Fix

by J. Albert Mann

  When I’m finished, I count the pill pieces. Twice.

  “You do know that the amount is actually the same as before you cut them up?” she asks. “Don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  But I don’t.

  Everything we think, everything we know, can change. There is no actual. No literal. No real.

  This is the Roxy dust talking.

  I count them one last time.

  “I’m glad you’re not mad at me anymore, Lid,” I tell her.

  “Why would I be mad at you?”

  I pop a wobbly-looking half into my mouth instead of answering and enjoy the scrape of it as I swallow.

  I love my Roxy.

  Last night I googled how painkillers work. I wanted in on the chunky white pill’s journey, to know what happened to it after it passed my lips.

  Our bodies are filled with nerve endings. When cells are injured or damaged, they release certain chemicals. When these chemicals hit the nerve endings, the nerve endings respond by whispering to one another—nerve to nerve to nerve—until the message reaches your brain: You are in pain, a lot of pain!

  But then comes the Roxy.

  Sometimes just staring at the bottle makes me happy. It’s like I feel dry without it. And I want to feel wet. I can’t explain it any better than that.

  In fact, I can feel it already, doing the simple little job of wedging itself between the nerves so they can’t speak to one another.

  No message. No pain.

  Proving that it’s better not to know.

  After hiding my pills in a secret place, I lie down on the couch. Where has Lidia gone? My laptop is sitting on the coffee table. I open Netflix. But the screen with all its colorful choices immediately defeats me, and I close it up and slide it to the floor.

  I hate the middle of the day.

  And now I hate that I cut up all my Roxy—it made me okay, doing something for a moment, but that translates into not okay in all the other moments.

  I turn to face him—the Roxy bits and dust from my work now wedged in all the right places. The sun is shining off his aperture, aperture being a fancy name for the telescope’s front eye.

  Aperture.

  “Why are you a telescope?”

  “Would you like me to be in some other form?” he asks.

  “Some other form?” I say, letting my eyes flutter shut. “Like a giant plastic hamburger?” I need to rest. My apertures. Rest.

  I’m almost gone, returning to the quiet, soft place where the Roxy takes me, when I hear him.

  “What about the human form?”

  Hmmm… so not a plastic hamburger?

  The Happiest of Huts

  Our first day of our first job

  we found ourselves

  in a smelly locker room

  with two giant costumes.

  I wanted to be the french fry,

  with its spongy, yellow softness

  and cool beret.

  The hamburger

  wore a goofy tuxedo

  size Men’s XL, and

  worse,

  it had a huge plastic head.

  Huge.

  But the french fry had

  two puffy yellow hands

  built

  right into the costume

  and the hamburger wore black gloves and

  used a cane.

  I became the hamburger.

  They sent us everywhere…

  new-building openings,

  food festivals, a

  medieval fair.

  We never spoke.

  Food doesn’t speak.

  We just showed up

  and were a hit.

  Everywhere.

  Even at the medieval fair,

  where we competed

  with swords and pirate hats.

  Lidia said

  she loved the

  paychecks,

  although it was obvious

  every time she removed the french fry head—

  her hair a frizzy

  humid mess,

  her face flushed, her

  eyes lit like high beams

  that it

  meant much more than

  money.

  It was fun.

  I loved it.

  I loved all of it.

  The dirty van and shaggy drivers, who

  drove us over potholed two-lane

  highways to strange venues

  with long tables, gritty floors, and

  paper cups filled with sugary juice,

  where kids screamed the

  second they saw us.

  I loved our choreographed dances

  set to some mother’s idea

  of a cool song on her Spotify.

  Although calling anything we did

  in those giant costumes dance

  was pushing it.

  I even loved the taste of plastic mixed with

  my own sweaty breath inside the huge head.

  Though I especially loved

  the view—looking out through the grinning teeth

  of a hamburger.

  People stared at me,

  as they always did,

  but with a straight-on smile instead of

  side-eye curiosity.

  Acknowledgment.

  Approval.

  Acceptance.

  I hadn’t seemed to make

  a good human, but

  as a hamburger,

  I was beloved.

  Minnesota

  MY MOTHER WAKES ME FROM A SOUND SLEEP. SHE WANTS to talk. I tell her I’m listening, but I’m not… until she says that word.

  “… Minnesota?”

  I’m listening now.

  I logroll off the couch and climb to my feet from my knees with a pretty loud moan.

  “You’re leaving me alone for two weeks?”

  “I’m not leaving you alone, Eve. You’ll stay with Mary Fay.”

  “What? I can’t even stay here in my own home?”

  “Eve, it’s an honor to attend the Minneapolis Poetry Society’s retreat and conference. You know I’ve been applying to it for years. This is the first time I’ve gotten beyond their wait list. You have to understand—”

  “I don’t have to understand,” I say, cutting her off. “When you’re healing from major surgery you want your own bed.”

  My mother sighs. “You sleep on that couch half the time.”

  Is this true? I want to fight her on it.

