скачать книгу бесплатно
Anna has her hands on her tiny hips in a way that looks more cutesy than angry, despite her best efforts. Her nearly black, almond-shaped eyes narrow. “I’m not taking no for an answer,” she says. I pull the duvet over my head, and weakly fight her as she pulls it down again. “You have to eat,” she continues. “Lunch. I promise.” She makes an air cross over her chest, eyes earnest. “Only for lunch and then you can come right back here to bed.”
“Anna, stop,” I say, finally allowing her to strip me of the covers. The flannel pajamas I’m wearing are rumpled and smell like they need a wash. “I don’t want to go out.”
She sits on the bed beside me, her lithe body barely making a dent in the mattress, and crosses her arms. “Listen, I promised your mom I’d get you to eat today so don’t make me look bad, okay?” When I say nothing, keeping my eyes on the ceiling, she bends toward me and kisses me on the cheek. “Besides, Gabe would be pissed if I let you stay in bed all day. Best-friend duties and all that.”
“Well, it doesn’t really matter what Gabe wants, does it?” My voice is sharp, but frustratingly weak. Anna sighs, looking ready to argue some more, but then waves her hands about like she’s trying to shoo a fly away.
“Scootch over then,” she says. I don’t move. “Come on, Teg. Scootch.”
I shift my body over the foot or so she needs to lay her petite frame beside me. It forces me onto Gabe’s side of the bed, which is cold. Anna’s thick, silky black hair tickles the side of my face, but I don’t move away. Head to head, her feet only reach the middle of my calves.
“Look,” she begins, “I know the last thing you want to do is go out there. To see people all happy and shit. I get it. And I’d be exactly the same way.” She rolls toward me, but not without difficulty. I’ve spent so much time on this mattress, wishing I’d disappear if I lay still enough, that I’ve left a hollow the length and shape of my body. A depression to match my depression.
She sinks her elbow into the mattress’s pillow top, above the hollow, and rests her head in her palm. “But it’s been three months, Teg. You’ve not even left the apartment. You’ve lost so much weight you look like a freakin’ supermodel, and, no, that is not a compliment. There’s a hole in this mattress so big we’ll have to call the firemen to rescue you...by the way, let me make that call if we have to, okay?” Anna winks and I smile despite myself. “As your best friend, it’s my job to make you do the things you don’t want to do because they’re good for you. I would expect nothing less from you.”
It’s essentially the same speech she’s been giving me for the past month. She’s made it her mission to get me out of my apartment for something other than a doctor’s appointment—because no one else has been able to, including Gabe, my brothers or our parents—and I have a feeling she isn’t going to relent anytime soon. I stare up at the ceiling again, at the small crack running from the light fixture over our bed to the corner where a cobweb dangles, swaying in the current of warm, forced air coming from the vent. If I could only shrink and suspend myself from that cobweb, out of sight...
“And as my zu mu always says, talk does not cook rice. So please, get out of this freaking bed, okay?” Anna is endlessly quoting her Chinese grandmother, who seems to have a proverb for any situation one could think up.
“Tegan, I love you.”
“I know.”
“Then let me help you. Please.”
I sit up, without looking her way. “Fine.”
A second later Anna and her tackle-hug slam me back into the mattress. For such a small person she really knows how to throw her size around.
* * *
There’s nothing like strolling down Michigan Avenue on a sunny day. Even if it’s cold enough to freeze nose hairs within seconds. People hold tight to bursting shopping bags full of treasures sure to at least temporarily make their lives better. They laugh often, debating over whether to go into another shop or stop for lunch. Their lives are full of small problems.
I used to love people watching on the Miracle Mile, but now all I want to do is escape. It’s too vibrant. Damn Anna and her fucking best-friend speech. I long for the dullness of my pewter-colored apartment walls. For Gabe and my mom’s acceptance—however hard-fought—that I’ll leave the bed when I’m good and ready.
“Anna...” I stop in the middle of the sidewalk, like a tourist with no appreciation for the flow of foot traffic all around. “I need to go home.” This must be how agoraphobics feel. The open spaces around me seem dangerous, unpredictable, and I have the sudden urge to lie down and let the gently falling snow cover me until no one can see me anymore.
Anna tries to escape the chill by snuggling farther down into her chunky mauve wool scarf. She shivers a little then turns her attention back my way, giving me a critical look. Like she’s trying to sort out how to react to what I’ve said. We’ve been friends forever. Well, for three years actually, but Anna has a way of making you feel like she’s known you since the first moment you can remember.
She takes the few steps back to where I am and tugs me gently out of the way of the shoppers, who barely break stride. “Screw lunch. Food is overrated anyway,” she says with a most unladylike snort—a classic Anna-ism, which helps to remind me that at least some things don’t change. “Let’s just get a coffee, okay?” I allow her to pull me into the Starbucks in front of us.
