Mind Your Own.

Mindy was a big believer in upwards. Things would, generally, trend upwards in life. More money would come in with each year worked at the technical college. Neighbors would become more generous with their waves and “howdy”s each time Mindy left a heaping ramekin of six-bean-chili on their welcome mat. Personal enlightenment would burgeon with each educational podcast Mindy forced down her euchastian tube before work. The size of their little family would even grow by one come next winter.

Mindy thought of birth often. Not so much the day of delivery, but the surrounding season. It would be a Christmas birth, arriving in that red-green luminous time of rosy, cherubic Santas and mulled (virgin, of course) wassail. In the weeks prior, Mindy imagined herself sipping eggnog and puncturing whole oranges with cloves—citrus oils and spiced spears mingling in the fruit’s seeded center. She would anoint her neck with the upspurting juices, the scent wafting through their ranch house and emulsifying with evergreen, peppermint and star anise. All good things. Come December, she’d be round and ready for what came next. It was a scene she thought of often this summer. She lingered in it during bouts of auroral nausea and sweaty, swollen soreness. It was a warm feeling though; a reminder of good things to come. There would be more. Upwards and upwards, they’d ascend as a unit of three. Mindy could feel that long-held conviction confirmed within her belly now: Things would grow and be good. 

Mindy lay prone today, her cheek down upon the plush cream carpet as though she were nuzzling it for warmth. Knit out before her floor-level eyes, the carpet looked like a clump of cumulus clouds upon which angels would lounge and play and dine upon generous styrofoam clamshells of the Great-Beyond’s finest fish and chips. The silvery AC vent before her was not so lovely. Its deep jaws were empty, spare the carcasses of a few grounded stink bugs from last spring. Air moved through it from the basement, upwards. Sound, too.

They’d need to leave soon. The barbecue would start in thirty minutes and Linda had requested that the family be altogether to greet incoming guests. They’d be a well-dressed familial bulwark against what people might say. Mindy and Mickey and Linda and Gary and Josh and Rebecca and Henry and Elise and their little girl who said cruelly truthful things that got big laughs. Three sons, three wives, child, Matriarch and Patriarch. Book now for all your potluck and family reunion needs! (Little Disney Channel star-in-training not included). They looked so intentionally happy altogether like that. Not so when Mickey was absent as he had been last Easter. After Mickey got back, he joked that his Mother would crudely photoshop the family Facebook photos so he’d be smack-dab in the middle, presenting a platter of ham biscuits with sugar-free honey mustard.

“Now Mickey’s Mickey, but I can trust you with this, right?” Linda had asked Mindy two days back over the phone. Mindy was still at work but quickly darted into a teal bathroom stall, pressing a cloudy iPhone screen against her cheek. Linda went on, “I have too much to deal with right now to have to—okay? You’ve got this, right? You can handle this?” She implored, the sound of a restaurant in the background: clinking glasses, approaching waiter, Linda’s usual order: “yes, grilled caesar salad, salmon, no, yes I know it’s extra, dressing on the side, okay repeat that back so I know you got it all.” Then, Linda asked Mindy once more, “You can handle this, yes?” Mindy could handle it. She would have to. Linda was generous. In fact, the young couple’s home and matte yellow sedan had recently been saved thanks to that generosity, but with magnanimity came mandates. 

Mindy was already dressed and made-up for the event. She pursed her lips to keep from staining the milky-white carpet with a festive coral shade she knew Linda would approve of. She already had her shoes on too. Levitating her ankles above the carpet, Mindy was careful not to track the outside in upon carpets technically owned by Linda and the largely silent and forever-gruff Gary. This second home of theirs was pristine and perpetually open to drop-by check-ins from Linda and her favorite Daughter-In-Law, Rebecca. 

The two women would appear in the house without the slightest sound. They moved like suburban ghosts, quietly haunting the low-ceilinged foyer and unfinished basement. Always “dropping off” some unwanted boxes or appliances to store in the living room, they’d sweep through the house, peering into Mindy and Mickey’s bedroom with its unmade tangle of bedding and the once-dandelion-yellow wall Linda insisted be repainted white. Linda had final say.  She set the thermostat. She kept a key and she’d let herself in while Mindy was cooking, gardening, watching YouTube documentaries on the toilet or even showering. Every so often, Mindy would emerge from the bathroom, wet-haired, towel-clad and bare-faced to find Linda and Rebecca lugging a broken rowing machine into the living room for storage. Mindy would offer a taut smile as she stood there, half-naked in the place that she slept but did not own. 

Cheek-to-carpet today, Mindy lay parallel to that same rusted exercise machine. A window flanked her other side. The day beyond was bleachingly bright, 98 degrees and bustling with moving people with brimming, busy lives. If Mindy were to scramble up to her knees and peer out the window just above her, she would see her neighbor’s kid cannonballing into their above ground pool, visible just over their rear fence. She too would see an older woman emerge from a sliding glass door with a pickaxe, ready to uproot the sunflowers that no longer bloomed. A shirtless old man cleaned his grill a house over. He kept a platter of thick-cut, raw chicken thighs and whole Vidalia onions beside him. Little white curls blanketed his generous, tanned tummy, rubbing up dangerously close to the grill’s heating prongs. 

