If You're Not Yet Like Me

by Edan Lepucki

  “I’ve got news,” he said, and I set down the sponge.

  He’d scored a job interview. It was for a receptionist position at a dentist’s office.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  There was no response.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “I’m excited about the job.”

  “Boring,” I sang, then plugged my nose, went all nasal. “I’ll need to see a copy of your insurance card—“

  “Maybe I like to be bored.”

  I didn’t know how to respond, so this time, I was the silent one.

  Was this Blow #5?

  I can feel you getting excited about Zachary, and that excitement is dangerous, for this doesn’t end how you want it to. This isn’t a story of a woman who sheds her superficiality, who learns to love someone as they truly are, and in the process, learns to love herself. It might have been that kind of story, had things gone the way of happily-ever-after, but they didn’t. The ending changes everything that came before it.

  Zachary and I had been dating for a month, and I assumed we were on the verge of I-love-you, that great emotional cliff off of which couples can never un-jump. Had I been so brazen, I would have said it already, and not in the throes of senseless passion, either, but during one of our myriad innocent moments together. The time, for instance, we talked about the paradisiacal beaches of Hawaii, and Zachary, who had never been, asked if they were like a screen saver. Or, when we went on a walk around the neighborhood, and he took my hand in his, and told me about all the instruments he had tried and failed to master. As he spoke of the piano, he instinctively pushed my hand with his fingers.

  It was after this month together that he called me to see if I wanted to meet at the coffee shop. At the time, I thought it romantic to return to the place where we met, but now I see the cruel circularity.

  He was standing by the counter when I arrived, eyes not on the door, not on me, but on the pastry case. He was gaga for croissants. I called out his name, and he looked up.

  “Hey,” he said, in a low voice. He reached out to hug me.

  I put my cheek to his chest. “Hi.”

  I would have remained there longer, ear to T-shirt, like listening to the ocean, but Zachary was already pulling away.

  “I forgot, you have a cold,” I said.

  He nodded.

  I’d already decided this was the reason we hadn’t seen each other for two days. It wasn’t until later that I added these things up—his absence, his lukewarm hug—as clues to his discontent. Zachary suggested we get our coffee to-go. “Let’s walk and talk,” he said. “And drink.”

  We bought our coffee and headed outside, toward the quiet side streets. I remember I tried to take his hand and he pulled away.

  “Are you that much of a germaphobe?” I asked. He didn’t answer.

  I was still blind, you see. There is a moment, when a woman’s foolishness slips into delusion. The former is forgivable, the latter isn’t. You will never live it down. Remember that.

  Even before we got away from the noisy boulevard, Zachary began his speech. He could not even suffer a preamble. “I don’t think I can do this anymore,” he said. “Us.”

  I understood immediately; I didn’t play dumb. Unlike Dickens, who had grinned as he broke my heart, Zachary, to his credit, seemed almost ill.

  “But I thought—“

  I stopped myself. No, I would not protest, because protest would turn into blubbering, and I wouldn’t stoop so low. I was a fool, but I wasn’t crazy.

  You want to know what I was going to tell Zachary. What was it I thought? About him, about us? About myself?

  To be honest, I’m not sure what I would have said, because in that instant, I willed the original Joellyn to return: big-breasted, carefree Joellyn, the one Zachary had given his business card to, the Joellyn he had been smitten by at the bar, the one who had undressed for him, who had pretended to like whiskey. That Joellyn would take this in stride. She had gotten me into this mess, and she would get me out of it.

  “I see,” I said.

  “Please don’t be upset.” That he knew me well enough to read my bluff was a special kind of cruelty. “You can’t honestly be surprised.”

  We had reached the residential block with its wide-mouthed bungalows. For each driveway’s gleaming and silent car there was a corresponding fruit tree on the front lawn. Lemon, tangerine, kumquat. Volvo, Subaru, whimsical old BMW.

  “Come on, Joellyn,” he continued. “You don’t want me. That’s been clear from the beginning. It was a little game you were playing.”

  “It was?” I asked.

