Reva Character Analysis

I was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you’d feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide. Not that what I was doing was suicide. In fact, it was the opposite of suicide. My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.

“I’m not a junkie or something,” I said defensively. “I’m taking some time off. This is my year of rest and relaxation.”

“Lucky you,” Reva said. “I wouldn’t mind taking time off from work to loaf around, watch movies, and snooze all day, but I’m not complaining. I just don’t have that luxury.”

Reva was partial to self-help books and workshops that usually combined some new dieting technique with professional development and romantic relationship skills, under the guise of teaching young women “how to live up to their full potential.” Every few weeks, she had a whole new paradigm for living, and I had to hear about it. “Get good at knowing when you’re tired,” she’d advised me once. “Too many women wear themselves thin these days.”

“But you could have the medication instead,” I argued. “And spare your jaw from all that chewing.” I didn’t really care about Reva’s jaw.

The ghoulish voice of the TV show’s male narrator and Reva’s sniffles and sighs should have lulled me to sleep. But I could not sleep. I closed my eyes.

“I’m overwhelmed, I guess. It’s been hard, but also sort of beautiful in this sad and peaceful way. You know what she said before she died? She said, ‘Don’t worry so much trying to be everybody’s favorite. Just go have fun.’ That really hit me, ‘everybody’s favorite.’ Because it’s true. I do feel the pressure to be like that. Do you think I’m like that? I guess I just never felt good enough. This is probably healthy for me, to have to face life now, you know, on my own.

Pondering all this down in Reva’s black room under her sad, pilly sheets, I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn’t bring them up in me. I couldn’t even locate where my emotions came from. My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best—a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system—a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love?

I thought about whatever subliminal impulse had put me on the train to Farmingdale. Seeing Reva in full-blown Reva mode both delighted and disgusted me. Her repression, her transparent denial, her futile attempts to tap into the pain with me in the car, it all satisfied me somehow. Reva scratched at an itch that, on my own, I couldn’t reach. Watching her take what was deep and real and painful and ruin it by expressing it with such trite precision gave me reason to think Reva was an idiot, and therefore I could discount her pain, and with it, mine. Reva was like the pills I took. They turned everything, even hatred, even love, into fluff I could bat away. And that was exactly what I wanted—my emotions passing like headlights that shine softly through a window, sweep past me, illuminate something vaguely familiar, then fade and leave me in the dark again.

I took off the white fur and the bustier and the fishnets and went to the bathroom to run the hot water in the shower. My toenails were painted lilac, my previously flaky calloused soles now smooth and soft. I used the toilet and watched a vein throb in my thigh. What had I done? Spent a spa day then gone out clubbing? It seemed preposterous. Had Reva convinced me to go “enjoy myself” or something just as idiotic? I peed, and when I wiped myself, it was slick. I had recently been aroused, it seemed. Who had aroused me? I remembered nothing. A wave of nausea made me lurch over and regurgitate an acrid globule of phlegm, which I spat into the sink. From the sandy feel of my mouth, I was expecting to see granules of dirt or the grit of a crushed pill speckling my saliva. Instead, it was pink glitter.

I had to admit that it was a comfort to have Reva there. She was just as good as a VCR, I thought. The cadence of her speech was as familiar and predictable as the audio from any movie I’d watched a hundred times.

And there was a Christmas card from Reva: “During this hard time, you’ve been there for me. I don’t know what I’d do without a friend like you to weather life’s ups and downs. . . .” It was as poorly composed as the aborted eulogy she’d given for her mother. I threw it away.

I wanted the old half life back, when my VCR still worked and Reva would come over with her petty gripes and I could lose myself in her shallow universe for a few hours and then disappear into slumber. I wondered if those days were over now that Reva had been promoted and Ken was out of the picture. Would she suddenly grow into maturity and discard me as a relic from a failed past, the way I’d hoped to do to her when my year of sleep was over? Was Reva actually waking up? Did she now realize I was a terrible friend? Could she really dispose of me so easily? No. No. She was a drone. She was too far gone.

“Take the jewelry, too,” I said, and returned to the bedroom, which now felt hollowed and cool. Thank God for Reva. Her greed would unburden me of my own vanity.

The world was out there still, but I hadn’t looked at it in months. It was too much to consider it all, stretching out, a circular planet covered in creatures and things growing, all of it spinning slowly on an axis created by what—some freak accident? It seemed implausible. The world could be flat just as easily as it could be round. Who could prove anything? In time, I would understand, I told myself.

I reached across her folded legs, tugged at the magazine in her tense clutch, like a tug-of-war. I didn’t want her to leave. The white glare off the overhead light gleamed across her collarbones. She was beautiful, with all her nerves and all her complicated, circuitous feelings and contradictions and fears. This would be the last time I’d see her in person. “I love you,” I said. “I love you, too.”

