by Harper Bliss
But at least she’s gone. She’s not seeing me like this. I feel Hemingway’s snout against my shin and then I finally remove my hands. The kitchen looks blurry through the mist of tears. My tears aren’t just born from frustration and anger for not seeing this coming—again—but also because I so clearly remember that meltdowns like this are one of the main reasons why I had to break up with Cynthia. I felt it was my duty to set her free from experiencing me like this. That it was the very least I could do for her. Even though she told me time and time again that she would be the one to decide which experiences she would have in her life and which ones she wouldn’t.
“Hey.” I bend over and bury my face in Hemingway’s fur. He’s not an official emotional support animal, but his support to me is invaluable. And the thing is that, after Cynthia, I had resigned myself to a life with just him. I had decided that I could be perfectly happy like that and it didn’t feel like I was compromising at all. My best life might be another person’s solitary nightmare, but isn’t that the case for so many people? I didn’t need for Zoe to come along. Hem and I were just going about our lives and it was all I needed. Do my work. Create my paintings. See my family. Go to Lenny’s. That’s it. I didn’t have to convince myself that was enough because, for me, it was more than plenty.
But now, there’s Zoe and her daughter discussing my condition with my nephew. I never even wanted to tell the kids. It was hard enough telling Jamie. I didn’t even want to get diagnosed at first, but Cynthia coaxed me into believing that I needed to know. The assessment was grueling enough and then I had to tell people about it? No, thank you. Why can’t I just keep myself to myself? It’s all I want.
But no, if I’m being completely honest, I do want more. Now that I’ve gotten to know her, I want Zoe. Even though my life would be so much easier if I didn’t. But I do.
An hour later, after I’ve sufficiently calmed down, I text Zoe to apologize.
No need, she texts back almost immediately, as though she’s been waiting, phone in hand, to hear from me since she left. Can we talk?
Zoe sure likes to talk, while I’m not too crazy about expressing myself verbally. But I like her, so I have no choice. I can’t just invite her to come back over and sit with her in silence. Maybe we can have a brief chat and watch some TV after.
At least my desire to spend time with Zoe is more powerful than the inertia I usually succumb to after a meltdown. After my brain has been so utterly suffused with anxiety, it often leaves me too depleted to do anything at all.
When Zoe appears in my doorway, not even two hours after I’ve asked her to leave, I can barely believe it. I start to go into overdrive almost immediately, because I feel I need to make it up to her. It’s either that or a remorseful, rather pathetic silence.
“Calm down, Anna,” Zoe says, while I fuss over her, fluffing a pillow that looks more than sufficiently fluffed already. “Come here.” She opens her arms to me. “Come on.” It sounds more like an order than anything else and while I’m usually not big on obeying orders, I can’t resist hers. Her embrace feels calming for a few seconds, until I get restless again, and I need to do something—anything—to make her forget about what happened before.
“Can I tell you a story?” she says, after we’ve both sat down. “About a friend of mine back in New York?”
“Sure.”
“His name’s Ted and he’s a brilliant guy. Very funny and warm and kind with everyone but himself. He’s gay, but by no means in the closet, yet he’s never been able to fully accept his homosexuality. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a gay bar, back in the day when those still existed. Any guy who comes on to him gets rebuffed immediately. He tries to adopt this macho sort of walk, but it never works, because it’s simply not him. And he gets his rocks off every few months via some anonymous sex, or through Grindr. He has never allowed himself to be loved for who he is. Never. And he tells me he’s happy with the way things are, and I want to believe him, because I want him to be happy—because every single person on this planet is equally deserving of happiness. But as long as he can’t accept himself, he can’t be truly happy. So he settles for this life he has created, always minimizing this vital part of himself. And maybe it’s enough for him and I shouldn’t judge him, but I do, because it pains me. Because I see all the missed opportunities. And what you told me earlier, reminded me of Ted a little.”
Holy hell. I need to take a minute to process Zoe’s speech—and to fully comprehend what she’s trying to say to me. “You can’t compare being gay to being disabled.” I feel like I’m repeating myself.
“That’s not what I’m doing, Anna. I think you know that.”
What was I expecting, anyway? To just be let off the hook again? This is starting to remind me of Cynthia, who somehow believed that, once I had some sort of official document in my hand certifying my impairment, I would be able to deal with it better. That surely backfired.
“Then what are you trying to do?” I ask.
Zoe shrugs. “I don’t really know, Anna. I just don’t like the way you talk about yourself sometimes. It makes me think you can’t really accept yourself for who you are.”
“Could you?” I feel tears prick behind my eyes again, but I’m determined to keep them inside. “If you found out that you would never be like anyone else, while that’s all you ever wanted to be?”
“But why would you want to be like everyone else? What does that even mean? Everyone’s different.”
