Close Enough to Touch Read online

  My cheeks redden at the mention of my freeloading, and I have the urge to hang up the phone. I feel like a loser. Like those thirty-year-old men who live in the basement of their parents’ house, their mothers still washing their drawers and serving them grilled cheese with the crusts cut off. And I guess in a way, I am.

  The first check arrived a week after she left.

  I set it on the kitchen table and stared at it for three days every time I passed it. I had every intention of throwing it away. Maybe Mom wanted to live off Lenny’s money for the rest of her life, but I wasn’t interested.

  And then the electricity bill came. And then the water. And then the mortgage.

  I cashed the check.

  I was eighteen and jobless and still trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Surely it involved some sort of employment and college education. So I swore to myself this would be the only time. That I wouldn’t take any more money.

  When the next check came, three weeks later, I still didn’t have a job, but I didn’t feel like leaving the house to cash it, so I thought that would be the end of it. But on a break from an intense game of Bejeweled on the computer, I did a quick online search and learned that I could just mail the check into the bank and the money would magically show up in my account.

  And then, as I returned to clicking on colorful gemstones and watching them satisfyingly disappear, I wondered what else I could do without leaving home.

  Turns out, a lot.

  It became sort of a game—a challenge to see what I could accomplish while sitting in my pajamas.

  Groceries? Fresh Direct delivers.

  College? I got an English degree in eighteen months from one of those online outfits. I’m not sure how legit it is, but the piece of paper they sent me is real enough. I wanted to keep going, get a master’s, maybe a PhD, but $400 per credit hour was depleting my already stretched budget, so I started taking a handful of the classes Harvard offers for free online every semester. Free. Makes you wonder why all those geniuses are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for their Ivy League education.

  Dentist? Floss regularly and brush after every meal. I haven’t had so much as a toothache, and I chalk it up to my good dental habits. And I’ve started to think that maybe dentistry is a racket.

  When a neighbor left a note on my door alerting me that my grass was reaching unmanageable heights and he would appreciate my maintaining my lawn for the “integrity” of the neighborhood? I called a landscaping service to come once a month and left a check under the porch mat.

  The trash presented a more difficult challenge. I couldn’t figure out a way to get it to the curb without actually going outside. It’s not that I couldn’t do that, of course, but now I was determined to not have to. To figure out this last piece of the puzzle. I’m not proud of it, but I called the city garbage service and told them I was disabled. They said if I could get my trash into the bin beside my back door, the workers would come around and get it every Thursday morning. And I felt a little buzz of pride at my deceitful cleverness.

  Six months passed. Then a year. And there were times when I would stop and wonder if this was it. If I would live my life out this way, never seeing another soul in person again. But mostly, I just woke up every morning and lived my life like everyone else does—not thinking about the big picture, just doing my work for class, making dinner, watching the news, then getting up and doing it all over again. In that way, I didn’t think I was really different from anyone else.

  Though my mother called sporadically over the years, to complain about the weather, a rude waiter, a bad ending to a TV series, to brag about one of the many trips she and Lenny were taking or to invite me for a holiday—even though she knew I wouldn’t come—we never discussed the money she was sending me. I was ashamed of taking it, but I had also convinced myself that I somehow deserved it. That she owed me for being kind of a selfish, crappy mother.

  But I never meant for it to go on this long.

  “I know you have your condition,” Lenny said, “but it’s something we never quite saw eye t—”

  “I understand,” I say, the humiliation burning brighter with each second. But there’s a flare of anger mixed in—anger that my mom didn’t leave me any money on top of the house and car (even as I recognize how ungrateful that is), although I guess technically it’s Lenny’s money. Or maybe I’m angry at myself for becoming so dependent on those monthly checks. Or maybe it has nothing to do with the money. Maybe I’m mad that I didn’t take her up on her invitation to visit even once. Or invite her to visit me. Funny how when someone dies you momentarily forget all their faults, like how just talking to her on the phone was so emotionally draining, I didn’t ever want to see her in person. But now . . . now it’s too late.

