Not Looking for Love: Episode 3 (2 page)

I go through the rest of the week like a robot. Classes in the morning, asleep by seven, then studying from three AM until it's time to go back to class.

On Friday afternoon, Phillipa comes home all red in the face, her hair plastered to her head with sweat. I've just made plans to meet Dad for dinner tomorrow night, and I'm already considering calling back and canceling. The terrible emptiness of home with Mom gone pressed in though the phone while I spoke to him. It transported me back to my own bedroom, anxiously waiting for her next raspy breath, her next coughing fit. Only she will never cough again, or smile, or laugh, or talk. Because she is gone, and I still don't feel her anywhere.

"You been to the Gym?" I ask and follow Phillipa into the kitchen where she chugs down a whole eight-ounce glass of water without pausing for breath.

"Better," she says and wipes some water off her chin. "Boot Camp."

"That sounds very military," I say, picturing beefy men doing pushups, only they're all Scott. He sent me a text last night, but I haven't read it yet. I'm too afraid he'll suck me back into the insanity that was my life for the last few weeks. I can't have that. Not now when the ground is finally firm under me again, and I'm taking control of my life.

"It's also amazing," Phillipa continues and flexes her bicep at me. "I feel so strong. I've been doing it since the beginning of term, and I think you should try it to."

"Why?" I ask, but I already know. Her tone changed pitch while she was saying it, and she sounded just like she does when she's talking about my mom dying.

"I think it will make you stronger too, and make it easier for you to deal with everything," she elaborates.
 

I pour a glass of water for myself, so I don't have to look at the pity spilling from her eyes.
 

"Are you speaking as a psychologist now?" I ask, a little too sharply maybe. "Because I'm doing OK."

"Yes, I am speaking as a future psychologist," she answers. "So trust me. There's a class on Sunday, and you're coming."

I shrug and drink the water. "Fine, but I probably won't like it. I'm more of a jogger."

Not that I've been doing any of that for a while, which maybe I should. Or not. A flitting thought still sends my heart racing like I've just run for ten miles, so I'm not sure heavy exercise is the best idea. That could be too much, and then my heart will just stop, and I'll die, join my mom in the grave, and all this dark emptiness will be gone forever for me too. My heartbeat is racing in my throat again, until I'm sure I was right and I'll just die here in this kitchen. And what would Dad do then?
 

"Are you alright, Gail?" Phillipa asks.

I force some water down my throat. "Yeah."

"We can have some dinner and talk," she says, undoing her ponytail. "I'll just shower first."

"OK," I hear myself say, though I'm not sure I really spoke.

After she leaves, I stare out the window, my mind so blank I hardly know where I am, or who.
 

I take a sleeping pill while she's still in the shower and am asleep before she comes out.

CHAPTER THREE

On Saturday, I arrive early to the restaurant where I'm meeting Dad. It's stuffy inside, and I wish they had a garden, but they don't, so I sip my water slowly, and try to ignore the growing nausea in my stomach.

When he arrives, Dad's hair is disheveled like he hasn't combed it since this morning, and the collar of his shirt is turned inward. I reach behind him and fix it when we hug, the smell of whisky on him sending bile into my throat.

"How are you holding up, Gail?" he asks after we order our food and drinks.
 

I fiddle with my napkin, not wanting to look into his bloodshot eyes and share the grief. "I'm OK, I guess. How are you?"

I want to chide him for driving here after he'd been drinking, and the words are on the tip of my tongue, but he looks so broken, so downtrodden that I absolutely can't burden him further.
 

"The house is so empty now," he says, and sloshes the whiskey around in his glass.
 

My eyes would be tearing up right now, if I wasn't so dead inside. I shrug, and roll my napkin up into a tube, tucking in the edges.
 

"I could move back home and drive to school everyday," I say, even though that's the absolute last thing I want to do.
 

He lays his hand over mine and squeezes. "No, sweetie, there is no need. I'll be fine."

I finally meet his eyes and nod. "Thanks."

