Easy Street by Maggie Rowe

Author:Maggie Rowe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2021-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

I stride to the car in an angry silence, forcing Joanna to trot along behind to keep up. What am I doing? I think. Why am I trying to help this woman who won’t make any effort to help herself, this woman unrelated to me whom I have no obligation to help, at all, by anyone’s standards? This woman who is in love with my husband who wishes I would disappear off the face of the earth?

I should be concentrating on myself. I am in the middle of a mental health crisis, for God’s sake. As I pull the key fob out of my purse, it occurs to me with a flash of horror that crises are by definition temporary, exceptions to the norm. And maybe I am not in the middle of a crisis at all. Maybe it’s permanent. Maybe it’s just what’s happened to me!

Through a clenched jaw, I hiss at Joanna, “I asked you to say, ‘Nice to meet you, Nazrini.’”

Joanna spits back. “You’re not the one in dire straits, Maggie. It’s easy for you to say when you live on Easy Street—”

“I asked you to say, ‘Nice to meet you, Nazrini!’”

“You get to live in Handsome Jim’s house. Handsome Jim married you, so you don’t have to downgrade. You never have to downgrade. You don’t know—”

“I don’t know? You don’t know, Joanna. You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know anything about my life.”

“I know you live in a big house in Hancock Park with a pool and Handsome Jim on Easy Street. I know that. I know that much. I know you’ve never had hard knocks—”

I inhale deliberately, expanding my chest and drawing myself to my full height.

“I. DO. SO. HAVE. HARD. KNOCKS,” I hammer in the deepest and most commanding tone I can produce. “IN. FACT. I’M. HAVING. HARD. KNOCKS. RIGHT. NOW! OKAY?”

Joanna scoffs. “I’d trade your hard knocks for my hard knocks any day. I wish I could. I wish I could. I’d trade you right now!”

She stares at me icily over the hood of the car, her neck thrust forward and her arms crossed over her chest.

“I’ve been really nice to you,” I say, reining in my voice. “I spent my whole day taking you to the hair salon and to Target and driving you across town to see this apartment.” I’ve succeeded in calming my tone, but I can’t keep it up, and I explode at the end, “And you can’t even say Nice to meet you, Nazrini!”

“I didn’t want to say something that wasn’t tr—”

“I’m doing a lot of shit for you, and the least you can do is be grateful and do what I say because, because, because for fuck’s sake, without me you’d be fucking homeless, okay?”

Not a proud moment. Not a proud moment at all. A moment that will make it into no Hallmark movie, unless I write myself into it as the insufferable, self-important, overprivileged villain.

“I’m sorry,” I say, resting my elbows on the hood of the car and collapsing my head to my forearms.

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