  “Well, then,” Lenny says.

  There’s nothing left for us to say, so I wait for his good-bye. But then it’s silent for so long I wonder if maybe he already hung up and I somehow missed it.

  “Lenny?” I say, at the exact moment he speaks.

  “Jubilee, your mom really . . . ,” he says. His voice falters again. “Well, you know.”

  I don’t know. My mom really what? Liked tight blouses? Smoked far too many cigarettes? Was impossible to live with? I hold on to the phone long after he’s hung up, hoping I’ll hear what he was going to say. That it somehow got caught in the ether between us and will materialize at any second. When I accept that it won’t, I let the receiver drop onto the floor beside me.

  Minutes pass. Or maybe hours. But I don’t move—even when a staccato of beeps blares from the receiver, the phone insisting on being hung up.

  My mother is dead.

  I look around the kitchen, checking for subtle differences—comparing the before and after. If I can find one, then it’s evidence that maybe I’ve entered some alternate universe. That maybe mom is still alive in the other, real one. Or maybe I’ve read 1Q84 too many times.

  I take a deep breath, and tears spring to my eyes. I’m not prone to outward displays of emotion, but today I just sit and let them fall.

  THERE ARE UPSIDES to being a recluse. Like, it only takes me six minutes to wash the one plate, mug, fork that I use every day. (Yes, I’ve timed it.) And I don’t ever have to make small talk. I don’t have to nod and smile when someone says “Heard it might rain today,” or mumble something inane back like “The grass sure could use it, huh?” Really, I don’t have to worry about the weather, period. It’s raining? Who cares? I’m not going out in it.

  But there are downsides, too. Like, late at night when I’m lying in bed listening to the dead-quiet of the street and wondering if maybe, just maybe, I’m the only person left on Earth. Or if there was a civil war or a superflu or a zombie apocalypse and nobody remembered to tell me, because nobody remembers I’m here. On those nights, I would think about my mom. She’d call me. She’d tell me. She’d remember. And a wave of comfort would wash over me.

  But now, she’s gone. And I’m lying in bed, listening to the night air and wondering: Who’s going to remember me now?

  THURSDAY BEGINS LIKE a normal day: I go downstairs and make two sunny-side-up eggs with toast (cut into tiny bite-size pieces after a choking incident four years ago) and eat it while reading the news online. But then, instead of clicking on the next lecture in my Harvard class (this week: “Shakespeare After All: The Later Plays”), I have to face that this day is not a normal day.

  I will be leaving the house.

  My heartbeat revs at the thought, so I try to distract myself with a more immediate problem: I have nothing to wear to my mother’s funeral. The only black things I own are a pair of sweatpants and a matching hoodie. Not exactly suitable funeral attire.

  Upstairs, I walk down the hall to my mom’s room and stand in the doorway. For nine years, I’ve left her room exactly as it was when she walked out the door. Not in a creepy Miss Havisham kind of way. There’s no uneaten wedding cake on a table or anything. I told myself i
t’s because I just didn’t know what to do with her stuff, but part of me liked having her stuff where it’s always been. Like maybe she’d come back for it one day.

  Except now, I guess, she won’t.

  At my mom’s closet, I stand staring at her collection of women’s skirt suits circa the nineties from her days as a department store retail clerk. I remember trying on her clothes as a child when she was at work, letting the garments swim around me, inhaling her sugary scent. I’d even get in her bed, wrapping myself up in her blankets, pretending they were her arms. It was against the rules—the doctors warned that even though it appeared I only reacted to skin-on-skin contact, I had to still be careful around things that had prolonged contact with other people, like bedsheets and towels. Allergies are tricky, they said. But I took the risk, and fortunately never reacted. It was my little act of rebellion, but it was something else, too—the only way I could feel close to her. I pull a black suit jacket off its wire hanger and shrug it on over the white tank top I slept in.