  “I played, too,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong—it was fun at first. A girl like you … “ His voice trailed off. A few weeks earlier, I might have thought he meant a beautiful, invincible girl, a girl who shouldn’t have given him a second glance. But now I knew he meant something else.

  “I’m not terrible,” I said.

  “We’re not compatible,” he replied, which didn’t contest my statement.

  “Actually, I think we get along pretty well.” I was careful not to beseech. From one of the backyards, children squealed.

  “I’m probably going to take that job,” he said finally.

  “Are you sure you want that?” I asked

  He stopped walking and held up his hands. “This is what I’m talking about. Why don’t you go find a dude who drives a Saab, Joellyn? Or a guy with an LP collection, and, I don’t know, a killer set of kitchen knives. Someone who isn’t into Mexico. Someone who doesn’t wear wretched cargos.” His voice had squeaked into a nasal pitch, and his fingers air-quoted.

  “Wow,” I said.

  He sighed, suddenly blushing. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—“

  “I’d impersonate you too,” I said, “if it weren’t so difficult.” My voice was like bathwater I’d neglected to drain: cold as it was flat. “Do you want to know why it’s difficult, Zachary?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re invisible.” I smiled. “You’re nothing.”

  “You’re a bitch,” Zachary said, and I shrugged. If things weren’t over between us before, they were now. I took a sip of my coffee, and waited for him to walk away. He did.

  You want to yell, “Come back, Zachary! Please come back!”

  So do I.

  People say all kinds of nonsense about loss: When one door closes, another opens. Everything happens for a reason. This, too, shall pass. A girl will bleed and then she will cry. But none of those lines help; they’re no better than spit, something to toss across your tongue when you’re bored. And when you swallow, it feels like you’re cannibalizing yourself. How long until there’s nothing left?

  The new world functions on email and takeout, and after Zachary walked away from me, I took full advantage. For two months after the break-up, I barely left my apartment. The tissues piled up by my bedside, as did the empty bottles of liquor, and the pizza boxes, and the white paper pails that once held General Tsao’s Chicken. During that dark period, the General was my only beloved.

  One night, sufficiently pickled by vodka, I decided I needed some fresh air, that walking to a bar to finish the evening off would do me some good. If anything, I needed to escape the mirrors in my apartment.

  At the bar down the block, I ordered the specialty: a gin gimlet with a slab of cucumber instead of a straw. The cold liquor was sliding down my throat—oh, sweet relief—when I heard a familiar voice.

  “Joellyn.”

  Dickens slid onto the stool next to me. His hair was shorter, but there were those cheekbones, those eyes, those shoulders, that jaw.

  “Look at you,” he said.

  “Look at me,” I said. “Bloated.”

  “You’re already drunk. Bad day?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Poor thing.” He smiled. A girl could sleep on the pink of those gums. I imagined swinging from the punching bag of his uvula.

  “Why don’
t you come home with me, big boy?” I said.

  Three weeks later, my period did not arrive as scheduled. I maintained a willful ignorance, though I’m not sure how—usually, my menstrual cycle is like a German train: always on time. I told myself it was stress. Not from heartbreak, from the absence of Zachary, which my night with Dickens only magnified. Oh no, definitely not. It had to be work, I told myself, and finances. I’d sent a copy of my unpaid cell phone bill to my mother with a Post-It note that read, “I’m screwed!!!” It wasn’t the first time I’d asked her for a hand out. I also worried I might have some disease. A female one. If I was dying, I preferred to delay the prognosis.

  Of course, from the beginning, the word baby flitted around my mind like a song I was trying to forget. I didn’t take it seriously. Not right away. Part of me figured you might disappear, that my period might come if I just wished hard enough. I was almost as bad as one of those teens who gives birth in the bathroom stall during Spring Formal. A girl won’t bleed, and then she will cry.

  I waited a whole month before I took a test. I’d already replaced my morning and afternoon coffees with herbal tea, and whenever someone offered me a drink, I declined. I had opened a savings account. Not because I was imagining you—or maybe I was—but because I’d hit rock bottom with Dickens, and I was ready to crawl my way out. The sun would hurt my eyes, and I’d adjust.

