Valentine’s Day felt like just another Saturday in winter, which was bad enough in itself. Eve kept herself reasonably busy during the daylight hours—food shopping, laundry (there was so much more to do now that Brendan was home, especially since he’d gotten into CrossFit), bill-paying, a solo afternoon walk around the half-frozen lake. When she got home, she roasted a chicken with fingerling potatoes and brussels sprouts, a delicious, lovingly prepared meal that she ended up eating by herself, because her son had plans he’d forgotten to mention.
“Sorry,” he said. “Thought I told you.”
“Nope.”
“My bad.”
Yeah, she thought. Your bad.
“Who are you going out with?”
“Chris Mancuso,” he said. “I don’t think you know him.”
“Why can’t you eat here and then go out?”
“We’re gonna get pizza and watch the hockey game. Is that a problem?”
“Fine. Do what you want.”
“Jeez, what’s the big deal?” he asked. “When I was away at school, you ate by yourself every night.”
It was true, of course. She’d happily eaten alone in the fall, because that was how it was supposed to be. His absence was part of the necessary and proper order of things. His presence now was the problem—a huge backward step for both of them—along with his uncanny ability to take up more than his share of space in the house while giving so little in return.
“You’re right.” She waved him toward the door. “Go have your fun. Don’t drink and drive.”
“I know, I know,” he said in a weary voice, as if he were a mature adult who could be counted on to make good decisions. “Enjoy your chicken.”
*
She lingered at the table for as long as possible—she owed herself that much—and then dragged her feet on the cleanup, doing her best to stave off that troubling moment when there was nothing left to do, the official beginning of what she already knew would be a melancholy and restless night.
It had been like this all winter long. She found it difficult to relax after dark—couldn’t curl up with a book, or settle down long enough to watch a movie from beginning to end. She was full of nervous energy, a nagging, jittery feeling that there was somewhere she needed to go, something else—something urgent and important—that she needed to do. But that was the catch: there was nowhere to go, and nothing to do.
All the freedom she’d experienced in the fall, that giddy sense of new horizons, all that was gone. She wasn’t a student anymore, puzzling over feminist theory, drinking and dancing with her friends, exploring her sexuality, making stupid but sometimes exhilarating mistakes. She was just plain old Mom, chopping onions, feeling neglected, cleaning lint from the filter. Her life felt shrunken and constricted, as if the world had shoved her back into an all-too-familiar box that was no longer large enough to contain her. Except that the world hadn’t done any shoving. She’d volunteered for her confinement, climbing in and pulling the cardboard flaps down over her head.
She told herself that she’d done it for Brendan’s sake. After all, he was the college student in the family, not her, despite the fact that she’d completed her first semester with flying colors, earning a solid A in Margo’s class, and high praise for her final paper, which explored the fraught relationship between radical feminism(s) and the transgender movement.
This is excellent!!! Margo had scrawled on the back of the essay, in sloppy, barely legible cursive that Eve couldn’t help but think of as manly, even though she knew it was a faulty mental reflex, a kind of residual transphobia. But Brendan came first: he was the one who really needed to be taking college classes during the spring semester, and ECC was the logical place for him to do it. Eve understood that it was a tricky moment in his academic career—his confidence at an all-time low—and it had felt right to give him some space, to spare him the embarrassment of attending the same college as his mother, of possibly bumping into her at the library—if he ever actually went to the library—or having to compare his grades to hers.
It had seemed like a minor sacrifice at the time—a brief hiatus from her continuing education—but it turned out to be a much bigger loss than she’d anticipated. Without a class to get her out of the house—to focus her thinking and provide her with a community of like-minded people—her intellectual life ran out of steam and her social life went into a coma. She felt like a teenager, grounded indefinitely for one stupid mistake, though she was also the parent who had imposed the punishment, which meant that, as usual, she had no one to blame but herself.
* * *
Chris wanted the last wing in the basket. I told him to go for it.
“These are pretty good,” he said.
I agreed, and had a big pile of bones on my plate to prove it. But I felt kinda guilty, too, because my mom had cooked a whole chicken at home, and here I was eating hot wings at the Haddington House of Pizza.
“There was this place at my school, Pennyfeathers? Their wings were fucking awesome. Dude, they’d deliver until like two in the morning on weekends.” He got this faraway look in his eyes and nodded for a long time. “I miss those wings.”
