Resolutions

RESOLUTIONS

“I never make New Year’s resolutions,” Madison says, licking the remaining yogurt from her spoon. Beth is still in the Poconos skiing with her family, meaning Madison will be eating lunch in my classroom for the next two days so she doesn’t have to brave the cafeteria alone. “If I want to do something, I do it.”

“That’s good,” I say. I haven’t made any progress on my resolutions, and I’ve already come dangerously close to breaking my promise to Sophie. Last night I pulled up Sam’s Facebook page for a split second, then x-ed out of it before I could see anything.

“I think a lot of people make resolutions so they can tell themselves they’re trying to be better, instead of actually just being better,” Madison says. “You know what I mean?”

I don’t much appreciate being dragged by a fifteen-year-old.

On my way home from school, I stop at the grocery store and buy ingredients. I buy fresh herbs and a clove of garlic and a garlic press. I buy tinfoil. I buy lemons and green beans and red potatoes and a small whole chicken. I buy butter and a nice bottle of olive oil. The oil is twenty-five dollars, which makes me feel very adult but also breaks my heart a little. A single tear may or may not fall as I insert my debit card at the cash register.

When I get home, I follow a recipe I found online. I almost quit as soon as I’m tasked with “removing the giblets from inside the cavity.” But I press on.

“I’m doing it!” I yell, reaching inside the dead bird. “I’m doing it.”

Ralph waves his front legs in a show of support.

I do it. I roast a chicken. I also make green beans and buttery mashed potatoes.

I cook a beautiful meal by myself, for myself.

Well, I share some with Ralph. He gets a shallow ramekin of chicken juice. He nods off immediately afterward, wearing a satisfied grin, chin resting on the rim of the dish.

It feels good to deliver on my resolutions. To do something just for me.

After I finish, I sit at the dining room table with my hands clasped in my lap and my plate still in front of me. The only things left on it are a few skinny chicken bones.

I stare at them. They’re delicate and pale. A grayish pink. They have a vague shine.

I wonder now, in the elastic minutes I spend studying these bones, who gets to decide what’s beautiful.

Before tonight, I probably would have said that chicken bones were grisly, unsightly things. I would have thrown them right in the garbage without a second thought. But why? What’s ugly about these parts?

This bird fed me. I should cherish its bones.

I fed me. I should cherish myself.

I clamp my eyes shut. My fingers curl in tight, my hands embracing like long-lost friends. I focus. I breathe in. That golden scent of butter, of citrus and rosemary. The warmth of it all nuzzles against me.

There’s a contentment I’ve never known brewing within me. I can feel it, its gentle swell.

Surrender,a voice says.

Sophie says. I say.

It glides through me with slick fins. Down to my toes. Up, in the narrow canals of my ears. But when it gets to my chest, something happens. My nerves rupture, and they drown it. It drowns.

I open my eyes.

I open them to a tall tower of chicken bones floating above my plate.

I gasp, and they fall. There’re more of them now, so many, and they rain down on me. I push myself away from the table. Ralph takes cover under the ramekin, a makeshift fort.

Maybe it lasts only a few seconds, but it feels like longer. It stops eventually.

There are chicken bones scattered all over the dining room. On the table, on the floor.

“I think it’s safe now,” I tell Ralph.

He emerges cautiously.

“I don’t know what happened,” I say.

He shakes his head. He doesn’t know, either.

“Well,” I say, looking down at all the bones, “I guess I’m magic!”

I start to laugh.

“I’m fucking magic! I can’t . . . I mean, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I just did that. I made that happen. Don’t know how, but I did. Me! Can you believe it?” I ask Ralph.

Of course he can.

I decide to save the chicken bones.

I gather them all and put them in a pot with water, along with my final lemon sliced thin, some rosemary and salt. The Internet says to boil, so I boil. Then I reduce to a simmer and let the pot sit while I work on lesson plans, while I brush my teeth and wash my face. While I tuck Ralph into bed. While I tuck myself into bed.

I lie on my back, facing the ceiling, trying to breathe out my lingering adrenaline so I can sleep.

I choose not to fixate on my failings, because maybe I’m not any closer to having control over whatever it is, whatever I’m capable of. But I know that I’m capable.

I didn’t always know that.

I flip over onto my stomach. I smile into my pillow.

In the morning, I wake up to bone broth.

“I made this!” I tell Ralph, letting him taste a small spoonful. He gives an enthusiastic squeal.

I get dressed and sail out to my car. I run into Lynn on the driveway. She’s walking up with a coffee cup I recognize from the Good Mug.

“Good morning!” I call out to her.

