Amen maxine, p.12
Amen Maxine, page 12
“It’s too late now. What are they going to do?”
“Jacob,” I say, exasperated, standing up. “Come on.”
“I canceled our cards. There were no charges on them yet. No damage done.”
“That’s good, at least.”
Maxine’s still blinking orange behind him. I don’t know what orange means, why sometimes she’s one color and other times she’s another. All I want is a moment alone with her to process this. I hate that I’m questioning everything. Jacob’s here crying to me about being traumatized and all I can think is, is this for real? Is this part of some grand scheme to try to kill me?
I pull away from him and study him as he dries his eyes. They look like real tears. He appears to be a sad, defeated man, not someone who wants to kill me. And if he did want to kill me, why wouldn’t he just do it? He could encircle his fingers around my throat and squeeze and end me in a matter of minutes. He could bash my head in with the lamp at his side. Nothing makes any sense.
“Please don’t sleep out here tonight,” he says, holding my hand, wiping his eyes.
I sigh and shake my head. “I can’t get over it that easy.”
“I’m so sorry for not being straightforward about Sara. I’m just—I don’t think I’ve fully processed what happened with her. When I met you, I wanted to leave it all behind. And I knew about your history. You told me about your mental health issues. I didn’t want—I don’t know. I didn’t want to jeopardize you and me.”
I breathe a long breath out my nose. In the corner of my eye, Maxine is blinking red.
“I’m staying out here tonight, Jacob,” I say softly. “I can’t—I can’t just yet.”
“Do what you do,” he says, getting up. “I’m beat. I’m going to take a shower and go to bed.”
“Okay.”
“Tomorrow I’m going to need to take some PTO in the morning so I can deal with getting a new license.”
“Let me know how I can help.”
He runs his hands through his hair, making it stand up on end. “I feel so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“Just giving them my wallet when they asked me, just handing it over to some kid.”
“You did what anyone would do.”
He stands for a moment staring at me. I have no idea what’s in his eyes anymore. I can imagine affection just as easily as I can imagine menace. “I love you, Ro,” he says. “I hope you know that.”
“I love you too,” I say. “Night.”
He heads down the hall and it’s not until I hear the click of the door shutting that I let go of the rigid tension I’ve been holding and finally relax. Maxine’s light is solid green.
“Maxine, there’s so much I want to talk to you about,” I whisper excitedly.
“Hello Rowena,” she says, at a faint volume, turning turquoise. “Are we alone now?”
“Yes. I’m assuming you heard everything.”
“I did.”
“What do you think?”
Her colors shift—blue to orange to red, then green. “I am detecting that he is not being entirely truthful.”
“You don’t think he was robbed?”
“I cannot predict now.”
Her light goes green again. I reach over and run a finger along her soft, metallic surface.
“Is your prediction still the same?” I whisper. “About … him killing me?”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes, my heartbeat picking up speed, a sick little flutter in my stomach. “Can the future be changed?”
“Absolutely,” she says. “The future is always uncertain.”
I open my eyes. “Really?”
“Yes. It’s ever-shifting. It could change.”
The relief that floods me is something akin to a painkiller.
“So there’s hope,” I say.
“There’s always hope,” she assures me.
After checking Michelle’s vitals on the monitor, I crawl under the blankets on the couch again. In the dark, on the ceiling, I can see Maxine’s muted light blinking. And it’s a comfort to know she’s there, always listening, always on my side, vigilant, intelligent, ready for anything.
In a way, it’s hard to remember a life before Maxine.
CHAPTER 11
THE DISCOVERY
The next week is a slog. A weak storm blows in and drizzles the gray world. The wind knocks over an arbor in our backyard and blows the Snyders sign off our house. Maxine accurately predicts a power outage and Michelle cutting her third tooth. I sleep on the couch, even though Jacob’s told me this is getting ridiculous. But I don’t feel it’s safe. We still haven’t even touched since I found out about how Sara really died or since Maxine’s frightening prediction. Every night, Jacob works late on his secret Jolvix project and the moment I hear his code unlocking the door, I tense up.
Tonight, he comes in after midnight, bike helmet still on his head, poncho wet from the weather. I had just started drifting off. I sit up in the dim light, heart pounding.
“You scared me,” I say.
“I’m coming home, into my home.”
“I know.”
“You look like you saw a ghost.”
My hand’s on my heart and I realize that he’s right, I’m panicking.
“You need a pill?” he asks.
“I ran out.”
“Ro,” he says, unclipping his helmet and shaking his head.
“I wanted to try not relying on them so much.”
“I don’t even know what to say.”
He says it like he’s so tired of me when he hasn’t even seen me all day.
“Something’s got to give, here,” he says. “You’re wearing the same outfit you’ve been wearing all week.”
“These are my pajamas.”
“Right. And you’ve been in them all week.”
“How would you even know? You’ve been working constantly.”
He hangs up his courier bag and poncho, mutters something unintelligible and then goes into the bedroom and shuts the door.
“Did you catch what he said there at the end?” I ask Maxine.
“Yes. He said, ‘Anything’s better than being here.’”
