You're Not You

by Michelle Wildgen

  I reached over and adjusted the fan so it blew right at me. I was sweating but hadn’t quite gathered the energy to shower yet. I gave myself another five minutes and closed my eyes.

  Church would not have been so bad except that I had told my mom I was going to attend St. Patrick’s every week. I had this idea that if I went to church I’d get involved in a group of some sort, or volunteer a bit. And maybe I just liked the idea of starting each Sunday with something welcoming and uplifting. When I informed my mother, she paused for what seemed to me an inordinately long time and then responded, “Well. That’s nice. Is there any particular reason why you chose to do this through church?”

  My reasons seemed too vague to enumerate, plus I knew she’d suggest I volunteer at Planned Parenthood like she did if I really felt the urge, and I only wanted to try something different from what my mother would have done. But instead of saying so, I found myself on a minor tirade about the enigma that is faith. She responded skeptically. I admit the resolution struck me soon after Christmas, around the time or just after I had met Liam (my parents did not know that part), and the urge waned almost by the end of the first sermon, but out of sheer stubbornness I went every week for a month. It soon became clear I didn’t really want to join the Bible study groups or volunteer in the cry room, my atheist mother was scrupulously silent on the topic, and Liam often had free time on Sunday mornings while his wife met her book club. Lent came, the season for sacrifice, and I gave up church.

  The whole thing had left me unsettled. My visits to Kelly Jervis notwithstanding, kindness and concern for my fellow man seemed to be playing a pretty minor role in my life. Jill, who probably should have been my mother’s daughter, not only had volunteered at the nursing home but voted Democratic and was forever forwarding me informative e-mails from NOW. Everyone else on campus seemed energetically outraged by any number of causes, papering the walls with flyers and meeting announcements and petitions. All those causes always mattered to me when I thought about them, but they didn’t light a fire in me as they did in other people. I had always thought of myself as aware and thoughtful, but since January it had begun to occur to me that most people believed this of themselves, even as they cheated on their lovers and averted their eyes from the homeless. You could ask a wife beater if he was a good person, and he’d probably say yes. What if I was really one of them, convinced I had sound reasons for everything I did? The fact was, I could have worked at a soup kitchen whether I went to church or not, yet I didn’t. And I could have dated plenty—at least a few—available guys my own age, but instead I sneaked around with Liam, and what was more, I liked it. I wanted to think there was goodness in me, some tough silvery cord of it like a second spine—hidden in its furrow, but resilient.

  From behind Jill’s door I heard her opening and closing drawers, humming, the whine of the blow dryer. She and I had lived together for more than a year, but we closed our doors carefully. If we were wrapped in towels after a shower, we darted from room to room. We knew so much about each other that at times, beers in our hands and the television on in the background, we looked at one another and realized we had told all the stories already. We had trotted out each of our Regretted Boyfriends as many times as we could, had teased one another about our families as far as it could go without offending. We had grown up together; our parents were friends, and we knew the same people. When we needed a rest from each other the air in our apartment became prickly with static and awareness. We might each be closed in our bedrooms, but we were still alert to the other person there, as though we could hear each other’s voices in our heads as we puttered, naked, in our rooms or unzipped our boyfriends’ jeans. That hadn’t bothered me so much in the past, but now, since Liam, I sometimes felt her disapproval move through the place like a chill breeze, even if she wasn’t there.

  THE TERRACE BY LAKE Mendota was packed. There were families with toddlers, people with puppies, college students, couples in their sixties. A band was setting up onstage, and the air smelled of grilling bratwurst, hamburgers, and a yeasty waft of beer. There were three extra bars set up around the terrace every night in the summer, since the indoor bar could barely deal with the students alone. Plus this was the wildest week of the year: Everyone had finished finals but hadn’t left town for the summer yet. There were groups of students sprawled out over picnic tables, their feet in each other’s laps, and it seemed like a lot of people were blowing leisurely plumes of smoke up at the sky. The occasional cheer erupted from various tables. I waved to a couple of my professors as they strolled past, holding hands with their little-seen and much-imagined spouses. They looked as happy to be done with us as we were with them—maybe even more so. Personally, I had a tendency to develop a sudden rush of affection for a professor once the semester ended.

