My Year of Rest and Relaxation

by Ottessa Moshfegh

  “No,” I answered, and raised my hands to touch my eyes.

  She reached down into a paper shopping bag and pulled out four sample bottles of Infermiterol. “Double your dosage. These are ten milligram tablets. Take two,” she said, and slid the boxes across her desk. “If vanity is going to keep you up at night, let me just say, it’s a very minor slant.”

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE CAB HOME, I looked at myself in the reflection of the tinted windows. My face was perfectly aligned: Dr. Tuttle was obviously crazy.

  In the gold-tone doors of the elevator up to my apartment, I still looked good. I looked like a young Lauren Bacall the morning after. I’m a disheveled Joan Fontaine, I thought. Unlocking the door to my apartment, I was Kim Novak. “You’re prettier than Sharon Stone,” Reva would have said. She was right. I went to the sofa, clicked the TV on. George Walker Bush was taking his oath of office. I watched him squint and give his monologue. “Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats; it is a call to conscience.” What the hell did that mean? That Americans should take the blame for all the ills of the world? Or just our own world? Who cared?

  And then, as though I’d summoned her with my mundane cynicism, Reva was knocking on my door once again. I answered somewhat gratefully.

  “Well, I scheduled the abortion,” she said, rushing past me into the living room. “I need you to tell me I’m doing the right thing.”

  “I ask you to be citizens: Citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens building communities of service and a nation of character.”

  “This Bush is so much cuter than the last. Isn’t he? Like a rascal puppy.”

  “Reva, I’m not feeling well.”

  “Well, neither am I,” she said. “I just want to wake up and it all be over, and I never have to think about this again. I’m not going to tell Ken. Unless I feel like I should. But only after. Do you think he’ll feel bad? Oh, I feel sick. Oh, I feel terrible.”

  “Do you want something to take the edge off?”

  “God, yes.”

  I pulled one of the Infermiterol samples Dr. Tuttle had given me from the pocket of my fur coat. I was curious if Reva would respond to it the same way I had.

  “What are these?”

  “Samples.”

  “Samples? Is that legal?”

  “Yes, Reva, of course it’s legal.”

  “But what is this, In-fer-mit-er-ol?” She looked at the box and tore it open.

  “It’s a numbing aid,” I answered.

  “Sounds good. I’ll try anything. Do you think Ken still might love me?”

  “No.”

  I watched her face flash with fury, then cool. She shook out a pill and held it in the palm of her hand. Was her face at a deviant angle? Was everyone’s? Were my eyes crooked? Reva bent over and picked a hair elastic up off the floor.

  “Can I borrow this?” I nodded. She put the pill down and fixed her hair. “Maybe I could look it up when I get home. In-fer-mit—”

  “Jesus. It’s fine, Reva. And you can’t look it up,” I said, although I’d never tried. “It’s not on the market yet. Psychiatrists always have samples. The drug companies send them. That’s how it works.”

  “Does she ever get Topamax samples? Skinny pills?”

  “Reva, please.”

  “So you’re saying it’s safe.”

  “Of course it’s safe. My doctor gave me it.”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “I can’t really say,” I said, which was the truth.

  “Hmmm.”

  I couldn’t be honest with Reva. If I’d admitted to having blackouts, she would have wanted to discuss it endlessly. I couldn’t stand the prospect of watching her shake her head in horrified awe, then try to hold my hand. “Tell me everything!” she’d cry, salivating. Poor Reva. She might actually have thought I was capable of sharing things. “Friends forever?” She’d want us to make some sacred pact. She always wanted to make pacts. “Let’s make a pact to have brunch at least twice a month. Let’s promise to go for a walk through Central Park every Saturday. Let’s have a daily call-time. Will you swear to take a ski trip this year? It burns so many calories.”

  “Reva,” I said. “It’s a sleeping pill. Take it and go to sleep. Give yourself a break from your Ken obsession.”

