Hannah Pittard - Listen to Me

auto |

informal

n. a motor car.

ORIGIN late 19th cent.: abbreviation of AUTOMOBILE.

auto- |

comb. form

self: autoanalysis

ones own: autobiography

by oneself: automatic

by itself: automaton

ORIGIN from Greek: autosself.

They were on the road later than they intended. Theyd wanted to make Indianapolis by noon, but they overslept. Mark offered to walk the dog while Maggie packed up the car. Hed wanted her to pack up the car the night before, but Maggie said it was nuts to leave a car full of luggage on a side street in Chicago.

Every time, shed said. We go through this every time.

You worry too much, he said.

Maybe you dont worry enough.

It was dark by the time theyd had this argument and late, which meant Maggie had already won.

And so, in the morning, it was Mark as promised who took the dog out so that Maggie could arrange the car. But downstairs, in the private entrance to their apartment (Private entrance! It had taken forever, but three years ago theyd finally found the perfect apartment with its own perfectly private entrance, which they didnt have to share with a single other person, a fact that, to this day, continued to bring Maggie sharp, if fleeting, joy) was the weeks recycling, just sitting there at the bottom of the stairs. Mark swore hed taken it out.

Clearly, he hadnt.

She put down the luggage and was about to pick up the bin to do the job herself when she saw it: a pink-gold length of foil peeking up from beneath a newspaper. She pushed the paper aside.

Her heart sank exactly what she thought: the foil was attached to an empty bottle of champagne. Her bottle of champagne. Hers and Marks, from their last anniversary. Shed been saving it. For what, she didnt know. But shed liked looking at it every now and then where shed stashed it above the refrigerator next to the cookbooks. True, it had been a while since shed taken any real note of the thing. Even so. It made her sad to think hed thrown it out without ceremony, which was an overly sentimental concern did an empty bottle truly merit ceremony? but what was she going to do? Suddenly become a different person?

According to the Enneagram, which shed taken on the recommendation of her therapistformer therapist, Maggie had stopped seeing her three weeks ago everyone emerged from childhood with a basic personality type. Maggies was Loyalist. Think: committed, hard-working, reliable. Also according to the Enneagram (shed done some recent reading on her own), people didnt change from their basic type. Instead, throughout their lives, they vacillated between nine different levels within their type, the healthiest being a One.

Lately, Maggie was about an Eight. Think: paranoia, hysteria, irrational behavior. Her goal, by the end of the summer, was to be back at her usual Three or Four. There wasnt an overnight solution.

She picked up the bottle. Even empty, its weight was significant. Mark had splurged because they could. Because life was good and on what else were they going to spend their money? There are no luggage racks on hearses, they sometimes said to one another. Spend it if youve got it. Mostly they were joking they never spent beyond their means. But it was only just the two of them. They had no childrens educations to consider, and so why not enjoy an extravagance every once in a while?

She tore off a sliver of the pink foil the tiniest of keepsakes! then slipped it into her back pocket. Perhaps Mark was testing her, measuring her steadiness by relieving her of an ultimately trivial trinket. Yet hed been so patient these last nine months, so generous with his affection kissing her shoulder before clearing the table, squeezing her hand before falling asleep. Sure, theyd quarreled about the luggage and maybe the last three weeks had been more strained than usual, but quarrels, as Maggie and her former therapist had discussed, were the latticework of relationships. They were the branches interlacing the pattern, strengthening the structure that sheltered them and kept them together.

She put the bottle back in the bin, right at the very top. She didnt need to say a thing about it. She would pass his test with flying colors.

Mark and Gerome were crossing the street when she emerged from the front door.

What are you doing? said Mark.

The recycling, she said. She held up the bin. You didnt take it out.

She watched his eyes; they didnt acknowledge the bottle.

Gerome didnt do anything, Mark said.

Maggie looked down at Gerome, who was looking up at her and wagging his tail. He sneezed.

What do you mean? she said.

He didnt go.

He always goes.

Gerome was still wagging his tail.

Youre driving him crazy with the recycling. Mark held out his hands to take it.

You dont do it right, she said.

If I chuck it all at once or put it in piece by piece doesnt matter. It all goes to the same place, whether its broken or not.

Maggie shrugged. He was right. She knew he was right. She wasnt an idiot, but there was something so gloomy about Mark carelessly hurling it all away. Just as there was something equally gloomy about watching the homeless man who walked their alley take off his gloves one finger at a time before searching the recycling for refundable bottles. It was silly to think their bottles and cans contributed anything significant to the mans well-being, but she couldnt help it. The thought of him fingering broken bits of glass made her heart ache. Of course, she hadnt actually seen anyone going through the trash since autumn, as she hadnt taken out the recycling since her mugging, and yet here she was still thinking about it, and here it was filling her afresh with sadness, a condition both new and not new.

For nine months, the sadness had been constant a heavy, dull fog lingering greedily about the nape of her neck. She was aware of it in the morning when she woke, in the afternoon when she worked, in the evening when she scoured the Internet, seeking out the most miserable stories of human woe.

When Mark came home from teaching, hed sometimes find her in front of the computer. He would ask, What are you doing? And shed say, Reading the Internet. Reading about this girl who just died. Reading about this boy who was killed. Reading about this teenager who kidnapped a jogger and took her body apart limb by limb. He had been so devoted the first few months after the incident in the alley, when the sadness was pushing down around her. He would close the computer, take her hand, lead her to the living room, and read aloud to her. He had a magnificent reading voice. Sometimes he chose a bit of poetry. Sometimes history or philosophy. They both liked Augustine and stories of war. Yeats was also a favorite. Mark would occasionally ask about her therapy. The sadness had begun to lift. The appointments had been helping. She stopped seeking out those awful news articles and started reading about other Loyalists online, about their own struggles with fear and personal insecurity. Maggie had felt herself returning. Shed felt the fog lightening, her levels stabilizing. Things with Mark were as good as ever.

But then, just three weeks ago out of nowhere and with no warning whatsoever the police appeared. They showed up at the front door of the apartment with pictures of a body, a coed who lived just down the street. They presented them to Maggie. Why had they let her see them? She hadnt understood then and still didnt now. They also presented photos of a man, the one responsible for the coed.