Page 109 of What It's Like in Words
“That was Diana.”
My voice is high and shaky, and Ruth puts the jar down.
“… and…?”
“… and we have an offer…”
“… an offer…”
“… to publish my book…”
“Oh my god.”
“It’s an independent publisher. A small place. But Diana wants me to come to the office after lunch to talk about it. The editor wants to meet, apparently.”
“Oh my god!” Ruth screams and runs to me. She lifts me up and spins me until we are both screaming and laughing.“You’re going to be a published author!”
“I’m going to be a published author!”
My whole body is shaking. I hold my arms out to show Ruth, and she steadies them.
“Roo, I really wasn’t expecting that.”
“I was,” she says with a wide smile. And she means it.God, I think,I am so lucky.
Less than a minute ago I had accepted that it was a no, but now that it’s a yes I already know that everything has changed. What I’m willing to fight for. What I’m willing to accept. Thisexcitement. It’s like my body can’t hold me, like I’m bigger than my bones. I’m on the top of a roller coaster. I’m dancing in the rain. I’m running into the waves.
“Does this make you want to call you-know-who? It’s all right if it does. I would understand. He is a writer too.”
I catch my breath.
“No. It’s the opposite.”
Ruth hugs me again. I tell her that I’m going to go to the bathroom to get ready. “But I’ll come back and we can have breakfast. Do you want to come into town with me?”
“Yes! Croissants will be ready in five.”
IN THE BATHROOM,Ilook in the mirror and try to process the last two minutes and the last two years. Someone wants to publish my book, my thoughts, my words.Mywords.
I weaved through the crowds and squeezed until I was standing just behind him, close enough to see the white threads in the rip in his jacket.
I put my hands to my cheeks and stretch the skin like clay. There are thin lines around my mouth and larger ones on my forehead; beads of moisture in the pores of my nose and half-moon shadows beneath my eyes.
A rumbling began in the tunnel. The lights of the train became visible. A receipt blew across the tiles.
I have my mother’s eyes and my father’s face, but the flaws are mine. Soon, the thumbprint on my collarbone will vanish like a leaf or a butterfly.
I thought about every cruel thing he had ever done or said, and yet without thinking, I put my hand on his back and pushed.
This is what it is like
But then she looked up, and he was pulling her with him down the path and across the burning sand to the ocean, the cool waves smacking them with the full force of happiness as their bones broke.
I am thirty years old
crouched in the river with
beach-burned soles and a cigarette breeze
