Page 17 of My Favorite Lost Cause
MAREN
Iwake surprisingly refreshed for someone who’s just slept in the trunk of a car, had a rodent crawl over her, and was aggressively hit in the head by her stepbrother.
“I’ve been cured of my desire to camp,” I tell Charlie as he opens his eyes.
His mouth curves. “I’ll leave Elijah a note. You check on flights.”
“It hasn’t cured me of my love of thehouse,” I reply. “Besides, I bet Elijah’s not scared of rodents.”
He rolls his eyes. “I wasn’tscared, Maren. I just didn’t fly down here with a bunch of rat traps in my carry-on. And I assure you that one last night was the first of many.”
I shudder. I still love the house, but…it’ll be a while before I sleep in there again, and that’s not even factoring in that ghostly tap on the shoulder.
It was probably my imagination. But it sure didn’t feel like it.
Charlie opens the trunk and climbs out. I follow him stiffly. Maybe I didn’t have such a great night of sleep after all.
While he goes upstairs to brave the shower, something I’mnot quite ready to do, I open my larger suitcase and pull out the juicer I brought.
Yes, I brought a juicer. A top-of-the-line, ten-pound juicer. Charlie’s eventual ridicule over this fact is inevitable.
I set it up on the kitchen counter. I used cleaning wipes in here last night, but there’s no amount of cleaning that can salvage this place: the avocado green cabinets and laminate countertops are peak 1970s chic and I saw a huge roach running across the rust linoleum floor yesterday. Ignoring this, I grab the veggies I bought at the store last night, the ones Charlie insisted no one here would eat. It’s one of many daily rituals at home that I manage to make stressful. I worry that all the produce comes in plastic. I worry about the green apple I add to make it palatable—is it too much sugar? If I truly cared about my health and that of my future offspring, wouldn’t I skip it entirely? This is a conversation I have with myself every morning as I put the fruit through my thousand-dollar appliance. It’s an endless process between the chopping, the grinding, the hand scrubbing of all of the components—all for a glass of juice that I will continue to feel somewhat guilty about.
And maybe that’s the issue—that I can’t seem to find anything in my life that I don’t feel a little guilty about. Or maybe it’s that I have so much time on my hands now that ruminating on stupid questions like this is the only way to fill the empty space.
Most people would say it’s a good problem to have, but I was a lot happier back when I didn’t have the time to think about any of it.
“Tell me you didn’t bring a fucking juicer,” grumbles Charlie, walking into the kitchen. I’m not sure why I was the model instead of him. His hair is damp, pushed off his face, he hasn’t shaved, and he’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts, but he still looks so good you’d buy anything he was selling just to feel as if you could be him or bewithhim one day.
He takes a seat at the cracked mustard-yellow table and I pour him a glass of juice. “I added extra green apple just for you. You already get so much sugar in your diet from alcohol that I probably shouldn’t have added any at all.”
He looks with dismay at the glass I’ve set in front of him. “Would it help matters if I told you that I’m probably not drinking it, with apple or without?”
“You’re drinking it, Charles. I put in a lot of effort, and this will undo at least a week of your Manhattan lifestyle.”
He crosses the kitchen and reaches for the bottle of vodka he purchased last night. “Fine, but I’m augmenting it.”
“Charlie,” I huff. “For God’s sake, it’s nine o’clock in the morning.”
“You don’t always need to tell me the time,” he says. “My watch does that quite successfully. And with less disdain.”
“But why?” I ask. “Can’t you get through the day sober?”
“I could,” he replies, “but I’d prefer not to.”
He returns to his seat at the table with the vodka and holds his glass up to the light, as if deciding how much alcohol is required.
“I don’t mean to judge?—”
He sets the glass down and looks up at me with a single brow raised. “Prefacing judgment by saying ‘I don’t mean to judge’ makes it no less irritating. And you’re always judging me. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
I ignore this. “If you have to drink to make your life bearable, there’s probably something deeper going on.”
“I stand corrected. Nothing judgmental about that at all.”
My shoulders sag. He’s not wrong. Iambeing judgmental, and no fun, and the green juice looks really unappetizing. Maybe I’m every bit as lame and uptight as he seems to think.
“Look,” I say, sliding into the seat across from his, suddenly weary, “I’m not pretending for a minute that my own life is perfect, but do you see my point?”
