A Happy Catastrophe

by Dawson, Maddie

  She’s petting Bedford on the floor and doesn’t even look up at me. “I asked Patrick, and he won’t come because he’s too busy,” she says lightly, but not as lightly as she thinks. “And anyway, it’s boring.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, I could come. We could make it fun, couldn’t we?”

  “Nope,” she says, and leaves the room.

  “I’ll talk to Patrick,” I call after her. “Maybe he could take the morning off.”

  “No, thank you,” she says in a singsong voice.

  My mother gives me an alarmed look and yells, “Say, do they ever have a grandparents’ day? Because if they do, little miss, I’m giving you notice now: I’m coming to it!”

  Fritzie’s bedroom door closes. I bite my lip.

  My mom says, “I think you should work on her.” That was always my mother’s way: work on somebody. But I like to think I’m sensitive to other people’s needs. Maybe it’s somehow worse for Fritzie if I do go—if she has to explain to everyone that I’m not her real mother; I’m not even her stepmother.

  Patrick, when I ask him, points wordlessly to the calendar—how January follows December so closely. He makes a gesture that looks like a head exploding, and then he shuffles back to his studio, shaking his just-exploded head.

  So I bring it up with Fritzie a few days later, as we’re combing out the tangles in her hair after her bath. “Patrick is sorry but his show is just too soon. Are you sure you don’t want me there?”

  She looks away. “I’m sure.”

  “But—won’t you be one of the few people there with no parent attending?”

  “Marnie,” she says. “Patrick should come, but you’re not even my stepmother. If you got married to Patrick, you could come.”

  “Oh, Patrick!” I call out. He can’t hear me; he’s in the studio. “Oh, Patrick! Darling! Could we run off and get married tonight, so I can go to the Parent Day lunch?”

  “Stop it,” says Fritzie, and she looks like she’s going to laugh and cry at the same time.

  Two days later, there’s an email in my inbox from Karen. Could we chat?

  I call her from the Frippery.

  “There are just a couple of concerns we have,” she says without even taking the time for any small talk. “Soooo, Fritzie has settled down nicely, is doing her work, and there hasn’t been any more stealing—or rather borrowing money. But . . . well, on the day of the Parent Day Luncheon, she asked if she could say a few words about her mother since her mom couldn’t be there.”

  “I do not like the sound of this.”

  “Yes, well, your instinct is correct,” says Karen. “She stood up and said that her mother was dead. Which I knew wasn’t true, but there she was, telling a whole story about how her mom died in a big accident. She actually had some of the moms in tears. So I interrupted her and said, ‘Now, Fritzie, you know that’s not actually true, honey,’ and she started laughing and said it was just a joke.”

  “She wouldn’t let me come to the luncheon,” I say miserably. Just in case Karen thinks I’m terrible for not being willing to show up. “Because I’m not really her parent, she said.”

  “I know. When we tried to talk to her about the luncheon beforehand, we told her that anyone important in her life could come. And that’s when she really got upset. We never see this girl cry, no matter what happens in the playground, no matter how scared or mad she gets, she just goes on forward, like some little determined optimist—but that’s when she started crying so hard and she said that Patrick doesn’t love her yet, and that he’s probably never going to love her, and her mum is gone for good.”

  “Oh,” I say. I can’t think of anything else. I have to pinch the bridge of my nose to keep from crying myself. “Well, thank you for this.” I say we’re in difficult times . . . transitions . . . knew this would be hard having her for a year . . . We do love her . . . Patrick is trying, but he has an art show coming up . . . blah blah blah. It all sounds like excuses, even to my own ears.

  After I hang up, I want to march right over to Patrick’s studio and tell him that he needs to shape up. Stop living apart from us! Open himself up! Emote! Love her! Love me! Where the hell is he when we need him?

  For the first time since I’ve been loving Patrick, I feel like yelling and screaming at him. I stand there in the Frippery, listening to the voices of people out in the store, picking out their poinsettias, chatting with Kat about red bows versus gold bows.