She gives a quick wave, then puts her head down and cuts across the yard, beelining toward the front door.

It occurs to me that the last time we saw each other, I was dancing barefoot in the backyard. For some reason, this compels me to say, “I made bone broth, if you’d like some! It’s broth from bones.”

If my goal was to let her know that I’m not weird, shouting the word “bone” at her twice before sunrise probably wasn’t the best move.

She gives another wave and then disappears into the house.

I save the broth and take it to Sophie’s on Saturday. She doesn’t think I’m weird. She thanks me and teaches me how to make soap from wood ash and pig fat.

“Don’t worry about Lynn,” she says when I tell her about our encounters. “She travels, sees a lot. She has an open mind.”

Lynn doesn’t seem that open-minded to me, but I guess it’s a lot to ask of someone to shrug off their upstairs neighbor frolicking around the yard on a cold November night, singing to herself.

“I’m glad for you, pet,” Sophie says. “It’s a nice thing, to cook for yourself. To be good to yourself. To commit to and feed your own happiness.”

“Yes,” I say. “I used to think, ‘Why put in all that effort just for me?’ But I get it now.”

“Mm,” she says, straining some strawberry juice for the soap.

The next weekend, Sophie teaches me how to make rose petal salve, how to make ginger oil. We roast and grind cinnamon. We dehydrate mint and make tea. We slice open vanilla beans with sharp knives and scrape out their insides. We bake cakes we adorn with fruit.

I teach myself how to make lamb stew. I teach myself how to bake salmon so it’s well-done, the way I like it. There’s no one else to consider, and for the first time, that feels like a gift. I dance around the kitchen to music of my choosing.

One morning, I wake up and there are flowers at the foot of my bed. I don’t know how I know, but I know. I picked them in my dreams.

I take them to school and display them in a vase on my desk.

“Who are those from?” Madison asks, picking fuzz from her glossy bottom lip.

“They’re from me,” I say.

She doesn’t bat an eye. “Nice.”

“You’re a special person,” I say. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

She sits up a little straighter.

“Thank you,” she says, the compliment coaxing a rare smile.

When I get home, my apartment is crowded with flowers. A hundred floating bouquets. Pink and yellow roses, cobalt delphinium, pastel snapdragons, white calla lilies, red carnations.

I pick one of the carnations for Ralph.

“This is for you,” I tell him. At first he’s sheepish, but then he accepts it. He cherishes it the rest of the evening. He carries it with him to bed, cuddles it as he sleeps.

We’re in the conservatory watering plants. It’s balmy in here, and the humidity clouds the glass walls, the glass ceiling. Without any view of the world outside, the room is claustrophobic, overcrowded with plants and kneading fists of hot air. I draw a flower in the condensation on a window. It’s gone in seconds, engulfed in fog.

“You did?” she asks, spritzing a leafy fern. “That’s lovely.”

“With my mind,” I say. “I made them appear.”

“Mm,” she says, unfazed. Because, of course, right? No big deal. “Annie, these plants are thirsty.”

“Oh, yep. Sorry.” I lift my mister and begin to spray.

I’ve been useless lately. I can’t stop thinking about the chicken bones. I can’t stop thinking about the flowers. About what else I might be able to do. The possibilities have become the bright stars of my obsessive thoughts.

My questions breed. I can no longer keep up with them. I look at Sophie, too perfect with her hair in a romantic updo, a few strategic curls framing her face, and there’s so much I want to ask her, so many things I want to know that I just can’t seem to articulate.

“It’s all new to me,” I say. “I feel annoying bringing it up, because I know it’s not new to you.”

“Nonsense,” she says, playfully spraying me with her mister. I’m comfortable around Sophie, but not comfortable enough to spray her back. “I’m here for you, pet. Anything you need. Anything at all.”

“How about a haircut?” I ask. I’m joking, though I could actually use a haircut. My hair has been dried out by the weather. It’s coarse and brittle. My ends are atrocious.

“Happy to,” she says.

“Really?”

She sets down her mister and takes me by the hand, leading me up to her bathroom. It’s dark and Gothic, all black marble. In the center of the room there’s a round tub that’s roughly the size of an aboveground pool.

“I never use it,” Sophie once told me about the tub. She refuses to submerge herself in water. I wonder if it’s because the townspeople tried to drown her. She didn’t seem too bothered by the incident when she offhandedly brought it up a few months back. Maybe she was kidding. I don’t want to pry. I figure she must take showers, because she appears very clean and never smells anything but dreamy.

