Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,37

a book with me either, since trying to sink into a fictional world had been impossible for me. I’d given up. Instead, I flipped through magazines and did my best to empty my mind.

“She always makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong,” I said in reply to Alexis. “It all bounces off me these days. I think I’d be more shaken if she went through a visit without trying to make me feel bad about myself and my blue-collar upbringing,” I joked.

Alexis did not find that funny.

“Can we just change the subject?” I pleaded. “And talk about something more pleasant? Like my latest visit to the gynecologist?”

Alexis bit her lip. I knew she was aching to give me all sorts of praise about what a good person I was and what a bitch Josephine was, all part of her job as emotional support sister.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life,” I declared, deciding to change the subject.

It was something I’d been thinking about between loads of laundry and fantasizing about Zeke. “There’s no way I can go back to my Instagram, blog, affiliate-link bullshit. I have a bachelor’s degree in fucking journalism because I had dreams of such things before I had children. I haven’t had a real job in however long and I’m not exactly a people person.”

Alexis beamed, as if all of this information about my sad life and nonexistent prospects was something to be joyful about. “Okay, I might not be able to help with the soul crushing pain of losing your husband, and my powers of necromancy are nonexistent so I can’t bring him back either, but the job thing. I can help with that. That’s my area.”

I stared at her. “If you suggest retail or multi-level marketing, I’m going to drown you in the pool,” I told her with all seriousness.

Alexis scowled. “As if. I’m your sister and friend, and I know you much better than that. Plus I’ve already thought of the perfect thing. You won’t have to interact with anyone else. Won’t have to answer to anyone, and it might just help the healing process.”

I waited.

“A book!” she declared, eyes wide and manic.

“A book,” I repeated.

She nodded. “Yes. I already know you’re an excellent writer. You took creative writing as your minor for goodness sake. But I’m not thinking fiction. I’m thinking a take on what you were already doing. Your blog posts about married life, kids, all that shit. But take the positivity away from it all. Take off the filters and the lighting. Get real. Write a book about what you’re going through right now. About life after losing your husband.”

I blinked at my sister. Tried to gauge whether she was telling a terrible joke or was deranged enough to be serious. “You’ve witnessed me this past year,” I said after a long silence. “You’ve seen just how fucking terribly I’ve handled everything, how much wine I’ve consumed, how much crap I’ve bought the boys as if material objects make up for their father’s death. You watched me yell at a checkout girl yesterday for no other reason than she was an idiot who couldn’t count change but nonetheless did not deserve to be yelled at by a suburban mother dangerously close to a psychotic break. You’ve seen all of this yet you still suggest I write some kind of fucking self-help book?” I scoffed. “No, let’s just leave that to Elizabeth Gilbert. Or whoever it is these days telling women to eat pasta and find themselves.”

Alexis did not at all seem fazed by my truth bomb and the bitchy tone in which I delivered it. “But that’s just it!” she said, scooting forward to grasp my hand. “Those books about finding yourself, about coping with life by journaling, trying a new hobby or whatever it is these days ... those are a dime a dozen. I’m not telling you to write that. I’m saying write you. Write about the wine, about yelling at the checkout girl, about running over the bike of the kid who bullied Jax for his outfit. Write about it all.”

“You’re serious,” I said.

She smiled. The sad smile she’d adopted for me since all of this began. That’s all I got from people these days. The sad smile. Of course there were variations. That ‘poor widow and her two boys’ smile. The ‘thank fuck that didn’t happen to me’ smile. The ‘she’s totally lost her shit and is a bad mom’ smile.