  We picked our way through the crowded metal tables and throngs of people. The lake water smelled rich and a little fetid near the edge, where the algae coated the surface in a mossy sludge. I had borrowed one of Jill’s thin dresses, which was long on me but felt good anyway in the breeze off the water. Now that we were here, my skirt blowing around my legs and my hair pushed off my neck, everything—Living with ALS, the next morning, when I would have to get up and go back to Kate’s all over again—seemed very far away. I didn’t have to think of any of that right now.

  Next to me Jill slowed her usual stride to a lazy stroll. She stood a good five inches taller, nearing six feet where I was five six, and as a result her broad shoulders and rounded arms seemed powerful instead of plump, which they might have on a shorter girl. Beneath her chin was a firm little pad of flesh. To work she wore thin dark dresses, short-sleeved or sleeveless, hitting mid-thigh, that showed the curve of her belly and the nick of her bra in her sides. Right now she was wearing a red sleeveless shirt and faded jeans, earrings dangling near her shoulders. She kept her scarlet hair, which sometimes bore a sharply delineated gold-brown growth at the roots, in ponytails and upsweeps stabbed with carved sticks. She was vivid, solid, both muscular and soft-fleshed, and next to her I often felt boyish and pallid—my skin pale and freckled, my hair a plain brown instead of, say, raven. I probably fell under the “natural” category, and most of the time I was fine with that. I looked more like I’d hike than shop, but at least I was tall and slim enough to wear what I wanted, if I ever wanted to try something besides denim. Sometimes I looked at my face, the pale eyes and rounded nose with a sprinkle of freckles, and thought I was genuinely pretty. But for some reason I never did much to heighten or shape it—I found it preferable to believe I had a certain amount of raw material, if only I attended to it someday.

  We stopped to buy beers at one of the outdoor bars. Jill paid for the first round. I would get the next—this was our system. Earlier that week I had worked one last shift at the restaurant before starting at Kate’s, yielding about fifty dollars. It didn’t seem like enough to bother putting in savings, so I’d brought it all with me.

  I set aside money each summer, meant to cushion me so I could work only part-time during school. When my mother had presented me with this plan three years ago, at the end of high school—that my parents would pay for tuition and maybe one other major expense, leaving the rest up to me—it seemed foolproof. In high school I got twenty dollars a week for an allowance and worked at a drugstore Monday night and Saturday afternoon and believed myself to be swimming in money. And every summer since then I thought I could save enough. I banked cash smugly, swinging by the drive-through every Saturday morning. But each year my savings cushion began a little limper than I meant it to, and this year I was determined to save up at least a thousand more than I usually did. Jill wasn’t going to take it well if she had to spot me for utilities again.

  I could have picked up more hours at the restaurant instead of job hunting, but it was so oppressive and dark, all clattering silverware and swearing line cooks. Each shift I blinked as the gloom and cigarette smoke descended on me at the door, my hands thrust blindly toward the f
lickering television suspended above the bar. Jill said I came home smelling of Kools, beef blood, and a collective item she referred to only as “the fried.” Plus I hated the bar crowd, all menthol cigarettes and cheap tap beer, several hours a night, five nights a week. At first that didn’t seem so awful. They were just people getting out there and chatting with the bartender. We all want a social life. For a time I had hung out at the bar after work, too, drinking half-price brandy oldfashioneds and spooning out the mashed fruit and sugar from the slushy bottom of each glass as though they were vitamins. If I had upped my hours at the steak house for the summer, Labor Day would probably have found me wheezing and cirrhotic, my meals reduced to the occasional glob of ketchup licked from a spoon.

  What had really gotten me reading want ads was when I had to take dinner orders from one of the regulars, a widower in his early seventies with a shock of white hair and thin, long hands. He always asked for a hot dog or grilled cheese with french fries and ketchup. These items came off the kids’ menu. He invariably sat in the same seat at the bar, taking careful bites of pickle and dipping the corner of his sandwich into a pool of ketchup on the rim of his plate.