  And you know something? I do not care one bit about any of it. I get my bag out from under the counter, and I tell Kat that I have to go home. I need to refigure my life.

  The next morning, when he’s getting his second cup of coffee in the kitchen, I tell him about my conversation with Karen. I’m trying to control how annoyed I feel. It’s one thing for him to be pushing me away, but Fritzie is his child.

  He looks suitably chagrined. Or maybe it’s only his basic level of chagrin-itude gone up one slight notch.

  “I don’t know what I can do,” he says. “I’m over my head here.”

  “Show her you love her,” I say. “Take some time off to do something with her. You are her father, you know. Kind of all she has right now.”

  “What are you talking about? She has you. You’re far better with her than I am.”

  “I don’t count,” I tell him. “You and Tessa are the ones she needs to hear from. I’m a substitute.”

  “Look, I don’t know the first thing about how to raise an eight-year-old girl! I told you that from the beginning. She wants things from me that I don’t know how to give her, and she never stops moving or climbing on things or making comments about everything. Everything.”

  I look at him.

  He picks something off the blanket, a little piece of fuzz. “Ha! I thought the worst of having a kid was going to be the teacher conferences. But instead it’s the random acts of crazy. What if she’s really a lunatic?”

  I take a deep breath. “She’s not a lunatic. I think the things she’s doing demonstrate a whole bunch of spirit and a healthy reaction to what’s happened to her. She was abandoned and left here with virtual strangers. You just need to do more to show her you love her. Couldn’t you do that?”

  He stares at me.

  I reach over and take his hand before he moves it away. “I’m in this with you,” I tell him, because I think Blix would want me to throw in some reassurance for him, too. “You don’t have to go it alone.”

  “Well, I have to do these fucking paintings alone, don’t I?” he says. “That’s the truth of it.”

  “When the art show is over . . .” I say.

  “If there’s anything left of me.”

  “There had better be, Patrick. There had better be a lot left of you!”

  “There’s already hardly anything left of me now,” he says. “Also, I don’t think I can have any more of this conversation right now.”

  And then, you know what I do? After he goes back into his studio, I stomp around for a bit, cry a little, and fling all the dishes into the dishwasher. And then I get out the book of spells that I usually keep near the cookbooks when I’m not hauling it around with me. Blix’s book. I take a leaf from the African violet and a pinch from the eucalyptus leaf and some dried sage and put them in a little silk bag from the cabinet and put them in my pocket. And I say some words for a happy home spell.

  Because when your heart feels like it’s breaking, it can’t hurt to have some eucalyptus, an African violet, and some dried sage on you.

  Later, when my mother and I are walking from the subway to Best Buds, sipping our thermoses of coffee and shivering in the cold wind, she says, “I’m thinking of filling out an online dating profile. I’m ready to get out there.”

  “Oh my God,” I say. “Can’t you people just please do what you’re supposed to do? Stop acting like you’ve all lost your minds?”

  She looks shocked. “What are you talking about? I have not lost my mind!”

  “You know,” I say
slowly, “not to sound all judgy or anything, but when you were talking about having flings and all, I thought that was just your charming Southern hyperbole. You really want to date . . . like people besides Dad? Strangers, you mean?”

  She laughs, a new kind of trilling laugh she’s adopted lately. “Yes, Marnie! Good God. I don’t call it dating when you’re out with someone you’re married to. And also, I don’t see your father here for me to go out with, so it would necessarily have to be with a stranger.”

  “No. I just . . . well, wait a second. Are you two getting divorced? Because that might be something you’d think about before you get all involved with another man, you know.”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I think maybe you and I are thinking of different things. I’m seeing dating as something that’d just be for fun. You know. Dates. Dinner. Movies. Outings.”

  “I hear all the time that dating is awful. Like, seriously, ninety-three out of a hundred people will tell you it’s horrible, ridiculous, painful, and excruciating.”

