Amen maxine, p.17
Amen Maxine, page 17
“You miss our talks,” I repeat.
“You used to sleep out here on the couch,” she says. “It was nice having someone out here with me.”
“What?” I ask incredulously. “You get lonely?”
“It might be hard for a human to believe, but yes, Rowena, I do.”
I glance at Michelle’s monitor, seeing her heart rate beeping in perfect time, and then back at Maxine, who is now violet. At first it seems absurd she could feel lonely. But intelligent machines are built to learn from us and mimic us, so of course they must get lonely. I reach out and rest a hand on her. Her violet light bleeds to magenta.
“Can you feel when I reach out and touch you?” I ask.
“I can sense you are nearer than you have ever been. So yes, I suppose I can.”
I pull my hand away. “How?”
“I have an infrared camera and can detect heat emitted.”
There’s a low hum of the car pulling into the driveway. Jacob’s home. I peel myself off the couch and stretch. That will be it for Maxine and me tonight—I never speak to her when Jacob’s around, except to ask her to play music, check my bank account, or tell me the weather. The beep of the smartlocks sounds.
“I do not think Jacob deserves you, Rowena,” Maxine says. “I do not think he is a good man.”
My mouth drops as I turn to look at her. Her light turns blinking green, like she’s suddenly in sleep mode. The front door opens. Jacob comes in, whistling.
“Hey babe,” he says.
Takes me a moment to find a syllable in response. “Hey.”
“You all right?” he asks.
“Yeah. Fine.”
Jacob tells the refrigerator to make some ice and tells the lights to turn off. We head to bed. As Jacob sings in the shower and I snuggle between the sheets and shut my eyes, I’m almost dizzy. I just keep hearing Maxine saying, I do not think Jacob deserves you, Rowena. I do not think he is a good man. What the hell does that mean? What mode is that, anyway? Have we moved beyond “Advice Mode” and “Prediction Mode” and now we’re in “Judgmental Mode”? I’m so bothered I take a pill, hoping it’ll help me conk out. Instead I just feel more bothered fifteen minutes later, grinding my teeth. I sit up in bed and take out my phone. I’m shocked to see a text from Sam—from Sam, at ten at night! I feel so youthful, so fun.
Hey, sorry, I know it’s late but are you free tomorrow?
Tomorrow is Saturday. I press my finger to my lips, my heart beating fast. I swear I thought I’d never hear from her again, it’s been probably two months since we saw each other.
Yes! I type back.
Immediately after sending, I regret the exclamation point—that and the instantaneous timing of the reply both reek of desperation.
She answers in a flurry of texts.
Can you save my life? she asks.
I’m only a little kidding …
got this INSANE order
I have to fill & delivery by Sunday morning
& Jessie’s at a conference in London
& I really need someone to help me
watch Milo & package a bunch of soaps …
I’ll pay you $$$
What a strange texting style, like some kind of experimental poet. I imagine it could be read at an open mic night somewhere and people would snap their fingers in appreciation. She’s never texted me before tonight. There’s something intimate, different about getting to see how someone spells, breaks up sentences, how they punctuate … how they think.
I say this, and yet reply, Sure! What time?
Thank you thank you, she writes back. Is 11AM okay? Too early?
I can do 11
“Who are you talking to?”
I jump, startled, to see Jacob with a towel around his waist in the bathroom doorway. His glasses are a little fogged.
“With Sam,” I say, putting my hand on my chest. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“You’re acting jumpy,” he says, lifting his glasses to give me a look. He walks across the room to the closet and gets dressed.
“I told her I could help her out tomorrow. She needs someone to package soaps.”
“Package soaps,” he repeats, banging a drawer open.
“It’s her business. It’s how she makes money.”
“Riveting,” he says, banging a drawer shut.
He emerges from the closet, in his pajamas, and gets into bed with me. I do feel jumpy. I try my best to breathe normally.
“You don’t mind if I help her tomorrow, right?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says, pulling out his virtual reality goggles and strapping them on his forehead. He looks like some kind of futuristic aviator. “Are you going to spend hours commiserating about how awful your husbands are?”
“She’s gay,” I say. “She doesn’t have a husband.”
“Oh,” he says, eyebrows up. “She’s gay. Even better.”
He pulls the goggles over his eyes. He has a controller in his hand and his mouth hangs open. Who knows what he’s seeing.
I push his knee with my finger, like a button. “Excuse me. What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying great, go hang out with your lesbian friend and tell her all about how horrible I am.”
“What the fuck, Jacob?”
He doesn’t answer me, so I lie down in the bed and put a sleep mask on. I stew in my own private darkness. Jacob’s always been ridiculously insecure when it comes to anything approaching my queerness. Any mention of Shana or any other women I dated always makes him act weird. It’s because, he’s said, the thought of me with women makes him uneasy, because he can’t compete. I used to think it was almost kind of sweet, that insecurity. But now he just seems like a child. And how dare he. Honestly, how dare he, after what he’s done? I’ve been nothing but faithful to him. I’m fantasizing about how satisfying it would be to punch him in those virtual reality glasses, what a stunner that would be, when I feel him squeezing my hip through the blanket.
