“That looks nice,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s only four dollars,” she said, still looking in the mirror. Her smile brightened.
After the thrift store, we went bowling.
“Did you see the Dunkin’ Donuts when we drove in?” Sue said, as we waited for our shoes.
“Do you want donuts? I’ll go get them,” I said. It was my ticket out of this group. My chance to stop smiling for a second.
I went outside and lit a cigarette. It was me and the gray sky. The nicotine hit me in a rush, a strange mixture of sadness and exhilaration. I steadied myself. I took out my phone and saw Amy had called. I called her back.
“Hey,” I said.
“They’re so weird,” she whispered.
“Why are you whispering?”
“I’m hiding in the bathroom.”
“Why?”
“I’m never going to get rid of him.” Her voice quivered.
“Are you crying?”
“How am I ever going to break up with him? He would end up here if I threw him out. I’ve only been here for, like, two days or whatever, and I want to kill myself. His mother will not leave me alone. I went to the office to go on the internet, and she came with me and worked out on the bike, and then I went downstairs, and she came with me. I don’t think she works. And his brother and his wife live with her, but they only have one car. How did I end up with this life that doesn’t look like anything I wanted?”
“Just leave him already. It isn’t your problem what happens to him. You didn’t give birth to him, you know,” I said, frustrated. How many times had I said those words to her?
“Sometimes I just think, you know, I’m thirty-one, and if I want to have a kid, I’ve got to get going. Did you know that after thirty-five the rate of Down syndrome goes up?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that.” This was actually the third time I’d heard that statistic in the past month. There was always this ticking clock, ruining everything, little by little, the longer you lived.
The Dunkin’ Donuts was packed. There was nowhere else to go in town. Two old men came in behind me. The line wasn’t moving. There was an image of an egg croissant with bacon. My mouth watered. They had hash browns now? I wanted it all. I wondered if there was a way to buy an egg sandwich, hash browns, and three Boston creams and scarf them all down without being suspiciously absent for too long. Then I could go puke it up. I was doing this more and more, sneaking food and then puking it up. I wasn’t good at it yet, but it was awesome to stuff yourself and then have an empty stomach. One time last week, I scarfed down five Hostess cupcakes before I came home but was caught when Peter asked innocently, “Is that chocolate on your teeth?” It was exactly like when he found a bag of dope in my pockets.
The bathroom: keeping America’s secrets for decades. Snorting. Puking. Crying. Leaving weepy messages on Ogden’s voicemail.
Whenever I talked to Ogden, it was anticlimactic. To have all these feelings of wanting and longing, a hole in my heart and none of it translating into the dull words passing through my lips, “I miss you,” or “I think about you,” or “I wish you were here.” They came out of my mouth and disappeared but the hole was still there.
“Hi, I’d like an egg sandwich with bacon, and hash browns and a dozen donuts,” I said. I turned just as Peter came in.
“What is taking so long?” he asked, annoyed. I ignored him and told the woman what donuts I wanted. Eyeing the overly large bag and the box of donuts the woman handed to me, he said, “How many things did you order?”
I looked behind me. The place was completely empty except for two people. “It was packed. It had nothing to do with how much stuff I ordered,” I huffed at him.
“Are you getting a dozen donuts?”
“Yeah, for everyone.”
“I’m sorry, honey.” He put his arm around me. “I just didn’t know what was taking so long.”
“I’m sorry I’m fat,” I said.
“Stop it, you know how annoying that is. I like you just the way you are,” he said, patting my butt.
We walked back to the bowling alley.
I sucked at bowling. Sue beat me, Jake beat Peter, and Grace couldn’t play because of her burnt hand. I wondered if Jake fell asleep in front of the TV all the time like Peter. If he lay around in sweat shorts and old T-shirts on the couch, playing with his balls and generally being a disgusting man. Sometimes Peter itched his balls and smelled his hand afterwards. Was this something he had always done, and just now something he felt comfortable doing around me? Did he think I didn’t notice, or did he not care? Why did balls itch so goddamn much?
After bowling we found another thrift store. Sue and I looked through the women’s section together.
Peter found a leather jacket, like MacGyver’s. It was terrible, the color of mud or diarrhea, with some rips, and the waist was too short and puffy. The type of thing someone’s dad would wear.
“Isn’t it great?” Peter asked, smiling, so excited.
“I hate it.”
“What?” He looked like I had stabbed him. “What do you hate about it?”
“I’m sure there’s one that’s better. Let me look.”
“No,” he said sternly, “I looked through them all, and this is the one I like the best.”
“It’s just so bad. The color, the fit.”
“It’s only twenty dollars.”
“It’s worth less.”
“Why are you being a bitch?” he said, walking away.
Mallard ducks. Peter had a tapestry of mallard ducks on the wall of his room in Queens. The ducks weren’t cartoony. They weren’t whimsical ducks going in every direction. They were serious ducks in serious colors, blank-eyed in straight rows like little communists. His dead grandmother had made it. Before I said something like, “Can’t you love her without displaying this awful thing on my wall?” I realized it meant a lot to him. He was like someone on Hoarders who thought the thing had to do with the person. There was also a frightful portrait of Winston Churchill his grandmother painted. When we moved in together, I didn’t say anything as Peter, without a second thought, put the mallard ducks up in the bedroom and the Winston Churchill in the center of the living room wall. I would forever be reading a book and look up to find this awful, fat, uniformed man in front of me.
The worst part about the ducks and Winston Churchill was they made me hate myself. Why did I care? If they made Peter happy, why wasn’t that more important than my apartment? I had slowly but progressively filled my apartment with perfect things. That was why I spent forever finding the exact right fridge, stainless steel and tall, but thin so it wouldn’t go past the doorway of the narrow kitchen. The dish drainer was Swedish and cost seventy dollars. Instead of getting a regular toilet brush, I got something called a toilet wand with disposable toilet scrubbers. I spent a whole paycheck on one thing. I wanted my little corner of the world to be an uncluttered, peaceful masterpiece. And then Peter came in with his mallard ducks and his Winston Churchill and his colored bottles, which he put on every fucking surface. What was it with men and bottles? But what was it with me, letting a tapestry and Winston Churchill cause friction with the one man who was willing to spend his whole life with me? Why did putting sentiment over aesthetic beauty make Peter a freak? Wasn’t it natural to hang something on your wall that reminded you of someone you love?