It’s warm inside, and familiar. Both things that make me feel instantly better.
While Anna orders us coffee I grab a table near the back. I take off my gloves and lay my snow-damp wool hat on the chair across from me, knowing Anna will take the seat beside me. She has this thing about sitting side by side. She thinks it’s easier to talk naturally if you aren’t forced to stare into each other’s eyes. She says it’s a Chinese thing, even though she was born and raised in Chicago.
“Here,” she says, pushing a venti cup across the table and into my idle hands. Without thought, my fingers close around the cardboard sleeve, the heat coming through just enough to make me never want to let go. “I got you a vanilla latte...with whole milk and whip on top.” My regular order is a skinny vanilla latte, hold the whip. “If I can’t get you to eat the least I can do is make your coffee more caloric.”
She sits beside me and takes a sip from her own venti cup, which I know holds a soy chai tea latte, extra whip, then rests her other hand on my thigh. I jump from her touch, and she rubs my thigh harder. “Talk to me, Tegan.” I’m grateful she can’t see my eyes. “How can I help?”
“Tell me something funny.”
“Funny...okay. Hmm.” Anna sips at her coffee again. I wait. “Did I tell you about Caroline?” I shake my head. “No? Holy crap. You’re going to die...” Anna’s voice trails and she whispers, “Sorry.” Sometimes I think I’ll put together a spreadsheet of words people should avoid when in conversation with me. Words like death. And baby. Perhaps that’s how to prevent these uncomfortable, cringe-worthy moments. But it wouldn’t be for my benefit, because the truth is no words can make this worse—or better, for that matter. I put my hand on Anna’s, still on my thigh, and give it a squeeze to let her know it’s okay. She smiles, and I’m glad one of us feels relieved.
“Okay, so last week we had the fun fair, remember the one Principal Clayton planned for Valentine’s Day? So one of the stations was face painting, like always, but this year the kids got to paint the teachers’ faces.” Anna, like me, is a teacher—grade four. She says kids under the age of nine give her migraines. “Anyway, they did a great job but that’s not the part I think you’re going to like,” she says, her voice dropping for effect. “I’d gone to the little girl’s room and Caroline was leaving the staff room as I was coming back in...and, well, I let her walk out without taking her face paint off! I looked right at her and smiled without saying a word!” Anna laughs, snorting deeply again. “She went on the ‘L’ with cat whiskers...ears—” Anna laughs so hard she’s losing her breath “—and...and a bright pink nose!” The energy from her laughter is contagious, and I can’t help the small chuckle that escapes me. Caroline DuPont was one of the other kindergarten teachers, and always trying to show me up with her Martha Stewart–perfect craft ideas for her class. The thought of her sitting on the train in full costume makeup applied by a clumsy five-year-old’s hand did bring some light to my soul. For a moment.
Anna laughs again and I want to join her, but it’s just too much work. She realizes she’s laughing alone and stops. We drink our coffees in silence, and then I blurt out, “I think something’s wrong with me. Really wrong.”
She looks at me, surprise muddling her pretty features. “Why do you think that?” To her credit, she keeps her tone light. Perhaps trying not to alarm me. Or maybe, herself. “What do you mean?”
My voice is softer now. “I talk to him.” Barely a whisper. “Sometimes it feels like he’s still with me...right here...” I gulp back a sob and clutch my stomach, the pain that can no longer be blamed on physical wounds starting up again. “Like nothing happened.”
“Oh, Teg.” Anna clutches my arm. I see something flash across her face. Relief? “That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you. I promise.”
I can see she believes it, and I’m grateful for her certainty. Even though I don’t share it.
“It will get better, sweetie,” Anna soothes. “But not today. Or tomorrow, or probably even months from now. But I promise you, you won’t feel like this forever.”
Something inside me snaps. My chair scrapes the hardwood floor noisily and Anna jolts back, the sudden movement surprising her.
“You promise me?” My voice is loud and unrecognizable to my own ears. It’s filled with misplaced, toxic anger, which unfortunately for Anna, needs to be released right now. It’s bubbling up in me like boiling water inside a tightly lidded pot. Straining to break the seal. I start to laugh, but without joy. “I suggest not promising me anything.”
“Tegan, please sit down,” Anna says, pulling on my coat’s arm with some urgency. People look our way, anticipating something more interesting than whatever is on their laptop screens or on the lips of their coffee dates. Their curiosity sickens me. Although admittedly, only months ago I would have been doing exactly the same thing.
“This will never get better. Never.” I bite my lip, not to hold back my words but to feel physical pain. I learned while recovering from my surgery just how valuable physical hurt is in keeping emotional anguish at bay. But it would have to be extreme to counter what I’m feeling, because most days it feels like my insides are covered in a million paper cuts, and I’ve just swallowed a bottle of lemon juice.