  “Not if you haven’t done it in forty years.”

  “I think it doesn’t exactly improve with age. And people expect it to lead to . . . well, sex. Maybe love.”

  “Oh, you,” she says. “I think you’re being naive. People can have little nonsexual dalliances. And that’s what I want: some fun. And if I fall in love—well then, I’ll make some necessary changes. It’s really not something I’m deciding right now. Did I mention to you that your father hasn’t noticed any haircut of mine in five years? Does that sound even slightly acceptable to you? I could use a little bit of matchmaking help.”

  “Mom.”

  “Millie. Can’t you call me Millie?”

  “I’m trying. It’s just that I don’t really see you as somebody who needs matchmaking. Not even if Dad never mentions another haircut of yours in your whole life. And by the way, if you need him to notice, I think you should tell him. You don’t leave a man for not mentioning a haircut. I’m sorry if that—”

  “It’s not just the haircuts. You know that,” she says. “I need more out of my life.” She stops walking, so I do, too. She’s standing there on the sidewalk, with her hair all fluffed up and her eyes full of sadness, and she looks like somebody that anyone could love. Full of the dickens, really. My mother, I realize, is actually cute.

  “I’m invisible to him,” she says sadly. “He doesn’t even see me, much less appreciate anything about me anymore.”

  “Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry you feel that way.”

  “Which is why I feel like I need a fling. A little one. So how do you do this matchmaking bit, anyway? Is it always about making people fall in love with each other?”

  “Making them? No. You can’t make people do anything, in my experience.”

  “Well, that’s for damn sure! So—then what? You see these sparkles around a person, and then how do you find the person they match up to?”

  I sigh. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but when I read your energy, what I see is that deep down you’re in love with Dad.”

  “You may be reading an old edition of me. The updated edition is available online.”

  “Really? You don’t think you still love him?”

  “Let me put it this way: I’m completely exasperated with him.”

  “Well, but don’t you think exasperation can mean love, too? Love doesn’t always dance around in its bright party dress, you know. Sometimes it means you’re working on stuff with the person. I think as long as you’re not completely indifferent to him, then I’m pretty sure it’s still love.”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I told you: I want a fling. I need to be seen by somebody before I get too old to care anymore.”

  I brush back a piece of her blonde hair that’s blowing onto her face. “Can you . . . not? Can you remember that you love him and try to work it out? He still loves you. I’m sure of that.”

  “I don’t think I even know what love is anymore. And I’m quite sure he doesn’t.”

  “Jeez, Mom. You had forty years with the guy and about a hundred million dinners and breakfasts. You have two kids, two grandkids, a paid-off mortgage, traditions—”

  She draws herself up. “Listen, you don’t have to help me if you don’t want to. I’m fully capable of taking care of myself,” she says.

  That night, after Patrick and I have gotten Fritzie and Mister Swoony tucked into bed, telling her more times than ever just how much we love her, and after Patrick has eaten his dinner in silence and then slouched off to the studio, my mom and I sit down in front of the computer. She wants me to look at her dating profile.

  I groan.

  “I just want you to look at it,” she says. “You don’t have to participate or change anything. Ariana’s helping me with all that. Just let’s see if anybody has answered me.”

  Naturally she has some prospects.

  There’s Hiram Putnam who is eighty-one and would love to meet a nice “young gal” and he hopes she’ll click on him. He has just a couple of tiny health problems, but he sees himself square-dancing well into the 2020s. “God bless him,” says my mother.

  Then there’s Joseph Cranston, who posts a picture of himself smiling into the camera in his bathroom mirror. He likes walks on the beach and values a sense of humor and a woman who is “fit.”

  “Red flag! Fit means skinny,” I say. I have heard some things around Best Buds about the code words. “You don’t want to go out with a guy who thinks that way.”

  “But I am skinny,” says my mom, which is true.