Maybe it's not the right thing to say, but I'm so grateful to him for not taking me up on my offer. I can hardly get to sleep here, and when I finally do, my dreams are always of Mom and me, playing when I was little, shopping, strolling along the beach. But they always end the same, with her sightless, glistening eyes staring at the ceiling of a cold morgue. And when I wake, it's like she just died. Each and every morning it's the same. I wish I didn't have to sleep.

"Are you having any trouble getting caught up with your classes?" Dad asks.

I shake my head. "I've been studying a lot. I'm even a little ahead in some of my classes. I just can't think of anything else, but school work."

"Me neither," he says and drapes his napkin across his lap because our food has arrived. He's on his second whiskey, and I order my first.

My risotto is perfect, and the rice melts in my mouth, but I have no appetite. Normally, I'd be asleep by now and I can't wait to get home.

Dad eats fast, like he wants to leave too. And I understand him perfectly. Neither one of us can talk of Mom, it's too soon, yet not talking about her is painful too. I glance at the empty chair to my right a few times, trying to picture her sitting there, eating her own dinner, probably gnocchi, she always ordered that at Italian restaurants, but I can't. All I see is her dead body covered by a thin white sheet in the morgue.

Dad orders his third whiskey once the waiter collects our plates.
 

"Should you be drinking so much, if you're driving?" I ask, unable to stop myself this time. I'm already seeing Dad's bloody and battered body on a morgue slab, right beside Mom, and then I'll be all alone in the world. I can feel the chill from where I sit.

"It'll be fine," he says and drains half the glass. "I thought we could take a walk before I leave."

I call the waiter over. "Let's go now."

Dad pays and drinks the rest of his whiskey while I'm already standing, ready to leave.

Outside, the wind is picking up like it might rain, and now I'm picturing my dad driving home drunk, with zero visibility because of the sheets of rain coming down.
 

I wrap my arm around his as we walk. "Dad, can you stay the night? Leave in the morning?"

"I have some work to finish up tomorrow," he says, and I know his mind is already on that and no longer here with me.
 

"Please. The third room is still empty at mine and Phillipa's," I urge. I won't let him drive home tonight, I won't.

"I couldn't impose like that. Besides, I have nothing with me."

I stop in front of the all-night drugstore. "Here, we can get you a toothbrush."

"Sweetheart, I'll be just fine," he says and places his free hand over mine. "I'll drive slowly."

"No, you'll stay here," I say pulling him towards the drugstore.

"Gail, come on now. Nothing will happen to me. I'm not even drunk."

It's his tone that silences my protests more than anything else. It's firm and relentless and I believe him, just like I always do.
 

"Call when you get in, whatever the time," I mutter and he agrees.

He walks me to my house, and then I'm watching him turn the corner on the way back to the restaurant. I take out my phone to turn the ringer back on, so he can call and tell me he's alright later. There's a call from Scott, the sight sending a sharp cramp through my stomach. I leave the ringer off.

"Let's go then," Phillipa says at eleven the next morning, sticking her head in through my bedroom door. I've been up since four, outlining my term paper on the situation in Syria, and how the various agencies could do a better job of working together to solve the crisis. It's not due until after Thanksgiving, but I'm done with all my other homework and reading.

"Go where?" I ask, taking off my reading glasses and rubbing my eyes.

"Boot Camp, of course." She's already wearing her gym clothes, and I'm still in my pajamas.

"I don't know. How about I go sometime next week?" I ask.

She strides into my room and opens my closet. "Nonsense. Let's go. You'll feel better afterwards, I guarantee it."

She fishes around and pulls out my own gym clothes, holding them out for me to take. The firm glint in her eyes tells me she won't stop pestering me until I give in. Fifteen minutes later we're at the gym, and I'm giving my name and information to a short, bulky instructor who looks like he'd be more comfortable in some desert warzone than in this air-conditioned, sparkly gym.

There's ten of us, mostly women, which somewhat settles my fears that I'll get muscles just like his from this. Or just like Scott's, but I'm done thinking about him.

The instructor starts us off with some jumping jacks, while his assistant prepares a scary looking obstacle course, complete with weights, steps, medicine balls and thick ropes. I have to stop and rest before the warm-up is even over.

