Yeah. It’s fucking sad.
But I think it’s time I lived init for a while.
Chapter 19
Zoe
The truth is, it feels sort of good to be alone.
I’m home after another full day of work at Legal Aid, where I’ve spent almost every day for the last two weeks, calling people on that log list like it’s a literal lifeline. They’re not short calls, and they’re not always wrapped up after a single conversation. I did four calls last week with a Mrs. Adelaide Martin, an eighty-six-year-old widow who’d had her identity stolen and who’d never used the internet in her life. By the fourth call, she’d started calling medarlingand invited me to play bridge on Saturday with her friends atSunset Terrace.
I’m probably going to go. Adelaide seems like good people.
But doing the calls, working with Marisela and the other full-time staff, getting to know some of the volunteers who come in, usually around the time I’m leaving for the day—it’s a reminder, I guess, of the time I used to need after work to unwind, not talk, let my mind quiet down. And there’s been little time for that, because Kit and Greer have been on full-time Zoe watch, dinners here or at one of their places, an extra spinning class or two, manufactured reasons why one or both of them needs to come over. “Ben’s sanding the floor in the guest bedroom,” Kit had said one day last week when she’d come over with an overnight bag and an absolutely unconvincing expression of desperation. “It makes my eyes itchy.” No way would Ben want Kit sleeping elsewhere after so short a time, and Kit’s eyes looked just fine to me, but she’d come in and we’d watched three episodes of a home renovation show, during which Kit made loud complaints about how much “perfectly good stuff” the hosts kept throwing away from the houses. The very next night it’d been Greer, swearing that her older sister—also her roommate—had a very important third date, and she wanted to give them some privacy. I’d helped her study for a sociology exam, but I’m pretty sure she was faking her efforts to recall key details about toxic masculinity and intersectional feminism. In fact I’m pretty sure she’d taken that exam already, but I’d played along.
They’re worried, which is fair enough. It was only a couple of months ago, after all, that I’d been putting up Kit while she’d been split up from Ben, and during those few weeks Greer and I had done everything short of asking for biometric stress tests to judge her mental health. But at this point I’m getting the sense of how overwhelming all that attention can be. Even my mother seems worried; when we video-chatted last night she asked if I was forgetting under-eye cream, which is basically a DEFCON 1 level of concern coming from her. Of course she also asked if I’d mind celebrating Christmas in February this year so that she could go on a cruise with her new boyfriend, so I guess there’s still a limit to her maternal instincts.
But tonight I’ve managed to convince everyone to give me a little space, and their willingness to let this pass gives me hope that I’mgetting better.
Still, I’m no dummy. I know that I’m no good with unstructured time—see, obviously, the last several months of my life—so I’ve made a plan, at least for this evening.
The guilt vase is still on my dining room table, empty now. I’d dumped the slips a couple of nights after the campground debacle, not angrily or sadly or hastily. Just—quietly. I’d looked at each one before I’d dropped it in the recycling bin, knowing, of course, that I wouldn’t forget any of them.I’mthe vase, that’s the thing. That’s the truth about making mistakes, about making the wrong choices. You live with them, and if you’re lucky you get enough perspective to see where you went astray. You figure out what you can do to repair the damage, and you figure out how to do bettergoing forward.
And no one would sayI’m not lucky.
Still, it takes me a little while to rally myself to my task—too much time lingering over my dinner, too high of a word count responding to a simple message about condo board business, too-careful research into the next round of cooking classes Janet and I will start in a couple of weeks.
Finally, I remind myself that this is a modest task. A small, unselfish, honest gesture, the kind of thing I should’ve have done all those weeks ago. The kind of thing that’s not about my guilt, but about someone else’s feelings.
I pick up thephone and dial.
“Hi, Lorraine,” I say, when she answers.
“Oh, Zoe,” she says, or…sighs, I guess, the sound in her voice a combination of relief and sadness.
“I hope it’s okay that I’m calling.”
“Of course it’s okay. I was hoping you’d call.”
I take a deep breath through my nose, let it out slowly before I speak again. “I just needed to tell you, Lorraine, both you and Paul, how sorry I am about being dishonest. There’s no excuse for my part in this. You made me feel so welcome, and I loved every minute of my time in Stanton Valley. And I—well. I apologize sincerely.”
“Not every minute,” she says.
“What?”
“We both know you didn’t love every minute. That first weekend you worked so hard I felt like I ought to write you a check at the end, and that’s back when I thought you were in it for real.”
It lands heavily, despite her light tone, for all kinds of reasons—she’s right, of course, and I don’t deserve to have it sugarcoated. But it’s so complicated. Itwasso complicated, even on that first weekend. Iwasin it for real, even then, even though I hadn’t known then what Aiden would mean to me, what I’d come to feel for him. “I guess that’s true,” I say, standing from my seat at the dining room table so I can pace around, work off some nerves, while we do this. “But even then I liked it. I liked you, and Paul.” I pause, unsure of how much to say next. I don’t know how much she knows about Aiden and me now—I’d left the lodge before anyone had asked whether we’d ever even managed to become friends over the course of our ruse. “I liked everyone, really.”
“Hammond could use some improvement,” she says, and we both laugh a little, before the line between us goes quiet again. I pass into the kitchen, grab the sponge off the rim of my sink, and scrub at a nonexistent spoton the counter.
“Lorraine, Iamsorry.”
“Oh, honey. I know you are. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t upset at the both of you for what you did. It really threw me and Paul for a loop. I don’t think it was any secret from you that we’ve always felt real strong toward Aiden, and this has been a disappointment.”
I take a deep breath, take in that disappointment. Own my part in it. I put the sponge back.
“But,” she says, her voice gentle, “I really appreciate you calling me, and saying what you said. That means a lot.”
