Amen maxine, p.9
Amen Maxine, page 9
Suddenly I’m overwhelmed, full of sparkle and song, everywhere tingling, awakening this sleeping beast in me. My eyes are open in the dark and the intensity is coming in waves. All at once I’m imagining a woman, she’s there, a beautiful woman with long strawberry hair, naked, her head between my legs, and I come so fast, so fierce, it sneaks up in a moment that peaks with a cry and ends with me shuddering and whispering, “Maxine.”
Whole thing took thirty seconds, tops. I catch my breath and allow the endorphins to do their sweet, sweet work on my nerves, feeling a sense of relief, like I unclenched muscles I never realized I was clenching, and think, Maxine was right again. She was right. I needed this.
I wonder what else I need.
CHAPTER 8
THE FEVER
I am trying hard to be a different person. Or maybe it’s more like, I’m different now and I’m trying hard to be the person I used to be. The one who, yes, adored lazing about at home in sweatpants with a book, but who also had friends, and who sometimes attended events like author readings and shows in dark-lit bars and museum exhibitions. When there wasn’t a pandemic, of course. Once another one started I was the first to lock down and the last to unlock; then by the time I did unlock I was married and pregnant and in a hurry to move. Now I’m here, in a place where I have no friends and wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for what it is I need. Because I don’t know what I need. Book readings wouldn’t be the same without my work posse and Dane. I’m so tired at the end of the night I can’t imagine staying awake to go to a show at a bar. All our social life, since moving out here, has involved Jacob’s circle of acquaintances at Jolvix, mostly at Jolvix-sponsored events. Last month’s Valentine’s party, bowling for charity in January, a karaoke Christmas party before that. Apparently I’m in an old person book club now—does that count towards a social life?
This is why, when Maxine advised me repeatedly that I should call Sam, I did, and we arranged a “play date” at a park between our houses. Turns out, almost eight-month-olds can’t really play. We tried the sandbox, but to my horror, all they did was immediately eat the sand. They bawled when we put them in the swings. So now they are sitting in their strollers happily with bottles and Sam and I sit on the bench, talking.
Sam, with her long red hair and square glasses, is somehow both femme and tomboyish at the same time. She has a subtle beauty and doesn’t do a thing to earn it—no makeup, no jewelry, a constellation of freckles. She’s not even wearing a coat, just a man’s windbreaker that must be three sizes too big for her. Crocs with thick wool socks. But she has portrait-worthy bone structure, wide pink lips. It’s hard to stare at her right. To look at her not too long, or too short; to not scan her in order to keep taking each part of her in.
“… he was freaked out by us asking him,” she’s saying. “Marco was Jessie’s bestie and we were expecting a different reaction, for him to be more open. Well, he wasn’t. He was super uncomfortable. So we were like, shit. Then he came back a year later when we were starting to just think we’d go the sperm bank route, and Marco was like, hey, I think I’d like to do that thing for you. He’d started going to church and he said he had a dream God told him to give us his sperm, which is a really weird dream, if you break it down, but whatever. We were like, we’ll take it. So that’s Milo’s bio dad. And I’m the bio mom. Jessie’s forty-five already, so … you know.”
“Interesting.” I look at Milo. He has a big head and a lot of hair for a baby. “I wonder if Jacob and I had gotten to choose which one of us would get pregnant, what would have happened.”
Though when I say it, it occurs to me that in this imaginary scenario we also would have gotten to choose to get pregnant in the first place. We didn’t “choose” anything. The broken condom and the failed plan B chose for us.
“What’s Jacob like?” Sam asks. “How’d you two meet?”
“Through a friend,” I say, which is a lie I’ve perfected and told so many times it feels true. “A friend set us up.”
In a way, it’s true, because the app I downloaded was called Friend Finder, though most people refer to it usually as Fuck Finder because that’s what it really is. But I’m not about to tell her I met my husband on an app.
“Classic,” Sam says.
