“I’ll lend you my confidence-boosting CD set,” she would say if I alluded to any concern or worry.
Reva was partial to self-help books and workshops that usually combined some new dieting technique with professional development and romantic relationship skills, under the guise of teaching young women “how to live up to their full potential.” Every few weeks, she had a whole new paradigm for living, and I had to hear about it. “Get good at knowing when you’re tired,” she’d advised me once. “Too many women wear themselves thin these days.” A lifestyle tip from Get the Most Out of Your Day, Ladies included the suggestion to preplan your outfits for the workweek on Sunday evenings.
“That way you won’t be second-guessing yourself in the morning.”
I really hated when she talked like that.
“And come out to Saints with me. It’s ladies’ night. Girls drink for free until eleven. You’ll feel so much better about yourself.” She was an expert at conflating canned advice with any excuse for drinking to oblivion.
“I’m not up for going out, Reva,” I said.
She looked down at her hands, fiddled with her rings, scratched her neck, then stared down at the floor.
“I miss you,” she said, her voice cracking a little. Maybe she thought those words would break through to my heart. I’d been taking Nembutals all day.
“We probably shouldn’t be friends,” I told her, stretching out on the sofa. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I see no reason to continue.”
Reva just sat there, kneading her hands against her thighs. After a minute or two of silence, she looked up at me and put a finger under her nose—something she did when she was about to start crying. It was like an Adolf Hitler impression. I pulled my sweater over my head and grit my teeth and tried not to laugh while she sputtered and whined and tried to compose herself.
“I’m your best friend,” she said plaintively. “You can’t shut me out. That would be very self-destructive.”
I pulled the sweater down to take a drag of my cigarette. She batted the smoke out of her face and fake coughed. Then she turned to me. She was trying to embolden herself by making eye contact with the enemy. I could see the fear in her eyes, as though she were staring into a black hole she might fall into.
“At least I’m making an effort to change and go after what I want,” she said. “Besides sleeping, what do you want out of life?”
I chose to ignore her sarcasm.
“I wanted to be an artist, but I had no talent,” I told her.
“Do you really need talent?”
That might have been the smartest thing Reva ever said to me.
“Yes,” I replied.
She got up and ticktocked across the floor in her heels and shut the door softly behind her. I took a few Xanax and ate a few animal crackers and stared at the wrinkled seat of the empty armchair. I got up and put in Tin Cup, and watched it halfheartedly as I dozed on the sofa.
Reva called half an hour later and left a voice mail saying she’d already forgiven me for hurting her feelings, that she was worried about my health, that she loved me and wouldn’t abandon me, “no matter what.” My jaw unclenched listening to the message, as though I’d been gritting my teeth for days. Maybe I had been. Then I pictured her sniffling through Gristedes, picking out the food she’d eat and vomit up. Her loyalty was absurd. This was what kept us going.
“You’ll be fine,” I told Reva when she said her mother was starting a third round of chemo.
“Don’t be a spaz,” I said when her mother’s cancer spread to her brain.
* * *
? ? ?
I CAN’T POINT TO any one event that resulted in my decision to go into hibernation. Initially, I just wanted some downers to drown out my thoughts and judgments, since the constant barrage made it hard not to hate everyone and everything. I thought life would be more tolerable if my brain were slower to condemn the world around me. I started seeing Dr. Tuttle in January 2000. It started off very innocently: I was plagued with misery, anxiety, a wish to escape the prison of my mind and body. Dr. Tuttle confirmed that this was nothing unusual. She wasn’t a good doctor. I had found her name in the phone book.
“You’ve caught me at a good moment,” she said the first time I called. “I just finished rinsing the dishes. Where did you find my number?”
“In the Yellow Pages.”
I liked to think that I’d picked Dr. Tuttle at random, that there was something fated about our relationship, divine in some way, but in truth, she’d been the only psychiatrist to answer the phone at eleven at night on a Tuesday. I’d left a dozen messages on answering machines by the time Dr. Tuttle picked up.