He couldn’t help it. Could he? Couldn’t he have tried harder? Couldn’t he just stop? I felt as confused about him as the kids often did about characters in movies when, trying to get the moral lay of the land inside a particular film, they turned to me and asked, Is he a good guy or a bad guy?
It’s almost like there are names for the number of times the sun comes up, K once joked after revealing he didn’t know what day of the week it was. How lost I must have been to have laughed. It was resigned, eye-rolling laughter, but there was also genuine surprise. Stark awe. It was incredible to be able to live so free of the burdens of adult responsibility, to be connected to the vast network of obligations I navigated daily by only a few thin strands.
He was a baby or an old man or both. His clothes smelled like urine sometimes. I washed them, let him sleep. I began to rail at him in anger and he let me and even apologized. This has to stop, I’d say. Promise me, promise me you’ll try to stop—and he’d promise.
He was sickly, but also angry. He yelled, raged, caused havoc. I retreated, reading Norwegian or Japanese novels where nothing happens. Novels of blankness and bowls of soup and quietly bubbling tension in relationships between shy people. The characters looked out windows onto lush expanses, they thought their small everyday thoughts, fed cats whose personalities were also sweetly described, and met at a Tokyo bar for sake and pickled snacks. They struggled to really know and understand one another because they were decent and quiet people who wouldn’t see the point in shouting and swearing at one another. There are so many possible lives, I thought. This one is mine. If a satellite zoomed down to snap a photograph, these windows, saffron-yellow-lit at night, in this building on this street in this city, were the ones behind which my pinprick of an existence was tormentedly ticking away.
Every relationship is a kind of world-making, and the one we’d said we wanted to make in the beginning wasn’t the one we made. Why couldn’t I be in a Tokyo bar, or at a film screening at the Kulturhuset in a second-tier Scandinavian city. I was working at a branding agency. Claire, still in the doctoral program, had moved to Moscow to do research and Skyped me weekly from the glamorously crumbling Soviet apartment building where she lived. That reality was supposed to be mine, too—Russia, research—but I’d frittered it away. I felt small as a speck, trapped in West Oakland, folding and refolding children’s clothes, my once-dazzling “potential” now diffuse and remote as a passing cloud. I can’t live like this forever, I thought. But as the days wore on, a more frightening realization dawned: that I could. I absolutely could.
There was nothing to stop me, no bottom low enough. And nothing would kill him. Nothing would grant me the true status of widow, a lifelong entitlement to suffering. A stamp of approval on just how bad it was. Instead, the experiment of our love would sputter forward, threatening collapse but never properly collapsing.
He still had ideas about what he would do. He lay on the couch, scratching his face and telling me about his plans. By that point, I’d largely been scoffingly cast out of K’s social life, such as it was—peopled with castaways and urchins, feral characters with laughably big dreams, delusions of grandeur, when their reality was so small it could fit, literally, in the palms of their hands. A plastic bag not half the size of his palm, the network of lines, heart lines, life lines, that mapped his fate. And the trip to get it. That was all there was. Still, he couldn’t always see that, so I heard about the butchering apprenticeship, a book he was writing, getting really into martial arts—he thought he’d really like that, just had to save up for a few months to be able to afford the studio. He just needed to make some fucking money. Even the way he said the word “money” had changed, fucking money, with putrid spittle flying from his teeth. Those were the upswings—coke, speed, crack, meth?—that punctuated days and days of nothing.
chapter twenty-six
Alone with the kids, I traveled east to visit my family a few times a year. One of those trips happened during the summer, when my father would spring for the rental of a Jersey Shore beach house for the week and my sisters and I, our children, and our divorced parents gathered.
