Losing It by Emma Rathbone

was studying some framed pressed flowers when I happened to look over and see Aunt Viv talking to a group of the women. She was holding up a decorative crystal goblet—the light glinted through it—and telling a story. She was talking quickly. Her hair was coming out of her braid a little, and her face was flushed. It was something funny; the people listening were giggling and paying close attention. I could see that in this context, with these women, she had a kind of power. She was presiding, divvying out attention and eye contact while they all stood around with open faces. Everyone burst out laughing at the same time, and she looked around in a happy, calculating way.
    Later, in the car, I asked her about it.
    â€œSo you went to Bora Bora?”
    â€œWhat?” she said, looking over at me, bemused.
    â€œDidn’t you live there for a year?”
    â€œMe?”
    â€œYeah. Karen said—about the coconut pantomime?”
    â€œOh.” She reddened. She became visibly flustered. She started messing with the radio dial and accidentally hit the turn signal, which started clicking.
    â€œThis
thing
,” she said, annoyed, poking at it, and then the windshield wipers came on.
    â€œSo you went there?” I said, prompting her again, once she’d turned them off and a few moments had passed.
    She nodded quickly without looking at me. The atmosphere in the car became warped and strange. We sat in silence the rest of the way.
    It was only later that night, thinking back on the incident and trying to decipher her behavior that I realized what had happened. Aunt Viv had acted exactly like someone caught in a lie. She’d never gone to Bora Bora. She’d made up a story and then forgotten about it until I brought it up. I thought of the imperious way she presided over her friends at the party, how she basked in their admiration; her obvious pleasure as she conducted the moment, and the look of triumph on her face when they burst out laughing. I could see embellishing a little bit, but what kind of person would make up a story that outlandish completely out of nowhere? What did Viv want the world to think ofher?

Four
    I stared at a colossal man named Ed Branch. He was like a mountain in a swivel chair. His huge face appeared to be melting, his cheeks sagging, the shiny skin under his eyes dripping down in two wide, flat drops. He was smiling at me in a jovial way. I took a sip from a glass of water on the heavy mahogany desk in front of me. There was a framed picture of an equally robust person—his wife, I assumed—caught unawares and laughing with a watering can, her face plump and happy, and I imagined they regularly had bawdy, baseboard-pounding sex, and then every once in a while she would watch him doing little boyish things, and her heart would burst.
    And then there was Wes, sitting next to him. Wes seemed like a nice guy, too. He was young, grave, and ex-military. He had a knee-jerk politeness about him, old-fashioned and Southern. I wondered if that meant he’d be the same in bed, attentive to your every need with perfect decorum. Or maybe that consideration could turn cold and sharpen into cruelty. I wondered if this was something you could tell about a person.
    â€œWhat was it you said you did at this Quartz Consulting?” said Ed. His hand absently wandered over to a nut bowl.
    I was interviewing with them for a job at a firm called Kramer Branch, a week after I’d arrived in Durham. My third day there, with Viv gone again, the house quiet, I was stretched like a piano string. Everything had sputtered out—the essay I started writing; it was too hot to go for a walk. I tried reading in different rooms, but I couldn’t get into a book. I ended up in the sunroom, feeling half deranged, looking at a dusty craft manual on weaving. Finally, in defeat, I pulled over my laptop and started looking for part-time work. Plus, I thought, how was I ever even going