  “It’s not an obsession. It’s a medical procedure. I’ve never had an abortion before. Have you?”

  “Do you want to feel better or not?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Don’t leave the house after you take it. And don’t tell anyone about it.”

  “Why? Because you think they’re illegal? Because you think your doctor is some kind of drug dealer?”

  “God, no. Because Dr. Tuttle gave the Infermiterol to me, not you. People aren’t supposed to share medications. If you have a heart attack, it would trace back to her. I don’t want to mess up my relationship with her over some lawsuit. Maybe you shouldn’t take it.”

  “Do you think it could hurt me to take it? Or hurt the baby?”

  “You care about hurting the baby?”

  “I don’t want to kill it while it’s still inside of me,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes, took the bottle from where she’d left it on the coffee table, shook one out. “I’ll take one, too.” I opened my mouth, threw the pill back. I swallowed.

  “Fine,” Reva said, and pulled a Diet 7UP from her purse. She placed the Infermiterol onto her tongue like Holy Communion and sucked down half the can.

  “What do we do now?”

  I didn’t answer. I just sat down on the sofa and flipped through the channels until I found one that wasn’t covering the inauguration. Reva moved from the armchair to sit next to me to watch TV.

  “Saved by the Bell!” Reva said.

  We sat and watched together, Reva chatting every now and then. “I don’t feel anything, do you?” and then, “Why bother having a kid when the world’s just going to hell anyway?” and then, “I hate Tiffani-Amber Thiessen. She’s so trailer park. You know she’s only five foot five? I knew a girl who looked like her in middle school. Jocelyn. She wore dangly earrings before anyone else.” And then, “Can I ask you something? I’ve been sitting on it for a while. Just don’t get angry. But I need to ask you. I wouldn’t be a good friend otherwise.”

  “Go ahead, Reva. Ask me anything.”

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN I WOKE UP three days later, I was still at home, on the sofa, in my fur coat. The TV was off and Reva was gone. I got up and drank water from the kitchen sink. Either Reva or I had taken out the trash. It was strangely quiet and clean in the apartment. And there was a yellow Post-it note left for me on the refrigerator.

  “Today is the first day of the rest of your life! xoxo”

  I had no idea what I’d said to inspire Reva to leave me such a patronizing note of encouragement. Maybe I’d made a pact with her in my blackout: “Let’s be happy! Let’s live every day like it’s our last!” Barf. I got up and snatched the note off the fridge and crumpled it in my fist. That made me feel a little better. I ate a cup of vanilla Stonyfield yogurt that I hadn’t remembered buying.

  I decided to take a few Xanax, just to calm myself down. But when I opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, my pills were gone. Each and every bottle had disappeared.

  My stomach dropped. I went slightly deaf.

  “Hello?”

  Reva had taken my pills, of course. I had no doubt. All she’d had left for me was a single dose of Benadryl in the foil blister, a one-inch square containing two measly antihistamines. I picked it up in disbelief and shut the door to the cabinet. My face in the mirror startled me. I leaned in and looked to see if it had shifted anymore since Dr. Tuttle’s weird assessment. I did look
different. I couldn’t put my finger on how, but there was something that hadn’t been there before. What was it? Had I entered the new dimension? Ridiculous. I opened the cabinet again. The pills had not magically reappeared.

  I’d never known Reva to be so bold. Maybe I’d tried to hide the pills from myself, I thought. I started opening drawers and cabinets in the hallway, in the kitchen. I hoisted myself up and stood on the counter, looking into the back reaches of the shelves. There was nothing there. I looked in the bedroom, in the drawer of my bedside table, under my bed. I pulled everything out of the closet, found nothing, and piled everything back in. I sifted through my drawers. I went back into the living room and unzipped the cases of the sofa cushions. Maybe I’d stuffed the pills inside the frame, I thought. But why would I do that? I found my phone charging in the bedroom and called Reva. She didn’t answer.

  “Reva,” I said into her voice mail. She was a coward, I thought. She was an idiot.