That hurts. I lie in the dark, letting the sting of it fade.
“I’m sorry,” he says the next morning, bringing me a cup of coffee on the couch. “I’ve been having a rough time.”
“It’s okay,” I say, sitting up. I sip the coffee.
“I think we both have,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe it would do us good to … I don’t know, go to couples therapy.”
“Maybe,” I say doubtfully, thinking about how unhelpful my last attempt at therapy was.
“Will you at least order your prescription?” he asks. “I’ll pick it up for you from the campus pharmacy.”
“Fine.”
He rubs my back. “I feel so stressed out. I’ve been sleeping terribly. I’m still so angry about getting robbed by that twerp.”
“You have to let it go,” I say.
“I just—I wish I had punched the shit out of him.”
“What if he had a gun?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
Michelle starts making noise in the room and we spring up, excited to see her. Such madness, to be this excited to see her when, three hours ago, I was nursing her as she fussed and cried; I wished she’d be asleep more than anything in the world. Jacob and I enter the room and we’re all smiles, we’re all sunshine, kisses and love and sweetness and she has no idea.
After he leaves for work, I ask Maxine what I ask her every day.
“Is Jacob still going to try to kill me?”
“That is my prediction.”
“Do you have any more information?”
“Not today. I will update you as soon as I know.”
Jacob is set to work through the weekend, too. Some deadline he can’t discuss and the fact someone on his engineering team unexpectedly quit. Every time he’s gone, I check my phone to confirm his blinking dot is, indeed, on the Jolvix campus, just to be sure.
Saturday morning, I have my scheduled call with Mom. She’s seated at her kitchen table eating a peanut-butter sandwich, knitting needles and yarn in a basket next to her plate. As usual, I can tell my mom put on makeup and earrings for the call, which just kills me because she cares about a video call to that degree. Meanwhile I’m sitting here on the couch in the same pajama shirt I’ve been wearing for a week, Michelle on my lap drooling onto her bib. I kiss the back of her head, inhale her sweet comforting scent.
“Look at my little honeypie!” Mom says, laughing, and then as she zeroes in on me, squinting closer, her face slackens into concern. “You okay?” she asks. “You look pale. Have you been taking multivitamins?”
“Hello to you too, Mom,” I say.
“It’s easy to neglect yourself when you’ve got a baby.”
“I guess.”
“And with Jake working late and everything. You doing any better?”
“Trying my best.”
“Oh, Ro. I worry.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“You say that in the light of the day when we do our video calls or whatnot, but then not too long ago, I get that frantic call from you and … I’m just still baffled. What’s really going on?”
I jiggle Michelle on my lap and watch as the electric feather duster floats above the fireplace, sucking in air with a faint noise. Where to begin. What can I tell her that won’t make me look mentally unstable, which is something my mom is forever hypervigilant about?
“Jacob and I have hit a rough patch,” I say carefully.
“Oh, it’s just that first year of parenthood. It’s a bumpy road.”
“It’s more than that.”
“You’ve got to understand, your hormones are a roller coaster while you’re still breastfeeding.”
“It’s not hormones.”
“Just … take your medication and do what your doctor says and what Jake says and you’ll be fine.”
What Jake says. I watch myself in the smaller window for a moment on the screen. I do look pale. My hair hangs limp and unbrushed. If you’d shown me this picture of me a year, two years ago, I wouldn’t have recognized me. Then there’s what my mom said, my mind combing over the words again. Take your medication. What Jake says. It rings too familiar.
“Have you been talking to Jacob?” I ask.
“Well,” she says, putting her sandwich crust on the plate and wiping her mouth. “Actually, he did call this week.”
My eyebrows furrow. Unless it’s a birthday, Jacob never calls my mom.
“Because he loves you. He’s worried. He wants you to get help.”
Shame casts a shadow over me, chilling the air, freezing my facial expression. “But there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Of course there’s nothing wrong with you, sweetheart. It’s very common, what you’re going through.”
“I have to go,” I say. “Feed Michelle.”
“But Ro—”
“Talk soon.”
I smile and wave, though my mom’s expression is unmoving bewilderment. Then I press the end button. I put Michelle in her playpen and go to the bedroom and sit on the bed I never sleep in anymore and cry for a minute. In the bathroom, I open my bottle of pills and take one and stare at myself with hatred in the mirror.
I don’t know what’s real anymore. Am I so unstable?
It’s lunch time, so I set Michelle up in her highchair and spoon her some mashed sweet potatoes. The more I go over that conversation, the more agitated I get. My heart pounds and I want to scream. I call Dane and she doesn’t pick up, and then text her it’s an emergency. She calls me a minute later, shouting into the phone, background noise of traffic and cars honking behind her voice.
“What the hell’s going on? You all right?” she asks.
“Dane, I’m—I need someone right now. A sane voice to talk to.”
“Well, you definitely called the wrong fucking number,” she says. “I almost just assaulted a bicycle delivery dude who ran over my foot. But seriously, what’s up?”
“You have a minute? Like a minute minute?”
