Emma Rathbone - Losing It

My mouth fell open. She put a hand on the counter to steady herself.

“You’re loud,” she said grimly. “Do you have any idea how loud you are? You slam every door, and you leave your things everywhere. It’s not appropriate, when doing laundry in someone else’s house, to leave your underwear hanging on every surface.” Her voice was climbing again. “The way you slam up the stairs without even saying hello, and you’ve been in my studio, I know you have — looking through my things, and that ambush with Gordon, and the way you acted at the funeral.” Her voice cracked and she put her face in her hands. Her back shuddered a little bit. A few moments passed. When she looked up, something had deflated.

“The way you carried on with Jack,” she said, wiping her nose. “None of us could believe it.”

“I didn’t,” I said; my face was hot, my throat was thick. “You don’t understand.”

“I’d seen you flirting, but I didn’t think you would ever— He’s practically a teenager . His mother had just died .” She looked directly at me. “You were ridiculous. You were drunk.”

I wanted to run away.

“It wasn’t just me, okay?” I said. The words erupted. I wanted her to know that, I wanted to get that point across.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You were my guest, you should have known better.”

“I know.”

“You’re twenty-six years old.”

“I know that.” It came out more petulant than I meant.

“What were you doing in my room?”

“What?” I said, stricken.

“There are things— I mean, were you just snooping?”

“No.” Yes. “I was looking for cotton swabs.” I was trying to find out about you. I was trying to understand how you became the way you are. And the more and more I’ve found out, the less it adds up. You make no sense at all. You’re water flowing in all directions. You’re a different person every day. Sometimes you even look different to me. There’ll be a masculine slant to your nose and chin, or you’ll be guilelessly pretty. I’ve tried to find out about your whole life and I haven’t found out anything, and we haven’t become friends, and this summer is a frayed cord hanging in the air, and the mystery of you, the great mystery that I have not been able to figure out and probably never will — why have you never had sex on this earth? — is still hanging in the air. And nothing is guaranteed. And why haven’t you been able to be happy? Why haven’t you had this thing? When does the scale tip the other way for you, and what are we supposed to do with this kind of unfairness? And could it happen — that your life could go off, in subtle increments, and end up bombastically wrong — to anyone? And what if you want more ? What about what you want ?

“Cotton swabs.”

For half a second, I thought about telling her everything. Why I’d acted the way I had that summer, what was behind my spastic behavior. Maybe she’d understand. Maybe all our misconceptions about each other would collapse into a shared heap.

Instead, I said, “Yeah.” My voice cracked. I pushed down a sob. “Cotton swabs.”

Aunt Viv squinted, and for a brief moment she looked sorry for me. She steadied herself against the counter again, and then walked back to the kitchen table and sank into one of the chairs.

We were both quiet. The clock chimed. Six o’clock.

“I had to meet someone. An old friend was in town,” I said, absurdly, my voice high-pitched and warped. “And I really thought I’d make it back in time with the plates, for the show. And then this car hit me. I ran a light.”

Aunt Viv was nodding, short little efficient nods as if I was confirming something she already knew, as if I was confirming something that had long been confirmed about her life. She put her face in her hands again. When she looked up, her eyes were wet, and she started talking without recrimination, just, it seemed, explaining.

“Ellen was the history buff,” she said, “not me. She was the one who became interested in legend, the Knights of the Round Table and all of that. I only became interested in it later. I think I wanted… I only wanted to carry it on for her. She had a teacher. Mr. White. And she was going to study history. It was just an exercise, to be close to her again. The King Arthur plates, I wanted to do something she would have liked.”

I slowly nodded my head.

“She always used to read me the same part of The Once and Future King… ”

After a moment I said, “They were beautiful. I could tell.”

Her eyes were shining. “You think so?”

I nodded. And we were quiet like that, for a while, suspended, it seemed, in a ragged silence. I slowly sat down across from her. I said quietly, “I thought you liked him.”

She looked up.

“Gordon,” I said. “I thought, maybe, if I could just set you up…”

“With just anybody ?” She shook her head and went back to her own thoughts, a palm against one of her eyes.

We continued to sit there. My fingers pressed themselves into a beaded coaster that was on the table. I knew if I got up, and looked out the kitchen window, there would be a layer of mist. Soon, the trees in the distance would start to cast long shadows over the field.

“Aunt Viv,” I said. She turned toward me. I swallowed. “Why are you a virgin?”

She stared at me for a moment. She took a deep breath. I saw something flicker in her face, and then she exhaled and said — and I found it extraordinary not just because of what she said but because of the way she said it: “I don’t know.” She said it mournfully, with a deep well of helplessness. I don’t know , as if it was a question that had plagued her her whole life, still did, a deep wound. A question that was indeed in the air, I could tell by the way she didn’t question my questioning; worth asking, worth answering, that she had asked it of herself her whole life because it was confounding and didn’t make any sense.

She looked at me. “I tried,” she said. She nodded to herself and dabbed an eye with the collar of her robe. She turned her head the other way, and dabbed the other eye, and then stared out the window above the sink. A minute passed. I didn’t think she was going to continue, but then she said, “There was a man. Richard. He was my boss at the hospice, where I worked for such a long time.” She pulled her robe tight, wiped away her tears again as they came, smoothed down her lap. “We were really good friends. We worked together beautifully and, in a way, became really close. We had lunch together, just the two of us, three days a week for eight years. He was unhappy in his marriage and I guess I always thought… I don’t know what I thought.” She looked around the room. “I saw him recently,” she said, glancing at me. “At the grocery store. He was there with his wife and his son. It was as if there had been nothing between us. Maybe there never was.”

“But, what about before that? When you were younger, there was never…” I wasn’t sure how to continue.

“I was religious.” She slowly shook her head. “And it was different back then. You waited. And so, I waited. I was here a lot, helping with the house, with your grandparents. Someone needed to. I couldn’t just leave them here alone, with Ellen gone. And your father, he just”—she shook her hand dismissively—“went off.” She touched her ear as if making sure it was still there. “I couldn’t just leave them.

“I was never one to”—she looked down, she was trying to straighten the collar of her robe—“throw myself at someone. And then I said to myself, ‘Don’t expect so much.’

“I tried,” she said, almost to herself. She dropped her hands into her lap. She looked at me. “In my way, I tried.” Then she smiled a smile that was resigned and filled with sadness and sympathy and brimming with her whole gorgeous array.