Finally, she speaks with the breathless, practiced gratitude of the professional guru. “Thank you,” she says, adding the flourish of a bowed head. “Orchids are my favorite.”
An opening. I lunge for it as if my life depends on it. Which it does. “We wanted to make up for the fact that we forced ourselves on you. Especially on the night before the start of the retreat when you probably have a million things to do.”
“A million things,” Gregory says.
I ignore him. “The woman wrapping it actually had to jump up on the counter with a staple gun because it was so big!” I mime the scene, pretending my arms over my head are the two big flaps of cellophane, and my hands opening and closing quickly are the staple gun.
No one’s laughing. Gary and I exchange looks. We want to die. “Then we drove with it sticking out of the sunroof!” Gary adds, joining the ill-fated pantomime, his entire torso becoming the plant swaying in the wind.
Still nothing. My fake smile fades to panic, as does Gary’s—we are so fucked—but Sari Epstein barely seems to notice. Is she dead? Does she have a pulse? She turns around and pads down the slate floor toward a huge open kitchen. “Gregory will show your husband to the guest suite,” she says, having so clearly already forgotten Gary’s name. “It’s over the car-barn.”
* * *
A few minutes later, Sari hand-hugs a mug of tea while looking out the window over the sink. Vast fields roll as far as the eye can see. I think of our own tiny yard at home, with the previous owner’s compost heap we never got rid of and the lawn we never graded and seeded and cover instead every year with cheap dark mulch. I force myself to compliment her, when really I’m wondering how they can afford such a spread.
“So this is all yours!” I say, my voice lilting a little at the end, but you can’t disguise jealousy. My tone is brittle and forced, and I’m pissed that I feel less than her in the midst of her affluence.
“My coloring books and workshops and private coaching do really well, so Gregory and I—he’s a sculptor—get to do what we want to creatively. Everything changes when art becomes about money.”
“Everything!” I’m trapped in a nightmare of my own making.
“It must be the same for you, right? Your Bird book was a bestseller and the animated series didn’t hurt.”
“It certainly did not hurt!”
“See? I know who you are.” It’s like she’s reading my mind already, and I can’t help but be slightly awed and flattered again. “Just because you disappeared creatively doesn’t mean your fans did. There are lots of us waiting for your next oeuvre.”
I cringe. She just misused oeuvre. How is that possible? Is Gary right about this whole thing being total bullshit? I nod and try to follow her continued gaze out the window.
“And yet, for all my success,” she says with ethereal self-absorption, “it’s still a struggle. I think writing is the hardest job in the world.”
“Posting, you mean.” Confused, I blink. I’m thinking about the tiny Instagram paragraphs she writes under her daily meditation and yoga selfies and how not hard they are. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re even harder to compose than actual writing.
“Posting is writing.”
“On a small scale.”
“Whatever the scale, skill is still required. And effort. And it’s the hardest thing I do.”
My $895 is already gone, so I decide to stop fighting. “The hardest.” I relent. I’m all in.
“Harder than working in a mine.”
“So much harder.”
“Or digging ditches.”
I shrug. “They’re just big holes!”
The back door opens and a woman in chef whites enters the kitchen. “Andy will get dinner ready while we go into town, Judy,” Sari says, putting her cup down on the counter. “I’ll show you around and we’ll pick up some wine and cheese.”
Andy has chin-length violet-silver hair, a pierced lip, and a full sleeve of tattoos on both bare arms. She looks at Sari and then at me with sadness, then pity. It takes me a few seconds to realize that we are too ridiculous to even bother hating. I blink in horror. I have crossed a line I never even knew existed. I want desperately to disappear.
“Thank you, Andy!” I say, gushing. Then, as if that’s not weird enough, I wave and walk toward her with my hand extended. “Hi! I’m Judy!”
Andy looks at my hand like it has a bird on its head. “Judy. Chill,” she says calmly, before heading toward the refrigerator.
* * *
Sari and I get into a huge SUV—the kind you have to actually step up and hoist yourself into—so that we can go into town to buy wine and cheese. She backs out and drives all the way down the lawn to the road, passing our car.
“Sorry you had to park so far from the house. We had a muddy thaw.” She shrugs with faux frustration. “Country living.”
“It was good exercise.”
“That’s why it’ll be great to start yoga this weekend. It changed my life. I’ve cut my Xanax in half.”
“I know,” I say. “You posted a lot about that last year.”
She ignores me. “So I never did ask you what you’re working on now.”
I shrug. “Work.”
Sari looks confused.
“I have a day job,” I explain. “I write for a health and wellness site.” I tell her a little bit about Well/er—the founding bro-dudes, how young everyone is, how I get my inspiration for “researched” pieces from my everyday life. “Maybe I’ll write about this trip!” (“Is country living actually like chicken soup for the soul?” “The science behind how a daily walk in nature can boost the quality and quantity of your creative output.”)
“Creating isn’t work for me.” Sari sniffs. “Creating is my life’s work. There’s a difference.”
Sari pulls the SUV into a gravel lot in front of a slate sign hanging from a lamppost: VERMONT COUNTRY PROVISIONS. We jump down out of the car and pad across the gravel, her clogs digging in with each step. Inside the dimly lit shop with sawdust on the wide-plank floors, multiple blackboards show cheese and wine specials written out in colored chalk, while wealthy weekenders fondle delicately wrapped hunks of triple-crème from local dairies and artisanal crackers. If Gary were here he’d tell me it smells like feet. Though we have been apart for less than an hour, I miss him desperately.
Sari puts a few things in her hand basket—two bottles of light pink wine; a tiny log of herbed goat cheese; and a small container of olives—and just as we turn toward the front of the store to pay, I see Gary and Gregory coming in. I now know the true meaning of the gratitude Sari is always tweeting about.
Gary and I make Save me! eyes at each other, while Gregory and Sari air-kiss and whisper into each other’s hair, like they’re at a cocktail party. Which they kind of are: within seconds they see more-important friends and drift away from us. Gary and I move toward each other like magnets.
“I hate them,” he whisper-blurts.
“Me, too!”
“He asked me if I wanted to drive his BMW. Which is sad, since it’s a 3 Series. I mean, it’s a nice car, but nurses lease 3 Series! What’s the big deal?”