The airport was bustling, and the line to pass through the security machinery wound around and around the black poles with seatbelt material stretched between them for crowd control. I was always turned on by the parade of men removing their belts. When the ride was smooth, the plane was loud and calm, like a room in which an enormous fan is whirring. The pleasant forcedness of white noise. As soon as the slightest turbulence hit, it seemed to be hurtling with great uncertainty, as though being pursued. It wasn’t just me, the machine itself seemed frightened. Outside the window was not the reassuring majesty of the horizon line of whipped clouds topped by the thick pastel blue icing of sky; that vision always suggested to me the magnitude of human mastery over nature. But that confidence could be rattled in an instant, as soon as I felt the smallest rocking, the slightest bump in the air. The first time I ever heard a flight attendant instruct passengers to take their seats and fasten their seatbelts because we were coming up on some “bumpiness” I was twelve and on my first-ever flight. I looked at my mother and said, Air doesn’t have bumps. This air had bumps. We were not securely flying above the cotton-ball clouds; we were instead surrounded as though submerged in a vaporous milky solution, something poisonous-looking. I watched the kids watching their screens and wondered, as I so often did, whether they could feel my anxiety, whether they were absorbing it. I was all smiles whenever they needed me.
The eagle has landed, I texted Kat, who lived in Brooklyn with her husband and kids. As much as I hated flying, I loved arriving in New York City in the summer—the cloying, muggy air, iced coffee and ice cream, air-conditioning blasting through every sagging corner store, seeing my kids and Anya’s kids together. We added Kat’s kids to the mix and then there were seven children all together screaming across the asphalt of the playground. Before we left for the Shore, I heard from a friend of a friend, a cute musician I had met in California. He’d asked for my number and invited me out for a drink. We had five drinks apiece, expensive cocktails at a gorgeous hipster bar, and flirted until last call. I hadn’t meant to seem quite so available. I was careful to make mention of my complicated relationship at some point in the night, but I also let him give me a peck on the mouth when we said goodbye, and we kept texting, drunk, until I fell asleep. The next day I piled with my mother, my kids, and our suitcases, plus towels and linens from her apartment, into her car and drove us in stop-and-go traffic down the parkway to the beach.
Anya stood on the shoreline, looking out. I sat on the deck, watching her. Amid the beach crowds, the tilting umbrellas and erect coolers, the greased barrel-chests and taut tanning teenagers, she was a most discernible dot, unmistakable in her like-me-ness: the same height, broad back, ropey braid of misbehaving summer hair. A hot breeze blew, and she put her hand to her head to steady the wide brim of her straw hat. I turned to settle the small stack of paper napkins on the picnic table, setting my drink down on top of them to keep them in place, and then returned my gaze to my sister’s lean form by the sea.
Near her, her small, bronzed children played. Three little sun-warmed caramels, their hair whipped by the salted air. The older two were digging feverishly, making something. The baby sat shirtless, with his own shovel, senselessly smacking the sand. I could see his sugar-sack shape, the blocky, meaty, diapered heft of him. It occurred to me that he was wearing an actual bonnet.
My sister’s posture was slack, and though she was momentarily alone she held herself almost as if there was a baby in her arms. Or, rather, something in her posture said that she’d held babies—many, for many hours, on airport security lines and while stirring the big Danish white enamel pot in her kitchen, her phone squeezed in the crook between her ear and her shoulder. She stood rooted on the shore with legs locked, her hands on her slightly overextended hips, elbows splayed out to her sides. Her b
ody inhabited, haunted, by exhaustion. It was diffuse, but indelible, permeating everything. I wondered if we had ever been lighter on our feet, or if that’s just how we enjoy remembering youth. Even from the deck, fifty yards behind her, I could imagine the damp furrow of her brow. I thought of crying out to her to let her know I’d made lunch, but I knew she wouldn’t hear me so I texted instead: Turn around. She didn’t move.
The sliding door suctioned open.
Why don’t you just walk down there? my mother asked. She’s busy with the kids; she’ll never check her phone.
She’s not busy with the kids, I can see her. She’s just standing at the water’s edge.
Who’s with the kids? My mother tried for casual, but could rarely conceal her alarm.
