Leave Me

She wrote back a longer e-mail: Was it Oscar’s ears? Had Jason made an appointment with the ENT? Had he spoken to the speech therapist? Now that she had an opening, she asked more general questions: about the children’s mental state, their physical state, their pediatrician appointments, their haircuts. When she finished, she had filled an entire screen with queries.

Jason’s reply came too quickly for him to have answered properly. They are doing fine, he wrote.

Can you be more specific? she wrote back.

Oscar is fine. Liv is fine. I’m taking care of things. We are all fine.

Fine? Everything wrong with Jason Brinkley could be boiled down to that one innocuous word. It was one part wish fulfillment, two parts laziness. Yeah, everything was fine. Because she was there to make sure it was.

But she wasn’t there now, so how exactly were things fine? He claimed he wasn’t punishing her but when she and Jason got into a fight, this was exactly what he did: became a turtle, all hard shell. It was the perfect protection, the perfect weapon. She lost every time.

She understood that she deserved his anger. She wasn’t trying to weasel out of it. She was not seeking forgiveness or absolution. She just wanted to know where she stood. For once, to know where she really stood. Because how could she even think of going back without knowing this? With the ground always shifting under her, how could she ever hope to regain her footing?

Fine? How could she trust such an insubstantial word? How could she trust such an insubstantial man? Who never said what he really meant. Did he mean fine as opposed to drowning, or fine as in thriving?

But then a jolt of understanding hit her like a fist to the gut. What if Jason was saying something else entirely? That they were doing fine. Without her.

48

Pittsburgh was not as cold as Maribeth had expected—she’d been anticipating piles of snow—but as winter approached, the blue skies seemed to disappear under a constant shroud of gray that chilled her to the bone. Maribeth had brought her winter coat but it was no match for the long, windy waits at bus stops, and she found herself lingering in her apartment, watching more TV, and feeling generally itchy and sad. Until one day she broke down and went to the fancy Goodwill in Shadyside and spent fifteen dollars on one of those puffy parkas that she and Elizabeth had always sworn never to wear.

Before leaving the store, she put on the new coat, stuffing her stylish but insufficient one in the plastic bag. As soon as she got outside, she understood she’d been doing it wrong. Wearing the parka was like walking in a sleeping bag. The cold nipped at her nose, her earlobes, but had no purchase with the rest of her. How in the world had she survived forty-four years without one of these things?

After her next swimming lesson—more time with the kickboard to work on rotary breathing—Maribeth felt so snug in her new coat, she decided to walk back from Squirrel Hill to Bloomfield through Shadyside. This was the chicest neighborhood she had found in Pittsburgh so far, the one with packed Asian fusion cafés, organic coffee shops, artisanal ice cream stores, and many boutiques. Aside from the stationery, she had not bought anything in Shadyside, had not really bought anything beyond necessities here. But sometimes, when she was missing home and needed a New York City hit, she liked to walk through the area.

Today as she window-shopped down Walnut, she stopped in front of a cosmetics chain. There was a sandwich board sign in front advertising makeovers.

One of the employees came to the door. She was beautiful in a Björk sort of way, jutting cheekbones, green, slanted eyes. “Minimakeovers are free,” she said. “Or you can have a full makeover with fifty dollars worth of products.”

Since her haircut and lice comb-out, Maribeth kept meaning to buy herself a tube of lipstick, maybe a new mascara, or to get the haircut professionally cleaned up. Like so many things she kept meaning to do—go to the movies, take herself out for lunch—she had not. Straying from her ascetic existence for even the most minor indulgence felt wrong.

But why was she punishing herself? If they were doing so fine without her? She followed the young woman inside to a swivel chair before a large, lit mirror.

“Are there any products you like?” the young woman asked. Her nametag read Ash.

“Not really.” Most of her products were pilfered from the beauty samples closet at work; Revlon one day, La Mer the next.

Ash pulled Maribeth’s hair back with a headband, and for a brief moment, Maribeth saw another face in the mirror.

“You have a great skin tone, so I would go minimal,” Ash said. “Maybe a tinted moisturizer, a pale lipstick, a touch of mascara.”

It felt so good to be touched, Maribeth felt herself surrendering. If Ash had recommended a full on Goth makeover, she probably would have said yes.

Ash returned with a few products and swiveled Maribeth toward her as she dabbed drops of each onto her wrist to match tone. “You really have gorgeous skin, and a lot of collagen left,” Ash said. She pulled up the skin along Maribeth’s jawline. “Do you know if you have Scandinavian in your background?”

Maribeth shook her head. There was a pleasant buzzing in her chest. “I don’t know.”

“I’m told Scandinavian skin ages really well, because the sun there isn’t so strong. Did your mother’s skin stay so young?”

“I don’t know,” Maribeth said. “I mean I do, but I don’t. I’m adopted.”

“Me too!” Ash said, a huge smile lighting up her face. “I was born in Kazakhstan.”

“Kazakhstan?” Maribeth said. “I’m not even sure where that is.”