We split up into pairs to start the obstacle course. After the first round, I'm mostly just watching Phillipa do the exercises, because I'm nauseous like I might throw up, which is not something I want to do in front of all these people, though there's a bucket set out in the corner for that purpose.

We finish the session by running ten laps around the gym, which is something I should be good at, but I'm winded after three.

"You'll do better next time, you just have to stick with it," the instructor tells me while I'm sitting on the floor, trying to get my breath back. I nod because I can't speak.

"So, what did you think?" Phillipa asks on the drive back.
 

I catch sight of myself in the side mirror. My face is completely purple. "I'm not sure I'm cut out for this type of torture."

"I was dead on my feet the first time too, but it'll get easier," Phillipa says and laughs.

I'm not sure I'll ever go back, and that conviction grows when I can hardly make it down the stairs the next morning, because muscles I didn't even know I had hurt like someone sliced them open.

But I still go again on Wednesday and the following Sunday, because she's right. The exercise is making me feel stronger, like I can beat the abyss, maybe even climb out again one day. Or maybe it's just the soreness in my muscles that's driving all else from my mind.
 

Three weeks of Boot Camp later, and my biceps are defined, my legs completely fat free, but my stomach still won't go flat.
 

"Maybe you're just bloated," Phillipa says as I complain to her about it over a Sunday dinner. "You should eat better."

My dinner is a plate of French fries with honey mustard.

I make a face. "I hardly eat at all. I'm still nauseous most of the time."

"You might want to take it easy for awhile then," she suggests.
 

"Weren't you the one who made me start exercising?" I don't want to stop now. I'm so tired each night that I haven't even needed a sleeping pill for almost a week. Even the dreams of my mom are gone, and I'd do anything to make them stay away for good.

"I'm sure you're fine, Gail, don't stress so much," Phillipa says. "You're probably just going to get your period."

My insides fill with ice as she says it, and I drop the French fry I was about to eat. It can't be. I'd been off the pill for maybe a day or two when I did it with Scott, if at all. I can't be pregnant. But my stomach is rounded, my breasts are sore and I'm puking up my breakfast almost every day. Right now, I'm eating fries with mustard, which I'll probably follow up with some strawberry yogurt and chips. Just like I've been doing for the past week.

"What is it Gail? Are you feeling alright?" Phillipa asks, her eyes wide. "Your face is completely white."

"Fine," I say and get up to deposit my plate on the counter, my legs jelly.

I can't be pregnant. It's not possible. Not so quickly. I've been on the pill, since I was seventeen. No way I could get pregnant so quickly after missing just a few days. Not after having sex twice.
 

Phillipa is standing right beside me, her face about in inch from mine. "Talk to me, Gail. What's wrong?"

I force a smile even though my face feels like it's frozen still. "Nothing. I just remembered a huge mistake I made during my test on Friday. I hope old Harvey doesn't flunk me because of it."

Phillipa sighs and laughs. "Gail, you really scared me. But knowing you, it's probably just some trivial date you got wrong, so I'm sure you'll be fine."

"I don't know. Harvey might lose all respect for me because of it. I better go email him right now," I say and run out of the kitchen. If I stayed in the kitchen a second longer I'd tell her everything, and I can't do that, because then it would be real.

The last period I remember having was in August. Or was that the excuse I gave Kate, so I wouldn't have to go to her beach party?
 

I stare at my belly in the mirror for what feels like hours, even Google some pictures of women pregnant for a month or so. But it could just be normal, I could just be bloated, and the websites all say that stress and hard exercise can make you miss your period.
 

In the end, I tiptoe back down the stairs and drive to the drugstore to pick up a pregnancy test. But then I just stare at it until past midnight, my heart bouncing inside my chest. I want to sleep, but I won't take a pill, not with a baby growing inside of me. Only I can't keep it. I'm still in school.
 

It's a girl, I know it is. And then I'll get cancer and die young and she'll be all alone in the world. Sarah I'd call her, I always loved that name.