My Year of Rest and Relaxation

by Ottessa Moshfegh

  “I’m just going to lie here with my eyes closed, Reva. You can stay if you want, but I might fall asleep. I’m really tired.”

  “Yeah, OK,” she said. “But can I keep talking, though?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can I have a cigarette?”

  I waved my hand. I’d never seen Reva so shamelessly unbridled. Even when she drank a lot, she was extremely uptight. I heard her spark the lighter. She coughed for a while.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” she said. She sounded calmer now. “Maybe I can move on and meet somebody new. Maybe I’ll go online again. Or maybe there’ll be someone at the downtown office. I kind of like the Twin Towers. It’s peaceful up there. And I think if I start things off on the right foot, with a whole new group of people, they won’t treat me like a slave. Nobody ever listened to me at Ken’s office. We’d have these strategy meetings, and instead of letting me speak, they’d make me take notes like I’m some nineteen-year-old intern. And Ken treated me like shit at work because he didn’t want people to know we’re involved. Were involved. Isn’t it kind of weird that he brought his wife to my mother’s funeral? Who does that? What was that about?”

  “He’s an idiot, Reva,” I mumbled into my pillow.

  “Whatever. Everything’s going to be different now,” Reva said, putting out her cigarette in the mug. “I had a feeling this was going to happen. I told him I loved him, you know? Of course that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. What a pussy.”

  “Maybe you’ll run into Trevor.”

  “Where?”

  “At the World Trade Center.”

  “I don’t even know what he looks like.”

  “He looks like any other corporate asshole.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “Gross, Reva.”

  “Do you think he still loves you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you wish he did?”

  The answer was yes, but only so that he would feel the pain of me rejecting him.

  “And did I tell you my dad’s been having an affair?” Reva said. “Some client of his named Barbara. A divorcée with no kids. He’s taking her to Boca. Apparently he went in on a timeshare there. He’d been planning it for months. Now I know why he was being so cheap. Cremation? And Florida? Mom dies and suddenly he likes warm weather? I don’t understand him. I wish he had died and not her.”

  “Just wait,” I said.

  “Can I have another Xanax?” Reva asked.

  “I can’t spare another, Reva. Sorry.”

  She was quiet for a while. The air got tense.

  “The only thing I can think to do to make Ken pay for the way he’s jerked me around is to keep it. But I won’t. Anyway, thanks for listening.” She leaned over me on the sofa, kissed my cheek, said, “I love you,” and left.

  So I gathered that Reva was pregnant. I lay on the sofa contemplating that for a while. There was a tiny, living creature in her womb. The product of an accident. A side effect of delusion and sloppiness. I felt sorry for it, all alone, floating in the fluid of Reva’s womb, which I imagined to be full of diet soda, constantly jostled around in her hysterical aerobic workouts and pinched and prodded as she tensed her torso furiously in her Pilates classes. Maybe she should keep the baby, I thought. Maybe a baby would wake her up.

  I got up and took a Solfoton and a Xanax. Now more than ever, a movie would have helped me relax. I turned the TV on—ABC7 news—and off. I didn’t want to hear about a shooting in the Bronx, a gas explosion on the Lower East Side, police cracking down on high school kids jumping the turnstiles in the subway, ice sculptures defaced at Columbus Circle. I got up and took another Nembutal.

  I called Trevor again.

  “It’s me,” is all he let me say before he started talking. It was the same speech he’d given me a dozen times: he’s involved now and can’t see me anymore.

  “Not even as just friends,” he said. “Claudia doesn’t believe in platonic relationships between the sexes, and I’m starting to see that she’s right. And she’s going through a divorce, so it’s a sensitive time. And I really like this woman. She’s incredible. Her son is autistic.”

  “I was just calling to ask if I could borrow some money,” I told him. “My VCR just broke. And I’m horny.”

  I knew I sounded crazy. I could picture Trevor leaning back in his chair, loosening his tie, cock twitching in his lap despite his better judgment. I heard him sigh. “You need money? That’s why you’re calling?”

