Really Good, Actually(74)
Sometimes I would get an email—a home goods store alerting me to exciting new offers, or updates on a friend of a friend’s cousin’s brain surgery. I’d discovered a fundraising page for this man one night after taking several melatonin and donated fifty dollars with the note get better pLEASE. Now I got emails what felt like once an hour about how things were going (as a Real Housewife once drunkenly yelled at another: not well, bitch!) and asking for further money. I didn’t feel like I could unsubscribe and still consider myself a good person, but I also did not have another fifty dollars lying around, at least not for this.
The only emails I returned were from prospective landlords or my students, toward whom I had been trying to be more professional. In an effort to butter them up, I had also removed the class participation component of their final grades. I met with Sara in a coffee shop and answered her questions about graduate programs and let her outline her dream of one day studying in London. Her enthusiasm made me feel like a fraud. I recouped some sense of myself as an authority figure by paying for her matcha latte while she was in the bathroom.
The group chat picked up and carried on without me, a flurry of links and screenshots and questions about what the fuck old classmates, the government, or our bodies were up to. I did my best to give everyone some space without crossing over into the silent treatment, dropping in a supportive haha or sending a heart emoji when one felt needed. After a week or so of “space,” I sent Amirah and Tom an Edible Arrangement to say congratulations. Amirah texted a photo of the ridiculous, brightly colored basket with the message tom’s allergic to strawberries . . . saboteur, then jk thank you they’re delicious. I wrote back, could we get a drink soon? just like green tea and 45-50 mins groveling, max. Amirah left it for two full hours before replying, sounds good, will see if aritzia’s selling hair shirts. Buoyed by this success, I sent an Edible Arrangement to Amy too. I wrote, “I’m very sorry, please call me,” on the card. She didn’t.
I drank three liters of water a day, which meant, give or take a few half hours here and there, I spent the rest of my time on the toilet. I figured this was life: I’d spend the next twenty years alternatingly hydrating and pissing, then all the water on earth would dry up and I would know it was time to die. The apartments I viewed were dilapidated and out of my price range. I started looking at places in Kingston.
One day after physio, the Australian chased Merris into the parking lot.
“M-dawg!” he said, horribly. “Forgot your resistance bands, my girl!”
“What a shame,” said Merris. “They’re such fun.”
The Australian did not return her smile. He rested both hands on the roof of the car and spoke to her like she was a child refusing to wear her coat outdoors in winter. “It’s so important that you do your exercises,” he said. “At this stage in life, if you don’t guard your mobility, you really can lose it for good.”
Merris took the bands from him but didn’t say anything else. In the car she was quiet too.
“What does he know?” I said, turning up the radio. “He probably has that strain of super-chlamydia koalas invented.”
Merris didn’t respond.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Really, I’m—”
“Enough, Maggie, please,” she said. “I am tired and sore. I feel about a million years old, and I don’t want to go over it all again. It’s not your fault.”
“It is kind of my fault.”
“Well, it’s not only your fault,” she said. “Maybe I’m being punished.”
I asked her what she thought she was being punished for.
She flipped down the sun visor and examined her face in the mirror. She sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Idleness, pettiness, vanity . . . pick one.” Merris ran her hands over her neck, pulling the skin taut. “Do you know how much money I spend each year on creams?”
We drove past a Lenten celebration, a cluster of old people lifting the Virgin Mary high over their heads. I realized I’d left my indicator on, that it was still clicking away to warn others about a right turn I had no intention of making. I switched it off. On the radio, a man who owned a furniture warehouse screamed about unbeatable deals.
“Betty told me you have a daughter,” I said. I kept my eyes on the road and tried to radiate a noninvasive empathy. Merris flipped the visor back up.
“Well, there it is, isn’t it?” she said. “Late-onset maternal instinct, misapplied, with unpleasant consequences.”
I snuck a look at her, and someone honked at me for drifting too close to the next lane. “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”
“You didn’t ask.”
She was right, which made it worse. I had probably asked her fewer than three questions about herself this entire year, maybe our entire relationship. We pulled into the driveway and sat there with the car idling, the heated seat warming the backs of my already hot legs.
“That’s terrible,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Merris. “I’m sure that was part of the appeal. Relationships with young people are very straightforward, they basically just want to talk about themselves. Lazy of me, really, to accept intimacy without any risk.”
“What happened with . . . ?”