Chapter 3 #4
I have had seven years to invent Georgia Gilligan.
I tell Edward that I was the daughter of a traveling preacher, and we moved around.
That my parents died in the same car crash that sent me through the windshield and left scars on my arms. That I finished high school with my aunt in Massachusetts, and went to RISD.
That I graduated and taught art, met a guy who was abusive, got pregnant and mustered the courage to leave him.
That my daughter died of SIDS when she was two months old, and I came to Atlanta for a fresh start.
“I like him,” Ximena says, when I introduce her to Edward. “He’s like a hot nerd.”
He tells me about growing up in the South, and what it was like to be a boy more into books than football. He calls me a Yankee. He says that Kurt Vonnegut novels changed his life, and brings me one to read.
Though we haven’t yet slept together, he kisses me until I’m breathless, slips his hand beneath my shirt and over the cup of my bra, grinds against me when we’re tangled together against the kitchen counter.
I haven’t felt this surge of want since I was in college.
But as Ximena reminds me, I am thirty--two, not dead.
One day in the middle of March, a tornado is forecast. Edward calls me at work to say the library is closing early and he will meet me at my apartment. By the time I arrive he has filled the bathtub and put new batteries in my flashlights. A portable radio is tuned to the National Weather Service.
“I’ve never been close to a tornado,” I say, terrified.
“I guess you didn’t have them often in Boston. We don’t usually get them in the city, either.” He folds me into his arms. “We’ll be safe.”
The rain is already beating against the windows. “Distract me,” I demand.
Edward draws me to the couch. “Tell me the scariest thing you’ve ever lived through.”
I look at him, alarmed. “How is that supposed to calm me down?”
“Because you survived it,” he says.
I settle on a half--truth. “Losing my child,” I say.
Edward’s gaze pins mine. We have danced around this, but we haven’t really discussed it. He knows her name was Molly. He knows that she is the reason I left Boston for Atlanta. “I wish I had met her,” he says.
I look down at the blanket, picking at the weave of the crochet.
“Georgia?” Edward asks. “Would you ever have another baby?”
My head snaps up. We haven’t discussed anything this future--coded. “Maybe. With the right person.” I twist the blanket between my fists. “How about you?”
“Maybe,” Edward echoes. “With the right person.”
The wind is screaming now. Edward brushes his mouth over mine. “The average kiss lasts twelve seconds,” he whispers.
“Why settle for average?” I reply, and I sink into him.
With hands and lips and breath we quickly reach the point where we’d normally break apart. Edward’s been respectful and never pressed me.
But there is a storm outside, and nowhere for Edward to go.
When he leads me into the bedroom, I don’t resist or make excuses.
As distractions go, this one is masterful.
“Is this all right?” he asks, gentle, his weight balanced over me and his hands framing my face. I nod, and I feel him move inside me.
I turn my head away so that he doesn’t see that I’m crying.
In one little human life, there are so many moments that shatter and remake you. The cracks become so ubiquitous, it’s hard to imagine that once, there was a whole, unbroken version of you.
“I love you, Georgia,” Edward murmurs into my ear.
I do not doubt this is true. He loves Georgia. But he doesn’t even know Eloise exists.
When Edward falls asleep, I slip out of the bedroom. The sky is a strange yellow, and the storm has passed us by. Although the power flickered, it never went out, and I sit on the couch, laptop balanced on my folded knees.
I log in to the Postpartum Psychosis forum and start typing.
GGinGA: When did you share your diagnosis with a new significant other?
I am not expecting responses, because it’s late, but two immediately blink on the screen.
Janie544: Still with my OG significant other. He watched it happen in real time!
NJM: Divorced. Third date with promising man: told him about bipolar. No fourth date.
I click out of the forum and open Facebook.
Evie has posted pictures of her new home in Rhode Island.
Adam stands in a backyard garden, grinning triumphantly as he holds up a tremendous zucchini.
One photo shows a sunset on a lake, with a male silhouette holding the hand of a girl’s silhouette. Her caption reads: My whole .
Is it cheating if your husband is married to someone else? If it’s been seven years? If you are, for all intents and purposes, dead?
Ximena’s high school boyfriend, Alejandro—-the one she found on Facebook—-visited her in Atlanta for the first time a month ago.
She got a new haircut and tried on everything in her closet before she settled on jeans and a black blouse.
She met him at a steak house—-where, as she put it, if he was a serial killer, he would be less likely to slit her throat.