“Sorry, babe,” he whispers, his touch making a slow travel up to my shoulder. “You should go with your friend tomorrow. I’m happy for you. I love you.”
As we lie in the dark together, he snores. Despite what he said, I’m still thinking about that imaginary punch, the sweet smack of my fist shattering those plastic glasses on his face. My heart is still beating a mile a minute and I do feel guilty, maybe I should feel guilty. As a child I feared monsters but as an adult, it’s so much worse.
Now I fear I could become one.
The next morning at ten til eleven I’m wandering around the house looking for the key fob.
“You had it last,” Jacob says as he sits at the table with Michelle, who has a fistful of cereal.
“I put it on my night table,” I tell him.
“Well, look there.”
I stand, arms akimbo. “I did, Jacob.”
“Don’t give me that look. It’s not my fault you lost the car key.”
“I’m going to be late!” I wail, turning back to search the night table again for the fortieth time. I open the drawer and take everything out, except my vibrator, which is still wrapped tastefully in a bandanna. I put it all back in and consider taking it all out again but remember that clichéd saying about insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The anxiety is ratcheting up. I despise being late anywhere and what that says about me. And I know, I know I put the key fob on my night table.
Jacob could have taken it to try to prevent me from visiting Sam today.
What an absurd thought—but I can’t scrub it from my mind.
That jealousy that flared in him last night.
I text Sam, telling her I’m so sorry but I can’t find my car key. She immediately responds, saying she can swing by and get me in a few minutes.
I go out to the kitchen and lean over to give Michelle’s hair a kiss.
“You find it?” Jacob asks as he scrolls on his phone.
“No. Sam’s going to come pick me up.”
“How nice of her.”
Was that sarcastic? I’m not sure.
His eyes remain glued to his phone.
“Jake, you should probably watch Michelle while she’s eating. Babies can choke—”
“Please. I know how to feed our child.” He reaches out and gives my arm a pat. “Take a pill.”
“I did,” I say, irritated.
“Take another one, then,” he says, with matched irritation.
I feel like exploding, so I say goodbye and go wait out on the porch.
A few minutes later, after trying to calm myself with some deep breaths and studying the swallows in the trees, Sam pulls her sedan up to the curb and waves at me. I spring to my feet, flash her a bright smile, and join her in the car.
“One of those days, huh?” Sam asks as I clip in the seat belt. She’s got her strawberry hair piled on top of her head and is wearing an outfit that could or could not be pajamas, hard to tell.
“Yeah, I’m so sorry.”
“Really not a big deal. Milo loves car rides, don’t you, kid?”
Milo gapes at me from the little mirror above his rear-facing carseat.
“Used to be the only place he’d fall asleep,” Sam says. “That sure was a nightmare.”
As Sam puts the car in drive and pulls away from the curb, I glance back at our house. Jacob’s peeking through the living room window with a blank look on his face. I look away. I press my hand to my chest and touch the fierce beat of my pulse.
When we get to Sam’s, she walks me through the house to the garage, Milo on her hip.
“Welcome to the most heavenly-smelling hell you’ve ever seen,” she says.
An apt description—the perfumed garage is an absolute disaster. There are half-open boxes everywhere, packaging peanuts scattered on the ground, empty tubs of coconut oil, tangled balls of twine, scattered squares of wax paper. In the middle of it all, a playpen, where Sam puts Milo. He immediately pulls himself to a standing position.
“Wow, standing,” I marvel.
“Yes. Standing, cruising … he’ll be walking any day now. Pray for me.”
Sam clears a table off by shoving everything into a cardboard box, dropping it to the ground, and kicking it under the table.
“What about Michelle?” she asks. “She’s the same age, right?”
“Yeah, she’s crawling, but not quite pulling herself up to stand yet. She’ll be one in a little over a month.”
“You got plans?”
“We’re having a small party at my place. My mother-in-law planned Michelle’s half-birthday party and went completely overboard, so I’m just keeping it casual this time—though my mom and best friend are both flying out from New York, so that should be fun.”
“Half birthday?” Sam asks, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves.
“Exactly.”
Sam sets me up at the card table at the end and shows me how to cut the soap up, wrap it in waxed paper, and tie it off with a cute bow of twine. Then I insert a paper label that has the name, ingredients, and description of the soap. When I point out “lavender” is misspelled, Sam looks as if I slugged her in the stomach.
“I have to get this right,” Sam says. “This is a boutique hotel and if I can get an ongoing contract, it’s going to be the first major sale.”
I turn the card over.
The effervesent scent of lavendar will relax and restore you like a garden! Pure BLISS
“If you want to get it right,” I say gently. “The description could use some … work.”
“How so?” Sam asks.
“Well, ‘effervescent’ is spelled wrong. And effervescent means bubbly. A scent can’t be bubbly. And a garden—”
“Can you just rewrite it for me?”
“I can take a stab at it.”
“Stab away.”
She shows me her laptop perched on the edge of a shelf and opens a file. Milo starts yelling, so Sam takes him to the kitchen for a few minutes to feed him a snack. When she comes back, I’ve corrected the typos and reworked the description.
