If living in the city is swimming against the current, living in the suburbs is swimming with it, getting swept gently along, no additional effort required.
I think of Connor and how he told me he always wanted to live in the suburbs as a kid, and wonder at what point he abandoned that ambition, or if he still secretly harbors it. Then I resolve not to wonder about him atall.
My strategy for visiting home, insofar as I have one, is to goas incognito as possible, avoid direct eye contact, and keep my head down. But some interactions aren’t so easily avoided. Like, for example, when a girl from my grade twelve history class is my dental hygienist.
We make polite small talk about our lives since we last saw each other—a nauseating twelve years ago—until she finally gets down to work, to my immense relief. It’s unnerving running into someone you know at the best of times, but there’s something extra uncomfortable about our little tableau: me, reclining in a dental chair, and her, hovering over me holding a miniature ice pick.
Say what you will about going to the dentist, but at least by necessity you can’t do much talking.
“You could floss more,” she tells me, and sends me on myway.
By the time I glide across town to the doctor’s office I’m almost looking forward to the appointment.
Having known me since the day I was born (literally: she was there), Dr. Lang’s authority is undeniable, her presence comforting in a way that’s hard to explain. This woman has seen me through every vaccination, every broken bone, every mystery rash I’ve ever had. She knows me more intimately than almost anyone else in my life.
I sit on the bench in the examination room, feeling like a small child, while she takes me through the basics. She listens to my lungs, shines a light in my eyes, looks in my ears, checks my blood pressure. It strikes me that it’s all just an elaborate warm-up: going through the motions to offset the embarrassment of doing all this while wearing a piece of glorified paper towel with sleeves that hangs open at the back.
She nods her head in approval when I confirm that I stilldon’t smoke, then tells me brisklythat’s finewhen I get weirdly specific about how much and how often I’m drinking, and with whom.
Next she says: “And are you sexually active?”
The pang of longing for Connor is sharp and unexpected. It vibrates through me like a gong.
“No,” I say, my voice shrinking down to a whisper. “I mean, yes—I am, or I was. But I’m not now.”
“We’ll do a standard check for STDs with your pap smear. Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”
I shake my head no, but imagine it anyway: a vision of a little kid terrorizing the playground, a perfect blend of my bossy sass and Connor’s laid-back smarts.
“Why don’t you lie down and we’ll do your exam.”
I do as she tells me while she swivels away from her laptop, dragging herself on her little rolling stool to the counter on the other side of the room. Her brown slacks are ever so slightly too short, her patterned socks on full display in her clogs.
I will myself to calm down, to not think of Connor, or being sexually active, or how we never will be again. It fails miserably.
“Sorry,” I say, when she catches me trying to erase the evidence of a stray tear rolling down my cheek with the back of my wrist.
“Were you seeing someone back in the city?”
I nod again, biting hard into my bottom lip, desperately trying to suppress the sob I can feel bubbling up insideme.
“He was really nice,” is all I manage to say before the tears spill over in earnest, streaming down the side of my face and down my neck. “I ruinedit.”
There’s no stopping them now, and it seems pointless to try and stem the flow, so I grip my hands tightly on my stomach and stare up at the ceiling, begging the moment to pass.
All the while, Dr. Lang stands calmly at my side. Her hand rests gently on my shoulder. The only sound in the room is the jagged hitch of my breath as I gulp forair.
“We don’t have to continue,” she offers, but I insist it’s fine, mostly managing to regain my composure after a few deep breaths.
For the rest of the appointment, she distracts me with easy, meaningless small talk. She tells me valiantly that I’m in perfect health—broken heart notwithstanding—then silently rubs my back for a second, before handing me a lollipop.
I make it all the way out of the building and to the parking lot, but the second I’m in the car my sadness is a wave so powerful that I drop my head onto the steering wheel and let it crash. I cry so hard and so long that by the time I sit up the stitching from the leather is imprinted on my forehead.
After our fight I was mad, then indignant, and by the time I’d been home for a couple of days, mostly just feeling incredibly sorry for myself. But I can no longer fend off the real emotions that have been lurking below the surface. Sadness, and disappointment, and regret at all the things I could have done differently.
I always thought that if I found true love I’d recognize it, and cherish it, and it would feel bulletproof. What a blow to realize that none of that was true. When the thing I’d waited for for so long finally came along I barely noticed, and then fucked it all up, and for what? I can get a new job. I can’t get a new Connor.
Thirty-Three