  I don’t know why that bothered me the way it did. So he wanted grilled cheese and fries. So what. And why shouldn’t I see his request for an extra dill pickle (I made the kitchen give him two, then three, then four) as a tiny, simple pleasure rather than the only one he had? Jill thought I was reading too much into it, and I probably was, but I started looking through the paper anyway.

  On Tuesday I had taken an odd pleasure in serving carafes of red wine and reciting salad dressings and potato preparations, marching underdone steaks back to the kitchen for another searing. It was my last night, for a while anyway, at something I knew how to do so well, joking with the customers, knowing by instinct when to check on which tables. Till today I’d forgotten how hard it was to start from nothing at a new job, how much time you spent with your hands clasped behind your back, the avalanche of details to memorize.

  We were supposed to be looking for our group but were walking along the lake instead. We’d been quiet for a while, looking around, getting our bearings, and settling into the prospect of an evening out. I was feeling all right again.

  “Hey, how was your date?” I asked.

  She fished a lemon wedge out of her paper cup of weiss beer and sucked on it thoughtfully. “I think when you ask someone out you should prime yourself first,” she said. “By watching the news or, say, leaving your fraternity house once a week.”

  “Another frat guy?”

  She nodded, laughing, and dropped the lemon back into her cup. “I should stop agreeing in the first place, but they seem to like me, for some reason.”

  “You seem adventurous,” I suggested. We passed a table full of tanned, wiry guys in ratty T-shirts and shorts, the shaggy kind who always have carabiners hooked to their backpacks. One of them gave us a big grin and raised a glass. I smiled back but kept walking. “You hold the promise of tattoos.”

  “Maybe. But every sorority girl has a clover on her ankle or her ass, so maybe not. Anyway, we just had nothing to work with together, you know? It was like trying to crochet with your feet.”

  We were just past the stage, heading toward the concessions stand and pondering a bratwurst, when Jill made a little noise, a soft Oh, and then she said instantly, “Did I tell you what the intern did today?” She turned to look me in the face, her lips slightly pursed and her eyes open a shade too wide. As I looked past her I saw what she’d been trying to distract me from: a table full of people, several pitchers of beer in the center, including Liam and a dark-haired woman I knew had to be his wife.

  “At least put on your sunglasses,” Jill murmured. I did, still watching. Their chairs were close to each other, Liam’s arm draped over the back of hers. His hand was moving thoughtlessly through her hair, which was dark and gleaming, one of those expensive cuts that’s designed to look effortless. She was in a red top and black skirt, and to me her gestures seemed definitive and assured, her earrings showing through her hair. She was large-breasted and curvy, a few inches shorter than Liam. I would have towered over her.

  She was totally different from what I’d imagined. Maybe wives always are. I had had two conflicting but equally fanciful images of her—either tall and slim and sleek-haired, always in a suit, or an English Rose in chintz dresses with dropped waists and tortoiseshell headbands. In truth she looked sweet, confident rather than tough. I was thinner, but she had breasts, real breasts, a trim upturned nose, and a small red mouth. Who knew what Liam saw in me? Maybe he liked frizzy dark curls and light blue eyes. Maybe he saw me as willowy instead of gangly.

  I knew, from little things Liam had mentioned, that his wife liked the blues and drank Guinness. She was a lawyer, and she was putting him through graduate school. None of this fit with my preconceptions about a wounded wife. But she sounds cool, I once protested to Liam. Shouldn’t she be the sort who likes peonies and spritzers?

  What the hell are you talking about? he answered. Who drinks spritzers?

  You know what I mean, I’d mumbled and he sighed and said, It’s complicated.

  I can’t believe you trotted that one out, I told him.

  Jill and I were still walking, though I had slowed down, and as they passed out of my sight I finished my beer and pushed back my sunglasses again. She was quiet.

  “It’s not like I didn’t expect it to happen at some point,” I said defensively. I didn’t sound very convincing.

  Jill nodded and looked away again as we walked. “I saw her once or twice,” she said. “I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Why not?” I asked. I hated the idea of being protected.

  “Oh, did you want me to mention it every time I saw her?” Jill retorted. “I thought you were still pretending she didn’t exist.” She picked up her pace, the impact of her heels on the concrete sounding in her voice. Her earrings swung, a tag of hair loosened from her twist flapping up and down.

