I do? I say.
Hell, yeah, she says. You have to take down Big Pharma.
I laugh. I can’t even get off a bus at the right time.
I’m not joking, she says. It’s that or some hugs-not-drugs thing, which I don’t think is really you.
I don’t know, I say, smiling, I’m changed now. She punches me in the tit playfully. Yeah, you are, she says.
Things to think about anyway, she says, but I have to go because I left the kids in the car and I didn’t crack a window.
Before she leaves, she looks at the stain on the bed. Are you really sleeping here? she says. Off to conquer Big Pharma, and I can’t even hold a glass.
I thought my house was depressing, she says, clocking the hole in the wall.
I like it, I say.
Of course you do, she says.
* * *
That night I masturbate to a blurry picture of an actor I used to like. I imagine him kissing my neck and telling me it’s going to be okay, and when I’m done I cry and stroke my own hair.
* * *
The next morning my phone wakes me up. I figure it’s Debs checking I wasn’t murdered.
Have you seen the news? she says. Put the news on, Janet.
I do as I’m told.
Richard Grossman is all over it. He’s been arrested. The details are confusing, but it seems someone has leaked internal data suggesting that his pill was actually a chemical blend of ingredients I’ve never heard of. Magnesium stearate, the host reads, microcrystalline cellulose, pregelatinized cornstarch, and sucrose.
Wait . . . sucrose? Isn’t that—
Isn’t that something, Alex? says the host. The pill they called Santa’s Little Helper was a placebo.
There was no scientific study. No chemical cure for holiday-specific depression.
The Christmas pill was a fraud.
Are you watching this shit? Debs says, still on the line.
I don’t understand, I say.
It was all a scam, Debs says. I’m falling again, but this time it feels like I’ve been pushed.
* * *
The full story unfolds quickly, in a wave of scoops, press releases, and breaking news. I sit in my dirty motel room, glued to the TV, shaking with anger.
After the leak is confirmed, the company has to admit that the whole story, all the research—all of it was fabricated.
It was all a scam, just like Debs said. There never was a Christmas pill. We were the only untapped market, so they tapped us—with a sledgehammer. Once we were out cold, they figured, we’d take anything they wanted us to.
I flip the channel, and there’s Pharma Bro himself. My pharma bro, Grossman’s local rep. The reporter has caught him outside his building, looking disheveled and ashamed. We were just giving people what they wanted, he says, not looking for a minute like he believes it. People wanted to buy a happy Christmas, so we made that possible, he says.
His name is Jason, according to the chyron. I’d never bothered to learn it, or maybe I’d just chosen to forget it.
For the first time in my life, I feel a solidarity with the talking heads. They’re outraged, they say. People have been duped, they say. It isn’t right, they say. And I just sit there, watching and nodding furiously, before I finally fall asleep.
But it doesn’t last long.
* * *
Overnight—literally overnight—the narrative changes.
The next morning, I wake up and turn on the TV. The first thing I see is Richard Grossman, somehow out of jail already, holding a press conference.
The world needed something to bring people together, he says. And we did that. Does it really matter how? He looks around, waits for that to sink in.
Don’t you see? he says. It worked. People all over the country had a happy Christmas. They found the real Christmas spirit—right there inside themselves. And it was all thanks to our pill.
I wait for the talking heads to roll their eyes with me.
I can keep waiting. They’re lapping it up.
Richard Grossman has done something amazing, Alex, hasn’t he?
Suddenly it’s not a scam but a holiday miracle. He’s basically saying he saved Christmas, and the world is buying it.
It’s enough to make me vomit, which I do, a lot.
I see a girl I recognize from my meeting giving an interview. She says she always suspected it was a placebo, but she doesn’t mind. It helped her see what she was missing—and she’s already started taking Prozac! Yay!
No one seems to feel cheated but me. And I didn’t even take the damn pill.
* * *
The next day, the tabloids run an exclusive tell-all from Dickie boy. I don’t even have to go outside to get it, the news is still covering it nonstop. He says he started out by trying to make the Christmas pill for real—for the love of his life—but it was just too hard. It wouldn’t work. And he couldn’t figure it out. So he made it all up. For Vyla.
Turns out the only true part of his story was Vyla Shirk. He goes on and on about Vyla, about her depression and her listlessness and how sorry he was about her life. And I can just hear what the people are thinking: What a caring man. He loved this girl so much he made her a pill. Or, you know, maybe he couldn’t, but he wanted to.
All I see is a man speaking for a woman and telling her she needed to be fixed.
He even digs out old photos of the two of them to help his case. See, he says, I was just a man in love. I just wanted to make her happy. I just wanted to make the world happy, he says, and everyone weeps and cheers.
Everyone sees in this exactly what they wanted to see. What I see is that Vyla is alive. This is what I focus on. I don’t give a shit about Dickie boy and his bleeding heart. He’s just like my boyfriend and my mother. Wanting to fix us all. I care about Vyla.
Where is Vyla? the reporters ask. I don’t know, he says, it was a long time ago, I just hope she’s happy. And he fake-cries a bit, and everyone buys it.
All of this is followed by an announcement from Grossman’s company. They’re sorry for deceiving everyone, but they’re so gratified by the groundswell of public support that they’re committing to a new plan that they hope will redeem themselves: they’re making this new Christmas pill available to everyone.
