Problems (8 page)

“In Jake's old room,” his father said. Peter walked to the back of the house, leaving me there with all of them. Sue walked in, thin-boned, wearing blue jeans and a tight black sweater, her hair in a ponytail. We shook hands. “You look so cold,” she said. Her body was perfect. Her smile showed ultrawhite teeth. She was a ray of sunshine. I was doom and gloom and could hardly muster a smile. I wanted her to like me. I hated her instantly.

“Yeah, I'm kind of cold.” I was still wearing my coat. I kept waiting for the warmth to hit me after I came in, but there was no heat.

“Oh, sorry about that,” Sandy said.

You couldn't say, “Please turn on the heat because I can't stop shivering in your freezing shitty house.” You couldn't say, “I'm just going to go to a bedroom because I'd rather read than talk to any of you.” You couldn't say, “This is my first day off dope, and all of this is overwhelming.” You couldn't say, “Let's cut the bullshit. You don't give a shit where I'm from, just like I have no interest in any of the questions I will force myself to ask so I don't appear rude. So I'll just shut myself in your freezing porch and watch your shitty television until it's time to go, and you can ignore me and hang out with your kid.”

“No, it's fine,” I smiled.

Sue opened the oven door and looked in.

“Are you making something?” I asked.

“Yeah, a pie,” she said. A fucking pie?

“Like, from scratch?” I asked, trying not to look down her top at her tits. She was wearing a hot pink bra. But Jake was looking too, so whatever.

“Yeah, me and Jake found the recipe last night, so this morning we all went to the market, and I bought the ingredients.”

“Why are you still wearing your coat?” Peter, coatless, asked.
How can any of them stand it
, I wondered.

“She's cold. Maybe I can ask your father to start the fire.”

Jake wrapped his arms around Sue and said, “Maybe just turn the heat on.” Why did they have to be touching? It felt obscene
somehow, like they were so obsessed with each other they had to always be touching. I wanted to be touched. I was pretty sure I would puke if anyone touched me.

“What's going on?” Grace asked.

“Maya's cold, so we were thinking of telling your father to start the fire,” Sandy said.

“Or we could put the heat on?” Grace replied.

“No, I'm . . . it's okay, I don't mind . . .” But Sandy was already walking away, calling, “Rick,” and then I heard my name. I should have just taken off my coat.

“Yeah, but the fire will take longer to warm the house, and we can't have her sit there alone in front of the fire,” Grace said.

Peter's father came down. “What's up?”

“We were talking about putting the heat on.”

“The heat?” He wiped his forehead.

“Maya's cold,” Jake said.

“I can put the fire on . . .”

I wanted to literally vanish into thin air.

“We haven't met, I'm Peter,” Peter said to Sue.

“Hey, Jake's told me so much about you.” Sue put on Sandy's apron. It had cherries all over it. I walked past Peter to Jake's old bedroom and shut the door. I imagined my entire bag filled with heroin. Then all of this would have been very easy. Why did I even try to be clean?
All my effort should have gone toward staying high all the time
, I thought. I could smile and talk and be charming when I was high. I wasn't self-conscious and weird. If not for me, then for the world. I started sweating. What could I do now? Tell them not to put the heat on and go through that whole hundred-year-long conversation. Sue and her amazing pie and her skinny waist and her smile—I wondered what it was like to be inside her head. She probably had her own insecurities. I needed a cigarette. I checked the time: five o'clock.
Two hours of awkward conversations, and then just stuff your face and sit around the dining table for a while, and then
off to bed
. They went to sleep early, ten-ish. Just five hours. I fished out my cigarettes and my cell phone from my canvas bag.

I wanted a bag of dope so fucking bad. If I was sick, I could convince them to take me to the train, and then I'd go back home and get a bag. A rush of excitement filled me at the thought. It was okay, I would get high again. This was not for forever. This was like a job. A bad shift at a bad job.

After being numb for so long on dope, when I was finally faced with reality, I couldn't handle the emotions. Not just the bad ones. The in-between ones too, like envy that Peter got along with his family, gratitude that these people were being nice to me and were willing to love me just for being there, and nostalgia when they played that Dylan song Peter sang on our first date. They wanted to like me, and all it did was make me feel lonely and insecure. I wiped the tears away and told myself to get it together. I was a grown-up and needed to act like one.

Back in the kitchen, Peter's mother stood in front of a pot of some kind of meat, Sue and Peter chatted it up, and Rick held a plate of the cheeses Peter and I had bought yesterday at Whole Foods. That was the difference; Peter and I bought expensive cheese from Whole Foods while Sue baked a pie from scratch. That Sandy's apron looked so cute on her was also troubling.

No one noticed me open the window. I was sweating through my clothes. I smelled like something that had died in the trash. At least if it was cold, I wouldn't smell as bad.

