Chapter 13 The North Shore Grump Has Left the Chat
13
The North Shore Grump Has Left the Chat
On Saturday, Adam reassembles the kitchen cabinets while I pack up the last of Sam’s overcrowded closets. We work in companionable silence, except I’m hyperaware of every time our bodies nearly brush against each other.
I don’t remember the last time I felt this crazy, like I needed to catalog and dissect every tiny, nearly imperceptible look. After he licks his lips and glances at me before settling his gaze on a cabinet hinge, I spend five minutes deciphering the series of movements. Following an embarrassing amount of deliberation, I decide that if he’d looked at me and then licked his lips, it would’ve meant something. As it stands, he must’ve had a dry mouth while glancing in my direction.
In the afternoon, he holds the stepladder behind me. I stiffen, studying the feel of his shadow around me for my data analysis. It’s pure insanity from sunup to sundown as the preoccupations of a boy-crazy sixteen-year-old ping-pong around my skull.
In an absolute travesty, we end the day with a noncommittal, one-armed hug. Still, the familiar scent of cedar and oranges unravels me into the door frame.
Sunday morning is a different story. I wake up to a calendar alert—drafted by me, not the ghost of boyfriends past—reminding me of my annual appointment with my breast surgeon at noon. Still, I won’t let it dampen my mood, because Sunday is another day I get to see Adam.
I drive into Minneapolis at a snail’s speed as icy flakes travel across my windshield in sideways gusts. Color has leached from my knuckles by the time I turn into Sam’s parking entrance with a student-driver level of edginess.
“Hello?” I holler once I’ve trudged through Sam’s propped-open door. The sharp scent of paint primer in the air, I cautiously step around boxes clutching the Starbucks drink carrier Adam’s come to expect. “If you’re a robber, my dad’s Liam Neeson,” I yell.
“So it’s Alison Neeson?” Adam spies me from a ladder in the living room, where he’s hard at work spackling over divots in the walls. His pants are slung low on his hips and splotched with different tones of wood stain and paint. His gray long-sleeve has fared a bit better, with only the occasional splatter of white paint. “I’ve been wondering,” he says, biting back a smile.
“Mullally, actually. The Liam Neeson thing was a clever ruse.”
Before I can blather on, he pushes up the sleeves of his shirt to reveal the forearms that haunt my dreams. Or maybe this gesture is not for my benefit at all, and he’s just warm.
Now I’m warm. I need those hands on me for no other reason than to puncture the tension building between us and free up my brain space for necessary functions. Maybe, if I knew what it felt like to have him touch me—really touch me—I’d stop obsessing over the unknown.
“I can finally change your last name in my phone,” he says, interrupting my thoughts.
“What’s my last name now?”
I’ve once or twice saved a man’s contact as Peter GoodHair or Jordan HotFace. My skin tingles in anticipation of the descriptor Adam’s used for me.
“SamGF.”
The simple statement sucks the air out of the room. Or at least out of me.
He drops the spackling knife and climbs down the ladder. “I saved your contact a while ago. We were on that group chat for the Patagonia trip.”
“I remember,” I say coolly, removing my coat and juggling the drink carrier.
“You sounded excited about it back then. It didn’t seem like you were faking.”
I set the drink carrier down on the kitchen island. “I wasn’t faking. I was trying. I still am trying. I should go on a trip like that. Everyone should.” I’m suddenly exhausted and the day’s hardly begun.
“ I’m not going on a trip like that.”
“Yes. I believe your response was ‘Absolutely not.’ Then the North Shore Grump left the chat. A big loss for us all.”
“North Shore Grump?”
With the coatrack packed away, I shove my coat over Adam’s on the closet doorknob. “You know, because of your geographic location and economy of words.”
He crosses the room to the kitchen. “Did I say something wrong?”
Yes! Not only did you point out how I’m failing in my relentless quest toward self-improvement, you also reminded me that, to you, I’m Sam’s Current Girlfriend. Possibly forever.
His forehead crinkles in confusion like he’s a scolded puppy. I can’t help it; I paste on a smile and choose the path of least resistance. “Of course not.”
He looks at me in a way I feel in my toes before he lifts one finger and traces the corner of my lip. Then he asks, his voice so low I almost miss it, “Why do you think I want to hear that?”
I inhale, I think. My brain is goo.
“No reason,” I tell him once he’s dropped his hand. “What do I need to do today?”
He looks around the apartment. Most of it is packed. Aside from the boxes crowding the entry, the place looks cold and bare, like we’ve puttied over any evidence of the existence of Sam.
“While I prep the walls, can you box up the corner bookcase? I’ll drop it off at the Lewises’ later today.”
