My Year of Rest and Relaxation (26)

I got up and went to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. The Infermiterol pills Dr. Tuttle had given me were small and pellet-shaped, with the letter I etched into each one, very white, very hard, and strangely heavy. They almost seemed to be made of polished stone. I figured if there were ever a time to hit the sleep hard, it was now. I didn’t want to have to make it through Christmas with the lingering stink of Reva’s sadness. I took only one Infermiterol, as directed. The sharp beveled edges scraped my throat on the way down.



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? ? ?

    I AWOKE DRENCHED IN SWEAT to discover a dozen unopened boxes of Chinese takeout on the coffee table. The air stank of pork and garlic and old vegetable oil. A pile of unsheathed chopsticks lay beside me on the sofa. The television played an infomercial for a food dehydrator on mute.

I looked for the remote control but could not find it. The thermostat was set in the nineties. I got up and turned it back down and noticed that the large Oriental rug—one of the few things I’d kept from my parents’ house—had been rolled up and set along the wall beneath the living room windows. And the blinds were raised. That startled me. I heard my phone ring and followed the sound into the bedroom. My phone was in a glass bowl sealed over in Saran Wrap sitting in the center of the bare mattress.

“Huh?” I answered. My mouth tasted like hell.

It was Dr. Tuttle. I cleared my throat and tried to sound like a normal person.

“Good morning, Dr. Tuttle,” I said.

“It’s four in the afternoon,” she said. “I’m sorry it took me so long to return your call. My cats had an emergency. Are you feeling better? The symptoms you described in your message, frankly, puzzle me.”

I realized I was wearing a hot pink Juicy Couture sweat suit. A tag from the Jewish Women’s Council Thrift Shop dangled from the cuff. There were new used VHS tapes stacked on the bare floor in the hallway, all Sydney Pollack movies: Three Days of the Condor, Absence of Malice, The Way We Were. Tootsie. Out of Africa. I had no memory of ordering Chinese food or going to the thrift store. And I had no memory of what I’d said in any message. Dr. Tuttle said she’d been “baffled by the emotional intensity” in my voice.

“I’m concerned for you. I’m very, very, very concerned.” She sounded like she always sounded, her voice a breathy, high-pitched hoot. “When you say you’re questioning your own existence,” she asked, “do you mean you’re reading philosophy books? Or is this something you thought up on your own? Because if it’s suicide, I can give you something for that.”

“No, no, nothing like suicide. I was just philosophizing, yes,” I said. “Just thinking too much, I guess.”

“That’s not a good sign. It could lead to psychosis. How are you sleeping?”

“Not enough,” I said.

“I suspected as much. Try a hot shower and some chamomile tea. It should settle you down. And give the Infermiterol a try. Studies have shown it wipes out existential anxiety better than Prozac.”

I didn’t want to admit that I’d already tried it, and it had resulted in this strange mess of food and thrift store purchases, at the very least.

“Thank you, doctor,” I said.

I hung up the phone and found a voice mail from Reva giving me the details for her mother’s funeral and reception in Long Island later that week. She sounded soft, sad, and a little scripted.

“Things are moving forward. I guess time is like that—it just keeps going. I hope you can come to the funeral. My mom really liked you.” I’d met her mother once when she’d visited Reva at school senior year, but I’d completely forgotten it. “We set the date for New Year’s Eve. If you could come up early to the house, that would be good,” she said. “The train leaves from Penn Station every hour.” She gave me specific instructions for how to buy my train ticket, where to stand on the platform, which car to sit in, where to get off. “You’ll finally meet my dad.”

I almost deleted the message, but then I thought I’d better keep it, and let my mailbox fill back up, so nobody could leave me any more voice mails.

My coat was still sopping wet in the tub, so I put on a denim jacket, pulled a pilly knit hat on, stuck my feet into my slippers, my debit card into my pocket, and went down to the Egyptians to get my coffees, shivering violently along the salted path in the dirty snow. The Christmas decorations at the bodega had been taken down already. The date on the newspapers was December 28, 2000.

“You owe this much now,” said one of the smaller Egyptians, pointing to a scrap of paper taped to the counter. He looked like a lapdog, cute and small and squirrelly. “Forty-six fifty. Last night, you bought seven ice creams.”

“I did?” He could have been messing with me. I wouldn’t have known the difference.

“Seven ice creams,” he repeated, shaking his head and stretching to reach for a pack of menthols from the back wall for the customer behind me. I wasn’t going to argue. The Egyptians weren’t like the people at Rite Aid. So I got cash out of the ATM and paid what I owed.

At home, I found seven pints of old H?agen-Dazs on the kitchen counter. I must have exerted great effort in removing them from the depths of the bodega’s freezer: Coffee Toffee Crunch, Vanilla Fudge, Raspberry Fudge, Rum Raisin, Strawberry, Bourbon Pecan Praline, and Watermelon gelato. It had all melted. I wondered if I’d been expecting guests. The Chinese food spread out on the coffee table indicated a celebration perhaps, but it seemed as though I’d fallen asleep or gotten frustrated with the chopsticks and left it all there to stink up my apartment while I dreamt. The apartment still smelled strongly of a deep fryer. I opened a window in the living room a few inches, then sat on the sofa and started in on my second coffee. One by one, I lifted each greasy container of Chinese food, guessed its contents, then unfolded the top to see if I’d guessed correctly. What I guessed was pork fried rice was actually slippery lo mein jiggling around slivers of carrot and onion and dotted with tiny shrimp that made me think of pubic lice. My guess of broccoli in garlic sauce was wrong. That container was full of glimmering yellow curried chicken. My guess of white rice was a farty, cabbage-filled egg roll. White rice was a vegetable medley. White rice was spare ribs. When I found the rice, it was brown. I tasted it with my fingers. Nutty and smushy and cold. As I chewed, I could hear my phone ring. I knew it would be Reva calling to make sure I understood about the funeral, wanting me to promise that I’d be there for her, that I’d show up on time, and to confirm that I was so terribly sorry about her mother’s passing, that I cared, that I felt her pain, that I’d do anything to ease her suffering, so help me God.