“Oh, my God.” Deb is tossing her sandwich onto her plate and raising her eyes toward the heavens. “She lied on the worksheet. It’s not there for you to pass, you dummy. It’s there for them to know if you need help!”
“She’s not a dummy, Deb! You can’t say that to people! Jeez. And the hospital probably should have offered some help, worksheet or not.” At first glance, everything about Cherise is round and sweet, even her voice. But don’t be fooled. She’s the boss for a reason. She’s a tenth-degree black belt in ass-kicking. The interns have a not-so-secret photo of Yoda with Cherise’s face taped on. “Nobody ever suggested a therapist?”
I try to answer and then shrug in frustration. “Maybe? I honestly can’t remember. Those early days, when Vin and Raff were still in the hospital…when I try to remember specific details…it’s like…sticking my head in a wind tunnel or something.”
Cherise and Deb share a glance. “But someone recently suggested you look into it?” Cherise asks.
“Vin thinks we have it.”
“Well, you’d have to get properly diagnosed with it to really know.”
“I know…”
“But honestly, it would beweirdif you didn’t have it. Considering,” Deb says. She’s nudging my plate toward me. I pick up the sandwich to appease her.
“I mean…I don’t know about PTSD. But it’s just been theworstyear.” It’s such a simple statement, but it makes the back of my eyes hot with tears just to say it out loud. “The accident, yes. But everything since then, too. You’d think—you’d think going through something like that would bring youcloserto someone—”
This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to admitting that the accident itself was terrible, of course, but the actual hardest thing about the last year for me was getting so distant from Vin. The emotion momentarily cuts off my air supply and I’m gulping against tears.
Cherise does me the favor of removing the sandwich from my clutches and handing me my glass of water. “Things…aren’t good with Vin?” she asks hesitantly.
“No,” I whisper. “Things are not good with Vin.”
It’s that awful/wonderful feeling of removing a splinter. It has to come out, but it hurts so fucking bad.
A group of people are laughing and joking in the hall andDeb gets up and closes the door to Kitchen B. She turns back with her hands on her hips. “Come on. Let’s hear it.”
“We—can’t communicate anymore. Or maybe we never could. But it didn’t used to matter. Now…he’s like a stranger to me. But also…he’s still Vin. He’s still the man I married. And Ijust don’t get it.How, in just one year, could we behere?”
I don’t say thathereis Vin moving out, but I can see from their eyes that I don’t have to explain the details of how broken we are. I don’t have to spell out that last night my husband and I tried to do what we historically do best and ended up freaking the fuck out and when he rolled out of bed for work this morning, I felt his warmth leave my back, felt his hand leave my hip, which is how I learned we’d been spooning and I just, for the love of God, want to know how he felt about that.
The PTSD is seeming more and more plausible. (See above.)
Cherise has one warm hand over my cold ones. Deb is pointing at me with her sandwich. “Honey, that is thedealwith these Italian American men. PTSD or not. They’ll die for you but they won’t tell you one word about how they’re feeling.”
I laugh in a knee-jerk reaction, but then her words sink in and make me feel so instantly ill, feverish and foul-tempered and nauseated, that I have to just put my hands over my face and breathe through it. I’m feeling irrationally angry at Deb for using the concepts ofdieandVinin the same sentence. Why would she think I’d want to hear that? Dying for someone isnotromantic. It’s sickening.
I take a deep breath and lower my hands. “Not all Italian American men. Raff tells me every thought that ever comes into his head.”
Cherise quickly slides back from the table and goes to root around in the fridge. She comes back with a covered plate of sliced cheeses. “Courtesy of Tommy.”
Her boyfriend is a cheesemonger and I like him because, personally, I don’t think you can beat complimentary cheese.
But Cherise is now avoiding my eye contact and I think I know why. “Are you still mad at Raff?” I ask her as I choose between two stinky cheeses.
“I was never mad.”
Deb and I raise our eyebrows in unison and it makes her laugh and crack and roll her eyes. “Okay, okay. When some rando fools around with your little sister, it’s okay to beskepticalof them!”
“He had honorable intentions!” I insist. Because he’s my best friend and I don’t think it’s diametrically opposed for sluts to have honorable intentions.
“It was a fling for him, but it was serious for her.”
I concede this, because I’m sure it’s true. “I will say this about Raff: His superpower is getting people to take care of him. But he does it without thought; he doesn’t even want it half the time.”
“Was that…” Cherise clears her throat. “Was that part of what was hard about this last year? Taking care of Raff after the accident?”
I consider this. “Hard? I mean…I think…when Raff was still living with us, everything was on autopilot, sort of? It was just…take care of Raff. Everything was almost, kind of, simple.”