Above the vanity hangs a large mirror with a frame that’s a giant silver Ouroboros. Its fanged mouth is open, and its tail is just inside, closing the circle around the mirror. It’s got big rubies for eyes, like two red golf balls.

Sophie sits me on a black velvet stool and positions me in front of the mirror. She produces a pair of antique scissors. They’re ornate, perhaps Victorian era. But they’re not rusty. They’re freakishly shiny.

“Fancy scissors,” I say.

“Thank you,” she says. “My murdering scissors.”

“Sophie!”

“They’re great for cutting hair as well,” she says, grinning. “Your face, darling. Oh, I’m sorry. Bad joke.”

“No,” I tell her, “it was a good joke. As long as it was a joke.”

“Of course,” she says. “I wouldn’t use scissors to murder someone. Terribly inefficient.”

“I do appreciate your morbid sense of humor, but . . .”

“But what?” she says, beginning to snip away at my ends. “I’m going to cut it dry. I was thinking shorter. Is that all right?”

“I’ve never had short hair.”

“Let’s try it. If you don’t like it, I have a serum. It’ll make your hair grow like that.”

She doesn’t snap her fingers, but I hear the sound.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

Maybe if I look different, I’ll feel different. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

I’ve been in a good place for the past few weeks, but it’s nothing I can savor. It’s tentative. Regression looms. I worry I’m in constant danger of slipping back into sadness and self-loathing.

Maybe this haircut will anchor me in the embrace of who I’m becoming. It’ll be a visual, tangible change.

“Tilt your head down, darling,” she says.

Listening to the crisp snips of the scissors, I do and watch as my hair gathers on the floor. It’s cathartic.

Sophie begins humming. I’m sure she’s got a gorgeous voice, but I’ve never heard her sing before.

“Do you sing?” I ask her.

“Not with witnesses,” she says. “Do you?”

“No, but I play the guitar. Or I used to. I haven’t in a while.”

“Why not?”

I shrug.

“Hold still,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“I learned to impress boys,” I say.

“Darling,” she says, “you’re in desperate need of new motivation.”

“This was back in high school. Sixteen years ago. But yeah, you’re right.”

My motivation hasn’t changed much since. When Sam and I first met, he mentioned that David Foster Wallace was his favorite author, and an hour later I was in my dorm room reading Infinite Jest. I would have never read a book that long in college on top of all of my coursework had it not been for a boy. I thought it was whatever, but naturally I didn’t tell Sam that. I told him I thought it was brilliant.

And a few years ago, when Sam decided he wanted to take up running and train for a marathon, I was awake at four a.m. right there with him, even in the winter, ready to go in head-to-toe Nike. At the time, it seemed like I was merely adopting a good habit, a healthier lifestyle, but in retrospect it was clearly all for him. To spend more time with him. To support him.

“I want you to play for me,” Sophie says.

“Guitar? Oh, I haven’t played in forever. It’d be terrible.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’ll care. Besides, my guitar is shitty. And I don’t have strings or anything. I’d have to get all new strings, tune it. All that.”

“Too much trouble to go to for your dear friend Sophie?” she asks.

“I mean, if you really want me to, I will. You’re the one with the scissors. Whatever you want.”

“My favorite phrase. Look, pet. Look how beautiful you are.”

She reaches around and lifts my chin. My hair grazes the tops of my shoulders. I swivel my head, shake it back and forth, back and forth. I feel so much lighter. How heavy were my dead ends?

I never realized how much bullshit is bound to the bottom of your hair. How it carries with it the years and experiences, all it has witnessed, has endured. The reason you can’t let go of your past is that it’s still attached. That weight on your shoulders, the strain on your back and neck. It’s your dead ends.

Cut your hair!I’m going to scream it from the rooftops and while running down the street, all across America. Cut your hair!

“I love it. Sophie! I love it.”

“Here,” she says. She takes one of the many crystal bottles from the vanity and pours a drop of yellowish liquid into her palm, then rubs her hands together. She moves her hands through my hair, giving it some texture, some shine.

“You’re the best,” I tell her. “You’re everything.”

“Please,” she says, blushing.

When I get home the next day and show Ralph, he holds his face like Macaulay Culkin did in Home Alone.

“You like it?” I ask him.

He nods. He’s wearing a new hat Sophie made for him. It’s green and pointy and has a teeny pom-pom at the tip. He looks very, very cute.

“You’re such a good boy,” I tell him, tickling his chin. I sit on the couch and he climbs onto my lap. I pet his back with my index finger. I like the way his fuzz feels.

“I’m happy,” I say to him or maybe to myself. Then I say it again because it’s true and because I like the way it sounds.