Everything's Fine

by Cecilia Rabess

He looked like what a fifth grader might come up with if asked to draw a man, all even lines and uncomplicated symmetry. Square jaw, blue eyes. Like someone to whom life had been incredibly kind. Like a guy from an old sitcom who condescended to his wife.

They would make their dispassionate arguments, and when class was over they would calmly pack their textbooks away and Jess would be the only one who’d felt like she’d been kicked in the teeth repeatedly.

Why did her success have to be predicated on perfection instead of, say, a vague sense that she was someone people would like to have a beer with?

“So you read a research paper and now you’re not racist?”

It was like Ivan proved that she mattered. Jess felt like she was stealing some of his power.

What a convenient theory, that they’d simply forgotten about her. As if forgetting implied a lack of malice. Forgetting her hard work, her contributions, the fact that she exists.

“It’s not good to go chasing white boys. They’ll never love you like their own.”

She can’t believe she trusted the leaderboard. Why did she think that being good enough would be good enough? She feels foolish.

He’s started paying for everything, no questions asked, which is a relief, but also sort of humiliating.

Jess is frustrated, but also relieved; it would be nice if he just understood, but there is also catharsis in explaining it to him.

“I think you’re so talented,” she says. But she also thinks it’s unfair. He is smart and talented and hardworking, but still, most people don’t get extra help from a supportive billionaire.

They’re not really opposites. More like two people playing for different teams.

Later, while Josh sleeps next to her, Jess considers things. How easy it is for him to compartmentalize. To divide the world into easy binaries: real and not real, important and trivial. Affects me and doesn’t affect me. If he can’t see it then it’s not real, the empiricist in him. Jess stares at the ceiling and wonders what he sees when he sees her. How much of her he sees. Wonders if, to him, she’s fully real. Wonders whether the aperture of his mind is wide enough to accommodate her in her entirety. Half-asleep, Josh mumbles, “Love you,” then rolls over and drops a kiss on her shoulder. She kisses him back and then lets herself stop wondering.

Whenever her dad caught her pretending—not hoping or dreaming, but inventing a convenient reality—he’d say, “Are you wishing or are you thinking?” and ninety percent of the time she’d be forced to admit that she was not, in fact, using her brain.

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

She’s no better than Josh. The only difference between them is that when she buys eighteen-dollar jamón she at least feels guilty. But that feels like something.

And at the end of the day, better to be a hypocrite than an unrepentant free market enthusiast.

I didn’t want to disappoint you. But I’ve learned, Jessie, that sometimes it’s better to be happy than right.”

But what a bitter irony. He wanted to free her from the demands of family, and now she is practically an orphan. The worst kind of freedom, to be sure.

In the news-magazine, they’d once published an explainer on impaired decision-making. It talked about the difference between hot and cold cognition, how the warmer the emotion, the harder it was to think straight. There were examples of what they called hot and cold function tasks. Cold: sorting laundry, reading textbooks, doing math. Hot: any activity associated with arousal, having sex, debating politics, discussing money.

The day it all ends, when there is nothing left to do or say, but to grieve, alone, lonely, orphaned, and figure out how to live her life a different way.

Love conquers all, except geography, and history, and contemporary sociopolitical reality.

“You’re still young. So whatever mistakes you make there’s time to unmake them.”