Jade Sharma - Problems

I slid into the seat, put my headphones on, and turned up the music. It was some indie band, singing, “Everything’s a mess,” and then something about a heart, and then I couldn’t understand the words. Peter put our bags in the trunk and slammed the door a little too hard.

Penn Station was packed. Kids twirled around. Tired parents studied the departure board. Peter went to pick up our tickets. I stood and waited for the gate number to appear. I called Amy, my college roommate. Amy had been calling me every night since she started working the late shift. She was going to be visiting her in-laws.

“Hey.”

“Hey, what’s up?” she said, sounding tired.

“I’m at Penn Station, and I don’t want to go,” I said, sweating in my big coat.

“It will be fine.”

“They don’t know we smoke. I’ll have to sneak around like I’m fourteen again. The sister is a Jesus freak. The brother and the brother’s girlfriend, Sue, who is hot and is studying to be a doctor. . a fucking doctor. How do I compete with that? What do I do? I’m fat, and I do nothing.”

“You’re working on your thesis.”

“Amy, I’m not.”

“They don’t know that.”

“Amy, I’m using.”

“When did that start?”

“I never stopped.” I had told her I stopped. “But I stopped today. Today I’m clean.”

“Good,” she said. “Are you anxious?”

“I need a Xanax, and we haven’t even boarded the train.”

“Yeah, well, pause for a moment and feel bad for me. I’m in weirdo white-trash world Upstate with Dennis.”

“Yeah, how’s his mother?”

“Maya, this morning I woke up, and she was sitting on the couch dipping saltines in a jar of generic mayonnaise. Watching an infomercial like it was a real show.”

“That’s disgusting,” I laughed.

“There was a pork chop on the counter. I mean, with no plate or napkin or anything.”

“Get out off the phone. The train is boarding,” Peter said, tickets in hand.

“I got to get on the train. I’ll call you,” I said.

“Okay. Have fun.”

The train would have made a great target for a terrorist attack. It was packed.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to sit together,” I said as we slowly made our way through the car.

“Shouldn’t we at least check the next car?”

“We could, but what’s the point?” I said, eyeing the car for an empty seat by the window. There wasn’t one. I collapsed in an aisle seat. Peter stood there like a wounded child. A woman in the next aisle stood up and offered him the window seat next to her.

I closed my eyes. If there was a bomb, it would be so fast. What would I feel? Probably heat and pain, and then nothing. It could happen any second. The train started bumping along. No such luck. Mom, in that big house in the suburbs slowly wasting away, always complaining of her failing body. The thought of a quick death didn’t seem like the worst thing. Age is meaner than death.

There were trees and sky, and the city receded farther and farther behind us. Another world. It was hot. I wanted to take off my coat. I thought that ten more times before I actually took it off. I’d worn my denim skirt and a red blouse. At home in front of the mirror, sucking in my stomach, it had looked elegant, but as I sat there, my fat rolls pushing against the elastic of my skirt and falling over the top button, it felt awful. My stomach growled. The worst was to feel both fat and hungry.

Peter came over. “Want to go to the dining car?”

“Yeah, okay.”

The only thing Suboxone didn’t help with was the sweats. The back of my head and neck were wet.

The windows were huge, and the air felt easier to breathe. We sat in a booth.

“Can you buy me a bottle of water?” I asked him.

“I only have two singles.”

“Just use your card.”

“I don’t know if they take cards.”

“For Chrissake, Peter, go and check. I’m dying of thirst.” He got up. Cheap bastard. Never wanted to spend a penny. He rolled his own cigarettes and refilled my old water bottles to take with him everywhere, even though he made good money. When we’d first met, he worked in the bookstore as a merchandiser and made next to nothing. “I make everything pyramid shaped,” he’d said on our first date. What good was all that nagging to get a better-paying job if he still refused to spend a dime? “But we’re making more money,” I would say. “Yeah, well, we need to save it.” I’d asked a million times but never really understood what we were saving for. He came back with a brown box and a can of beer, a bottle of water, two packs of M&M’s, and chips. He sat down in front of me. His eyes, as innocent and guilty as a child’s, tried to gain my forgiveness.

“I had to spend at least ten dollars to use my card,” he explained.

“Oh, thanks,” I said. He was trying to be nice.

“Are you mad?”

“You were just being so awful this morning.” All morning, bustling around like a maniac, sighing and cursing to himself. Annoying the shit out of me.

“I’m sorry. I just get so anxious. Can we please just try to be nice to each other? I don’t want to have a bad time.” As if I did? That was the implication, that I wanted everyone to be miserable. He popped open the Bud and took a long sip. Great , I thought, just drink. Go be fucked-up in your world, and leave me here alone to deal with reality .

Lily Tomlin once said, “Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.”

“Okay, well, don’t act like a jerk,” I said.

“Can we please just watch The Simpsons on the laptop?”

He opened the laptop while I looked out the window, trying to decide whether or not to let him off the hook. My brain was tired. The sky looked so open outside of New York, not just above, but all around. A few brown trees, open fields. People were always saying how crowded the world was becoming, but outside of that window, there was so much space left.

Grace, Peter’s sister, met us at the train station. She was wearing a flowered, matronly dress and, strangely, one white glove. She hugged us. I was pissed I couldn’t sneak in a cigarette before she came.

It was colder. I zipped up my coat and buttoned it. They walked ahead, Peter carrying my two canvas bags and his one small tote.

Christ , I thought. It’s happening. We’re really here .

“What happened to your hand?” Peter asked Grace in the car.

“Oh, I burned it. I was frying zucchini in a pan and put in too much oil, and I tried pouring some of the oil out into a bowl, and it dripped down my hand.” She laughed the way girls laugh, like, “I’m such an idiot, aw shucks.”

“That sucks,” I said. Peter shot me a look. “Sucks” wasn’t the right word. Should have gone with awful. “How awful”; that would have been the right thing.

It was an unspoken rule that everyone dealt with Grace with kid gloves. Grace was the type of girl who had “victim” written on her forehead. She was so trusting and so unsure of herself.

“So, what did you think of Sue?” Peter asked. His voice had changed already. A little bit more corny.

“Oh, she is so nice. Last night she helped with dinner, and she’s so much fun, which is good for Jake. You know how serious he is.” Her face relaxed in a little smile.

Helped with dinner? Oh god, this Sue was worse than I thought. When I came to visit two Christmases ago, I hadn’t helped with anything. I caught the flu on the train down and spent the entire four days of our visit shivering or sleeping in their clapboard house. Only one small TV in the enclosed porch, which the whole family crowded around. Peter’s mother bringing bowls of chicken broth, his father not knowing what to say, eyeing me.