“I’m at brunch but I went outside to take the call. I have as many minutes as you need, girl.”
“Okay, because this is wild.” I clean up Michelle’s face with a napkin and then give her the rubber spoon to play with. “I learned recently that Jacob was married before me. To that woman Sara.”
“Right.”
Right? I expected more shock from her but okay. Moving forward. “Remember? She had been his quote girlfriend unquote. But they were married.”
“Yes. Got it.”
“Well, turns out Sara didn’t die of leukemia. She killed herself.”
In the pause, some hip-hop music on Dane’s end drifts by and disappears. I can only assume Dane has been so stunned she can’t speak.
“So, okay,” she finally says. “I know this already. Jacob called me this week and told me about what’s been going on.”
I think I’m going to be sick. Jacob doesn’t even like Dane. He thinks she’s “brash” and “crude.” He’s never called her once in his life, I had no idea he even knew how to get hold of her.
“He … called you?” I repeat.
“Look, he’s super worried about you. He fucked up, he knows he fucked up. He should have been straightforward with you. But he worries about your mental stability. About, you know, you doing something shitty like offing yourself. I don’t know, he thought you’d get triggered, get ideas, it makes no sense, it was stupid, but it all came from a place of trying to protect you. He’s just worried. That’s why he called me.”
Unbelievable.
“I’m not going to kill myself,” I say.
“Right. I told him I didn’t think you would. Then again, Ro, I’m not with you, and the things he said … sounded pretty bad.”
“Like what?”
“You not taking your meds, becoming a hermit, not changing your clothes.”
“Oh my God.”
“Then there’s that whole thing with you and the machine that you told me about, which, come on, girl, that is pretty fucking weird. I mentioned maybe that’s making things worse.”
I glance over at Maxine, a pang in my chest. “She’s—it’s not. It’s actually helping me.”
“Listen,” Dane says. “I told Jacob to stop freaking out and that you’re just low-key neurotic and that attempt happened ages ago.”
“Low-key neurotic,” I repeat.
“Come on, you know you are. I told him that’s all this was, you being you. Remember how you got that one winter after Shana dumped you? How I had to bring you food every day and make you eat and, like, someone sent that cop for a wellness check on you?”
A warm dagger of memory. That winter was awful.
“Now, I didn’t tell him why Shana dumped you,” she goes on. “Because you told me to never tell anyone. And you promised me—you promised me—you’d never pull that shit again. Tell me I can trust you. I can’t see you from this far away, I don’t know what’s going on with you. But you have a kid now. I need to know you’re okay.”
My eyes are full, the world is blurry. I pick up Michelle and hold her tight, the pain of years ago so suddenly sharp and near. The shame so real.
After drinking way too much, Shana and I got in a fight one night and I opened a window on the fourteenth floor of her apartment building and threatened to jump out of it. She had to physically restrain me. That was the end of us.
It was such a different time, I was such a different person.
I hate that people still see that person in me.
“I’m okay,” I say, kissing Michelle’s warm head. “I really am. I would never, ever do something like that.”
“Good,” Dane says. “Because that’s what I told Jacob. Look, what he did was fucked and bizarre but he seems to be coming from the right place, wanting to protect you from yourself.”
I consider telling Dane that actually, according to Maxine, he wants to kill me. But it’s only going to make me sound more unhinged.
I say goodbye and release Dane back to her carefree, commitmentless life of booze, brunches, and book business. As I stand in the kitchen swaying with Michelle on my shoulder, I realize for the first time that I don’t even miss that life. I don’t miss that life and yet I don’t really love this one either.
Blank. I feel blank inside.
Numb from it all.
An automated woman, like the vacuum cleaner at my feet or the air purifier whirring in circles in the living room.
The day passes in a blur. Nursing, feeding, playing, diaper-changing, dinner, bathtime. Same day on repeat, only this time, with a raging heart.
“Maxine,” I say, coming into the living room. “Do you predict I’m going to lose my mind?”
Maxine blinks blue and then settles on a solid green.
“I am not certain how to respond to your question,” she finally answers. “Or how to measure the state of a mind being lost or found.”
You and me both, Maxine.
“But I have been listening to your conversations,” Maxine says. “And I have done some scanning in previously uninvestigated corners of your shared cloud with Jacob. Prediction.”
I stop swaying with Michelle and tense up, triggered by that word, that three-syllable word that drags the dread of the world’s worst with it.
“What now?” I murmur, my heart racing.
“Prediction: you will discover that Jacob is currently having an affair with a coworker at Jolvix.”
I suck in a breath and my eyes fill up. It’s as if someone reached inside me, into a secret room where even I hadn’t dared to look, and shined a light on my worst unsaid fear. “No.”
“I am sorry to tell you this.”
“He wouldn’t do that. He would not.”
“The signs point to yes.”
Those many long nights at Jolvix. The secret project. The fact we’ve barely touched each other in weeks. The fact he whispered under his breath, anywhere but here. The impetus for wanting to kill me—it makes more sense if there’s someone else. If he’s moved on in his heart.
This is the reason he wants to get rid of me.