Chris missed a lot of things about college. His frat brothers, his rugby teammates, this amazing ice cream place that had waffle cones dipped in chocolate, all the bars on 12th Street that didn’t care if you had a fake ID, and now these wings from Pennyfeathers.
“Those were good times,” he told me.
Chris and I knew each other a little from the Haddington High football team, but he was two years older, a varsity starter back when I was still warming the bench. I’d heard he’d gone to one of those small colleges in Pennsylvania, so I was pleasantly surprised to spot him in the hallway at ECC, where I hardly ever saw anyone I knew from high school (the only exception was Julian Spitzer, who seemed to pop up every time I turned a corner, though we always walked right past each other like we’d never met, like I hadn’t found him sleeping in my fucking bed that night, a memory that still gave me the creeps). Chris explained that he was home for the semester due to some disciplinary bullshit and said we should grab a beer sometime. I thought he was just saying it to be nice, but he repeated the offer when we bumped into each other at CrossFit, and it wasn’t like I had anything else going on.
“I guess you’ll be happy to get back there,” I said.
“I don’t know if I’m going back.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin, but he missed a greasy streak on his chin. “It’ll suck without the frat.”
“What do you mean?”
“They shut us down. Five-year suspension.”
“Why?”
“Because of the kid. You didn’t hear about it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Huh.” He seemed surprised that it wasn’t a matter of common knowledge. “This freshman pledge died of alcohol poisoning at our house. It was all over the internet.”
“Kind of. I mean, I was playing air hockey in the game room, just minding my own business. I saw this kid staggering around, but he wasn’t the only one. All the pledges were shitfaced.” He pulled the visor of his baseball cap lower, like a celebrity who didn’t want to be recognized. “I guess he went outside to puke and everybody forgot about him. My buddy Johnny found him in the yard the next morning.”
“Jesus. How much did he drink?”
“A shitload of vodka shots.”
“Like how many?”
“I don’t know.” Chris sounded pissed. “It was a fucking drinking game. Everybody makes it sound like it was our fault, like we poured it down his throat. But he was totally into it. Screaming and high-fiving everybody. Having the time of his life.”
He stopped himself, like he realized that probably wasn’t the best way to put it.
“We had to write apology letters to the parents, which was brutal. And then there were hearings, and the whole frat got suspended. Didn’t matter if you were involved or not. And now if I want to go back I have to reapply. For my senior year. Can you believe that shit?”
“Wow,” I said. “I just thought you failed a class or something.”
“That would at least make sense.”
“So what are you gonna do?”
Chris took another napkin from the dispenser. Instead of wiping his face, he unfolded it very carefully and laid it over his plate, like he was covering his bones with a blanket.
“I might join the Marines,” he said. “Just get the fuck out of here, you know?”
* * *
Facebook wouldn’t let her forget what day it was for a second, flooding her news feed with images of hearts and flowers, a seemingly endless torrent of saccharine memes, happy couple photos, and loving tributes to loyal partners.
Thank you, Gus, for twenty-two years of red roses!
A romantic dinner for two at the Hearthstone Inn. So blessed . . .
This wonderful man didn’t just make my DAY! He made my LIFE! I love you, Mark J. DiLusio!!!
Snuggling by the fire with my handsome hubby on V-Day
Somebody’s gonna get a little surprise tonight . . . #feelingnaughty
She tried her best to be a good sport, issuing a handful of halfhearted likes and offering a supportive comment when she could, but she gave up after a few minutes of resentful scrolling. It wasn’t that she begrudged her friends their happiness—she wasn’t that kind of person—she just wished they’d be a little quieter about it, a little more private.
You won, she thought. There’s no need to gloat.
She knew that the winners didn’t think they were gloating—in their own innocent minds, they were just celebrating the holiday, sharing a sweet sentiment with people who cared—but it was hard for Eve not to take it personally, not to feel like a weepy high school girl stuck at home while everyone else was slow-dancing at the prom. It had been a lot easier to be a loser back in the days before social media, when the world wasn’t quite so adept at rubbing it in your face, showing you all the fun you were missing out on in real time.
