Chapter 1 Unoriginal Sin #2
“Maybe…” Eve paused before letting her suggestion into the air, knowing that once it was out there, she was probably going to follow it.
There were so many places she could go to take a break.
A couple of weeks in Los Angeles always did her well.
The openness of it all. The antithesis of home, the high-strung havoc of New York.
Or she could go to Paris for a bit. She’d always had an abstract dream of escaping to the City of Light and James Baldwining it up for a year or two.
The way her bank account was set up, she couldn’t quite afford that luxury, and again, she was not someone who could live on whims. But she could do it for about a month.
Mostly, Eve wanted to drop off the grid, and the one place that kept coming back to her mind was some cabin in the middle of nowhere, where she could grieve and write—in no particular order—all by herself.
“I think I’m going to Gatlinburg,” she finally said. She gazed at Maya, awaiting her approval—or lack thereof.
Maya only raised an eyebrow. “You sure you wanna go back there?”
Eve shrugged. “Can’t hurt any more than I already do.”
“Damn.”
“That was a long time ago anyway.”
Maya gave her a knowing look, clear that Eve was in denial, at best, and lying, at worst.
“I sort of already knew what I was gonna do before I got here,” Eve admitted.
She pulled out her phone, where she had started her search for flights on the ride there, and lamented that she would have to fly out of LaGuardia if she wanted a nonstop route.
“I guess I just wanted to see your face before I left,” she added.
“Bitch, why are you being so dramatic? How long you goin’ for?”
“I don’t know.”
“A year?” Maya asked, cocking her head as if to challenge Eve.
“Probably not, but…”
“It better not be a year.”
“I said I don’t know,” Eve said.
“So you gon’ sit up in your grandmama’s old cabin by yourself for a year? Shut up.”
“I can’t stand you,” Eve said, holding back her amusement.
“A second ago, you couldn’t live without my face.”
“When I don’t call you for a year, I want you to recall this moment as the reason why.”
“I will hunt you down in Tennessee before I let that happen,” Maya said.
“You can try.”
“And you better not need money while you’re there, because you will starve messin’ around with me.”
Maya’s immaculate smile evolved into a laugh, and Eve responded in kind.
A small one, but a laugh, nonetheless. Which was precisely why she wanted to see her best friend.
She wasn’t in a laughing mood, and hadn’t been for the last few weeks, but Maya would bring her to a place where she could at least fathom it for a couple of minutes. She always took the pain away.
“I just hope a change of pace will let me feel something different,” Eve said, sobering.
Maya nodded. “It’s the hope that kills you, you know.”
“No shit.” It was all this time, the years she’d spent hoping for a baby, that left her feeling like this.
The last pregnancy test she took had been on her opening night at Playwrights Horizons, with Maya waiting on the other side of a bathroom stall as Eve anxiously peed on a stick.
They spent the requisite three-minute wait reminiscing, as they often did when they didn’t want to face the complexities of present-day adult life.
They cried with a muted delight when the result came back positive, after Eve spent the better part of the holidays trying to get over her second miscarriage.
She hoped upon hope that the third time would be the charm.
And so, this one only felt heavier. Crueler.
Maya sat back in her chair, her arms folded over her chest again like a judgmental auntie.
“I don’t like it. But I guess I’m gonna be an adult about this.
Go…get better. Write a play about it. Shit’s way cheaper than therapy.
” She let out a somber chuckle and so did Eve. “But then bring your ass home.”
Eve replied with a strained smile. But Maya wasn’t wrong—writing had been far more therapeutic than any time she’d spent on a psychologist’s couch. It would be nice if she could write her way through this. If she could fix herself. “I’ll try.”
—
When Eve walked into her parents’ Strivers’ Row brownstone, she shouldn’t have been surprised to find Leo waiting there.
He was like a stray puppy, desperate for affection from the human who abandoned it.
She often wished she had a dog, but Leo was allergic.
So she accepted his unconditional love, regretful that she didn’t have the same to give to him.
He’d called her four times, and texted twice more, and she ignored nearly all of them.
I’m ok was her only response after his third attempt, and even that was a lie.