  I turn and look in the ornate mirror hung over Mom’s dresser, and I scrutinize myself for the first time in years. The realization that other people will be looking at me—seeing what I see in the reflection—churns my stomach. I haven’t had a proper haircut in years, relying on a few snips here and there with my nail scissors, and it shows. My hair’s never been obedient, but it’s grown especially unruly and wild in its freedom, brown curls crawling every which way from the crown of my head to my elbows. I try to smooth them down with the palm of my hand, to no avail.

  Then I remember the suit I’m wearing and my eyes are drawn to the padded shoulders. It’s as if someone is asking me a question and I’m shrugging to indicate I don’t know the answer. The rest of the suit is slightly ill fitting. My mom was a little slip of a thing, aside from her large breasts. While I’m not much bigger, the sleeves are a tad too short, the skirt too snug around the waist. It will have to do.

  As I bend down to look in the bottom of her closet for a pair of shoes, I swear I catch a whiff of vanilla body spray and my stomach lurches. I sit down on my butt, pull the lapel of the jacket up to my nose, and inhale.

  But all I smell is musty fabric.

  DOWNSTAIRS, I PICK up my handbag from the side table near the door. I rifle through it, eyeing the two bright yellow EpiPens clustered at the bottom. They expired years ago, but I convince myself they’ll still work in an emergency. And then I pick up my gloves. I wonder if I should put them on. I always found it kind of overkill as a child—the yellow knit gloves I wore in elementary school, graduating to more adultlike, but just as weird, leather gloves in high school. It’s not as if I was going out of my way to touch people—or them me. It’s not that hard to keep your hands to yourself, especially when you’re treated like a pariah. But then I think of all the ways people can make contact without even thinking about it: exchanging money at cash registers; handshakes; someone in a hurry pushing past you, their arm brushing yours.

  I slip the gloves on.

  Then, before I can change my mind, I snatch my keys off the table beside the front door, turn the handle, and step over the threshold.

  The brightness of the blue September sky assaults my eyes and I squint, raising a hand to block the rays. It’s 7:34 a.m. and I’m outside. On the front porch. Though I’ve hurriedly opened the door under the cover of night to bring in packages left by the postman and my weekly grocery delivery, I can’t remember the last time I stood here. In broad daylight.

  Blood rushes to my head and I clutch the door frame, dizzy. I feel exposed. As if a thousand eyes are on me. The air around me is too loose, shifty. As if a current could just pick me up and fling me unwilling into the world.

  I will my foot to move. To step forward.

  But it won’t. It’s as if I’m standing precariously on the edge of a cliff and one step will send me into the great abyss. The world will swallow me whole.

  And that’s when I hear it.

  The metal clanging and squeaking of the garbage truck turning onto the street.

  I freeze.

  It’s Thursday. Trash day.

  My heart beats wildly against my chest, as if it’s trying to burst out of my body.

  I search for the knob behind me, turn it, and step back inside, shutting the door firmly behind me.

  Then I lean against it and concentrate on slowing my breath, so the rhythm of my heart can return to normal.

  Normal.

  Normal.

  I glance at my gloved hands and snicker. And then a full burst of laughter escapes my lips and I reach up to my mouth with leather-clad fingers to suppress the sound.

  What was I thinking? That I could just leave the house and go to my mother’s funeral like a normal person?

  If I were normal, I would wave to the garbagemen. Or say hi. Or just ignore them completely and get in the car, as I’m sure other people do a hundred times a year without even thinking about it.

  My shoulders begin shaking as my laughter mutates into crying.

  I’m not going to my mother’s funeral. Lenny will wonder where I am. Anything my mom’s told him over the years about my being a bad daughter will be confirmed.

  And while all of that is troublesome, another thought floats on the periphery of my brain, waiting to be let in. A terrifying thought. A thought that I realize maybe I’ve known deep down but haven’t wanted to admit to myself. But it’s hard to deny it when I’m leaning against the front door inside my house, unable to slow my heart or stem my tears or stop my body from shaking.

