Alternative Remedies for Loss by Joanna Cantor

Author:Joanna Cantor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

New Year’s Day, after they finished reconstructing the apartment (“Why did you make us clean it all up yesterday if we were just going to do that?” Olivia asked crossly, extracting a cigarette butt from between the couch cushions) as well as the night (Olivia agreed with Kelsey that if Kelsey didn’t remember making out with the guy she woke up next to, it almost definitely hadn’t happened), they went to brunch at Bridget and Kyle’s place in Brooklyn. Olivia texted Brick, who’d said he was staying in the city, to get some pot, but he didn’t write back. After a restorative Bloody Mary, she called him.

“Why’d you diss my boy Lucas?” he said when he picked up.

“I didn’t—” she said automatically, and then remembered the bedroom, the history class. “Fuck,” she said out loud.

“That was rude.”

His confrontational tone startled her. She’d forgotten how little she knew these people. Brick, whom she’d only befriended after high school, running into each other at the town beach club, had done a year or so of community college, but he was a real drug dealer now. She knew nothing about Lucas. Sober, she thought she remembered him—slightly—from high school after all, but she couldn’t tell if it was just her brain creating a memory of what it had learned to be true.

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling trapped, rather than apologetic. Brick had said the night before she should call him anytime if she needed a hookup.

There was noise in the background—Brick too was at some sort of New Year’s Day gathering. He made an irritated grunt. “Whatever. Don’t hit me up for a while.” He hung up before she could respond.

“Is he coming?” said Kelsey.

“No.”

Kelsey looked disappointed. Olivia told her what had happened the night before with Lucas.

“You trampled the heart of a thug,” Kelsey said. “Nice work, Liv.”

“You can do what you want,” Olivia said. “But I’m going home.”

They walked to the train. As they waited on the platform, Kelsey said, “I was only teasing. He shouldn’t have tried to make out with you—what a jerk.”

Olivia nodded. She found that she was holding back tears. It was a new year, but everything felt terrible, and she didn’t even have the superficial comfort of Michel.

Kelsey’s expressiveness was usually endearing, but now her face was too much of a mirror, dramatizing Olivia’s unhappiness. She hugged Olivia, breathing warm air on her neck.

Back in the apartment, Olivia told Kelsey the whole story about the letters from F she’d found in her mother’s desk. She hadn’t even been thinking about the letters until the long train ride uptown. But in her hungover misery, she felt the need to be confessional.

Kelsey’s eyes were huge. But she was a loyal friend, convincing when she told Olivia that it must be some old silly thing. “F could be someone she knew in college,” she said.

They were curled on the couch, their feet tucked under them and their knees touching. Olivia almost mentioned the photo of Eleanor in a swimsuit, which seemed to date the letters in the recent past.

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