The Smash-Up Read online

  “Working?”

  Tap, tap, tap. “As in, ‘a job’? As in, somebody gives you money in exchange for your services?”

  “Job? What job? You don’t have a job.” Her job is babysitting for them, isn’t it? Her job is looking for a job. Her job is figuring out what comes next, that’s why she’s here.

  “Whatever, Ethan.”

  “Wait.” He’s not thinking straight yet. This whole damned day has been so off-kilter. “But do you have a job?”

  Maddy stops typing, finally looks at him. The expression on her face says at once, You’re really stupid, and also, But that’s okay, I like you anyway. Her voice is softer as she says, “I do, Ethan. I have lots of jobs, actually.”

  Ethan tries to piece together the facts. He thought she was dead, but she’s not dead. She didn’t overdose/stroke out/collapse in his house, not on his watch. It was a job, that’s all.

  The hell kind of job, though?

  When he asks her that, the hell kind of job, she replies, “The kind that’s my own damn business.”

  He gives her the look she sometimes gives to him. Lips together. Arms folded, waiting. A taste of her own medicine. He’ll wait like this until she answers. Finally she tosses her hands in the air, resigned. “Fine. You ever hear of Ten-Spot?”

  He hasn’t.

  “It’s one of those odd-jobs websites,” Maddy explains. “Online marketplace for freelance stuff. You pitch your services, people bid. Gigs you can do from your home, starting at ten bucks.”

  “What sorts of gigs? Like graphic design?”

  She smiles at him, amused—too amused, actually. She looks like she’s talking to an idiot and is trying not to laugh at how slow he is. “Sure, Ethan. Like graphic design.”

  “But…for ten dollars?” He’s trying to do the math in his head. What sort of design jobs can a person do for ten bucks? And how can there possibly be enough of them for the business model to work?

  “Well, you have to offer something for ten bucks. So if it takes, like, a minute of my time, I charge ten bucks,” she says. “Price goes up from there.”

  “Maddy, do you even know graphic design?”

  Maddy stares at him. (Yes, he’s an idiot, he doesn’t know the first thing about anything, he admits it. He’s old, he’s irrelevant, ridiculous, a fool.) “To be honest, Ethan, I don’t get too many requests for graphic design.”

  She bangs on her laptop, then turns the screen toward him. “Here. This is my shop.”

  Now Ethan’s looking at a photo of her. He’s almost certain that it’s Maddy, anyway. It’s a selfie, taken from above her head. The picture includes just a portion of her face—her chin and a portion of her jaw. Mostly, he’s looking down on her body, which is sitting cross-legged on a white carpet. She’s wearing a loose black V-neck, and it’s almost impossible not to notice her cleavage, the hint of neon lace peeking out.

  The headline: I’LL DO ANYTHING, KINDA’ PROBABLY.

  He scrolls down, reads the description: I’ll rewrite ur online dating profile. I’ll correct ur spelling, or compliment your new haircut. I’ll call your house when ur girlfriend’s there and refuse to leave my name. I’ll Skype with u and not say a word, no matter what u say to me. Heck, I’ll even do that last one while licking a lollipop. I’ll do other things, too. Who knows—if I’m in the mood, I might even do that. Or that. Yeah, I’d might do that, too. Try me.

  He looks up. “Maddy, you can’t say this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” He pauses. Will Alex someday be in her twenties and still not know you can’t say this? “Well, because there are creeps out there, Mad.”

  She tilts her head, stares at him. “Oh, really, Ethan? Are there creeps out there? I never would have guessed.” Yes, he’s a silly old man, obtuse, he doesn’t understand. That’s what she’s saying with that look on her face.

  “Maddy, I’m serious.”

  “News flash, Ethan: creeps are out there no matter what I do or don’t do. And creep money is as green as anyone else’s.”

  “Wait. So you take those jobs?”

  “I mean…Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Depends on my mood. I can refuse any job I want, just so long as I don’t break a contract after it’s signed.”

  “But…” Ethan can’t shake the feeling that she’s missing something, some essential point. “What do you do for them?”

