Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

Zoe flattened her hands over her notebook. “Listen,” she said, her voice low and even. “Here’s what I think. Hyacinth will be back up and running soon, which is great, but I think it’s time for something new. I think we need a change.”

“Shit,” Jane said. “Shit! I really thought that things were getting so much better, Zo! How do you not see it? I know my temper isn’t great, and I know that I’m moody, and that I haven’t been to the gym in ten years, but come on! How do you not see that we are good?” Jane could feel her heart rate skyrocketing. “I love you. Don’t leave me. I will do anything.”

Zoe smiled and moved her hands. Hidden underneath them was a drawing of a storefront. There were windows all along the street, like at Hyacinth, but with small round tables facing out. Above the door, the sign read HOT + SWEET, with a drawing of a pretzel. “It doesn’t have to be a pretzel,” Zoe said. “I just like the shape. It could be a croissant. Or a muffin, maybe. No, I don’t like the way muffins look. But it could be a croissant.”

“What is this?” Jane turned the page and saw that there was more. More drawings, more notes. “Ditmas Park’s First Gourmet Bakery.” A list of their suppliers, some menus.

“We make everything. You make everything. I already know what light fixtures we should have. This kid out in L.A. makes these lamps that look like mod octopuses….” She was still talking when Jane stopped her with a kiss. Zoe was laughing, and they were kissing, and then Jane was laughing, too.

“You scared me,” Jane said. She shook her head. “Don’t scare me like that.”

Zoe took her wife’s face in her hands. “Never again. Now, tell me, what do you think?”

“Hot and Sweet,” Jane said. “I love it.”

“Good,” Zoe said. “Because Elizabeth thinks she has a place. You know where the hair salon is, with the yellow awning? Before that, like maybe ten years ago, it was a tiny little Dominican coffee shop? Right across from the fire station?”

Jane closed her eyes. “With the patio. We could have outdoor seating on the side.”

“Exactly.” Zoe reached over and slid her arms around Jane’s waist, folding herself onto Jane’s lap. “A new project. A new baby.”

“A new baby made out of butter.”

“Best kind,” Zoe said, nuzzling in as close as she could, and then even closer.

The office was just as Zoe had described — nicely messy, with stacks of books on the floor beside the bookshelves. Elizabeth and Andrew shuffled in awkwardly and sat down next to each other on a well-worn tufted couch.

“So,” Dr. Amelia said, “what brings you here? Elizabeth, we spoke on the phone briefly, but I always like to start out couples that way, so that we can all be on the same page. In the same boat. On the same team.” She nodded at both of them, her lips pursed with anticipation. The appointment had been a gift — Jane and Zoe were skipping their session and sent Elizabeth and Andrew instead. It wasn’t a present you could give to everyone, but there you were.

“Well, I, um,” Andrew began. “I think I’ve been feeling a bit lost, professionally, for, um, for some time.” He paused. “I think that’s where this started.”

“Really?” Elizabeth said, her head rearing back. “I think this started when we were about nineteen years old, don’t you?” Ever since leaving Montauk, Elizabeth had slowly been feeling layers of her anxiety flake off, like a snake’s old skin. Bits and pieces dropped off all the time — Harry having sex, Harry having sex in public, her first gray hair, the fact that her boss sometimes still called her Emily, the way Lydia looked at her a million years ago, the way fake Lydia looked at her now, the way she’d always been worried about how Andrew was feeling. Dr. Amelia and Andrew were both looking at her with wide eyes, and Elizabeth realized she was talking.

“And then I also think we should talk about how you basically just joined a cult by accident because you need friends, and a job, and a vocation, which I know isn’t easy to come by — I mean, I’m a real-estate agent, which isn’t exactly something children dream about becoming, you know?” She was panting slightly, but it felt good, like she’d just run around the block. Elizabeth wanted to run. On the train home, she’d written three songs, and she was pretty sure that at least two of them were as good as “Mistress of Myself.” She wanted to play them for Andrew, but she also wanted to make a demo and send them to Merge and Sub Pop and Touch & Go and say, Hey! Here I am! I’ve been here all the while! She knew some of the right people, at least to start. She just needed to figure out which direction to go. It was exciting, almost, like having a fever so high that you thought you were on another planet. “I think I need a break, maybe. Like a few months. I think I need to travel by myself for a little bit.” Elizabeth rubbed her hands on her thighs. “Maybe rent a house somewhere, record some music, just take some time.”

“Okayyy,” Dr. Amelia said. “Let’s start there. Andrew? Jump on in here, the water’s fine.”

“The water is definitely not fine,” Elizabeth said. She threw her head back and laughed. “The water is not fine.”

“Come on, Lizzy,” Andrew said. “We were totally cool a few minutes ago, weren’t we?”

Elizabeth looked at her husband. There were so many pieces of advice she’d heard over the years: not to marry someone she wouldn’t want to be divorced from, not to marry someone she wouldn’t want to be, not to marry someone who didn’t treat her as an equal if not a superior being, not to marry someone for sex, to marry for sex, to marry for friendship, not to marry for companionship. They’d been together for so long that Elizabeth didn’t know which of those rules she’d followed — she certainly hadn’t known when they got married. Those guidelines were all for people like Ruby and Harry, city kids who probably wouldn’t get married until they were thirty and wouldn’t have kids until they were thirty-five. Somehow, though they hadn’t meant to, she and Andrew had behaved like they lived in the 1950s, rushing into adulthood with no sense of themselves as individuals.

Dr. Amelia stuck the tip of her pen into the hollow of her cheek, leaving a small blue polka dot. “What do you think about that, Elizabeth? Are you cool?”

The air-conditioning clicked on, sending a sudden blast of freezing cold air onto Elizabeth’s right side. Andrew gave an involuntary shake, and she saw a path of goose bumps pop up on his bare forearms.

“I don’t think we know the answer to that yet, Dr. Amelia,” she said. She tugged a pillow from behind her back and laid it on her lap. “I think we’re really just getting started here.”

Andrew had the strangest look on his face — partly a grimace, and partly a grin, like he couldn’t tell his lips what to do and so they were making their own suggestions.

“You know what, though?” Elizabeth said. “This just occurred to me. I actually don’t think it’s all your fault what’s happening here.”

“That’s good, sharing the responsibility,” Dr. Amelia said.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “ Yes. It’s also clearly my fault for not losing my mind ten years ago,” she said. “Or twenty. If I’d been more wild, more willing to experiment and crash and burn and fail, then I don’t think we’d be here right now. We might not be here at all.”

“What do you mean? That we’d be dead?” Andrew, the poor dear, looked so confused that Elizabeth wanted to sit him in the corner with a dunce cap.

“No, not dead. Just not married. I’m not saying that I want that. Maybe I want that, I’m not sure yet. But I do think that we’re both so static — and that’s why we’re sitting here.”