Sunday, May 7
“This isn’t like you! You’ve never left your mail sitting this long. Ever.” Pause for dramatic effect. Then, the button: “You need help, Nadia.”
Liv is lecturing me again, this time from where she sits cradled in the pink satin pillow, on speakerphone.
I’m starfished on the bed in my underwear, the echoes of my night out with Marco still ricocheting through my bones.
Overhead, the ceiling fan whirls at full tilt, rocking gently in place.
The cool air is both a salve for my limbs and like a cast-iron frying pan over my head.
My sister takes for granted that I may actually be depressed or be suicidal. To her, depression and anxiety are mere concepts reserved for hypotheticals you read on the internet or characters in a TV show.
“Please, God. Enough. I’m already fucking exhausted.”
“What about holistic medicine?” She keeps going. “Isn’t there an herb you can rub on yourself? I just feel like you’re not trying—”
“You think I haven’t tried all that stuff? I’m on medicine. I’m on steroids. It all just takes a while.”
“You know, I read an article about a woman with cancer who bought a ranch, tilled the land, and cured herself.”
“And I read an article about a man from Nantucket with a really big bucket.”
She sucks her teeth at me. “Very funny. Just wait until Mom and Dad find out you’ve been making a dent in their king-size mattress.”
Our parents are currently on a Mediterranean cruise for their fortieth wedding anniversary.
They’re two people who, as long as I’ve known them, have done little else besides work at the butcher shop.
They’re hardwired with an old-world work ethic and skepticism.
The only thing they believe in fully is the Catholic Church, which is, fortunately, the basis for their marriage.
I can’t imagine them anywhere other than the shop; the row home where they raised me, Liv, and our little brother, Nicky; and the Shore.
But right now, as I speak to my sister, they’ve elected to be trapped at sea, on a vessel where group activities and line dancing are strongly encouraged.
I picture my dad, five-two on a good day, frowning at the shores of Crete, longing for his tomato plants and the patch of sun in the carport where he loves to sit in a lawn chair.
“Don’t worry, I’m just making a dent in your queen-size mattress.”
“Oh, thanks a lot,” she huffs. “Typical, ruining my bed.”
“Your room is way bigger and has the ocean view. Mine has a fucking porthole, Nicky’s baseball gear, and all those jars from Dad’s pickling phase.”
Liv lets out a dry laugh. A door slams in the distance, and I know she’s arriving at Fabiola Sausages to open in time for the post–Sunday morning Mass rush. “Remember when he was obsessed with jalape?os? You smelled so bad that entire summer.”
“The funk was trapped in my hair. Thank God it’s g—” Fuck. I stop short of the word gone leaving my lips. But Olivia is a hound dog. She could sniff out a poor life decision from planets away.
“Thank God it’s what? What is it?”
“Nothing. I just got a haircut, that’s all. Just a trim.”
“Why do you sound like that?”
“Like what?”
“Just a trim! You sound British.”
“I do not—”
She launches into an awful impression of what I guess is supposed to be me. “Just an inch off the bottom, dearie. Tidy ho!”
“Ew, shut up,” I whine and it’s the most enthusiastic I’ve sounded this entire phone call.
For most of our life, it had just been Liv and me; eighteen months apart, both of us girls. We’d never really been similar—in school, Liv loved clubs and organizing parties and could probably convince a flock of geese to unionize. I was quieter. I liked pressing flowers and limping around the playground, pretending I was an abandoned carpetbagger on the Oregon Trail.
“Spot of cream!” Liv’s still going.
Then, when we were both pubescent, Nicky was born and weirdly, everything finally felt complete.
Liv and I made more sense with this little whiny baby boy around.
He needed us both, for different reasons.
It was never either of our dreams to take over the butcher shop, but Liv had a hard time making herself unavailable.
Then, she dropped out of hair school and met a nice neighborhood guy with forearms like oil tankards and all bets were off.
She was the heir apparent.
“Whatever,” I say, instead of telling her to fuck off.
The curse of being a younger sister.
I physically cannot bring myself to be as mean to Liv as she is to me.
Liv has had an existence, however brief, before me; I have never been without her. She was my first friend and probably will be my last.
“You need a jay-oh-bee, baby.
A real one.
If you don’t get moving, Dad’s gonna stick you back in the shop and that’s the last thing either of us needs.”
Liv isn’t wrong, but she’s being such a dick about it.
“I can’t come back to Philly,” I half whisper. “That might actually kill me.” Unlike lupus, which will just make my life infinitely more irritating over a fairly normal amount of time.
“I’ve known you your whole life, and you’re not a do-nothing person. You’re hiding, Nadia. I’m just worried, believe it or not, and I’m not going to coddle you.”
