My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh Page 0,78

fat Skippy. Sugar-free jelly. Sugar-free Hershey’s Syrup. Rice crackers. Low-fat microwave popcorn. Box after box of yellow cake mix. When I opened the freezer, smoke billowed out. The thick frosted inside was crowded with fat-free frozen yogurt. Sugar-free Popsicles. A cloudy bottle of Belvedere. Déjà vu. Reva’s new favorite cocktail, she’d told me—had I been on Infermiterol?—was low-calorie Gatorade and vodka.

“You could drink this all day and never get dehydrated.”

“Reva, if you’re hiding from me, I will find you,” I called out.

Her bedroom was hardly any bigger than her king-size mattress, which she’d told me she’d inherited from her parents when her mother got sick “and so they got two doubles because my dad couldn’t sleep at night with all her fidgeting.” Green numbers on a digital alarm clock glowed between cans of Diet 7UP on the bedside table. It was 4:37. I smelled peanut butter and again, the bitter tang of vomit. The comforter was Laura Ashley, folded back from the bed. Food stains on the sheets. I looked under the bed, found only shoes, more magazines, empty little yogurt containers, paper bags from Burger King punched flat like deflated footballs. In the drawer of her bedside table, a purple vibrator, a diary with a waxy green cover, a purple eye mask, a pack of cherry Lifesavers, a Polaroid of her mother wearing a Tigger costume, smiling shyly, her eyes caught midblink, sitting on that plastic-covered sofa in Farmingdale, a five-year-old Reva dressed as a tiny Winnie-the-Pooh on her knee, Reva’s mother’s hand cradling her fuzzy yellow potbelly. I picked up the diary and looked inside. It was just a daily log of numbers, mathematical sums and subtractions, the final results circled and annotated with either smiley or frowny faces. The last entry was marked December 23. Reva seemed to have abandoned her daily numbers game when her mother died.

I thought of Reva sleeping in that bed each night, probably drunk and full of Aspartame and Pepcid. In the mornings, she prepped and set out into the world, a mask of composure. And I had problems? Who’s the real fuckup, Reva? I hated her more and more.

The bathroom looked like it belonged to a pair of adolescent twins preparing for a beauty pageant. I could smell the mildew and the puke and Lysol. A pink expanded toolbox burst with brushes and applicators of all shapes and sizes, drugstore makeup, nail polish, stolen testers, a dozen shades of Maybelline lip gloss. On the shelf, there were two hair dryers, a curling iron, a flat iron, a bowl of bejeweled barrettes and plastic headbands. Cutouts from fashion magazines were taped to the edges of the mirror over the low vanity and sink: Claudia Schiffer’s Guess Jeans ad. Kate Moss in her Calvins. Runway stick figures. Linda Evangelista. Kate Moss. Kate Moss. Kate Moss. There was a bowl of cotton balls and swabs. A bowl of bobby pins. Two huge bottles of Listerine. Next to the cup that must have held a dozen toothbrushes, each head of bristles yellowed and frayed, a prescription bottle of Vicodin. Vicodin! From the dentist. There were twelve pills left in the bottle. I took one and pocketed the rest. I found more pills under the sink in a wicker box with a pink ribbon tying the lid shut—an Easter relic, I guessed. Maybe when Reva bought it, it was full of chocolate eggs. Clearance sale. Inside: Diurex, ibuprofen, Mylanta, Dulcolax, Dexatrim, Midol, aspirin, fen-phen. A Victoria’s Secret gift bag was tucked into the back corner of the cabinet. Inside, glory! My Ambien, my Rozerem, my Ativan, my Xanax, my trazodone, my lithium. Seroquel, Lunesta. Valium. I laughed. I teared up. Finally, my heart slowed. My hands started trembling a little, or maybe they’d been trembling all along. “Thank God,” I said aloud. The draft sucked the bathroom door shut with a celebratory bang.

I counted out three lithium, two Ativan, five Ambien. That sounded like a nice mélange, a luxurious free fall into velvet blackness. And a couple of trazodone because trazodone weighed down the Ambien, so if I dreamt, I’d dream low to the ground. That would be stabilizing, I thought. And maybe one more Ativan. Ativan to me felt like fresh air. A cool breeze, slightly effervescent. This was good, I thought. A serious rest. My mouth watered. Good strong American sleep. Those pills would scrape out the sludge of Infermiterol left in my mind. Then I’d feel better. Then I’d be set. I’d live