The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

Author:Joshua Ferris
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Psychological fiction, Family Life, Legal, Fiction, Psychological, General, Identity (Psychology)
ISBN: 9780670917709
Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited
Published: 2010-09-15T10:03:45.178000+00:00

12

When did she go from someone who liked a glass of wine with dinner to the woman with the lights blazing at four a.m.? Trying to do the bills totally blasted. Her nice quiet life had been stalked from behind by alcohol. Who would have guessed? If you were predisposed, or had the gene, or lacked some inner resource, you had to be vigilant or you went down. Four in the morning and she was digging through her purse for a Newport. What was that? She was not that woman. But she was. Oldest story there is, total cliché. Except when it’s your life. When it’s your life it’s not a cliché, it’s real life, real everyday life, just drunk. It came up from behind her and knocked her to her knees. She never expected it, but that’s what happened, it came up from behind. Being a drunk was simple. It was an accident you caught sight of in the rearview mirror, and the car you saw was your own. The intersection where the accident happened, it was the very one you were approaching. When you turned from the mirror to the road in front of you—BAM! you got hit again. And then, once again, you were looking back at it. She was supposed to be on guard her whole life against alcohol? Who knew.

But it wasn’t an accident. She was making choices, even if she didn’t know it.

She called Becka during his time in the room and said, “You have to come home now and watch your father. It’s your turn, it’s time.” Like he was a baby and not her husband. Like Becka had made the vows and not her. Becka didn’t understand. “Why, do you have plans?” She had no plans. She hadn’t had plans for months. She hadn’t seen a movie, she hadn’t talked to friends, she hadn’t been to the dentist. She wasn’t going outside to collect the mail. Becka got the mail when she came home. Becka was the one who had to drag her by the hair to see Dr. Bagdasarian. Jane kept thinking, when did she become the parent? Becka told her to put the wine down and get in the car. She had called from school to make the appointment. The doctor took one look at Jane and said she was in the dictionary under depressed and wrote her a prescription. She didn’t need a prescription, she needed a life. She needed to start over again with new teeth and fresh underwear. But of course she took the prescription. If it came from a pharmacy and modified behavior, there had to be some merit to it.

But a month went by and she was still calling Becka. “You have to come home. I have to drive.” And Becka said, “Drive?” “Yes, drive.” “Drive where?” Drive where—what sort of question was that? When you’re driving just to drive you don’t know where. You’re just driving. She shrieked that into the phone. If she

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