Chapter 6 My Phantom Nipples
6
My Phantom Nipples
When I step out into the Tuesday evening chill, I feel it. It’s a split second of panic, followed by a rush of embarrassment—like losing your glasses only to find them on your face. It’s the shock of the cold air hitting my sensationless breasts—the moment I feel my nipples showing through my thin shirt, then remembering all over again I don’t have them.
When I was a teenager, I would sneak my mother’s romance novels off her bookshelves, carefully replacing them before she noticed. Heroines had an awareness of their nipples I didn’t understand at the time. I inhaled passages of women taking note of the specific states of nipple arousal—purpled, pinched, plumped, pebbled, and perky. These nipples all seemed to have a life of their own. I never really noticed the pair of nipples on my chest.
Now that I don’t have nipples, though, I always notice them. I feel their absence pucker under my blouse like a phantom limb when I walk into a cool breeze. When Adam caught me in the car lot two days ago, I swear they pinched in a way that would make any Regency-era maiden blush. But since I no longer have physical sensation on my breasts (no hot, no cold, no pain, no pleasure), what I do feel is a trick of the brain.
I constantly wonder what they’d be doing, like my old nipples still exist somewhere in the ether. They’re a vacation fling I’ve lost track of and am now left dreaming about. What are they doing now? What would we be doing together? Is there a world where we could’ve made it work?
I hike up the box of Sam’s flatware over my phantom nipples as I heave it into the back of my car in front of his apartment. Dr.Lewis asked Adam to leave the boxes we packed in their garage while he and his wife are in Florida, but after getting derailed by the no-snow emergency, the delivery duties fell on me.
Mara Tetrises the final box and clicks the trunk shut. “Just the one trip, right? I have a call with the Guy in an hour. He’s mid-meltdown.” She slides into the passenger seat.
My Subaru hums to life when I push the starter. “Someone caught wind of the secret baby?”
She checks her face in the mirror before flipping up the visor. “Ugh. I wish. My kingdom for a secret baby. That’s a scandal I would rock. Is that all of the boxes?”
“Just from the kitchen. We’ve hardly made a dent in packing. Can you check if Adam texted the Lewises’ garage code yet?” I pass her my unlocked phone before pulling out of Sam’s parking lot.
Categorizing a screenshot of a text from my ex-boyfriend’s dad as a “text from Adam” feels like a stretch. Adam’s gone from monosyllabic responses to zero.
“Al, this text conversation is completely lopsided.” Mara does nothing to conceal her cringe as she scrolls up to the beginning of the thread. “You’re quadruple texting him for almost nothing in return.”
“That’s how he is with everyone.”
“I kind of respect that level of misanthropy.”
“He’s dipped into some special reserves of hostility for me. Did I mention that he can’t stand me?”
“You mentioned that in the apartment. And on the stairs. And when the box broke in the lobby.”
I click on my blinker and squint into the late autumn sun. “I’m not used to being disliked. It rattles me.”
“How are you not done with this apartment thing yet?” she asks, her tone steeped in judgment.
“It turns out Sam was pretty bad at home ownership. When he broke off part of the faucet handle, he just duct-taped it.” I flit my eyes toward Mara, who’s pursing her lips. “There’s more stuff like that all over the place. We’re not even close to done.”
“Can’t they hire someone?”
“I don’t think they know how bad it is, and I feel wrong tattling to his parents.” When Rachel told me he was lying to his parents about our relationship to appear more serious and settled, she introduced me to a part of Sam I had so much more in common with: a people pleaser performing a version of himself. I can’t betray that guy, even if he broke up with me in the middle of a lake. “Adam seems determined to do it all himself, and I promised Sam’s mom I’d help Adam.”
“If he wants to do it all himself, let him,” she says with a flick of her wrist.
I tilt my head, considering this. After all, Adam made it clear he didn’t want me around, and though I agreed to pretend that Sam never dumped me, I can’t imagine his family honestly cares which of his friends packs up his socks and paints the living room. If Adam wants the job so badly, why can’t I give it to him?
“It’ll free you up for weekend trivia before the tournament, and we desperately need the practice. I assigned Chelsea a couple of sports to study, but she’s deep in a Formula 1 hole. Can you learn everything there is to know about baseball by January first?” Mara shines her intensity on me as I check my blind spot to exit the highway.
“Everything there is to know about America’s oldest pastime? Sure,” I respond dryly.
“Start with Minnesota baseball and work your way out in concentric circles.” Mara says this like she’s asking me to grab takeout on the way over—a wholly ordinary and simple request.
“You’re insane.”
“I’m a winner. We have to beat our nemesis once and for all.”
Mara has a one-sided rivalry with another trivia team, Risky Quizness. They massacre us every time and have no idea who we are or that Mara hates them. It drives her batty. Consequently, she tends to overestimate Chelsea’s and my desire to memorize sports stats. But as with most things involving Mara, resistance is futile.
“We have the other major areas covered. We need someone who knows sports if we want to win.”
Sam knew sports. A few weeks after we broke up, Mara dragged us to a different bar every week, trying to qualify for the upcoming trivia tournament. One Tuesday, we wound up somewhere near Sam’s job. He was perched on a stool near the back enjoying happy hour with coworkers.
I did what any normal woman would do in this situation: pretended not to see him, sparing us the obligatory awkward ex chitchat and endless “good”-ing. You’re doing good? I’m good too. Work’s good. Good for you too? So good! But Sam yelled across the bar, “Seriously, Mullally? You’re gonna walk right past like that? Can we at least be civil, for the kids?” He gestured to Mara, Chelsea, and Patrick, and I busted out laughing.