They’re just playing, I said. They’re fine, Mom, I see them. I counted them. The baby’s wearing a bonnet? I didn’t know they still made bonnets.
Well, Lucia went to the surf shop, I’m sure she’ll be heading down when she gets back. Put your suit on and you can go with her.
Yeah, I said halfheartedly, heading back into the kitchen to top off my screwdriver. I might.
The beach week was when we did all of our old family things. My dad bought shellfish and cooked it. Anya and Lucia and I baked and cooked together, and made runs to Dunkin’ Donuts for tall plastic cups of iced coffee and to CVS for sunscreen—high SPF for face, low SPF grease for legs, self-tanner in case the sun wasn’t working fast enough, and nail polish to do mani-pedis for one another and the kids. My dad knew to bring an old stack of issues of the New York Times Magazine so that Anya and I could do a month of crosswords together under the blazing sun, getting the pages greasy with fist prints as we took turns writing. At night, after we put the five kids to bed, the original five gathered again to eat cookies and talk about politics. It was comforting to watch our mother make our father laugh in the same way she always has.
By day, we entertained the children, or watched them as they entertained themselves with imaginative cousin games. A bunk bed was a ship. Dolls were bathed in mixing bowls. In the downstairs bedroom that my mom shared with Lucia for the week, we sucked on e-cigarettes and tried on one another’s bathing suits so we could rally the troops to head down to the water. The kids were kids by this point, my son five and my daughter nearly three, and though my body had gone back to its previous weight, it was forever marred by stretch marks. For the drum-taut tummy and wobbly, baby-deer legs of my two babies, I had traded some of my own suppleness. Anya had made the sacrifice, too. Lucia still had flat abs and wore mismatched combinations of seemingly endless bikini pieces she pulled from her bag. First I put on one of Anya’s high-waisted two-piece bikinis, one with a paisley top and solid red bottoms, but it made me look bloated and round, so I donned instead the black one-piece suit I’d brought.
This suit is to a bikini as a nun’s habit is to normal clothes, I said as I climbed into it.
Oh please, my mom said. You look great.
God, are we already there? Anya said. Mom, no one wants to look great. That’s what Rob tells me when I ask how I look before we go out and he doesn’t even look up, he just goes, “You look great, babe.”
Well, you do. You don’t want to look great?
She wants to look hot, Lucia chimed in. “You look great” implies there’s more to it. Like great for your age, great for a mom.
Great considering you were recently maimed in a hunting accident, I added.
Ah, forgive me, said my mom. You look hot. Not for a “mom”—she added air quotes for comedic effect—just for an…anything.
You do, said Anya. If I didn’t know you, I would hate you on sight.
Aw, really? I said. Thank you. I would hate you, too.
The easy intimacy of our family made me feel both deeply grateful and also closely observed. Throughout the week, in various combinations, we caught up, discussing and comparing our bodies and lives. K and I texted while I was away, but he was often slow to respond. Though he had never accompanied us on a trip to visit my family, he had told me that it made him insecure when I was out of town, especially back home, which he imagined as a hotbed of ex-boyfriends. It’s really just me and my sisters, and maybe some old friends I try to see when I’m home, I’d said. Still, he was suspicious, and suspicion always made him cold. It had been the same when I was away on business trips. I tried to stay calm, not to check my phone every few minutes, but the stress of not hearing back from him spun me out. You’re on that phone a lot, said my mother as we passed each other on the stairs. I guess, I replied.
The week passed lazily, without incident, and by Saturday, after a long hot car ride, we were back in Brooklyn. The kids and I were flying back to California the following day, and my sisters asked if they could take me out for a drink that night.
What about the kids? I asked.
Rob already offered to watch all the kids, we’ll just go down the block, Anya said, as though the plan had already been made.
At a bar on Grand Avenue, my sisters sat me down, with suddenly grave and nervous expressions on their faces, and told me they were worried about me, about the life I was leading, and especially about the extent to which my relationship with K had taken over my universe.