“I mean in general. I don’t want the things that society makes you believe you have to want. I don’t want to live ‘my best life’—God, how I hate the expression—and then post about it on Instagram. I don’t want to go out with my girlfriends and drink cosmopolitans while we discuss our sex lives. I didn’t even want to join the LGBT alliance when I was at Columbia. I don’t want any of that. Most of all, I want to stop pretending that it’s what I want.” I’m pretty sure I have not gotten my point across and that the examples I’ve used do not demonstrate what it is I actually want to avoid, but these are all the words I have in this moment. These are the only sentences my brain has allowed me to string together in this conversation. And I know very well that, for this very reason, I can’t let Zoe in fully. I can’t express myself adequately and if that doesn’t drive her nuts, she must be some sort of saint. She surely is the kind of person someone like me doesn’t deserve to be with. And whether I accept myself or not has little to do with that.
“But all of that,” Zoe says, “is what makes you uniquely you.”
“The aspirations that you seem to have for me, I don’t have for myself. I’ve already been very lucky in my life. I have my family. I have a job I can do on my own terms. Many women with my condition have not been so lucky. I function, and half of the time, I’m happy. I don’t need more than that. And I certainly don’t need woo-woo self-help mumbo jumbo spouted at me, that’s been made up by people who have no clue what it’s like to be me. I used to want to be a ‘better person’. Or a more ‘palatable one’. And I’ve read all these self-improvement websites, and I started journaling and meditating and doing yoga in my living room and getting up at 5AM to fit it all into my day, and it just made me miserable.”
“Maybe I should have included a trigger warning,” Zoe says. “Because something I’ve said has obviously triggered you.”
“Look, Zoe…” I don’t want to ask her this. My stomach is clenched into the tightest ball and I can feel a drop of cold sweat trickle down my spine. “What do you want? What do you want with the likes of me? You can’t fix me. Let me just be very clear about that. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there in need of fixing, but I’m not one of them. I know who I am, and whether I accept that is my business. For the record, I accept myself a great deal more already than I ever have—”
Zoe holds up her hand. “Please, Anna, just stop.” She shuffles forward to the edge of the sofa. “I don’t want to fix you. Cynthia already warned me about that.”
“Cynthia?”
“Before you go on a tangent about that, let me just say that everyone I’ve met who knows you, only wants the best for you.” She sighs. “She came into the store and we got talking. It happens. Maybe not to you, but to me, it does.”
“What did she say?”
“What I just told you.” There’s impatience in Zoe’s voice.
“I’m sorry.” If I want to save today at all, I need to get my mind off Cynthia and Zoe talking about me behind my back. “I can only ever be me and I feel it’s my responsibility to not give you any false ideas about who that is, Zoe.”
“There’s no chance of that.” It sounds as though she has gone off me completely in the space of five minutes.
“But I do know that I need to compromise, although I often forget how to do that.”
Zoe drinks from the wine I poured her earlier when I was fussing over her—when it looked like this afternoon could still be saved.
“When we met, I felt something,” Zoe says. “I was drawn to you. There was something about you. Then I got to know you better, and even though you were sending very mixed signals, I could still so easily see that you were into me. And I liked you. I like your conviction, and your opinions, and your humor, and your obvious intelligence. But I don’t like your defensiveness. And I’m not a big fan of your self-pity, either. I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that life has been, and still is, hard for you, but you know what? It’s hard for everyone. My ex-wife left for Shanghai, leaving our daughter to wonder what she might have done wrong to deserve that. I made the decision…” Zoe stops talking mid-sentence. “No, you know what? I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to list a bunch of bad stuff that happened to me, because I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to focus on the negative. I want to look ahead. And when I was looking ahead earlier, you played a big part in that, Anna. Now, I’m not so sure any more. You don’t have to prove anything to me. I just want to spend time with you, but not if it’s going to be this difficult every single time.”
I swallow hard. My brain’s working overtime trying to come up with something to say. But the pressure of finding the one thing I might say to get Zoe to stay is too much, and I already know I’ll come up empty.
“I’m sorry, Zoe. I don’t want it to be difficult.” Panic floods my veins. “And I don’t want you to go.”
“Then show me that you want me to stay.”
“W-what do—” I get the distinct feeling that I shouldn’t be asking her what she means by that exactly. Does she want me to kiss her? Is that what this is all about? Are we going too slowly? Does she need to see some signs of obvious progression? Some hope?
She gets up, and it’s as though my backside is glued to the couch. I’m frozen in my spot. I can’t move, and I can’t speak, and I certainly can’t show Zoe what it is that she wants to see. Because I don’t know what that might be. I’ve never known. While that seed of connection to another person is all I’ve ever wanted to locate in myself—it’s not there. It has never been there.
“Bye, Anna,” she says, and then I feel my heart break to the sound of her receding footsteps.
9
Zoe
Brooklyn should be home by now. I try to focus my thoughts on my beautiful daughter who feels like the one thing in my life that I’ve done absolutely right. Even though, most of the time, I have no clue what I’m doing while raising my child. But still, the thought of her has gotten me through a lot of dark days.
I don’t even know why I’m so sad about things not working out with Anna. I did push her and I hated to see her crumble like that. But clearly it wasn’t going to work out. She’s too much work.
When I approach Bookends, I see no light on above the store and the curtains are still wide open. Brooklyn must still be at Jaden’s. I haven’t given her a curfew, and Jamie and Janet must not have kicked her out yet. I decide to go pick her up.
