Adult Assembly Required, page 25
Having disappeared into her own reverie, she wasn’t paying attention when the conversation moved from musical instruments to the subject of Laura Costello.
Strangely enough, Madeleine started it.
She looked at Laura, decided she needed to evaluate this other person living in the house with Asher, and asked, “So, Laura, what is it you do for a living? Asher says you’re new in town?”
Laura, who had been peacefully letting the sounds of conversation wash over her while she contemplated the hand and wrist involvement in spoon use, looked up and hastily swallowed.
“Um, I’m going to grad school to study physical therapy. And yes, I’ve been here around a month. It’s very nice.”
Madeleine deployed a very useful muscle called the mentalis to pout a little. “Is that like a massage therapist?”
“No,” said Polly, leaping in while Laura was mentally counting to ten before answering. (The conflation of physical therapy and massage therapy was a bugbear for both sides of the confusion, and Laura was tired of clarifying.) “Physical therapists help people recover from accidents and injuries.”
“But you do do massage?” Madeleine said to Laura, ignoring Polly.
Laura nodded and opened her mouth, but Polly had her back up and was taking this one for the team.
“Sure, but she does a lot more than that. She helps people learn to walk again, things like that. Useful things.”
“What do you do, Madeleine?” asked Libby, wading into undercurrents he was totally oblivious to.
“I’m an interior designer,” said Madeleine, at which Polly made a snorting noise she quickly turned into a cough.
Madeleine had already identified Polly as her only competition for Asher’s affections, even though she wasn’t sure she was interested in his affections. She’d grown bored of the conversation about musical instruments and was ready to take back control of the evening. Despite the fact that she looked like a character from Beatrix Potter, Madeleine was . . . well, there’s no other way to say it: an asshole. She’d had parents who were proud of her prettiness and very little else, and the fact that she’d always gotten what she wanted as long as she stayed quiet and smiled long enough made her resentful and sour. She didn’t like other women, because they were friendly at first and then less so, whereas men were oblivious at first and then very obliging.
“Asher tells me you work in a shop, Polly.” She made “shop” sound like “brothel.”
Polly nodded. “A bookstore, yes. Have you read any good books?” She didn’t add the usual “lately,” but left it there.
Madeleine narrowed her eyes, and responded, “Yes, of course. Asher also tells me you’re an actress.”
Polly nodded.
“Have you been in anything I might have seen?”
Polly shrugged. “I don’t know, I don’t do reality TV.”
Bob looked across the table at Laura, who was looking back at him with a mounting sense of panic. There was going to be a scene, she could feel it. He gave her one of his fleeting winks, and she flickered a smile. They would keep their heads down and the storm would pass over them. At least they weren’t talking about her any longer.
“You know,” said Nick conversationally, “Laura could have been anything she wanted to be.”
And we’re back to me again, thought Laura. Fantastic.
Maggie looked at Laura and then at Nick. “Well, isn’t she being what she wants to be?”
“So she says”—Nick shrugged—“but she has a truly first-rate mind, she had offers from Caltech, MIT, Cornell, Stanford . . .”
Bob frowned. “Where did you go to school?”
“Columbia,” said Laura quietly. “My parents are professors, it was free, why would I go anywhere else?” She looked at Nick. “Nobody wants to discuss this.”
“But you could have been a scientist,” said Nick incredulously.
Laura sighed. “I didn’t want to spend my life in a lab, Nick, you know that.”
“She has so much energy,” said Maggie. “She would be totally bored sitting inside all day.”
“Seriously,” chimed in Anna. “Have you seen how much she runs every day? Have you seen her swim?”
Nick shrugged. “She could still do all that physical stuff, but she could have contributed to the world.”
“I do contribute . . .” said Laura, but they were still discussing her.
Nick was a tiny bit drunk. “Yes, but you could have done your little physiotherapy thingy at Columbia, you didn’t need to move all the way to the other side of the country. Maybe you thought the standards would be lower on the West Coast?”
“I bet it’s super challenging,” said Anna staunchly. “Not everyone likes thinking all day.”
“I think—” asserted Laura, but Madeleine interrupted her.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be like her parents.” Madeleine was proud of this insight, even though she never could have applied it to herself. “She came across the country for a reason, right?” She raised her eyebrow artistically at Nick. “Maybe she came here to get away from you?” She lowered her lashes. “Although why anyone would do that, I don’t know . . .”
Asher frowned. “People change their minds, maybe she felt like a change.”
Laura tried again. “I wanted . . .”
“All I’m saying,” said Nick, finishing his glass of wine with a flourish and pouring himself another, “is that she’s wasting her brain.” He held up his palms. “But that’s the thing with Laura, she’s impulsive first and stubborn second. She leaps into things, and then refuses to change her mind.”
Bob looked across the table at Laura and could see how much she wasn’t enjoying this.
“So,” he said to Nick, “you were explaining the difference between . . .”
It didn’t work. “Although,” said Nick, “that isn’t totally true. After she had her accident, she changed her mind completely.”
Madeleine looked vaguely interested. “You had an accident? What happened?”