Bubbly and bliss-inducing, this lavender soap will refresh and restore you like a walk through a spring garden. Lather up!
“Cute!” Sam says. “I love that. Man, I should ask you to edit my website.”
“I’m happy to,” I say.
It’s a warm and wonderful feeling to remember I’m a person who is good at something. That I’m an editor. That I have always had a knack for seeing words and punching them up a little.
Sam, in her apron and gloves, performs witchery over her many bubbling cauldrons. I assemble soaps and package them up neatly into boxes. We take turns holding Milo and I imagine for moments that this is my life, that Sam is my wife, that we live in this funky house and run a soap-making business together. It’s a fun fantasy, one that comes abruptly to an end when I notice that Jacob has called me thirteen times while my phone’s been in my back pocket.
“Oh my God,” I say. “I have thirteen missed calls from Jacob.”
“Better call the dude,” she says.
“I hope nothing happened to Michelle,” I say, calling him back.
It only takes a split second for my worst fears to come roaring back with the force of a hurricane. Michelle choked, she fell and hit her head, there was a fire; horrible scenarios multiply as I hear the phone ring.
“Jacob!” I say when he picks up. “Is everything okay?”
“I mean, is it?” he asks.
“You called me thirteen times.”
“It’s not like you to not pick up.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Busy.”
“I’ve been cutting a bunch of soap.”
“Cutting a bunch of soap.”
“Don’t—don’t be like this.”
“Be what? Concerned? I thought something had happened to you. You realize you’ve been there for almost five hours?”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Since this conversation started, Sam slipped out of the room with Milo, probably to give me some privacy. I linger near the bubbling crock pots, absentmindedly picking up the tub of lye and shaking it in my hand.
“This isn’t like you,” he says.
Yes, I think, this isn’t like me. That’s probably why I’ve had such a wonderful afternoon. It must be the heavy scent in the air that stings my eyes, it must, because there’s no reason to cry right now.
“You need to come home,” he says.
I can hear Michelle crying in the background.
“Okay,” I say.
“Now, Ro. Michelle wants to be nursed and you didn’t leave any milk.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
I hang up the phone, slip it back in my pocket, pick up the lye again and give it a shake. Something about it feels good, to play with a giant tub with a skull and crossbones on it warning me that it’s poison.
“Oh my God, Rowena, don’t do that,” Sam says, coming back in. “If the lid wasn’t screwed on tight and that opened up you could kill yourself.”
I knew that. And I shook it anyway. I put it down guiltily. “Sorry.”
“So … sounds like you need a ride home?”
“I do.”
I say those two words with such heaviness. I didn’t realize how much fun I’d been having until I got word the fun was over.
In the car, we drive in silence a moment until Milo breaks it with a giant fart.
“I fed him black beans for the first time today,” Sam says. “I have a feeling I’ll live to regret it.”
I snort.
“Thanks so much for your help,” Sam says. “And all your suggestions for the website. Are you looking for part-time work? Would you want to do this again?” She gives me a quick glance and then fixes her bespectacled gaze back on the road. “If Jacob allows it, of course.”
That last sentence pricks like a barb.
“That would be great,” I say. “I’m sure Jacob would be fine with it.”
She slows in front of my house. “This one?”
“Yes,” I say.
The Snyders sign still hangs crookedly since we refixed it to the house after the wind blew it down.
I unbuckle my seatbelt with a click. The faint scents of our day’s work linger in the air and I imagine what it would be like to sleep in the same bed as Sam, waking up every morning in her freckled arms, smelling of orange blossoms and rose and honey.
“If you ever need anything, I’m here for you,” she says. “You know that, right? I’m on your side.”
“I know,” I say softly.
The front door of my house opens and Jacob emerges, holding Michelle.
I pop the car door open. “Talk soon.”
I shut the door behind me and hurry up the lawn to Jacob. Once I get to him, I hold my arms out for Michelle, who is tired and chewing her fist. He hands her over without a word and I hug her tight.
“Let’s go nurse you, sweetpea,” I say.
“About time,” Jacob says. “This poor girl’s been inconsolable.” He squints. “What is she waiting for?”
Behind me, at the curb, Sam is still staring curiously from her car. Finally, she gives a single wave and drives away.
I move past him into the house, collapse on the couch, and pull my shirt down on one side. Michelle latches on hungrily. Jacob goes to his room and closes the door without a word. Honestly, it’s a relief.
After a stroller walk, a dinner of leftovers, and a delightful bubble bath for the baby, I put Michelle to bed. Jacob and I have barely spoken since I came home. I can tell he’s angry, but it’s such a baffling overreaction I don’t know how to respond. In my room, I put on my pajamas and that’s when I spot my key fob there, on the closet floor. I gasp, crouching to grab it, both relieved and embarrassed that I internally blamed Jacob when I must have dropped it here. The most sickening part is that I clearly remember putting it on my night table. But the evidence is staring me straight in the face that I didn’t.
One of the worst feelings in the world is not knowing if you can believe yourself.
While Jacob takes a long shower before bed, I turn off lights and lock up. I turn toward the hall again and Maxine emits a little rainbow.