  “And your mother. You want your mother,” I add, laying it on pretty thick. “Don’t go,” I whisper.

  She’s standing and looking at me. I hate when she does that—looks but doesn’t say anything.

  Maybe… maybe she’s changing her mind. Maybe she sees how wrong it is to leave your suffering daughter for a work thing. Maybe she’ll stay.

  “I’ll ask Meef to come here, okay?” she says, using my nickname for Mary Fay like this makes it better, like she’s conceding. And then she turns and heads off into the kitchen.

  Her back. Always her back. Walking away, hunched over a desk, a book, her computer. Intent on everything but me.

  “What about school?” I shout after her, and instantly regret it. The thought of school sends a shot of fear through me.

  “You have almost a week before you go back. And paratransit can get you there. It’s probably a lot more comfortable than any car would be for you right now anyway,” she says, walking into the kitchen.

  School. In less than a week. But that’s not tomorrow, or the next day. Or the day after that.

  “And Eve,” she shouts, interrupting my attempt to morph a week into forever. “Mary Fay is great with sick people because of her mom’s multiple sclerosis, and she does a lot of her work from home, so you won’t be alone like you are now.”

  “I’m not sick and I like being alone,” I holler, my loud voice sending pain up my spine and through my mangled rib cage.

  She ignores me.

  “MOM!”r />
  Still no answer.

  I pick up my Roxy, yet instead of opening it, I hold the bottle against my chest and turn toward the big picture window. The sky is a bright gray. It looks like it might snow. Or maybe it’s just evening.

  Dropping to my knees, I roll back onto the couch with the Roxy in my hands and close my eyes. Shutting out everything.

  Did I want this? For her to go?

  I don’t. I know I don’t.

  Cold. Lakes. Snow.

  My thumb rubs along the ridged edge of the plastic bottle top.

  Don’t open it.

  I hear my mother walk back into the room. I hear her sip her wine. It must be evening.

  “Mary Fay will have Dr. Sowah’s number,” she says. And then I guess since she sees me lying there holding my Roxy like a warm little kitten, she adds, “As well as a list of your prescriptions. I just spoke with her and she said it’s no problem at all for her to stay here. She’ll drive over after dinner on Sunday.”

  I keep my eyes closed. “Of course Mary Fay said she’d come. She is a caring, loving human.”

  My mother quickly gets my meaning.

  “Eve, stop acting like I’m abandoning you. I’ve been here every day for six weeks. I’ll be here for two more days, and then back before you know it. For god’s sake, this is important to me.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter. I’m not important to her. I want to fucking be important to her.

  “Eve.”

  “I don’t need Mary Fay. I’m sixteen, not six.”

  “As you have just pointed out, you’ve undergone major surgery. I’m not leaving you alone.”

  “You leave me alone every single day!”

  She winces. “That’s different. I’m just a few miles away. And every time you call, I pick up immediately.”

  I’ve only called twice, which she knows.

  “I’d be fine by myself.”

  “Blood clots, infection, confusion, nausea, atrophy, atelectasis,” she says. “Should I keep going?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do,” she says.

  “Well, I don’t know what atelectasis is,” I grumble, turning to face the back of the couch.

  “It’s a collapsed lung. And it can happen after serious surgeries. All those things can happen after serious surgeries. That is why I’m not leaving you alone.”

  I take a breath.

  And then another.

  My lungs feel fine? I think? I didn’t even know they could collapse.

  My mother reads the silence. “Your lungs aren’t going to collapse,” she says.

  I turn my head to face her. “Then why can’t I just stay here alone?”

  I don’t want to stay alone. But I don’t know what to say that will keep her here.

  She flaps her hands at her sides in frustration and turns around and walks out of the living room. So I guess it wasn’t that.

  “Did you ever think,” she says, her voice muffled by the fact that she is walking away from me, again, “that maybe I want to go and do this very important thing in my life without having to worry about you?”

  Her words suck the air right out of my perfectly fine lungs, and before I can stop myself, I roar, “I didn’t know that you ever worried about me.”

  My head spins with the emotion of letting those words out into the world.

  She stops. She’s angry. I can feel it. How dare she be angry. But she doesn’t turn around.

  Come back. Don’t go.

  She goes. Leaving me alone.

  Except for my Roxy.

  Mirrors and Miracles

  IT’S BEEN SIXTEEN HOURS WITHOUT ROXY.

  That’s the new deal. No Roxy and my mother stays safe. The telescope can go fuck himself.

  It’s also been sixteen hours without sleep. I’m exhausted and I ache from my split ends down to my scuzzy toenails. The only way I can deal with the pain is to lie very still and moan. I’m back in my bedroom with my telescope. I wish he wasn’t in here, but I can’t ask her to take him out because I love that she moved him without my asking.

  I turn my head and look at him. Dust lies on the top of the black cylinder like the first few flakes of snow on the top of a mailbox. His aperture faces the floor. Maybe he’s not here anymore.

  He is not a he; it is a telescope. A thing. A made-up thing.