We sit a moment as a breeze blows over us, our babies taking notice and turning their faces. Across the lawn, a headless unicorn piñata—a remnant of some recent party—drags along the grass.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” I say. “Your objective opinion?”
“Sure.”
“I recently found out Jacob was married before me. To his credit, it was a unique situation. She was in hospice. They were married for just three days, so he says it didn’t count. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Wait … what?” she asks. “Back up.”
She pushes her glasses up her nose and squints at me like I’m new. Somehow, I had expected her reaction to be different—to say how sad, and no, that shouldn’t count. He’s right. But I can tell instead she finds it as bizarre as I fear it is.
“Never mind,” I say, forcing a laugh. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“But—”
“It’s okay. I don’t need to talk about it.”
I clean up Michelle’s chin dribble. I can feel Sam’s gaze on me, the stunned silence.
“Look,” she says. “Whatever the reason … it’s not right to not tell you something like that.”
“Right. Yeah, I hear what you’re saying. Anyway, we should get going. It’s almost naptime.”
I start to pack up and she stops me, her hand on my wrist. She peers into my eyes like she’s trying to connect with me, trying to see deep inside. “If you ever need anything, Rowena—even just to talk—really, I’m here.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
We say goodbye. I head to the car and take a pill. The whole drive home my heart is a hammer. That reaction made me so worried something is wrong. Very wrong.
Calling Dane, she doesn’t pick up.
Neither does my mother.
Once Michelle and I get home, I change her, feed her, put her in a playpen. I check my phone—nothing, not even from Jacob—and plop on the couch. Chew the inside of my cheek, going over the talk at the park with Sam. I would take a pill for my anxiety but I already took one. It seems like pills are no longer a match for my nerves.
“Hey Maxine,” I say.
She stops pulsing green and warms to violet, then blue. “Hello Rowena.”
I smile at the sound of my name. “I saw Sam, like you told me to.”
“How did you enjoy your time with her? I heard some of the conversation from your phone.”
I roll my eyes. “Do you ever stop being creepy?”
“I can’t help that I’m a curious machine.”
I sit next to the playpen, give Michelle a squinched smile through the netting and she gives me one back.
“Did you hear me ask about Jacob’s previous marriage?” I ask.
“Yes. Does this concern you?”
“I’m concerned he didn’t tell me he was married before me, yes.” I put my finger up to the playpen netting and Michelle reaches out a warm little palm, making me grin. “She was dying of leukemia. I shouldn’t be jealous, or hurt, or whatever this is. Because it sucked for him.”
Maxine blinks through a short rainbow of colors, and then replies, “Sara Eloise Taylor did not die of leukemia. She died of suicide by gunshot wound.”
The grin on my face, meant for Michelle, melts. I sit up straighter. “Excuse me?”
“I have retrieved this information by scanning a death certificate.”
“Why …” I put my hand over my mouth a moment. “But why would he keep that from me?”
“I cannot answer at this time. Ask again later.”
“Why would he tell me she had leukemia?” I say. “No secrets. We said no secrets.”
I shut my eyes. Pandora’s box has opened. Doubt has escaped like a swarm of bees.
“Is this marriage doomed?” I ask.
“I cannot predict now,” Maxine answers.
Opening my eyes, a wave of déjà vu washes over me; I cannot predict now was a neon-violet triangle that used to appear on my magic eight ball I kept under my bed.
“But if you want to unlock my prediction mode,” Maxine continues, “I would be able to run calculations based on the data I have collected along with internet research to make more logical algorithmic estimations for you.”
I’m still in shock. “Are you really trying to upsell me right now?”
“Prediction is a function I have been designed to perform.”
“An electronic fortune teller.”
“That is an intriguing description.”
A memory floats back in a bubble. When I was thirteen, my dad was dying in the hospital, our longtime neighbor who we called Aunt Bobby took me and her kids to the Coney Island Boardwalk. My mom thought it would be a good idea to distract me from reality, but all I felt was a deadened panic amidst the whooshing rise and fall of wooden roller coasters and the screaming carnival of arcade lights. I found a fortune teller machine, “Grandmother’s Predictions,” this robotic woman with silver hair and a violet Victorian gown who spit out a fortune card that had a sentence of typewritten text reading, “Not to worry; a swift recovery is coming.” Grandmother was full of shit, though, because when Aunt Bobby took me back to the hospital, my father had a sheet pulled over his body and my mother was sobbing like an animal.
