used it to create attention for herself. She pulls Donald closer to look inside the box. “See? I labeled them left and right.”
Donald laughs, accommodating her.
I give Tyler a look, needing an ally, but she smiles at Mom.
“Come on, Kerry,” Mom says, seeing my expression. “Don’t be so sensitive.”
“I’m not being sensitive.” I crumple the wrapping paper.
“Your breasts are fine just the way they are,” she says. When I say nothing, she pouts. “You have no sense of humor.”
And when I still say nothing, she says, “You must hear about the outfit Claude is designing for me for my practice’s grand opening. It’s absolutely stunning. A black silk tunic and pajama pants. He’s sewing in beads from a bracelet Grandma got in Indonesia.”
Tyler nods. “I think you told us already. It sounds really nice.”
I wish I never agreed to spend break this way. Snow covers the ground and dark tree branches. Plows build piles taller than me along the side of the road, and because it keeps coming, Donald goes out in the morning to shovel the walkway to the car. Something about the snow, the quiet, the blankness, highlights my panic as I think about Eli. I decide I will do whatever it takes to keep him. I’ll have sex more often. I’ll stop needing so much from him. I know these thoughts are desperate, no different from the ones I had years ago with Heath, but I can’t help it. Faced with losing Eli, I feel exactly as I did then, as though I haven’t grown at all.
While Eli is in Florida, collecting specimens on a boat, I can’t talk with him, which makes everything worse. Anxiety knocks against my ribs, keeping me awake at night. I wish I still smoked, just so I would have something to calm myself.
At dinner, Mom talks about her new practice, how Donald, who is a brain researcher, is now going for his MD as well. When I bring up studying Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Mom gasps as though someone has grabbed her throat. I stop short.
“Did I mention yet the outfit Claude is designing for the grand opening?”
I set my mouth.
Tyler looks down.
“And the beads from Indonesia? The ones that Grandma brought back?” She looks at Donald. “You saw the sketches. Isn’t it beautiful?”
He nods. “It really is.”
“I was talking here,” I say.
“What?” Mom looks at me, innocent surprise on her face.
“I was talking about my Renaissance Literature class.”
“Oh.” She puts a jeweled hand to her throat, takes a sip of her wine. “I’m sorry. By all means, continue.” Her expression changes to feigned interest.
“Forget it,” I say.
“No,” she says. “I want to hear.”
“I don’t care,” I say, frustrated.
“OK, then,” she says. She glances briefly at Donald for approval, and he smiles, a condescending smile that says I’m the one being immature.
“I’m going to bed,” I say, though it’s only seven thirty. Mom frowns. “You need to learn to enjoy other people’s company.”
I don’t say anything. Silence, I’m learning, is my only defense. I gather my plate and take it to the kitchen. Later, Tyler comes downstairs to the room we share. I’m reading
Hemingway’s Nick Adams Stories for a class in school, his fictional exploration of coming of age. Each story recounts a traumatic event, and I’m struck by Nick’s struggle to understand himself as a man in the face of each one. For all the times I’ve given myself over to them, all the energy I spend thinking about them, I still know nothing about men, about their hardships and hurts, the things that bring them to their knees. In my mind they’re still invulnerable and too powerful. They still have all the control. Tyler moves around the room, changing her clothes, looking for her own book. She is out of college now, and she lives in Chicago with her boyfriend. I want to ask her how she can stand it, being so far away, how she can trust he will keep loving her without being there to prove it, without his touch to know she truly exists. I don’t know whether she’s even thinking of him, if, like me, she can think of almost nothing else.
“Is it OK that this light is on?” I ask. I want to begin a conversation with her, but I don’t know how to start.
“That’s fine.” She takes off her glasses, rests them beside the bed, and gets under the covers. She rolls over.
“It won’t bother you?”
“Uh-uh.”
I hesitate, place a bookmark on the page where I’ve stopped.
“Tyler?”
“What is it?”
“Are you having any fun here?”
“I’m making the best of it.”
“I don’t want to be here.”
She sighs, still facing away from me. “But you are, so why not just go with it?”
“I don’t want to just go with it,” I say, annoyed now. She sighs again, annoyed too. “Are we done? I’m tired.”
I set my mouth. “Fine.”
I wait, my leg bouncing furiously on the bed, and soon her breath becomes long and even. I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling, too pissed now to sleep.
The day I know Eli is back in Maine, I call from a pay phone while Mom and Tyler are in the Price Chopper buying groceries. When he gets to the phone, he sounds different, distant.
“I miss you,” I tell him. “I’ll do whatever I need to make this work.”
“Winter break isn’t even over,” he says. “Let’s give it some time.”
“I don’t want to give it time,” I say. “I just want you.”
He doesn’t say anything. I wait, my heart sick, knowing something has changed. People walk by behind me, scolding children, pushing rumbling carts full of disposable diapers and Diet Coke.
“Kerry,” Eli starts.
“Oh, God.”
“There was someone there, in Florida,” he says.
“No.”
“She goes to Clark,” he says.
I squeeze my eyes shut, afraid I might throw up.
“Did you have sex with her?”
“No,” he says. “We spent some time together. And we kissed.”
I try to take a deep breath, but my lungs are too tight. I can’t stand to think of it, of Eli and some nameless girl, his face close to hers.
“It’s so easy with her. Relaxing.”
“Don’t,” I say, stopping him. I want to cry. I can feel it lodged in my throat, but it won’t come. The implication is clear: It’s too hard with you. You’re too hard. “Don’t do this to us.”
“It’s already done,” he says. “Before Florida it was already done.”
“But I love you.” For the first time I notice an elderly man is waiting for the phone. He stands back, respectful, seeing my face. He makes me feel even worse.
“I love you, too,” Eli says. “I just don’t think that matters enough anymore.”
When we are done, I walk quickly along the sidewalk. Gray snow sits in piles against the curb. The air is icy. I hadn’t noticed it while on the phone, but now it begins to seep into my skin. I like it, this physical sensation. It distracts me from the dull ache I feel. I stand at the entrance to Price Chopper. I cannot go inside. An old lady
