Mary Robb - Down the Rabbit Hole

Slouching in a booth at some bar she didn’t recognize, Max’s sigh was deep and loud. “It’s been two weeks. And six days. That’s almost three weeks. I should at least call her; send a text . . . just hi . I need to do something. What if she’s forgotten about me?”

The wrist under the fist supporting Roger’s cheek went limp in disbelief. “Do you need a slap or something? I’m telling you, she’s in bad shape.” His pause was dramatic. “Not as bad as you , clearly, but I have it from a reliable source that she’s been calling in sick to work and then spending the whole day in bed. My source caught her a couple of times with puffy red eyes and a stuffed-up nose, which—and you should take my word on this, too—once seen can never be unseen or mistaken for anything but crying.”

“No. I don’t ever want to see her cry.” Max took a swig of his beer. “Happy crying would be okay. I could handle that. But I don’t ever want to see her as unhappy as she was the last time I saw her. I swear to God, it was all I could do to walk away from her. She looked so hurt and confused.”

“I still say stubborn.” Roger finished off his beer and motioned to someone for two more. “I know how my wife and my sister work, but I have no idea what drives them to do what they do. If I say no to Molly all she hears is Oh sure, sweetie pie, do whatever you want . Elise is really good at overanalyzing everything. Her mantra is Yes, but . It can drive you completely insane, but eventually she gets to the point where everything yes is bigger or better than whatever comes after the but .” He took two beers off a waitress’s tray and handed one to his companion. “It just takes time. What?”

Max caught himself staring, gape-mouthed. “I can’t believe I understood that.”

“Well, that’s because you’ve spent more than ten minutes with her. In thirty years you’ll have an owner’s manual full of female gibberish. The thing you have to remember is that nothing you do is going to change anything. See, with Elise, you can give her all the answers, write them down for her and show her scientific evidence, and she still has to stubbornly go through her whole weird process until she comes to the conclusion you gave her in the first place.” He tipped his head and squinted at Max. “Come to think of it, you should probably run away while you still can.”

Max chuckled. “Too late. I am hopelessly in love with your sister.”

Roger shook his head in commiseration. “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

“I don’t know. One minute I’m standing behind her at the grocery store. She’s reading the Cook’s Illustrated magazine while she waits for the people ahead of her to finish. Her feet hurt, I guess, because she steps out of one shoe and then the other and stands there in her bare feet, reading, waiting, curling her toes. I was mesmerized. And the minute there was movement in the line she was back in her shoes and returning the magazine . . . then she changed her mind and put it in her cart.” He sighed again and met Roger’s sympathetic gaze. “I wanted to follow her home like a puppy.”

“Molly backed into my practically new, parked Cherokee Trailhawk with her Mazda piece-of-crap car and the whole time she was standing there trying to be apologetic and responsible she had tears in her eyes. She never cried and her voice never cracked. We did the insurance thing and the cops came; the tears stayed and they never spilled, not one. I thought she was trying to kill me. I did follow her home, but only because I didn’t know if she could see well enough not to hit someone else.” He grimaced. “We’re pathetic.”

Max smiled. “Maybe. Probably. But I don’t feel that way when I’m with her. She does things that—”

“Is this going to get weird? This is my sister we’re talking about. I don’t want to have to knock you out.”

Max chuckled. “Pathetic, not insane.” Roger played relief. “I was going to say that she makes me feel like I belong. And awake. I feel so awake around her . . . and I didn’t feel asleep before.” Another forlorn sigh. “We fit, you know? Why can’t she feel it, too?”

“She does.”

“Really? She has an odd way of showing it.”

“I told you. It’s a process. She’s yes, but –ing.” He bobbed his head. “It doesn’t usually take this long, I’ll admit that, but she’s not exactly buying a new car. The good news is that once she makes up her mind about something it becomes a forever thing . . . like a Twinkie.”

Max laughed again—Roger had a way about him.

“I hope so. It’s been six months and I can’t imagine my life without her anymore.” He pushed both hands through his thick black hair, front to back, then looked up suddenly with an epiphany. “Love sucks, man.”

The both laughed then—agreeing, bonding, deciding to order burgers.

Elise watched, transfixed, as a vanishing Max forced forward a jovial demeanor for Roger when clearly, behind it, he was anxious and unhappy. “He loves me.”

“Yes, he does.”

“I’m a dope.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“He never said it to me. Not like that.”

“Then why didn’t you say it to him? Too afraid? Too proud?” She was both, and he knew it. “Did you know that historically it took forty years for Lois to discover that Clark Kent was Superman? Two people in a love triangle? All that time loving each other—him saving her life a dozen times a week, not knowing if she loved him or his superpowers and being super-insecure about it. And all it took in the end was trust and the truth. Think of all the time they wasted.”

These words came in a different tone of voice and from far above her. Things had changed again. She looked at her hands and touched her face . . . then touched it again to be sure.

“Oh.” A two-letter word filled with more relief than one would think possible. “I’m me again . . . I look like me again.” It then occurred to her: “I feel like a fool and I’m back to being me again?”

“Apparently that shoe fits.”

Elise sighed and started to turn to see who Martin planned to foil her with this time—she hesitated briefly, hoping it wasn’t God speaking from on high.

She saw it peripherally first—smooth, striped cyan-colored skin, a long sweeping tail—and eventually came around fully to face the lower hem of a . . . loincloth. Automatically stepping back, twice, her gaze traveled steadily up the slender ten-foot body of Jake Sully’s avatar, Toruk Makto, resplendent in native cuffs, bands and ties; hair braided with beads, bones and bright feathers.

God might have been a little less disquieting.

“I know.” He stretched out his arms, and his lemurlike eyes of golden-green danced. “Is this cool or what? I tried it once before on a guy from Philadelphia, but he fainted.” Bobbing his head and admiring himself, he added, “He was pretty much hysterical the whole time anyway. I should have known better, I guess—but Avatar had just come out and everyone was talking about it and I was really eager to try it out. Still, you know what they say: There’s no point trying to dazzle someone who’s out of their mind with fear. Right?”

“I can’t think of one, no.”

“So now I keep this one for special people who’ve made the most of this experience and are on their way out.”

“I’m on my way out?”

“If you think you’ve made the most of this experience, you are.” The beautiful blue Na’vi came down on one knee and sat back on his calf, making him more accessible but no less mind-blowing. His wide, muscled shoulders rustled costumes and barely fit between the partitions. He curled his tail around himself, and then he grinned at her. “I told you I’d help you find your way back.”