“No swiping. We can rebrand it Snack & Catch,” Ellen said. “Bet our kernel-catching percentage will be a lot higher without the distraction from the apps.”
A smile squeezed out of Rae like lemon drops in the scramblette Ellen had made. “All right,” she said.
She took off her coat as Ellen fetched a bag of popcorn. They met back on the couch in their old, patented Elle-Rae posture, socked feet resting beside each other’s heads. Ellen tossed a puffed kernel into the air for Rae to catch. It followed a parabola, up and down again, missing Rae’s mouth.
“I think we’ve actually gotten worse,” Rae said after more than a few failed attempts.
“We’ve passed our popcorn peak,” Ellen agreed. “I’ll clean out the cushions before I move out.”
“That’s okay,” Rae said, craving something to hold on to from these past few years as roommates, even crumbs. “I’ll get around to it. I like cleaning.”
“Since when?”
“Since now. New chapters, remember?”
“Yes,” Ellen said, her clean, matching socks tickling Rae’s ears. “New chapters.”
“Which of the therapists do you like best?” Rae asked Dustin, sitting on the edge of his bed. It was a Sunday evening in early March.
He was sprawled facedown on the mattress, shirtless back rising and falling in a lumpy pattern that told Rae he wasn’t asleep.
Dustin’s therapy attendance percentage had continued to drop as he complained that Jessica “just didn’t get it.” Rae had done hours of diligence on new options.
“I think Anette is the best one,” Rae said, consulting the Stall Street Journal, which she’d repurposed as a research notebook. “Strong credentials, high customer satisfaction ratings, and your healthcare plan will reimburse fifty percent of the costs.”
Anette was also very pretty, but the situation was too serious for Rae to dock points for that.
Dustin didn’t answer, so Rae presented another therapist. It was a human behavior hack she’d learned at work—executives were more likely to commit to a deal when pitched multiple options.
“There’s also this woman named Kim. She has a differentiated approach to recovery—it’s very focused on physical movement of the body.”
Dustin grunted, which Rae found moderately encouraging, as it at least meant he wanted her to know he was listening.
“Grunt once if you want me to call and make an appointment with Anette, twice if you want Kim,” Rae said, trying to lower the barriers to entry.
Silently, Dustin pulled the pillow over his head. The gesture cut to Rae’s overcompensating, undercompensated core.
Rae walked to the kitchen to refill his water. He’d been drinking less alcohol lately, but he’d been doing everything else less too. His emotional depreciation seemed to be accelerating, ifacceleratecould describe something attached to so little movement.
The potted sunflowers Dustin had gotten her for Valentine’s Day were sitting in the window, droopy from too much water, beside Phyllis, stubbornly green as ever.
Standing at the sink, Rae stared out the window into the eye-level apartment across the street, where a shadow was shifting through translucent blinds.
It reminded her of the second date she’d gone on with Dustin—that Christmas party where they’d stood in the courtyard, looking up at the woman in the window, inventing stories. Imagination had been something winged and feathery back then, lifting her into thefreedom of fiction. Now it took the form of a weighty anchor, tugging her to the factual magic of the past.
She thought about Dustin, facedown through the wall.
Then she thought about the dinner she’d gotten with Jenn and John last week that Dustin had bailed on, citing “stock market chaos.” Over sticky sushi, Rae had half broached Dustin’s emotional downturn.
Neither Jenn nor John seemed surprised. “It’s gotten bad before,” John had said, and Jenn had added, “We were really worried for a while.”
They talked about it like Dustin’s emotional trough was far in the past. Rae wanted to believe this, but she figured it more probable that Jenn and John were caught up in the bubble of Manhattan married life, a far cry and a whole river away from any brokenness in Brooklyn.
But perhaps they’d picked up on the undertones, because Jenn had told Rae, with gentle firmness, “It’s not your responsibility to take care of him.”
Rae had wanted to ask a follow-up—Then whose responsibility is it?—but Jenn would say it was Dustin’s, and Rae knew that asking him to save himself from depression was like asking a man in the path of a hurricane to lift up his house and carry it on his own back for two hundred miles.
She should probably let Dustin sleep off his mood, but she found herself walking back into his bedroom. The pillow was still over his head, or his head was still under the pillow. She clung to the vision of the long, happy life they’d have together once Dustin got better, and it helped her say the next words, words she knew he wouldn’t like. “I think you should consider taking medical leave from work again.”