  When the test read positive, I laughed.

  I’m sure, Baby, you’ve done the math. Zachary isn’t your father.

  “But, Joellyn—!” you want to cry out. Can’t say I blame you.

  I thought about sending the pregnancy test to my mother, with that same note: “I’m screwed!!!” I was screwed. By Dickens. Thus, you. Instead, I threw the test and its box away, and I said, “Well, here we are.” You were listening, I knew. I couldn’t just get rid of you.

  In a few weeks, you will turn from fetus to baby, and you will have a baby mind to match your baby babble, your toothless crying. You’ll find me with your baby mouth. And when that mouth does learn to speak, you won’t call me Joellyn.

  For now, all I can do is instruct. People talk to the dead, so why not to the unborn? Be careful, I want to say. I’m sorry, I want to say. Things will turn out differently for you.

  Let this be a final story, then, from your dear Joellyn. I’m telling it to soften the blow of revelation. Maybe, by some miracle, you’ll be born knowing all of this, and you won’t come to me later, and ask for the truth. Who knows what I’ll tell you when you’re older. This could be the confession before the deception.

  Nowadays, my stomach is round, stretched taut as a drum. Small blue veins map the blood I pump to you. I have to pee eight times an hour. I barely sleep. My labia feels fat. I suppose the gift of my new full breasts must be offset somehow.

  Yesterday, my parents came over to clear out my kitchen so that the exterminators can get rid of my roach problem. All dishes and food must be removed, and the counters must be draped with newspaper. There is still that one empty cupboard, which I cleaned out months ago, for the future.

  My mother says my bedroom is large enough for the crib she bought, thank goodness. We agree I can shine this on—my one-bedroom, freelance situation—for a year or two. “And then you’ll have to do something,” she said. She asked again who the father was.

  I auditioned answers. I could have said, “You don’t want to know.” Or, “The father was a dick.” I closed my eyes, as if that might help.

  “The father—” I imagined saying, “he’s invisible.”

  I pressed my eyelids and saw the universe. I heard the cars passing on the street outside. The clock on the kitchen wall counted off the seconds.

  My mother repeated her question.

  I opened my eyes.

  I AM THE

  LION

  NOW

  Margaret took a bath. The tub, like all tubs in apartments worth living in, was grimy. She had scrubbed it many times but the porcelain remained gray and streaked with rust around the drain. She didn’t mind. She also kissed dogs on the mouth, didn’t wash her fruit. Let the squeamish suffer their fear, let them live without really living. Margaret was safe in her risk-taking.

  In the kitchen, Toby baked a cake, his second: the first one had burned. Margaret had assumed he’d forgotten to turn on the timer, but this was deliberate. He’d wanted to have sex, more than he wanted to eat cake, and he knew that if the timer went off in the middle, they would stop to handle it. They were married, and passion was not greater than cake. But they didn’t end up having sex (because there were dishes to wash, because they were tired—they were always tired now that the baby was on the way), and the cake burned anyway. Toby felt silly, and a little disappointed by his carelessness.

  The average married couple in Los Angeles has sex once a week. The number increases among newlyweds, and decreases considerably among those with children. Margaret and Toby, married four years, together for six, were not doing badly. Margaret kept a tally of their lovemaking in her checkbook. Toby wasn’t aware of the tally, wasn’t aware that their average was higher than the norm during the fall and lower in the summer, bikini wax or not. Heat wasn’t sexy. Margaret sometimes imagined a future biographer, their biographer, celebrating the discovery of this diligent record. She didn’t realize that no one was recording the more important matters. Toby’s baking, for instance. That he was making a second cake two hours after the first, simply because his wife had a craving.

  In the bathroom, a candle next to the sink glowed weakly, a gesture of light. Margaret lay in the tub with her eyes closed; the book she had brought into the room admonished nearby. It was a turgid novel, too challenging to read in water. Margaret longed for a tabloid—all those pregnant actresses. But I am worth it, whispered the book.