  And that thought is: Maybe there’s another reason I haven’t left my house in nine years.

  Maybe it’s because I can’t.

  two

  ERIC

  THE FISH IS dying.

  I don’t think it is dead yet, because when I gently poke at it with the eraser end of a pencil, it flaps its fins and swims erratically around the small glass bowl for about ten seconds until it appears to give up and float to the top of the water again. It’s not belly-up, though, and isn’t that the telltale sign?

  My eyes dart around the boxy apartment as if the solution to save this fish’s life will present itself. But the beige walls, of course, are bare. The rest of the small living room only contains my couch, a glass coffee table, and a few boxes with LIVING ROOM written in black marker on the side. The pencil appears to be my only hope.

  I poke at the fish again and look over my shoulder as if a PETA representative is going to be standing there shaking a finger in my face. I’m sure this is tantamount to animal abuse, but this fish needs to live. At least for the next fifteen minutes. And the pencil is my only hope.

  The fish finishes its bizarre dance and resumes floating.

  Jesus Christ.

  “What are you doing?” The small voice gives me a start.

  “Nothing,” I say, jabbing the fish one more time and then setting the pencil down. “Feeding Squidboy.”

  “I already fed him. Last night. I feed him every night.”

  I turn to face Aja’s large, dark, knowing eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses and marvel—not for the first time—at how he can so often make me feel like I’m the child and he the adult. Even though he looks exactly like his dad, Dinesh—acorn skin, silky black hair, lashes long enough to be a mascara ad—he’s the complete opposite of him personality-wise. Where Dinesh was impulsive, charming, personable, Aja is cautious, quiet, introverted. More like me, I guess.

  “I know,” I say, using my body to block his view of the small glass bowl. Aja’s life has been turned upside down enough in the past two years—from his parents’ death, to my adopting him, to my now moving from the only town he’s ever known in New Hampshire to Lincoln, New Jersey. If I can shield him from his dying fish, at least for today, I’m going to do it. “But he looked hungry. And I am, too. Let’s go get breakfast.”

  Suspicion doesn’t leave Aja’s eyes, but he turns and plods toward the kitchen, hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched,
making his already slim ten-year-old frame appear even tinier.

  “Ready for your first day of school?” I ask, heading toward the sink to rinse out yesterday’s coffee mug with hot water. Maybe today will be the day I find the extra mugs in an errant box, as I’ve unpacked all the boxes marked KITCHEN, and they were not there. Moving is the only time that I’m able to suspend my belief in the laws of nature and understand that some other dynamic force is at work. Black magic? Teleportation? It’s the only explanation for how things get lost. The coffee mugs should be in the kitchen boxes. Where I packed them. And yet . . .

  I grab the coffeepot handle and pour the dark brown liquid into my mug. I shouldn’t have made an entire pot, as, after seeing some news segment on the dire health consequences of too much coffee, I promised myself that the new me in New Jersey would only have one cup a day. I can’t remember what the consequences are now, but they probably involve cancer and death. Which seems to be the end result of every health study these days. I turn back to Aja, realizing he didn’t respond to my question.

  “Bud?”

  He’s carefully measuring one cup of Rice Chex to pour into his bowl, as the serving size suggests. I know he’ll measure the half cup of milk next.

  When he’s done with his precise breakfast preparation, he picks up a spoon.

  I try again. “Aja?”

  I realize I sound a bit desperate, but that’s mainly because I am. Because even though I’m now four full states away I can still hear her voice as though she’s speaking directly in my ear.

  You don’t know how to talk to your own fucking child.

  And that’s one of the nicest things Stephanie has said to me since our divorce. When we were married, she always complained I wasn’t good at picking up on social cues or implications or the meaning behind words and actions (and maybe she was right; is it too much to ask people to just say what they mean?), but I had no problem picking up on the implication of what she was telling me that night.