  “I’m sick and can’t leave my apartment. Can you buy me a new VCR and bring it over? I really need it. I’m on all this medication. I can barely make it to the corner. I can hardly get out of bed.” I knew Trevor. He couldn’t resist me when I was weak. That was the fascinating irony about him. Most men were turned off by neediness, but in Trevor, lust and pity went hand in hand.

  “Look, I can’t deal with you now. I’ve got to go,” he said and hung up.

  That was fair. He could keep his flabby old vagina lady and her retarded kid. I knew how this new affair would play out for him. He’d win her over with a few months of honorable declarations—“I want to be there for you. Please, lean on me. I love you!”—but when something actually difficult happened—her ex-husband sued her for custody, for example—Trevor would start to have doubts. “You’re asking me to sacrifice my own needs for yours—don’t you see how selfish that is?” They’d argue. He’d bolt. He might even call me to apologize for “being cold on the phone the last time we talked. I was under a lot of pressure at the time. I hope we can move past it. Your friendship means a lot to me. I’d hate to lose you.” If he didn’t come over now, I thought, it was just a matter of days. I got up and took a few trazodones and lay back down.

  I called Trevor again. This time when he answered, I didn’t let him say a word.

  “If you’re not over here fucking me in the next forty-five minutes then you can call an ambulance because I’ll be here bleeding to death and I’m not gonna slit my wrists in the tub like a normal person. If you’re not here in forty-five minutes, I’m gonna slit my throat right here on the sofa. And in the meantime, I’m going to call my lawyer and tell him I’m leaving everything in the apartment to you, especially the sofa. So you can lean on Claudia or whoever when it comes time to deal with all that. She might know a good upholsterer.”

  I hung up. I felt better. I called down to the doorman. “My friend Trevor is on his way. Let him up when he gets here.” I unlocked the door to my apartment, turned off my phone and sealed it in Tupperware with packing tape and slid it into the depths of the highest shelf in the cabinet over the sink. I took a few more Ambien, ate the pear, watched a commercial for ExxonMobil and tried not to think of Trevor.

  While I waited, I ticked open a slat in the blinds and saw that it was the dead of night, black and cold and icy, and I thought of all the cruel people out there sleeping soundly, like newborn babes in blankets held to the bosoms of their loving mothers, and thought of my mother’s bony clavicles, the white lace of her bras and white lace of her silk camisoles and slip dresses that she wore under everything, and the white of her terry-cloth robe hanging on the back of her bathroom door, thick and luxurious like the ones at nice hotels, and the gray satin dressing gown whose belt slipped out of its loops because it was slippery silk satin, and it rippled like the water in a river in a Japanese painting, my mother’s taut, pale legs flashing like the white bellies of sun-flashed koi, their fanlike tails stirring the silt and clouding the pond water like a puff of smoke in a magic show, and my mother’s powdered foundation, how when she dipped her fat, rounded brush in it, then lifted it to her wan, sallow face shiny with moisturizer, it also made a puff of smoke, and I remembered watching her “put her face on,” as she called it, and wondering if one day I’d be like her, a beautiful fish in a man-made pool, circling and circling, sur
viving the tedium only because my memory can contain only what is imprinted on the last few minutes of my life, constantly forgetting my thoughts.

  For a moment, a life like that didn’t sound bad at all, so I got up off the sofa and took an Infermiterol, brushed my teeth, went into my room, took off all my clothes, got into bed, pulled the duvet up over my head, and woke up sometime later—a few days, I guessed—gagging and coughing, Trevor’s testicles swinging in my face. “Jesus Christ,” he was mumbling. I was still adrift, dizzy. I closed my eyes and kept them closed, heard the crackling of his hand jerking his spit-covered penis, then felt him ejaculate on my breasts. A drop slid down a ridge between my ribs. I turned away, felt him sit on the edge of the bed, listened to his breathing.

  “I should go,” he said after a minute. “I’ve been here too long again. Claudia will start to worry.”

  I tried to lift my hand to give him the finger, but I couldn’t. I tried to speak but I groaned instead.

