by Mary McCoy
Maybe they want to play those roles one last time.
“Then let’s do this,” my dad says, and my mom lets out a whoop, and he leads everyone through the secret passageway. And then my dad, the man who never wants to talk about the past, is circling up his friends, explaining what we’re about to do, what they’re about to listen to, as I plug my recorder into the speakers.
“You’re about to hear one of the worst engagement parties in recorded history,” he says, gesturing to me to begin. “Let’s finish this in style.”
CHAPTER 37 Right Where I Already Was
It’s almost one when everyone gathers round in my dad’s living room to listen: Trudy and Kyra; my dad’s new neighbors, who are medical students and used to late hours; and my parents’ inner circle—Maggie, Sage, and Harold—and Max and me.
Maggie and Sage sit on the orange velvet couch, Maggie’s legs thrown over Sage’s lap, just like she does in the video of my parents’ engagement party. I wonder if they remember.
Harold sits on one of the milk crates, and my mom sits with her back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of her.
Trudy, Kyra, and my dad’s neighbors stand near the front door, leaning against the walls like they’re not sure whether they should be here, but are also worried it would be rude to leave now.
The audio I’m playing isn’t finished yet, but I’ve been able to pull the sound from the digitized VHS and edit in my commentary. The levels are all over the place, in a way that makes my inner perfectionist cringe. Still, I can hear the thing it will be, and even now, it’s beginning to sound like a real story.
And people seem to like it. Everyone in the inner circle giggles and exchanges knowing glances when I describe Greg’s goatee and indoor sunglasses. Maggie rolls her eyes at his bleak toast, and when he tells my mom she’ll regret staying in Memphis with my dad, Sage gasps. “I knew he said something dumb, but I didn’t remember how dumb,” they say.
Even the people who weren’t there when it happened seem to be connecting with it, feeling the things I hoped they’d feel when I edited it.
“Mosquito-infested shithole?” Trudy says, scoffing. “Ahem, Memphis is a cockroach-infested shithole. Everybody knows that.”
“Yeah,” Kyra adds. “Get it right, Greg.”
It’s interesting to watch Sage, Maggie, Harold, and my parents while they listen. Even though it’s part of their shared lore, I can tell they all remember it a little bit differently. Had they forgotten how my mom flipped the coffee table, or how it was Harold, not my dad, who caught my mom in his arms and stopped her from lunging at Greg? Did they remember that my dad didn’t do anything, didn’t say anything, didn’t even get up off the floor when it happened?
We listen to the part where Greg storms out of the house, and everyone goes outside to smoke, and my mom is sitting alone in the living room with her head in her hands.
I look over my shoulder and see that she’s in a similar pose now, in the present tense. She’s drawn her knees up to her chest and is looking down at them, rocking slightly.
“Is this okay, Mom?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, sitting up straight, eyes on the recorder almost like it’s projecting an image above.
And then we listen to the rest.
OBJECTS OF DESTRUCTION, EPISODE #3:
“A Book, a Passport, a Tape”
LEE SWAN: (studio)
When we reach the end, my dad gets up and walks out of the room. Kyra whispers something to Trudy, but otherwise, nobody speaks. Harold looks like he’s torn between following my dad or putting his arm around my mom, but isn’t sure either of them want that, so he does nothing. He avoids looking at Maggie and Sage.
The person my mom can’t seem to look at is me. Under her breath I hear her whisper, “I thought I was doing what was best.”
Stories are supposed to have villains. Stories are supposed to have people who do the right thing and people who fuck up. Stories are supposed to have wronged parties and people who get what’s coming to them, people you cheer for and people for whom you only wish bad things. Stories are supposed to have a romance where two people find each other and live happily ever after.
So what I ask myself, as I sit in my dad’s cursed fourplex, as I watch my mom looking like she wants to vanish, what I ask myself is: Do I want a story, or do I want the truth?
Do I want a villain, or do I want my family?
I sit down next to my mom. I haven’t even hugged her since she’s been back, so I do, because I missed her, because my heart hurts for her, and I still have my arms around her when my dad comes back into the room holding a photo album.
He crouches down beside my mom and hands the album to me. On the cover, there’s a picture of my parents and me standing on the front porch of what I realize now is the big house on Belvedere that wasn’t really that big.
“Turn on your recorder,” my dad says. “Let’s talk about the past.”
ARTHUR SWAN:
Lee, by the time I was your age, all the family I’d ever had was gone. My dad left when I was exactly old enough to remember how scary he was, but young enough to be completely gutted by losing him. And then my mom got a new boyfriend who didn’t want to raise another man’s kid, so she left me with my grandparents.
They did their best, but they were very old, and I could never really shake the feeling that I wasn’t supposed to be there, and maybe that was somehow my fault.
And then I got a scholarship to college, and I met your mom and Harold and Sage and everybody, and it was like, whoosh. Magnetic. Instant family. And just when I started to relax a little and trust that I wasn’t going to lose it, we graduated. I panicked. I was losing everybody.
