Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

“I love your sweater,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“And I like that thing on your neck—what is it?”

“Jade,” she says, touching it with her fingers.

“I bet it’s warm. It must get warm when it hangs on your neck.”

“This is criminal!” Heather yells from the bathroom.

“You’ll do time for this.”

“You want to sit down?” Lauren asks.

“Okay,” he says.

They cross the landing into what looks to be a guest room.

Lauren flops down onto a large white sofa. “I bet the Davidsons are drinking pina coladas in some beach hut on Aruba.”

“Yeah,” Ted agrees, “talking to friends about their good son Jack applying early admission.”

“Exactly.”

“My parents never go away,” he says. “Do yours?”

“Sometimes. They’re trite. They care about silly things.”

“Harsh.”

“Yeah,” she says. “It is.”

Ted perches on the edge of the couch. “You seem older.”

She turns to look at him, her eyes slightly narrowed, slightly blurred.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like you’ve experienced all this before. The way you don’t talk much, but like you’re thinking something instead, something you’re not saying. It’s odd.” He would like to put his hand behind her head and let it rest in his palm, perhaps taste the jade lozenge hanging round her neck. He wonders what he would know about her if they touched.

“I’m stoned,” he says, leaning back into the sofa. “If I say weird stuff, you won’t be offended, will you?”

She shakes her head. “I’m drunk.”

Ted closes his eyes. He sees Mrs. Maynard asleep in her room up on the hill. He’s never mentioned to his parents or his brother that he visits her, but then they’ve never asked about the program he signed up for.

“I went to this store today,” he says, “with this woman I visit over in Plymouth, for the volunteer thing. I draw for her usually, but we went out today. She kind of flipped out in the store. She ripped up this poster they had, and then…” He sees Mrs. Maynard’s face as she gazed, terrified, onto the highway ahead of them. “In the car she told me there was a woman sitting in the backseat, but that I shouldn’t look because she was angry. She said she heard the woman’s voice a lot but she only saw her once in a while.”

He opens his eyes and looks at Lauren. “The strange thing is,” he says, “I wasn’t scared. I mean, it was creepy, but I believed her.”

“You thought there was really another person in your car that you couldn’t see?”

“For her there was, yeah.”

To this Lauren makes no reply. They sit on the couch a while, listening to Lou Reed singing from downstairs. The borderline defeat in his voice seems alien to the objects in the room: the coffee table books, the dried flowers, the wafflepatterned bed skirts, the beige clock and ruffled curtains—these things they’re supposed to want one day. The objects persist blandly in the bland intention of their owners. For Ted, they have the sadness of the things in his own house, the maple living room set his parents bought the year he was born, the dining room table they used to sit at when he was younger, reminders of old marital hope. He and Lauren are just florid detritus in a room like this, drifting past on the dead river of time that never ceases here.

“I like you,” Lauren says.

Suddenly, Ted’s heart crashes into his rib cage. He hears George Clooney yell, “Lidocaine!” sees himself sped on a gurney toward a team of doctors, bright lights, IV drips, and he knows he is very high and all of a sudden absolutely happy.

“That’s so cool,” he says to her. “I got you some lipstick.”

And then Heather is standing in front of them, rage of a prosecutor emblazoned on her face, and she says she’s leaving, there’s another party at the Putnams’, and if they want a ride they better come.

THE HOLIDAYS BRING Christmas lights and family visits to Plymouth Brewster, along with the news that Mrs. Johnson is retiring at the end of the year. The new man, Mr. Attwater, young and handsome in a boring sort of way, wears dark suits and shakes everyone’s hand. The older women coo, the younger women are suspicious, the men play cards. Rehearsals for Our Town keep Ted from coming the first two weeks of December, though he calls to tell Elizabeth and says he’s sorry.

The second time he phones they speak a long while. Ted sounds reluctant to hang up. Finally, Elizabeth steels her courage and asks, “Have you seen Lauren?” They have not mentioned their trip to the mall.

“Yeah,” he replies with the quick, breathless voice she’s come to recognize as his unconscious signal of interest.

“Yeah, she’s in the play. I get to narrate what she does and stuff.”

“I’m sorry, Ted, that we didn’t get her a gift.”

“Oh no, that’s cool. I actually gave her the lipstick anyway.

She was kinda into it.” He pauses. “I’ve been sort of wondering, like when you were married…”

“Yes?”

“Or like before that, when you guys were dating… I mean at some point, you guys, like, got together so you must have let him know when it was cool to do that, right?”

“That’s right,” Elizabeth says. “He would call the dorm. I would tell him if I were free on the evening he suggested. He was very reliable in that regard. He always called when he said he would. You should remember that, Ted. Politeness is a tremendous asset.”

“Yeah, right,” he says. “But like after that, I mean after you decided to hang out, did you let him know when other stuff should happen, or did he kinda… let you know?”

“Oh. I see. You mean about sex.”

She can almost feel his wince at the other end of the line; she restrains a giggle.

“Yes,” he whispers.

“I’m afraid I’m not much of one to ask about these things. But you’re a good person. You’re kind. Be kind to her.”

“Okay.”

The next time he calls he tells her it’s coming up for winter break at the high school, and with performances and things he and the other volunteer won’t be back until January.

Elizabeth hadn’t been told about a break over the vacation, and she takes it hard. But Ted calls each week, once on Christmas, and with this she thinks she will get by until the day he returns.

Judith, the nurse, has grown suspicious of her behavior over the last few weeks, hearing her talk sometimes, and Elizabeth has begun flushing her Primidone down the toilet rather than risk discovery. She’s been on the drugs so long she’s forgotten many ordinary satisfactions. What cold water feels like in a parched mouth. The pleasure concentration on a single thought can yield. The days bring with them the pulse, the hum, joyous sometimes, terrifying others, but alive, full and alive. And they bring Hester, never now a day without her. In the midst of it all, there is so much she wants to ask Ted that she’s started making a list so she won’t forget.

NEW YEAR’S EVE begins with a clear, bright sky, flooding Elizabeth’s room in light. The annual party is scheduled for after dinner. Families will drop by in the early evening and everyone will be in bed by ten. It is Mrs. Johnson’s last day as director and she makes the rounds of the rooms saying goodbye. Some of these men and women she’s known twenty-five years. It’s just after lunch, as the sky clouds over and snow begins to fall, that she comes to Elizabeth. They start as they always do by Mrs. Johnson reporting what she’s been reading—a book written by a foreigner about traveling in America, she says, full of suggestions for places to visit.

She and her husband plan a trip across the country in the spring. She’s never been to the South and wants to go.