Chapter 1

1

Sunlight severs me from sleep. I grasp at a fading dream, catch its last breath, quiet and wispy as a cobweb. It feels tragic, but I already forget what the dream was about. Something good. Was I at the mall again? I’m always dreaming about this mall. It’s the same mall, except a little different every time. The stores change, the layout. The fountain to throw loose change into while wishing to strike it rich.

I’ll have to tell Naomi. She also has a dream mall. It’s a cornerstone of our friendship.

Someday we’ll meet in the dream mall, she’ll say.

How do you know it’s the same mall? I’ll ask.

It’s obviously the same mall.

I take her word for it. She speaks with such certainty, it’s impossible not to.

Sometimes when I bring up the dream mall, she’ll go on a rant about capitalism infiltrating our subconscious. Sometimes she’ll try to interpret, say the dream is about choices, about decision paralysis, or insecurity, or identity; then she’ll eulogize her beloved dream dictionary, which she accidentally left on a train when she was a teenager. It was a gift from her favorite aunt, who bought it from a clairvoyant in Prague—irreplaceable.

I’ve never asked her why we’ve yet to find each other there, at the dream mall, what that could mean. I’m sure she’d have an answer. Naomi has an answer for everything.

I yawn, shut my eyes tight. I call the dream back to me, make a silent plea with sleep, but they’re both gone, so I might as well get up.

My morning routine looms. As I lie under the covers, the simple task of brushing my teeth feels monumental. Then everything that comes next. Applying moisturizer, vitamin C serum, SPF, foundation, blush, mascara. All this effort just to look half-decent. To look alive.

And then making coffee, and logging in to work, and checking email. Slathering peanut butter on a slice of almost-stale bread that I’m too lazy to toast. Smiling at Joel when he offers a cheery Good morning .

He snores beside me now, impervious to the morning light, its brightness amplified by a fresh dusting of ultra-white snow. Joel could take a nap in an Apple Store, on the surface of the sun. Doesn’t bother him. He always forgets to close the blinds at night. So do I, but it’s too early for accountability. At seven thirty a.m., there’s only blame.

I roll onto my back, tongue the drool crust at the corners of my mouth. A face materializes, just for a second. There was a man in my dream. His image has already escaped me. Not someone I know, I don’t think. A stranger, maybe? Or a figment of my imagination.

What would have happened between us had the sun not interrupted?

Joel grunts, twitches, then resumes snoring. Sometimes I feel guilty for dream cheating, even though I know I shouldn’t, considering…. But, turns out, seven thirty a.m. is too early to contemplate the complexities of monogamy and the enduring hurt of infidelity.

I get a leg free of the covers, put a cold bare foot on the carpet. I lost a sock in the night. Like the dream, it’s now gone forever. I don’t know where all my missing socks go, but wherever they are, I hope they’re happy.

I thrust myself to standing and stumble into the bathroom, shivering, my knees stiff. I avoid the mirror as best I can. Lately, my reflection has been the bearer of bad news. You’re tired, it tells me. You’re sad. You’re getting older. Last week, I spent over an hour examining a line on my forehead that I could have sworn appeared overnight. The line shouldn’t bother me as much as it does.

It really bothers me.

It instigates these spells of debilitating angst that punctuate a bland, general malaise. Upon the arrival of my new forehead wrinkle, I Googled “existential crisis” directly after I Googled “Botox.” I’m aware that my imminent birthday is exacerbating this angst.

But it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it. There’s no cure for getting older, no solution for the harsh seep of time, save for maybe an attitude adjustment, a positive outlook, which I’m incapable of. Best I can do is acquiesce.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I’d talk to Naomi about it, but she couldn’t relate. Her life is a wild, glamorous adventure.

I squirt out some toothpaste, brush my teeth with my back to the mirror, turning to the sink only to spit.

—

“So, I know you hate surprises,” Joel says, scooping some coffee grounds into a refillable pod. He pops it into the Keurig and turns to me, rubbing his stubble like he always does when he’s nervous.

“I hope that’s the end of your sentence,” I say, and lick a knife clean of peanut butter, then stuff it into the dishwasher, which is somehow already full. “I emptied this last night. I know I did. Do we have a ghost?”

“A ghost that uses all our dishes while we sleep?”

“Yeah,” I say. “A midnight snacker. A hungry ghost.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “Sloane.”

“I’m haunted by chores! Also—sorry—there’s no more milk.”

