Natalie says, “I’m joking. Ha-ha, right? My jokes are usually better and I’m way more fun when we’re not navigating the zombie apocalypse—that was for you, Rams.”
“Thank you. Please stop saying ‘zombie.’”
Natalie sings the chorus to the Cranberries’ “Zombie,” and not very well.
Ramola’s thoughts briefly travel from Mr. Fitzgerald in Quincy to the flat in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, she had shared with her ex-partner, Cedric. They started dating while in medical school, one month after Natalie and Paul got their own place. She remembers Cedric with neither malice nor fondness. He was plain but handsome, gentle but never warm, maddeningly demure only when he wasn’t. He was intractable if he dug in on a topic or position. Most notably, their date-night schedule was so rigidly mapped and unmalleable in his eyes, he took to hanging an otherwise blank calendar on the refrigerator door with DATE NIGHT slashed onto a scatterplot of dates, the handwriting desperate, accusatory, childish. Her memory of their relationship is neither enhanced nor distorted by the haze of nostalgia; their time together represents a signpost of where she once was and nothing more. She idly wonders if Cedric is still in New England. Her mum took their breakup and Ramola moving to Quincy much harder than Ramola did. In the immediate aftermath Mum insisted Ramola move back home to England and do so immediately. She stammered through saying the America experiment was a noble miss and was incredulous that her daughter didn’t agree. She would not hear of how Ramola was almost done with residency and was preparing for a second interview with Norwood Pediatrics. At the height of the contentious, one-sided (or Mum-sided, as Ramola thought of their occasional spats) argument, Ramola said, “Mum. Listen to me. I cannot say it more plainly: I am not moving back to England. Not ever.” Ramola had never before stated this to her mum. The shocked and hurt hiss of silence on the phone was a hard-won victory, but it came at a cost. Ramola attempted to soften the blow with “I will visit you and Dad, of course, but I will not be coming home in the way that you want me to.” Mum didn’t call Ramola back for eleven days. Ramola refused to be the first to break the embargo and held out. She talked to Natalie every night instead. On the eighth day, she admitted Mum not calling made her sad in a way that felt irreparable, as though this sad (Ramola referred to “this sad” as if it were an object, something to be probed, dissected, but delicately) might diminish or fade into the background, but would always be there. Mum was the first to relent. She never apologized directly but did so in her way by calling every other day for the next two months. She demanded a detailed recounting of the third interview that became the job offer, and she wanted to know everything about Ramola’s new flat and city. There were, of course, subtle digs coded within her catching Ramola up on the lives of her friends’ children, the ones who were married and had children of their own. It went unspoken when talking to Mum, but Ramola was as resolute about never having children as she was about not moving back to England. She was content to help and to serve other people’s children as their doctor. Not that being a pediatrician was a substitute for a lack of children in her life; quite the opposite. There was no lack as far as she was concerned. Mum would occasionally ask if Ramola was seeing anyone. Ramola dismissed the queries by saying she was far too busy and by the time she got home most days she was exhausted. During one memorably wine-fueled conversation, Mum asked if Ramola missed “physical intimacy.” By then Ramola had begun to think of herself as asexual but would not admit this to her mum. She said she was impressed by Mum’s vocabulary choice, and added she enjoyed the idea of sex like she enjoyed the idea of riding a bike, but both involved too much prep work, or leg work, as it were, and she was all right forgoing both for the foreseeable. Mum surprised her by saying, “Cheers to that,” and they both broke up laughing. There would always be a point during their conversations when Ramola would tell Mum not to worry, because she was happy, which was more or less true, although happiness was never Ramola’s ambition. Happiness held no nuance or compromise, did not allow for examination, did not allow the hopeful, hungry will that fills the vacuum of failure and what-might’ve-beens, nor did it allow for the sweetness of surprise. Happiness was as rigid in its demands to adherence as a calendar shouting about compulsory date nights. Happiness was for dogs, lovely creatures though they were. Ramola yearned for something more complex, something earned, and something more satisfying. If she ever felt lonely, it was a passing storm, not one she brooded upon, and it was easily banished by
