Leave Me

  23

  “How much did you weigh before your heart attack?” Dr. Grant asked. It was Maribeth’s third appointment in less than three weeks, only this one she’d scheduled in a panic after the pair of size-eight jeans that had fit when she’d bought them at the thrift shop a week ago fell off her hips. Sudden weight loss, she knew, was a bad sign.

  “I don’t know. One twenty-five. Ish.”

  “You’re one fourteen now.”

  One fourteen. She had not weighed so little since she was a teenager. “Is something wrong? Should we do blood work?”

  “Maybe. But first, tell me: what are you eating these days?”

  She was eating what she was supposed to be eating. Whole grains. Leafy greens. Chicken breasts. Low-fat. Low-sodium. Low-taste.

  Even though on her trip to the grocery store with Todd she had practically had a lust attack in front of the butcher case, simultaneously remembering the taste of every steak she had ever eaten: the flank steaks her dad charred to a crisp on the grill, the côte de boeuf she and Elizabeth had shared in a Paris bistro, the porterhouse she’d cooked for Jason after they’d got back together.

  And then she’d lost it, again, in front of the freezer case this time. She could taste, so clearly, the Neapolitan ice-cream sandwiches she used to eat for dessert every night as a kid. Starting with hard, frozen strawberry, moving on to the softening vanilla in the middle. By the time she got to the chocolate, the ice cream and the cookie crust were both squishy and delicious. “You’re so lucky your metabolism lets you eat anything you want,” her mother would say, sitting there, drinking her Sanka while she watched Maribeth eat ice cream.

  “Oatmeal and blueberries for breakfast,” she told Dr. Grant. “Kale salad for lunch. Chicken breast for dinner.” Just reciting the menu killed her appetite. No wonder she was losing weight. “I’m being very vigilant.”

  “Vigilant?”

  “To make sure I don’t eat the wrong thing again.”

  “Diet sometimes plays a significant role, particularly if you’re overweight or you eat at McDonald’s all the time. But as we discussed, given your age and your weight and your diet and other risk factors, I would hazard it’s the hyperlipidemia, your body’s inability to metabolize the cholesterol. You didn’t do anything wrong. So you can take yourself off the hook.”

  “Great. I’m off the hook.” She mimed removing herself from a hook, slouching down in her chair. “I’m so relieved.”

  “I don’t know if you’re a worse mime or liar.”

  “Hey, I’m offended,” Maribeth said. “I’m an excellent mime.” She mimed a wall in front of her.

  He laughed. Then he looked at his watch. He was the kind of man who still wore one.

  “Do you have an hour?” he said.

  “All I have is hours.”

  “Good. Come with me.”

  THEY DROVE TO a gourmet ice cream shop in Shadyside. He ordered her to sit down while he went to the counter. He came back with two sundaes, two spoons in each.

  “Taste test,” he said.

  “What is it?” she asked suspiciously.

  “That’s vanilla with figs and balsamic,” he said, pointing to one. “And that’s mint chip with hot fudge and whipped cream. One yuppie, one classic. Okay?”

  “You’re the doctor,” she said.

  She stared at the ice cream.

  “It won’t kill you,” he said.

  She picked up a spoon. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  She dipped her spoon in the fig-balsamic sundae. “Is this part of my official treatment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does insurance cover it?”

  “You don’t have insurance. You pay cash,” he replied. “Though I doubt you paid cash for that.” He gestured to her chest. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re an escaped prisoner from Cambridge Springs.”

  “How about you don’t ask me about my insurance, and I don’t ask why you have all this free time to take patients for ice cream.”

  Something came over his face. Not anger, or resentment, or even embarrassment, but something else. It was like a veil being lowered. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be,” he replied. He held out his hand. “It’s a deal. Now take your medicine.”

  They shook hands. She took a tentative bite. It was pretty good.

  “Look,” he said. “You’re not dead.”

  “Give it a few minutes,” she said.

  “Give it enough minutes and we’re all dead.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you have an excellent bedside manner?”

  “Here, try the other one.” He slid the mint-chip sundae toward her. She took a bite. Also delicious.