Tension grips my shoulders. I’ve been avoiding the bookcase, and today—Yearly brCA Appointment Day—it’s the very last place I want to be. This bookcase is Sam’s life. It’s his favorite books, photos, trinkets, and souvenirs. It’s proof of a short life well lived. Even looking at it feels intrusive.
I exhale loudly. Theatrically. The baiting way you breathe when you’re daring someone to notice how undone you are so you can bite their head off.
“You okay?” Adam asks.
“I’m fine.”
“Okay…” He walks back to his ladder, clearly confused and hurt.
I walk to my corner and face Sam’s bookcase. I have to drag a bar stool from the kitchen to reach the top, but I start there. It’s adorned with trinkets that have never made it to his social media feed: faded Polaroids, seashells, a cracked gas station key chain, a stack of handwritten journals, and a receipt for auto-body repair written in Spanish.
I’m struck by how meaningless it all looks to me. I’ve seen the selfies he’s shared of all these places, but these shelves are packed with the bits he wanted to remember—just himself.
Sometime between the breakup and his death, I reduced all of Sam down to a label to be neatly filed away: that time I was dumped by a travel influencer . The items on this shelf prove he was so much more than that.
Sam was living his life for himself. Sure, certain poses and pictures monetized a rosy-hued snapshot, but there’s no evidence of that on these shelves. Here, he kept the memories of what he truly experienced.
What this shelf reveals is how disingenuous I was about him. He was looking for someone to share the real parts of the adventure with. I wanted him to make my life the highlight reel. Guilt buzzes under my skin like a bee trapped behind a curtain.
Sorting these mementos isn’t the issue—it’s all “Keep”—but I don’t know how long these things will sit in a box when I’m done. Will Sam’s family immediately take out every item, discussing their memories with each small token? Or will the box sit in a basement for years until someone opens it in search of something in particular, only to slam it shut to hold the painful ghost of grief at bay? I feel like I owe it to Sam to witness it all—one last time—before it gets packed away.
I reach into a small ceramic bowl and pull out a few coins from other countries and a piece of plastic. My heart clenches when I recognize a chip from Mystic Lake Casino, because I have its mate somewhere in my jewelry box.
He told me a ludicrous story of getting drunk with bikers at a casino in Macau on our third date. I’ve never gambled before, I told him. So on our fourth date, he took me to the local casino.
I bet twenty dollars on a card game I didn’t know how to play and lost it all. We played penny slots for the afternoon, and before we left, he handed me one of his last two $1 chips and said, We’ll each hold on to one—for bail money .
Now I sit on the floor with Sam’s chip. He was so sure I could live a life as free and untethered as his if I wanted it. When I met Sam, I was certain he was exactly what my small life needed. I thought I wanted my world to get brighter, bigger, and scarier, but I wasn’t brave enough to hold on to that light. Or I didn’t want it enough. Or maybe I wasn’t worthy of it.
I do everything it takes to keep from crying. I don’t get to cry over this. Remembering is the absolute least I can do.
My phone beeps, reminding me of my appointment. Two and a half hours have passed in a blink while I’ve hardly made a dent. I put the chip back in the dish and walk toward the front door.
“I have to go,” I say, facing the closet. My coat hugs Adam’s over the doorknob. It’s denim-side out today, and a grin clambers up my face in spite of my mood.
“Where do you have to go?” he asks from his perch.
I pull on my boring, one-sided black coat. “I have a doctor’s appointment.”
“On a Sunday?”
“Is that a problem?” My tone slices, but I don’t have the energy to dull its hard edge.
“Is this about the name in my phone?”
My cheeks flush. Thank god I’m not looking at him. I don’t need my face giving me away, and I don’t want to see his either. I don’t need the confirmation of how one-sided my feelings are.
But the anxiety building up my spine—that feeling that my brain will peel away from my body if I don’t get out—isn’t just about him. It’s about me. Sam. Everything.
It’s like you’re pretending to be someone else.
I shake it off. “I don’t know what you mean, but I’ll be back later.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He sounds more casual than rude, but it still cuts.
I open my mouth to say something—apologize?—but I roll my lips between my teeth and walk out the door.
—
One Sunday per month, Dr. Steinberg sees post-mastectomy patients like me for routine checkups. She says it’s to allow flexibility for her patients’ schedules, but I suspect we’re merely an excuse to get out of attending travel hockey tournaments with her husband and two sons. She confirms my theory by waxing poetic on the transcendent silence of an empty house.
Seated on the exam table, I open my gown at the front and watch Dr.Steinberg grope my right breast clinically. Like most breast cancer–adjacent spaces, the room’s decor falls on the pink spectrum somewhere between baby and millennial.