I taste blood, and feel the rough edge of my lip where I’ve gone through the skin. “I lost... I lost my—” My voice cracks, and I can’t make the word pass my lips. “I lost everything. I am without a future now. At twenty-six. Do you know how that feels? No, you don’t. Because you still have the chance for all that.”
I suppose I do, too, although not in any way that makes sense to me now. I keep going, despite the stares of the coffee-shop patrons, despite the tears that stream down Anna’s cheeks, ruining her mascara.
“So, please. Please don’t promise me anything, Anna. Especially something you can’t control.” You see now? I want to add. No one can help me.
“I’m sorry,” Anna says, eyes downcast. Her voice is thick with emotion. For a second I feel guilty for making her cry. “I really thought...maybe if you could... You said you weren’t ready. I’m sorry.”
“What the hell are you sorry about?” I’m giggling uncontrollably even though I know it isn’t the right reaction. I should be crying. Wailing. But for some strange reason I giggle, like a carefree schoolgirl.
I’m barely hanging on.
“You weren’t driving the car. You always drive the fucking speed limit anyway. I wish you had been driving instead of Gabe. Maybe then... Maybe...” The giggles shift to a full-body sob, but I can’t stop the words spilling from my tear-damp lips. “I hear it all the time. The crash. Have I told you that, what it sounded like? Did you know metal screams when it’s being ripped apart? Like, it actually screams.” Anna stands quickly, grabbing her stuff and then my arm as I sob around my words.
“Come on.” Anna ushers me through the now crowded tables. There are murmurs, chairs pulling in to accommodate our quick departure. She leads me outside, into the cold air. I concentrate on breathing. In and out. In and out.
But I can’t catch my breath, my lungs rejecting the air. My vision narrows to a long, dark tunnel, and I drop to the sidewalk.
6 (#u64e53cc8-5d43-59a3-9a3b-48ce0a5ed8e1)
I wake up in the emergency room, a bright light piercing my vision.
“Ms. Lawson? That’s it, Tegan, open your eyes,” an unfamiliar voice says.
“Thank God.” Anna sounds like she has a terrible cold, her nose too stuffy to breathe through. Her face hovers over mine and I blink a few times. She’s quite blotchy, her eyes red and swollen from crying.
“How are you feeling?” The voice belongs to a middle-aged man in muted green scrubs. He has on glasses that make him look quite Clark Kent–like. Cute and nerdy. His hands hold either side of the stethoscope hanging around his neck and he’s watching me closely. I wonder if Anna notices how handsome he is. He’s exactly her type—a decade older and brainy enough to have made it through medical school.
“Better, I guess,” I say, my throat dry. I clear it a few times. “What happened?”
“You just dropped!” Anna says, seeming quite frazzled. Her obvious panic adds volume to her words. “Like one second you were standing in front of me, and the next you were on the sidewalk.”
“Sorry. I’m okay, I promise.” I hold the hand she puts on my shoulder, and watch her fiddle with the cell phone in her other hand. “You didn’t call anyone, did you?” She shakes her head, but she’s a terrible liar.
“Anna?”
“It went to voice mail. Twice.” I glare at her, hoping Gabe’s with a client and hasn’t picked up his voice mail yet. I don’t need anyone else looking at me the way Anna is at the moment. “Sorry, Teg, but you scared the crap out of me.”
“Has this ever happened to you before?” The doctor asks. Now I see his name, embroidered over his scrub shirt pocket. Dr. Wallace.
“No,” I say, shaking my head, which feels leaden. I’m glad I’m lying down. “But I haven’t been, um, sleeping well.” I swallow hard. In an instant everything lands back on me, like a boulder falling directly onto my chest. I try to breathe around the heaviness. “I was in a car accident a few months ago.”
“Were you injured?”
“Yes,” I say without elaboration. He waits, but I don’t add anything more.
“It was quite serious,” Anna interjects. “She had to have surgery and was in the hospital for almost three weeks.”
“What kind of surgery?” handsome Dr. Wallace asks, casually, like he’s asking how I take my coffee. He looks up from the chart and waits again for a response.
It’s as if someone has sewn my lips together. I can’t get the words out.
Anna looks at me, waiting, too, then at the doctor. “She, uh...” Anna glances my way again and I try to tell her it’s okay, she can tell him. The message must have come across despite my lack of voice, because she keeps going without taking her eyes off me. “She had a hysterectomy,” Anna says, adding more quietly, “and she was just over six months pregnant at the time.”
Dr. Wallace stops writing and gives me the most excellent sympathetic look. One I’ve seen before. From my surgeon, who cut out my uterus right after the accident, along with any chance I had of becoming a mother.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Dr. Wallace says, and I can tell he means it. His voice is smooth, confident, yet it carries an appropriate amount of compassion. They must practice that, doctors—how to convince a complete stranger you really care in one minute or less. “You mentioned you haven’t been sleeping. Any other changes to your health?”
