Leave Me
“We have different membership levels. Annual or month to month. If your passes run out next month, say, you could just have a membership for a month or two. What do you think?”
She didn’t know. All her life she had been such a planner, a plotter, a plodder. She planned meals the week before so she knew how to shop. She planned vacations a year in advance so they could save on airfare. She planned the feature stories at Frap six months in advance. She had the calendar memorized: who was going where, eating what, writing what.
But now? She didn’t know what would happen next month. She didn’t even know what would happen next week. She didn’t know what would happen with Jason. With Stephen. With her children. With her birth mother. A year ago, so much uncertainty would’ve killed her. Her lists, her plans—they were her parachute, the thing to keep her from total free fall.
She was in free fall now. And it wasn’t killing her. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if she might’ve had it backwards. All that fixating on the fall . . . maybe she should’ve been paying more attention to the free.
61
Janice called her that afternoon. “I have it! I have the report! It’s parent-teacher night so I can’t show you now, but first thing tomorrow.”
“Can’t you just read it to me?”
“No. I won’t open it without you. Come over first thing tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I know. But you’ve waited this long. You can survive one more day.”
Maribeth wasn’t sure she could. She knocked on Todd and Sunita’s door.
“Please tell me there’s a game on,” she said. “Something. I need to be occupied.”
“Maybe a college game,” Sunita said. “We’re going to the movies in a while. A double feature. You’re welcome to come.”
“The genre is action adventure,” Todd said. “If your heart can handle it.”
At first she thought he was being serious, but then she noted the wicked grin. Somewhere along the line, she had been promoted to Sunita treatment. She found this thrilling.
“A movie sounds perfect,” she said.
“We don’t have to leave for an hour,” Todd said, gesturing toward the computer. “If you need something to do, why don’t you go e-mail your husband?”
From: [email protected]
Subject: You at work?
From: [email protected]
Subject: You at work?
I’m working from home. Want to Gchat?
From: [email protected]
Subject: You at work?
I believe we are officially too old to Gchat. Our computers will melt if we attempt it.
From: [email protected]
Subject: You at work?
You know I like to live dangerously, Grandma.
A few seconds later, a notice popped up that Jinx would like to chat.
Jinx. That made her smile.
5:40
Jinx: Hi.
Me: Hi.
Jinx: Look at us, Gchatting like kids.
Me: Next thing you know, we’ll be Snapchatting.
Jinx: I don’t know what that is.
Me: No. Me, neither.
5:47
Me: So the report is in. About my birth mother. I see it tomorrow.
Jinx: !
Jinx: How do you feel?
Me: Mostly sick.
Me: In a nervous kind of way. Not heart-related.
Me: What if she’s dead? What if she died of a heart attack? What if she was a horrible person? What if she was raped? It could be so many dreadful things.
Jinx: Maybe knowing definitively will ease the fear.
Me: Or increase it.
Jinx: I don’t know. There’s something about facing your fear head-on. Like when I read your note, it was horrifying but reassuring to see my fears echoed by someone else. It was like proof that I wasn’t crazy.
5:52
Jinx: You still there?
Me: Yeah.
Jinx: Thought I scared you off.
Me: No. I was just wondering how to tell you that I don’t remember what I wrote in the note, and when you sent it to me, I freaked out and deleted it.
Jinx: Really? Why?
Me: I thought you were throwing it back in my face. That first line . . . It’s so hysterical.
Jinx: “I’m scared I’m going to die.”
Me: Please don’t. I remember that part.
Jinx: But not the rest?
Me: Let’s just say I wasn’t my best self when I wrote it.
Jinx: I probably wasn’t my best self when I sent it back. I was pretty pissed off so I guess I was kind of throwing it back in your face. You leave, then nothing for a month, then that hail of accusation. But mostly I wanted you to see, in your own words, what you’d asked me to do.
Me: I’m sorry.
5:57
Jinx: That’s okay. FWIW, I didn’t think you were being hysterical. I thought you were being truthful. And obviously, it was a shared fear. I was also scared you were going to die.
6:01
Me: Jase? Would you send me the note again?
Jinx: Now?
Me: Now. Can you e-mail it to me?
Jinx: I can attach right here if you want. We can read it together.
Me: Really? Okay. Do that.
An attachment popped up right in the chat window. Maribeth clicked on it and read the words she’d written on that worst of days.
I know you think I’m fine but I’m scared I’m going to die.