You’re obsessed with him, Lucia said, and I think it’s really damaging you. And I’m afraid it could damage the kids.
Let’s just say it, Anya interjected.
Say what? I asked.
What we’re really afraid of is that your kids will be taken away from you, Lucia said.
Taken away from me? I said incredulously. Are you kidding?
We knew this would make you defensive, Anya began.
I’m a good mother. I’m an amazing mother! Under what circumstances would my children possibly be taken away from me?
Now Lucia tried, I knew you weren’t going to like hearing this, she said, no one would—
So why are you saying it? I asked. My relationship has been a struggle, and if it’s too difficult to hear about it, I can stop sharing, but it’s a little alarmist to suggest someone is going to take my kids away. Who—cops?
It is possible, said Anya. You have to grant that. All it would take is their dad calling child services, or K getting arrested, or—
That’s not going to happen. I’ve told him hundreds of times he’s not allowed to come to the house when he’s using.
He lives with you! You’re living with a heroin addict, Lucia said.
You were a heroin addict! I countered. Now I’m the fucked up one? So fucked up that I require an intervention? I’m sure Mommy was in on this. Was she?
She’s also worried, replied Anya. They were taking turns with that practiced calm. It was rich, I thought, the tables turning this way.
What exactly are you asking me to do? I said. I don’t think you understand how hard I’ve been trying to keep everything together. All I do pretty much is work and take care of the kids and there’s barely even time for my relationship with K. I’m kind of shocked, to be honest. I don’t know what you want me to say.
I’m surprised to hear you say you’re shocked, said Lucia, with the calm of a thousand years of therapy. You’re so stressed, you’ve been on your phone all week. It’s hard to even get your attention.
So the problem is that I’m texting too much?
I know you know what we’re talking about, said Anya. You don’t have to agree, it was just important to us that we say this to you so we know we did.
Well, now you have, I said, and walked to the bar for another drink.
I flew home the next morning, hungover, in an emotional fog, withdrawing from my bag at half-hour intervals the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, the goldfish, the markers and coloring books, and the little Ziploc bag of gummy bears for everyone who was being so good!
* * *
• • •
r /> Soon after I got back to California, my sisters’ admonitions still ringing in my ears, I told K I had gone out for drinks with another man while I was in New York, and he strangled me on the bed. He wrapped his hand around my neck and stared into my face, with an evil, death-dealing gleam in his eye—some pleasure and some terror mixed in with the rage. My eyes bulged like in the movies and I felt myself going blue. I was nearly unconscious when he finally let go.
How long were we like that? Twenty seconds? Thirty? It would have taken longer to actually kill me, but not much longer.
So all of the pockets of calm were a lie. We were living right there, at the edge of something irreversible, poised to experience something truly, blackly final. To fight the feeling of helplessness, he was about to make something happen. To make the end of me happen. And I had put myself there. I’d seen him punch a wall, break a window, seen him throw things, and I had put myself there in bed with him.
Afterward, he cried. He appeared physically sick. He seemed to have shown himself something about himself that he hadn’t known. I coughed as soon as he let go of me, my hands instinctively jumping to hold my own throat. K staggered backward, a caricature of a man newly aware of his own brute strength. In the visceral rushing return of my breath and my consciousness, it all looked like a performance to me, like he was kidding. It was the way a murderer, stricken, drops the murder weapon in a bad police procedural, and looks at the blood on his hands, thinking, What have I done?
* * *
• • •
My mother once told me that I should be mindful of how far I went with boys. I was a teenager, and she knew that every weekend brought the promise of crossing some fleshy threshold. There’s no going back, she said, sounding more foreboding than I think she intended. I understood what she meant, but only once I’d gone far enough to understand. She meant once you’ve gone to third base, you never just go to first base again. Or you rarely do. Why would you stop at kissing? You have no reason to. Third base has become the new baseline. Once you have sex, sex is just the thing you do, my mother told me.
Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls Page 25