Laura opened her mouth, but Nick pointed his finger and talked over her. “One minute she was all set to go to grad school and deepen her study of whatever it was she was interested in— can’t remember right this second, this is excellent wine—and then she was like, yikes, broke my leg, guess I’ll be a nurse instead.” He laughed around at everyone, not that anyone else was laughing. “You can only imagine what her parents thought about that!”
Laura frowned. Nick was drunk and this was deeply annoying.
“What’s wrong with being a nurse?” asked Libby, puzzled. He noticed Anna was frowning at Nick now, and welcomed this development. He hadn’t liked the other guy from the get-go and was more than happy to help him dig himself a deeper hole.
“Nothing,” said Nick, “if that’s as far as your brain will take you, but Laura’s much too smart for that. She has a gift for science, she could have changed the world.” He looked at Laura and had another thought. “Of course she needs to get her mental illness sorted out, no one’s going to take her seriously if she keeps bursting into tears all the time, it’s hard enough being a girl already.” He looked owlishly at the women at the table. “Sorry, but that’s the truth, whether it’s fair or not, and a scared little girl isn’t going to get tenure, is she?”
Several mouths opened to respond, but then a new voice chimed in.
“Hey,” said Nina Hill, who was standing at the kitchen door. “I knocked but nobody heard me, and the door was unlocked . . .”
“Who’s that now?” asked Madeleine, who was getting very tired of everyone talking about someone else.
“I’m Nina,” said Nina, coming into the kitchen. She looked at Maggie. “I’m sorry for walking in, I wanted to bring Laura this.” She held up a T-shirt that read Trivia Bowl Semifinals, with a truly repulsive design of question marks in various colors. “Our team got through to the semis and I wanted to discuss our plan of attack.”
There was a pause, then Nick said, “Wait, you’re on a trivia team?” His tone of voice would have been the same had he been commenting on her new hobby of trafficking stolen body parts.
“Not just any team,” said Nina staunchly, “the best team. My team.”
“And who are you again?” Madeleine was getting overwhelmed by the number of attractive girls in the room.
“She’s my boss at the bookstore,” said Polly.
“Oh,” said Madeleine, “another shop assistant.”
Nina frowned. Luckily for Madeleine, Nick was still on a tear.
“Jesus, Laura. You could have gotten a PhD and come up with a cure for cancer or something, and instead you’re playing games and becoming a personal trainer?”
“It’s not—” Laura couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
“I bet you come home and put on pajamas and watch sports on TV, right? I blame your grandmother, she always encouraged the basic side of you.”
“Hey,” said Laura, “leave my grandma out of this.”
Nick was now red in the face, and everyone else had gone quiet. “I bet you sit on your ass and talk about boring things with your boring friends instead of applying yourself.” He paused and took a deep breath. “I’m starting to think I dodged a bullet. I came here to offer you a second chance, hoping you would come to your senses, but apparently you left them in New York.” He looked around. “This is what you’ve sunk to? Retail workers, gardeners, therapists . . . Psychotherapy is a pseudoscience, it might as well be astrology!” He stood up, furious. “Honestly, Laura, we could have achieved so much, but you’ve always settled for so little.” He finished his new glass of wine and put it down on the table a little too firmly. “I thought I could bring you up a level or two, maybe let you help me with my research, but I guess not.”
Laura took a deep breath. She couldn’t pretend this wasn’t happening anymore, she couldn’t pretend it was acceptable to be talked about and over like an object, and she certainly couldn’t pretend Nick hadn’t insulted everyone and told them she was an emotional basket case. Her cheeks were flaming, her eyes were smarting, and she could hear her mental clock ticking down to an implosion. She was determined to get the words out while she could.
“Nick, stop talking and listen to me. I’ve found something I actually want to do, not something other people think I will be good at. I like playing sports, I like my new friends, and I like trivia. You and I may have been friends since we were kids, but you don’t know me at all. You’re being incredibly rude and it’s time for you to leave. Please go back to New York and break the news to my parents that I really am, one hundred percent, in every way, lost to science.” She pushed her chair back, worried she was about to burst into tears, ashamed of not being able to control herself. “You can also tell them I’m very happy, not that any of you really care about that.” She stood up and smiled tightly at her landlady.
“Maggie, thanks for a lovely dinner. Madeleine, I’d like to say it was nice to meet you, but you’re kind of a bitch. Nina, thanks for the T-shirt.” She took it from Nina as she passed her. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Then she left the room, walked to her bedroom, and shut the door.
After a second of silence, both dogs got up and followed her.
THIRTY-FOUR
After taking a long, hard run the next morning, Laura spent most of Sunday curled up and hiding in her room. In the afternoon she watched the baseball game, and when she went to the bathroom she could hear it playing in Bob’s room, too. She hesitated. Part of her wanted so badly to go knock on his door and watch the game as if nothing difficult had ever happened between them. No freaking out repeatedly. No kissing. No loss of tempers at ex-boyfriends. But most of her felt too ashamed to be seen by anyone, and she returned to the game alone. Back under her shell, back behind her wall, back to the privacy of her own head. Maybe it wasn’t the friendliest place to be, but at least it was the most familiar.