We invited him over to our table, and it was…fun. It was like we were old friends who had never dated. Sam regaled us with stories of the strange people he’d run into at a campground near Badlands National Park and his new venture into getting his pilot’s license. Patrick listened rapt, and Mara and Chelsea revealed their slightly mean nickname for him when we were together: Manic Pixie Dream Boy. He laughed good-naturedly in the way the unflinchingly self-assured can.
With Sam’s encyclopedic knowledge of ESPN, we were able to win the night and qualify for the tournament. My favorite competitive sociopath, Mara, jumped into Sam’s arms and screamed, “Suck it, Risky Bitchness!” who were not even there to receive the devastating blow. Chelsea thanked him for freeing her from Mara’s crippling qualifying schedule. Patrick was just grateful for a buffer from Mara’s intensity.
He wanted to join us for the tournament on New Year’s Day, and I had smiled, realizing we were finally exactly what we were always supposed to be. It was like discovering the shirt you could never get over your head no matter how hard you tried had always been a pair of pants.
On autopilot, I pass several obscenely large lakefront houses. The Lewises’ cheery floral mailbox snaps me back to reality, and I turn onto their drive, pea gravel crackling under my tires like Rice Krispies. Their cozy rambler’s exterior doesn’t look as grand as the neighboring McMansions built during the Clinton administration, but what it lacks in flimsy austere fa?ade it makes up for in airy warmth. We park in front of the oversized garage, which I know holds two luxury SUVs, a couple Jet Skis, and a pontoon boat.
Mara punches in the code while I heave the boxes out of the trunk, yanking at my ill-fitting sports bra. With firm silicone implants and no nipples to speak of, I generally don’t wear bras, but lifting stacked ceramic plates and other athletic endeavors require proper support. A too-tight bra leaves deep grooves and skin irritation I can’t feel. Too loose and the jostling causes pins and needles throughout my chest—my brain filling in the gaps of assumed pain.
Preparing to lift the final box, I’m bent over, adjusting the band of my bra, when I hear the snap-crackle-pops of a car pulling up behind me. A white Lexus enters my field of vision, and Mrs.Lewis steps out of the passenger seat. She’s dressed like a Nancy Meyers movie heroine in head-to-toe linen neutrals. The outfit’s all wrong for Minnesota in November, but then again, she’s supposed to be in Florida right now.
“We came home early,” she says, because I must’ve said that last part out loud. She’s slower than when I saw her last, like her grief is a weighted vest. “I’m glad I caught you. I was thinking about you the whole time we were gone. Is this all of it?”
Mrs.Lewis gestures between the open garage door and the box at my feet. Mara waves demurely and beelines out of sight. No chance she’s rescuing me from my matinee performance as Sam’s Current Girlfriend.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. There’s a lot more to do.”
Apprehension pulls her face taut. Tears pool in her eyes, but she presses into the corners of them with her thumb and forefinger before they can fall.
Panic seeps into my chest. “It’ll get done. Adam will be here every weekend. He’s determined to do this for you,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Alison, honey. The idea of having to pack up his…It’s just…” She pulls me into her arms and says into my shoulder, “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we’ve had you to count on through all of this. Knowing someone who loved Sam is guiding the process, you can’t imagine—” She stops herself. Her chest rises and falls in my arms until she takes a step back.
“I’ve always been so worried for him. I imagine every parent worries—about the big things especially, but about the little things too. And Sam always gave me so much to worry about.” Her mouth curls up at the corners, like even now, she can’t help but smile at her son. “When he was learning to walk, he would grab on to table legs and bookshelves to help him stand. But then he kept trying to pull himself higher up the bookcase, as if climbing was the real goal and we were all thinking too small. Gosh, I should’ve gotten a punch card from the ER for how many times I had to get that kid stitched up.”
Her wistful expression deteriorates into a sad, broken thing. “They don’t tell you…the worry doesn’t go anywhere when they’re gone, you know. I don’t think it’s supposed to. Your children hand it to you when they’re born and you carry it with you until the end. But knowing he had you in his life…it helps a little. Like you’re holding some of it for me.”
She rubs my shoulder in the way my mom does. Maybe all moms have this comforting gesture in their arsenal. What do they do with it when they lose the person it was made for?
“Adam and I will take care of it all,” I promise, pressing my hand against the emotions cracking beneath my collarbone. “Don’t worry about a thing.”
Mrs.Lewis bends to touch the box next to me. Her hand falters, like there’s a monster inside, poised to attack. Maybe for her, there is. She snaps her hand back. “Can you put that in the garage for me?” she asks, pointing to the cardboard box of her distilled grief.
With a wobbly smile, I move the last one into the garage, spying Mara hidden in the passenger seat in my peripheral vision. She’s no doubt overheard this dreary exchange.
We don’t say another word until we’re back on the highway. “I’ll let Chelsea and Patrick know you’ll be busy every weekend this month,” Mara states. It’s not a question anymore. I’m in this with Adam until the end. “You’re doing a good thing, Mullally.” She rubs sympathetic circles on my right shoulder blade. “I just wish it wasn’t at the expense of our trivia domination.”
A single-syllable laugh breaks free from my throat, and I shrug her hand off. “Yes, this must be a very challenging time for you .”
“Hey, let’s not compare our problems.” She turns up the volume on Mariah Carey and lets the queen of Christmas serenade us home.