Breakup Jetlag

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The plane landed at nine thirty AM, twenty-two hours after I left Beijing, and still strangely the same day. I take a Taxi back from the airport, the driver is Jamaican but he’s lived in the city for almost a decade. He asks me the best way to get back to my apartment, and I shrug my shoulders, my eyes focused on the small TV in the backseat, repeating the same three Jeopardy questions. Chapter 100 of this novel introduces the one-armed Captain Boomer of the Samuel Enderby. By the third time around I know it's What is Moby Dick. My father and I stopped watching after Alex Trebek died, a closing chapter in childhood and my relationship with him. Expedited by the part where he took a job across the planet and took my whole family with him.  When we arrive, the driver offers to carry my suitcase inside–I decline. I leave my suitcase on the floor of my bedroom and fall into my bed with my winter coat still on. My cat, Leo, walks across my stomach, pressing his paws into my liver and making me slightly queasy. My mattress feels solid, as if it’s hardened without me. Finally, I bundle up in my winter hat and scarf and walk to the supermarket. It’s a frigid journey, my skin stinging in the cold draft. I listen to a carefully curated playlist of break-up songs I’d previously considered too melodramatic to enjoy. The supermarket is humongous and sparsely populated. They’re somehow out of baskets, so I maneuver the aisles with a cart too large for my one person. The freezer section is my favorite, horribly fluorescent with foggy windows shading the colors of the boxes. All-you-can-eat in easy microwavable portions. I add things to my cart without consulting my list: frozen peas and dry rigatoni, meatless chicken nuggets, and easy-bake brownie mix. At self-checkout, I scan my items while staring directly into the camera, my skin is dry and flaky. The TV above me plays disturbing, muted images of a house in flames, a young reporter's eyes look tired. My headphones feel too tight around my ears, so I walk back to the sounds of the city. The train rings its bell as it enters the station, the Scientology Center advertises a free film exhibit, the wind whips in my ears. My hands are numb by the time I turn the key in my door. The apartment is cold, and my legs shake when I go to use the bathroom, my bare thighs against the porcelain bowl. 

I fall asleep at seven-thirty PM and one bong hit. Leo curls up next to me, his breath heavy. I sleep fitfully, waking up every hour until midnight when I finally accept defeat and pace around my room, taking photos off my wall and crumpling them into balls between my fingers. Leo, now wide awake, dances across the hardwood floor, chasing an old hair tie. My wastebasket is full to the brim, on the top a photobooth picture of the two of us, snap one: smiling, snap two: silly, snap three: kissing. I call my Mom, who texts to tell me she’s playing tennis and asks me when my next therapy appointment is. Her exasperation radiates through the screen, a month of wallowing in my own self-misery, but in Boston, I am twelve hours behind and  I feel it all again for the first time. I take two melatonin, smoke a bit more weed, and then fall into a strange, dull unconsciousness. 

I dream that I’m still seventeen, attending a Jewish youth group for something to put on my college applications. We sit around the plastic table discussing the recent inauguration. “I know it’s been a difficult week,” says the group leader, a thirty-something with bangs and adult braces. “Just know that Shalom Alohim is here for all of you; solidarity between Jewish women is so important these days.” The room is small and square, in the cramped, dusty basement of our old Synagogue, removable insulated room dividers used to divvy up the small space. Next to me, I feel someone take my hand and squeeze, hard. I turn to see her, Noa, a teenage version of her. Long dark hair and thin lips. She is looking at me like she wants to hide away with me while the world burns.
“I want us to go around and each give three words that describe how we’re feeling”, Adult Braces says, faux-sensitivity dripping from her glossed mouth. 

“Angry, confused, and scared,” says the small girl sitting beside her.

“Frightened, agitated, anxious,” says another. We go around like this until it’s my turn. I stare blankly at the center of the table, there's a pile of thin Snickerdoodle cookies, covered in sugary white frosting. 

“Pass,” I say flatly. The cookies are stacked like a Jenga tower; pull the wrong one and they all go toppling to the floor.

Noa meets my gaze with crinkled eyes, like, at least they’re trying? “Horrified is about the only word that comes to me.” Her bottom lashes are longer than the top ones. 

“Thank you to everyone who participated,” says Adult Braces pointedly. She smiles slightly, “Do you guys want to see something crazy?” 

The rest of the group nods. I lean into Noa’s shoulder; she smells of tangerines. 