There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.

I was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you’d feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide. Not that what I was doing was suicide. In fact, it was the opposite of suicide. My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.

“I’m not a junkie or something,” I said defensively. “I’m taking some time off. This is my year of rest and relaxation.”

“Lucky you,” Reva said. “I wouldn’t mind taking time off from work to loaf around, watch movies, and snooze all day, but I’m not complaining. I just don’t have that luxury.”

Reva was partial to self-help books and workshops that usually combined some new dieting technique with professional development and romantic relationship skills, under the guise of teaching young women “how to live up to their full potential.” Every few weeks, she had a whole new paradigm for living, and I had to hear about it. “Get good at knowing when you’re tired,” she’d advised me once. “Too many women wear themselves thin these days.”

“But you could have the medication instead,” I argued. “And spare your jaw from all that chewing.” I didn’t really care about Reva’s jaw.

The ghoulish voice of the TV show’s male narrator and Reva’s sniffles and sighs should have lulled me to sleep. But I could not sleep. I closed my eyes.

“I’m overwhelmed, I guess. It’s been hard, but also sort of beautiful in this sad and peaceful way. You know what she said before she died? She said, ‘Don’t worry so much trying to be everybody’s favorite. Just go have fun.’ That really hit me, ‘everybody’s favorite.’ Because it’s true. I do feel the pressure to be like that. Do you think I’m like that? I guess I just never felt good enough. This is probably healthy for me, to have to face life now, you know, on my own.

Pondering all this down in Reva’s black room under her sad, pilly sheets, I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn’t bring them up in me. I couldn’t even locate where my emotions came from. My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best—a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system—a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love?

I thought about whatever subliminal impulse had put me on the train to Farmingdale. Seeing Reva in full-blown Reva mode both delighted and disgusted me. Her repression, her transparent denial, her futile attempts to tap into the pain with me in the car, it all satisfied me somehow. Reva scratched at an itch that, on my own, I couldn’t reach. Watching her take what was deep and real and painful and ruin it by expressing it with such trite precision gave me reason to think Reva was an idiot, and therefore I could discount her pain, and with it, mine. Reva was like the pills I took. They turned everything, even hatred, even love, into fluff I could bat away. And that was exactly what I wanted—my emotions passing like headlights that shine softly through a window, sweep past me, illuminate something vaguely familiar, then fade and leave me in the dark again.

I took off the white fur and the bustier and the fishnets and went to the bathroom to run the hot water in the shower. My toenails were painted lilac, my previously flaky calloused soles now smooth and soft. I used the toilet and watched a vein throb in my thigh. What had I done? Spent a spa day then gone out clubbing? It seemed preposterous. Had Reva convinced me to go “enjoy myself” or something just as idiotic? I peed, and when I wiped myself, it was slick. I had recently been aroused, it seemed. Who had aroused me? I remembered nothing. A wave of nausea made me lurch over and regurgitate an acrid globule of phlegm, which I spat into the sink. From the sandy feel of my mouth, I was expecting to see granules of dirt or the grit of a crushed pill speckling my saliva. Instead, it was pink glitter.

I had to admit that it was a comfort to have Reva there. She was just as good as a VCR, I thought. The cadence of her speech was as familiar and predictable as the audio from any movie I’d watched a hundred times.

And there was a Christmas card from Reva: “During this hard time, you’ve been there for me. I don’t know what I’d do without a friend like you to weather life’s ups and downs. . . .” It was as poorly composed as the aborted eulogy she’d given for her mother. I threw it away.

I wanted the old half life back, when my VCR still worked and Reva would come over with her petty gripes and I could lose myself in her shallow universe for a few hours and then disappear into slumber. I wondered if those days were over now that Reva had been promoted and Ken was out of the picture. Would she suddenly grow into maturity and discard me as a relic from a failed past, the way I’d hoped to do to her when my year of sleep was over? Was Reva actually waking up? Did she now realize I was a terrible friend? Could she really dispose of me so easily? No. No. She was a drone. She was too far gone.

“Take the jewelry, too,” I said, and returned to the bedroom, which now felt hollowed and cool. Thank God for Reva. Her greed would unburden me of my own vanity.

The world was out there still, but I hadn’t looked at it in months. It was too much to consider it all, stretching out, a circular planet covered in creatures and things growing, all of it spinning slowly on an axis created by what—some freak accident? It seemed implausible. The world could be flat just as easily as it could be round. Who could prove anything? In time, I would understand, I told myself.

I reached across her folded legs, tugged at the magazine in her tense clutch, like a tug-of-war. I didn’t want her to leave. The white glare off the overhead light gleamed across her collarbones. She was beautiful, with all her nerves and all her complicated, circuitous feelings and contradictions and fears. This would be the last time I’d see her in person. “I love you,” I said. “I love you, too.”

There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.