I turn up the collar of my coat, hoping I don’t run into anyone who wants to chitchat about books. Then my phone buzzes in my pocket. Being a mother, I can never ignore a text message. But it’s not from Brooklyn. It’s from Anna.
I’m so sorry. I didn’t have the words. But this is not what I want. Can we talk, please?
Anna isn’t the only who can lose the capacity to find the right words. Most of all, though, I feel like I’m utterly and completely out of my depth with her. And I’ve surely also overplayed my hand. But I can, in all honesty, say that all I wanted to do was help. And Anna clearly doesn’t want to be helped. So I don’t reply, because I can’t go back to her house tonight and say the wrong things all over again.
Jamie and Janet live about halfway between Bookends and Sherry’s. I didn’t even give it that much thought when Brooklyn asked if she could go back to Jaden’s house after lunch. I was too preoccupied with spending time with Anna. I suppose I’ll have to host Jaden at my apartment soon then, according to the law of reciprocity.
I’m happy that Janet opens the door to me because my brain has already catalogued her as a friendly face. Immediately, as I’m guided into their home, I’m struck by something very specific I’ve been missing. The feeling—the colors, the atmosphere, even the very smell of it—of domesticity. It reminds me of my best days with Eve, and Brooklyn’s first ten years on this earth.
In the living room, Jamie, Jaden, Jeremy, and Brooklyn are hunched over a game of Monopoly.
“I’m just the bank,” Janet says.
“As in real life,” Jamie jokes. “The keeper of the purse strings.”
They act as though my visit was fully expected.
“I’m glad to see you again so soon,” Janet says.
“The game’s almost finished, Mom,” Brooklyn says.
“I’m winning,” Jeremy screams.
“You be the bank now,” Janet says to Jamie. “Zoe and I are going to have a drink in the kitchen.”
Are we? I could certainly do with a drink, so I follow Janet.
“I hope my daughter has behaved,” I say. “Thanks for having her over.”
Janet holds up a bottle of wine, and I nod.
“Brooklyn’s an amazing girl and, quite honestly, I’m glad to have some female energy in the house,” Janet says. “So you’re very welcome.” Janet sits at one end of the kitchen island and deposits my glass very close to hers. “I was going to get your number off Brooklyn and call you this week to go out for a drink.”
“That would be lovely.” I perch on a high stool and take a long drag of cool wine. After I swallow, I exhale deeply—perhaps a bit too dramatically.
“Are you okay? Your energy’s very different than earlier,” Janet says.
I’m not sure if I can talk to her. Anna’s her sister-in-law—and Anna would probably hate me for it. But I’m desperate for a friend in this town, for a deeper connection with someone who’s not Anna. “My afternoon didn’t really go as planned.”
“Something with Anna?” Janet asks.
“How did you guess?”
“I’ve been a member of the Gunn clan for almost two decades,” Janet says matter-of-factly.
“I don’t feel comfortable talking about Anna behind her back, but, um, well, I think we might not be seeing each other anymore.” Sadness coils into a ball in my stomach. I drink some more wine, hoping it will dissolve the anguish lodged deep inside me.
“Oh, God, no. I’m so sorry to hear that,” Janet says, then briefly puts her hand on my arm. “What happened?”
“I said some things. She said some things. You know.”
“Despite having been with her brother for more than twenty years, I don’t really know Anna that well. I’ve tried to, but to some people, she’s just completely impenetrable. I’ve never been able to find a way in with her, even though we get along on a superficial level. Is it something like that?”
Pretty much, I think. “I feel like I’ve tried my best. More than my best. But it’s like she deliberately misinterprets certain things I say just so she can hold the
m against me later. I don’t want things to be difficult between us like that. Not at this stage of our relationship.” The words come easily now. I haven’t been able to truly talk about Anna with anyone.
Janet regards me intently and an uncomfortable silence falls between us.
“She has told me about having ASD,” I say. “We’ve talked about it and I’m educating myself about it. I’m trying to learn as much about it as I can, and I feel like a real asshole for holding it against her, because I know it’s not fair, but… I just don’t know what to do. This is completely unknown territory for me.”
“I lost all our money to our children.” Jamie walks into the kitchen. “Oh, sorry. Am I interrupting something?”
I take a deep breath.
“Look, Zoe,” Janet says. “Seeing as it involves Anna, do you mind telling Jamie?”
“Tell me what?” Jamie asks. “What’s going on with Anna?”
I give Janet a nod because I’m worried about Anna too. I don’t know how she deals with situations like this. Whether she needs someone to be with her or if she just wants to be alone—I suspect the latter, but I can’t be sure and Jamie might know.
“They broke up,” Janet says.
“What? When?” Jamie asks.
“Just now, before I came here,” I say.
“How was she?” Clearly, Jamie’s first concern is for his sister. “What state was she in? Agitated or the opposite?”
“I would say the opposite.” I haven’t been able to erase the image of a completely frozen and shut-off Anna from my mind.
“I’ll call her,” Jamie says.
“Don’t, um, tell her that you know. That I told you,” I say.
“I know how to deal with my sister,” Jamie says, while he fishes for his phone in his pocket and walks toward the hallway.
