Karma Brown - Come Away With Me

I nod and push the cheap, vinyl-covered chair back. Without looking at Dr. Rakesh, I leave the room, rubbing my thumb around my ring finger, feeling the indentation again.

I take back what I thought this morning.

I hate this place.

12

I’ve only been home a few days, but between Gabe, both our sets of parents, my brothers and Anna, I feel more captive in my own apartment than I did in the locked-down psych ward. It takes a sweep of our medicine cabinet to make sure there’s nothing stronger than acetaminophen and cough syrup, along with promises to check in hourly via text and phone to get them all to leave me alone, but finally it’s quiet again. Aside from Gabe, who reiterates he’s not going anywhere.

At my second-to-last session with Dr. Rakesh I had what he called “an important step in the right direction.” Just shy of a breakthrough, I suppose, but good enough for the yellow-toothed doctor to sign the papers for my release. Of course, what he didn’t realize was that it was mostly fabricated. The tears were real, but the proclamations of forgiveness I knew he wanted to hear were rehearsed the night before, as I tried to fall sleep under my overstarched, scratchy hospital bedsheets. Back in his office, I felt the way my kindergarteners must when they’re trying to give me the answer they think I want, rather than the one that feels most true to them.

They released me with an antidepressant with so many side effects I’m not sure the pills are better than the depression, and two follow-up appointments with Dr. Rakesh over the next couple of weeks.

But I’m not about to forgive anyone yet, least of all Gabe.

“What are you doing?” Gabe asks, watching me pull out a large white melamine bowl from the bowels of our deep pantry. I hold it up to the kitchen’s halogen lights, then wipe the dusty inside of the bowl with a paper towel.

“I’m making banana bread,” I say, cracking the freckled skin on one of the squishy bananas. I glance at the recipe, the one Gabe coaxed out of the general store owner after he returned the pig, written on the back of a postcard picturing Maui’s black sand beach. I continue peeling the ripe, fragrant fruit until three mushy bananas pile up in the bottom of the bowl.

The oven beeps, letting me know it’s warm and ready, and I methodically drive the potato masher into the bananas before pouring in the whisked eggs and oil, and an overflowing cup of sugar. Setting the wet ingredients aside, I concentrate on the flour and baking soda, using my thumb to level the teaspoon full of soda.

“It probably won’t taste the same,” Gabe says. “Where are those from?”

I tilt my head to read the sticker from one of the discarded banana peels. “Costa Rica.”

I measure out another half teaspoon of baking soda, which I toss into the flour mixture.

I stir the flour, soda and salt around and around with the large wooden spoon Gabe’s mom gave me last Christmas, in the hopes I’d start making her Italian family’s famous tomato sauce. She’s chastised me continuously about my sauce spoons, reminding me the metal and plastic versions I typically use will ruin the taste.

I tried to make the sauce once, even using exorbitantly priced canned tomatoes imported directly from Italy and sweet basil from Rosa’s garden, but it had none of the flavor or depth of her sauce. Gabe said I was crazy, but I was sure Rosa left a critical ingredient off the recipe card she attached to the spoon. Just to make sure I couldn’t make it taste exactly like hers.

With a few quick stirs to blend the wet and dry ingredients together, I spatula-level the mixture into the pans coated with a healthy smear of butter, and set the timer. I sit at the kitchen island and pull out a magazine from the stack Anna brought over and flip the pages without commitment.

“I’m sure it will be good, even without the Maui bananas.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I mumble, keeping my eyes on the glossy pages without reading a word.

“I’m glad you’re baking again,” he says, keeping his voice light. I recognize the tone. It’s the one he uses when I’ve had a stressful day at work, or when our neighbor’s miniature dachshund howls at three in the morning and I threaten to storm over there and tell him exactly what I think he should do with the dog. “You look different, you know?”

“Do I?” I try to sound disinterested. But I’m actually curious. Different how? In a good way? Less depressed, maybe? I wonder what that looks like.

“Tegan?”

“Yeah?” I don’t look up. I can’t look up, because if I do, I know I’ll be back in bed for days. If someone told me you could love and hate a person so completely, at the same time, I would have said no way. But I would have been wrong.

My hate for Gabe drives as deeply into my body as my love for him does. And it’s tearing me in half, like my seat belt almost did when we hit that metal pole.

“Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again.”

“Like what?” I ask, knowing exactly what he means.

“Don’t do that, okay? This is serious.”

I sigh and slam the magazine shut. “Oh, this is serious? Wow, thanks, I didn’t realize that.”

“Stop fucking around, Tegan!” His blue eyes blaze with anger. “Do you even care what would have happened if your mom hadn’t found you? Do you know what that would have done to the people who love you?”

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself, Gabe. It was an accident.”

“No. No,” he says, voice rising. “An accident is pulling pink sheets that used to be white out of the washing machine because you forgot to double-check if those red socks were mixed in, or adding salt to cookies instead of sugar because they look the—”

“Or hitting black ice and killing our baby?” I shout, shaking with fury. I try to hold eye contact, but my rage makes it hard to focus on his face.

Gabe says nothing, his beautiful eyes filling with sadness. I turn my back and will him to disappear.

The timer starts its incessant beeping, and only then do I notice how glorious the kitchen smells. But instead of feeling comfort, the sweet smell turns my stomach. I choke back a sob and slam on the oven mitts so I can pull out the perfectly browned loaves. Gabe must have understood my wish, because when I turn to put the hot pans on the cooling rack, he’s not in the room anymore.

Alone again, I sit at the island and shove handfuls of the still hot, moist bread into my mouth, barely chewing. The heat ravages my tongue and lips, but I don’t stop until the whole loaf is gone. It turns out a dash of sorrow and a teaspoon of bitterness really will ruin even the best recipe.

Gabe’s right. It doesn’t taste the same.

13

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier.”

I have the worst stomachache, likely from the loaf of banana bread I gorged on; I’ve been nauseous ever since. But it may also be the argument that’s turning my guts. As much as I hate to admit it, my mom is right when it comes to my stomach. It’s sensitive to nerves and anything too spicy, as well as angry words I wish I could take back.

Gabe sighs at my apology, but doesn’t seem too angry. Though he really should be, after what I said. “It’s okay,” he says. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

I bite my tongue, because words I don’t want to say are trying to get out.

I did mean it. But that doesn’t change that I probably shouldn’t have said it.

We’re on the couch, watching television. Feeling guilty, and getting no relief from nearly an entire bottle of pink bismuth—the same bottle left over from our wedding day, coincidentally—I flip on a nature show Gabe loves and try to come up with the right words to convey my regret.

The television is muted, but on it a lion stalks a sick antelope that has been separated from its herd. At least I can’t hear the antelope’s screams when it realizes what’s happening, left alone to try and fight off the too fast, too strong lion. I understand how the antelope feels.