I feel the pressure of her touch on my breastbone and the sharp chill of the clinic air on my exposed arms and stomach. She moves over to my left and repeats the process, her face as vacant as always. I focus on the wall behind her, my attention drifting between an aggressively inoffensive watercolor and a mammogram infographic.
Dr.Steinberg stands as I close my gown. “Everything feels good. Scars look good.” Dr.Steinberg doesn’t do small talk, but that’s never bothered me. I like my clinicians clinical. She rolls across the vinyl floor in her desk chair, and her brows curve inward at the text on her computer screen. “Do you have a plan for the ovarian risk? I can provide a referral.”
“I’m seeing someone at Fairview. I’m getting regular ultrasounds for now until I decide what to do with them.”
She rises and offers a nod, like she’s checking off a mental bulleted list of bedside manners, as she makes her way to the door. “Good. See you in a year.”
I put my clothes back on and walk out of the clinic without looking at anyone. My mom prefers me to call right after my appointments, but I don’t feel up for it. Instead, I punch out a dismissive text.
12:45 PM
Alison:
Went great. Phone dying. Call you later.
When I press send—and toss the fully charged lie on the passenger seat—my eyes snag on the sign planted between my car and the navy minivan beside me.
The yearly exam is not what I dread. It’s parking in the spaces reserved for patients of the breast cancer clinic, knowing I should have gotten cancer but probably won’t because of an unlucky break for my mom. It’s knowing my doctor will ask me about my ovaries and I won’t have an answer. It’s having to call my family and talk brCA. Again.
I turn my key in the ignition, and the speakers blare “The Christmas Shoes”—the worst and most manipulative holiday song ever written. It’s the final insult. I look in my rearview mirror, grab the headrest of the passenger seat, and step on the gas.
Before I have time to react, my car lurches forward, up over the curb and into a snowbank. I slam on the brake and look down at the gearshift to find confirmation that the car’s in drive, not reverse.
My Subaru rests on the mound of snow piled directly in front of my former parking spot. I try to reverse, but my car bellows into the snow like a beached whale. I turn off my engine and dramatically rest my head on the steering wheel like a Christmas movie heroine at her lowest point. And yet, a Christmas tree farmer doesn’t save me. Chelsea does.
···
I’m not the only one making snowy road mistakes today, but I suspect mine was the most preventable. Chelsea’s uncle Ricky can tow my car to his nearby shop. Since I’m not one of the poor souls blocking traffic or trapped in a ditch, I’m placed at the end of the queue. I definitely won’t make it back to Adam today.
I walk back to the doctor’s office lobby, pulling my glove off to text him.
1:07 PM
Alison:
Car trouble. Won’t make it back.
1:08 PM
Adam:
Are you okay?
1:10 PM
Alison:
Fine. Drove into a snowbank.
Immediately after I press send, Adam calls me.
“Where are you?” his tinny voice asks as soon as I pick up—no greetings.
I fill my voice with all of the faux cheeriness I can muster. I won’t let him worry. “I’m fine. I drove into the snowplow pile in the parking lot of my doctor’s office.”
“I thought you were lying about going to the doctor.”
“I wasn’t, but now I have to wait for the tow truck.” I yank on the locked front door of my doctor’s office. “And my doctor left, so I’m in for a long afternoon while I wait outside in the cold or in a car that’s mid-takeoff. Perfect.”
“Where are you?” Something honks in the background.
“Are you in your car?” I ask past him.
“I dropped some stuff off at the Lewises’. I’m leaving Excelsior now. Where are you?” he repeats more urgently.
“Adam, no. You don’t need to do that.”
“I’m not leaving you in the cold to wait for a tow truck. I’ll wait with you. It’ll be fun.” He says the word fun with the flattest and most unconvincing affect.
I tuck my scarf into the front of my coat and brush against my icy boob. “I’m not super fun right now.”
“Perfect, I’m never fun.” This makes me laugh, and I swear I can hear him trying not to smile through the phone. “What if I bring sandwiches? I can’t leave you like this. It’s too pathetic.” Now I’m certain I hear a smirk in his voice, and I smile to no one like an idiot.
“Pathetic?” I repeat. His chuckle pings against my ear, and I relent. “Fine. I want a happy salad.”
I know our time together has an expiration date, but I can’t help stretching every moment out as much as possible. I want to believe he is too—shouldn’t we be done with the condo by now?—but that might be my one-sided crush talking.
“No such thing, but I’ll figure it out.” A turn signal clicks on his side of the line. “Send me your address.”
Crap. “Um. I’ll drop a pin.”