“She’s not been eating much, either,” Anna offers, before I can answer “No, nothing,” like I’d planned to.
“Well, that could explain why you fainted,” he says. He licks his finger, which I find odd for an emergency room doctor to do, and flips over a page on the chart. I think about all the germs his hands must come in contact with during a single shift. I’d be wearing gloves, or carrying a bottle of hand sanitizer in my back pocket, but I guess he’s not all that concerned about getting sick. “Also, that patch on your upper arm? Nicotine patch?”
I shake my head. “It’s an estrogen patch. They also removed my ovaries when I had the hysterectomy.” I say it as matter-of-factly as I can, but we all know what it means. I will never have a child. And every week, when I take off the old patch and put on a fresh one, the reminder of that makes me want to throw something, or punch someone, or collapse into a heap on my bathroom floor and never get up.
The good doctor nods, and gives me another sympathetic smile. “I’m going to do a few more tests, just to be sure there isn’t something else going on, okay?”
“Thank you,” Anna, my spokeswoman, says.
“You bet...sorry, I missed your name. Miss?” he asks, his smile for Anna this time.
“Anna,” she says, extending her hand. “Anna Cheng.”
“Okay, so if everything checks out we’ll have you out of here soon. Sound good, Tegan?” I nod, and he pats my shoulder. “Just try and relax.”
Three hours later Anna pushes me out of the hospital in a wheelchair—hospital policy, apparently—with a good handful of sleeping pills to get me through the next few nights until I can see my family doctor. A short cab ride later, I’m home and manage a pitiful thank-you when Anna strips me of my clothes and tucks me back into bed in new pajamas. The hollow welcomes me back like an old lover, and I settle in as Anna heads to the kitchen to make me soup and toast. A few minutes later I hear the front door open and close, and I brace myself for company, presuming Anna made that call after all.
I roll over, settling deeper in the mattress, and feel the cool comfort of the pendant as the weight of my body presses it into my skin. For a moment, I indulge my grief-weary brain a reprieve and imagine what life would have looked like if the car had spun out thirty seconds later, after the row of steel lampposts.
If only Gabe kept both his hands on the wheel.
If only I stopped him from what he was doing under my skirt.
If only the de-icing trucks had already been out.
I close my eyes, only then remembering I left my hat and gloves at Starbucks.
“Tegan.” Gabe’s voice startles me. Guess he got the voice mails.
“Are you okay? What the hell happened?”
He lies down beside me, barely disturbing the covers, but doesn’t touch me. He knows me so well.
I keep my eyes tightly closed. “Let’s just say I may not be welcome back at the Starbucks at Michigan and Lake.”
Gabe sighs. “But you’re okay. Right?”
I nod against the pillow. His voice softens. “What happened?”
“I had a fucking meltdown, Gabe. An embarrassing, who-let-the-crazy-lady-out kinda meltdown. Then I passed out on the sidewalk and ended up in the ER.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you. I was with a client.” Gabe shifts closer to me. “I should have been there.”
“You can’t be here every second of every day,” I say. “Anna took care of me.”
“I know. I’m glad she was there,” he says. His hand caresses my cheek; his fingers brush the hair back from my face. Still, I keep my eyes shut. “You need to eat something.”
“I’m sure Anna will force-feed me the soup she’s making. Or my mom will when she gets here in, oh, twenty minutes,” I say, finally looking over at him. He’s wearing my favorite suit—gray herringbone, cut perfectly for his lean, muscular body—with a white shirt and mint-green tie. “I assume she called my parents?”
Gabe shrugs and smiles. “You know Anna, she’s not known for her secret-keeping abilities.”
I sigh. Gabe and I often joked that the best time to share something with Anna was immediately after telling everyone else.
“I completely freaked her out,” I say. “She didn’t even comment on how cute the doctor was.”
“Man, that is serious,” Gabe says, his tone light. I smile. But a moment later, the smile drops from my face and Gabe’s laughter fades.
“It’s okay, Tegan. You’re just not ready yet,” Gabe finally says, when the silence becomes uncomfortable. “You need more time.”
“That’s what I told Anna.” I’m weary now. I really want to be alone. “I wish you could explain it to her. I think you could make her understand.”
“She’s doing exactly what you would do for her, Tegan.”
I nod, rolling onto my side. I can hear Anna in the kitchen, as drawers open and close, and the microwave timer beeps. A salty, fragrant smell hits my nose and I know the boxed chicken noodle soup—the extent of Anna’s cooking repertoire—is bubbling away on the stove. I hope I can get some of it down, if for no other reason than to appease everyone.
