housekeeping

Call your mother at 3 am, and when she asks why you are awake so late, tell her you recently learned that drain flies are fuzzier than fruit flies, even though both have made a home out of your sink. It’s important to keep people on their toes, so follow up this fun fact with “how is Jinghai doing?” and follow that up with “I run an average pace of 9 minutes now” and follow that up with “I don’t know if I believe there are good people anymore.” She will take this to mean “I can’t get over this breakup” and “I miss him,” and, although true, this means you won’t have to talk about the other blocked numbers on your phone.

Fly to California on a whim. Fly to California using money you should’ve set aside for an emergency, fly to California around the same time you flew to California last year, and tell people it’s a tradition. All traditions start from doing the same thing twice, so maybe it is a tradition, and you just don’t know it yet. Fly to California because last year your therapist (who is no longer your therapist) told you to (1) take more spontaneous trips and (2) see your friends more often. She’s no longer your therapist, but you figure if you already paid her hundreds of dollars, you might as well keep some of the advice.

In California, write in your Notes app “in California, I stay grieving” because this sounds like a good title for a poem. Except you don’t grieve in California because your best friends are dealing with a drain fly infestation. Spend your trip reciting the same drain-fly-fruit-fly fun fact you told your mom at 3 am. Don’t tell your friends that it was your ex who taught you this fun fact. Don’t tell your friends about how he bought you fly swatters, either. Stay up until 3 am again (except this time, in California hours) and call your mom to say, “I learned the drain-fly-fruit-fly fun fact from him.” She will say, “I know,” and you will extrapolate this to mean “he was important, he was different, he was good” when all she means is “I know you miss him.”

Consider telling your friends about the other blocked numbers. Un-consider this as soon as you remember you are an unreliable narrator, and before they were blocked numbers, they were drain flies. Scratch that, before they were blocked numbers, they were drain flies that you mistook for fruit flies. Scratch that, before they were blocked numbers, they were your friends, too. Tell your friends the drain-fly-fruit-fly fun fact again and ignore the strange looks you get as they tell you this is the fourth time you’ve said this fact.

Go home. Do your laundry as soon as you reach your apartment. Wash your sheets. Wash your sheets again. The drain flies have reached your bedroom despite the misleading name; this is a metaphor. A metaphor can only catch so much in its net; the “net” here is the fly traps you set up. Erase the metaphor. Wash your sheets again. It is now 3 am after you spent the entire day (and night) repetitively washing your sheets; this is (maybe) a metaphor. Call your mom.

Tell your mom about the blocked numbers this time. Conveniently leave out that one of the numbers is that of your best friend. If the number is blocked, does that mean it’s “ex-best friend” now? Maybe this is why you left it out: ex-partner and ex-therapist is a coincidence, but ex-best friend makes it a pattern. And you’ve already established you’re an unreliable narrator; this is why you keep saying drain-fly-fruit-fly — you still can’t tell the difference. Follow up the conversation about the blocked numbers with “I’m dealing with a fly infestation” and ignore the urge to correct yourself on both accounts. It’s important to keep people on their toes, but you’re no longer sure if the “people” is you or your mother.

Wake up. Wash your sheets. You’ve spilled so much detergent in the past few weeks that you’re starting to lose your sense of smell. You haven’t washed the sheets since he packed everything up and left, but now you’re washing the sheets every day. Your friends make jokes about if it’s because the sheets smelled like him, but he didn’t smell like anything. Or maybe you no longer let yourself get close enough to anyone to smell anything. You call your mom and say, “I don’t know if I believe there are good people anymore,” and this time she says, “maybe you need to be a little more open-minded.” You don’t tell her that you are (1) an unreliable narrator and (2) unable to distinguish fruit flies from drain flies from flies from gnats from friends.

You know you have to clean the drain instead of obsessively washing the sheets eventually. (You know you’ll have to unblock the numbers and give a proper reply eventually. Or maybe you don’t.) Ignore the drain long enough, and maybe the flies will starve to death. (Ignore the messages long enough, and maybe there will be no more new ones.) In a better story, the narrator would end the metaphor by cleaning the drain or taking a course in entomology (to actually learn the difference between fruit flies and drain flies) or, at the very least, no longer obsessively washing the sheets.

You wash the sheets again.