  “Honestly, most of the time it’s stupid,” she says. “One kid had me stuff as many cheese puffs in my mouth as I could, then say ‘penis’ a bunch of times. Another asked me to dance around to Ariana Grande wearing underwear over my face. It’s mostly pretty juvenile stuff. Lots of teenage boys with dumb ideas. I think they’re paying the ten bucks just to see if I’m for real.”

  He thinks about this, imagines himself as an adolescent with the power to ask a woman to do anything, anything at all, for the price of a movie ticket.

  “But it’s not just guys,” Maddy continues. “Like, this one woman asked me to call her husband and start talking dirty to him. I don’t know if she was spying on him, testing how long he’d stay on the phone, or if it was some kind of foreplay for the two of them, or what. Didn’t really matter to me either way. Only took a minute or so before he moaned and hung up.”

  “And this guy, today?”

  “Wanted me to lie motionless on the floor, mouth and eyes open. That’s it.”

  “Like you were…dead.”

  “I guess, yeah. He wanted to watch.”

  “But…why?”

  “I mean, I’m guessing that’s how he busts his nuts, but what do I know?”

  “Jesus, Maddy,” he says. He sits down on the bed, presses his forehead to his fists. “That’s horrible.” Why can’t she see how horrible this is?

  “Better than him using an actual dead girl, that’s what I figure. Plus I turned the sound down, so I wouldn’t have to hear him. I could’ve turned the job down, but he was offering, like, really good money. So I was like, okay, sure, I’ll take fifty bucks for lying on the floor for ten minutes. Hell yeah, I’ll do that.”

  “Mad. You have to be careful. Some of these people could be dangerous.”

  She shrugs. “It’s not like I meet them. They never even know my real name, or my location, or anything like that. The whole thing is, like, totally anonymous. Anyway, that’s the gig economy for you, am I right?”

  * * *

  —

  Ethan keeps his promise to Zo. Despite everything, he forces himself to call Boston Children’s, just like he said he would.

  He looks up individual doctors, specific department staff, as if his wife isn’t in jail as he does this, as if Maddy Silver hadn’t just indulged some psychopath’s murdered-girl fetish, as if his oldest friend weren’t asking him to blackmail a movie star. Ethan dutifully calls every extension at Boston Children’s he can find, explaining the situation into one voicemail box after another. Been on the waiting list for nineteen months…really struggling in the classroom…need more help than is available locally…might have to change schools…just want information…please, isn’t there anything you can—

  Very occasionally he talks to a live human. Those individuals take his name and number, promise nothing. Between calls, he dials Jackie’s number. He leaves multiple voicemails for her, too, each time saying pretty much the same thing—he’s at home, he’s waiting by the phone, he’ll come to the police station whenever Zo needs, can he do anything? Anything at all?

  And when he runs out of people to call, he sits down at his laptop. Tries to work.

  But the truth is, he’s got bigger problems—much bigger problems—than the rebranding of Fake Dr. Ash’s website. Try as he might, Ethan can’t keep his mind on Dr. Ash’s pseudoscience, her made-for-Instagram platitudes—Your body cries out for wellness, will you answer the call? Your s
oul is a seed that needs light and nourishment to grow!—or any of her supposedly health-boosting products.

  Ethan frowns. His eyes drift from his computer, to the reminder he scratched out this morning, still sitting on the counter: Get More Adderall.

  Never mind Dr. Ash. He’ll go get Alex’s prescription now. While he’s out, he’ll return the carpet Zo ordered and now doesn’t want. Might as well do something productive while he waits for the phone to ring.

  How to Get an Adderall Prescription, Part A

  Don’t think. Not about money, or about financial aid, or your wife in handcuffs. Don’t think about what your old business partner is asking of you, or about beautiful women who do unsavory things. Put all of that out of your head.

  Your only task right now is to get a prescription. Your kid needs her Adderall, and soon. You’ve got just one pill left in that jar.

  Adderall’s a Schedule II drug, so highly controlled that the Starkfield pediatrician won’t prescribe more than thirty days at a time. Her office also refuses to fax the prescription to the pharmacy, as they would for antibiotics or antihistamines. So getting this prescription filled on short notice is trickier than it seems.