Since then, they’ve been inseparable. Alejandro sends her plane tickets to Miami on the weekends he doesn’t come to Atlanta.
He is small and wiry and shaves his head. He has a tattoo of his mother’s handwriting on his forearm. He looks at my friend as if she invented the stars.
“I’m so happy for you,” I tell Ximena one night when we are in her tiny backyard. She is drinking sangria and I’m nursing a bottle of Pellegrino while Alejandro and Edward grill burgers.
She kicks my foot with her own. “I’m happy for you.”
I laugh. “Look at us. We’re disgusting.”
“Ugh,” she agrees. “I hate us.”
This sends us into a fit of giggles, and the men look up and smile, confused, before poking the meat again to test it. “What do you think they’re talking about?” I ask.
“Their fabulous partners,” Ximena scoffs. “What else.” Her gaze lands on Alejandro. “If you told me that I’d be head over heels for the guy who once pulled out my chair in grammar school, I’d tell you you were crazy.”
“Can I ask you something . . . strange? Do you ever feel like you don’t deserve to be happy?”
Ximena sighs. “You mean, because you’re here .
. . and someone you loved isn’t?” I know she is thinking about her husband, who was murdered; her parents, who she left behind when she fled El Salvador with the girls.
“I think the only way to honor loss is with joy,” she says after a moment.
“Otherwise, you’re just letting yourself die by degrees.
And what good is it, if you’re alive, but not really living?
” She reaches for my hand and squeezes it.
“You deserve to be loved. And he loves you, mija. Warts and all.”
Ximena doesn’t realize I haven’t told Edward I am bipolar. Every time I think about telling him, I find a better reason not to.
“Alejandro wants me to move in with him. In Florida,” Ximena blurts.
The first wave that crashes over me is utter delight. The second wave is panic, because for seven years she has been my rock. She watches all this transpire on my features, and gently says, “You have Edward now.”
“What about Milagros?” She is in high school, with a year left before graduation.
Ximena sighs. “We are negotiating.”
“She could stay with me till she graduates.” It is only after I make the suggestion that the shadows crowd in, and I wonder if I trust myself to raise someone’s child, given that I failed my own so spectacularly.
“You don’t want a seventeen--year--old crashing your love nest. Take it from me.”
“I do,” I insist, convincing Ximena. Convincing myself. “If she’s okay with it, I mean.”
“I’ll ask,” Ximena says, but I can see the way her shoulders relax. Then she looks up at me. “You don’t think I’m moving too fast?”
I shake my head. “Didn’t you meet, like, in diapers?”
Ximena looks at Alejandro, who is flipping the burgers. He winks at her. “You’re right,” she says. “How many people get to redo their past?”
On Labor Day, the county library system throws a barbecue for its employees at a public park.
It is beastly today in Atlanta—-over 100 degrees—-and we have been playing softball against one of the other branches.
Edward drives in the winning run. “I can’t believe I’m dating a star athlete.
” I laugh as we collapse, sweaty and tired, on a quilt.
“A star athlete for the Fulton County Library,” Edward says. “Which is kind of like being the captain of the Antarctic surfing team.”
“Is there an Antarctic surfing team?”
He shakes his head. “I love that that’s your takeaway.”
He leans down to kiss me, but I block him. “I’m filthy.”
“I’m filthier,” he offers.
“Is that a promise?”
Edward grins. “If we can sneak out past your chaperone.”
I roll my eyes. “Milagros is hardly cramping your style.” Ximena is living in Miami and Milagros moved into my apartment two weeks ago.
She sleeps on the foldout couch, but she is a stellar roommate—-washing up whatever dishes are in the sink, splitting cleaning duties.
When Edward and I want to be alone, we stay at his place.
“Besides, I don’t want to be at your house when your parents arrive. ”
Tonight, I am meeting his mother and father. I’m trying not to let myself think about the hidden meanings behind it. They are coming to town. I’m Edward’s girlfriend. Period.
Although it was years ago, I remember my first dinner with Adam’s parents.
How his mother asked questions about my upbringing and my faith and my education.
How his father wanted to know my plans and goals for the future.
Then, all I’d been hiding were the details that made me flee Alabama.
Now, I have seven years’ worth of lies to keep straight.
“They are going to love you,” Edward promises me, and just like the last couple times he’s said this, I feel a stabbing pain behind my eye.
The pain intensifies, radiating behind both temples. My face feels like it’s on fire, too.
“You all right?” Edward asks, peering at me.