She sits for a long time looking at her computer screen. She hits Return twice and types:
Goodbye,
Me
She hits Command+P. There is no reason to go over the document one more time—at this point doing so would be grounds for calling her sponsor.
She rises from the desk and sits Indian-style on the bed. The bed is really a mattress on the basement floor. The floor is carpeted. The only natural light comes from a narrow window close to the ceiling. Her father painted the walls turquoise to liven things up for her, but he couldn’t be bothered to get painter’s tape so at the floor and ceiling there is a border of hodgepodge rectangle edges from the roller and then the base color.
She reaches for her phone on the nightstand, which is a milk crate with a lamp on it. The lamp is made out of popsicle sticks; her father got it at a thrift store for three dollars. She opens a text message she has been avoiding for too long. It is from Mark.
Verdict?
Her hope has been that the right answer would simply emerge, but every time she has decided on one she has been overwhelmed with panic that it is the wrong one. Maybe there isn’t a right answer. It could be that this sense that the next decision she makes will irrevocably alter the course of her life can be attributed to generalized anxiety morbidly fixating on this specific issue. It could be that what she does next is not meaningful at all in the scheme of things, that this indecision is worse than whatever she could decide, that if she is taking things ONE DAY AT A TIME what could be the harm in being a little less lonely for a weekend. Could feeling a man’s hands touching her with love really be worse than another night of reading Flannery O’Connor to a lamp made of popsicle sticks? She tells herself to relax, her stomach to unknot, this is not the thing that knocks the world from its axis. More importantly, this is not GOING BACK AGAIN. Life is a labyrinth, not a maze—every step you take is just one more that brings you closer to the center.
She looks over at the stack of pages incrementally rising on the printer. She pulls the sleeves of her cardigan over her fingers the way that used to give her comfort as a child wearing adult clothes, and rests her elbows on her knees and her chin on her knuckles. Abruptly she gets up and stands in front of the mirror, where she slips off her cardigan and lifts her shirt. She bends and removes her yoga pants and then her underwear. She picks up the phone and hits the button to respond to his message with a photo, standing white, a frantic, amphibious white like some cave life form, blind and primordial and stupidly innocent.
Every step you take is just one more that bring you closer to the center. Or whatever story you tell yourself. Thank you and goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
She is just about to send this picture as her response when there is the sound of the front door buzzer. She pulls her clothes back on and goes upstairs and opens the door. She wheels back several steps and leans against the newel. Her hand covers her mouth, but she makes no sound.
I… I… I… I’m sorry, Terry, I need a moment.
“I love you, you bitch,” said Jason