  “Are you a medical doctor? Are you some kind of expert? If my shit isn’t back in that medicine cabinet by tonight, we are done. Our friendship is over. I will never want to see you again. That is, if I’m even alive. Did it occur to you that you might not know the whole story behind my condition? And that there would be harmful consequences if I just all of a sudden stopped taking my medicine? If I don’t take it, I could go into seizures, Reva. Aneurysms. Neurotic shock. OK? Total cellular collapse! You’d feel pretty sorry if I died because of you. I don’t know how you’d live with yourself then. How much puke and StairMaster would it take to get over something like that, huh? You know that killing someone you love is the ultimate self-destructive act. Grow up, Reva. Is this a cry for help? It’s pretty fucking pathetic, if it is. Anyway, call me back. I’m waiting. And honestly, I don’t feel very well.”

  I took the two Benadryl, sat back down on the sofa and turned on the television.

  “In a sweeping vote of one hundred to zero, the Senate has confirmed Mitch Daniels as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for the freshly minted Bush administration. Fifty-one-year-old Daniels has been a senior vice president for Eli Lilly and Company, the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant.”

  I turned the channel.

  “Negotiations began this week between Hollywood’s screenwriters and production executives, trying to head off a possible strike that could result in a TV-film shutdown and in thousands of writers having no business in show business. The tremendous impact of such a strike would be felt most profoundly in television, where viewers could be left watching virtually nothing with a script.”

  That didn’t sound so bad. Was the Benadryl working?

  Then I noticed that there was another Post-it note affixed to the top of the broken VCR. The horror of that thing! Probably another trite message from Reva encouraging me to “live life to the fullest,” I expected. I got up and plucked it off. Trite it was: “Everything you can imagine is real.—Pablo Picasso.” But it was not Reva’s handwriting. It took me a moment to place it. It was Ping Xi’s.

  I ran to the toilet.

  My puke came up as sour, milk-flavored syrup. A little splashed up into my face. I saw a swirl of neon pink as the two Benadryl I’d swallowed plunked down into the water. A few days earlier, I might have tried to fish them out, but they had mostly dissolved anyway. Let them go, I told myself. Besides, two Benadryl were a joke. Like blowing a snot rocket at a forest fire. Like trying to tame a lion by sending it a postcard. I flushed and sat down on the cold tile. The room spun for a moment, the floor bobbed up and down like the deck of a ship rising in a swell. I felt sick. I needed something. Without it, I’d go crazy. I’d die, I believed. I turned up the ringer on my phone so it would be as loud as possible when Reva called. I stood up slowly. I brushed my teeth. My face in the mirror was red and wet with sweat. This was anger. This was bitter fear.

  I sat back down on the sofa and stared at the TV screen and put my feet up on the coffee table. I crumpled the idiotic Post-it Ping Xi had left me. Then I put it on my tongue and let it dissolve slowly as my mouth filled with spit. Sybil was playing on the Turner Classic Movies channel. I was determined to remain calm. I chewed and swallowed the soggy paper bit by bit. “Sally Field is bulimic,” Reva would have told me had she been in the room. “She’s been candid about it. Jane Fonda, too. But everybody knows that. Remember her thighs in those exercise videos? They were not natural.”

  “Oh, shut up, Reva.”

  “I love you.”

  Maybe she did, and that’s why I hated her.