That’s why I applied for the passport.
LEE:
Where were you going to go?
ARTHUR:
I was going to follow them. I didn’t have any plans of my own, so I daydreamed about following Harold’s band on tour and selling merch at their shows. And I thought about following Sage and Maggie to Berlin and getting a job as a tour guide or a nanny. I even thought about getting an apartment with Greg in Santa Monica and waiting tables until someone decided to put me on a reality show.
LEE:
But then you found out about me.
ARTHUR:
I was working as a nanny, and your mom worked day shifts at the TGI Fridays, so we were in the house together a lot while everyone else was out at night working or hustling or partying.
LEE: (studio)
I already know this part, but there’s something comforting about hearing him tell it the same way my mom did, knowing that if nothing else, they agreed about this.
MAYA:
We got really close that summer. We’d always been friends, but then suddenly, he was the person I was always looking for at the end of the day. I wasn’t over Greg, but I didn’t care.
ARTHUR:
And when she told me she was pregnant, I wasn’t sad. I was scared out of my mind, but I didn’t have any doubts about what I wanted to do.
MAYA:
I didn’t want to be pregnant, but at the same time, I didn’t want not to be pregnant. I wanted to be your mom. I wanted your dad to be your dad, so that’s how it happened.
LEE: (studio)
I page through the plastic sleeves of the photo album, and see pictures of my parents feeding me applesauce, pushing me on a swing, holding me by the hands, helping me take my first steps on the half-rotted hardwood floors.
Partway through the book, I recognize the kitchen in the house I remember growing up in, the back porch on Cookout Night, my mom reading me stories in my own bedroom, in my own bed.
ARTHUR:
Lee, do these people look like they’re consumed by regret?
LEE:
No.
MAYA:
Just because we’re not happy now doesn’t mean we never were.
LEE:
But why take that chance? You didn’t know each
other that well. It was so complicated. You both had a lot of reasons to walk away.
ARTHUR:
I wanted a family. I would have chased it to Berlin or Los Angeles or followed it around the world. But your mom wasn’t telling me, “Sure, tag along if you want.” She was inviting me to be a family with her, right where I already was.
MAYA:
If I could go back and do it all over again, I’d do this part the same way. I knew it might not work out, but your dad and I chose each other. We knew what we were doing.
ARTHUR:
Uh, our daughter’s diaper is on backward in this picture. We did not know what we were doing.
MAYA:
Arthur.
ARTHUR:
What?
LEE: (studio)
I hear the sharp edge she gets in her voice when she’s being serious and he makes a joke. The one she gets when he forgets to pay the gas bill and she says his name like he’s the most disappointing person who’s ever lived.
And I hear the exasperation in his “What?” The tone he gets when he knows why she’s annoyed but acts like he doesn’t. The one he gets when she wants to talk about something and he doesn’t.
When I hear that, I remember that they fell in love for a reason, and they fell out of it for a reason too, and putting them on a podcast to reminisce isn’t going to get them back together.
When you get right down to it, this is the story: my mom wanted someone who chose her, and my dad wanted a family, and even though it doesn’t have a happy ending, it’s my favorite story of artists in love.
Because it ends here, with me in this place, with these dreams, and it all could have been otherwise. I could have been an entirely different person. Maybe a tidier person, or a more practical person, or a less romantic person. I might want a little less, or dream a little less.
But whoever I turned out to be in those alternate realities, I’m glad that in this one, it all happened like this.
CHAPTER 38 Pentagram in My Heart
The sun is coming up when we finish the recordings.
A little after one, Trudy, Kyra, and the medical school students bail on the party. Maggie and Sage crash in the spare bedroom around two, and even Harold goes home. I don’t know if there’s anything between him and my mom now. If seeing Greg in person settled that question for her, once and for all, Harold might pose a more complicated question. After all, she’s seen him almost every day for the past twenty years. If she hasn’t made up her mind about him yet, maybe she never will.
Max is by my side until the very end, though. He listens, makes coffee, goes across the street to the Circle K for beef jerky and Coke. Mostly, though, he listens.
At dawn, my dad tumbles toward his bed, but before he does, he pulls me aside.
“Trudy said to give her a call next week so you can talk about when you might be ready to come back to work.” He slips a phone number into my hand. “And she asked me to give you this. It’s Wire Mother’s road manager—she said you’d know what that meant. Anyhow, they want you to run sound for a show he’s doing at the P&H Café in the fall.”
I tuck the paper into my bag. It’s an unexpected bit of sweetness and relief at the end of a sleepless night.
“Thanks, Dad,” I say.
“And she told me to yell at you until you made a website or got business cards or something to let people know you do this.”
I know this is the extent of the yelling at me he will do.