“I should really go and call my mom,” I said to no one in particular, holding my phone as if they needed a visual aid. I turned and walked out, trying not to look at Peter's face.

“Can you just not smoke for two fucking days,” he had said when I asked if I had to keep up this charade that we didn't smoke.

I opened the door. Couldn't stand right there, so I turned the corner and then realized there was a window, and they would see me from the dining room. I walked back toward Jake's old room, fished out a cigarette, and then hit “mom” on my phone.

She picked up right away.

“Hey,” she said weakly.

“Hi.”

“Where are you?”

“We just got here.”

“How is it?”

“I don't know, Mom, I feel so out of place.” The cigarette tasted so good. My body started to feel right as the nicotine hit me, but then I felt a little woozy from not smoking all day. I crouched down.

“What do you mean?”

“They're just so nice.”

“So?”

“It's weird. I don't know what to say.”

“Raj wants to talk to you,” and before I could protest, my brother was on the phone.

“What's going on?”

“Oh, Raj, it's like, they're like a normal family,” I said as I lit a new cigarette from the one I just smoked.

“You're lucky. I bet the food is good. Mom couldn't cook, so we're having leftover lasagna and watching
Colombo
.”

“Yeah, it seems like there's a lot of . . .” and then I heard Mom in the background. “Tell her not to eat too much, she's already gained so much weight.” Why did she always have to be awful?

“Mom says not to eat too much.”

“I heard.” I heard my mom again, “Potatoes, tell her,” and then she got back on the phone. “Don't eat the potatoes, you know, carbs. Just eat some turkey and the vegetables.” You would have thought someone with her kind of medical problems would realize
how silly something like counting calories was, but somehow after she got sick, she'd become even worse, like she was clinging to these little things as the last fringes of her mom-hood or person-hood. The whole thing was so depressing.

“Yeah, okay”

“Where are you?” Raj again.

“I'm out smoking a cigarette.” I put it out on the cold ground and stuck the butt back into the pack.

“You should probably go back in there.”

“Yeah, okay. Bye.”

He said good-bye. It could have been worse. I could have been with them. A small leafless tree stood in front of me. Another house, blue against the gray sky. Peter hated winter. He said it was like death all around. But there was something beautiful about this naked tree in the wind.

Samuel Beckett said, “Nothing is more real than nothing.”

I walked back into the house and took off my coat. I was covered in sweat, and the house was so hot it made it hard to breathe. I opened a window. I made my way to the plate of cheese we brought, and the crackers. Whenever I saw food, I felt compelled to eat it, even if I wasn't hungry. Jake came in. I nodded, but he went in for a hug.

“Hey,” he said, looking at me, smiling. Jake could be so handsome it was almost startling. There wasn't even any sexual tension between us because it didn't feel like we were the same species. It was kind of a relief to hang out with people where you didn't have to think about if you wanted to fuck them or if they wanted to fuck you.

“So, how's it going?” I asked, stuffing my mouth. I started shivering again. Why did I have to wear the thinnest blouse in my closet?

“You're still cold?” he asked with genuine concern. “Someone opened the window,” he said, and then went over and closed it. “Who would do that?”

That was when I should've confessed, but I didn't. I couldn't seem to get warm. I put my coat back on, and my scarf. I was shaking. My face hurt. My sinuses were congested. One day someone would pick up my skull and say, “This human has the worst sinuses I've ever seen. It must have been horrible to live like that.” Sweat poured out of my pits. I could smell the dope-sick stench. A kind of rotting.

“I'm so glad you finally met Sue.”

“Yeah,” I said. We sat there and smiled. Grace walked in. I hoped she couldn't smell me.

“You're still cold?” I realized I was standing with my arms around me, crouched over. I stood upright.

“No, no, I'm fine.”

“Did you open the window?” Jake asked her.

The front door opened. I braced myself to withstand a gust of wind. A middle-aged man wearing a snowflake sweater came in beside a short-haired woman in high-waisted light blue jeans.

“Jake!” The man slipped his arm around Jake.

“Hi, I'm Marcie,” the woman said. Aunt Marcie, Peter had mentioned her. The aunt who made that ratatouille Peter raved about.

“Hi, I'm Maya, Peter's wife.”

“Well, it's so good to meet you.” We smiled. It had been Peter's idea to go off to Vegas and get married. I thought eloping would be like a fun weekend, but when I met his relatives, it felt like I was this mysterious woman they were all wondering about. “Darren,” the man introduced himself, smiling, his face friendly. “Wow,” he said. “It is so nice to finally meet you.” I smiled back. “So, huh, it must be, what, two years since the two of you got married?”

“No, about four.”

“Didn't want to deal with the fuss of a big wedding, I guess?” he said, taking his gloves off and putting them on the kitchen table. The table had a plastic tablecloth on it.

