Problems (10 page)

“That looks nice,” I said.

“Yeah, it's only four dollars,” she said, still looking in the mirror. Her smile brightened.

After the thrift store, we went bowling.

“Did you see the Dunkin' Donuts when we drove in?” Sue said, as we waited for our shoes.

“Do you want donuts? I'll go get them,” I said. It was my ticket out of this group. My chance to stop smiling for a second.

I went outside and lit a cigarette. It was me and the gray sky. The nicotine hit me in a rush, a strange mixture of sadness and exhilaration. I steadied myself. I took out my phone and saw Amy had called. I called her back.

“Hey,” I said.

“They're so weird,” she whispered.

“Why are you whispering?”

“I'm hiding in the bathroom.”

“Why?”

“I'm never going to get rid of him.” Her voice quivered.

“Are you crying?”

“How am I ever going to break up with him? He would end up here if I threw him out. I've only been here for, like, two days or whatever, and I want to kill myself. His mother will not leave me alone. I went to the office to go on the internet, and she came with me and worked out on the bike, and then I went downstairs, and she came with me. I don't think she works. And his brother and his wife live with her, but they only have one car. How did I end up with this life that doesn't look like anything I wanted?”

“Just leave him already. It isn't your problem what happens to him. You didn't give birth to him, you know,” I said, frustrated. How many times had I said those words to her?

“Sometimes I just think, you know, I'm thirty-one, and if I want to have a kid, I've got to get going. Did you know that after thirty-five the rate of Down syndrome goes up?”

“Yeah, I've heard that.” This was actually the third time I'd heard that statistic in the past month. There was always this ticking clock, ruining everything, little by little, the longer you lived.

The Dunkin' Donuts was packed. There was nowhere else to go in town. Two old men came in behind me. The line wasn't moving. There was an image of an egg croissant with bacon. My mouth watered. They had hash browns now? I wanted it all. I wondered if there was a way to buy an egg sandwich, hash browns, and three Boston creams and scarf them all down without being suspiciously absent for too long. Then I could go puke it up. I was doing this more and more, sneaking food and then puking it up. I wasn't good at it yet, but it was awesome to stuff yourself and then have an empty stomach. One time last week, I scarfed down five Hostess cupcakes before I came home but was caught when Peter asked innocently, “Is that chocolate on your teeth?” It was exactly like when he found a bag of dope in my pockets.

The bathroom: keeping America's secrets for decades. Snorting. Puking. Crying. Leaving weepy messages on Ogden's voicemail.

Whenever I talked to Ogden, it was anticlimactic. To have all these feelings of wanting and longing, a hole in my heart and none of it translating into the dull words passing through my lips, “I miss you,” or “I think about you,” or “I wish you were here.” They came out of my mouth and disappeared but the hole was still there.

“Hi, I'd like an egg sandwich with bacon, and hash browns and a dozen donuts,” I said. I turned just as Peter came in.

“What is taking so long?” he asked, annoyed. I ignored him and told the woman what donuts I wanted. Eyeing the overly large bag and the box of donuts the woman handed to me, he said, “How many things did you order?”

I looked behind me. The place was completely empty except for two people. “It was packed. It had nothing to do with how much stuff I ordered,” I huffed at him.

“Are you getting a dozen donuts?”

“Yeah, for everyone.”

“I'm sorry, honey.” He put his arm around me. “I just didn't know what was taking so long.”

“I'm sorry I'm fat,” I said.

“Stop it, you know how annoying that is. I like you just the way you are,” he said, patting my butt.

We walked back to the bowling alley.

I sucked at bowling. Sue beat me, Jake beat Peter, and Grace couldn't play because of her burnt hand. I wondered if Jake fell asleep in front of the
TV
all the time like Peter. If he lay around in sweat shorts and old
T
-shirts on the couch, playing with his balls
and generally being a disgusting man. Sometimes Peter itched his balls and smelled his hand afterwards. Was this something he had always done, and just now something he felt comfortable doing around me? Did he think I didn't notice, or did he not care? Why did balls itch so goddamn much?

