by Mary McCoy
Why doesn’t Greg ever come to visit us? It seems like all your other friends from college come back to Memphis all the time.
MAYA:
He always had a lot going on in LA. Maybe Memphis isn’t that compelling to him anymore.
LEE:
Like, he’s too good for you?
MAYA:
I wouldn’t say that Greg ever made me feel like that.
LEE:
Well, you dedicated a book of poetry to him. How did he make you feel?
MAYA:
See? That’s how you ask a question like that.
When we’d sit together at the Map Room, me writing, him sketching, he made me feel like what I was doing was real. Like maybe I wasn’t going to wait tables at the TGI Fridays in Overton Square for the rest of my life.
LEE:
So the poems were about him?
MAYA:
Some of them were. I loved him.
LEE:
So if you were writing love poems at the Map Room with Greg, where does my dad come in?
MAYA:
The summer after graduation, we were all living together in that big house on Belvedere Street. Me, your dad, Greg, Maggie, Sage, and Harold. Your dad babysat for one of our professors’ kids during the day, and every night, he came home and wrote his plays. Everybody else partied, tended bar, went to shows, kept crazy hours, but I always knew where to find your dad. His schedule never changed.
LEE:
So you ended up with him because he was around?
MAYA:
Doesn’t it always start like that?
LEE:
Were you still in love with Greg then?
MAYA:
Greg was leaving for LA. There was no changing any of that.
LEE:
So instead of leaving Memphis with a man you loved, you stuck around and got together with Dad, and got pregnant pretty much immediately.
MAYA:
Pretty much.
LEE:
Do you wish you hadn’t had me when you were so young?
MAYA:
Lee, my mother—your grandmother—died when I was twenty-eight years old.
LEE:
I remember.
MAYA:
Exactly. You remember. The two of you got five years with each other. I would never be anything but grateful for that.
My mom’s eyes get red, the way they always do when she talks about my grandmother, who had raised her alone, who’d never had time to take up knitting or gardening or any grandmotherly hobbies, because all she ever did was work. She painted decorative finishes on the walls of all the new-money houses out in Germantown, the whitest and wealthiest Memphis suburb, where people stood in their actual ballrooms wearing sweatpants and haggling with her over the price. She’d take me with her sometimes, set me up in my Pack ’n Play in the corner while she went up on the scaffolding and sponged faux-leather texture on the ceilings.
When my grandmother got sick, my mom took over the business. She painted her way through her poetry degree at the University of Memphis. I wonder what Greg and his fancy art school friends thought of the kind of painting my mom and grandma did. Would he have looked down his nose at it, made fun of it?
“I should go, honey,” my mom says. “Maggie’s waiting on me.”
She tells me that she loves me, and I thank her for talking to me, and we’re about to hang up when suddenly—
MAN’S VOICE:
Maya, are you in there? Maya! Answer the door!
A man is pounding on the door of my mom’s hotel room, calling her name.
My mother’s head whips around.
“I’ll be right there!” she says, and then she looks back at the camera, guilty and stunned.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Nobody. Just a friend joining us for breakfast.”
“He sounds pretty upset about it. Which friend?”
“He teaches at Tulane. He’s showing us around today before the reading tonight, and we were supposed to get moving half an hour ago. Now, stop being suspicious. I love you.”
LEE SWAN: (studio)
Talking to my mom reminds me of another one of her poems in Map Room Love Songs, one of the few that’s not about love, or Greg, or heartbreak, at least not the romantic kind. It’s about wondering if you’re going to be a waitress at TGI Fridays for the rest of your life.
I’ll read it to you.
DISAPPEARING ACT
I always watch the kids at TGI Fridays.
Not because I want one of my own,
but because they know something I don’t:
how to get out of here.
Like sideshow con artists,
they wait for their moment, then
spill something,
break something,
hit someone,
cry.
I’m apprenticing at the foot of miniature Houdinis,
mastering the art of escape.
And when their parents’ lives come for me,
I’ll dislocate my shoulder,
spit a piece of wire into the palm of my hand,
pick the locks,
and vanish.
When your mom writes a poem like that, it makes you feel like a padlock, a straitjacket, a length of chain.
As we hang up, I find myself wondering if she’s pulling her disappearing act now, at last, after all these years.
I find myself wondering how many other things she’d lied to me about.
CHAPTER 10 An Unreliable Narrator of Your Own Life
I don’t know what to say to you, I write to Vincent, then delete it.
Then: I don’t know if I can do what you’re asking me to do.
And the next: I don’t know what to do.
I don’t send any of them.
There’s nothing I can say that will make this neat and clean. I know that, but then my mind reels out this flight of fancy. I imagine finishing this podcast on my own, a work of such depth and sensitivity that Vincent would hear it and he’d know that I was an artist just like he was. He’d hear it and somehow that would be enough to magically resolve the problem of him being eight hundred miles away from me.