Depression, even when exacerbated by what they were going through, wasn’t a good excuse for treating loved ones badly.
But she would use it, and he would take it.
“You found me.” She said it as a simple statement of fact, too numb to even be annoyed.
“Maya told me where you were headed.”
Eve made a mental note to curse her out next time they spoke, then continued into the kitchen, where she found her mother hovering over the Crock-Pot on the island counter.
She couldn’t help but notice how the white marble top matched her mother’s gray locs, and she welcomed the distraction from the heavier things on her mind.
The unmistakable aroma of stewing oxtails brought Eve a modicum of much-needed comfort.
“I thought I heard your voice,” Joan greeted her.
She embraced Eve with a quick kiss to her cheek and then studied her face, undoubtedly looking for something to comment on.
To criticize. “You would look so nice with a bit of color on your lips,” she decided.
“A nice red would bring out your beautiful skin.”
“Where’s Daddy?” Eve asked, resisting the urge to argue.
Joan resumed stirring and seasoning as Eve looked on. “He’s around here somewhere.”
Eve surveyed the bright space—a pot of rice sat on the stove, a half-mixed salad on the counter closest to the refrigerator, the dinner china waiting just beside the slow cooker, with an assortment of silverware resting on the top plate.
She spotted a set of keys sitting near the landline at the entryway. “Are those for me?”
“Oh, yes.” Joan gestured for her to take them. “I realized that her car would still be there, too. You’re going to need one while you’re there.”
Eve had been relieved that her mother didn’t make a big deal when she called to ask for the keys to her grandmother’s cabin.
No superfluous questions disguised as concern, none of her typical meddling.
Just an agreement that the cabin would be a great place to write her next play.
It did come with a bit of unsolicited advice: You need to strike while the iron is hot, sweetheart .
But Eve took the empty platitude in stride because she’d been expecting worse.
Which was why Eve wasn’t surprised when she went to retrieve the key ring and found a church bulletin sitting directly underneath it.
“Ask and it will be given to you, knock and the door shall be opened.” True prayer is a personal dialogue with God in which we trust in God’s mercy and kindness.
Eve rolled her eyes. The Parish of St. Charles Borromeo had become something of a thorn in her side as she found herself outgrowing her Catholic upbringing.
“How old is that car anyway?” Eve asked, ignoring the provocation. She rejoined her mother to take in the sights and smells of the oxtails.
“Oh goodness.” Joan paused to think about it. “Probably…twenty years old now.”
“Jesus.”
She flicked her daughter for the mild blasphemy and went on, “It’s a sturdy car. It’ll get you where you need to go.”
“I don’t think I’ll be going too many places, but it’ll be nice to have,” Eve said. “Thanks, Ma.”
“You’re staying for dinner?”
Eve stopped herself from pointing out that her mother’s questions often sounded like demands. “I’m not really hungry.” She was lying.
“Nonsense. Your fiancé is here. You’re going out of town. You can have a meal with your parents.”
“Okay, but Leo doesn’t need—”
“Roger!”
“Mom, I—”
“By the way, your father is very excited that you’re finally writing something new.”
“Finally?” Eve huffed and rubbed her face as she tried to process the idea of sitting down to dinner with her parents and fiancé, when all she wanted to do was find somewhere to be alone and cry.
Now, she would have to paint on the happy face she’d tried to avoid all day with Leo.
It probably served her right for leaving him that way.
She forced a smile as she heard her father’s footsteps approach. “Where’s my Tennessee girl?” Roger asked.
“Hi, Daddy,” Eve replied. She wrapped her arms around his tall, sturdy frame as he left a kiss atop her braids, the way he did when she was little.
She and her mother were similar in shape and size—slender and on the tall side of average—but fit in his arms in decidedly different ways. “How are you?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m good, Tètè.” His grin, with its tiny gap between the front two teeth, was identical to hers. “Sounds like you are as well?”
“I can’t complain,” Eve said, meaning it literally.
She hadn’t told her parents about the pregnancy—for a number of reasons—and she certainly wasn’t going to open that can of worms now.
So no, she couldn’t tell her father that she actually felt like crawling inside a hole and dying at that very moment.
