Sometimes All the Time

"Hey,"
Jenna said.
She stepped into his apartment, kicking off her shoes without
untying them, and slipped her keys back in her purse. "I haven’t
seen you in forever."

She
was holding a large cardboard box, fuzzy along the seams where masking
tape had once been stripped away.

"What’s
that?" Jonah asked.

"It’s
yours," Jenna said.

Her
clothes were translucent, and Jonah could see her tank top through her
sweater, her bra (black, or dark brown) through her tank top, her underwear
– a thong, which made him jealous, which made him sad – through
and just above the waist of her stretch pants, and her summer tan was
mostly gone so her skin was pale, too. All this transparency – Yes,
Jonah thought, all I have to do is ask, and she’ll move back; that’s
why she’s letting her underwear show. Also, her cheeks were red from
the cold air outside.

Rabbit
went over to her and barked.

"You’re
above that," Jonah said to the dog.

"I’m
excited to see you too," said Jenna.

They
all went into the kitchen and Jenna put the cardboard box on the breakfast
table, and pulled out a coffee maker, which she placed in the alcove
under the cabinets, its spot for the past year (minus the last four
weeks), and plugged it in and set its digital clock. "My dad has his
own, obviously," she said. "And I don’t think my mom even drinks
coffee. I don’t really know why I took it, even. I don’t drink coffee.
You know that though. Am I still talking?" She wiped her hand along
the countertop. "Everything’s so clean," she said. She opened
and closed the cupboards, where coffee mugs stood in lines, sentry-like,
upside-down and dry; she pulled out the drawers – silverware and flatware
and jars of spice gleamed in the light (Jonah thought he saw them twinkle)
– and then shut them quickly; she opened the refrigerator and bent
to peer at the shelves. "There’s not a lot here."

"I
eat at work, usually," said Jonah. "I brought home dessert if you
want."

"Everything
at your restaurant tastes like fish."

"It’s
carrot cake."

"No."
she said. "I don’t feel like that, lately." The refrigerator door
began to move toward her, and, when it came too close, Jenna pushed
it back out with her palm, a little too hard, Jonah thought, rattling
the bottles of ketchup and mustard and soy sauce. She squatted to check
the contents of the lower racks and said, "You have a beard."

Jonah
touched his face. "Yeah."

"You’ve
lost weight. You should eat more. You should eat more meat."

Slowly,
the refrigerator door closed in on her again and she pushed it back
out. A flower-shaped magnet slid down the exterior, and a month-old
grocery list slipped to the floor.

"I
live in Minneapolis. I own approximately half of a black Labrador. My
feet are cold," Jonah said. "Anything else?"

"Sorry.
I didn’t mean it like that."

Jonah
wanted to apologize, too, but he wasn’t sure what for. He went to
the refrigerator, careful not to touch Jenna. Its barrenness embarrassed
him. Three yogurt containers eclipsed the dull light in the back. The
motor had switched to energy-saving mode and all the shelves were going
foggy. He grabbed the foil-wrapped carrot cake and moved quickly away.

"This
is dated tomorrow," Jenna said, holding up a carton of half-and-half.
"Are you going to use it by tomorrow?"

"I
don’t know."

She
dragged over the yellow plastic garbage can from below the sink and
pitched in the cream, even though there was no lining bag. Jonah peeled
back the tinfoil to his cake: frosting stuck in its wrinkles. Rabbit
sniffed under the table, where three days’ worth of his food was sealed
in a Ziploc bag, along with a metal measuring cup. ("Why did you pack
that up already?" he asked Jonah in a whimper. "I thought we were
all having a sleep-over again." Jonah didn’t answer, but offered
his dog a finger to lick.)

"Those
are still good," he said, as Jenna threw out a Styrofoam carton of
mushrooms. "Are you hungry? Why are you doing this?

"I don’t know."

"Here,"
he said. He picked out a chunk of cake and carried it to her on a fork.

"No,"
Jenna said, then opened her mouth. Careful, he guided the fork inside.

"We’re
having a class trip on Sunday night. You should come, if you want."

"Maybe,"
Jenna said. After checking its expiration date, she set an unopened
carton of orange juice back on its shelf. "Are you still sleeping
with that other girl?" she asked. "Don’t answer that. I don’t
actually want to know, I don’t think. It’s something I had to say,
but if you don’t answer I think it’s all right."

"No,"
said Jonah. "I won’t."

The
refrigerator door was at that exact angle where it stood perfectly still
– but quivering somehow – unsure whether to shut tight or to splay
itself open and expose its poorly stocked but at least now uniformly
fresh contents. Jenna went to the table and picked at the carrot cake
with her fingers. "I’m not sure I’ve forgiven you yet," she
said. "And if we get back together it’s going to be for forever,
and I don’t know if you’re really actually ready for that. Or if
I am, anymore."

Forever.
Forever for Jenna, Jonah knew, was at once untouchable, and malleable.
When she said things like, "I haven’t seen you in forever," ‘forever’
meant exactly seven days. But a few minutes ago she’d said, "These
English muffins have been in your refrigerator since forever," meaning
since sometime during their relationship. When she said ‘forever ago,’
it was usually to imply something that had happened in high school,
or even as early as childhood. ("Your parents got divorced forever
ago, though," she’d said a couple months back. "It’s different.")
But when the word was cast into the future, as now, there was no equivocation:
it meant always, it meant infinity. And Jonah wondered, with all the
uncertainties she’d encountered in her life, how she could ever allow
herself to use the term in this scarily permanent way. And he believed
that all her preparations for the future – her life insurance policy
and stock portfolio, the way she always changed her car’s oil on time,
her pious adherence to expiration dates – were actually a sad form
of protection from it.


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