After bowling we found another thrift store. Sue and I looked through the women's section together.

Peter found a leather jacket, like MacGyver's. It was terrible, the color of mud or diarrhea, with some rips, and the waist was too short and puffy. The type of thing someone's dad would wear.

“Isn't it great?” Peter asked, smiling, so excited.

“I hate it.”

“What?” He looked like I had stabbed him. “What do you hate about it?”

“I'm sure there's one that's better. Let me look.”

“No,” he said sternly, “I looked through them all, and this is the one I like the best.”

“It's just so bad. The color, the fit.”

“It's only twenty dollars.”

“It's worth less.”

“Why are you being a bitch?” he said, walking away.

Mallard ducks. Peter had a tapestry of mallard ducks on the wall of his room in Queens. The ducks weren't cartoony. They weren't whimsical ducks going in every direction. They were serious ducks in serious colors, blank-eyed in straight rows like little communists. His dead grandmother had made it. Before I said something like, “Can't you love her without displaying this awful thing on my wall?” I realized it meant a lot to him. He was like someone on
Hoarders
who thought the thing had to do with the person. There was also a frightful portrait of Winston Churchill his grandmother painted. When we moved in together, I didn't
say anything as Peter, without a second thought, put the mallard ducks up in the bedroom and the Winston Churchill in the center of the living room wall. I would forever be reading a book and look up to find this awful, fat, uniformed man in front of me.

The worst part about the ducks and Winston Churchill was they made me hate myself. Why did I care? If they made Peter happy, why wasn't that more important than my apartment? I had slowly but progressively filled my apartment with perfect things. That was why I spent forever finding the exact right fridge, stainless steel and tall, but thin so it wouldn't go past the doorway of the narrow kitchen. The dish drainer was Swedish and cost seventy dollars. Instead of getting a regular toilet brush, I got something called a toilet wand with disposable toilet scrubbers. I spent a whole paycheck on one thing. I wanted my little corner of the world to be an uncluttered, peaceful masterpiece. And then Peter came in with his mallard ducks and his Winston Churchill and his colored bottles, which he put on every fucking surface. What was it with men and bottles? But what was it with me, letting a tapestry and Winston Churchill cause friction with the one man who was willing to spend his whole life with me? Why did putting sentiment over aesthetic beauty make Peter a freak? Wasn't it natural to hang something on your wall that reminded you of someone you love?

Sometimes I imagined dumping all of Peter's things in a corner and saying, “This is your corner.”

Maybe I was trying to help him. Even with, “I don't want you wearing that jacket and looking like a moron.” Future me would cringe every time.

I followed him to the rack of leather jackets, trying to find anything better. I pulled out one, but it had fringe, and so I kept looking. Too big, too small.

“Hey, Jake, check out my new jacket.”

“Cool,” Jake said.

“See,” Peter said, “Jake likes it. I like it and it's cheap, and check this out.” He flashed the lining at me. “It has a world-map lining. Isn't that funny?”

“Please don't,” I said. How could I walk down the street with him? Jake watched us. Oh god. Maybe it would be better to let him buy the thing and then accidentally on purpose spill something on it or throw it away, and it would remain a mystery what happened to Peter's great jacket.

“Jake, what do you really think? I don't like it.”

“Well, you know,” Jake said to Peter, “it's kind of puffy around your waist. Leather should be sleek.” Thank you, Jake! I couldn't believe it; he was helping me. I tried not to smile so as not to rub it in.

“What about this?” I pulled out a suede blazer. Peter tried it on. The color was a light tan, darker would be better, but it fit him.

“It's nice.” He looked at the price tag. “But it's forty-five dollars.”

“Peter, that's nothing for a suede blazer.”

“But I want a jacket I can wear every day.”

“You need a new blazer, and besides, there's nothing else here.”