  “VCRs are going to be obsolete in a year or two, you know,” he said. Then I heard him in the bathroom, the clink of the seat hitting the tank, a spattering of piss, a flush, then a long rush of water at the sink. He was probably washing off his dick. He came back in and got dressed, then lay down behind me on the bed, spooned me for about twenty seconds. His hands were cold on my breasts, his breath hot on my neck. “This was the last time,” he said, as though he’d been put out, as though he’d done me some huge favor. Then he lurched up off the bed, making my body bounce like a buoy on an empty sea. I heard the door slam.

  I got up, pulled on some clothes, took a few Advil, and dragged the duvet from the bedroom to the sofa. There on the coffee table was a DVD player, still in its box. The sight of it disgusted me, the receipt tucked under the lid. Paid in cash. Trevor would have known I didn’t own any DVDs.

  I put on the Home Shopping Network. In a haze, I ordered a rice cooker from the Wolfgang Puck Bistro Collection, a cubic zirconia tennis bracelet, two push-up bras with silicone inserts, and seven hand-painted porcelain figurines of sleeping babies. I’d give them to Reva, I reasoned, to condole her. Finally, exhausted, I drifted off just a centimeter from my mind, and spent the night on the sofa in fitful half sleep, my bones digging hard into the sagging cushions, my throat itchy and sore, my heart racing and slowing at intervals, my eyes flicking open now and then to make sure I was really alone in the room.

  Six

  IN THE MORNING, I called Dr. Tuttle.

  “I’m having an insomnia flare-up,” I said, which was finally true.

  “I can hear it in your voice,” she said.

  “I’m low on Ambien.”

  “Well, that’s no good. Excuse me while I put the phone down for a moment.” I heard the whoosh of a toilet, some gutteral grunting that I assumed was the sound Dr. Tuttle made when she hoisted up her pantyhose, then a tinkle of water in the sink. She got back on the phone and coughed. “I don’t care what the FDA has to say: a nightmare is just an invitation to rewire your neurocircuits. It’s really a matter of listening to your instincts. People would be so much more at ease if they acted on impulse rather than reason. That’s why drugs are so effective in curing mental illness—because they impair our judgment. Don’t try to think too much. I hear myself saying that a lot these days. Have you been taking your Seroquel?”

  “Every day,” I lied. Seroquel did nothing for me.

  “Ambien withdrawal can be dangerous. As a professional, I must discourage you from operating any heavy machinery—tractors or school buses, whatnot. Did you try the Infermiterol?”

  “Not yet,” I lied again.

  Telling Dr. Tuttle the truth—that the Infermiterol had made me do things out of my nature for days at a time without my knowledge, that the stuff had ruined me for all other medication—would raise too many red flags, I thought. “Blacking out can be a symptom of shame-based disease,” I imagined she would say. “Maybe you’ve been infected by regret. Or Lyme? Syphilis? Diabetes? I’ll need you to see a quote-unquote medical doctor for thorough testing.” That would ruin everything. I needed Dr. Tuttle’s unwavering trust. There was no shortage of psychiatrists in New York City, but finding one as irresponsible and weird as Dr. Tuttle would be a challenge I didn’t think I could handle.

  “Nothing seems to be working,” I told her on the phone. “I’m even losing faith in the Solfoton.”

  “Don’t say that,” Dr. Tuttle muttered, gasping casually. I hoped she’d prescribe something stronger for me, stronger than even Infermiterol. Phenobarbital. DMT. Anything. But in order to procure such a prescription, I had to make it seem like it was Dr. Tuttle’s idea.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I’ve heard from several esteemed colleagues in Brazil that regular Infermiterol use can activate a profound tectonic displacement. Followed up with some filigree work using low doses of aspirin and astral projecting, it’s proven to be quite effective in curing solipsistic terror. If that doesn’t work, we will reevaluate. We may need to rethink our approach to your treatment in general,” she said. “There are alternatives to medication, though they tend to have more disruptive side effects.”

  “Like what?”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  “In what sense?”

  “We’ll cross that road when we come to it. As far as drugs go, the next level up in home-use heavy-sedating anesthetic is a drug called Prognosticrone. I’ve seen it do wonders, but one of its known side effects is foaming at the mouth. Still, we can’t discount the possibility that maybe—now this is rare, in fact, unprecedented in my professional experience—you’ve been misdiagnosed. You might be suffering from something, how shall I put this . . . psychosomatic. Running that risk, I believe we should be conservative.”