Roger nodded. “I told you you would come up with something for your next play. You just needed to soak up a little more of the world.”
Eve was convinced that the semi-success of her current play was the first time her parents deigned to be proud of her.
When she got her PhD, their response was basically, Took you long enough .
Nothing special in a family of academics.
Her little production hadn’t even sniffed Broadway, barely filling ninety seats a night in Clinton Hill nowadays.
But it was external validation, at least. Eve understood why they were looking to recapture that.
Adamant that she not be a half-hit wonder. A failure.
“We’ll see what happens,” she said, her smile tightening. “I won’t even know if it’s worth anything ’til I see it on a stage.”
“But you’ll tell us what it’s about?” Joan asked, pulling a series of glasses from an upper cabinet. “Leonardo, come set the table,” she added in another shout.
“I don’t think I’m ready for that, Ma.” She wasn’t even sure she knew what it was about yet.
“It’s that superstition where you cannot tell someone your wish before it comes true,” Roger said, chuckling. “You can tell us about it when you’re ready.”
Lacking any substantive response, Eve went to retrieve pitchers of water and sweet tea from the refrigerator.
“Do you know how long you’ll be in Tennessee then?” he asked.
“Who’s going to Tennessee?” Leo asked, entering the kitchen.
Eve avoided his eye as she pointed him in the direction of the plates. “I am.”
“Oh…”
“Writing retreat,” Joan said. “God knows she needs it.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know,” Eve said. Guilt was swallowing her whole, and she wasn’t in the mood to be honest with herself about why. “Maybe for the summer. Come back in September. If I don’t get bored and come back sooner, of course.”
“Wow,” Leo said.
“That’s so long,” Joan said. “Will Leo visit you on the weekends?”
“I think I would have to,” he said.
Eve choked out an awkward laugh, unable to tell him that she would rather have her nails plucked out than have him visit.
“Do you have enough money to be gone that long?” Roger asked.
“Yes, Daddy.” She gave her mother a knowing glance.
The night she got engaged, Joan impressed upon her just how important it was to keep her own secret stash of money.
Just in case. The implication was in case Leo turned out to be terrible.
She never imagined she’d end up using it because she was the loathly one.
The kitchen became chaotic as plates and bowls, platters and serving dishes were passed back and forth, making their way to the dining room.
The table there made her think of her grandmother; it was something her mother had coveted for years and brought back from Tennessee after the funeral.
It was wide and sturdy, in a beautiful tobacco color, its legs made up of spheres descending in size.
Had she been willing to go to the funeral, Eve might’ve tried to keep this particular heirloom for herself.
Once they were finally seated, her parents at the head and foot of the table, Eve and Leo across from each other, she could no longer avoid her fiancé’s dubious stare.
“When are you leaving?” he asked. His brown eyes were sad, practically pleading.
Eve purposely began shoveling rice onto her plate as if the action would block out his question.
“In the morning,” she finally said. “And I don’t want you to come visit me,” she added in a mumble that was likely audible only to her father, who had hearing like a bat.
She could never even sneak midnight snacks as a kid, because he would know the second she opened the fridge or pantry.
“What was that?” Joan asked.
Leo eyed Eve long enough for her to understand that he heard her loud and clear. And he was hurt. She bit the inside of her cheek, realizing just how sudden and shitty this was, her thoughtlessness once again rearing its ugly head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Sorry for what?” Joan pressed. “What is going on?”
“I’m pretty sure your daughter is breaking up with me in the middle of dinner,” Leo said flatly.
“What?”
“Eve?” Roger eyed her as if he were willing her to be brave and not embrace the streak of cowardice that was trying to force her up from the table. The one sending her running once again.
“Don’t do this,” Leo said. Begged.
“I’m so sorry,” Eve said, brushing away a stubborn tear as she indeed rose from her seat.
She felt tinges of déjà vu as she left the table, blocking out everything except that throbbing impulse to escape.
It was a terrible thing to do to anyone, much less to a man who had never done anything but love her.
And for much of their time together, she’d loved him, too—or she’d tried to.
But she could no longer care about him more than she did herself.
She was running for her life here. With her grandmother’s keys in hand, Eve left the apartment without another word.