  Because the smell of burnt food lingers, Toby had opened the front door and all the windows. As he’d begun to stir the second batch of dry ingredients, Margaret had said, “I feel fat. I’m going to take a bath.”

  “You’re not fat,” Toby said. “You’re pregnant.”

  “My arms aren’t,” she said.

  Margaret was three and a half months along; she’d recently purchased a maternity wardrobe, even though she didn’t need it quite yet. Toby found the smock dresses, and the shirts like parachutes, sexy.

  For some reason, taking a bath temporarily cleansed his wife of any physical self-loathing. In water she was weightless, and afterwards, she put on the same extra-large t-shirt, its size dwarfing her, making her feel thin. The baby inside her, (a boy, though neither Toby nor Margaret knew this yet, or wanted to), liked the sound of the running faucet, and the shaking and groan of the pipes. He heard everything, and tucked the information like loose change into his forming brain.

  The sound was like a handful of paperclips scattering across the hardwood floor. A scampering. From the kitchen Toby yelled, “Holy fucking shit!”

  Margaret stood up, feet in bath water. “What was that?” she called, her ear toward the door. She heard the rustling of paper bags—the two next to the garbage, used for recycling. “Are you okay?” she yelled. The baby moved, but he was too small for Margaret to notice.

  “There’s a fucking rat in here!” Toby cried. Boyish cowardice tugged at the edge of his voice. Margaret heard a kitchen chair slide across the floor and she imagined Toby standing on it.

  She grabbed her towel from the rack, pulling it so strongly that it hit the candle, tipping it over, onto the book. The book caught fire.

  “Fire!” she yelled.

  “Possum!” Toby yelled. He hadn’t heard his wife in the bathroom.

  The possum, a baby, ran back and forth across the kitchen, butting its head against the cabinets and the fridge. It did look like a rat, but an obese one, pink-eyed, with that same root-vegetable tail.

  The book’s pages went first, curling black with the lick of fire, then disintegrating. The covers were hardbound, and thus more stubborn, but it didn’t take long for the flames to
cover the entire book, eating it. The room turned orange with the glow, and Margaret thought first of that Ray Bradbury novel, then of the Nazis, then of death, then of the first cake, which had also burned, then of the baby, oh not my baby, then of death again.

  As the possum ran for the living room, Toby realized what had happened. Abandoned by its mother, the animal needed food, and the burnt cake smell had been inviting. A coyote might be next in the hunger parade, might come skulking through the front door, which was still open.

  The possum ran behind the couch. Food, food, food!

  Margaret plunged her towel into the tub of water, and, once soaked through, flung it over the flames, suffocating them. The book stopped burning. Where was Toby?

  “Fire!” she yelled again, testing him.

  Toby smelled the fire just as he heard Margaret’s call. Burnt book wasn’t the same as burnt cake. At seven years old, he and his brothers had thrown a lit match to a pile of their mother’s collection of romance novels. The flames leapt from the paperbacks to a nearby bush, swallowing it with a roar of heat. Later, when the firefighters were leaving, one of them said to him, “Be careful there, Moses,” and Toby had nodded, confused. Who was this Moses?

  Toby wasn’t thinking of this as he ran for the bathroom—only of his actions: the jumping off of the chair, the pushing in of the bathroom door, the reaching out for Margaret, who was naked and dousing something charred in the sink. The breathlessness of, “Are you all right, babe? What happened?”

  Margaret laughed. “Oops,” she said. “Guess I won’t be reading this.” All crises, once averted, become jokes.

  “Did you burn yourself?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  Toby kissed his wife on the mouth and on the belly. “There’s a small beast in the living room.”

  The timer shrilled. Cake.

  “Come quick,” Toby said, already out of the bathroom. “I might contract rabies.”

  Toby pulled the cake out of the oven before attending to the possum, whom he could hear rustling behind the couch, scratching at the walls. If the possum couldn’t behave like a human being, why not run outside, where it belonged?