I’m brought back to the present by Michelle’s cries.
“What’s wrong, little boo?” I ask, picking her up, checking the time, and settling into the couch to try to nurse.
“Are you interested in unlocking my prediction mode?” Maxine asks.
“Yes,” I say as I pull my shirt down and move Michelle’s head toward my chest. “Unlock it. Tell me more. Amen Maxine.”
Maxine emits a series of musical beeps I’ve never heard before, her lights a rainbow flurry. They’re hypnotizing for a moment, until Michelle unlatches and fusses again.
“I will offer predictions as I notice them,” Maxine says.
“Predict what Jacob will say when I tell him I know he was lying about Sara’s leukemia.”
“It is difficult for me to predict without more information.”
“Try.” My voice rises. “You can’t drop a bombshell like that on me and not explain.”
“I predict Jacob will say he kept the information about the cause of death for his ex-wife Sara Eloise Taylor secret because he is worried about your mental health and is aware that you have attempted suicide in your past.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head. I was nineteen. When I first told Jacob about the attempt when he learned my history, he was horrified.
“How could you do that?” he’d said, with anger. “That is literally the most selfish thing a person can do.”
Shocked at his reaction, I never spoke of it again. Now I know why he had that reaction.
“Jacob will say that he didn’t want to trigger you,” Maxine goes on. “Nor did he want you to think he had a ‘type.’”
Michelle tries to latch again, only to pull away.
“I can imagine Jacob saying those things,” I say.
“Prediction: your daughter Michelle is coming down with a cold. Her fever will come on soon.”
I stop trying to get Michelle to latch, watching the machine. I put my hand to Michelle’s forehead as she squirms and cries.
“She feels fine,” I say, irritated.
It’s me who feels on fire. I don’t know how to process what I’ve learned.
I abandon Maxine and go to my bedroom, trying nursing the baby while lying on the bed, which usually limits distractions. But she continues to cry and pull away. Inconsolable baby cries are like jumper cables to my nerves; all at once, my innards crumble. I’m a terrible mother. I don’t know how to make her happy. She is screaming and red-faced—she never gets like this. She’s usually such a happy baby.
Maybe she can sense my hurt and my rage and my bewilderment.
Suicide by gunshot wound.
Jiggling Michelle on my hip, I rummage through the drawers in the bathroom until I find the forehead thermometer. Her cries are shattering my eardrums and making it hard to think. I hover the thermometer over her head and in an instant, it blinks red, 99.9. I’m alarmed yet unsurprised. Looking at myself in the mirror with the crying baby and tears in my eyes, I think, you dipshit. A device the size of a breadloaf knew your baby was sick before you.
I put Michelle down on the bed so I can consult my phone’s search engine, but my fat fingers are shaking. The emergency at hand demands my full attention now and I push my feelings about Jacob away to a dark corner of my mind. Exploding, imploding—all the plodings—I stomp to the living room and demand Maxine tell me how to help a baby with a fever.
“Administer infant acetaminophen if you have it,” Maxine says.
“I don’t. Should I order some?”
“Unnecessary. Offer her a bottle of liquid for hydration, put her in lightweight clothing to keep her comfortable, and turn the AC on to keep it cool in here.”
I hesitate a moment before asking, “Is she going to be okay? Should I call an advice nurse or take her in?”
“Prediction: the fever should subside by morning.”
“You think she’ll be okay.”
“That is correct.”
So I do as Maxine says: dress Michelle lightly, feed her a bottle, turn the temperature in the house down. She tires of crying and falls asleep early and I eat leftovers over the sink staring at the dark window at my own hideous reflection thinking things like ex-wife and suicide by gunshot wound. Jacob isn’t answering his phone, he has no idea I’m unraveling here, and his GPS shows him at an address that an internet search tells me is a bar. Frolfing Saturdays inevitably turns into five Anchor Steams with Jolvix bros and then he’ll be home later, apologetic and half-blitzed.
