Page 81 of Counting the Days
“It’s not your fault—”
“You met him at my house; it’s at least a little bit my fault.”
“I just don’t know what to do now.”
“What can you do? You gotta just move one foot in front of the other, but I think we should be done with the wallowing phase, if I could just shove you through the stages of grief a little faster.”
“Where’s Wolfie?”
“At home. With his favorite person.”
“Jason?”
“His nanny. I swear to God, Ree, I’ve been thereevery second of his life,and he still prefers her to me. He’ll chug my breast milk, then physically shove me away to reach for her. My nipples look like meatloaf, but she’s his mommy.”
“I’m so sorry I haven’t met him yet,” Rhea said, and started crying again.
“Good news for you, I got him for another seventeen years and eight months. Even better news for you, you’re gonna meet him tonight. ’Cause you’re coming over.”
Rhea thought about leaving her house and audibly sighed. “I don’t think I can make it tonight.”
“Ree, no. I’m not letting you spend tonight alone; I know it’s not your favorite holiday, but—”
“What holiday?”
“…Halloween.”
“It’s Halloween?”
“Holy fuck.I cannotbelievewe were actually gonna keep respecting your boundaries. This is so much worse than I thought. Get your purse; we’re leaving now.”
Rhea tried to come up with any excuse not to leave her house.
“I don’t have a costume.”
“I have one for you.”
“I hate Halloween.”
“That’s only ’cause you’ve never seen Wolfie dressed as a strawberry.”
“I think I have a cold; I don’t wanna get him sick.”
“He’s already sick. He’s never not been sick.”
Out of excuses, Rhea found herself standing outside Tiny and Jason’s bedroom door, holding Wolfie in his inconceivably adorable strawberry costume while on the other side of the door, Tiny put on an awkward bunch of grapes and Jason put on a giant banana. They stepped out of the bedroom, and the sight of this ridiculous family of fruit made Rhea laugh for the first time since the breakup.
“We’re a fruit bowl!” Tiny exclaimed. “And you, my friend, are…a lemon.”
Tiny held up a clear plastic bag with an adult lemon costume inside, and Rhea recoiled.
“Come on, where’s your holiday spirit?”
“I hate Halloween,” Rhea repeated, but took the costume into the bathroom and put it on.
The round, yellow fruit covered her entire body. It was the second-least-flattering costume in existence, the first least flattering being Tiny’s bunch of grapes, and Rhea flat-out refused to wear the yellow beret with a green stem sticking out of it. She did feel a lot warmer with it on, partly because it was polyester but mostly because Tiny had thoughtfully taken the time to buy her a lemon costume.
A member of Tiny’s staff took pictures of them: adults dressed as fruit, forcing grins while a fat little strawberry lookedoff into the distance, bored and confused. Rhea looked at the photos on Tiny’s cellphone and laughed again. She was genuinely starting to feel lighter; Tiny might have just saved her life.