Sometime around the seventh inning, there was a knock on her door. Laura opened it a little and saw Polly. Being Polly, she pushed past Laura into the room and came straight to the point.
“Hey there,” she said, sitting on the floor with the fluidity of a child. “Last night was super entertaining for me, but I imagine it sucked for you.”
Laura nodded.
Polly nodded back. “Yup, I bet you hated every second of it.” She hugged her knees and rocked back and forth a little.
Laura gave another nod. Polly was so forthright she blew right past Laura’s defenses and made them feel unnecessary. Laura didn’t really understand the mechanics of it; one minute she was completely alone and feeling like crap, the next minute Polly was there and she was feeling better. But if you’d asked her if she’d wanted company, she’d have said no. Do other people find being alive easier than this? Surely to God everyone isn’t struggling this much?
“Which was worse,” asked Polly conversationally, “the part where we were all talking about you as if you weren’t there, or the bit where your ex revealed what a shit heel he really was?”
Laura frowned at her. “Neither. The worst part was when I lost my temper and stormed out.”
Polly looked at her quizzically. “That was storming? Dude, if you’ll excuse me for sounding all Californian for a minute, you need to work on releasing your anger, because that was the politest temper tantrum I’ve ever seen.” She put her hand to her heart. “Honestly, after you left, we felt like crap because you’d been so self-controlled and hadn’t ripped everyone a new one for commenting on you like a character in a telenovela.”
Laura looked down at her bedspread and let a tear fall onto her computer keyboard. Quickly she blotted it with her sleeve, but it slipped between the K and the L. L for loser.
“I’m sorry, Polly.”
Her friend leaned forward and poked her very hard on the thigh, three times. “Quit it. I don’t completely understand what Nick was so peevish about, but you’ll be pleased to hear he left shortly after you delivered your wonderful exit.” She hugged herself. “Oh my god, when you called Madeleine a bitch, I thought I might die and go to heaven. It was amazing.”
Laura started to smile. “Really?”
Polly nodded. “She was deeply offended, and when Asher didn’t immediately leap to her defense, she stormed off herself.” She made a face. “She has no issue accessing her anger, I’ll give her that.”
“What else happened?” Laura felt better, but she was still worried.
Polly shrugged. “We cleaned the kitchen and had dessert.”
“No one said anything about me?”
Polly hesitated for a second, and Laura realized Polly was trying to decide whether to be honest or not.
“Please tell me,” Laura said.
“Before he left, Nick elaborated on your . . . problem.”
Laura blushed. “The panicking thing?”
Polly nodded. “Yes, he actually risked life and limb by calling it scaredy-cat syndrome, and was listing the various freak-outs you’d had, when Bob stood up and told him he could either leave or be thrown out, and he had ten seconds to decide.”
“Really?” squeaked Laura. She picked up her quilt and hugged it, feeling confused.
Polly nodded. “Really. Nick was telling us how fragile you were, how a year ago you’d ended up in the emergency room, how you couldn’t be in a car, or drive anywhere, or even be on the street, really.”
Laura remembered the emergency room. She’d crumpled in a doorway on Eighty-Sixth and Broadway, overcome by anxiety, and someone had called 911. The EMTs had taken her in, and a very pleasant psychiatrist had talked to her for a bit. But she’d insisted she was fine, and as the guy in the next cubicle insisted his elbows had been replaced with exact replicas, the busy psychiatrist let her go without much questioning.
Laura hung her head. “It’s true.”
“So?” said Polly, as if they were discussing pizza preferences. “You’d had a near-death experience, you’d been through a lot, and God knows we all break down from time to time.” She shook herself. “Honestly, like any of us is impervious to life, or able to fight our way through it alone.” She made a puffing noise, then continued, “Anyway, Bob rose up like a really good-looking but slightly terrifying knight of old England, issued his warning, and literally started rolling up his sleeves. It was beyond awesome.”
Laura raised her eyebrows. “He did?”
“Yeah”—Polly looked amused—“then Maggie chimed in with If you really cared about Laura, you’d respect her privacy and not share her private medical information with strangers. It’s funny, isn’t it, how sometimes the people who’ve known you the longest are the ones who know you the least?”
Laura gazed at her, not sure whether to smile at the story or be horrified. “And then he left?”
“Well, yes, but not before Nina told us that one in five Americans lives with a mental illness, with the highest proportion being young women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. She probably would have gone into exhaustive detail because that’s how she rolls, but Nick got the message that he’d lost his audience and started sputtering apologies.”
Polly looked at Laura, and her eyes were clear. “And then he left. I will say he looked ashamed of himself. Alcohol can make people say things they regret, you may have noticed that.”
“What about the whole in vino veritas idea?”
Polly sighed and lay flat on her back. “Sure, yeah, but also not. It might be veritas, but it usually isn’t very reliable veritas. Alcohol can loosen your tongue so you say what you’ve been wanting to say, but that isn’t necessarily what you should say, if you get me.”