  I wondered, would my mother have been better off if I had stolen all her pills, as Reva had stolen all of mine? Reva was lucky to be plagued only by the image of her mother’s burning body. “Individual pans.” At least her mother’s body was ruined. It didn’t exist anymore. My dead mother was lying in a coffin, a shriveled skeleton. I still felt like she was up to something down there, bitter and suffering as the flesh on her body withered and sank away from her bones. Did she blame me? We buried her in a carnation pink Thierry Mugler suit. Her hair was perfect. Her lipstick was perfect, blood red, Christian Dior 999. If I unearthed her now, would the lipstick have faded? Either way, she’d be a stiff husk, like the sloughed-off exoskeleton of a huge insect. That was what my mother was. What if I’d flushed away all those prescriptions before I went back to school, poured all her alcohol down the sink? Did she secretly want me to do that? Would that have made her happy for once? Or would it have pushed her further away? “My own daughter!” I sensed a bit of remorse in me. It smelled like pennies in the room, I thought. The air tasted like when you test a battery with your tongue. Cold and electric. “I’m not fit to occupy space. Excuse me for living.” Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe I was having a stroke. I wanted Xanax. I wanted Klonopin. Reva had even taken my empty bottle of chewable peppermint melatonin. How could she?

  In my mind, I made a list of pills I wanted to take and then I imagined taking them. I cupped my hand and plucked the invisible pills out of my palm. I swallowed them one by one. It didn’t work. I started sweating. I went back to the kitchen and drank water from the tap, then stuck my head in the freezer and found a bottle of Jose Cuervo wrapped in a crinkly white plastic bag. I was glad it wasn’t a human head. I drank the tequila and glared at Reva’s Polaroid picture. Then I remembered that I had a set of keys to her apartment.

  * * *

  • • •

  I HADN’T BEEN TO the Upper West Side in several years, not since the last time I’d been over to Reva’s. It felt safe in that part of town, sobering. The buildings were heavier. The streets were wider. Nothing there had really changed since I’d graduated from Columbia. Westside Market. Riverside Park. 1020. The West End. Cheap pizza by the slice. Maybe that’s why Reva loved it, I thought. Cheap binges. Bulimia was pricey if you had fine taste. I always thought it was pathetic that Reva had chosen to stay in the area after graduation, but passing through it in the cab, in my frenzied state of despair, I understood: there was stability in living in the past.

  I rang Reva’s buzzer at her building on West Ninety-eighth a few times. Ativan would be nice, I thought. And strangely I was craving lithium, too. And Seroquel. A few hours of drooling and nausea sounded like cleansing torture before hitting the sleep hard—on Ambien, Percocet, one stray Vicodin I’d been sitting on. I was thinking I’d get my pills from Reva’s, go home, and then I could hit the sleep for ten straight hours, get up, have a glass of water, a little snack, then ten straight more. Please!

  I buzzed again and waited, imagining Reva trudging up the block toward her building with a dozen bags of groceries from D’Agostino’s, shock and shame on her face when she saw me waiting for her, arms laden with brownie mix and ice cream and chips and cake or whatever it was Reva liked to eat and vomit up so much. The nerve of her. The hypocrisy. I paced in circles around her crummy little vestibule, punching at her buzzer violently. I couldn’t wait. I had her spa
re keys. I let myself in.

  Going up the stairs, I smelled vinegar. I smelled cleaning detergent. I thought I smelled piss. A mauve-colored cat sat on the second-floor railing like an owl. “Fussing with animals in dreams can have primitive and violent consequences,” Dr. Tuttle had said to me once, petting her fat, snoring tabby. I felt like pushing the cat down the stairwell when I reached the landing. The look in its eye was so smug. I knocked on the door to Reva’s apartment. I heard no voices, just the wind howling. I expected to find Reva in her apartment wearing pink flannel pajamas with cartoon bunnies on them and furry pink slippers, in some weird sugar coma, perhaps, or crying hysterically because she was “at a loss for how to handle reality,” or whatever garbage she was feeling. The silver key opened her apartment door. I walked inside.

  “Hello?”

  I could have sworn I smelled puke in the darkness.

  “Reva, it’s me,” I said. “Your best friend.”

  I flicked up the light switch by the door, casting the place in a sweltering blush-hued glow. Pink lighting? The place was messy, silent, stuffy, just as I remembered it. “Reva? Are you in here?” A five-pound weight propped open the one window in the living room, but no air was coming through. A ThighMaster hung from the curtain rod, a floral drape bunched and pinned to the side with a Chip Clip.