  “That one,” he said, pointing to the yuppie, “is made with vegan ice cream. No saturated fat. The other one.” Here he popped a bite of mint chip into his mouth. “Is your classic ice cream. Both are delicious. In moderation, both are fine.”

  “Except this one is full of cholesterol!” she said, pointing to the mint chip, picturing the ice cream slipping down her esophagus and detouring straight to her arteries. She pushed the sundae away. “I’ll never be able to just eat ice cream again like a normal person, will I?”

  “Maybe. Consider it a worthy goal.” He pushed the mint-chip sundae back toward her.

  She took a small bite. She tried not to think about occluded arteries, which meant she thought even more about occluded arteries. Maybe she could take a double dose of her statin tonight.

  “You know what I can’t help wondering?” she asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “What would’ve happened if I hadn’t already been going to the doctor that day? Would I have just carried on blithely eating ice cream and then had another heart attack and dropped dead?”

  He shrugged. “Not necessarily. Your chest pain might’ve resolved and you wouldn’t have had another incident. Your chest pain would’ve worsened and you would’ve eventually gone to the ER. Or the chest pain would’ve worsened or not worsened and you would have a potentially serious repeat event and, as you say, dropped dead.”

  “There’s that excellent bedside manner again.”

  “You don’t strike me as someone who wants to be coddled.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I do want to be coddled,” she said. “Just not lied to.”

  “Sometimes those are mutually exclusive.”

  She nodded. “My dad, my adoptive dad, had no idea he had any arterial disease, and then one day he had a stroke and went into a coma, and two weeks later he died. I don’t know which is better, to have it hanging over you or to be blissfully unaware until the day you die.”

  She expected him to say that it was better to know. It was his bread and butter, after all, letting people know, fixing things if they went wrong. But instead he said this: “I imagine it’s like most things in life. You sacrifice something for the knowledge, be it peace of mind, a sense of your invincibility, or something less quantifiable.”

  “The truth will set you free but first it will make you miserable,” she said, reciting the one inspirational poster from high school that she could remember.

  “Exactly.”

  24

  The next day, at the library, Maribeth logged on to BurghBirthParents .org and clicked on the Find Your Birth Parent tab. There was a questionnaire, basic information, name, date of birth, religion, adoptive parents’ names, contact details.

  As she filled in the form, it felt like filling in any online form, to register the twins for a class, or to buy diapers in bulk.

  When the contact information boxes appeared, she input her new cell phone number but hesitated before listing her old e-mail address. She had not logged on to that account since she had left. Now, she imagined the pages of messages awaiting her—howlers from Jason, carefully crafted notes of concern from Elizabeth, sanctimony disguised as caring from the parents in the twins group, not to mention the usual clutter from Br
ightStart and the various groups and e-mail lists she subscribed to—and shuddered. She could not go back to that. She left that part of the form blank.

  She paused for a moment, her finger hovering over the submit button.

  “You really don’t want to find her?” Jason had asked her in college, when his own parents were divorcing. He asked it again after one of his good friends flew to South Korea to reunite with his birth siblings. He asked it yet again after the twins were born. “You really don’t want to find out about your family?”

  “You’re my family,” had been her standard reply.

  She wondered if that was true anymore.

  She clicked submit.

  25

  Maribeth knocked on her neighbors’ door, feeling nervous. She had debated texting the invitation but that felt too informal. Which was ridiculous. She was not inviting them to a Yule Ball. Just to dinner.

  She’d discovered a fishmonger near the library and had thought to make a paella. But the expense of all that shellfish, not to mention all that work, seemed too much for one person. And besides, the ice cream outing with Dr. Grant had been cheering. Not just the food, but the conversation. She needed to be more social, and Todd and Sunita were her only options.

  She was relieved when Sunita answered the door. Even after her and Todd’s moment of understanding during the last shopping trip, he intimidated her. So Maribeth was a little surprised when Sunita responded to the invitation with a shake of her head so vigorous it snapped her ponytail.

  “Oh no,” Sunita said. “We can’t. We absolutely can’t.”