If Mindy were to just look up through her window, she would see all this. She’d see all the families with their other, disparate lives from her own. She would watch them unwind over the fruits of late summer, framed by the peachy 6 pm luster and the flittering silhouettes of gnats. For a brief, squintingly-bright moment, she would be a part of the outside world. But Mindy did not lookup. She had no time for the luxury of perception without purpose. Now she was always looking for some clue, scouring each interaction for some familiar remnant of the time when everything was going so very wrong.

Things were okay, now. They were an attractive young couple, both with jobs finally. Mickey worked for his family’s company. Mindy did administrative work in the admissions department of the local technical college. They lived in their first home together, though again the home was not technically their own. It had been for a year until things got bad. Then, it wasn’t anymore.

Mickey didn’t like to talk about it. He saw it as his own fault and while it might have been, every bone and vein in Mindy’s body keened at the way he blamed himself. Mickey was a sweetheart. That was the only way to describe him. He was a strong man, but gentle, generous and prone to believing he was at fault—always at fault. Should the 2% in their fridge go bad, Mickey would apologize immediately, snatching the gallon jug from Mindy’s hands and personally depositing the curdled pearls of dairy down the sink. Even if Mindy had been the one to let it go bad and she typically was, Mickey wouldn’t accept anyone’s culpability but his own. That is perhaps why the bad times were so bad. He did it because he felt guilty and then felt guilty because he did it and downward and downward, day by day. But that time was over or at least neutralized—held down by Mindy’s little hands, writhing beneath the surface of some slowly draining pool.

This time was better though it was fragile. Mindy often lay prone here on the floor beside the vent that carried air up from the basement. She knew she shouldn’t—that she should just blindly trust—but she had to be sure. She needed to check, though Mickey made it so clear he could be trusted nowadays. He went out of his way to show Mindy kindness—a perpetual apology that Mindy did not need. She knew he was sorry. He’d cook them elaborate dinners when he got off work, insisting Mindy stay off her feet since they learned of the pregnancy. She’d watch him cook from the kitchen table, dropping chopped onions and garlic into an awaiting skillet of hot, peppered oil or slicing and salting the plump tomatoes Mindy grew out back. As he seared and sizzled marinated chunks of chicken, he’d become animated telling her about his day: 

“So this guy’s about to fully knock me out over this quote he thought he was getting, but ya know it’s a quote from Mitchell’s a town over, not even ours! And the whole time I’m like nodding, yeah, ‘I completely understand’ ya know, but I’m thinking to myself, ‘this guy looks just like that kid actor from ET, plus like thirty-something years and minus half his hair but just like that kid actor! So, okay, so he storms off. Pissed, but the whole confrontation is over. And I think it’s just me and I’m packing up and I just kinda say to myself, ‘phone home.’ But then! He WHIPS back around like ‘what’d you say??’ which is INCREDIBLE because I think that proves he gets the ET analogy A LOT!” Mickey finished, waving his arms around like a fire and brimstone preacher man. Clavicle-bouncing laughter erupted up from their cores as it often did. They very seldom finished stories. They’d wind up laughing too hard.

They’d washed the dishes together, side-by-side with Mindy scrubbing and rinsing and Mickey drying and putting away. They’d done so the night before when Mickey had scratched the center of his palms, furiously and fervently like he often did. It is a hard thing to explain. He did it often, maybe every 30 seconds or so or whenever a bad, no-good thought elbowed its way into his head. He was a knocker, a counter, a cleaner and a fretter. Since he was little, he’d tear at the hearts of his hands, drawing up ruby beads. His own private, compulsive stigmata. 

“I’ll go. I, don’t worry about me going, because I’ll go, but I just haven’t seen Josh or Becca since and…” he trailed off, slowing his drying motion. Mindy slowed her scrubbing too, looking over at him. “I know I’m not a bad person,” he said. “I know that, but when I’m with them I don’t,” He finished and Mindy hugged his warm shoulder, rubbing her cheek against the forest green cotton of his t-shirt just as she rubbed her cheek against the carpet now. 

“You’re a good person. And you’re getting better every day,” Mindy said softly, rubbing the nape of Mickey’s neck in the way that grounded him. Flesh to flesh brought him back to here and now.

“I know. And I am. It’s...it’ll be good, yeah,” he nodded and they didn’t speak of it further. Mindy knew the prospect of all those open mouths with their easy, unsolicited opinions at the barbecue unnerved Mickey. He did not, in fact, speak with his brothers often, spare an early dinner at Home Team Bar & Grill by the parkway. 