  He was never here.

  I take another big breath to test my lungs. They’re working, but greedy-ish, like they need extra air. I pick up my Roxy and shake it. It sounds like a festive little maraca.

  I do not need one. My spine throbs, my staples itch, and the tips of my missing ribs vibrate in fear at even my mind approaching them.

  But.

  I do not need one.

  I shake my Roxy again. I remove the top and look at them. My mother will be gone for two weeks. That’s a long conference.

  Two weeks.

  I twist the top back on with a heavy sigh, put the bottle onto my bedside table, and then glance over at him.

  I can help you, Eve. But each time I do… a tiny piece of Minnesota will disappear.

  I should take my Roxy. My fucking back hurts. I’m in pain. Do I really believe that I made a pact with the devil? I don’t. I do not believe this.

  But I do. I do believe it.

  Frustrated, I close my eyes to get away from him. Yet he somehow feels more present this way. I need to get out of this room.

  Rolling off the bed, I head for the bathroom, grabbing my Roxy. It’s as if there is some invisible rope that ties us together.

  I lock the bathroom door behind me and lean against the tiled wall, soaking up the safe feel of the small room. The light is off, and the gray morning makes my reflection glow white in the full-length mirror. I’ve always been one of those really white, white girls, but this morning, I look like a blank Word document.

  I put down the plastic bottle and stand up off the wall in front of the mirror. I’ve stood in front of so many mirrors.

  So many mirrors.

  Although right now I am reminded of only one. Full-length. On the door outside the event trailer bathroom. Where Lidia stood—her french fry head off, staring at herself with two hands.

  That imperfect mirror is all in your head.

  Such bullshit.

  I slipped out before she caught me. It felt wrong, seeing her wanting something she couldn’t have.

  And here I stand. In front of yet another mirror. Like I’ve done so many times.

  Did I finally have it?

  The something I wanted?

  Like all those other times, I do not notice anything about myself but the shape of me, wrapped in familiar plastic.

  My hands run down either side of my brace.

  Nineteen degrees.

  Down from seventy-eight.

  The sound of the Velcro strap echoes off the tile of the tiny bathroom. My heart speeds up, telling me that I need to slow down. I quickly pull the brace back into place.

  I suck in a breath and rip open the Velcro again.

  Nineteen degrees.

  I let the brace fall and stare at myself in the mirror in my filthy body sock and sweats.

  Not crooked. Not leaning. No humps or bumps or bones poking wrong.

  Symmetrical.

  Linear.

  Even.

  Shoulders running across in a line. Breasts where one does not sag lower. Hips that follow shoulders. A waist with twin curves. Vertebrae that tell a single tale, all together. The indent of a belly button surrounded by a perfect circle of proportion.

  And all of this ease, it glides… silent, tippy, tippy-toe silent brushing past like a pretty skirt against legs.

  This is me.

  Me!

  Me straight.

  Me fixed.

  And god, I look good.

  I look good, and it’s what I wanted. To look good.

  Then why does it feel wrong to look like this?

  Wrong to
like it?

  You could be straight if you wanted.

  Grabbing my Roxy, I open up the bottle and… stop. I want to pop one in before I can have any thoughts against it. But I have a thought. Of her in Minnesota. And now I can’t.

  I lean over the sink and scoop handfuls of cold water onto my face, into my mouth. I wipe my face on a towel and ease down onto the toilet seat.

  The four walls snuggle around me, closing me in, and all I see is the white porcelain. The shine of the drain. The light from the window. The tub. The showerhead. The dull blue shampoo bottle. An old razor. I need my life to be as small as this bathroom.

  I imagine warm water on my skin. I’m dying to feel it. I’ll settle for just listening to it run.

  Kneeling, I stop up the tub and start the hot water, watching it swirl over the bath mat. It’s so beautiful. My fingertips skim the top of it like skeeter bugs on a pond.

  Maybe I can just sit in a couple of inches of it.

  I stand up and unlock the bathroom door. My mother is the last person I want to see right now, but I’m not about to have the fire department breaking down my door if I fall and can’t get up.

  Warm steam fills the bathroom. I pick up the orange bottle and move it to the back of the toilet so it won’t fall into the water. It feels nice just touching it.

  When the water reaches about two inches, I turn off the faucet. Then I stand up and let my sweats slide to my ankles. The body sock is harder. It takes a ton of wiggling and heavy breathing to pull my arms out and scooch it down over my hips.

  Of course I consider looking in the mirror at my totally naked self, but the roller coaster ride my stomach takes just thinking about it has me turn back to my first order of business—the tub. Very, very slowly, I step over the side and put my right foot in the water.

  Oh, wow.

  Water.

  I let the amazing warmth of it soak up through my sole, the heat creeping into my ankle, up my calf. Every muscle in my body screams to be in that tub.

  I stay like this for a few minutes, skin tingling, while I gather my wits about me for the next step. It’s a big one. I look around for a way to get into the tub where I don’t have to lift my second foot from the ground.