For a moment, my mom looks like she isn’t sure where she’s supposed to be, but then she gets her bearings and calls us a Lyft back to Cooper-Young, back to my house that feels a little bit less like my house than it used to. My mom sits in the front seat, and I’m amazed at her ability to make small talk with the driver like nothing is out of the ordinary. Max and I sit together in the back, holding hands, our heads slumping onto each other’s shoulders, then jerking awake. We climb into my bed without getting undressed and fall asleep the moment our heads hit the pillows.
* * *
I don’t know what time it is when I wake up, but the heat of the day has seeped into my bedroom and I’m hungrier than I’ve ever felt in my life.
Max is still asleep, so I open the door quietly and go out to the kitchen. There’s a note on the counter from my mom saying that she’s gone out to eat with Maggie and Sage before their train back to Chicago. At first I’m offended that we weren’t invited, but then I look at the clock and see that it’s two in the afternoon.
I check the fridge for breakfast fixings, but it’s empty except for two beers and half a package of hot dogs. I can almost imagine my mom’s thoughts when she saw that this morning. It’s while I’m closing the refrigerator door that it hits me: I just pulled Max off an Amtrak train yesterday so he could get on another one today and leave me all over again. We’ve fallen into such an inseparable rhythm this week, I can’t imagine it ending.
When I turn around, he’s there, leaning against the kitchen doorway like he’d collapse if it wasn’t there to hold him upright.
“Is there bacon?” he asks. I shake my head sadly. “Is there at least coffee?”
I open the cupboard and realize that my dad has packed it with his few belongings and taken it to his new apartment.
But it’s okay, I tell myself, because I am a woman of means, a woman who has gotten her sound-guy job back. I can dip into my savings for a special occasion like Max’s last day in Memphis.
“Let me buy you breakfast,” I tell him. “I know a place you’ll like.”
We walk down my street, into the center of Cooper-Young, and even though I’ve made this walk hundreds of times, my heart suddenly swells with love. I know how lucky I’ve been to grow up in these few blocks, this neighborhood that isn’t perfect, but has nearly always loved me back. I want to carry that feeling with me to all the places I go next.
I take Max to a restaurant that used to be a beauty shop in the 1970s, but because this is Memphis, they turned the stylists’ stalls and old-fashioned bonnet hair dryers into part of the booths. And because this is Memphis, you can get biscuits with sausage gravy and cheese grits, which Max does. Anyone who orders cheese grits in Chicago is just setting themselves up for disappointment.
We’re about to dig into our feast when I see Claire walk into the part of the restaurant where we’re sitting. She weaves between the chairs, setting up at a small table in the corner. She has her notebook with her, but she hasn’t opened it, and when she sees Max and me, she raises her fingers from the tabletop in a small wave.
“Do you mind if I go over there?” I ask.
Max gives me a pained look, which I realize is only because he thinks I might ask him to go with me and leave behind his Southern feast, all of which will congeal into glue if it’s not consumed within the next five minutes. That’s what you get for ordering the sausage gravy and the cheese grits: desperation.
“You eat,” I say. “I won’t be long.”
I walk over to Claire’s table and finally do the thing I never did when we went to school together.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she says, cocking her head to the side and folding her hands under her chin. “I’d offer you a seat, but I don’t have another one.”
“That’s okay,” I say, nodding toward her notebook on the edge of the table. It’s a plain college-ruled notebook with a black cover, the kind you can buy at Walgreens for three dollars, but I can tell it’s as much of an artist’s notebook as the fancy Moleskine Greg kept in his shoulder bag. “I don’t want to keep you from your writing.”
“I heard you’re coming back to work next week,” she says, then adds, “Brent’s been an absolute dick since you’ve been gone. He thinks you getting fired—semi-fired—is some kind of vindication for him.”
“When I come back, let’s finally ban him from the open mic.”
Claire nods enthusiastic approval of this plan. “Did you know he once put one of his baby teeth in the tip jar? Unironically. He
thought I would appreciate it more than money.”
“Why did he have one of his own baby teeth?” I ask. “Wait. I don’t want to know.”
“He’s so vile even the tooth fairy wouldn’t come to his house.”
We laugh, and it feels good, like we’ve reeled back around to where we started, where we were when we realized that we liked each other as people but before we fucked it all up.
“Before I come back to work, I just want to say…”
At that moment, the server comes over and sets down Claire’s coffee. Claire picks up the cup, holds it to her lips, like, Oh, you just want to say…
“I’m sorry for putting you in the position that I did.”
Claire chortles into her coffee cup. “Interesting phrasing choice there.”
I’m mortified but decide to try for a better apology.
“I’m sorry for being a person you probably regret hooking up with.”
“I wouldn’t say I regret it. I just wish you’d treated me a little more like a person than a logistical problem.”
“Yeah, that was shitty,” I say. “I’m working on some self-awareness in that regard.”
I say it, and about halfway through the sentence, I realize that I don’t know what makes me say ludicrous, pretentious shit like I’m working on some self-awareness in that regard. But maybe, with Claire, it’s because I know it amuses her so much.
She purses her lips and nods, like she’s a high school wrestling coach who is proud of me, but also emotionally repressed, and this amuses us both.