Now she’s recycling talking points, but my phone vibrates and I see Marco’s name and suddenly, I’m sitting up.
Marco: The only place I could get a hair appointment is in Cape May. Five star place tho.
My fingers explode over the keyboard immediately and I know he sees the three hovering dots. I backspace the nonsense I’ve written and flop back on the bed. My heart is pounding erratically in my chest.
“Are you even listening?”
“Uh huh.” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to keep my voice even. “I hear you, Liv. I gotta go, okay? Tell Mike I say hi.”
“Ugh. Fine. Goodbye. I’ll see you Tuesday. No flaking.”
Right. Shit. Tuesday she’s coming into town to go bridesmaid dress shopping. That was why she called. The beginning of our conversation was so long ago, I can’t even remember the woman I was when it began.
“See you Tuesday,” I repeat, trying my best to make sure it doesn’t sound like a question.
* * *
Nadia: Cape May is an HOUR away
Marco: So?
Nadia: I have a life outside of Sweet Novembering
Marco: Prove it
Damn. Well, he got me there.
Nadia: Fine, but we have to go whale watching
I pause before hitting send on this text. Whale watching off the coast has been on my bucket list for years, even before moving to Evergreen. Back when I didn’t have a car. I’d talked about my dream of seeing a jumping whale endlessly to friends and guys I’d dated—especially when we found a day or two to sneak away to the Shore between the usual, unending thrum of life.
Then, suddenly, I was in Evergreen full-time, and I had a car—but nothing else. No friends (until I fully annexed Soph and Allie). No boyfriends. And frankly? No desire. What was I going to do, drive an hour to sit, exhausted and achy, on a boat alone?
What he’s proposed is, essentially, a very long errand. What I’m proposing is a dream come true. He doesn’t need to know that, I remind myself. There a lot of things Marco doesn’t need to know.
I hit send.
Oh fuck yeah, he replies and we agree to meet at 1 p.m. in the Billiard’s parking lot.
“Those kids were crazy-talented last night,” Marco says, dragging a hand down over his stubbled chin.
We’re taking all the back roads to Cape May, whipping past farmland and fields of reed, windows cracked, and sunshine-filled neo-jazz playing softly. It’s a little unseasonably warm, but I try not to think about it. Climate anxiety used to keep me up at night, but my world has shrunk. I take the sun at face value.
My throat hurts, but I’m trying to act like I don’t feel it. I’m trying instead to focus all my attention on the gentle, one-handed hold Marco has on the steering wheel. A sore throat is a bad sign. An omen for worsening symptoms, potentially even a flare-up. A shadow that’s suddenly hanging over me, and I’ll have to put as much effort as I can into not showing it. Especially considering how frequently Marco’s eyes drift from the road over to watch me.
I should take some ibuprofen now; that way it will have started working before we get there. Then, while Marco gets his haircut, I can wolf down some yogurt and take the Big Guns. The Good Stuff.
I don’t want to think about medication. A petulant little thought. I wish I could stomp my foot. Throw back my head and whine. I don’t want to deal with any of this. For the first time in months, I just want to be here, completely, in this moment. I want to have fun.
“You okay?”
His voice snaps me out of my spiral, and I toss Marco a small smile. “Yeah, sorry. I thought maybe I forgot something at home.”
“We can turn around—if you need to check for the thing you forgot . . . or maybe just get out of spending the entire day with me.” He adds the last part softly, kindly. He’s giving me an out.
“No, no. I’m good. I really . . .” What I should not do is finish this sentence with: have been looking forward to this.
Marco laughs, flexing his fingers around the steering wheel. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Whale watching is something I’ve always wanted to do,” I say, recalibrating. “I’m excited.”
“I’m excited,” he parrots back in my monotone. “Why do I feel like that’s glowing praise from you?”
“Because I fascinate you.”
He lets out a low, deep laugh. “You’re definitely one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.”
“No way.” I pull three ibuprofens from my pill pouch. “You’ve like, hosted award shows with Japanese sex symbols.”
Marco shrugs, twisting his hat around backward. “Hedonism is kind of boring. Once you’ve seen one nepo baby try to network while in a k-hole, you’ve seen them all.”
I laugh through a sip of water, swallowing back my medicine. He doesn’t even notice. “What a sinister sentence.”
“Speaking of which . . .” He tightens his grip on the steering wheel for a moment, and I straighten in my seat. “The other night, when we went out and got drunk . . . ” Dread crackles in my stomach. Oh, no. “I’m supposed to be living a completely sober lifestyle. I’m a drug addict and . . . ” He pauses to lick his lips. “This conversation is going awfully.”