“I guess that was part of it, but it was more like we thought it would be fun, you know?”

“Right, right,” he said, smiling, nodding, as if fun were something he had a working understanding of. Marcie stood and observed us.

It felt like Darren was the talk show host; me, the guest; and Marcie, our audience.

“We got married by Elvis,” I said. It was what I said every time I mentioned the wedding.

“Huh! How fun! I would love to see pictures,” he said, still smiling. I believed him. He really would have loved to see pictures.

“Oh, I don't have any. We didn't think to take any.”

“Yeah . . .”

“We were pretty loaded,” I said. A moment passed. “I'm kidding,” I added.

Darren burst into laughter; Marcie, a cautious smile.

“Yeah, you guys just met that night, right?” Darren said, adding to the joke.

“Actually, we met there at the chapel.”

Darren laughed harder.

Peter and his father came in. Nervous, I smeared goat cheese on another cracker and stuffed it into my mouth. I wanted to throw up, and I was sweating again.

“So, what do you say, should I open a bottle of wine?” Rick said to Darren.

“Can I see it?” Peter said. I loved how Peter acted as if knowing wine was an actual hobby of his, when it was just like what watching porn was for a sex addict. The culture of wine, learning obscure cocktails, having just a beer. He was a fucking alcoholic.

“I say, sounds like a great idea,” Darren said. Peter walked over and put his arm around me, which made me uncomfortable.
I hated the way he was always touching me. My stomach cramped. I was going to have the runs.

There was only one fucking bathroom, and someone was in there, taking forever. You couldn't say, “I seriously will shit myself if you don't stop fucking touching me.”

On the toilet, I doubled over in pain. I wanted to fucking die. When I stood up, my vision darkened. I sat back down on the toilet lid. I closed my eyes. Did I need to puke or shit? Did I need more Suboxone, or had I taken too much? I stood up. Shit on the floor and puke in the toilet, or puke on the floor and shit in the toilet? I lay down on the cool tiles with my eyes closed. Get it together. Grow up. Get it together. Darkness. Self-loathing. Regret. I was an addict. I wasn't an addict; I was just in a fucked-up situation. I was going to end up homeless. Everything would be fine. I needed to use a lifeline. I needed to ask the studio audience. I needed to phone a friend.

I let myself cry for a minute.

Eventually you had to say to yourself, “Get over yourself.”

Peter's father took Darren down the hall somewhere. Sue reappeared, humming, in her apron, ready to take out her pie. Jake was putting something in a pan. “Did you make something?” I asked him.

“Yeah, just an apple crisp.”

“Yeah, we bought some apples this morning, and we browned them with sugar,” Sue added.

“Huh,” I said, deadpan. It had been only two hours, and already I was exhausted by faking enthusiasm.

Peter's mom chopped something and Peter left again. I was just standing there, in the kitchen. There was an empty chair at the
dining table so I sat down, but then it was like I was sitting there while everyone else was doing something. I stood back up. “Do you need help?” I asked. No one heard me. So. Huh. I sat back down.

The wine. Find the wine.

I found a glass. “Do you want something to drink?” Sandy asked.

“Where is the wine?”

“Oh,” she said, and then she came closer, “about the wine. Grace is, well, you remember, over Christmas. She's touchy about having wine in the house, you know. She has her beliefs. So we compromised; we're keeping the wine in the other room.” She smiled, apologetically.

Grace went to a religious college and lived in a “sober dorm.” If she was lame as a college student, how lame would she become as an adult? Or would the lameness build up until she reached forty, when she would become addicted to coke and rediscover God? Or would she maintain her lameness until she died? Or maybe she had a different measurement for lameness, and in her own world, eating ice cream past midnight and talking all night was her being wild. Was lameness subjective? Was it something we grew out of or something we eventually had to experience?

A boy. She would meet the wrong boy, and then anything could happen. It was always like that: girl is fine, meets boy, falls in love, ruins life, boy leaves, girl straightens life out, dusts Bible, puts on lame dress, and goes back to church. At least then she would have something to repent for, experiences to regret. I wished I could have given her some of mine. I wished I were someone no one ever had to worry about. I should have been with my mother, who was dying of
MS
. I should have saved money and bought her nice presents. A knot in my stomach. I wanted to hug my mom. I felt the future me looking back at the selfish me, who spent all her time avoiding her sick mother, staying high, and being a huge disappointment.

Last Christmas Grace and Rick got into a big fight with Peter about having alcohol in the house. They compromised and kept the alcohol away from Grace. They must have made the same arrangement. “Just don't cross the line into the dining room,” Sandy said into my ear as she poured my glass. I nodded, like this was all very reasonable.

Wasn't part of Jesus's whole thing turning water into wine?

