I left and she didn’t. He dropped her off at my apartment the next day before noon. For weeks, she disappeared for days to be with him. I always knew where she was at night if she wasn’t across from me in bed.
She made fun of him in front of me. His sheets, she said. Her face scrunched up. I’m not sure they’ve ever been washed.
She was affecting this not caring. She tried to convince me I still mattered most of all. He’d dropped out of high school, lived with a cousin in South Boston, no real plans. She said when he fucked her he got angry just before he came and she liked the way his ass felt in her hands, taut and small compared to the rest of him. Twice, she showed me bruises he’d left across her body. I ran my hands slowly over them, one on the shoulder, another just below her chin, her skin so white and poreless, even in summer, the purple splotches popping, angry, with smaller patches of brown and blue. Later, I reached slowly up into myself with that same hand and let myself remember her pulse thrumming; I thought about their fucking, imagined the feel of that hard, angry ass overtop of me.
* * *
He stopped returning her calls after a month. She pretended she didn’t care. Then she told me she thought she might be pregnant. She refused to take a test but left a message on his phone. I went to the CVS and bought the test for her, but she refused to take it. Instead, she curled up next to me in my bed and cried, her phone clutched to her. When he still hadn’t called her back a week later and she was still calling, warning, saying she’d take care of it herself except she didn’t have the money now (I knew this wasn’t true and had also offered to put an abortion on my parents’ credit card) I found a used tampon in the bathroom under two sheets of paper from the day’s news. We were the only people in the house.
I CALL IN sick to work and meet the Chilean writer for breakfast at a diner in the Village. It’s the end of the month and we’ve just paid our rent and made the girls’ school payment and the magic credit card no longer works. I realize, halfway through breakfast, that I can’t afford this meal.
I can’t pay for this, I say out loud, scared all of a sudden.
The Chilean writer sits up very straight and smiles at me. Her books have never sold too well in the States, but she has a reputation overseas.
I can, she says.
* * *
We were different types of objects, I say, as I tell her about Sasha.
She appeared and I didn’t, I say. I didn’t wholly understand then, how limited her power was. I didn’t understand how contingent her power was on other people wanting her.
And you? she says. Your wants?
She wears glasses and has large eyes that are made larger by the glasses. The glasses’ frames are wide and round and black and overwhelm her face.
I know now all the ways not being looked at kept me safe.
Our server refills our waters. In the time that we’ve been here, the place has filled, then emptied. I don’t know why I’m talking about her. It was a whole other life. I want this not to be the same story of this friend I loved and how I lost her. I want to be past whatever it was I thought I got away from when I left Florida all those years ago.
I wasn’t in the world, I say. I was detached from almost everyone but her.
Not without its dangers, she says.
Sure, I say. But self-inflicted dangers are a different thing.
* * *
I get seven emails from work in the time we sit and nurse coffee after coffee. The twenty-four-year-old couldn’t find the readings he was meant to give the students, so he let them watch a movie, and my co–homeroom teachers had to defuse a fight after lunch between two of the kids I teach. My husband texts to ask about my day at work and I text back and say it’s fine and ask how his is.
On my walk home from all that coffee, I text Sasha. Congrats, I say, after hours of not responding. She does not, of course, respond, and I feel dumb.
3
MY ALARM GOES off and I climb down the stairs of our bed, grab my phone, and turn it off and stuff my phone underneath my pillow. I close my eyes again. I reset the alarm for 5:00 and then 5:30. My calves and neck hurt, my lower back. My husband’s still asleep and I crawl to the middle of the bed and bend my knees, my ass against my calves. I stretch my arms up to the front of the bed and press my forehead hard against the sheets and breathe slowly in and out.
I run four miles instead of eight and am rushed and anxious after. Our four-year-old has wet the bed and the two-year-old is crying, holding on to all my limbs, screaming that she hates my job, that she wants me to stay with her, pulling on my sweater to wipe the snot off her nose and lips and chin.
I have to go to work, I tell her. People have to go to work, I tell her. So they can live.
Just go, my husband says, packing their lunches, making breakfast, cleaning up the four-year-old in the bathtub, changing her sheets. Let go of your mother, he says to the baby.
I want to come to work with you, she says. Nurse, she says.
You have to go, says my husband.
I hold the two-year-old another minute, wiping her face with my sweater, reminding her to breathe.
I’ll see you tonight, I tell her. This isn’t true, though, I remember just after I say this. It’s Thursday and I won’t be home until long after she’s asleep. I try not to do this, tell them I will be somewhere when I won’t be. I try not to ever promise things to them that I can’t give. But it’s too late now and I have to go and she won’t stop crying.
The four-year-old is still not wearing any pants and she comes out of her room and I pick her up to find her underwear and leggings, still holding the baby. You’re going to be late, says my husband. I dress the four-year-old and kiss her, hug her, give the red-faced baby to my husband. I hug them one more time and miss my train.
* * *
I have been called into a meeting with the principal and wonder briefly if the twenty-four-year-old has reported me. I’ve been leaving at least twice a week. I don’t think anybody sees me, but I also don’t work very hard to keep my leaving a secret. I walk out with my bag and coat on, usually while classes are going on so there aren’t many people in the hallways. When I pass coworkers, I assume they think I’m going out for coffee or a late lunch. Twice, the twenty-four-year-old has messaged me on the Google chat when I’ve been on the subway or already back in Brooklyn, and I’ve made things up about my kids.
Three times, I’ve had to ask my co–homeroom teachers to cover for me. I blame my children. I lie to my co–homeroom teachers because they’re just as frustrated with this job as I am but they don’t leave.
I see the twenty-four-year-old lingering, close to the principal’s office, just before I’m led in by his admin assistant. I brace myself for the look I’ll get at home when I tell my husband I lost this job and it’s my fault. I imagine what response I might give to excuse it, but I leave because I want to, which is not, I think, a reason I should say out loud to try to keep my job.
The principal appears, though, not to know about my midday leaving. Instead, he explains calmly to me that it’s time for test prep, that the portion of the year in which the kids are meant to be doing anything but test prep has long since passed. I am not, he tells me, trained in test prep and so will no longer be teaching the students I’ve been teaching since the fall.