  Maribeth felt her face grow warm. What was she thinking? Todd and Sunita were in their early twenties; she was in her midforties. She’d mistaken their overtures of friendliness for friendship, when in fact she was just an old lady they were helping to cross the street.

  “Oh, okay, never mind then,” Maribeth said, backing away.

  “It’s just tomorrow’s Monday,” Sunita said. When that didn’t register, she added. “Monday Night Football. We play the Titans.”

  “Oh, football, right,” Maribeth said. She was vaguely aware of such things. Jason was a haphazard sports fan at best, but her father-in-law went completely bonkers over one of the teams. The Giants? Or maybe it was the Jets.

  “We’re going to crush them,” Sunita added.

  “Oh.” Maribeth didn’t know what to say. “Well, good luck with the crushing.”

  “Wait. What are you making?” Sunita asked. “No one’s cooked me dinner in a while.”

  “I was thinking about paella.”

  “Todd’s allergic to scallops,” Sunita said.

  “No scallops in this recipe.”

  “Maybe you could bring it over here. If you don’t mind watching the game with us.”

  “Really?”

  “Kickoff is at seven-thirty but come earlier so we can hang out.”

  Hang out. “Okay.”

  “Be warned, Todd can be a tyrant about talking about anything but football while the ball is in play.” She rolled her eyes as if to say: Men.

  Maribeth smiled. “I’ll see you at seven.”

  THE RECIPE WAS pleasantly complicated, lots of debearding and deveining, chopping and slicing. She went about it methodically yet leisurely, a glass of red wine at her side. (One thing Dr. Grant had insisted she could feel good about.) She even bought fish heads to make her own stock.

  As a briny smell filled the apartment, Maribeth tried to recall the last time being in a kitchen felt like a luxury rather than a chore. She didn’t have to worry about a meal that had to be cooked, served, and cleaned in that tiny window between coming home from work and exhaustion-related meltdown (usually the kids’ but not always). She didn’t have to worry if Liv was or was not eating tomato sauce or rice or broccoli that week. She didn’t have to worry if seeing the shrimps with heads on in the kitchen would traumatize Oscar. She didn’t have to perform a cost-benefit analysis of a multipot meal: tastiness of food versus time spent cleaning up.

  Even cleaning the kitchen felt gratifying. A cutting board was dirty. It was washed. Now it was clean. The simple satisfaction of it. It made her happy in a very basic way, much like editing once had.

  At seven, she brought the steaming platter next door. Sunita answered, wearing an oversized Steelers jersey, her eyes blackened with those marks football players wore for reasons that mystified Maribeth. Todd appeared behind her. He was dressed exactly the same. Maribeth had seen Sunita in sports jerseys but Todd had always been dressed on the preppy side.

  “It’s for luck,” Todd explained, picking up her look. “Otherwise the Steelers lose.”

  “It’s true,” Sunita said. “We lost the Super Bowl in 2011 because Todd was trying to impress a guy and wore J.Crew.”

  “Youth,” Todd said, shaking his head.

  “Here, this is heavy,” Maribeth said, nodding toward the platter.

  “Oh, right. Put it down on the table,” Todd said.

  “It’s hot. Do you have a trivet?”

  “Grab a catalog or something, Sunny,” Todd said.

  Sunita snatched a magazine from the pile of mail. It was a recent issue of Frap.

  “I haven’t read that yet,” Todd said.

  “You’re not missing much,” Maribeth joked.

  “You read Frap?” Todd arched his eyebrows and Maribeth suspected she had just scored another point with him.

  “I’ve been known to.”

  “See?” he said to Sunita. To Maribeth he said, “Sunny gives me no end of shit, even though the girl has never met a BuzzFeed Harry Potter quiz she didn’t take.”

  “You cannot compare HP and your silly magazines.”

  “Oh, give it up. It’s two against one. And M.B. reads it and she’s smart. She’s probably a visiting professor or something.”

  She glanced at the issue of Frap, the cover growing soggy from paella steam. “A consultant.”

  “A consultant reads it,” Todd said. “So no giving me shit.”