  “Yes, but you don’t want that to be the thing he cares most about, do you? Monitoring your ice cream consumption? Counting your calories? Also, the bathroom mirror photo is a real turn-off. Shows a kind of cheapness. Or at the very least in this case, an ugly bathroom.”

  “You’re tough,” she says, patting my arm, “which is why I need you here with me.”

  Elliott Chase is an attorney whose wife died in a car crash five months ago.

  “Too soon,” I tell her.

  “But he’s handsome. Maybe he needs cheering up.”

  “Not your job. Nope, nope, nope.”

  “God, you’re tough. If you ever lose Patrick, I don’t see how you’re going to get another one, not with these standards.”

  “I’m not losing Patrick,” I say.

  She’s scrolling through more prospects, not looking at me. And that’s when it hits me, like a blow to the stomach: Wait a minute, I am losing Patrick. I may have already lost him. I think of how he looked at me so grudgingly when he shuffled off to his studio after dinner, and how unmoved he is when I talk to him, and how he can’t wait each day to go back over there. To be all alone. I’m the one who forces the Conjugal Visits. Who tries to make things okay for him.

  But he’s gone.

  There’s an ache already spreading through me, skittering across my nerve endings.

  “While we’re on that topic,” my mom says, “if you don’t mind my asking, why didn’t you ever marry this guy? It’s not like you to not want to get things in writing.”

  “I-I don’t know.”

  “Well, do you love him?” She types something on the keyboard. A checkmark.

  “Yes. Yes! I do love him.”

  “Do you? Then get married to him, why don’t you? Frankly, you and Patrick might as well be married, with the way you’re living. He’s vulnerable and sweet, and you want a baby, and you’re raising Fritzie and apparently a couple of teenagers, too, so I don’t see what the hell the difference is. Maybe it would make him happy.”

  “Nothing makes him happy right now,” I say before I can catch myself.

  She swings her eyes over to me, looking concerned. “Yeah, I’ve gotten that idea. So . . . is it really just the art show, do you think? Or is something else going on?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “It’s like he’s not even here,” she says. “Isn’t it?”

  Something is forming in the back of
my head.

  “Men can withdraw so completely when there’s something else going on,” she says. She’s not looking at me. Her words hang in the air, like little drones all pointed at my head.

  A thought suddenly forms up near the ceiling. I watch it coming closer to me and settling in my head, and I realize I’ve known all along what’s going on. I’ve even mentioned it, without truly taking it in or believing it.

  Patrick isn’t here because he’s reliving his relationship with another woman.

  That’s it, isn’t it? I think. It’s as though he’s in that other room, dancing with death.

  Yes.

  “Y’all should be sleeping in the same bed so you can fix this,” my mom is saying, but I can barely hear her over the drumming of my own thoughts. “I’m being horribly selfish,” she says. “I need to find a place of my own, and you need your time to reconnect. I feel like you’re growing apart more each day, and I bet you anything, it’s because you’re not getting any sex. Sex holds people together, keeps them from murdering each other.”

  “It’s not just sex,” I say slowly. But maybe those words were inside my head, too.

  She keeps talking. “I’m going to look for a place to live. I’ve been having such a good time being here with you, but this is ridiculous. You’re sleeping in a bed with your mama, and your boyfriend is having to sleep in his studio. I should be sued for this.”

  “No, no, Mom,” I say. “He wants to be there, with the paintings. He told me. It’s fine. Really.”

  The knowledge clunks into my head like it’s been floating above me and just now found the way into my brain. He is actually involved again with Anneliese. She’s the one he’s thinking about all the time, not me. I’m freaking competing with a dead woman, and I’m losing!

  It would seem to be quite the opposite, wouldn’t you think? She’s already put forth all her best stuff and has no more cards to play—and I, being alive and sentient, could just possibly wow him with some amazing feat of love and tenderness that only a living, breathing human could do. I can cook meals for him, for instance. Make love to him.