  “I’ll try the Infermiterol,” I said curtly.

  “Good. And eat a high-dairy meal each day. Did you know that cows can choose to sleep standing up or lying down? Given the option, I know what I’d pick. Have you ever made yogurt on the stove? Don’t answer that. We’ll save the cooking lesson for our next meeting. Now write this down because I have a feeling you’re too psychotic to remember: Saturday, January twentieth, at two o’clock. And try the Infermiterol. Bye-bye.”

  “Wait,” I said. “The Ambien.”

  “I’ll call it in right away.”

  I hung up and looked at my phone. It was only Sunday, January 7.

  I went to the bathroom and took stock of the medicine cabinet, counting out all my pills on the grimy tile floor. In all, I had two Ambien but thirty more on the way, twelve Rozerem, sixteen trazodone, around ten each of Ativan, Xanax, and Valium, Nembutal, and Solfoton, plus single digit amounts of a dozen random medications that Dr. Tuttle had prescribed only once “because refilling something this peculiar might trigger speculation by the insurance wizards.” In the past, this supply of medication would have been enough for a month of moderate sleeping, nothing too deep if I was conservative with the Ambien. But I knew in my heart that they were all useless now—a collection of foreign currency, a gun with no bullets. The Infermiterol had made all other drugs moot. Maybe it was radiating detoxifying energy into everything on the shelves, I thought, and although I knew that was nonsense, I put all the pills back in the medicine cabinet, but left the Infermiterol bottle out on the dining table, its blue plastic top flashing like a neon light as I looked through the mail. I took a few Nembutal and shot back the dregs of a bottle of Dimetapp.

  I found a notice from the unemployment office: I’d forgotten to call them. The measly payments were running out anyway, so it wasn’t a huge loss. I threw the notice in the trash. There was a postcard from my dentist reminding me to come in for my yearly cleaning. Trash. There was the bill from Dr. Tuttle for my missed appointment—a handwritten postcard on the back of an index card. “November 12th no show fee: $300.” She’d probably forgotten all about it by now. I put it aside. I threw away a
coupon to a new Middle Eastern restaurant on Second Avenue. I threw away spring catalogues from Victoria’s Secret, from J. Crew, from Barneys. An old water shut-off notice from the super. More junk. I opened up last month’s debit card statement and skimmed through all the charges. I found nothing out of the ordinary—mostly ATM withdrawals at the bodega. Only a few hundred dollars at Bloomingdale’s. Maybe I had stolen the white fox fur coat, I thought.

  And there was a Christmas card from Reva: “During this hard time, you’ve been there for me. I don’t know what I’d do without a friend like you to weather life’s ups and downs. . . .” It was as poorly composed as the aborted eulogy she’d given for her mother. I threw it away.

  I hesitated to open a letter from the estate lawyer, worried that it would be a bill that I’d have to pay, which would require that I find my checkbook and go out into the world to buy a stamp. But I took a deep breath and saw stars and opened the letter anyway. It was a brief handwritten note.

  “I’ve tried to reach you by phone several times but it seems your mailbox is full. I hope you had a happy holiday. The professor is moving out. I think you should put the house on the market rather than look for a new tenant. Financially speaking, you’re better off selling and putting the money into stocks. Otherwise it’s just going to sit there empty.”

  A waste of space, he was saying.

  But when I closed my eyes and pictured the house in that moment, it wasn’t empty. The pastel depths of my mother’s swollen closet lured me back. I went inside and peeked out between her hanging silk blouses at the rough beige carpeting of her bedroom, the cream ceramic lamp on her nightstand. My mother. And then I traveled up the hall, through the French doors, into my father’s study: a dried plum pit on a tea saucer, his huge gray computer blinking neon green, a stack of papers he’d marked in red, mechanical pencils, yellow legal pads that flared open like daffodils. Journals and magazines and newspapers and manila folders, gummy pink erasers that struck me suddenly as somehow genital. Squat glass bottles of Canada Dry a quarter full. A chipped crystal dish of oxidizing paper clips, loose change, a crumpled lozenge wrapper, a button he had meant to sew back onto a shirt but never did. My father.