  “But then what would I live for?” Sunita said. “M.B., do you want the grand tour before the pregame?”

  “Sure.”

  “I already warned her what a slob you are,” Todd said, and he exchanged a conspiratorial look with Maribeth.

  The apartment was a lot like hers, the same aging appliances in the kitchen, the same dirty carpeting in the living room, the same generic oak-veneer dining table. Yet it looked completely different, perhaps because it looked lived in. There were chili-pepper lights strung along the windowsill, a bookshelf teetering with paperbacks and school texts. There was what looked like a shrine to the Steelers: a framed front-page newspaper article trumpeting a Super Bowl win, a few bobble-head toys, a placard that read, I BLEED BLACK AND GOLD. There was a smattering of framed photos of the two of them, younger, softer-faced, and endearingly awkward.

  Sunita’s bedroom was, as Todd had warned, a mess: a jumble of throw pillows and brightly colored wall mosaics, a pile of clothes spilling out of the closet.

  Todd’s bedroom by comparison was spartan: a bed that would pass a military inspection, a framed poster of the periodic table of the elements done up to look like a Warhol, and an enormous bulletin board full of movie ticket stubs that had been artfully arranged to look like a flower. Maribeth went to inspect.

  “We see a lot of movies,” Todd said. “I figured if I was going to spend all that money, I might as well have something to show for it.”

  “Do you like movies?” Sunita asked.

  “I do, but I don’t go often enough.” When she’d taken the job at Frap she thought she would use at least a couple of the Fridays to sneak away to an early matinee. But she hadn’t. Not once. She glanced at the stubs, which were mostly from recent films, none of which she’d seen: Skyfall. Pitch Perfect. American Hustle. Identity Thief. The Hunger Games. Ted. Harold and Maude.

  “Harold and Maude?” she said in surprise.

  “I know,” Sunita said. “He dragged me to that at th
e Row House. It’s really weird. Have you seen it?”

  Not since college. Not since the first night with Jason.

  After Maribeth had taken Courtney up on that dare to profile Jason for the college newspaper, she’d gone to the radio station office, prepared to spend exactly one hour with some ugly music snob.

  But after talking to him, she found a reason to continue the interview the following day. And then he insisted that she sit in on one of his shows, to get the full experience, he said.

  It turned out that everything Maribeth had expected about Jinx had been wrong. Sure, when she first admitted she didn’t like Nirvana, he’d ribbed her a little—“Who raised you?”—but it was all good natured. She could tell straightaway that he didn’t judge what people liked so long as they liked something. His whole thing was that he loved music. Deejaying wasn’t a way to be cool, or discerning, but his way of expressing the love.

  And he wasn’t ugly. Not in the least. When she’d first seen him at the radio station office, she’d thought he was cute: that mop of hair, the hazel eyes, those plummy lips. When he got excited about some track he was playing her—because when she didn’t recognize a band he was referencing, he would drag her into an empty studio to educate her—he’d close his eyes and bite his lips, and Maribeth would lick hers as if in response. By the third day of the interview, after she’d watched him spin records for his show, she had upgraded her assessment from cute to beautiful, and she had chapped her own lips from licking them so frequently.

  Normally writing was agonizing for Maribeth—it was why she preferred editing—but she wrote the article about Jason in a frenzy of inspiration and filed it immediately. When she saw it in print the next day, she understood what she’d written. Not a profile, but a mash note, circulation 11,500.

  “On an average day, Jason Brinkley flits around campus anonymously, a sort of Clark Kent in jeans and a T-shirt. But when he gets in the booth, in this case the radio broadcast booth at WLXR, he transforms into Jinx, a musical Superman,” she read out loud to Courtney from their dorm room. She skimmed further down, unable to stomach the thing. Then she got to the kicker. “In an era of practiced cynicism, when everyone pretends to be too cool to care, Brinkley is that rare exception, someone who truly cares and is all the cooler for it.” She threw down the paper. “Why’d you make me do this? I hate you. No, I hate me.” She put her head in her hands. “Kill me now. Please.”