One year turned to the next, turned to the next like a slow, lazy river, so blended she hardly noticed it until one day in the shower, she realized with a start she could hardly remember all those buzzwords. She’d repeat them to herself—dynamic, paradigm, deliverables—her vocabulary her last tether to the corporate world she belonged in, not this messy, dirty, vomit and shit and therapy and meltdown world she actually lived.
On a Good Day, though, she could hold it all together. Today, she was unmoored, her thoughts black. There would be no prime of her life. There would be no empty nest, no golden years, no deep-breath-get-through-it, no reward at the end, no prize from the game. The interminability of it got to her. She was Sisyphus on a forever-climbing mountain. When she gave in to self-pity, which wasn’t often, she could wallow better than anyone. Wallowing was a skill, really. Some did it with drinking, or drugs, even chocolate or soap operas. Before Gabe, Alecia wallowed at the mall.
She wound her way to the register, plucking a pair of gray pumps along the way. The tags were bent and damp from her hand, and she handed them to the clerk who thankfully rang them up without any patter. In the mall, Alecia stopped at a kiosk. Bright lipsticks and blushes and powders and creams.
“You like?” The attendant smiled, a flash of white teeth against creamy red lips. Alecia nodded and sat in the chair, the leather cool under her thighs. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend she was on her lunch break. That Rick wanted a balance sheet for last quarter for the Smithfield account, that she had to hurry up so she could work some creative accounting with the rest of her lunch hour. That she had to pick up a birthday card for Tanya from marketing and get it circulating. And maybe a cake.
When the attendant was done, Alecia opened her eyes, and all she saw was her own reflection, unrecognizable.
“I look happy,” she blurted.
“It’s not magic. You must be happy.” The other woman laughed and pushed small jars into Alecia’s palm. Alecia held out her credit card and watched her swipe it. She felt sick. What was she doing? She added it all up in her head. Over four hundred dollars. That was a half a month’s worth of copays for Gabe’s medication. A week of yoga therapy. Three days of horse therapy at a hundred bucks a pop.
In the parking lot, she sat in her car with the door open. The air was hot for April, too hot, but the parking lot was empty. All those fucking birds had scared everyone away. She sat in the driver’s seat with her head between her knees and vomited onto the pavement. She moved her feet, keeping her new gray heels out of the mess. When she was done, she turned on the car, blasted the air conditioner right into her face.
She picked up her phone and dialed. “Hi. I miss you and I might be cracking up. Can I come over?”
• • •
Bridget’s house was a home. A sweeping wraparound porch that enveloped everyone inside like a hug, drooping wisteria framing the door, filling the air with a sweet, flowery perfume. Painted a sunny yellow, the house had twin turrets, a rickety second-floor balcony, and wide stained-glass windows. While Alecia had always struggled with decorating, Bridget seemed to embrace it like some kind of goddamn earth mother.
Alecia and Nate’s small townhouse sat in a busy development, picked as a starter home when, with her burgeoning belly, she thought a neighborhood kid was in her future. She envisioned her son, at ten years old, taking off on his bike till the twilight hours, circling the endless cul-de-sacs, while the parents drank margaritas and grilled steak.
When it was obvious that Alecia wasn’t going to become the suburban housewife she’d always dreamed about, she stopped caring about their home. No, that’s not right. She still cared. It was clean. It was reasonably put together. The furniture was mostly of the Target and Walmart variety, the Pottery Barn catalogs collecting dust in the corner until they found their way to the trash can. It was hard to justify spending a thousand dollars on a coffee table when Gabe would probably just break it anyway.
Bridget tackled homemaking like a hobby, collecting unique, expensive antique steamer trunks and butter churners. An entire wall in her kitchen was hung with nineteenth-century small appliances: whisks and egg beaters and salt boxes and bread peels. Little clanky metal things that Alecia didn’t know the names for. The wide-plank floors were covered in braided rugs and every flat surface held a knickknack. The house always smelled like freshly baked muffins, even though Bridget swore she couldn’t bake a premade cookie.
Alecia rapped twice on the front glass and let herself in. She met Bridget in the hall and they hugged, Bridget’s bone-thin arms strong. Alecia felt the tears in her eyes and blinked them back.
“Are you okay?” Bridget asked, not letting go, whispering it into her hair. Bridget gave long hugs, without discomfort. She’d strong-arm you in a hug, swaying side to side. Then she’d pull you inside her cocoon of a house and make you tea and serve you store-bought baked goods.
“Yes. No. Yes.” Alecia took a deep breath. “I should be fine.”
“No one should be fine. That’s a stupid thing to say.” Bridget waved her hand around and rolled her eyes. She led Alecia through the living room and into the kitchen. A tea kettle was whistling and she busied herself with two mugs while Alecia pulled a stool out from under the heavy wooden island. Bridget sat down opposite Alecia and plunked a tissue box in front of her on the counter.
“You’ve lost weight,” Alecia said. She hadn’t seen Bridget for a while.
“What stage of grief is it where all food looks disgusting?” Bridget wrapped the string around a spoon and squeezed the teabag.
“Aw, Bridge, I’m sorry.”
“It feels never ending, that’s all. Some days, it’s like Holden died yesterday. I didn’t expect that, for it to go on forever.” She shrugged. “Mama said time heals all wounds. I’m waitin’ around, that’s all.”
Alecia felt stupid with her petty problems, with her son, who despite all his issues, still existed and her husband, despite his shortcomings, was still alive. She shouldn’t have come. She stirred more sugar than necessary into her tea and blew across the top.
Bridget broke the silence first. “I saw news vans the other day! ABC and WKLP both at the ball field. Crazy, right?”
“What the hell is going on?” Alecia was grateful for the change of topic. “I saw them, too. And the EPA and Department of Environmental Protection. Everyone is staying inside with their windows shut. Well, except you.” A breeze lifted the curtains through the open screen above the sink. “It’s like the whole town doesn’t know what to think.”
“I don’t know. Everyone is talking. Some people think it was some kind of air poisoning from the old paper mill, but that thing hasn’t been operational in ten years. What, does a building suddenly belch toxic gas?”
Alecia giggled. “When is school opening again? It’s been a tough week.” In some ways, she couldn’t wait for Nate to go back to work and yet, at the same time, she dreaded it.
“They say Monday, that by then the air and water testing will be done.” Bridget shook her head, no nonsense. “Maybe the birds all ate something? Could it be that?”
“I’m sure they’ll figure it out. They have a thousand bodies to autopsy. If it’s poisoning of some kind, we’ll know.”