* * *
I wasn’t crazy about the idea of partying with a bunch of high school kids—it’s kinda awkward once you graduate—but Chris really wanted to go. He was friends with the girl who was hosting and said she was totally chill and down-to-earth, despite the fact that she went to the Hilltop Academy, a local prep school that cost almost as much as an Ivy League college.
“How do you even know her?” I asked. Kids from Haddington High and kids from Hilltop didn’t usually mix.
“Summer camp. She was my junior counselor. We flirted a lot, but we never hooked up. I’m hoping to take it to the next level.”
“That’s cool,” I said. “You mind if I just drop you off? I’m not really in a party mood.”
“Dude,” he said, like I’d failed to live up to his expectations. “Just come in and have a beer. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. But don’t be a pussy about it.”
*
His friend’s name was Devlin and she lived up in Haddington Hills, in what looked like a fairly normal house, except that it was like four times bigger than any house I’d ever been in. She was half-Asian and very cute, dressed in a short black skirt and white knee socks. A construction paper heart on her shirt said, Are You My Valentine?
“Oh my God.” She gave Chris a fierce hug, like he’d just returned from the dead. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You too,” he said. “This is my buddy Brendan.”
She gave me a stern look, her heart all crooked from the hug. “You’re going to have to help me talk him out of it.”
“Out of what?”
“Joining the Marines. It’s crazy.”
“Good luck with that,” Chris told her. “Brendan’s joining up with me.”
She squinted in dismay. “Really?”
“Why not?” I said. “Somebody’s gotta do it.”
I was just goofing around, following Chris’s lead, but Devlin didn’t know that. She told some of her friends, and pretty soon it spread through the whole party. That was all anybody wanted to talk about, which was fine with me, because it spared me the embarrassment of having to explain that I’d flunked out of BSU and was currently living at home with my mom and taking classes at community college.
Most of the girls I talked to were firmly opposed to my enlistment—a couple said they were pacifists, and others just thought it was too dangerous, or that it made more sense to join the Peace Corps, to help people instead of trying to kill them. Some of the guys were more gung ho, and wondered if I’d given any consideration to the Special Forces, because those dudes were the true badasses, the Rangers and the Seals and Delta Force.
The best conversation I had was with this light-skinned black kid named Jason, a middle-distance runner who was heading to Dartmouth in the fall. He’d taken a summer school class on Contemporary War Literature and told me about a bunch of books he liked—the only one I’d heard of was The Things They Carried, which I’d read in English class junior year—and then we switched to movies. Our tastes were pretty similar—we both liked Lone Survivor and The Hurt Locker and also Tropic Thunder, which wasn’t really a war movie but was still hilarious.
“Not very PC, though,” he said. “I know I’m not supposed to laugh at Robert Downey Jr. in blackface, but damn. Funny is funny, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said, and we clinked our bottles.
Jason was one of the few guys at the party with a paper heart pinned to his chest. His said, Somebody Loves Me! He tapped it with two fingers.
“All right,” he said. “Gotta get back to my girl before somebody steals her.”
After that I danced with Devlin’s friend Addison, whose heart said, Make Me an Offer. I hadn’t been out on the dance floor since my date with Amber, and it felt really good to be moving in the dark, getting all sweaty and goofy with a bunch of cool people I’d just met. It was almost like I was back in college, except that it was a better college than BSU, and I was a better person, too, a thoughtful guy with interesting opinions and a solid plan for the future.
*
I’d only had two beers, so I wasn’t close to drunk, but I did need to find a bathroom. Addison told me it was down the hall, just past the den.
I got a little distracted on my way. It was a long hallway, and the walls were lined with photographs of Devlin and her little brother and her mom and dad, a good-looking family who seemed to live their lives near water—beaches, lakes, swimming pools, fountains—and were always laughing about something when the picture got taken.
The first room I stuck my head into was a home office, and the second had a yoga mat on the floor, along with a big red exercise ball. I found the den on the third try—bookshelves, fireplace, leather chairs.
“Sorry,” I said, because there was also a couch, and it was occupied by Jason and the girl he was making out with. They were going at it pretty good, and my arrival had startled them. “I was just trying to . . .”
“Trying to what?” Jason said, after an awkward moment of silence.
I didn’t answer. I was staring at the girl. She was staring right back, looking just as confused as I was.
