To Love and to Perish - By Lisa Bork Page 0,18

pillow?”

“I’m impressed. When did you take up cross-stitching?”

“Last week. I’m unemployed, you know.”

A sobering fact. Erica spent most of her adulthood unemployed, able to get a job but always losing it when either the depression or the mania along with the phone calls to her coworkers at all hours of the night arrived. All the restaurants and shops in town flipped the “Closed” signs in her face now whenever she tried to apply, having learned either firsthand or through the grapevine just how unreliable or disruptive she could be.

“I’m glad you’re putting your time to good use. I love the pillow. Thanks.”

I broke our companionable silence after a few yards, beginning my ritual questioning. “So how are you?”

“Good.”

“How are things going with Maury?”

“Okay.”

“Are you happy with him?”

“Sure. He loves me.”

I waited for Erica to say that she loved him, too. And waited. At least it didn’t sound like she had another man. She would have told me. Discretion was not one of her virtues. And what a relief! Erica had taken up cross-stitching instead of with another man. It felt like real progress. If only it would last.

I moved on. “Are you taking your medication?”

Erica whipped her face away from me as though something interesting had caught her attention on the far side of the road. “Which one?”

She only takes two: one for her bipolar disorder and one to prevent … I’d never had to ask her about that one before. “What do you mean, ‘Which one?’?”

A bottle cap lay in the road ahead of us. I watched as Erica stooped to pick it up and place it in her pocket. She’d been collecting them for years, some from beers she’d consumed, others from bars she’d frequented, and the rest from other people’s discarded trash. The caps blended nicely with her enormous wine cork collection, and I didn’t think she was even aware she was doing it anymore. She didn’t seem about to answer my question, so I prompted her along.

“Let me be specific. Are you taking the medication Dr. Albert prescribes for you?” Dr. Albert was Erica’s stud-muffin psychiatrist she saw once a month for her bipolar disorder. I’d considered developing a mental health issue just to spend some time with him alone myself.

“Yeah.”

“And is it working?”

“It quiets the buzzing.”

That was the best we could hope for because the buzzing would never completely disappear. “And are you taking your birth control pills?”

Erica started walking faster. She mumbled an answer.

I hustled to catch up to her. “I didn’t hear you.”

She stopped dead. “I’m taking them, but don’t tell Maury.”

I got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach again, a feeling I could really live without. “Why not?”

“Because …” she heaved a huge sigh, “he thinks we’re trying to get pregnant.”

My blood turned to ice. “And are you … trying?”

“God, no. Never. Never ever.”

I should have felt relieved. After all, Ray and I had split for three years after I refused to have a baby with him, fearing the family mental illness gene would be passed on to our child. It seemed far more likely that Erica could pass it on to a child. But instead of relief, I felt concern. A marriage built on lies wasn’t going to last long.

“Why are you pretending otherwise?”

Erica kicked a pebble off the sidewalk. It zinged a nearby mailbox.

“Maury was all over me yesterday that we needed to do something together. He thinks we’re growing apart. I never want to watch his stupid Japanese animated cartoons and I didn’t go to the Glen with him. He says we need to find a hobby where we can”—she flicked quotation marks as she rolled her eyes—“bond. He wanted to take up canoeing. He’s always wanted to take up canoeing, or so he says. Our landlord broke up with his girlfriend, and he offered Maury the use of his canoe, since he’s not going to be taking her out of the lake anymore. Maury thinks it’s the perfect time to”—her fingers flicked again— “get out on the lake. He’s obsessed with the idea.”

I loved how she referred to “our landlord.” Erica and Maury lived in my old apartment, and I was pretty sure I was the only one regularly writing checks to the man who owned the 1870s Victorian and lived in the apartment above their first floor love nest.

“It’s not such a bad idea. What’s wrong with canoeing?”

“What do you think of when you hear the word ‘canoe’?”

“Ah, Indians, birch bark, um … paddles?