  Don’t call the pediatrician’s office; they’ll just connect you to an automated prompt—“Dial 3 to fill an ADHD medication.” This path, you’ve learned, takes forty-eight hours. You don’t have forty-eight hours: you’ll be out of pills by morning.

  Drive to the office instead. Ask for Tracy, the medical assistant whose full-time job seems to be managing ADHD prescriptions for kids. When she comes out to meet you, put on your friendly voice, your affable voice, your whole “sheepish good-guy routine,” as Randy called it. You’re sorry, you tell Tracy, so sorry, but you need a prescription today. Count on the fact that Zo used to take a yoga class with Tracy, back before Zo changed gyms. Count on the fact that you once brought cookies to the staff after a particularly rough office visit when Alex was four; you’d had to hold her down, Exorcist–style, so the doctor could remove what turned out to be a pair of bright purple Barbie shoes from her left nostril. Count on the fact that you’re a dad; Zo says that fathers who are involved with their kids’ care are forgiven for cluelessness in ways that moms never are. Use this. I’m just a bumbling dad who doesn’t know the rules: but hey, look how much I care!

  Yes. You’ll wait here while she gets the prescription ready. You appreciate it, you really do.

  Sit in the waiting room, surrounded by primary colors and restless infants and a snotty-nosed toddler whose whine is an endless drone. When the prescription is ready, hand over your driver’s license. As they copy your license number—some precaution they claim to have to take, even though they know you—fill out the paperwork: patient name/date of birth/relationship to patient/yes I certify that this medicine will be used only for said patient/yes, I understand that this is a Schedule II controlled substance and I’m personally liable if it gets into the wrong hands.

  Drive the prescription to the local Rite Aid. Wait in line. When it’s your turn at the pharmacy counter, hand over the prescription. Show your driver’s license again. Fill out a new form, which says more or less all the same things that the first one did. Sign again. You’ll have to do the whole thing—the driver’s license, the form, the signature—a third time, when the prescription is ready to be picked up. It’ll be a half hour, they say. You can wait, or not.

  Not.

  You’ll come back for the filled prescription later. After you know your wife’s okay. After you’ve returned that carpet, and after you’ve gotten an appointment at Children’s Hospital, and after you’ve picked up Alex.

  And maybe, too, after you’ve figured out how to get a little money so you don’t need to do what Randy’s asking.

  How to Get an Adderall Prescription, Part B

  After Maddy had arrived to live with them, Ethan had told her about Alex’s ADHD. “She takes medication,” he’d explained, his voice low as if someone might hear, even though they were alone in the kitchen.

  “Cool,” said Maddy. Unfazed. “I took ADHD meds for a while.”

  “Really? Did they help?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  He asked Maddy why she stopped taking them, and she shrugged. “My supplier moved away. I guess just never bothered to find anyone else.”

  “Wait. You never actually had them officially prescribed?”

  Maddy shrugged. “I mean, it’s just Adderall or whatever.”

  * * *

  —

  Alex had started taking that red horse pill long before she knew how to swallow pills, or to spell her last name.

  They’d tried everything else. No screens, no sugar, no red dyes, no wheat, no dairy. They tried vitamins, magnesium, omega-3s. They’d done an elimination diet that left Alex eating little but rice and turkey for weeks. They tried memory training, meditation, neurofeedback, acupuncture, forced early morning walks, then forced early morning jogs (Ethan cheerleading—You can do this! It’s so good to get our energy out!—and Alex crying the whole while). When fellow parents recommended craniosacral therapy, kinesthesiology, Reiki, aromatherapy, qi-gong, crystal therapy, they tried those things too. And maybe some of it helped, hard to say, but not enough, because after all of this trying, they still marched up to the pharmacy counter with a prescription in hand.

  It helped, the Adderall. It helped more than they had expected, and faster than they expected too. It didn’t fix everything, but it made their lives—their child’s life!—just a little bit easier, a little bit more manageable.