“So I found this thing online when researching self-defense for young women,” she pulls out a plastic baggie from her purse, a small brown thing inside. She pulls it out of the case gingerly, placing it atop the plate of cookies. It’s identical, except for the fact that the icing is chocolate instead. 

“It’s a cookie,” says Noa skeptically, “how is it going to help us defend ourselves from predators?”

Adult Braces grins even deeper, the silver wires gleaming. “It’s a very special cookie, baked with muscarine. It’s a special type of mushroom that is completely toxic in large doses. One bite and your attacker will be too sick to touch you.” 

“Awesome!” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. It comes out hoarse and muted. I look around the room, the other girls look tired and pale. We pass a container of plastic baggies around the table. I unzip my backpack and place it carefully into the small pocket. We move toward regular programming, reading an English translation of this week's Torah portion, the section of Genesis in which Cain and Abel compete for God’s love. The iconic feud between brothers ended in a gruesome death on a bed of flowers. Afterward, the all-knowing Hashem comes to Cain to hear his side of the story. The LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain is exiled to wander the world, homeless, for the rest of his life, and the earth swallows up his brother's blood.

“What do we think the moral of the story is?” Asks Adult Braces her voice high and mighty, even without a rabbinical degree. 

“Don’t lie to God,” I say.

“Or don’t kill your own brother?” suggests Noa, a small grin on her pretty face.

“God is all-knowing?” says a girl with a blunt bob.

“Exactly!” says Adult Braces, smiling haughtily. “You may be able to trick everyone else, but God will always see you for who you truly are.” 

As if on cue, there's a knock on the door, three men in suits and sunglasses enter. They each have large automatic rifles strapped across their chests. They survey the room quickly before reporting back to a small black walkie-talkie. Then, from the dark hallway emerges the President of the United States. He is smaller in person, even for a tall man. His hair combed forward with so much gel that it appears to be a white-blonde helmet, shiny and hard. He smiles widely so that we might all see the yellow of his teeth. We sit in complete silence, staring at him, mouths agape. 

“Well, let me tell you, ladies, I sure am glad to see your pretty faces,” he announces this loudly as if we are not all looking right at him. “I’ve got to say, Jewish girls—great people, really— to be in spaces like this, learning these traditional values, it's what America is really about.” He reaches down to the pile of cookies, picking off the one at the top, the one chocolate cookie. As he reaches towards his mouth, I suddenly come to consciousness, I turn and see Noa, next to me, words are choking out of her mouth, gurgling to try and stop him. In a rush, I stamp my foot down on her own. She falls silent with a squeak.

The President takes a large mouthful of cookie, chewing with his mouth open, crumbs falling down his chin. “It’s all about tradition,” he repeats. “It’s all about…” he stops, face frozen in fear. He coughs, once, then twice, and then falls onto the table in a clatter as it collapses beneath him. At once, the room is full of security, pushing us into corners and rushing towards the body. 

From there, the dream becomes more abstract, flashing images of gunfire, confederate flags, and me and Noa lying on the concrete, broken and bloody. I hold her in my tired arms. When I wake up, I’m drenched in cold sweat, dripping down from my underarms to my calves. 

For the next week, I fall into a state of numb, disgusting behaviors. On Tuesday, I start smoking weed at dawn. I spend the last hundred dollars in my bank account on delivery, eating pasta in my bed, and getting the crumbs of Oreos all over my light blue bedsheets. 

And I wish I could cry, in fact, I try desperately to do so. For a month of winter vacation, I prayed to God on the top bunk while my little brother snored beneath me. I smiled for family pictures and crossed off calendar days in thick red ink. Now I am finally alone, and I watch a marathon of Netflix original romcoms, biting my lip hard at every love confession, breakup, and makeup scene. Nothing works. In one of these films, the male love interest, boyish and handsome, begs the woman to break his heart, to do whatever she wants to him. A single tear falls down his perfect jaw, basking in blue light. I take out my phone and draft a text message to the tune of, PLEASE TAKE ME BACK, I PROMISE I CAN CHANGE, I’VE NEVER FELT LIKE THIS WITH ANYONE BEFORE. 

I delete it, rewrite it three times until it is a long soliloquy of apologies and false promises, I take another bong hit. I cough. I press send. 

I finally get up to use the bathroom, my bladder is tight and full, and I have to walk carefully to make sure I don’t wet myself. After I’m finished, I stand up to wash my hands, and my eyes fall slowly on the small jar that sits at the edge of the sink. Her toothbrush, with its purple handle and worn white bristles, sits next to my own. I pick it up and avert my gaze from the mirror, which is speckled with water spots. I take it in my mouth, feeling the dry texture against my tongue, and biting down hard on the soft plastic. I can almost taste her, mint toothpaste and nicotine. I swallow a great dollop of salvia and place the toothbrush back in its place next to mine. My teeth have left small indents around their necks.