“Really? I thought we got more….” He opens the fridge, because he can never just believe me. He rummages around, validates the absence of dairy.

“Ghost must have gotten to it,” I say, imagining an ethereal floating milk mustache. “You should try it black.”

“I’m not cool like you.”

I grind my own beans, prefer a French press. Maybe because I’m a snob, or maybe because, freshman year of college, I lost my virginity to a random guy at a party and in the morning, in his grimy off-campus apartment, he put on a Jimmy Campbell record and made me coffee with a French press, and I felt special for five seconds. Felt cool. Like an adult. Like I wasn’t a girl anymore. I left that morning thinking, This is the kind of woman I am. The kind who takes a lover. The kind who drinks strong French press coffee. I never saw the guy again, but leave it to teen me to let a complete stranger spoil me to the ordinary, to allow myself to be ruined for what’s simple and easy in favor of some romantic notion of who I imagined I would be.

I’ve abandoned enough of that idealized self. The French press is my last holdout.

Though it is kind of a pain to wash.

“Guess I’m going out,” Joel says, sighing. “Do we need anything else?”

I shrug. “Not that I can think of.”

“Oh,” he says, tossing up his keys and catching them in the opposite hand. “Birthday surprise. You want to hear it?”

“Okay,” I say, battling a sudden bout of stress-induced nausea.

“This Thursday through Sunday, I booked you a cottage at the Waterfront in Auburn. For you and Naomi.”

“Naomi?”

“My coconspirator.”

I screw and unscrew the lid of the peanut butter jar, fidgeting until I figure out how I feel.

“This is the exact reaction I was hoping for,” Joel says. He’s joking, but I can sense the frustration lurking under the surface. I can see its dorsal fin.

“I’m…” I start. “That place is so expensive.”

“It’s a big birthday,” he says, and my existential angst returns, batting around my chest. Is it a big birthday? Is thirty-six big? “Plus, it’s off-season.”

“Naomi’s coming?”

“Yep,” he says. “Girls’ weekend.”

“But she’s in Europe,” I say, my voice at a mortified pitch. “I think.”

“Not this Thursday through Sunday. I’ve been planning this for a while. You don’t need to worry about anything,” he says, which, of course, makes me worry. “All right. I have to go get the milk; my first meeting is in twenty.”

“Okay. Thank you, Joel. Thank you.”

He nods and slips out through the door to the garage.

I walk over to the front window to watch his car pull out of the driveway, tires interrupting the perfect powdering of snow. I’m still holding the peanut butter, and I’m struck by this riotous impulse to chuck it at the wall. Instead, I return it to its rightful spot in the pantry. Then I roam around the house clenching and unclenching my fists, compulsively sighing.

I’d call Naomi, but I know she wouldn’t pick up. And what would I say?

I’m so excited! I can’t wait to see you!

Or, Why didn’t you tell me? You know I hate surprises . I don’t feel like celebrating my birthday. I’d rather just ignore it. If you ever bothered to ask me how I was doing, you’d know that.

Or, Do you think this is a generous gift from a guiltless husband, or do you think it’s suspect?

I park myself in front of my laptop and attempt to get some work done.

Joel comes back with the milk, which he leaves out on the counter, either absentmindedly or with the expectation that I will put it away. At around five o’clock, I log out and go down to the basement to pedal the stationary bike for half an hour while staring off into space. Then I come upstairs and put a pot of water on the stove to make pasta for dinner. I step into my knockoff UGGs and take the kitchen recycling out to the bin at the side of the house. The bin is already full, overflowing, and a cherry seltzer can falls onto the icy pavement. I reach to pick it up and notice something small and furry and still in the dark, wedged in the narrow space between the bin and the house.

It’s a mouse. And it’s dead.

If the mouse were alive, I’d be screaming, flailing. I’d wish it were dead. But because it is dead, I wish it were alive.

I don’t want to just leave it there, let its corpse freeze to the driveway, so I get a garbage bag and a pair of plastic gloves from the garage and pick it up, wrap it in the bag, toss it in the trash.

Someday me, too, I think, carefully removing the gloves and throwing them on top. Someday I’ll be dead in a bin and none of this will matter.

This sudden grimness provides a nebulous sense of relief, like tonguing a sore in the mouth.

I let the lid slam down and wheel the trash and recycling to the curb, go inside, wash my hands vigorously. Then I get my suitcase out of the closet.

I consider that maybe I do need this weekend away. More important, maybe I want it.