me: FINE.
I totally don’t get this - is there anything more boring and pathetic than setting the table when there are only two of you? i mean, with place mats and salad forks and everything. who is she kidding? i would give anything not to have to spend the next twenty minutes sitting across from her, because she doesn’t believe in letting silence go. no, she has to fill it up with talk. i want to tell her that’s what the voices in your head are for, to get you through all the silent parts. but she doesn’t want to be with her thoughts unless she’s saying them out loud.
mom: if i get lucky tonight, maybe we’ll have a few more dollars for the car fund.
me: you really don’t need to do that.
mom: don’t be silly. it gives me a reason to go to girls’ poker night.
I really wish she would stop it. she feels worse about me not having a car than i do. i mean, i’m not one of those jerks who thinks that as soon as you turn seventeen it’s your god-given american right to have a brand-new chevrolet in the driveway. i know what our situation is, and i know she doesn’t like that i have to work weekends at cvs in order to afford the things we need to pick up at cvs. having her constantly sad about it doesn’t make me feel better. and of course there’s another reason for her to go play poker besides the money. she needs more friends.
she asks me if i took my pills before i ran off this morning and i tell her, yeah, wouldn’t i be drowning myself in the bathtub if i hadn’t? she doesn’t like that, so i’m all like ‘joke, joke’ and i make a mental note that moms aren’t the best audience for medication humor. i decide not to get her that world’s greatest mom of a depressive f**kup sweatshirt for mother’s day like i’d been planning. (okay, there’s not really a sweatshirt like that, but if there was, it would have kittens on it, putting their paws in sockets.)
truth is, thinking about depression depresses the shit out of me, so i go back into the den and watch some more law & order. isaac’s never back at his computer until eight, so i wait until then. maura calls me but i don’t have the energy to say anything to her except what’s happening on law & order, and she hates it when i do that. so i let the voicemail pick up.
me: this is will. why the f**k are you calling me? leave a message and maybe i’ll call you back. [BEEP]
maura: hey, loser. i’m so bored i’m calling you. i figured if you weren’t doing anything i could bear your children. oh, well. i guess i’ll just go call joseph and ask him to do me in the manger and begat another holy child.
by the time i care, it’s almost eight. and even then, i don’t care enough to call her back. we have this thing about calling each other back, in that we don’t do it very much. instead i head to the computer and it’s like i turn into a little girl who’s just seen her first rainbow. i get all giddy and nervous and hopeful and despairing and i tell myself not to look obsessively at my buddy list, but it might as well be projected onto the insides of my eyelids. at 8:05 his name pops up, and i start to count. i only get to twelve before his IM pops up.
boundbydad: greetings! grayscale: and salutations! boundbydad: so glad u’re here. grayscale: so glad to be here
boundbydad: work today = lamest! day! ever! this girl tried to shoplift and wasn’t even subtle about it. i used to have some sympathy for shoplifters
boundbydad: but now i just want to see them behind bars. i told her to put it back and she acted all ‘put what back?’ until i reached into her pocket and took the disc out. and what does she say to that? ‘oh.’
grayscale: not even ‘sorry’?
boundbydad: not even.
grayscale: girls suck.
boundbydad: and boys are angels? ☺
we go on like this for about an hour. i wish we could talk on the phone, but his parents won’t let him have a cell and i know my mom sometimes checks my phone log when i’m in the shower. this is nice, though. it’s the only part of my day when the time actually seems worth it.
we spend our usual ten minutes saying good-bye.
boundbydad: i really should go.
grayscale: me too.
boundbydad: but i don’t want to.
grayscale: me neither.
boundbydad: tomorrow?
grayscale: tomorrow!
boundbydad: i wish you.
grayscale: i wish you, too.
this is dangerous because as a rule i don’t let myself wish for things. too many times when i was a kid, i would put my hands together or squinch my eyes shut and i would devote myself fully to hoping for something. i even thought that there were some places in my room that were better for wishing than others - under the bed was okay, but on the bed wasn’t; the bottom of the closet would do, as long as my shoebox of baseball cards was in my lap. never, ever at my desk, but always with the sock drawer open. nobody had told me these rules - i’d figured them out for myself. i could spend hours setting up a particular wish - and every single time, i’d be met with a resounding wall of complete indifference. whether it was for a pet hamster or for my mom to stop crying - the sock drawer would be open and i would be sitting behind my toy chest with three action figures in one hand and a matchbox car in the other. i never hoped for everything to get better - only for one thing to get better. and it never did. so eventually i gave up. i give up every single day.
but not with isaac. it scares me sometimes. wishing it to work.
later that night i get an email from him.
I feel like my life is so scattered right now. like it’s all these small pieces of paper and someone’s turned on the fan. but talking to you makes me feel like the fan’s been turned off for a little bit. like things could actually make sense. you completely unscatter me, and i appreciate that so much.
GOD I AM SO IN LOVE.
Chapter three
Nothing happens for a week. I don’t mean this figuratively, like there is a shortage of significant events. I mean that no things occur. Total stasis. It’s sort of heavenly, to tell you the truth.
There’s the getting up, and the showering, and the school, and the miracle of Tiny Cooper and the desk, and the plaintive glancing at my Burger King Kids Meal Magic School Bus watch during each class, and the relief of the eighth period bell, and the bus home, and the homework, and the dinner, and the parents, and the locking the door, and the good music, and the Facebook, and the reading of people’s status updates without writing my own because my policy on shutting up extends to textual communication, and then there’s the bed and the waking and the shower and the school again. I don’t mind it. As lives go, I’ll take the quietly desperate over the radically bipolar.