“You’ll cover the whole tab, right Mickey?” they’d tease when the waitress slid the check across the table. “This one’s on you, right” they’d grin, tossing a crumpled napkin onto a demolished plate of buffalo wings. With cherry-red sauce pooling in the edges of their mouths, they’d mess with Mickey. Just joshing with ya’ there bud, c’mon. A good razz. Mickey would grin, playing it off as the joke was juiced for every smidge of entertainment, drawn and quartered. There in the booth, before a table of bones and unloved celery sticks, all the levity would drain from his brothers’ faces as they feigned earnest insistence. They thought he was gonna cover the tab? Uh-uh, no they left their wallets at home. No money. All on you Mickey man. You don’t got it? Guess somebody’s gotta start washing dishes, huh. Finally, just when the bit had gone far enough, they’d relieve their brother, “Nah, don’t worry, man. It’s good. We know where you put your money,” they’d say. Mickey too would laugh for it was just a joke. Nothing to get worked up about now. Just a joke! Didn’t mean nothing by it. Promise.

They weren’t all bad. Mindy had to remind herself. They were in a tough spot too. She knew Linda had cried many nights over Mickey back when it was bad. His brothers and Gary must have worried too. It was simpler, though, if they were wholly malicious. She found it all easier to digest if the whole family was composed of vicious one-dimensional, polo-shirted brutes of the landed gentry. It was true that their tongues were unfamiliar with the shapes of empathy, but Mindy knew too that she often read cruelty in the benign. They had done her a kindness, Linda and Gary. They had saved their home from foreclosure. That kind of generosity is rare, precious. It was that generosity in fact that plagued Mindy so. She felt like a leech. A strange, subterranean thing suckling from the swollen teat of a family that wasn’t even her own. 

It was particularly bad at family functions: Easter, Christmas, the occasional gender reveal party (“he’s gonna be a little heartbreaker tell you that much”). They were objectively lovely events: a pristine yet lived-in family home; a generous horderves spread atop the granite island; a massive flatscreen broadcasting BREAKING coverage of some poor celebrity’s loose nipple. Feel-good classics played over the speaker system. Springsteen. ABBA. Guests filed in and out of rooms with tiny plastic plates in hand. Gary and Josh and Henry’s business associates moseyed around, occasionally asking if there was any real money in Library and Information Sciences, Mindy’s undergraduate major. Longtime family friends palmed the back of Mickey’s shoulder, wondering aloud how he was holding up. Someone had always just read an article that could really help him. He should send them an email to remind them to forward it to him later. 

Most input was amiable. Some less so. Gifting unsolicited counsel feels good, particularly about things that are easier said but wrenchingly, impossibly done. People liked to wash down their mini meatballs and potato salad with a nice, cleansing gulp of just-looking-out-for-you-here advice. Not making enough money? Work harder. Low energy keeping you down? Ask Carol about that green tea thing her niece has been selling. Bummed out? Look at the brilliance of a sunrise and cheer up! Turns out: there’s nothing you can’t stop doing if you want it bad enough. You must just not want it bad enough, huh?

Mindy thought that on some level Linda and Gary and Josh and Rebecca and Henry and well, actually not Elise—Elise is cool—enjoyed that Mickey had tumbled so far. Never had they felt so right as when they stood above him, peering down from the dispensing end of salvation. They relished his weakness. It proved they were strong. All they had inherited was earned because he had been born of the same blood and suburban birthright, yet look at the difference between them! Mindy would not say it, but she despised them for how they luxuriated in Mickey’s past screw-ups. Things were better now. Mickey had made it almost six months now. They were so much better though they acted like they weren’t. They wouldn’t see all the work. Things were so much better now. Up and up, things would grow and get better. 

They’d have a baby, a warm, wet little thing that depended on them. They’d be exhausted and overworked, but certain in their purpose as they peered down upon their slumbering child. They’d make enough money to make it exclusively their home again. Mickey would keep on. He’d be okay and keep working and they’d sit on their back porch at day’s end, eating blackberry cobbler straight from the baking dish. They’d tickle their toes against the splintering wood of the rear deck as they feasted, daubing their tongues with the taste of butter and oats. Their bellies would be full with the sweet spoils of their work. They would sleep so very well.

Mindy was a big believer in upwards. It was how she lived her life. It was a kind of faith. Things would, generally, trend upwards. As did sound, through the resin-coated floor vent where she lay prone, floating upon cumulus clouds of plush creme carpeting, pursing her coral lips. The sound traveled up from the basement below to her right ear. It was a familiar sound. She didn’t know how he could be making it but there it was. That faint rattle like baby teeth clinking against the ceramic walls of a “family memories” jar. The opening of the child-proof lid. The spilling out of one, maybe two. Then the taking. That relieved gulp. The sigh. And the low, dreadful sound of sweet, kind, self-conscious Mickey promising himself that he would stop though Mindy knew, as she’d known before, that it was starting back up again.