“Becca?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
* * *
Eve closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh, the way she always did before she started watching porn. It was somewhere between an admission of defeat and an attempt to clear her head, to create a mental space free of judgment and open to erotic suggestion.
She had cut way down on her porn consumption in the past few months—that was one upside of Brendan’s return—but she still found herself visiting the Milfateria from time to time, usually on nights like this when she was bored and lonely and looking for something to cheer her up, or at least distract her for a little while.
I deserve some pleasure, too, she reminded herself, which wouldn’t have been such a terrible status update—not to mention an epitaph on her fucking tombstone—if only she’d had the courage to post it.
She didn’t think Brendan would be home anytime soon, but she went upstairs and latched the bedroom door behind her, just in case. Then she took off her jeans, got into bed, and started searching, clicking on any thumbnail that caught her eye.
In the Milfateria, at least, no one knew it was Valentine’s Day. The people in the porn videos just did what they did, all day, every day, with boundless energy and unflagging enthusiasm, regardless of the calendar. They fucked on Christmas; they fucked on Earth Day and the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving; their fucking was not affected in the least by wars or terrorist attacks or natural disasters. They never got sick, never got tired, never got old. Some of them were probably dead, Eve realized, not that she’d have any way of knowing which ones. But here they were on her screen, going at it with abandon, having the time of their lives.
Good for you, she thought. Keep on doing what you’re doing.
She was happy for them, but she wasn’t especially aroused, which was not an uncommon occurrence in recent weeks. She just didn’t know what she wanted anymore. The lesbian MILF stuff made her nervous, and she hadn’t been able to find a new category to take its place. Some items on the menu seemed a little too familiar, while others were waaaay too specific. Usually she ended up sampling the Homemade MILFs, ordinary women having fairly straightforward sex, mostly with their husbands, if you could believe the brief descriptions that accompanied the videos.
The problem was, Eve had become a lot more interested in the women than she was in the sex. She kept trying to figure out who they were, and how they’d ended up on her laptop. Had they volunteered, or had their partners pressured them? Did it occur to them that their kids might someday watch the video? Their parents? Their neighbors and co-workers? Were they in denial, or did they simply not care? Or maybe they were proud, like they were finally getting a chance to show the world their best selves.
She must have clicked on twenty different videos, looking for something that would get her out of her head and into her body, but nothing worked. It was sad to fail at masturbation—again, no one to blame but herself—but at least it was better than failing with a partner. You didn’t have to fake anything, or apologize, or offer comfort, or pretend it was no big deal. You could just close your computer, shake your head, and call it a night.
* * *
I tried to find Chris before I left the party, but someone told me he’d gone upstairs with Devlin. I figured he was all set, so I headed to the mudroom to grab my coat. That was where Becca caught up with me.
“I’m sorry, Brendan.” She was standing in the doorway, looking like her usual put-together self—all her buttons buttoned, every hair in place—which was not how she’d looked in the den. “I should have told you.”
The coats were in a big pile, and half of them were black ski jackets, just like mine.
“Whatever,” I said, tossing aside a girl’s red parka. “I guess you weren’t as busy as you expected.”
I had tried to start things back up with her in early December, a few weeks after I came home from BSU, but she claimed she was swamped with schoolwork and college applications, and didn’t have time for a relationship.
“I’ve been meaning to text you,” she said.
It was hard to look at her just then, not only because I’d kinda forgotten how hot she was, but also because she was wearing a paper heart that said the exact same thing as Jason’s: Somebody Loves Me!
“How do you guys even know each other?” I asked.
“Instagram,” she said. “He’s a really nice guy.”
I found my coat. I knew it was mine because my mom had written my initials on the inside label before I left for college.
“I know,” I said. “I talked to him before.”
I tried to slip past her on my way out, but she grabbed my arm.
“Brendan?” she asked. “Are you really joining the Marines?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
She stared at me for a few seconds, like she was trying to picture me in my dress blues.
“You know what?” she said. “I think that would be really good for you.”
*
I didn’t feel like going home, so I drove around for a while. When that got boring, I went to the high school and sat on the top row of the bleachers, looking down on the football field. Wade and Troy and I had done that a few times over the summer. It was kind of a nostalgia thing, a way to remember our glory days.