The world rejoices. My mother gets her wish. Fake it, meet make it.
I’m screaming at the TV. For a minute, I stop, to see if anyone else in the building is screaming too. Crickets.
They’ve found the spirit of Christmas! say the heads on the TV. Without the pills!
But no one is listening, mostly because I’m alone in a motel room. It doesn’t really matter what I say or where I say it. It’s already starting over again. Only there won’t be any meetings this time, just the pills.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Janet? my doctor will say.
My mother keeps calling me, but I ignore it. All the crying and masturbating and shouting and vomiting has made me more hollowed-out than I’ve ever felt, like a scraped-out potato skin no one has any intention of stuffing with anything delicious.
It doesn’t even matter that I didn’t take the pills. It still feels like something has been taken from me. Not taking the pills was the only bit of control I had, and it turns out I never had it at all. And now the world is a bigger mess than I could have ever imagined.
I can just hear my mother’s voice: See, I knew you could do it! You just needed a nudge. A nudge? It feels more like a big hard shove. I want her to see how ridiculous it’s all gotten, but I know she’ll never see it that way. All she’ll see is me being difficult.
They made a pill just for you, and you wouldn’t even take it, she’ll say.
I need to get out of this motel fast, before I punch a hole in the wall, to go with the ones that are already there. Maybe motels are where girls come
to punch walls. Who knew?
Stepping outside, I’m surprised how calm the world actually is. It’s only my head that’s full of noise and chaos. There are no news crews or reporters hounding me for my take on all this. I’m still no one, and I’m glad.
I drive to my apartment, and it feels like I’m going backward.
On the stairs, I see Min-seo, her phone to her ear. Hey, she says.
Hey, I say, hoping I don’t have any vomit in my hair.
I saw the news, she says. Sorry, she says.
What are you sorry for? I say.
Because people keep dicking you around, she says.
I sit down next to her. I have no idea what I’m doing anymore, I say.
Never have, never will, she says.
I’m done with being touched again for a while, anyway, but I wish I knew her well enough to lean my head on her shoulder. I don’t, so we just sit there, and it’s fine.
I just wanted to feel different for a while, I say.
And did you? Min-seo asks.
I felt relief, I say. Hope, maybe. I don’t know anymore.
Well, I see they’re actually doing it for real now. So you have a few months to figure it out, right? she says.
Or not, I say, a tiny moment of quiet private joy that can only be felt by a Janet.
She doesn’t say I’m here if you need me, because she doesn’t really know me, but she does say, Maybe we should get a drink sometime, and I say, Sure.
I go into my apartment, close the door, and curl up into a ball on the floor, rocking a little. What yoga move is this? I say to no one.
Then there’s a knock at the door.
I think it might be Min-seo needing that drink already, but it isn’t. It’s a woman I don’t recognize.
Janet? she says.
Yes, I say.
Sorry to just show up like this, she says. Jason gave me your address. He thought we should meet.
Why the fuck is Pharma Guy sending random women to my apartment? I think.
And then, just like that, I know who she is.
I’m Vyla, she says.
Hi, I say, smiling. I’m Janet.
Hi, Janet, she says, and smiles back. Her smile is a little crooked, like it might not be the most natural thing for her—it looks like mine—but she’s giving it her best shot.
She’s real. I’m real. I don’t know if anything else is, but it doesn’t matter.
Before she left the motel, Debs told me there comes a time when you need to stop thinking about the people you don’t have and start thinking about the people you do.
I have Debs. I have Melissa, whether I want her or not. I have Min-seo, maybe, and now I have Vyla. Together we have three hundred and forty-seven days to work out what to do about Christmas and all the stuff in between.
We’re women. We’ll work it out.
Acknowledgments
To be honest, I wrote this book on my own. It was only toward the end that my lovely agent, Stacy Testa, found me and probably saved my life, and then Cal Morgan and Riverhead gave it a home, and I still think I’m being punked. Thank you, Stacy and Cal, for believing in me, when I still don’t. Thanks to everyone at Writers House and Riverhead.
Thank you to the following people and places for supporting my writing and general nonsense over the years: George Saunders for always saying the right thing; Rachel Fershleiser for being my early cheerleader; Jade Sharma for being an early reader and helping me find my voice; I miss you. Marcy Dermansky for her friendship and TV updates; Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney for her wisdom and kindness; Adrienne Celt for inspiring me every day; Kerry Cullen for her general awesomeness; Tobias Carroll and Vol. 1 Brooklyn; Carol Ann Fitzgerald and The Sun magazine; Tracy O’Neill and Epiphany literary journal; Catapult Story; Five:2:One magazine; Split Lip Magazine; The Millions; Tincture Journal; Barrelhouse; Glimmer Train; Jellyfish Review; Synaesthesia Magazine; Tammy Journal; and Bird’s Thumb.
Thank you to my family, especially my sister, Ruth, the first person I ever wanted to make laugh. I never would have finished anything if it wasn’t for you.
Thank you to Alex for making this life bearable, even fun sometimes.
Thank you to you for reading if you still are and didn’t give up at my first fart joke and go and read something else.
About the Author
Lucie Britsch's writing has appeared in Catapult Story, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Split Lip Magazine, and The Sun, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sad Janet is her first novel.
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