Tilt: A Novel

by Emma Pattee

But it’s not the beginning; it’s the end. It’s just coming towards me in slow motion, so I can’t make out the shape of it.

It’s like life is this powerful river, of doing laundry and buying groceries and driving to work and scrolling on my phone, and the weekends are so short.

That is the divine rule of the world, Bean, you should know this now. You always say yes.

The sweetness of having a favorite bar, or a brunch spot, turns sour after six, seven years.

They say the first time you meet the person you fall in love with, you can already see the thing that will break you up, if you know where to look.

Every couple of minutes, I check my pockets for my phone. I can’t help it. It’s like a phantom limb.

Without a phone, I’m like an animal without legs. You have to understand about people my age that we got phones before we had sex, we got phones before we got credit cards, before we started therapy, before we started drinking beer and coffee and two-for-one margaritas at the shitty bar down the street. I learned to drive by following the glowing blue arrow wherever it took me.

Everyone makes mistakes, little Bean. Even you. Even you will make mistakes.

The key to a happy life is wanting what you already have.

“Not everything has to be complicated. Not everything has to be a thing.”

Your father and I don’t have that. I don’t mean the steak and the grill and the fancy bikes, because I think by now you get that we don’t have that. I mean a thing, like playing tennis or doing puzzles. They say that’s what keeps a couple together, you know. To have a third thing on which you shine all your attention, something you can turn towards together when you can’t bear to stare at each other any longer. A bowling league, or a kid.

“We’re supposed to be saving money,” I say. We’re always supposed to be saving money. Paying off our credit cards. Putting money aside for emergencies. Thinking about the future.

Your father always wants to move. To LA, so he can try his hand at film. To London, where people appreciate theatre. Montreal, because of universal health care. He stares into every city like a wishing well, seeing only the possibility of us having a new life: glamorous friends, better jobs.

He looks at me for a second but doesn’t ask what I mean. We’re at that stage where we’ve learned to live with our incomprehension of each other. Where it’s easier to nod like, oh yes, I see, than it is to ask for more.

I could never

He moved to Portland to escape his childhood, and now he wants to move somewhere else to escape his adulthood.

Nobody wants to be where they are,

The man you marry is the man you get, my mother used to say. Meaning: men don’t change.

Why does yoga always make me so anxious?

Your father collects little phrases like the person who picks up pennies off the sidewalk.

He hates this part of me, the part that goes into a room of strangers and decides that I don’t like any of them, and none of them like me either.

At the end of the world, the men with the guns make the rules. We’ve known this forever.

People will tell you that everything is clear in hindsight, but really it’s just rewritten.

You think you’re gonna get married and be the one who lifts up the other person. You say things in your vows about unconditional support and being a rock and a lifelong cheerleader. But then you realize how heavy it is to lift someone up day after day. How much your arms burn and how much easier it would be to just rest for a while.

He holds his hands out. This is a thing people do to show they’re not holding weapons, Bean. But this doesn’t mean they’re unarmed. The weapons are just hidden.

oven. I want something more than this. That thought is like a pebble tossed inside a lake, sinking down into darkness. It’s better to forget the things you want but don’t have. The happiest people are the ones who want what they already have. This ache, this ache inside of me, I don’t know how to get rid of it.

What can you possibly say to somebody who doesn’t want the tincture, doesn’t want the pillow, somebody who is unhappy not just one day or two days but every day?