“Actually they do have one, you just don't like it. I'm not like you with your hipster bullshit. I just want a nice leather jacket,” he said. I was his old, fat mother. Was I being an asshole? Why couldn't I just let him buy the fucking thing? Wasn't I a total embarrassment all the time? Wasn't it the least I could do? But I was the one who had to look at the thing.

“I really do like this blazer, though,” he said.

Sue showed up, holding a shirt over her arm and a dress with flowers on it. This was a dress you wore for your man to bend you over and bang you. That should be in one of those
Vogue
articles: “Drive Your Man Crazy by Wearing Clothes for a Wholesome Tween.”

“The blazer fits a lot better,” Jake said.

“Yeah,” Sue said. “But it's not, like, for the winter. I mean, it's just a blazer.” Fuck you, Sue.

“Whatever. I guess forty-five dollars isn't that much, right?” Peter said, eyeing himself in the mirror.

“No, honey, it's nothing if you really like it.”

Disaster averted.

We had to go to dinner at a place with a decent wine list, Peter said. So that left two options, both Italian. We finally picked the closest one. I was covered in sweat again. Peter held my hand. I kind of hated holding hands.

Dinner was a nightmare even though we took sad, sober Grace back home first. An enormous plate of spaghetti with bland marinara sauce and a few little pieces of sausage. I tried to eat it, but I couldn't put a dent in it. I pushed the plate forward. Peter and Jake reminisced about some childhood Christmas when they were so poor their father had given them each an apple. I didn't understand why they laughed. Something like Stockholm syndrome.

“I'll be right back,” I said, and held up my phone. Peter gave me a dirty look.
I'm thirty years old and an adult, and these people are adults
, I thought.
Why can't I smoke if I want to?

I turned the corner and stood between two cars on the gravel driveway. I looked up at the sky. Stars. That real pitch-black only found in suburbia or rural areas. No streetlights to brighten up the night. Crickets. The weirdest part of leaving the city was hearing all the sounds you normally didn't hear. I called Amy.

“What's up? Sorry I got off the phone in such a hurry earlier.”

“It's okay. I have food poisoning.”

“Oh god, I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, been puking all day. How are you?”

“We went bowling and to the thrift store. I can't figure out if they like me. I don't know how to talk to people.”

“Everyone likes you.”

“I know, but I have to be a
PG
-rated version of myself. It's hard for me not to curse and be sarcastic all the time. I don't even know when I'm being sarcastic. I'm so sarcastic all the time.”

“Maybe you'd be better here then, with these fucking weirdos. The sister farted while we were watching
National Lampoon's Vacation
, and then told everyone she had to change her underwear.”

I laughed.

“It wasn't funny. I know it sounds funny,” she started laughing too. “How did we end up like this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Maya, are these really our lives?”

“I know. I wish Peter would just leave me already. I treat him like shit. It's obvious I don't love him. Then I wouldn't be stuck in this rut, and maybe I could, like, have a life.”

“You could never dump people.”

“I know. I just treat them like shit till they leave me, which, if you think about it, is a nice thing to do, because then they can hate you and not feel rejected and sad.”

“Peter's never going to leave you.”

“I know.
As I Lay Dying of Boredom
, that's what my memoir of being married to Peter will be called.”

“Boring is better than a lot of things,” she said.

“No, boring is the worst, because you're, like, ‘I'm not being beaten to death; I can live like this,' and then the years go by. You know?”

“I gotta go puke.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Honestly, I kind of like puking. It's spiritual for me, like a release of everything.”

“That's beautiful and gross. Take care.”

I looked up at the dark sky over this little shitty town. How did people live in this quiet, where you could hear all of your
depressing thoughts? Peter appeared out of nowhere. Where did he come from? How long had he been there? He didn't say anything.

“Hey, honey,” I said, and we kissed.

“Hey, look, they know you smoke.” And before I could say, “What?” Jake and Sue turned the corner.

“It's okay. Sue smoked when I met her,” Jake said, smiling.

“I'm sorry I lied to you guys. I just didn't know how to broach the subject.” I put out the cigarette. Immediately I wanted another.