“Vicodin,” she said helpfully. “And something called gabapentin, which I got for my restless leg syndrome. It makes the opioids work better. Did you know I have restless leg syndrome? Well, I don’t really have it, I just said I did. There’s no actual test for that, so all you need to do is go to your doctor and say, ‘Doctor! I have a strong, irresistible urge to move my legs. Especially at night! Accompanied by uncomfortable sensations!’ Then they rule out iron deficiency and neurological stuff, and voilà: you’re diagnosed. I made the appointment last fall in case they wanted me to do a sleep study before giving me the prescription, but this doctor went straight to the drugs, so good for her. She also gave me some Oxycontin for the terrible pain, and she threw in the Valium when I told her there was this crazy troll accusing my boyfriend of plagiarism online, and we were both stressed out beyond belief. That was Valium in the soup, by the way.” He heard her laugh. “Which definitely was not in my mother’s version. I also gave you something for nausea, to make sure you don’t throw up all my hard work when I’m halfway to Seattle. Anyway, it’s all pretty foolproof in combination, so I’d relax if I were you.” Anna sighed. “Look, I can stay a bit longer. See you through the worst of it, if you want. Do you want? Squeeze my hand if you want.”
And Jake, who couldn’t have said what he wanted, and had already forgotten what he was supposed to do about it, felt her squeeze his hand, and he squeezed back.
“Right,” she said. “What else? Oh … Athens. I was loving being back in school. Education really is wasted on the young, isn’t it? When I was in high school I used to look at people in my class, and my brother and his friends, and think, This is fantastic! We get to sit here all day and learn stuff. Why are you all such assholes about it? My brother was the biggest asshole of them all, by the way. Not once in my entire life did he ask me a question about myself, or say a single loving thing to me, and I had zero problem with never laying eyes on him again till he started trying to get in touch with me. By which I mean, in touch with Rose. And that wasn’t because he was suddenly interested in her, either. It was because he wanted to sell the house. Maybe because the bar was tanking. Maybe because he was back on the drugs, I didn’t know, but I guess he figured he couldn’t leave my daughter out of it and not expect a lawsuit. I didn’t answer any of his calls or emails, so one day that winter he just came down to Georgia. I saw him waiting in a car in front of Athena Gardens. Unfortunately, he saw me first.”
Anna checked the time again.
“Anyway, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I thought, Okay. He’s seen me. He can obviously recognize his own sister, so even a moron like my brother is going to figure out what happened here. I hoped we were just going to leave each other alone, the same way we’d always done. And I mean, I knew he’d moved back into the house himself, so a little appreciation wouldn’t have gone amiss, but of course that was never my brother’s way. And one day I saw on Facebook that he’d signed up for some writing program in the Northeast Kingdom. And maybe you’re thinking, Okay, but why assume he was going to write about this one thing? All I can say is: I knew my brother. He wasn’t what you might call an imaginative guy. He was a magpie. He saw a pretty, shiny thing on the ground and he thought, Now that’s got to have some value. So he helped himself. I’m sure you can understand, Jake, what that must have been like, having someone steal from you like that. So a couple of months later I drove back to Vermont and I waited till he left for work, and you can color me surprised because that asshole actually managed to write almost two hundred pages. Of my story. And don’t think he was doing it for himself, either. This wasn’t some inner exploration through creative writing, trying to find his voice or understand the pain at the center of his family of origin. I found publication contests, lists of agents, the dude even had a subscription to Publishers Weekly. He knew what he was doing. He had a plan to make some serious money. Off me. People today bitch if you use a culturally appropriated word or hairstyle? That bastard just helped himself to my entire life story. Now you know that isn’t right, Jake, don’t you? Isn’t that what they say in the writing programs? Nobody else can tell your story but you?”
The not so distant cousin of Nobody else gets to live your life, he thought.