The days feel long and solid, passing through my body slowly, with a harsh biting shudder. I reach the seventh season of a television show about teenage vampires. By the hundredth episode, the writing has become so convoluted that it loses all meaning in its entirety. My lower back begins to stiffen and ache. My vibrator dies. I begin to rely on a single meal a day, at four PM, when I can muster the energy to place various frozen dishes into the microwave. For the rest of the day, I chew on gelatinous sour candy until my tongue goes numb.

Classes start again, and I make it to one class a day before I bail out and take the train back home. I walk from building to building, eyes peeled, jumping at the sight of every five-foot brunette. I don’t see her, but I do become hyper-aware of the dirty car windows and the ice frozen against the concrete. On the second day of school, My father calls to tell me his contract has been extended, and my family gets to stay abroad for another three years. I am grateful that it's not a video call so I can hide my grimace. Across the street a man with a sparse white beard is huddled under at least three layers of wool blankets. I place a dollar into his outstretched hand and turn back as I walk away from him. I wonder if he will freeze to death. Boston winter is not for the weak. 

My art history Professor cold-calls me on the third day. My brain is glazed with moldy grey margarine. 

“What can you see when you look at the artwork from this angle?” It’s a crude painting in the Maros-Pangkep caves made some forty thousand years ago in what’s modern Indonesia.
“You can see that it was done by hand, because of um… the handprints.” 

My parents took out a loan of tens of thousands to send me to this school.

On the fifth day of school, I send her another text. Can we talk?

She replies instantly. Was she waiting for me? Yeah, I have class until four tomorrow. After?

I send a thumbs-up emoji. The moment I put my phone down, I feel a lurching wave of nausea rising from my gut. I sit on my bathroom tile with my forehead touching the base of the toilet bowl. I dry heave into it until I finally release something bitter and wet that burns the inside of my mouth. 

Tomorrow happens, and I’m up at the crack of dawn, soft light peeks through my lacey curtains, reflecting the shadows of flowers across the hardwood floor. I never bought her flowers. I consider the benefits and drawbacks of wearing something she’s already seen me in, or wearing something completely new. Which outfit would remind her of all the good and highlight all my best features, while simultaneously allowing her to forget her list of reasons to dump me? In the end, I find myself in the same green flannel and jeans I’ve worn for the last four days.  

At 3:53, I take the elevator up to her dorm room, I check my reflection in the hazy metal walls, and fix my bangs. I stand outside her door from 3:55 until 4:01, pacing around the hallway, praying that none of her roommates come home. I knock twice, loudly, my knuckles rapping against hard red paint. There’s a shuffling nose, and the doorknob twists, and she’s standing in front of me. 

“Hi,” I say. 

“Hi.”

We walk from the doorway into her room, it’s a rectangle about eight feet by twelve feet, there's a large window that leaks cold air and overlooks a parking lot. There is only a bed and a desk, so I sit on the carpet, cross-legged, staring at the pilling. 

She sits in front of me, centimeters away, so our toes are pressing against one another. She’s wearing fuzzy pink socks. “I don’t really know how to do this.” 

“Yeah, me neither.” 

She is staring at me, face contorted. I can’t tell if she is trying not to laugh and trying not to cry.

“Was it not just what you expected?” My voice comes out congested, mucus at the back of my throat. 

“Being in a relationship?” 

“Being in a relationship with me.” 

“I think I wasn’t ready for what a relationship would mean for me. I haven’t been a girlfriend before.” 

“What does that even mean?” 

She bites her lip now as if to stop herself from crying. “I just have never really had someone care about me like that before, and I get scared and I pull away.” 

I blow a stupid, self-righteous breath out my nose. “So you couldn’t talk to me about it?” 

“I panicked.” 

“You broke up with me over text message.” 

“I know.” 

“The day I got to China. I was barely off the plane!”

“I know.”

“I was with only my homophobic parents and my fifteen-year-old brother for company. For a month!” 

“I know, I said I was sorry.” 

“Apology accepted. Like, no big deal.”

“I don’t know how to make up for this, I can’t make it go away. I wish I could.” 

I’m shivering, and she reaches for a blanket to give to me, but I brush it off. “Would you take it back?” 

