Lies She Told(27)

Her reply appears almost instantaneously. “Meet you @ Crow on a Roof. Nine.”

I head back to my room. As I climb the stairs, my stomach protests waiting three hours to eat, grumbling and groaning louder than any creaky floorboard. I have a feeling it will make me pay for this later. Already, I am more queasy than usual. By the time I reconstitute my office setup—sitting on the mattress with my computer in my lap and phone by my side—my lower abdomen is in full revolt. Each of my unfertilized eggs seems to have grown limbs and is throwing a tantrum, kicking and clawing at my muscles and vital organs. I run to the toilet with my hand over my mouth. Fish, cured in stomach acids, burns in my throat and my belly. When I see porcelain, I’m not sure which end belongs over the bowl.

When everything is out, I wipe down the bathroom surfaces with bleach left beneath the sink, pausing every few seconds to catch my breath. The smell of so much chlorine turns my stomach, but it’s preferable to the stench of sick. The bleach will also disinfect the room on the off chance that the hormones aren’t responsible for my illness. A spritz of standard bleach obliterates nearly everything: E. coli, salmonella, viruses. It will even unravel DNA. The only thing it can’t destroy is blood.

When I finish, I shower for a second time, brush my teeth, and head back to my room. Feeling clean helps, but a heavy metal drummer still plays in my head, thumping on the bass and slamming his sticks into the hi-hat to maintain the ringing between my ears. I stumble over to the bed, weak-kneed, and curl up in fetal position on the mattress. Sleep doesn’t ask my permission.

*

The phone’s vibration startles me awake. I swat blindly around the mattress, trying to find the handset without opening my eyes. Around the third slap, I remember my breakfast date with Christine and add vision to the search. Chris is good about giving me a five-minute grace period. The waiter is probably telling her that he needs the table.

The phone lies beneath a pillow. “Chris?” My voice sounds skinned.

“Liza, are you on your—Wait, are you okay?”

“Alcohol and fertility drugs don’t mix.”

“Say no more. I’ll grab you an egg sandwich to go.”

You choose your friends, not your family. Christine is the best sister an only child could ever want. She arrives twenty minutes later with a white paper bag from the restaurant, coffee, and a bottle of aspirin. Love and appreciation overwhelm me so that all I can do in return is offer a sniffling hug.

She pats my back. “What are best friends for?”

My gratitude gives way to guilt as I watch her set up breakfast on the dining table, grabbing plates and glasses from kitchen cupboards as if she owns the place. If Chris had disappeared, I’d be wallpapering Montauk with posters and pestering the police daily. David is doing the same for his friend. I’ve been selfish to expect him to snap out of it and start paying me attention after only a month.

I sit at the place that Chris has set for me. A fried egg sandwich with a thick medallion of ham between two croissants rests in the center of a plate surrounded by a glass of water, two aspirins, and a large black coffee.

I swallow the pills first and drink the water. Chris nods her approval and then indicates the Starbucks cup with the bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich in her hand. “I always go with coffee first. If your stomach isn’t ready to hold anything down, you’d rather find out with liquids.”

I pull the paper cup beneath my nose and inhale the steam. The familiar scent calms the throbbing in my skull. The drummer is not playing so much anymore as he is feathering the snare, creating internal white noise.

Chris settles into the chair across from me, her back toward the kitchen. It’s the seat she always took growing up. Me on the right, her across, my mom at the head. Even when he lived with us, my father rarely ate dinner with the family.

I tentatively sip the black coffee. A warm, calming sensation spreads through my gut as the liquid goes down. “This is exactly what I needed. Thank you.”

“Love you.” Chris blows me an air kiss. “Besides, you’d do it for me. In fact, you have done it for me, many times. How many nights did you stay over after the divorce?”

The answer intensifies my shame about David. I spent four days at Christine’s house helping her pack George and the nanny’s things into boxes. I’d had Chris and Emma over for dinner at least one day a week afterward. Yet I’d wanted David to get over his friend’s likely death in a month.

“You’re my sister from another mister. I’d do anything for you,” she says. Despite her jokey tone, I know she means it. Chris and I have looked out for each other our whole lives. “How are you feeling?”

“Physically or mentally?”

“Both.”

“Physically? Much better thanks to you. I don’t know what I would do without you.” I reach out and squeeze her hand. She smiles at me to accept the compliment and then rolls her eyes at my sappiness.

“And mentally?”

“I feel sick with myself. I’ve been giving David a lot of grief about still wallowing over Nick and not boarding the baby train. But if David cares about Nick half as much as I adore you, then he’s within his rights to crawl into a hole for a year. It’s not fair to him.”

Chris tucks her hair behind her ears rather than join me in admonishing myself.

I sigh. “It’s also not very respectful of Nick. I haven’t mourned him at all.”