  I sped up too. “This isn’t some big drama. It’s just going on, and at some point it’ll quit and no one will know. It happens all the time.” In truth, for all our careful planning, I could never quite believe it counted. I didn’t think we were old enough, Liam and I, to make adultery a meaningful transgression. Deep down I thought it only mattered if you had been together for twenty years, or had a child. They had not even been married all that long—five years? four? Who knew how long it took for marriage to really take?—and if this affair was so dreadful our meetings should all feel worse than they did, tougher and more ominous.

  “Okay,” said Jill. “I know I’m being a pain. It’s up to you.” She glanced back over her shoulder at their table. I did too. They were barely visible now: just the tops of their heads, a hand on a shoulder. “She’s pretty,” Jill said neutrally. I didn’t answer. If I had thought I would get a sympathetic distraction from her, I was wrong. I knew I had no room to push it. I knew what this woman’s hair smelled like, I was thinking. If I were to guess from Liam’s plain gold band, I’d bet her wedding ring was smooth and thick, her engagement ring a plain round solitaire.

  Jill saw someone and waved. A few of our friends had found a table on the upper part of the terrace and we started making our way back to them. She glanced over her shoulder at me, held out a hand, and said, “Come on, Becklet.”

  I OUGHT TO HAVE gotten a good six hours of sleep that night, but after the Union we went to a bar where I pilfered from a communal basket of cheese curds and watched Jill play pool with Nathan, a kid who’d been in our dorm freshman year. The four-beer urge to phone Liam hit me around eleven, but Jill, reliably, shamed me out of it. I resisted the temptation but felt anxious and disconnected from everyone anyway.

  They all said the same thing when I told them about the new job, feeling modest and quietly virtuous as I did, as if I were reading to the blind in my spare time. “Ah,” they’d said, nodding. Then, “At least she’s married.”
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br />   Phrases from the ALS book kept coming back to me: It is a mistake to let one partner take on too much caregiving responsibility. Who else was going to do it? I could imagine how that dictum would be hard to violate. How did the healthy person force herself to look the other one straight in the face and say, “I’m restless. I think I’ll go play some tennis”?

  By midnight it was obvious that the night had gathered steam into a genuine bender. I wasn’t sure anymore if I was really having fun or just simulating it, but either way I was glad to be out of a quiet house, among people and loud music. Sometime around one, as I watched Jill and Nathan play a game of pool, Nathan reminded me I had to get up early for work. I just snorted. Even I could hear it was a hateful sound. Don’t be afraid to make your needs clear to a caregiver. Now is not the time for shyness. Something bitter that had edged around me all night took hold, and I gave up my virtuous pretense and said, “Look, I basically just live this woman’s life with her. For her, whatever. And fuck it, I can do that with a hangover.”

  “I thought you liked her,” Jill said. She took a shot and missed. The end of their pool game had been going on for half an hour.

  “I think I do,” I said, leaning against the table. “As far as I know, anyway. She seems pretty nice.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  I watched Nathan’s cue ball sail smoothly into the corner pocket near my hand. I didn’t know quite what to say to that. I don’t know what will happen to this woman, I could have explained. I don’t know what I’ve agreed to. Instead I told Jill we had to get out of there before I had anything else to drink.

  But news of our departure was received as an invitation. People trailed along after our cab, and a moment after we’d walked into our apartment and turned on the fans to cool it down, we heard the familiar roar of our friends’ decrepit cars in the driveway. They came in with fresh packs of cigarettes and a new case of beer they’d gone to Maple Bluff to buy since the Madison liquor stores closed at nine, and when someone has gone to that sort of trouble you have to let them in for at least a token beer. A pizza delivery was set in motion. The television and the stereo were turned on; Jill moved the trash can to the middle of the room for empties, and scattered around tin ashtrays stolen from a fast-food joint. We were settling in, and I had no intention of removing myself to get some sleep. The last thing I remembered was Jill coming out of the kitchen toward where I lay sprawled across three people on the couch. She was holding out a vodka tonic in a red plaid thermos in one ringed hand and smiling kindly down at me.