Page 9 of The Unraveling

“Is she…going to die?” The words sting like an open electrical wire has just been placed on my tongue.

Jordan is sitting up beside me, looking steady and concerned.

Joel takes a long beat before saying, “I think you should try to get here as soon as possible, if you can.”

“I can’t, I can’t, I’ve got—no, I mean, fuck!” I’m scrambling, angry, misfiring it toward Joel when he didn’t do anything wrong. “Sorry,” I say.

“Don’t apologize.” We’re both silent for a long moment before he goes on. “I’ll text you the details, okay? I’m so sorry, Jocelyn.”

I hang up without saying anything else, holding the phone in my hand and staring at the wall across from me.

“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” says Jordan, trying to touch me.

“Stop it,” I say, swatting his hand away.

I walk over to the window and look down to the street.

I close my eyes but instantly regret it.

My mom.

A crash.

I gasp and inhale sharply, but it feels shallow.

Chapter Three

“Well, maybe this whole thing was a fucking mistake!” I shout, slamming my open palm on the butcher block in our tiny galley kitchen.

“Jocelyn, can you please look at me? You’re not even looking at me!”

I turn, eyebrows up, arms crossed, tongue pressed between my top and bottom teeth. I light a cigarette. I don’t usually smoke, or I didn’t used to, but lately I have been. I’m blaming it on Europe, but the truth is it’s probably because I’m miserable inside and it’s the only thing that makes me feel like I have control. Even though it makes me feel awful. What I started to feel a month ago, the insidious grieving of my lost career, has turned into rage since the phone call from Joel a week ago. I focus it all on Jordan all the time. And knowing that this is what I’m doing is not enough, apparently, to stop me.

Jordan and I have been fighting for a week straight. He tried to get me to go to my mom, and I didn’t want to go. Then, last night, we got the call that my mother had died.

It was expected. She was on life support and had no signs of improvement in the last few days. I didn’t really feel anything when I got the news, and Jordan trying to care for me and tell me to feel my feelings made me mad. Like he was trying to get me to feel something I don’t feel.

My mom was a bitch. Most of my life. Why would I be upset?

We keep making up and then something small will set me off again, and we start fighting. We’ll wake up in the morning and everything will be fine, but then he’ll ask me to close the window because I’m letting all the hot air out, and I’ll explode. We’re sometimes meanest to those we love most, taking advantage that the love will always be there. All the anger I feel toward my mom I have turned toward him.

“I’m looking at you,” I say. “Better?”

He looks so hurt. “Baby, you’ve been drinking tonight, and you’re going through a lot right now. I get that. But please don’t say this whole thing was a mistake.”

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here! I was a fucking ballerina. Do you have any idea how hard that is?”

“Yes, I—”

“No, no, seriously, do you have a clue? Since I was seven years old I spent every single day trying to force my body to do things it didn’t want to do. You grew up driving to the beach for the weekend or whatever, eating ice cream and pizza.”

I hate myself. I’m weaponizing a memory shared with me, minimizing it and using it as an example of how provincial his life has been compared to mine. What’s worse is that I know that memory is one of the last times he spent with his father before he divorced his mom.

“I didn’t grow up with that shit,” I say, doubling down. “I was in the studio killing myself for ballet. And then—and then, Jordan? I actually got the career that it was all for. I got it. I was living my dream. And then you come along and now it’s all just…” I ash the cigarette onto the ground. “Fucking dust.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that. Can we—”

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

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