Fix by J. Mann (highly illogical behavior .TXT) 📕

I whine. The truth of this depresses me further when I think back to leaving bed a few minutes ago.

“You’ll feel better after a shower. According to your surgery paperwork, your incisions were allowed to get wet February twenty-fifth. And it’s March second.”

I have paperwork? That she read.

“I placed two bath towels on the toilet for you.”

It’s March?

“Remember Nancy’s instructions. Don’t close the door all the way. Hold on to the bars. Take. Your. Time. And call me if you need anything at all!”

My mother had shower bars installed the afternoon after my bath. It amazes me every time I walk into the bathroom.

“People might be at the store,” I try. “You know, people I care about not seeing me.”

“It’s eleven in the morning on a Tuesday,” Mary Fay says. “All the people will be at school.”

“Some of them get early release and they work at the grocery store,” I continue. I don’t want a shower or an outing. I’m happy in my room.

“Early release?” she says, turning back around to face me. “That sounds like prison, not school.”

Mary Fay had been homeschooled all her life. Homeschooled! What an excellent idea. I’d never have to go back.

“Meef?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Will you homeschool me?”

“No.”

“Even though my mother left me and I’m sad?”

“No.”

I sigh. I’ll work on that one later. Right now, I have to eat because she’s standing there watching me. I swish my eggs around and stick another bite in my mouth. They taste like warm slime. She swipes my Roxy off the kitchen counter and puts it by my juice. “It’s been a while,” she says, glancing down at the time on her cell phone.

I open the bottle and break a Roxy in half, swallowing the larger chunk and placing the other back in the bottle.

“I like that you’re down to half a pill, Eve.”

I don’t offer that I already took a half this morning. Or that me taking it may be wiping the woman she loves from the face of the earth. Not that I believe this. I don’t believe this. The half Roxy on its way into my bloodstream helps me not believe it even more.

“Okay, my heavy metal friend,” she says. “I guess we can go to the grocery store before you take a shower. Avoiding the early releasers.”

I am going nowhere like this. I haven’t seriously washed in god knows how long. And according to Mary Fay, I stink.

“I’ll take a shower and we can go after,” I say, standing up from the table.

Mary Fay stops me. “Eve,” she says, looking down at my plate. “You didn’t eat very much.”

I have a missing-my-clueless-mother pang. “I’m never that hungry in the morning, Meef. You know lunch is my big meal.”

She nods, and I escape. Yet it’s obvious she doesn’t believe it.

Wobbling down the hall toward the bathroom, all I want to do is crawl into bed and pull the covers up to my ears. Picturing myself in the grocery store the way I look right now compels me into the bathroom.

Easing the door almost closed, I leave the light off and start the shower. I stand, staring at the daylight streaming in through the frosted window and listening to the water, while steam fills the room. The idea of stepping into that water gives me goose bumps.

Mary Fay is out there, clattering about the house. Since the moment she arrived, I’ve had zero peace.

As if on cue, she yells, “Holler if you need me, sweetie!”

Sighing, I undo my brace, pull off my pajamas, and reach for the new bar while v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y raising my foot up and over the side of the tub. Water hits my leg and I start shivering all over.

I stand there for a few minutes, watching the blur of cars through the window. Finally, I shift my weight to the foot in the tub and bring my other one to meet it, clutching the bar with both hands.

I’m in.

Closing the curtain and letting the shower do what it does—stream out of a hundred holes—I look down at myself. The sun shining in through the shower window glints off the long line of shiny metal staples. My pulse quickens, my head spins. It’s too steamy. There isn’t enough air.

I rip open the shower curtain and gulp down cool air like it’s water, holding tightly to the bar.

After a few minutes, my heartbeat slows and I let my chin fall to my chest, watching the water pool around my feet while steam surrounds me like a warm cloud. Closing the shower curtain again, I ease backward into the water stream.

When it hits my spine, I gasp. The warmth and the weirdness seem to mix together creating some emotional elixir. And I start to cry, as quietly as I can manage, so Mary Fay won’t hear.

Although when I finally douse my head with water, I can’t contain the loud sob.

“Eve?”

“I’m good,” I yell. And then I add, “I’m really good.” Because I am.

I grab the shampoo and dump half the bottle on my hair and then lather with the tips of my fingers because it hurts to raise my arms. There are so many bubbles they threaten to drown me.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

I use the pile of bubbles streaming down my shoulders to wash my body.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

I imagine this is what the Vikings must have felt like when they returned from some yearlong sea voyage and finally got to bathe—if they’d had grapefruit-lemongrass shampoo. And then I dump another round of it over me and lather again.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

This is heaven! I don’t think about stopping until I hear Mary Fay again. “Eve, it’s been a minute, honey.”

I turn off the faucet, and it’s like the running water is connected to my energy level because suddenly I’m exhausted.

But I’m also freezing.

I make my way out of the tub the same way I made my way in… slowly and thoughtfully.