Of course, at the same time I’m telling myself this story and obsessing over my ex, the other lobe of my brain is writing the lead-in to the interview with my mom and cleaning up the audio, because, I think, Fuck it. This is who I am. This is what I do. Let’s ride this self-indulgent mine car out to the end of its rusty, broken track.
I slip on the headphones and set myself up in front of the microphone to test my levels before I start to record the introduction, and it feels good. I can’t control anything else about my life, but I know how to set up a pop filter, run the de-esser plug-in, and produce a clear and beautiful sound. I can take the interview with my mom, edit it together with my script, layer in some music. I might use an open-source piece, or one of the tracks Harold had given me to use, but I also keep a keyboard and sequencer in the attic because sometimes it’s quicker to create a little melodic interlude myself than to search for a free one on the internet.
It feels weird to record the lead-in without anyone else around, knowing that Vincent isn’t going to be there to listen to it, critique it, break it apart so we can build it up again better.
I trusted his ear. I trusted his taste. He was my Object of Destruction, keeping watch over me in my studio, letting me know if the work was any good. I’d never had anyone else like that in my life. I don’t know if I ever will again.
If I could just move to DC and let us go back to being us, I think. If I could just say it would never happen again.
If I could just believe that was the real problem.
After I finish recording the lead-in to my mom’s interview, I keep talking.
LEE SWAN:
Recently, I caught myself thinking, When you’ve been kissing one guy exclusively for two years, you forget that other guys can be bad kissers.
I may have b
een a little bit in denial when I used the word exclusively, because that would suggest that during the time Vincent and I were together, Vincent was the only person I was kissing.
There are a lot of ways to justify cheating. In movies, people say, It didn’t mean anything, or It was just the one time, or I never meant to hurt you.
I justified it by telling myself at least I was discreet, and Vincent never found out I was hooking up with Claire after work.
But it wasn’t just the one time. And it did start to mean something. And sometimes I wanted it so much, I almost didn’t care if people got hurt.
There were other things I told myself. Like, if he didn’t want to have sex with me, what did it matter? Why should he be jealous about something that he didn’t even want?
Those are things you can tell yourself in the moment, but then afterward, you feel guilty for lying to people you love about who you are and what you’ve done. For lying to yourself.
Everybody thought Vincent and I had the perfect relationship. But I guess Vincent knew it wasn’t perfect. And Claire knew it wasn’t perfect. And deep down, I knew it wasn’t perfect too.
I’d recorded myself before, but I’d never said anything so personal, not even when Vincent and I were breaking up. I almost delete it right away, but it feels honest and true. It seems important to keep it, as some sort of signpost to mark who I am in a post-Vincent world.
This part is just for me, I think.
Behind me, the top step of the pull-down attic staircase creaks, and I spin around to see who’s there.
I don’t know how long Max has been standing at the top of the stairs, but the look on his face suggests that he’s heard a lot.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Nothing. Just messing around.”
I could yell at Max for coming into my space, but ours is not that kind of friendship. We’ve known each other since we were eight. When I stayed at his house in Chicago, I walked in on him in the bathroom, squeezing pus from his zits or pulling his hand out of his pants. I was embarrassed, but this wasn’t any different.
“What kind of messing around?”
“It’s a true crime investigation,” I say, then put on an old-timey radio announcer voice. “ ‘Who drowned love in the bathtub and made it look like an accident? You won’t believe what the nanny is hiding!’ ”
However, my jokey deflection does not work on Max. He ignores it completely, doesn’t even smile, and asks, “Are you making a podcast about breaking up with Vincent?”
I nearly throw my headphones at him.
“I’m heartbroken, but I’m not pathetic.”
Max puts his hands up in self-defense. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were. I’ve been dumped before. Whatever gets you through, right?”
“It’s about my parents,” I say. “That’s what I’m doing. Investigating the story of how I never should have been born.”
“That’s an extreme position.”
“Not particularly. Earlier today, my mom told me that she ended up with my dad because his schedule was easy to remember and everybody else left her for something better.”
“Turn the mic back on.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Max. You don’t ‘turn the mic back on.’ ”
“Then hit record, or whatever shit it is you do.”
MAX LOZADA:
What you need, Lee Swan, is an objective, impartial observer to prevent you from becoming an unreliable narrator of your own life. If your parents were so doomed, why did they stay together for almost twenty years?
LEE SWAN:
Because they’re stubborn. Because it seemed like a lot of paperwork. Because of me.
MAX:
Still, you couldn’t possibly have gotten the whole story in one conversation with your mom.
LEE:
You are probably right. Is that what you wanted to record? Me saying that you’re probably right?
MAX:
No, I wanted to ask you again. What are you doing?
LEE:
I’m investigating the story of why my parents got together, and got married, and had me, when all the evidence I have suggests they shouldn’t have.
