During the day, when he’s at work, I climb on a step stool and take out the Macallan. I pour some of the whiskey down the sink. Not an amount that would raise suspicion; just enough for me to protect him a little from himself.
By the end of May we aren’t washing the groceries anymore or waiting to open our mail, but we’re freaked out about slipstreams, and whether you can catch the virus from a jogger who runs past you. I start receiving the unemployment benefits I became eligible for when I was furloughed, but they certainly don’t cover my half of the rent.
When I start to feel like I’m going stir-crazy, I remind myself of how lucky I am. I scour forums of long-haul Covid survivors, who are still suffering weeks later with symptoms no one understands and no doctors have the bandwidth or knowledge to address. I read articles about women who are balancing work and online education for their kids; and profiles of frontline workers who get paid scandalously little to risk their exposure to the virus. I see Finn stagger in after his long shifts, haunted by what he’s seen. Sometimes it feels like the whole world is holding its breath. If we don’t gasp, soon, we will all pass out.
One Saturday when Finn has the day off, we spend the afternoon getting back to ground zero: cleaning the apartment, doing laundry, sorting through the mail that has piled up. We play Rock Paper Scissors to choose chores, which leaves me scrubbing toilets while Finn fishes through piles of envelopes and junk mail for the cable bill and the bank statements. Every time I pass by him at the kitchen table, I feel ashamed. Usually we split the cost of utilities and rent, but with my contributions reduced to a trickle, he’s paying the lion’s share.
He picks up a stack of glossy catalogs he has separated out from the bills and tosses them into the milk crate we use as a recycling bin. “I don’t know why we keep getting these,” he says. “College brochures.”
“No, wait.” I put down my dustrag and sift through them, pulling a bunch back out and cradling them in one arm. “They’re for me.” I meet his gaze. “I’m thinking of going back to school.”
He blinks at me. “For what? You already have a master’s in art business.”
“I might change careers,” I tell him. “I want to find out more about art therapy.”
“How are you paying for tuition?” Finn asks.
It stings. “I have some savings.”
He doesn’t respond, but implicit in his look is: You may not by the time this is over.
It makes me feel equally guilty—for wanting to spend money on myself when I haven’t been carrying my own weight on household expenses, and angry—because he’s right. “I just feel like this could be … ?a wake-up call.”
“You’re not the only one who lost a job, Di.”
I shake my head. “Not only getting furloughed. Everything. There has to be a reason that I got sick.”
Finn suddenly looks very, very tired. “There doesn’t have to be a reason. Viruses don’t need reasons. They strike. Randomly.”
“Well, I can’t believe that.” I lift my chin. “I can’t believe I’m alive because of the luck of the draw.”
He stares at me for another moment, and then shakes his head and mutters something I don’t hear. He rips open another envelope and eviscerates its contents.
“Why are you mad?” I ask.
Finn pushes his chair away from the table. “I’m not mad,” he says. “But, I mean—going back to school? Changing careers? I can’t believe you didn’t happen to mention this anytime over the last month.”
I blurt out, “I’ve been visiting my mother.”
“Wow,” Finn says quietly. Betrayal is written all over the margins of his face.
“I didn’t say anything because … ?I thought you’d tell me not to go.”
His eyes narrow, as if he is searching to find me. “I would have gone with you,” he says. “You have to be careful.”
“You think I could get hurt taking the trash into the hallway to dump it.”
“My point exactly. You shouldn’t be doing that, either. You’re only a month out of rehab—”
“You treat me like I’m on the verge of dying,” I snap.
“Because you were,” Finn counters, rising from his chair.
We are standing a foot apart, both of us crackling with frustration.
He wants to gently set me down exactly where I was before this happened, like he’s been holding that place for me in a board game, and we are going to pick up where we left off. The problem is that I’m not the same player.