Элисон Скотч - The Theory of Opposites

Shawn makes eggs for breakfast. It’s one of our things. A thing that Raina would add to the list of “Shilla things,” like our joint manicures, if she were to make such a list. (Which she might.)

The smell of the grease doesn’t wake me, but the doorbell does. The Xanax rendered my sleep a blackout, dreamless, and I wake disoriented, my lids crusty, my mouth tacky as if I’d eaten glue.

There’s a knock on the bedroom door, and then Vanessa pokes her head in.

“Nice,” she says, like I should’ve known she was coming over, and I should’ve been better prepared, should’ve been gussied up.

“What are you doing here? It’s…like, 8 a.m., and I’m unemployed. So…go away. I want to sleep.”

“It’s Sunday, so unemployment has no bearing. And you said you’d come to the free fall with me. The warm-up for the Dare You! book.”

I’d forgotten. In order to boost tourism in the city, the mayor’s office had implemented a simulated free fall off the Brooklyn Bridge. It was basically an over-hyped bungee jump, and if the mayor ever bothered to go to 42nd Street, he’d see that we should actually be attempting a mass exodus of tourists, not inviting more in. But still. The Dare You! producers set it up to announce the book deal: blasting out a press release to the trades wasn’t exactly their speed. Throwing their writer off a bridge was. Vanessa had asked me to tag along because she grew paralyzed when transported to any level above five floors, though her paralysis wasn’t enough to scare her off the job or off anything really. It never would be.

I probably put the free fall in the Together To-Do! app, but I hadn’t checked since spiraling down my Xanax haze. I reach for my phone on the nightstand.

Together To-Do! has one notification:

Bungee with Vanessa: book deal announcement!!!!

“Ugh,” I croak. “Okay. Hang on. Give me ten minutes.”

She slides the door closed, and I stretch up, my back cracking, my mind gray. I sit on the precipice of the mattress until I can physically will myself to the bathroom, brushing my teeth, splashing water on my cheeks, grabbing sweatpants and a tank that were abandoned on the floor at some point earlier in the week. I gaze in the mirror — I am wrinkled and pale and borderline inhuman — until I have nothing left to do but get moving and stomach the day.

“You lost your job?” Shawn says when he sees me. I was deep into REM when he and Nicky got home from the Yankees game. He must have slept on the couch again. He’s still wearing a Jeter jersey.

I glower at Vanessa. “You told him?”

“I didn’t tell him anything. I’m just eating eggs. Minding my business.” She flourishes her fork in the air and takes an overzealous bite as if to make a point.

“Nicky told me. Were you planning to?”

“I was, of course.”

I pull out a stool, and out of habit, like an assembly line technician, he sets a plate in front of me. He has made eggs every Sunday morning since we moved in together. When we first married, he would place bacon in the shape of a smile at the base of the plate and two little strawberries up top — a face to greet me to start my day. Now — I eye the eggs with distrust — now, they’re just a plop of eggs . I should be grateful that he’s still honoring our Sunday ritual, that he hasn’t insisted on, like, brunch at some hip place in Williamsburg or bought a crepe maker from Sur La Table or something, but the gratefulness is seeping out of me now, slowly, like my appreciation has been dumped into a sieve. I move some of the eggs around with my fork, buying my time.

“I was planning to tell you,” I say finally. “I just really haven’t seen you much alone since it happened. But now you know. Hannah was all coked up and made me do Adult Diapers by myself, and I told you that the meeting was disastrous, and so they dropped us as a client, and then she got fired, and then I got fired. And you know, it’s all live free or die, Shawn! That’s what it’s about! Live free or fuckin’ die! ”

Now it’s my turn to take an overzealous bite of eggs, as if stuffing them in and bulging my eyes is the exclamation point for my story .

“What does that even mean? What are you even talking about?”

“It’s the goddamn universe, Shawn!” I bark. “Like, what the hell was I supposed to do anyway?”

Vanessa sighs audibly and Shawn scowls. “Why are you taking that tone with me? I’m not to blame here.”

I swallow and drop my forehead to the counter.

“I’m sorry,” I look up at him. “I should have told you. And I’m sorry for my tone. I’m resolving as of this moment to stop being mad at you. Anger is pointless.”

Vanessa makes a face like she bit into a sour grapefruit.

“I didn’t realize that you were angry with me,” Shawn says.

He dumps the remaining eggs in the pan onto a spare plate and sets them aside for Nicky who will likely make a gagging noise at the sight of them and just ask for, like, some Pop Rocks and Sprite for breakfast. Which we’d give him. (That kid from the ’80s’ stomach totally didn’t explode, in case you were wondering about our parenting. I googled it.)

“I’m thinking we should get going,” Vanessa says. “I have to be there by nine — they have a camera crew there, so I need make-up, which is sort of ridiculous since they better not be doing a close-up of me hanging upside down with my face all morphed and bulging.” She scrambles off her stool. “And also, I don’t know why I just ate these since I’m probably now going to throw them up before I jump. The whole theory of what goes down, must come up.”

“Wait,” Shawn says to me (not Vanessa, who is shoving the last bites in her mouth too quickly). “Seriously, why are you mad at me?”

“When did you take up golfing?” my tone is a little too forthright to be casual, a little less kind than conversational.

“I…I don’t know. I’m trying new things. Recently.”

“And that jacket over there…” I gesture to a motorcycle jacket that I am only now noticing thrown over the couch. “What is that? Do coders wear that?”

“Ooh, that’s actually really nice.” Vanessa gets up to paw it. “This isn’t ridiculous. This is the real deal. Varvatos. What did this set you back?”

“Oh Jesus, Vanessa, can you please pipe down for once?” I say, then immediately follow with, “Sorry. Shit, sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Hey, no flies on me. I’m gonna do this thing without you. You guys keep going. Just call me. Coffee later.”

She quickly kisses my cheek and breezes out the door before I can beg her not to leave without me. Shawn and I are left alone, flanking each other in the kitchen. He pours himself more coffee, making a big show of the silence, dropping in his first plop of milk, then his second, then one last splash, as he does every morning, and for the first time ever, this makes me insane. I don’t want my husband to make me insane, I want Shilla! But then I remember Grape! , and that I’m not exactly the one who might be cheating on us.

He sprinkles exactly half a packet of Splenda in, then stirs, then sips, and then sighs. Then he unspools the plastic wrap and envelops Nicky’s plate as carefully as parents would swaddle their newborn. Finally, he turns back toward me and says:

“Why are you so mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re mad at me. You said, and I quote, ‘I’m resolving as of this moment to stop being mad at you.’”

I’m about to shout out: Grape! when his phone vibrates on the counter, and he grabs it.

“Hey,” he says, then wanders to the couch and perches on its arm. “Oh. Okay. Sure. For how long?”