 “Yes. No. I don’t know.” 

I watch her in indignation, and then I see that she’s crying. “I was just so surprised,” I say. “I feel so stupid. I’m a fucking idiot for not knowing you were going to dump me.” 

Her skin is turning red around her nose and her cheeks. “You were so good to me, so kind, and you wanted to be there for me in ways I’ve never…” She stops and looks straight at me, the skin around her eyes is red too. “You never raised your voice at me, and I didn’t know what to do with that.” 

“How could I have raised my voice? We’d never even had a fight.” 

We sit in silence now, and for the first time since, I feel myself begin to cry. Noa reaches towards me with a tissue box, and I ignore her, turning my face away. I think of how unromantic tissue boxes are. 

“I just think there's so much I don’t know about myself yet, so much about my life I want to change.” 

“And one of the things you wanted to change was me.” I sound bitter and spiteful and pathetic. 

“I can’t undo it, ever, I know that, and I’m really sorry. I wish I could take it back, I do.” 

“I wish a lot of things. I wish I could hurt you as badly as you hurt me. I wish I could stick you in the gut with my pocket knife and make you feel like I do.”

“When you said…” She pauses, now it’s her turn to look at the carpet. Her hand is covering mine. Her fingers trembling. “When you told me what you wanted to say to me, I just wanted it all to go away.” She looks up, and her face is inches from mine. Her eyelashes are long and wet, so fucking beautiful.

I try to count the freckles on her nose. I try to match her breath. I try to read her mind. “Do you love me?” 

Yes.” She says. 

My mouth is on hers, a question and then an answer. She tastes like mint toothpaste and her weed pen. My whole body is on fire. I can feel her in my temples, in my elbows, in my stomach, at the space between my eyes. When we come apart, she’s smiling, eyes still watery. 

“I missed you so much.” 

“I missed you, too.”

It’s still January, but the world is sunny again. Sweaters warm from the dryer, foamy matcha lattes, and perfect unchipped fingernail polish. Leo eats all his food in one go. I make it to all my classes, I remember to take my medication. 

On Wednesday, Noa and I lie side by side on my bed, cocooned in my heavy down comforter, fighting the Boston cold and my cheap landlord who won’t let us turn up the heat. Leo is loafing in the right corner, his tail wagging back and forth slowly. Noa turns to me, whispering, “What are we supposed to do with him when we have sex?” Her breath is hot against my neck, her hair tangled in my fingers, and she’s blushing. 

“Don’t worry. We can just kick him out of the room.” I kiss her and she’s laughing and I’m laughing, and we’re kissing and touching and warm. 

“Do you know what I want to do?”

“What?” 

“I want to take you to a club, and slow dance to a fast song, right in the middle of the dancefloor, and make everyone else bask in how in love we are.”

She watches me for a moment, cocking her head to one side, “That doesn’t sound like taking it slow,” she says with a small smile. 

“In the very far away future,” I amend sheepishly. 

“In the very far away future, that sounds nice,” she says and kisses me again. 

The following day I get a text at work, a Google document sent from Noa titled, “How I Think This Could Work” The subtitle reads, I am a type A bitch at heart and love a plan. It’s only a page and a half with jotted thoughts like I need to know if you’re angry with me, cause again, that’s totally warranted but concerning for our relationship. And simply take things slow. I skim it, send a thumbs up emoji, before returning to my Crossword Puzzle, 34 down: “Disease that was the subject of the second Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1902)” 

After work, I sneak back up to her dorm before heading home. Her lipstick leaves marks on my wrist, waxy and peachy pink. 

On Friday night, I cook us dinner, crushing up cherry tomatoes for sauce and mixing in spices to the rhythm of the song playing.I like the way her mouth looks around a cigarette, the way her ribcage juts out from her chest, the way her knuckles turn red and dry in the winter weather. I miss her when she gets up to brush her teeth, I miss her when I blink, I dream of her when I sleep. I plate two picture-perfect servings of spaghetti bolognese, sprinkling on salty parmesan and two leaves of basil each.

The weekend comes, long and slow. On Saturday morning, I text her at nine-thirty. Good morning, sweetheart!

Three hours later, she texts me back, Hey, going to be MIA, have to study for my exam.

Okay, talk to you soon.

She reads it but doesn’t respond. I take my medication anyway, 55 milligrams of Prozac, and pick at my toenails down to stumps. Leo walks from the bottom of the bed to my pillow, rubbing his head against my neck. I reach out to pet him, but he takes my finger in his mouth and bites down hard. A tiny pinching pain. Then, he licks my skin, sandpaper, and saliva. When I get my finger back, there are two drops of blood on either side. 