It wasn’t very cold for February, I guess because of climate change, though maybe it was just a weather pattern, the Gulf Stream or whatever. I didn’t know as much about that stuff as I should have. I’d read a chapter for my Comp class that made it sound like the end of the world, but it didn’t feel like that in real life. It just felt like a pretty nice night.
Now that the shock had worn off, I realized that I wasn’t that upset about Becca. I wanted to be mad at her for lying to me back in December, but I knew she was just trying to be nice, letting me down easy with that bullshit about being too busy for a relationship. And I couldn’t blame her for hooking up with Jason, though I did wish she’d found someone a little more ordinary, who didn’t make me feel like such a loser by comparison.
The only girl I was really upset about was Amber. I’d sent her a bunch of texts in December and January, just checking in, trying to start a dialogue, but she threatened to block me if I kept bothering her. I hadn’t tried to contact her since then, so I figured maybe she’d calmed down a little. I thought about telling her I was joining the Marines—that would at least get her attention—but there was no way I was actually going to enlist. I had zero interest in shaving my head, and even less in going to Afghanistan.
I had a hard time thinking of what to say. I’d already apologized to her a bunch of times, and it hadn’t gotten me anywhere. I couldn’t think of anything funny or charming or even interesting, so I just wished her a Happy Valentine’s Day and left it at that. She didn’t reply, but my phone said she’d looked at the message, which I figured was better than nothing.
* * *
Eve was fast asleep when her phone dinged, shocking her back into consciousness. She sat up and threw off the covers, her groggy brain sorting through disaster scenarios as she tapped in her security code.
The text came from a number she didn’t recognize. It was three words long, a sad little joke from the universe.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
She took a moment to breathe, and get her heart rate under control.
Who is this?
There was a brief pause, and then a pleasant bloop!
Its me Julian
The glow from the screen was painfully bright. Eve’s fingers felt fat and clumsy as she typed.
How did you get this number?
Class list . . . last semester
Was that possible? Eve couldn’t remember putting her cell number on a class list. But maybe she had. In any case, another text had already arrived.
Am I bothering you?
She wasn’t sure how to answer that. It was sweet of him to remember her on Valentine’s Day. But not in the middle of the night. That wasn’t okay. Except it wasn’t the middle of the night, according to her bedside clock, just a few minutes after eleven. In any case, Julian had already moved on to the next question:
R u in bed?
And the next:
R u naked?
Eve tugged on the blankets, covering her bare legs. She wasn’t naked, but she was pretty close. Just underwear and a T-shirt, not that it was any of his business.
Julian . . . please don’t do this.
There was a longish pause.
Dont you miss me?
This was an easier question. Of course, she missed him, just like she missed all her new friends from the fall—Amanda, Margo, Dumell, the whole short-lived gang. And she owed him an apology, too, for everything that happened on that night in November, and for ignoring the emails he’d sent her in the days that followed. But this wasn’t the time or place for either of those conversations.
Have you been drinking? she asked.
Im kinda wasted
Where are you?
His reply arrived in multiple parts, a rapidly accumulating stack of bubbles.
Vermont
Visiting my friend at UVM
This girl was hitting on me at a party
and I kept thinking
Id rather be with u
Eve laughed, because it was so crazy for him to be thinking of her under those circumstances. Except it wasn’t completely crazy.
Not crazy at all, come to think of it.
This girl, Eve wrote, because she suddenly needed to know. Was she pretty?
I guess
What did she look like?
Julian took another moment to gather his thoughts.
u r hotter . . .
Waaay fucking hotter
That’s sweet, she told him, adding a smile emoji. I’m flattered.
Two more messages arrived just as she’d sent hers off.
I jack off all the time
thinking of u
Eve grimaced. A murky sound escaped from her throat.
Julian . . . This isn’t a good idea.
Im so fucking hard right now
She closed her eyes and tried not to think about that.
I could send u a pic, he added.
Good night, Julian. I’m turning off my phone now.
He didn’t protest, didn’t even try to change her mind.
night eve
She didn’t really turn off her phone, but he didn’t text her again, which was too bad in a way, because she really did miss him, and thought he would’ve liked to know—not that she ever would have told him—that she was touching herself and thinking about his body. The orgasm that had eluded her before was suddenly within easy reach—right there at her fingertips—and a lot more intense than any she’d had in recent memory.
Thank you, she would have liked to tell him. Thank you for that.