Page 66 of The Way I Am Now
“I’m really sorry,” I repeat. “This is just the fifth time I’ve had to explain this. First time I’ve cried though, lucky you.” I try to laugh.
“It’s quite all right, Eden.” She gives me a frowning smile, a head tilt, and one final pat on the back. “It’s no problem. Why don’t you come to my office hours after you return, and we’ll figure out some way to make up the time?”
“That would be great,” I gasp, my breathing erratic. “Thank you.”Thank you, I silently tell her,for not asking why I’m crying or if I’m okay.
She hands me the whole package of tissues now. “If you need to miss today’s lecture, I can have Lauren, my teaching assistant, send you the presentation.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine, really,” I say by default.
“Self-care is more important than sitting here listening to me bang on for two hours about the politics of ancient Rome. Really,” she says. “Please.”
Say yes, I plead with myself.Just say yes.
“Actually”—gasp, gasp, gasp—“I think that might be helpful if you’re sure you don’t mind. It’s been a really long week.” My therapist would be so proud of me for accepting this small offer of grace.
But now it’s three o’clock in the afternoon and I have nothing I’m supposed to be doing. It’s a strange, unsettling feeling, after months of rushing and endless things needing to be done, to have time. I get a coffee and decide to stop at the store on my way home, thinking maybe I need to stock up on some travel packs of tissues if I’m going to be spontaneously ugly crying in public.
I pass the customer service desk at the front of the store and eye the racks of cigarettes tucked safely behind the counter. I could buy a pack. Just have one, throw the rest away, and feel so much more capable of handling everything right now. I get in line, behind the older woman holding her stack of scratch-off lotto tickets. But I won’t have just one, I know this. And Josh would smell the smoke on my hair, taste it on my tongue. Then he’d worry. I watch as the lady in front of me hands over her winning tickets and the twentysomething cashier scans them, reciting how much each ticket should be worth.
I step out of line. Tell myself I don’t need the cigarettes. I tell myself maybe it’s only hormones—I started on the pill just a couple of weeks ago. I’ve never been on birth control before, and Mara warned me it could mess with my emotions. I don’t exactly need any more interference on that front, but with the amount of sex Josh and I have been having, I couldn’t risk anything happening. I tell myself it’s this and not that I’m slowly unraveling as the hearing gets closer.
I’m walking up and down the aisles, not even sure what I’m doing. I smell a package of strawberries and set it back down. I pick up a pear and squeeze it gently. I sample a cube of cheddar speared with a toothpick.
I select a bag of organic coffee that is way too expensive and carry it like a baby as I continue down the aisle. And then I see cake and brownie and muffin mixes. I exchange the bag of coffee for a chocolate cake mix.
I’m surprising Josh with a fun dinner at this hibachi place he told me his parents took him to for his birthday last year. I’m trying to do something special to preemptively make up for missing his birthday next week. Of course, I haven’t told him I’ll be gone, because I haven’t told him about the hearing yet. I’ve been telling myself for weeks,Tomorrow. I’ll tell him tomorrow. But then tomorrow never comes.
I take my phone out. It barely rings before my mom picks up.
“Hello?” she answers, sounding alarmed. I can’t remember the last time I called her instead of texting. “Eden, you there?”
“Hi. Yeah. Are you busy?”
“No, not at all,” she says, though I can hear phones ringing in the background at her work. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, I just had the afternoon off and I’m in the grocery store.”
“Okay . . .”
“I’m trying to get stuff to make a cake. For Josh’s birthday,” I add. “And I thought maybe you’d have some ideas. I want to do sort of like a peanut butter chocolate flavor.”
“That sounds nice,” she says. “So, things are going well with him? With Josh,” she inserts, making a point to say his name.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “It’s good. Things are good.”
“Good.”
There’s a painfully awkward pause.
“Um, so I have this chocolate cake mix, but I don’t see any kind of peanut butter type frosting. I don’t know, I just remember you always made different flavored frostings for our birthday cakes when we were kids.”
She laughs. “Watermelon vanilla. That was your ninth birthday,” she says.
“Right. I remember. That was a good one.”
“Let me see.” I can hear her typing on her work computer. And as I wait, listening to her breathing into the phone, sort of humming to herself as she scrolls, I wish she were with me right now. “Oh, here we go. I think I found something. Yes, this is an easy frosting recipe. All you need is peanut butter, whipped topping, chocolate syrup, and mini peanut butter cups—all of which you should really have stocked in your kitchen anyway, as a college student.”
It takes me a second to realize she actually made a joke. “Oh.” I laugh. “I thought you were serious for a minute there.”
