Page 60 of Our Long Days
She ignores my jab, no humor in her voice. “When Flo returned from her travels, we were all shocked. I know as well as anyone how hard keeping up appearances can be. It’s onlysince she started working for you I’ve noticed a difference. She seems content—more at peace with herself.” She lays a hand on my shoulder. “And so do you.”
Peace? There isn’t anything peaceful about my feelings for Florence. They’re a wild frenzy, blurring the lines we continuously reinvent. She’s a whirlwind, sweeping me up and spitting out a version of myself I hardly recognize.
It’s now, sitting here in stunned silence, that I realize how undeniably fucked I am.
Jo’s right. I’ve been wearing my hearing aid more, every day since my attack.
All because I didn’t want to miss hearing the sweetest noise first thing in the morning when she brings me my decaf coffee.
Florence’s tannedlegs dangle from the bed of my truck as she nibbles the end of a pen. Having both grown up in Maine with parents who love the outdoors, to us, camping is second nature.
That didn’t stop her from whipping up a list and calling each item out as I load it into the truck. We were supposed to leave an hour ago.
“LED lantern?” she shouts.
“Check.” I shake the lantern before placing it back in the open storage box.
“Hand warmers?”
I pause. “It’s eighty-degrees, and you’ll be in your sleeping bag. You don’t need hand warmers.”
She pouts, wiggling her fingers in the air. “I have bad circulation.Hand warmers?”
I pull them out of the bag and frisbee them into the box. “Check.”
“Mosquito net?”
“Check.” I glance around, finding only my backpack left on the ground. “That’s it. You got everything checked off?”
She scans the list then hops down. “Yep. Let’s hit the road.”
We’re away for one night, camping on the other side of Acadia. Florence’s brothers are popping in to check on the goats. She told them we’re away on a business trip. We’ve nothing to hide, so why was I more comfortable with a lie than the truth?
Florence skips over to the goat pen and leans over the chicken wire fence. “Goodbye, my precious angels. Auntie Quinn and Uncle Graham Cracker will be over later to feed you lots of carrots and blueberries. You love blueberries, don’t you?”
They bleat in response, staring at her lovingly, jaws grinding.
“I don’t think they understand you.”
She whips a glare over her shoulder. “They’re very smart.”
Vincent van Goat takes that as his sign to knock the water trough over, causing Butt Head to faint.
Florence snorts. “Okay, maybe not.”
I bend down and scratch the conscious goat’s head. “See you later, guys. No keg parties.”
With one final check, we lock up and climb into the truck, Florence in the driver’s seat. Her permit arrived last week, and we’ve done a few practice runs, preparing for her first time on the highway. I fight a smile at how close she sits to the steering wheel, nose scrunched in concentration.
During our lessons, it became more obvious how failure shapes Florence’s self-perception. Clipping the curb equaled totaling the car. The other day, an invoice went missing. Either of us could’ve misplaced it, but she was convinced it was her fault. It took ten minutes to talk her off the ledge and calm herdown. It was a tiny error to most, but to her, the world was ending.
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, she called it, a common symptom of ADHD and something she’s keen to discuss at her first appointment with her psychiatrist. She’s in the middle of transferring from her mom’s insurance to my business one, so hopefully, she doesn’t have to wait long. I don’t know much about ADHD, but there are aspects she speaks about in a negative light that I can’t help but see in a positive. I’m pretty sure her hyperfixation helped her organize my entire office—years’ worth of documents filed away, color coordinated, dated, and categorized by project in two days.
I’m well versed in not wanting your condition to become a part of your personality, and whatever happens, I hope she learns to go easy on herself.
One thing I’ve learned helps: praise. She laps up words of affirmation. Not to feed her ego, but to fight away those negative thoughts.
When she merges onto the highway, white knuckling the steering wheel, her tense body relaxing when I say, “Good use of your mirrors.” When an impatient asshole flashes his headlights at her for sticking to the speed limit, I lay a hand on her knee, murmuring, “Ignore him. You’re doing perfect.”
