Chapter 10 #2
Harrison swallows, pulling his lips to the left.[*2] “I’m trying to be better,” he whispers as his mom enters the room.
As I watch Harrison and his mom get along fabulously for the next ten minutes, it’s clear that whatever he’s trying is working. Even so, the positive feelings between them obviously don’t extend to me.
“You’re a teacher, right, Emma?” Millie asks, sipping her coffee.
“I was,” I say, eyes darting to Harrison, who provides no helpful backup. “I actually work in a coffee shop now.”
“Oh, is that so?” Her voice drips liquid sweetness. “Why did you decide to leave teaching?”
“Turns out it wasn’t for me,” I say. That’s about 30 percent of a full explanation, but Millie certainly isn’t interested in the nuances of my feelings about the teaching profession, nor do I want to unpack them right now.
“Well, we can’t all end up in the right job the first go-around, I suppose,” she says.
She then proceeds to embark on a rant about the status of career counseling in our nation, and why every student should be required to meet with a professional career coach at least once every six months while they’re in college.
Finally, she asks the question I can tell she’s been dying to ask since we walked in the door: “How’s Stephanie?”
My eyes dart toward Harrison, but his eyes stay trained on his mother with so much focus that it feels intentionally avoidant. “I haven’t talked to her today,” he says.
Millie’s eyes narrow, picking up on his suspicious lack of additional information. Why? I beg her to ask. Ask him why! I want him to tell you why, because I’m incredibly desperate for any additional scrap of information he’ll give me about this breakup! Help a girl out!
“Why?” she asks. Hallelujah.
He finally glances over at me, but I can tell from even that split second that he’s assessing whether I’m paying attention or whether I’ve miraculously left the room so he doesn’t have to do this in front of me.
“We’re in a bit of a rough patch right now,” he says. I don’t even pretend to hide the way my head whips toward his, and he doesn’t even pretend to hide the way he ignores me.
“What does that mean?” Millie demands.
“Um,” he says, making eye contact with her so intently that I feel like I’ve disappeared, “I’m not sure it’s going to work out between us.”
What does that mean? I beg. “What does that mean?” she asks. Millie and I have never been more aligned than we are in this moment.
Harrison blinks several times before responding. “It’s a long story. I don’t really want to get into it.”
A long story is a crazy way to say we broke up, but we’re friends on a trial basis, and I don’t think trial-basis friends get to have opinions on how you describe breakups.
“Harrison. You two were great together. You know I adore that girl. She’s like a daughter to me.
” That’s an insane thing to say about a girl your son had been dating for four months, but what do I know?
“You two were bringing me so much joy, even though I don’t have a lot of reasons to feel joy right now,” she adds.
If I breathe, they’ll remember I’m here, so I don’t breathe. I evaporate into thin air.
“Mom, come on, it’s not that seriou—”
“Yes,” she says. “It is.”
Harrison is silent. (I am still nonexistent.)
His ability to speak calmly about his breakup, both right now and last week in his apartment, mere hours after it happened, is, frankly, baffling.
I’ve never been part of a breakup due to the necessary prerequisite of having actually been in a relationship, but surely it’s more emotional than this.
Then again—if you’re the one who does the breaking, then it’s probably easier for you, right?
Harrison wanted the breakup, and also he knew it was coming, so he had time to prepare.
“Did this just happen?” she asks, and Harrison nods. “Great. Then there’s still time for you to fix it, right?” Harrison nods again. “Don’t nod. Use your words.”
Harrison says “Yes, there’s probably still time” at the same moment I stand and say “Bathroom?”
They stare at me blankly, as if I’d accomplished my goal and they had forgotten I was present. As Millie points down the hallway, she studies me inquisitively. I scamper out of the room, becoming nonexistent again.
The bathroom has the same level of half-unpacked clutter as the living room. There’s a lotion bottle, an open container of mouthwash, a lone strand of floss, and a half-full glass of water, all to the right of the sink. The mess continues to the left.
So, when Harrison said she wasn’t doing great, he really did mean she wasn’t doing great.
This is what my living space looked like in the months leading up to me quitting my teaching job, so I see it for what it is.
