“I know, Ruth,” she says.
“Eating three servings a day—two hundred grams or seven ounces—can have a significant impact in lowering the risk of dementia and cognitive decline. The research on fruits was not conclusive.”
“Cruciferous?”
“That’s what it says. Also, walnuts. Berries, all kinds, and folic acid.”
“That’s interesting,” Mom says, not looking up from her magazine.
“I don’t object to you cooking,” she says, finally. “But I’m taking a little break, myself.”
I order new pots and pans online: a stainless-steel collection.
February 14
I’m at Walgreen’s to pick up my dad’s prescription and laundry detergent when I realize it’s Valentine’s Day. It’s six o’clock. A man holding a briefcase stands in the aisle where the heart-shaped boxes of chocolate are, reading labels. Another man is in the card aisle. Another man twirls all the false roses one by one, indecisively.
Every time I buy detergent I think about the oceans filling with soap and all the fish dying. I know it’s not accurate, but isn’t it true that all the water we have here on Earth is all the water we are ever going to have?
For dinner I make lamb chops seasoned with rosemary. I read that it’s the “herb of remembrance,” so I put it on the lamb and I put it in the mashed potatoes. But it’s too much rosemary, and it’s really not good. What I will remember, I realize, is this failure.
February 16
The chemistry teacher is on week two of his vacation, so we’ll meet in last week’s classroom.
I suggest tennis before class with a foolproof provocation: “I bet I can whoop you,” I say.
“You bet wrong,” Dad says, on cue.
And of course he can—he used to do push-ups with me on his back—but this is not the point. The point is that the car is safe, in a spot where Levin won’t be looking. I’m desperate to win, though.
“Rematch,” I say, for the fourth or fifth time.
He beats me swiftly again and again.
As we’re approaching the car, in the parking lot, I can see a little rectangle of paper. A ticket. I whisk it off, hoping to do it fast enough that Dad won’t notice, but he does.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“Menu,” I say.
February 19
Today you asked where babies came from, and I told you that they came from the mall. Where in the mall? you asked, and I told you the Burlington Coat Factory. I told you they were very expensive. I told you they were more expensive than the most expensive coat. We made a game of trying to find the most expensive coat.
I remember the look my mother gave him. It was a look that said, Are you sure this is a good idea?
“She won’t remember this, Annie,” he said, and I thought: Remember this. You’ll show them.
February 20
Today Dad revives the topic of Joel. He knows that Joel isn’t my fiancé anymore, except when he doesn’t.
The last trip Joel and I took together was to the beach. He was obsessed with the weather. He’d looked up the UV rating. It was unusually high and bound to give us very bad sunburns so long as we kept not discussing what needed discussing: all that had gone stagnant between us.
We’d driven to Half Moon Bay, for a picnic. We were eating sandwiches, in silence. I like to think each of us was acting out of consideration for the other: knowing we lacked the satisfactory answers, choosing to spare each other the trouble by not asking the questions.
Over by the water, there was a single black braid about to be pulled in, of great interest to the gulls. What I can’t figure out is if this thing is specific to me: with some frequency, I’ll find artificial hair in public. Instead of coins, it’s hair that appears—mainly on sidewalks and streets—improbably often. Together with Joel, there on this beach, was this not uncommon dreadlock.
“Dread,” I said, and pointed.
In a week it was over. All our years—that was the end of them.
There was one last thing, I guess: a pelican staggering like a drunk, circling a baby who was laughing in the sand. You know in Japanese, Joel said, the word for beak, kuchibashi, means “mouth chopsticks.”
Those are more like “mouth ladles,” aren’t they? was what I said. Later, while he was asleep in the car and I was driving home, I couldn’t stop crying.
I’m over it, swear to God. But sometimes a thing washes up, out of nowhere—like an ancient candlestick from some wrecked ship.
Like that time I had appendicitis and, after the operation, was lying miserably in bed. Joel pulled out a deck of hotel cards to pass the time. We played Go Fish. We played Hearts. He held my hand in one of his and with the other started to build a house from the cards. He laid the foundation on my stomach, and I tried my best not to breathe. I tried to hold very still, so I wouldn’t be the one to bring it down.
“When you know you’ve found the one,” my father is saying now, “you know you’ve found the one.” About Joel, whom he’s forgotten broke my stupid heart.
“But listen, Dad,” I have to say.
We met in college. I was standing outside the classroom building, waiting for my next class. I was eating a sandwich, turning slowly like a stand fan, trying to find the wind so it could blow the hair from my face and away from the sandwich. It was peanut butter and jelly and there was the risk of my hair getting caught in the jelly.
“Are you lost?” Joel had asked, justifiably. He invited me to a party that night. I said I’d think about it. In the end, I went only because I flipped this dime: heads meant go and tails meant stay. It had landed heads, so I went, but not before drinking a jelly jar of whiskey in my dorm room. That dime misled me.
The next time I saw Joel after the breakup, it was by accident—a couple of months later. It was Sunday, and we were both at the market on Market. We both had in our hands clear bags of carrots. I was seeing a mechanic named Franklin, who had a weakness for carrot cake and a two-year-old son named Davy. This was week number two of Franklin: we’d last a month.
There was a single tomato in a baggy in Joel’s other hand.
“For a salad,” he said.
And because we had nothing else to say to each other, I said, of all things, “I’ve heard some dogs enjoy the odd carrot.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, and then—to fill the silence—he said, “Someone told me cats can’t eat onions. They die if they do.”
“You’re Ruth,” said a woman. “Pleased to meet you.”
Joel introduced her as Kristin.