My Year of Rest and Relaxation (13)

One night, she came over unannounced. The doorman told her he thought I’d gone out of town.

“I’ve been worried,” Reva said, barging in with a bottle of sparkling rosé. “Are you sick? Have you been eating? Did you take time off of work?”

“I quit,” I lied. “I want to devote more time to my own interests.”

“What interests? I didn’t know you had interests.” She sounded utterly betrayed. She stumbled a little on her heels.

“Are you drunk?”

“You really quit your job?” she asked, kicking her shoes off and flopping down on the armchair.

“I’d rather eat shit than have to work for that cunt one more day,” I told her.

“Didn’t you say she was married to a prince or something?”

“Exactly,” I answered. “But that was just a rumor anyway.”

“So you’re not sick?”

“I’m resting.” I lay down on the sofa to demonstrate.

“That makes sense,” Reva said, nodding compliantly, although I could tell she was suspicious. “Take some time off and think about your next move. Oprah says we women rush into decisions because we don’t have faith that something better will ever come along. And that’s how we get stuck in dissatisfying careers and marriages. Amen!”

“I’m not making a career move,” I started to explain, but I went no further. “I’m taking some time off. I’m going to sleep for a year.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

I pulled a vial of Ativan out from between the sofa cushions, unscrewed the cap, and fished out two pills. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Reva squirming. I chewed the pills up—simply to horrify her—swallowed and gagged, then stuffed the vial back between the cushions and lay down and closed my eyes.

“Well, I’m glad you have a life plan. But to be honest,” Reva began, “I’m concerned about your health. You’ve lost at least three pounds since you started taking all those medications.” Reva was expert at guessing the weights of things and people. “What about the long term? Are you going to take pills for the rest of your life?”

“I’m not thinking that far ahead. And I might not live that long.” I yawned.

“Don’t say that,” Reva said. “Look at me. Please.”

I blinked my eyes open and turned to face the perfumed haze on the armchair. I squinted and focused. Reva was wearing a dress I recognized from a J. Crew catalogue the year before: a raw silk shift in a shade of pink I could only describe as “taffy.” Orange-hued lipstick.

“Don’t get defensive, but you’re kind of off these days,” she said. “You’ve been sort of distant. And you’re just getting thinner and thinner.” I think that bothered Reva more than anything. She must have felt that I was cheating in the game of skinniness, which she had always worked so hard to play. We were about the same height, but I wore a size 2 and Reva wore a 4. “A six when I’m PMSing.” The discrepancy between our bodies was huge in Reva’s world.

“I just don’t think it’s healthy to sleep all day,” she said, popping a few sticks of gum in her mouth. “Maybe all you need is a shoulder to cry on. You’d be surprised how much better you’ll feel after a good cry. Better than any pill can make you feel.” When Reva gave advice, it sounded as though she were reading a bad made-for-TV movie script. “A walk around the block could do wonders for your mood,” she said. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“I’m not in the mood for food,” I said. “And I don’t feel like going anywhere.”

“Sometimes you need to act as if.”

“Dr. Tuttle can probably give you something to get rid of your gum addiction,” I told her flatly. “They have pills for everything now.”

“I don’t want to get rid of it,” Reva replied. “And it’s not an addiction. It’s a habit. And I enjoy chewing gum. It’s one of the few things in my life that makes me feel good about myself, because I do it for my own pleasure. Gum and the gym. Those are like my therapy.”

“But you could have the medication instead,” I argued. “And spare your jaw from all that chewing.” I didn’t really care about Reva’s jaw.

“Uh-huh,” she replied. She was looking straight at me, but was so entranced by her gum chewing, her mind seemed to drift off. When it returned, she got up and spat her gum out in the kitchen trash can, came back, lay down on the floor and started doing rhythmic crunches, crinkling the midsection of her dress. “We all have our own ways to cope with stress,” she said, and rambled on about the benefits of habitual behaviors. “Self-soothing,” is how she described it. “Like meditation.” I yawned, hating her. “Sleeping all the time isn’t really going to make you feel any better,” she said. “Because you’re not changing anything in your sleep. You’re just avoiding your problems.”

“What problems?”

“I don’t know. You seem to think you have a lot of problems. And I just don’t get it. You’re a smart girl,” Reva said. “You can do anything you put your mind to.” She got up and fished in her bag for her lip gloss. I could see her eyeing the sweaty bottle of rosé. “Come out with me tonight, pretty please? My friend Jackie from Pilates is having a birthday party at a gay bar in the Village. I wasn’t going to go, but if you come with me it could be fun. It’s only seven thirty. And it’s Friday night. Let’s drink this and go out. The night is young!”