5. As I Ugly Cry
AS I UGLY CRY
PRESENT
I get two immediate FaceTime requests.
“What’s wrong?” It’s Daisy’s voice, but it’s her dog (literally named The Dog) who appears on my screen, long tongue lolling out and trying to lick at the screen.
Gwendy’s gloved and pipetting something, but as soon as she looks at the screen and sees my tear-streaked face, she tells me, “I can be there in seven minutes. I can push off leaving for my conference too, if that makes a difference.”
She’s slated to defend in a few months and should be done with all her wet lab work, but Gwendy being Gwendy, I’m sure she’s doing additional work to finagle one last paper.
“No,” I sniffle. “There was a last-minute change and Lucas is now today’s guest speaker. I’ll have to—”
“The Lucas?”
“Sagittarius A*?”
Unlike Abe, they don’t mean it in the Forbes-list way. They both know he’s my Katy Perry one-that-got-away. Mostly because that was the song I was looping while trying to explain the entire sordid past to them.
“Yeah. The Lucas. Though I never agreed to the other nickname.” Gwendy, with her need to romanticize everything, had latched on to my metaphor, that Lucas drew me to him like a black hole, and was also forever beyond my reach.
“Oh, honey.”
“You saw him already?”
I’m proud of how steady my voice is when I reply.
“It didn’t go well.” Though it’s difficult to know what well would have looked like.
After all, avoiding Lucas was the whole reason I put off RSVPing to Brody’s wedding.
“Abe told him about the paper, and of course Lucas wanted to see my research and—”
“Did he guess it was about him?”
I give a watery shake of my head. “I don’t know.
Maybe? I guess I thought I’d have more time to prepare, and it’s so much harder than I thought it would be,” I admit, finally.
My glasses are foggy from my tears, and I wish I could channel the energy of my younger self, when I was able to focus on the anger instead of the sadness.
“You need to tell him.”
It’s what Gwendy’s been arguing from the very beginning, despite not knowing all of the details.
“All of it, whatever the truth was behind that definitely-not-real engagement, your condition, the fact that you’re even working with Abe Kleinberg, of all people, when—”
“Stop.”
Gwendy stops talking, and for a moment the only sound is that of The Dog panting.
“I don’t want to rehash old arguments. I just want a distraction before I have to attend his”—my brain blanks out for a moment, and I can’t think of a single appropriate adjective—“stupid talk. Because I’ll have to hear his stupid voice lecturing on something stupidly brilliant that only Lucas fucking Murray could have come up with, and—”
“I could fly out,” Daisy offers. “I can be very distracting.”
“Don’t be silly—”
But Gwendy cuts me off, her tone an exaggerated form of petulance. “Wow. So you don’t fly out for my birthday—”
“I didn’t have money—”
“But now you’ve got a rich math-y daddy.”
I sniffle, because yes, thank you, this is what I needed. Their bickering is soothing, even if they’re not here with me, even if Daisy’s across the country and Gwendy will be leaving when she graduates this May.
“Please don’t call Lars that.”
“It does sound wrong,” I manage to contribute.
“Agreed.” There’s a deep voice offscreen, and it’s only then I realize Daisy isn’t alone.
“Sorry,” Daisy mouths. “Lars is working from home.”
“Working,” Gwendy repeats. “I’m sure you’re getting all sorts of things done.”
“We are, actually.”
“We work very well together.” Lars’s voice is only slightly disembodied. I’ve yet to meet the man, but given how ecstatic Daisy has been since they got together? I’m a fan.
“That’s not the point.” Daisy moves The Dog, who barks in protest, his tongue wiping a streak across the phone screen. “I could cook all your favorite dishes, show you a million pictures of The Dog, and more importantly, I could be there tomorrow morning.”
“Actually, we could be there tonight,” Lars corrects, clearly already looking up flights.
“Please don’t fly out.” I’m almost smiling as I say this, but I’m also exhausted in a way that feels bone-deep. “This was all I needed.”
“Nicknaming Lars math-y daddy?”
I laugh again and look at the time. “Lucas’s talk starts soon and—”
“But do you have to attend?”
I pause at Daisy’s question, because do I? Abe expects it. But it’s not like I need this for networking purposes. And the best thing about having an advisor who’s always upset with you? It’s hard to make him upset-er.
Because Abe’s already, always, at maximum upset-ness.
“I do have dissertations to edit.”
“That’s not a normal sentence, you know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Gwendy agrees, back to pipetting and not looking at the screen now that I’ve clearly calmed down. “Most of us only ever edit one dissertation and barely survive the trauma therein.”
“Who says therein?” At this point, I know Daisy’s bickering to give me continued distraction, but I still smile.
“I’m fancy now that I’m graduating.”
“By that logic, since I’ve already graduated, I ought to be able to expostulate—”
“No one says expostulate,” Gwendy protests.
“Agreed.” Lars dips his head into the screen again. “It’s not even a good Scrabble word.”
“It’s a playable word.”
“It’s eleven letters, Daisy.”
“Okay, hello.” Gwendy is waving her pipette around, which is surely against protocol. “Are we really skipping past the part that Lorelai, the only one of us who isn’t graduating, is the one who’s edited multiple dissertations?”
“Editing is easier than writing.” The small lie rolls easily off my tongue, even if I do hate myself for not sharing the complete truth.
No one knows my dissertation has been completed, formatted, and edited for the past eleven months.
Instead, I use the time I’m supposed to be writing to edit other people’s work, because it helps me feel useful, reminds me I’m still capable.
Even Daisy and Gwendy don’t know just how many essays, papers, and dissertations I’ve edited, that I’ve helped everyone from Lucas’s little brothers to my younger sisters, my groupmates (whom I can help escape Abe more quickly), and a variety of random people who have been referred to me, who pay me in everything from cash in red envelopes to home-baked goods.
“Editing soothes my former, more workaholic tendencies.”
“Former,” Daisy repeats with decidedly more snark. “Because you’re definitely not the roommate we always found awake at all hours, tapping away on your laptop.”
“I’m a recovering workaholic,” I tell them, because it’s easier than admitting I’m an insomniac who works whenever I can’t sleep.
“Well, I for one am forever grateful.”
I wave off Daisy’s thanks—even if Daisy’s math was well beyond my limited capabilities to understand, a comma splice is a comma splice.
Lars whispers something in Daisy’s ear, and Gwendy is clearly peering at equipment, which is my cue to end the call.
“Thank you both for calling right away.”
“Anytime.”
I smile when I realize even Lars has agreed.
I watch as they hang up.
I can feel the tears starting again, and with it, my own impatience. Growing up, it always felt as though my mother’s tears were endless, her grief over the dissolution of her marriage a boundless, infinite chasm of sorrow.
And even though yes, I’m not the woman I once was, I refuse to become my mother. So I swipe to the sad Chinese song I have queued for such mini crises and allow myself the luxury of three minutes and forty-seven seconds of crying to “Fen Fei.”
When the song ends, I square my shoulders and exit into the quiet hallway.
I have friends and a solid research project. I have papers and dissertations to edit. I have three little sisters who still depend on me.
It’s more than so many others have.
I tell myself I’m content.