I shake my head. “Keep going.”
“I know myself and once I start down that path, it never ends well, and I never want to put myself in a situation where I’m tempted to potentially make an even worse decision. Which is exactly what I did.” He drags his eyes away from the road to meet my gaze for a moment. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey. No.” I place a hand on his shoulder. He’s like a hummingbird trapped in a greenhouse, slamming into all-glass walls over and over. My hand, gently placed on his warm shoulder, stills him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . . instigated. Or fanned the fire. Or whatever the fuck I was doing.”
I feel the tension in his muscles dissipate. “How were you supposed to know?” He runs his tongue over his bottom lip. “By the time I was being honest with you—”
“You already had your hands down my pants.” Thankfully, my joke lands and we both dissolve into laughter.
A very modest cast of pink expands upward from the collar of his shirt. “Well, that’s a little humiliating.”
“Hey, life is just a series of humiliations and then sometimes . . .” Sometimes what? I have no wisdom for Marco, only sympathy. “Sometimes you get to go whale watching.”
His eyes dart off the road again, toward where my hands rest in my lap. He reaches over and gives my knee a squeeze. “Thanks, kid.”
“You’re welcome. But you have to stop calling me that. It reminds me of this mega-douche I dated. He was always using experimental pet names. One time he called me little dove in front of a waiter.”
Marco grimaces. “Oh God. I’m so sorry. Never again.”
“Thank you.” I laugh. And then we both relax back into a more comfortable silence. Outside, the sky is a cloudless wash of cornflower blue. The low, vibrant farmlands of South Jersey whip by. After a moment, I say, “Can I ask what triggered you? To drink?”
Marco makes a small noise in the back of his throat. “I guess getting recognized. And honestly?” He lets out a dry laugh. “The boardwalk.”
“The boardwalk?”
“It’s all the . . . the . . .” He takes a hand off the steering wheel and gestures vaguely, rolling his wrist. “The shit. The bright lights, the crappy overpriced food, the hokey stores. It makes me feel like I have a plastic bag wrapped around my head. I want to like Evergreen. I’d even consider staying there forever if they just would burn down that goddamn boardwalk.”
I huff. “I can see that. When I was a kid, I hated anything where I was told I was supposed to be happy. Even now, I still hate it. It’s like . . . like, fuck you! You can’t make me be happy. You can’t trick me with flashing lights and clown music.”
“Exactly. If you tell me I should be happy, you know what I’m gonna fucking do?”
“Be unhappy,” I jump in, twisting in my seat to face him.
Marco’s eyes shine, fixed on the road, with a look of satisfaction. “Right. I’m going to be unhappy just to piss you off.”
“And then that’ll make me actually happy,” I say wickedly.
He lets out a growl of approval.
When Marco and I get out of the car I notice the film camera hanging around his neck.
“Is that a prop?” I tease, lifting the camera away from his chest and turning it over in my hands. It’s heavy and looks loved, with visible wear marks around its leather body.
“Sure is. Gotta look tortured and artistic. Part of the brand,” he deadpans, pulling his arms through a flannel. We’re the closest we’ve been since Thursday night, and the memories are catching up to me. Especially now that I can smell his cologne—a floral musk that dusts his neckline.
He places his hands over mine, engulfing them. Suddenly, I’m back on Ernie’s dance floor, Marco’s sweat-slick chest pressed against mine, his lips flush against my ear. Wanna get out of here?
We shift toward each other, one foot crossing lazily over the other. There’s something about his body that pulls me to him—that pulled me to him the first night we met, as soon as I had enough tequila in me to shut down the never-ending rush of self-loathing running through my head. Right now, there’s no tequila, but there is our contract. We’re dating. This is okay.
Marco is the kind of guy you yearn for. The kind of guy you dream of fucking, and if our first night together was indicative of anything, it’s that we’re both horrible at pacing ourselves. We both have lead feet, and this experience is a race car aimed at a cliff.
But I don’t want to slam headfirst into intimacy again. I’ve done that before, over and over, and the ending is always the same. Luckily, this time I already have our ending. I can work backward from there.
On May 31, we’ll meet at the Pier Point Diner and split a stack of pancakes. I’ll tell him about my diagnosis; I’ll tell him about how I’m feeling sooo much better and I finally got a great job doing something cool in Philly, and I’m headed back. He’ll be completely overjoyed; he’ll tell me he got some part playing a grizzled dad, and he’s moving to Vancouver. I’ll be completely overjoyed.
Ten days before that, he’ll tell me he never wants kids.
Five days before that, he’ll tell me he thinks monogamy is a prison.
Two days before that, we’ll have sex for the first time.
Today, we’ll hold hands and see a whale.