Three Breakdowns A Year Was All I Was Allowed novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Shanna's Couch

Emmy sleeps at her sister's, cries without counting in front of the contractor, and wakes to Christian and a patrol car at the door.

My sister opened her door at eleven with plaster dust in her hair.

"Emmy," Shanna said. "You have no coat."

"I left it at the dinner."

"What dinner? You said you were hosting the doctors."

"I was," I said. "Then he read my miscarriage out to them between the salad and the lamb."

Shanna looked at me for one second.

Then she pulled me inside by the cardigan and shut the door on the cold.

Her house on Jenifer Street was a fixer-upper, and she had bought it a month ago.

The hallway smelled of sawdust and old wallpaper paste.

Plastic sheeting hung across the kitchen doorway, and a work light glowed behind it.

"Sit," Shanna said, and pointed me to a couch with a quilt on it. "Not sit like him. Sit like a person who's cold."

I laughed once, and it came out wet.

"That's the first one I've heard in a year," she said. "Don't stop."

I did not stop.

I cried into the quilt with my shoes still on, and my sister sat down beside me and did not say a single useful thing.

She put a hand on my back and let me go on.

At some point the plastic sheeting rustled.

A man stepped through it with a tape measure on his belt and a flannel jacket gone gray at the elbows.

He was tall and bearded, and he stopped when he saw me.

"Sorry," he said. "I thought the house was empty. I'll go."

"Luther's my contractor," Shanna said. "He's rebuilding my kitchen at night because I can't afford him in the day."

"She can afford me," Luther said. "She just argues."

"Emmy is my sister," Shanna said. "She's staying."

He nodded at me once and did not ask anything.

"I've got a thermos of soup and half a pizza on the ladder," he said. "You want either?"

I wiped my face on the quilt.

"Both," I said.

He went back through the sheeting and returned with a paper plate.

Two slices of cold pizza sat on it, and a cup of soup balanced on the edge.

He set it on my knees.

"There's no spoon," he said. "I'm sorry. I'll find one."

"I'll drink it."

"Okay."

He waited one more moment, then went to lean against the doorframe, a polite distance away.

I ate a whole slice with shaking hands.

It was the first thing I had eaten since breakfast.

"I should call him," I said to the quilt.

"No," Shanna said.

"He'll worry. He always writes down when I'm late."

"Emmy."

"If I don't answer, he'll say I'm in crisis."

Shanna's jaw went tight.

"Let me text him," Luther said from the doorway.

We both looked at him.

"Not for you," he said. "For the house. A short line, from my number, that says you're safe and you're sleeping. Then he has what he needs and he stays on his side of town."

It sounded kind and sensible.

I was tired enough to want somebody else to carry one thing.

"Fine," I said. "Say I'm safe."

He typed it with his thumb, slowly, and showed me the screen.

It said: Emmy is safe and asleep at her sister's. Please give her tonight.

I nodded, and he pressed send.

Shanna watched him do it.

Her mouth opened, then closed again.

"Where's Christian's number from?" she asked.

"Your fridge," Luther said. "There's an emergency contact sheet. Your sister's name is on it with his."

Shanna said nothing more.

Later, when the soup was gone, the sheeting was lit from behind, and Luther was back up his ladder, I lay down on the couch under the quilt.

Shanna turned off the lamp and sat on the floor next to me with her back against the cushions.

"Tell me what you want," she said.

"To cry without anyone writing it down."

"Then do it."

So I did.

I cried for the March morning, and the two days after, and the paint can in June.

I cried for the hour in the hallway that he had timed.

Behind the plastic, a drill started, stopped, and started again very quietly, so it would not wake me.

Nobody counted.

I fell asleep in the middle of it.

The knocking started at six.

It was three hard raps, and then a pause, and then three more.

Shanna was already at the window in her scrubs with her coffee.

She turned and said, flat and quiet: "Em. Christian's on the porch."

I sat up.

Behind him in the gray light, parked at the curb with its lights turning slowly, was a patrol car.

He held a manila folder against his chest, and his glasses caught the blue and red.

"Emmy," he called through the door, warm and soft. "Sweetheart, it's all right. I've brought help."

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