“Reva!” I called again.
There was no answer. I sat on the fuzzy pink toilet lid and fiddled with the knob for what felt like twenty minutes. I would have to break the door down, or wait for Reva to come home from work, I thought. Either way, it would result in a confrontation. I already knew everything she’d say.
“I’ve stood by the sidelines long enough. You have a problem. I can’t just look the other way while you kill yourself.”
And what I’d say back.
“I appreciate your concern,” me seething, me wanting to kill her. “I’m under a doctor’s supervision, Reva. There’s nothing to worry about with me. I wouldn’t be allowed to do this if it wasn’t kosher. It’s all safe!”
Or maybe she’d go the heartbroken route.
“I buried my mother a few weeks ago. I’m not going to bury you, too.”
“You didn’t bury your mother.”
“Cremated, whatever.”
“I want a sea burial,” I’d tell her. “Wrap me in a black cloth and throw me over. Like a pirate.”
I pulled back the mildewed shower curtain, hung my coat on the towel rack, lay down in the tub, and waited. In the hours before Reva came home and let me out, I did not sleep. I knew I wouldn’t. I needed a way out of this—the bathroom, the pills, the sleeplessness, the failed, stupid life.
When the solution to my problems came to me, it landed in my mind like a hawk on a cliff. It was as though it had been circling up there the whole time, studying every little thing in my life, putting all the pieces together. “This is the way.” I knew exactly what I had to do: I needed to be locked up.
If one tablet of Infermiterol put me into a state of vacuous unconsciousness for three days, I had enough to keep me in the dark until June. All I needed was a jailkeeper, and I could live in constant sleep without fear of going out and getting involved in anything. This all seemed like a practical matter. The Infermiterol would work for me. I was relieved, almost happy. I didn’t mind at all that when Reva finally came home and wrestled the bathroom door open, she shrieked, expressed her grave concern for my sanity, all while rushing me out the door, I guessed, because she had a stomach full of junk she wanted to puke up.
I left the pills with her, all but the Infermiterol.
At home, I called a locksmith, arranged a meeting with Ping Xi for the following afternoon, and called Dr. Tuttle to tell her I was going off the grid for the next four months.
“Hopefully I won’t ever need to see you again,” I told her.
“People say that to me all the time,” she said.
That was the last time we spoke.
Seven
“ARE YOU SURE you won’t wear this stuff? What if I stretch something out, and then you want it back?”
I had called Reva to say that I was cleaning out my closets. She brought over a collection of large paper shopping bags from various Manhattan department stores, bags she’d obviously saved in case she had to transport something and needed a vessel that would connote her good taste and affirm that she was respectable because she’d spent money. I’d seen housekeepers and nannies do the same thing, walking around the Upper East Side with their lunch in tiny, rumpled gift bags from Tiffany’s or Saks Fifth Avenue.
“I never want to see any of these clothes again,” I told Reva when she arrived. “I want to forget it all existed. Whatever you don’t take, I’ll donate or throw away.”
“But all of it?”
She was like a kid in a candy store, methodically and vampirically pulling out every dress, every skirt, every blouse, hangers and all. Every pair of designer jeans, every bit of packaged lingerie, every pair of shoes except for the filthy slippers I wore on my feet.
“They kind of fit,” she said, trying on an unworn pair of Manolo Blahniks. “Good enough.”
She packed everything into the shopping bags with the urgent efficiency of someone building a sand castle at sundown, as the tide comes in. Like a dream you know will end. If I move fast enough, I won’t wake the gods. Most of the clothes still had the tags on them.
“This is good motivation to stick to my diet,” Reva said, lugging the bags into the living room. “Atkins, I think. Bacon and eggs for the next six months. I think I can do it if I really set my mind to it. The doctor said the abortion won’t cause any dramatic weight loss, but I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever I can get. Especially now. Size twos are a challenge for my hips, you know. You’re sure you won’t want any of this back?” She was gleeful and flushed.