Jade Sharma - Problems

“So, what do you say, should I open a bottle of wine?” Rick said to Darren.

“Can I see it?” Peter said. I loved how Peter acted as if knowing wine was an actual hobby of his, when it was just like what watching porn was for a sex addict. The culture of wine, learning obscure cocktails, having just a beer. He was a fucking alcoholic.

“I say, sounds like a great idea,” Darren said. Peter walked over and put his arm around me, which made me uncomfortable. I hated the way he was always touching me. My stomach cramped. I was going to have the runs.

There was only one fucking bathroom, and someone was in there, taking forever. You couldn’t say, “I seriously will shit myself if you don’t stop fucking touching me.”

On the toilet, I doubled over in pain. I wanted to fucking die. When I stood up, my vision darkened. I sat back down on the toilet lid. I closed my eyes. Did I need to puke or shit? Did I need more Suboxone, or had I taken too much? I stood up. Shit on the floor and puke in the toilet, or puke on the floor and shit in the toilet? I lay down on the cool tiles with my eyes closed. Get it together. Grow up. Get it together. Darkness. Self-loathing. Regret. I was an addict. I wasn’t an addict; I was just in a fucked-up situation. I was going to end up homeless. Everything would be fine. I needed to use a lifeline. I needed to ask the studio audience. I needed to phone a friend.

I let myself cry for a minute.

Eventually you had to say to yourself, “Get over yourself.”

Peter’s father took Darren down the hall somewhere. Sue reappeared, humming, in her apron, ready to take out her pie. Jake was putting something in a pan. “Did you make something?” I asked him.

“Yeah, just an apple crisp.”

“Yeah, we bought some apples this morning, and we browned them with sugar,” Sue added.

“Huh,” I said, deadpan. It had been only two hours, and already I was exhausted by faking enthusiasm.

Peter’s mom chopped something and Peter left again. I was just standing there, in the kitchen. There was an empty chair at the dining table so I sat down, but then it was like I was sitting there while everyone else was doing something. I stood back up. “Do you need help?” I asked. No one heard me. So. Huh. I sat back down.

The wine. Find the wine.

I found a glass. “Do you want something to drink?” Sandy asked.

“Where is the wine?”

“Oh,” she said, and then she came closer, “about the wine. Grace is, well, you remember, over Christmas. She’s touchy about having wine in the house, you know. She has her beliefs. So we compromised; we’re keeping the wine in the other room.” She smiled, apologetically.

Grace went to a religious college and lived in a “sober dorm.” If she was lame as a college student, how lame would she become as an adult? Or would the lameness build up until she reached forty, when she would become addicted to coke and rediscover God? Or would she maintain her lameness until she died? Or maybe she had a different measurement for lameness, and in her own world, eating ice cream past midnight and talking all night was her being wild. Was lameness subjective? Was it something we grew out of or something we eventually had to experience?

A boy. She would meet the wrong boy, and then anything could happen. It was always like that: girl is fine, meets boy, falls in love, ruins life, boy leaves, girl straightens life out, dusts Bible, puts on lame dress, and goes back to church. At least then she would have something to repent for, experiences to regret. I wished I could have given her some of mine. I wished I were someone no one ever had to worry about. I should have been with my mother, who was dying of MS. I should have saved money and bought her nice presents. A knot in my stomach. I wanted to hug my mom. I felt the future me looking back at the selfish me, who spent all her time avoiding her sick mother, staying high, and being a huge disappointment.

Last Christmas Grace and Rick got into a big fight with Peter about having alcohol in the house. They compromised and kept the alcohol away from Grace. They must have made the same arrangement. “Just don’t cross the line into the dining room,” Sandy said into my ear as she poured my glass. I nodded, like this was all very reasonable.

Wasn’t part of Jesus’s whole thing turning water into wine?

Two Xanaxes and two glasses of wine later, I felt amazing. Xanax was like a shortcut out of the woods of addiction and into the clearing of sobriety. Fucking Xanax. I could do this every month or so. Get clean, let my dope tolerance drop so I wouldn’t need to use as much to get high, save money, stay clean for long stretches — but still have dope when I needed it. I could use until Peter and I had babies and then slide right back into society, blend into Facebook with baby pictures, my hair in a baseball cap, complaining about how tired I was in my status updates. Life would take over, and like a mountain climber, I would keep going. A stupid, idiotic mountain climber moving very slowly up a big, dumb mountain, weighed down by a bag of shit, finding one foothold at a time, just to turn around and do it all over again backwards. All this until I woke up one day and was old. My kids will have taken over, and I’ll have become part of the shit they’ll have to carry with them. Just like my mother, haunting me. If only she was kind enough to become a memory. Memories didn’t call. Memories didn’t nag. Memories stayed golden and young, and you kept the ones you wanted. Memories didn’t have lesions on their brains and chairs in their showers. She used to be young and pretty. Did she know, when she opened the oven to check on dinner, that taking care of kids was how she was wasting the best years of her life? That was what I was aspiring to do, but at least I knew it. At least I experienced college and watched enough television with female leads to know exactly what I would regret. She wasn’t stupid. Having a family was a popular way to waste your life, so maybe it wasn’t the worst way. You had to do something or do nothing. She knew she would have finite time to be in her physical prime, so why did I feel bad? Why did I have to be implicated? Why did I feel guilty that she had wasted it on me? She lived the life she wanted. It was her choice not to finish school, not to have a career, to marry an old man she didn’t love. She had her eyes wide open.

All the pain went back to my mother. Freud didn’t seem that deep. It was natural to contemplate the very beginning and the first person you ever met, whose job was to keep you alive when everything was brand-new, and you were perfect with all kinds of perfect futures. I popped another Xanax. Things were going to be absolutely fine.

Peter’s father, at the head of the table, said, “Okay, I guess we’ll start.” I nodded, but something was wrong because I was the only one still standing up. Then I realized Darren had my hand, and I looked around. Oh, right, the praying .

“Thank you, Lord, for the food we are about to receive. .”

It was just like the movies! “And for the animals who gave their lives for us to have this meal and. .” This struck me as hysterical. The animals? Like they agreed to be sacrificed? Then that feeling hit me, the one where you knew you weren’t supposed to laugh, so all you wanted to do was laugh. I bit down on my lip, hard.

After the prayer, I shot straight up to the buffet and filled my plate with green beans and a heap of mashed potatoes, and put the plate down to slice some meat. “Maya, don’t forget about the onions, they’re over there,” Peter’s father pointed across the room.

“Did you make them?” I asked.

“I grew ’em,” he smiled.

I couldn’t tell if he was being serious. “Wow, that’s, um, I didn’t know you could do that,” I said, meaning growing food when the ground was so cold, but it sounded like I didn’t know anyone could grow anything.