Page 29 of 32 Days in May
“This is my second act, for sure. This is my part two. Everything’s different. I’m ready for everything to be different.”
“So, you’ll quit smoking?” I tease.
He looks at me over the top of his sunglasses and flashes a heart-stopping smile. “For the right woman, absolutely.”
I throw my phone across the room.
Sunday, May 7
“This isn’t like you! You’ve never left your mail sitting this long. Ever.” Pause for dramatic effect. Then, the button: “You need help, Nadia.”
Liv is lecturing me again, this time from where she sits cradled in the pink satin pillow, on speakerphone.
I’m starfished on the bed in my underwear, the echoes of my night out with Marco still ricocheting through my bones. Overhead, the ceiling fan whirls at full tilt, rocking gently in place. The cool air is both a salve for my limbs and like a cast-iron frying pan over my head. My sister takes for granted that I may actually be depressed or be suicidal. To her, depression and anxiety are mere concepts reserved for hypotheticals you read on the internet or characters in a TV show.
“Please, God. Enough. I’m already fucking exhausted.”
“What about holistic medicine?” She keeps going. “Isn’t there an herb you can rub on yourself? I just feel like you’re not trying—”
“You think I haven’t tried all that stuff? I’m on medicine. I’m on steroids. It all just takes a while.”
“You know, I read an article about a woman with cancer who bought a ranch, tilled the land, and cured herself.”
“And I read an article about a man from Nantucket with a really big bucket.”
She sucks her teeth at me. “Very funny. Just wait until Mom and Dad find out you’ve been making a dent in their king-size mattress.”
Our parents are currently on a Mediterranean cruise for their fortieth wedding anniversary. They’re two people who, as long as I’ve known them, have done little else besides work at the butcher shop. They’re hardwired with an old-world work ethic and skepticism. The only thing they believe in fully is the Catholic Church, which is, fortunately, the basis for their marriage. I can’t imagine them anywhere other than the shop; the row home where they raised me, Liv, and our little brother, Nicky; and the Shore. But right now, as I speak to my sister, they’ve elected to be trapped at sea, on a vessel where group activities and line dancing are strongly encouraged. I picture my dad, five-two on a good day, frowning at the shores of Crete, longing for his tomato plants and the patch of sun in the carport where he loves to sit in a lawn chair.
“Don’t worry, I’m just making a dent in your queen-size mattress.”
“Oh, thanks a lot,” she huffs. “Typical, ruining my bed.”
“Your room is way bigger and has the ocean view. Mine has a fucking porthole, Nicky’s baseball gear, and all those jars from Dad’s pickling phase.”
Liv lets out a dry laugh. A door slams in the distance, and I know she’s arriving at Fabiola Sausages to open in time for the post–Sunday morning Mass rush. “Remember when he was obsessed with jalapeños? You smelled so bad that entire summer.”
“The funk was trapped in my hair. Thank God it’s g—” Fuck. I stop short of the word gone leaving my lips. But Olivia is a hound dog. She could sniff out a poor life decision from planets away.
“Thank God it’s what? What is it?”
“Nothing. I just got a haircut, that’s all. Just a trim.”
“Why do you sound like that?”
“Like what?”
“Just a trim! You sound British.”
“I do not—”
She launches into an awful impression of what I guess is supposed to be me. “Just an inch off the bottom, dearie. Tidy ho!”
“Ew, shut up,” I whine and it’s the most enthusiastic I’ve sounded this entire phone call.
For most of our life, it had just been Liv and me; eighteen months apart, both of us girls. We’d never really been similar—in school, Liv loved clubs and organizing parties and could probably convince a flock of geese to unionize. I was quieter. I liked pressing flowers and limping around the playground, pretending I was an abandoned carpetbagger on the Oregon Trail.
“Spot of cream!” Liv’s still going.
