Post-traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson

Author:Chantal V. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2020-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

Standing outside the rich couple’s building waiting for her car to arrive, Vivian took in the night’s activity while shivering. It was almost jacket weather. A drunk guy huffed on a Citi Bike and couples lovingly lapped up their last outdoor ice cream of the season. She heard a woman say, “I wore this outfit as a joke,” and thought of Jane, who, at a party once, had joked that her oversized sweater paired with the oversized bohemian dress she was wearing “as drag” made her look like an actress in a nineties sitcom who gets pregnant while playing her role at a time when pregnancy wouldn’t make sense in the character’s story arc and so the actress is forced to hide her baby bump in ways that get progressively more absurd as the pregnancy evolves. Jane had really committed to the bit, too, grabbing items from the party host’s apartment to use as props-to-hide-the-bump: laundry basket; paper bag filled with groceries; stack of towels.

She laughed a little and decided to smoke some of the Comfort Killer. It would make her feel closer to Jane. “Let’s go,” she said, taking a few puffs.

By the time her car got there she was very high, and her slow, awkward wobble into the car made her intoxication apparent, such that she felt immediately at risk. Shortly after she’d settled in for twenty minutes of unity with the world, her Eastern European driver asked her, “How long have you lived here?”

His icy blue eyes were trained on her with a hungry expression. He was a tall man in a short person’s car, with long, spindly fingers like a fairy-tale witch. He had a nice face, but she wasn’t in the mood.

“Ten years,” she said. She put in her earbuds.

As they got onto the FDR she remembered Anita’s email and how she had deleted it. She leaned her head against the window and thought about her family. It hadn’t all been bad. On holidays they’d watch TV together in the living room. A Twilight Zone marathon, a Soap marathon, a Dark Shadows marathon. They had good taste. Eventually they’d fall asleep. Vivian would drift in and out of consciousness, curled up in her favorite armchair. No one would touch or disturb her, and even though she was intermittently awakened by a family member’s snores she wouldn’t go to her room to nap because actually there was no place she’d rather be than with them. Julio played Scrabble with her for hours even though she beat him every time, and no matter how tired or sick Anita was, she always left a plate of food out for Vivian when she came home late and the food was always delicious. She actually felt safe sometimes with them and it hurt her heart, actually, it was too much, so she put on Kid A and she turned it up so loud that it drowned out her primeval longings, allowing her to focus on the city’s soaring buildings and their relentless rectangles of light.

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