Fiction

From You’re Not You

Not long after I saw Evan at the farmers market, he called. Kate and I were in the kitchen making a list of people to call for the ALS Society's phone drive. I still disliked making these calls, and when her telephone rang I was relieved to have a moment's reprieve before I had to phone strangers and explain myself through a chain of prepositions: My name is Rebecca, and I am calling for Kate Norris on behalf of …. Sometimes I found myself speaking to another caregiver, and with Kate at my side and the other employer on the other end, we two caregivers would carry on a conversation by proxy.

I was looking over my list of potential donors for ones I recognized when the phone rang. I looked at Kate, who shook her head. Lately she had been screening calls. Her parents, upset about the split, had been leaving long tremulous messages on the machine, reminding Kate that she had "the future" to worry about. "Your father and I are not as strong as you might think, Kathy," one message had said. "Our house has so many stairs."

We heard the answering machine pick up and Kate's voice come on. It was always startling. No matter how many times I heard this greeting, recorded three years ago and never updated, I always stopped and listened. So that was her voice, her true voice: a lower pitch than it was now that her breath was forced into a higher register as her muscles froze up. A tendency to elide the digits of the phone number into each other. She lacked the Wisconsin accent that showed itself in the vowels, like the exaggerated and almost glottal O you heard in smaller towns, like mine. Kate's voice had been accentless, Midwestern, and fast, a little impatient to finish the message and move on. In a way she hated to hear the old greeting, she'd once admitted, but she couldn't bring herself to erase it.

When the greeting ended there was a beep and then Evan's voice came through the machine, saying, "Katie? Hi, it's me." Kate and I looked at each other. Then she closed her eyes for a moment and wheeled over to the phone, gesturing with her head for me to follow. I picked up the receiver and clicked off the answering machine.

When I answered he said, "Bec, how are you? It's nice to hear you."

"I'm fine, thanks," I said. There was a silence. I had no idea how to speak to him with Kate present, so I said, "Kate's right here."

Kate said hello and I repeated it, relieved to be back in the familiar pattern. She raised her eyebrows at me and I remembered to flip on the speakerphone. Evan's voice floated out from the speaker, sounding flat and ghostly. I imagined his voice emanating from an empty room.

"I, uh. How are you, Kate?"

"Great, thanks," she said. There was a pause. I waited to see if he could hear her well enough, but in the silence I knew he hadn't. Or else he couldn't understand her. I repeated it.

"Look, sweetie, I'll just get to the point. I'm calling about what I mentioned before," he said. He cleared his throat. "About home."

Kate said he could come back—at this I shot her a look of surprise, but she wasn't looking at me, staring intently instead at the speaker—if he ended it with Cynthia.

Cynthia?

Kate still didn't look at me.

"Um, you… you have to end it with Cynthia," I repeated into the speakerphone.

"I know I need to," he said slowly. Kate rolled her eyes and looked out the window. "But I'm not sure what it solves."

"Jesus," I muttered. Suddenly I felt fed up with it all, with the talking around it for my sake, as if I didn't know. I was the interpreter, it was time to quit pretending I would never piece it together.

Kate cleared her throat so loudly Evan said, "Pardon?" She did it again, and I realized it was to get my attention. I looked over at her.

"This is me," Kate said. She ignored Evan's voice and focused solely on me. I'd never had her look at me this way: no humor, no softening the blow. She let each word sink in and added, "You're not you right now."

We looked at each other. Her lips were set, but after a moment she raised her eyebrows, as if to check that I got it; we were done with it. I felt my head nodding of its own accord as the truth of what she said sank in. The air around me seemed warmer, closer, as if the edge of my skin were softening and blurring into it.

"Kate." Evan's hollow voice rang from the speaker. "I wish you would listen to me for a minute. I know I sound like a complete asshole saying this, so please don't point it out, but I need some help here too."

"We're not talking about forever," she said. I repeated it, word for word, intonation for intonation.

"You're so pessimistic," he said. "People live for years."

"In a bed, staring at the ceiling, on a respirator," she said.

"That isn't your life."

"No," she agreed. "Right now my life is good. You know I'm talking about the future."

"Even then, there are therapists, activities…"

Kate shook her head. She nodded at the receiver. I looked at her, but she didn't say anything or meet my eyes. I let my hand hover over the button, hoping she would at least say goodbye, but she nodded again and I hung up.

Kate and I sat there for a moment. I was hoping she might shake her head in exasperation or say something snide about Evan, anything to redirect attention from me.

She said, "Remember it's me talking, that's all. Okay?"

"I know. I apologize. I didn't realize you could get such volume." I'd thought she'd smile at that, but she turned her face toward the window again. I felt like I'd greeted someone with a big hug and they wouldn't even shake my hand.

I had to watch that, I realized. Sometimes I thought we were closer than we were—actually, I'd thought I knew everything—yet here I didn't even know who Cynthia was. And why would I? I was paid help, after all. Kate probably was sick of me easing my way into her life, reading her books, looking around her bedroom. Sometimes I tried to get her to laugh or crack a joke and she just shook her head and said, I don't think I have it in me to be charming right now.

We sat there, Kate looking away and me trying not to show that I was humiliated and worried. Maybe she'd tell me to find a new job so she could hire someone who did the work briskly and then left her alone. It was true I didn't work that way, but that was what I thought she wanted.

"I'll go make a few calls in the other room," I said. Kate nodded thoughtfully, still gazing toward the window.

In the study I seated myself at the desk with the list of names and numbers. I would quit dreading it, I decided, and just take care of this task for her like an adult. I knew no better motivator than the picture I had in my mind right then, of Kate looking at me across the kitchen table, saying the sort of thing that takes a moment to sink in as a dismissal. I'd nod stupidly until I realized the reason she was suggesting I should, say, devote more time to school was because I was out of a job. Just picturing it gave me the same kind of stinging embarrassment I remembered from being dumped in junior high—the cold plummet in your stomach, the quiver at the corners of the mouth. Because what else was worth doing? Selling food, convincing people they needed a black car or a red lipstick? Answering phones at a place where I didn't know or care what happened inside the offices? Anyone could do those things. Anyone.