Really Good, Actually(73)

I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up with a snort as we pulled into the driveway.

I wiped the corners of my mouth and said, “We’re here,” to Merris, who said, “Yes,” and opened her door with great effort. I ran around to the trunk and pulled out the walker, thanking the driver and guiding Merris toward the front steps with a transparently guilty abundance of care.

Inside, we worked our way slowly up still more steps. I said, “Are you alright?” and Merris said, “You have to stop asking me that.” I helped her to her room, promised to cook for her and clean things, assist with appointments and medications and errands and classes . . . whatever she needed. “You’re working yourself into a frenzy,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

I got her into bed with an ice pack and a big bottle of water and some painkillers. I bunched pillows behind her and arranged the duvet just so. She smiled and squeezed my hand. Leaning forward made her wince. I told her I was going to move out.

“Well,” said Merris, and for a second I thought she might stop me. “Take your time finding the right place.”

As I crept downstairs, I could hear Inessa and Betty at the breakfast bar. It was quarter to six, but they were always up obscenely early, puttering around, folding things, making weak coffee from an immense plastic tub. I stood on the landing, wondering if maybe they would leave once the kettle boiled. Whether they did or didn’t, I could not face them. I would have to wait.

“I never wanted her here,” Inessa said. “I was on the record, opposed, from day one.”

I heard a cupboard open, the clinking of two mugs brought out by the handles. It seemed like they were settling in.

“Ness, please,” said Betty. “She can probably hear you.”

“I know she can, she’s out there on the stairs.”

I weighed my options: stay silent where I was and hope they didn’t check the hall; run out the front door and never look back; walk confidently into the kitchen, taking out imaginary earbuds and pretending I had heard nothing; sneak back upstairs and hide under Merris’s bed. Instead, I stuttered, “Oh, hello, I, well,” speed walked into the room, and started drinking from the sink like a gerbil.

“Sorry,” I said, coming up for air. “Thirsty.”

I was thirsty. My mouth was dry and tasted terrible. My whole body was sore from spending the night on hospital floors and benches, my nostrils felt thick, my head hurt. I did not want to think about what I looked like. The women considered me briefly, then turned back to each other and carried on.

“She’s clearly ashamed of herself,” said Betty, addressing Inessa only. “And that works for me, she should be, but we don’t need to lay it on.”

“Maybe we do,” said Inessa. “Taking advantage of Mer’s guilt like that.”

Unsure what to do with my jittery hands, I grabbed an apple from the counter and started slicing it finely on a cutting board. The women continued to ignore me. I felt an impulse to tell them about my monthly donations to charity, my commitment to voting Green.

“I’ve always said, if she’d just call the girl, they could sort it out in an hour,” said Betty. “Daughters can’t stay mad at their mothers, it’s not natural.”

I turned away from the counter and toward the two women. Inessa’s eyes darted in my direction, then back at Betty. She gave a little cough, but her roommate seemed not to notice. I averted my eyes, pretending to be engrossed in the decorative molding that hugged the perimeter of the kitchen ceiling.

“I thought when Gene died it might move things along for them, but they barely looked at each other at the funeral,” Betty said. “. . . What’s the matter with you?”

I had abandoned my pretend disinterest and was now standing directly beside the two women, staring stupidly and holding out a plate of wafer-thin apple slices, hundreds of questions bouncing in my brain. I set the apple slices in front of Inessa, who looked at me like I’d plated a human turd.

“Merris has a daughter?” I asked.

Inessa scoffed and rolled her eyes, though Betty gave me a few facts: the daughter was about a decade older than me; she worked at a bank; she had Merris’s features with her father’s coloring; the relationship had always been strained, but several years ago there had been a proper falling out; Merris did not like to talk about her; she lived in Spain. Eventually, Inessa stood up and said, “Enough now,” walking over to the counter with the plate of apple slices. She fished a Ziploc bag out of a drawer, slid the apple slices into it, and handed it to me, indicating that our time together was over and they would not be revealing any more of Merris’s family secrets.

I went back to my room and stayed there for the rest of the month. I left only for work or food or apartment viewings, and to take Merris to physiotherapy on Thursdays. I’d help her into the car, drive to a little gray building north of the city, and wait in the foyer under a diagram of foot fascia, as an overfamiliar Australian man helped her stretch and wriggle in healing ways. Then I’d drive her home. Merris made polite small talk sometimes. If she started, I’d carry on, but I preferred to listen to the radio, look straight ahead, and let shame fill my head like static.

At home I took baths and drank a lot of CBD beverages, hoping they did something but feeling like they probably didn’t. I threw a stick around for Lydia and stayed “California sober.” I tried to read—novels, magazines, student essays, anything—but always ended up back on my phone. My main activity was reading one page of a book, then putting it down and looking at a screen for twelve to forty-seven minutes. There was always something tragic on the screen: details of someone’s workplace sexual harassment, beloved pets dying suddenly, a brand using slang. Simon seemed to be soft-launching a new Woman of Significance in his Instagram Stories. There had been a feminine-looking jacket on his couch in a photo of some new beers he’d acquired, and I heard a woman laughing in the background of a video he posted of himself bowling a strike. She sounded pretty.