Everything's Fine

by Cecilia Rabess

Jess wishes she hadn’t said anything. Because now she’s revealed an uncomfortable truth. She’s invited him to appraise her private failings. She’s made it weird.

I do think it’s healthy for a soul to have some relationships where there’s no need to explain anything

“But… what? I don’t understand. Who’s Barbara?” “She’s a friend,” he says,

Could you imagine… and that’s my man??

Jess hugs her dad and tries not to cry; she’d seen him at Christmas, but it feels much longer. She thinks she must be the worst daughter in the world.

“Yes, yes,” he assures her. “Now that you’re here, I’m just fine.”

OH MY GOD AND HE’S DYING???

I miss you Just Jess She wants to type me too but instead she says: Okay

“don’t you know? It’s cancer. Stage four.”

I knew this diva would let me know

But I’ve learned, Jessie, that sometimes it’s better to be happy than right.”

She misses him, but he also feels far away,

He tries another time and Jess lets her finger hover over the Accept Call button. Closes her eyes and tries to imagine. Josh here. In Lincoln. In her living room. In her father’s bedroom.

“I’m very sorry,” and leaves behind a pamphlet about how to cope when a loved one is dying. The next night, her father dies.

Shoooooot

and even though she asks everyone to send donations instead of flowers, people still send flowers.

Josh isn’t active on social media, a blessing and a curse.

What it would be like living in Hillary’s tax fantasy, which garners one hundred and seventy-two likes, one of which comes from Josh.

Yeah… it’s never gonna work

A foursome, smiling on a sailboat: David and his girlfriend, Abby. And Josh. And Tenley. Her worst fears, finally, confirmed.

Fuck off. It being the one person I was worried abt I’d actually have to kill him

She doesn’t want to die, she just wants to disappear.

“He cheating?” Jess says, “Something like that.” This isn’t true, but it feels like it is.

She tips her face to the ceiling, feels the swish-swish of the hair against her back. And she ignores the fact that she could have looked like this the whole time.

She thinks about how he made her feel seen, but also, so many times, like she was invisible. She thinks about how he made her feel cared for and defended, at Goldman, with Gil, but how on some level that also made her feel helpless and insecure.

It isn’t cheating to have an ex and still keep in touch.

… is it

The perfectly rational reason why an entire relationship could unravel under the weight of a simple asymmetry. Love conquers all, except geography, and history, and contemporary sociopolitical reality.

The previous evening Donald J. Trump was elected president. People on the internet were already screaming about how 2016 was the worst year ever, and it’s true, as soon as the returns from Florida were in, Jess felt her heart sink; she felt a sense of loss that was much more than losing—more than losing the election the presidency the country—instead, it was the feeling that half the nation, even if it was the smaller half, had stood in a line sixty million people long to spit in her face and say: people like you don’t matter.

first a Black president, then a woman. Though, of course, they were all wrong.

AAAAHHHHH

“You voted for him, didn’t you?”

I’m on the phone with the police

He says, “I called you because I miss you and I love you and… and not being with you isn’t working for me.”

I called because I can’t live without you in my life.”

She misses him. She does. Sometimes so much it hurts. But then she remembe...

“Hey, Jess.” “How’d you know it was me?” Her house phone is not one he would recognize. He says, “You’re the only one who calls.” She says, “You’re the only one I call.”

“You have to ask yourself: ‘Is this person capable of change?’ You can’t change people. Whoo boy! Now that’s a fool’s errand to be sure. Believe me, I know. But. People do change. So, you ask yourself: ‘Is this person on a path of personal growth or are they fighting change?’ And baby? That’s the best you can do.”

Jess tells him about her dad: that he always cheered for the little guy, he was all about justice and equity (“Sounds like somebody else I know,” Josh says, and Jess says, “But he really meant it.”),

He murmurs sweetly into its ear, “I found you wandering around all alone out here, didn’t I?”

God… and he likes cats… HE WAS SENT BY THE DEVIL

“Why would you say that New York City should evict poor people?” Jess asks, hiccupping.

Real, let’s cuss him out while drunk

“We like Jess, don’t we. Yes we do. The purest heart. I know it and you know it too.” He turns back to Jess.

Fuck off

It always surprises Jess, this softness in him. She could stay here forever, until—

HE CAN BE SO NORMAL IF HE WANTED TO

There is no judgment in love.

She says, “Let’s not talk about it.” Other things they don’t talk about: Tenley, Jess’s most recent article (Visualizing Lies: Analysis of 1,000 Political Speeches Shows Conservatives 10x More Likely to Bend the Truth), money, that hat.