  Okay, Alex still gets sent to the principal’s office more than the average kid. And sure, a dad at the Rainbow Seed School once remarked to Ethan, “So your kid’s got a real raised-by-wolves vibe, doesn’t she?” When the man saw the look on Ethan’s face, he added, too quickly, “It’s really very compelling.” But the truth is, Ethan couldn’t even get mad, because the guy wasn’t entirely wrong. You should have seen her before, he thought.

  It took the edge off, that’s the thing that nobody who hasn’t been through it could possibly understand. Thanks to those red pills, Alex was a little less raised-by-wolves. Everything became just a little easier. For her, and for them.

  Boy, is a nine-by-twelve wool carpet heavy. Ethan huffs and puffs as he drags the rolled rug from the back of his wagon toward the UPS Store. He throws open the door, managing to heave the rug only a couple of inches before the door closes, wedging it in place. Damn thing won’t budge. Ethan tries again: Open door, heave. Door shuts, carpet stuck. Then he does it a third time, and a fourth.

  Behind the counter, a clerk watches this whole clown show. “Need some help there?” The clerk’s younger than Ethan, with a beard that’s as long and scraggly as Ethan’s.

  “Nah,” Ethan pants. A bead of sweat trickles down his forehead. “I’ve got it.”

  Open door, heave, shut, stuck, fuck.

  The clerk shakes his head, emerges from behind the counter to help. He moves slowly, this kid; bit of a limp, as if he’s managing some kind of chronic pain, lower back maybe. His name badge, pinned to his shirt, says Jarrett K.

  Jarrett K tells Ethan to hold the door open, then grabs the carpet. He lifts the whole thing onto his shoulder, and carries it easily to the front of the store. The kid might walk funny, but he’s a friggin’ musk ox.

  Jarrett sets the carpet down, wipes his brow. “It’s a nice carpet, hey? This is what, New Zealand wool?”

  “No clue.”

  Jarrett peels back a corner of the carpet, rubs the yarns between his fingers. He nods. “That’s New Zealand, all right. Felted. Yeah, that’s real nice. Hand-knotted and everything.” Ethan’s surprise must show, because Jarrett shrugs. “Used to work over at Home Goods, the one over near Albany. Was one of the only guys who worked there—some days it was just me and a bunch of women, so naturally I
hauled all the heavy stuff. You learn pretty quickly to dread a well-made carpet.”

  Ethan sets down the return label. Jarrett asks, “Your wife order this?”

  “She did.”

  “And lemme guess. The color was ever-so-slightly off.”

  Ethan laughs. “Probably.” I don’t love it, Zo had said, who knows why.

  Scanning the barcode, Jarrett says, “So your wife does the ordering and the rejecting, and you do, what, the paying and the hauling?” Jarrett’s voice is friendly, and the truth is, he’s not wrong—Zo did order it. She did reject it. Ethan is the one who has to haul it. Still, Ethan feels a little guarded as he answers. “Well…she had some stuff going on.”

  You know, like getting arrested.

  Jarrett nods, tapping on a keyboard, eyes on the computer screen. “Sure, of course.”

  Also, not that it matters, but Ethan did pay. He’s not complaining, not really. What’s his is hers. Theirs. It’s theirs. Although he wouldn’t mind if Zo started bringing in some money again.

  “You married?” Ethan asks. Hard to tell how old this Jarrett kid is. His body seems middle-aged tired, but there’s not a speck of gray in his beard. Shaved head, but the stubble on his scalp looks dark, too. Could be anywhere from nineteen to thirty-five.

  “No sir, no marriage for me,” Jarrett says. He prints out a form, marks the places for Ethan to sign, flashes a grin as he hands over the pen. “I get to do enough hauling as-is.”

  “Well…” Ethan hesitates. “Marriage has its benefits too.” He feels like he should name a few. Comfort, maybe. Friendship. Partnership. Predictability. But he suspects these words will sound banal, not remotely convincing, and are they even true? There’s not much comfort coming from Zo these days. Or friendship, for that matter, let alone partnership. And predictability? Just a few hours ago, Zo slammed headlong into traffic cones, cackling like a madwoman.