I get a notification from my virtual Torah app: this week, Jacob dies after making his son, Joseph, promise to bury him in the promised land. Then, after a very long speech about forgiveness to his brothers and their various attempts to destroy his life, Joseph also dies. Heartwarming. 

Exactly one week later, we break up again.

The doorbell rings at half past eleven, Noa’s hair is wet, and she’s holding out a plate of cookies: snickerdoodles with chocolate icing, wrapped in plastic. “Sorry, I’m so late.” Her fingers feel like icicles when she wraps them around my neck. 

“Don’t worry about it,” 

The air is heavy, dark, starless sky, and quiet streets, the remaining stragglers walking hastily to their homes, craving warm kitchens to escape the frosty air. We go inside, her knee-high leather boots take almost three minutes to unlace. She’s wearing white socks with purple polka dots. I pull her towards the bedroom, our fingers intertwined, my index finger around her pinky. 

“What’s wrong?” Noa’s brow is creased, and her brown eyes are wide. 

 I am lying face first in the bed, my neck tilted away from her, her legs splayed across my thighs. Leo is curled at the corner of the bed, dozing off with long, heavy purrs. My chest is hard, and my shirt presses tight against my collar. I glance out my window into the dark garden. It begins to snow. One time, I met someone at a party who told me they had gone through ketamine therapy trials for treatment-resistant depression. She was drunk and crying. 

“It’s nothing,” I say. I pull her back down to the bed, holding her chest tightly and nudging my chin into her neck. It’s only when she’s that close to me that I’m able to release. There is bile at the back of my throat, bubbling in my stomach. We lie there for a moment, as I cling to her. I talk to God for the first time in weeks. Stuttering Hebrew under my breath and pressing my eyes closed. 

Noa pushes away from me, sitting up. “Sadie.” 

“Yeah?”

“What is wrong?” 

I can’t look at her. I have to look at her. “Did I pressure you into this?” 

There’s a look on her face so dreadful that I feel myself begin to cry. “It’s just that I don’t know if anything has changed. I’m still so confused, and I wanted to take it slow.”

“I’m trying to be slow, I can try harder.” 

“I’m not sure you have any mode except full-speed. And I love that about you, you are all in, you’re so passionate, and kind.”

“But?” 

“But it’s a lot to live up to. I don’t know if I can be that person for you.” 

“I don’t need you to be anything but yourself. I just need you to believe in us.” She’s wearing her hair in a ponytail, I’ve always loved her hair that way. I want to run my hands behind her ears and down her neck. 

“I wish I could just believe, I’m just not wired that way. I’m just so scared for the future.” She grasps my hand, her face has a stupid, bittersweet smile, her eyes are wet. I can tell by the weight in my stomach, I can tell by the way her fingers are shaking. If Hashem was listening, there are no signs. Perhaps I am not worthy of his favor. I have run out his patience. 

“I love you, and you love me. Why can’t that be enough?”

“I don’t know. But it isn’t.” 

“I don't want to lose you,” I say because I know I am.

“You won’t,” says Noa, but I will, and I do.

I get out of bed and walk towards the window. I unwrap the plate, and eat one of the cookies. It tastes of dust, and I cough hard into my sleeve. The storm has picked up into a blizzard outside, gusts of white blowing on against the windowpane. “Can we go walk outside?”

Noa looks at me confused, then nodding, “Yeah, of course.”  

We dress up in sweaters and winter jackets, stepping into boots and wrapping knit scarves. The steps of my building are perfectly white, and we leave matching footprints as we descend them. We walk towards the park, the street is quiet, my face stings in the frigid air. I want to lie in the bank and sleep. Her hair is dotted with tiny snowflakes, her nose is red. I swallow my screams; it hurts on the way down. I want to freeze. I want to melt. We sit at the top of a hill, staring down at the empty jungle gym, the swings moving back in forth in the wind. 

“I think I should go,” Noa finally says. 

“Okay.” I have nothing to say. I have everything to say. I release her.

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Okay.” I watch her disappear behind the snow, a tiny dark shadow in a blur of white. I count out loud to a hundred, and then backward to one. Then, I lie back in the snow, feeling it engulf my head, ice in my ears. When I write about this, I wonder what parts I’ll keep and what parts I will make up. My earlobes are cold. 

It stops snowing.