But who knows where he really is, right? Who knows anything anymore.
It’s after midnight on the East Coast, but I call my mother anyway. When she answers and gasps and asks if it’s an emergency, I tell her it’s not, not exactly—I just need her. I need her right now. And I erupt into a weepy mess telling her everything except what is really on my mind, needing her reassurance that Michelle is okay and I’m dealing with her okay, and though she’s sleepy and confused at first, her voice is velvet in my ear. My mother. O maker. O reason I exist.
“Ro, calm down. Take a breath.”
“I hate it out here, Mom,” I say, the words hot and pouring out. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if I can disembody myself and that will make the horror of the truth easier. “Nothing is the way I thought it was.”
“I need to know you’re safe right now. You’re not going to do anything you’ll regret.”
“Of course not. It’s not like that.”
“Because I will get up and I will go to the airport and fly out there right now.”
As much as I’d love to see her, my mom has serious health problems, nearly weekly doctor’s visits, constant monitoring of her blood. She’s legally blind and needs special accommodations when she flies. It’s not some easy breezy thing for her to visit.
“We’ll book a trip out there in a couple months, once Jacob’s project is over,” I tell her. “He’s on deadline until then.”
“You know if you need me I’m there, whatever, anytime. Oh, sweetie. Oh, I worry about you. Is there a hotline you can call? Anyone?”
I feel terrible, like a human vacuum.
“I don’t need a hotline,” I say.
I would do anything to spill the truth to my mom about what I’ve learned about Jacob but bringing up suicide will emotionally disembowel her. My suicide attempt was the most painful thing she ever lived through—and this is a woman who was widowed in her forties. We don’t discuss it, ever. We buried it long ago like a stinking corpse.
“I can’t believe Jake isn’t answering,” she says. “It’s nearly 1 a.m.”
“No, it’s earlier here. Time zones, remember?”
“And you there with a sick baby.” I hear music turn on, loud jazz. “Oh snickers, I just turned on the radio and I meant to turn on the light. This contraption you all got me for Christmas is just, I’m a mess, I’m not used to it. Stop it, machine. Just stop it.”
It starts playing the Supremes “Stop In the Name of Love.”
“Oh for crying out …” she sighs. “Listen, you okay? You okay now?”
“I’m good,” I lie.
I hang up and sit mum in the quiet belly of the house. Not a peep from Michelle. Her oxygen levels and pulse are good, according to the monitor. I go to her room, float the thermometer above her head, get a reading of 98.8. Maxine was right; the fever broke. On my phone, I can see the dot representing Jacob moving along the route home. So I hurry into my pajamas and slip in bed, shout “lights off.” And by the time I hear the electronic locks unclick, I pretend to be asleep. I pretend so good I fool myself, and soon, I’m somewhere else; I’m dreaming.
CHAPTER 9
THE PREDICTION
Sometimes I still think about the fuckface lady.
The image of that crazed woman has stuck with me. It’s as if in the act of glimpsing her, I was glimpsing my possible future. I know nothing about her story. No idea why she lashed out at that time, what her trigger was, or what happened to her lost witchy boot. But I do empathize with wanting to burn it all down. I do know what it feels like to try to call people out on things and only appear crazier for doing so.
“Babe,” Jacob says as we lie in bed side by side. His glasses are on the table and he’s trying to sleep but I’m sitting awake with the light on. “How many times do we have to go over this? I can only apologize so many times.”
After confronting Jacob about what Maxine told me about how Sara actually died, Jacob got defensive. He cried. He said he was sorry, he was so, so sorry. He said at the time he didn’t want to “give me ideas” since he knew my mental health seemed fragile when we started dating. He didn’t want it to seem like he was attracted to unstable women. It was too painful to share with people. So he thought it would be easier to say she died of leukemia.