Two Xanaxes and two glasses of wine later, I felt amazing. Xanax was like a shortcut out of the woods of addiction and into the clearing of sobriety. Fucking Xanax. I could do this every month or so. Get clean, let my dope tolerance drop so I wouldn't need to use as much to get high, save money, stay clean for long stretches—but still have dope when I needed it. I could use until Peter and I had babies and then slide right back into society, blend into Facebook with baby pictures, my hair in a baseball cap, complaining about how tired I was in my status updates. Life would take over, and like a mountain climber, I would keep going. A stupid, idiotic mountain climber moving very slowly up a big, dumb mountain, weighed down by a bag of shit, finding one foothold at a time, just to turn around and do it all over again backwards. All this until I woke up one day and was old. My kids will have taken over, and I'll have become part of the shit they'll have to carry with them. Just like my mother, haunting me. If only she was kind enough to become a memory. Memories didn't call. Memories didn't nag. Memories stayed golden and young, and you kept the ones you wanted. Memories didn't have lesions on their brains and chairs in their showers. She used to be young and pretty. Did she know, when she opened the oven to check on dinner, that taking care of kids was how she was wasting the best years of her life? That was what I was aspiring to do, but at least I knew it. At least I experienced college and watched enough television with female leads to know exactly what I would regret. She wasn't stupid. Having a
family was a popular way to waste your life, so maybe it wasn't the worst way. You had to do something or do nothing. She knew she would have finite time to be in her physical prime, so why did I feel bad? Why did I have to be implicated? Why did I feel guilty that she had wasted it on me? She lived the life she wanted. It was her choice not to finish school, not to have a career, to marry an old man she didn't love. She had her eyes wide open.

All the pain went back to my mother. Freud didn't seem that deep. It was natural to contemplate the very beginning and the first person you ever met, whose job was to keep you alive when everything was brand-new, and you were perfect with all kinds of perfect futures. I popped another Xanax. Things were going to be absolutely fine.

Peter's father, at the head of the table, said, “Okay, I guess we'll start.” I nodded, but something was wrong because I was the only one still standing up. Then I realized Darren had my hand, and I looked around.
Oh, right, the praying
.

“Thank you, Lord, for the food we are about to receive . . .”

It was just like the movies! “And for the animals who gave their lives for us to have this meal and . . .” This struck me as hysterical. The animals? Like they agreed to be sacrificed? Then that feeling hit me, the one where you knew you weren't supposed to laugh, so all you wanted to do was laugh. I bit down on my lip, hard.

After the prayer, I shot straight up to the buffet and filled my plate with green beans and a heap of mashed potatoes, and put the plate down to slice some meat. “Maya, don't forget about the onions, they're over there,” Peter's father pointed across the room.

“Did you make them?” I asked.

“I grew 'em,” he smiled.

I couldn't tell if he was being serious. “Wow, that's, um, I didn't know you could do that,” I said, meaning growing food when the
ground was so cold, but it sounded like I didn't know anyone could grow anything.

“So, Sue, how's medical school going? Tackling cadavers?” Darren asked. I burst into laughter. Everyone looked at me.

“No, I'm sorry. I just didn't know it was a phrase, ‘tackling cadavers.'” There was a general laugh. Darren cracked up, putting his hand on my shoulder like we were old friends. Was that mean to say? Was I making fun of him?

When my food was gone, I got more.

Later I crouched in front of the toilet and put my fingers down my throat and dry-heaved and did it again and again and finally it all came up. I sat on the floor, exhausted. Then I ate vanilla ice cream because when you threw it up it didn't burn. I wasn't just throwing up because of the calories; I was trying to take care of the future me who was going to wake up dope sick with a stomach full of food. I stared at the mirror. My eyes were watery, and my face flushed. The Xanax had faded. I would have to keep taking more, and then it would knock me out. I couldn't go on like this. I would sleep forever, be high forever, and be broke forever.

After dinner I thought about helping clear the table, but Sue and Grace beat me to it.

Peter's mother handed out pens and sheets of paper. “I don't know if the boys told you,” she said to me and Sue, “but we have this tradition of writing down what we're thankful for, and then we put it in that vase.” She pointed to a shiny blue vase. “Then we go around the table and everyone takes one out and reads it, and everyone guesses who wrote what. It's just this silly tradition . . .” As she walked away, I noticed she was kind of waddling.

Sue looked thoughtfully at her paper. Close up she had bad skin,
with makeup caked over the blemishes. Sometimes the thing that solved the problem was the bigger problem.

“I'm thankful I have this glass of alcohol,” I whispered to Sue. She giggled.

“I'm thankful for having locked in a low interest rate,” I said loud enough for Darren to hear. He snorted. I was making fun of this family tradition. I had never realized how jokes were always a little mean. That was why these people never joked around. My mother and I and Raj were always laughing, when we weren't screaming at each other.

“I am thankful I have a cozy apartment to come home to every night.”