Mal
On day three of Operation Smoke Josephine Out, Mal finally made contact.
Mal knew Jo was eating his meals. She usually waited until he went to the bathroom or returned home for the night before snatching her tray into her room. Dahlia sent him pictures of the rinsed dishes in the sink the morning after, with the addition:Poor thing. She tries so hard not to turn the faucet on all the way so I won’t hear it running.
“I’m back,” he said. “I picked up Thai. I asked Dahlia what you like, and she said you’d probably be good with red curry, so that’s what I got.”
From through the door, a soft voice. “Thank you.”
It was a good thing Jo couldn’t see his jaw drop, or she might have run away again. After days of talking to a wall, it felt like he’d just heard a ghost.
“It’s no problem,” Mal said, tiptoeing toward her closed door cautiously.
“It is,” she said. Her voice was scratchy with disuse, and she cleared it. “You’re doing too much.”
“I’m doing exactly what I need to,” Mal said. “Not my fault you aren’t used to being taken care of.” He slid to the floor, dropping his head against her door. “Why don’t you come out? Eat with me?”
Jo made a sound that could have been a laugh, could have been a sob.
“No,” she said. “Sorry. I don’t think I can. Not yet.”
“It’s okay,” Mal said hurriedly. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to rush you—”
“You’re not rushing me,” she filled in quickly. “I’m just”—she paused—“embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed?” Mal repeated.
“Yes, of course,” Jo said. “You’d understand, if you could smell me right now.”
“I’m sure I’ve smelled worse.”
Jo laughed, a small huff of a sound. “I hate that you’re seeing me like this.”
“Technically, I’m not seeing you,” Mal joked lamely. He opened his mouth to offer up something else, thought better of it, bit his lip, then decided,Screw it. “I ever tell you about what happened with my ex? After she left?”
“No,” Jo said. “Not in detail.”
Mal sighed, straightening out his legs. As Dahlia had strictly informed him, the joint Boateng-Cortes household was firmly anti-shoes-indoors, and so he focused on the design of his socks, the thin line of white that demarcated the gray toes from black body.
“We owned a photography studio together,” he confessed. “When we were in college, we always dreamed of working for ourselves. We took a loan out from my parents, moved up to Chicagoto be close to her family, and opened our studio. She did the marketing, got the clients, and I did the shoots. It was a dream come true for me.
“But Porsh wanted more. From the business at first, and then from me. And when she didn’t get it, she got frustrated, and then she got mean, and eventually, she left.” Mal swallowed, remembering those first few days after he’d returned home to find her gone. At the time, he had felt like he’d failed—at being a partner, at being a man. “We’d been together for so long that I think I lost sight of who I was outside of her. And when I realized she was gone for good... I broke.”
The stillness of the air between them felt potent, like they were both holding their breath.
“How?” Jo asked, after a moment. “I mean. What did breaking look like for you?”
Mal told her. He realized that he’d never told anyone this story before, aside from his therapist, because everyone who was still in his life had been an active player in it. He’d shut down his website. Unplugged his phone. Stopped taking bookings entirely. Google marked his business as closed, and he didn’t refute it. For two months, he let every day meld into the next, playing video games online with potty-mouthed tweens until the sun came up, consuming nothing but takeout and cheap beer, becoming one with his couch. He’d spilled shit on his floor and not wiped it up. Let the vegetables in his fridge develop their own ecosystems. It had taken a surprise visit from Kieran, Kelechi, and his very concerned parents to whip him back into shape. They’d practically forced him into therapy, into the gym, out of his apartment, and stayed on his ass until he emergedfrom his cocoon with a vision of a future for himself that for once, seemed crystal clear.
“If I’m honest with myself, I probably had been depressed for a while,” Mal confessed. “Definitely anxious. It kept me from taking risks, asking questions, pushing myself harder. I had this constant refrain in my head telling me that I shouldn’t bother, and sometimes I listened to it, instead of listening to the people I loved. I had to get to a pretty dark place before I accepted that I needed help. And when I got it, it was all-hands-on-deck.” He knocked his knuckles back against her door, one after the other. “So here I am, being your hands.”
He remembered the chokehold of depression. It was hard to admit now, how much of his youth had been eclipsed by it, how, despite his loving family, he’d always felt it layered on his skin like a fruit mold. He’d gotten better, then worse, then hit rock bottom, and he knew better than anyone that climbing out of the pit was a Sisyphean task. Every day it took work, and some days more work than others, and most times being loved the way he, honestly, had always been wasn’t enough.
But every now and then, it got close. Kieran’s voice on the other side of his apartment door, his parents flying in from Texas, the whole crew pitching in to help clean the biohazard zone he’d created—it had been the gust of cold wind he needed to jolt him back into reality. And reality was what Jo needed. He couldn’t imagine how she felt, under the onslaught of online attackers who made a game out of diminishing her. But in the real world, she was loved. If not by everyone in it, by him. And he would do whatever it took to break through the noise.
The hardwood underneath them creaked; Jo, adjusting herselfon the floor. If he concentrated, he could almost hear her breathing.
“Thank you, Mal,” she said, after a moment. “For everything.”