MAX:
And why are you doing that?
LEE:
Because… because I want to know where they went wrong. Because I want to believe that love is possible, that it isn’t something that’s destined to rot or turn cold or end. Because I have to know whether they were doomed from the start.
A few hours later, Sage and my dad come home together with a bag full of Chinese takeout. Max and I head down to greet them, trying to look as though we haven’t just been recording a podcast about my parents’ horrible relationship.
My dad points at Max and asks, by way of a greeting, “If there was a reality show called America’s Next Top Carnivore, which contestant would be the fan favorite?”
Max never has trouble keeping up with the questions that sprout in my dad’s brain.
“Pit bull with a heart of gold. His name is Scraps, and he’s looking for a second chance.”
My dad clutches his heart and makes a tearful expression. “Scraps is gonna teach us all to love again.”
I’m not sure why he’s in such a good mood until he starts opening cartons while Max and I set the table, and he casually remarks, “So, I guess your mother was wrong. Greg is coming after all. He gets in later tonight.”
Sage frowns. “I thought you wanted me to do your tattoo tonight.”
“Why not? He won’t be here until late. We can get these two night owls to go pick him up from the airport. Or he can spring for a cab. I’m sure he’s good for it.”
“I wonder why he decided to come,” Sage says.
“To see us, of course! He said something came up, and he had to come out this way anyhow, so it all worked out.”
“Uh-huh.” Sage does not seem to share my dad’s enthusiasm, and instead picks up their phone and sends a couple of texts as the rest of us load our plates with kung pao tofu and slippery shrimp.
“How was your day, Sage?” I ask, since no one else in the house had managed a normal greeting.
Sage puts down the phone and gives me a sad smile, then a hug.
“It’s hard being here. I forget that sometimes.”
At first, I think Sage is talking about our house, and like, sure, I get it, but I’m still about to get offended when they add, “I don’t mean here. Or in this neighborhood. Or with all of you. You provide the context people seem to think they need to figure out how to interact with me. It’s when I step outside that…”
I don’t know if it’s like this in every city, but sometimes it feels like Memphis has an unwritten book of rules. Some of them are dumb, like how if you’re a guest in someone’s house, you’re not supposed to ask for anything that your host doesn’t offer you. Not even if you’re dying of thirst. Not even if there’s no toilet paper in the bathroom. Some of the rules of Memphis are annoying, such as the way you’re supposed to graciously accept the chivalry of guys opening doors for you, even if they’re getting in your way, or slowing you down, or calling you a bitch while you walk past.
And some of the rules of Memphis just suck.
The rule that says it’s more important to say sir or ma’am than it is not to misgender someone. The rules about where white and Black people go to school, where they live, where they go to church. The rules that say who belongs here and who doesn’t, who is accepted at face value and who will be asked to explain themselves.
It’s not written down anywhere. Even if your parents don’t teach it to you—even if they teach you that it’s wrong—you grow up knowing it. That’s just how it is.
“Did something happen at Trinity today?” Dad asks.
“Something happens almost every day,” Sage says. “And even if it doesn’t, even if it’s something little, it’s stressful being on edge during every single interaction. Like, is this person going to be a dick? Even when n
othing happens, my muscles are tensed up in a ball of knots all day.”
“You’re not the only one,” Max points out. “It’s not the same for me, obviously, but I know what it’s like to have people look at you and decide they need to know exactly what you are.”
“I know I’m not the only one, honey,” Sage says.
I know exactly what Max and Sage are talking about because I’ve seen it happen. Most people who live in Memphis are either Black or white; there aren’t a lot of Asian people here, and hardly any Filipino people. We’d be out somewhere, and Max would ask Sage or Maggie for some money for a Coke, and people’s eyes would stay on him a moment too long, studying his skin tone, which was darker than either of theirs, trying to gender Sage, and I could see the questions on their faces: Who are you, kid? What are you to them? How do the three of you belong together?
And then sometimes, when it dawned on them that Maggie, Sage, and Max were a family, a queer family holding hands at the zoo or posing for a picture on Beale Street, I’d see the questions on their face curdle into judgment.
If I could see it, I didn’t doubt that Max could feel it, their scrutiny of his race, his family, his sexuality.
What I don’t understand is why Max gives Sage a dirty look when they call him honey, and why Sage looks away, turns to my dad, and says, “Well, we’d better get started on your tattoo.”
An hour later, my dad is leaning over a chair back, his shoulder shaved clean and sterilized with alcohol, Sage is tracing the design with a stencil they’d drawn, and Max and I are gawking at the spectacle.
“Um, Sage,” I say. “The thing I talked to you about this morning. Is it still okay if I record you?”
Sage turns to my dad. “Lee wants to interview us for something she’s working on. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure. About what?” my dad asks warily, but I start recording as soon as he says sure.
CHAPTER 11 Some Slippery Fucking Logic