My bathroom was constantly littered with dirty water glasses and sunglasses from five fashion trends ago and towels on the floor, because sometimes the thought of having to bend over and pick up a towel made me want to break down, and so the laundry stayed unfinished.
I can’t imagine how this has weighed on him.
If Harrison has a fatal flaw, it’s his desperate need to care for other people.
It’s why he’s a nurse. It’s why he meal-prepped and drove thirty minutes out of his way to bring his mom food, just so she wouldn’t have the added pressure of cooking tonight.
It’s why he offered to drive me to IKEA, even though he had other things to do. Damn it.
It’s been silent since I closed the bathroom door, but the conversation finally picks back up, the thin walls doing nothing to halt the flow of words.
“It’s not because of her, is it?” Millie asks, not loudly, but with enough clarity that I can tell the way she says “her” implies that “her” is a she-devil mistress straight from hell. It is immediately clear she’s talking about me, which is not surprising but still makes my stomach plummet.
“Of course not. There’s nothing going on between us,” Harrison says confidently, confirming what I know to be true.
“I can’t imagine there would be, since she has a history of treating you so poorly.”
I hate her, and I hate that she’s right.
“Well—”
“You’re a pushover, and she’s always pushing you. You can’t let her do that again. But, thankfully, if there’s nothing going on between you two, then I’m sure you can fix things with Stephanie, right?”
Harrison doesn’t say anything.
“Right?” Millie repeats. “It just makes me so happy to know you’re happy.
Do you understand how rare and lucky it is to have a strong, healthy relationship the way you two did?
When something like that comes along, you can’t just let it go.
I don’t want you to end up in a doomed relationship the way your father and I did. ”
“I know, Mom,” he says. “I’ll work on it.”
“Well. You know she’s welcome for dinner any time.” It’s obvious she’s not referring to the same “she” as before.
Harrison mumbles something in return, and I gather myself and walk back into the living room before Millie can keep berating me and Harrison can keep not defending my honor.
From his perch on the couch, Harrison looks even more miserable than the time Carson Straeder was his assigned partner for a group project in our freshman year writing seminar, and Carson got up to present in front of the class and didn’t use the talking points that they (they being 99 percent Harrison) had written and went so egregiously off-script in his supposed discussion of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden that we were no longer certain whether we were discussing Thoreau’s trip to Walden Pond or Carson’s family trip to go see it three summers previously.
He turns to me with a tight smile. (Carson, I think Thoreau didn’t have access to a cell phone.) “Ready to head out?” Harrison asks.
I force my way through a goodbye, and although all of it is a blur, I’m absolutely certain I didn’t get a dinner invite.
The moment my ass touches the car seat, I open my mouth to interrogate him, but he beats me to it.
“So, you just need a bed frame?” he asks.
I turn my head to face him, but he keeps his gaze away from mine as he turns on the car and backs out of the parking spot. Fair enough, I suppose.
“Yes, but you know me. I love to browse.”
I allow him to lead me away from the topic of his mother, but when we’re finally in IKEA, I ambush him.
“So, what happened back there?” I ask him as we enter a mock-up of a living room. It’s packed today, but this pseudo-room provides a semblance of privacy.
Harrison sits on the love seat, bouncing a couple of times as if to test the springiness. He runs his hand across the fabric, letting out a neutral humming noise at the mediocre quality. Finally, he looks up at me. “She’s getting better,” he says. “I’ve been taking care of her.”
That’s not what I meant, and I feel a jolt of guilt. “I have no doubt you have been. I’m sure it’s been hard for her. Is she getting the help she needs?”
“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “She’s always struggled with depression, since before I knew what it was. She’s always kept it under control, but this time it’s been a little harder. Too much change, I guess. Her brain doesn’t know how to adjust.”
“You’re clearly taking good care of her,” I say, and he smiles softly at me. “She’s lucky to have you.”
He reclines back onto the couch as a sales associate walks by and asks if we need any help.
I politely decline, then seat myself on the opposite end of the couch.
The large canvas lighting fixture above us sends soft light over the scene, and it’s easy to imagine this as an actual home—one that smells like lingonberries and Swedish meatballs.