as if Evvie had said none of it.

“Mom, you’re not listening. I don’t want to. I’m—” Take a class in not apologizing all the time, she heard Andy’s voice say. “I don’t want to.”

“Honey, I know it’s been hard for you. But I’m not asking for much; it’s lunch. If there’s something we need to talk out, we’ll talk it out. I want to help. And I want to hear all about your boyfriend.”

“I understand that, but I don’t want to talk about it with you.”

“Eveleth,” Eileen said. “You only have one mom, and I only have one daughter. And I don’t want either of us to have any regrets.” There it was. The crescendo of Eileen Ashton’s symphony for telephone and preprinted greeting card always ended here, with the same cymbal crash: But how will you feel if I die?

“Mom, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Evvie, it’s not like you to be like this.”

“No,” Evvie said. “I know it’s not.”





“EVELETH,” SAID DR. JANE TALCO with a smile as she swung open the door of her office. “Come on in. It’s good to see you again. Pardon my stacks of paperwork.”

Evvie stepped into the room, beige and blue and calming, feeling her heart pound so fast she thought she might pass out. She lowered herself onto the couch and tried to smile a mentally healthy smile, whatever that was. “It’s good to see you, too,” she finally said, as evenly as she could, which was ridiculous, because it wasn’t good at all.

“So,” Dr. Talco said, settling into her wing chair. “It’s been a while. Tell me what’s going on.”

The surprising thing to Evvie was not that she cried, since she’d been doing that on and off for the last four days, but that she cried so soon. “Shit,” she whispered to herself.

“There are tissues on the table. Take a breath.”

Evvie dabbed at her eyes, managed a long exhale, and then focused her eyes on a painting of gulls on the wall behind the doctor’s chair. “I feel like I’m already bad at this.”

“You’re doing fine,” Dr. Talco told her.

“What, crying as soon as I sit down?”

   “I’ve had people cry for six months,” the doctor said. Evvie felt her eyes widen a little. “I’m not saying you will.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Evvie told her. “I guess ‘help.’ But I don’t know what else.”

“Well, what made you pick up the phone and call me?” Dr. Talco was holding a silver pen, rolling it a little between her fingers.

“I dropped something. In my kitchen. And I don’t know what happened, I just…flipped out. I guess I thought I might be going crazy. Or whatever is less offensive than that.” She explained about the rice and the can and hearing herself wail. It sounded as strange when she described it as it had felt when it happened. If her head really was the house she lived in, Evvie was increasingly afraid that walking through it and stomping on the floorboards, rattling the beams, might make it all collapse right down to the concrete slab. “I ended up screaming on the floor of my kitchen over having to clean up some stuff I spilled. And like I said, it made me think I might be crazy. It just didn’t seem normal.”