by Tash Skilton
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Liar,” my mom immediately responds, putting on her cat-eye reading glasses and staring me down.
“Okay,” I respond. “Not exactly fine. But I’m doing better.” Of course I had to tell them the wedding was off. And of course, this being my parents, I had to tell them why—the real reason. Though I’d let Aisha handle explaining most of the gory details.
“When are you going to come visit?” they say then, practically in unison.
See, everyone thinks that Jews and Muslims are mortal enemies, that my parentage shouldn’t even be possible, let alone harmonious. But what they don’t know is that there are so many similarities, it’s practically laughable. Starting with the parental guilt skills. Separately, they are forces to be reckoned with, but together, they are unbeatable. Like when the Power Rangers all united to make the Megazord.
“Soon,” I say.
My mom raises her eyebrows and I just know she’s about to call me a liar again.
“I promise,” I say. There are very few things that would drag me down to God’s Waiting Room, aka Florida, but seeing my parents is one of them. Especially if I’m feeling extra mopey about love, fearing that it doesn’t really exist....
Well, they are living proof that it does, that it can be stronger than where you’re from, or how you were raised. That it can even be stronger than what your own family is telling you. When my parents got married straight out of Penn State, I don’t think anybody thought it would last, not even the one person who supported them the most: Uncle Hassan, my dad’s brother and Aisha’s father. They were both so young—twenty-one and twenty-two—and everyone thought it was puppy love spurred on by the fact that my dad’s student visa was expiring.
But Ahmad and Louisa knew better, their ages and backgrounds be damned. It was very Romeo and Juliet, in that nobody’s parents were happy, but with a meet-cute that took place at a frat party rather than a masquerade ball. Louisa’s parents wanted grandkids who would be bar/bat mitzvahed (I was, in fact. Maybe the only kid who read a portion of the Quran along with my portion of the Torah, but still. Like the millennial multitasking Jewslim I am, I became a man in the eyes of God/Allah at the same time). Ahmad’s parents wanted their son to come home and marry a nice Egyptian woman so that they could see their grandkids.
But there weren’t kids, plural. Just me. And I came along fifteen years after their City Hall nuptials. My mom liked to joke that “it took them that long to figure out the schematics for the nursery.” Which might be more believable if they hadn’t settled for the uber-creative theme of . . . sailboats. In reality, I know they were too busy being in love to think about having children yet. They were young; they had time. As to why there weren’t any more after me . . . well, I have heard rumors that I was somewhat of a terror. And by rumors, I mean my mother likes to remind me two to three times a month.
Anyway, back to the Capulet/Montague saga; by the time I was born, Grandpa Frank was gone and Grandma Naima wasn’t too far behind. Grandma Ellen came around at the end. I have some memories of being with her, playing near her carpet shoes, drawing on one of her throw pillows, and hearing her cackle in glee and tell my mom not to yell at me—that she thought it was an improvement on the paisley.
But I don’t think my dad spoke to his dad ever again. They’d ask after each other, via Hassan. But a hereditary stubborn streak remained in both of them that not even illness or death could tear asunder.
“Maybe for Memorial Day?” Mom asks, trying to pin down an actual date of visitation from me.
“That’s a little too soon,” I say. “I’ve got some work stuff going on. But . . . before the summer is over. I promise.” I immediately regret this because there are few places on earth more miserable than Florida in the summer. But I see Mom is already jotting something down in the little planner she keeps on the coffee table, so I know I’m doomed to be bound to what I said.
I ask after some of their friends down there and they bring me up to date on who has gout, who has dropped out of the mah-jongg club, and whose kids are getting married/divorced/ having babies.
“It’s going to be a granddaughter for Julia,” Mom says, maybe not even wistfully but in my current state of mind that’s what it sounds like to me.
I glance over at the tiny sock on the floor and feel compelled to ask her, “Mom, how do children appear?”
Mom blinks. “Didn’t we already have this talk?” She turns to Baba. “I mean, I mostly left it up to you but I thought it was taken care of.”
“So did I,” Baba responds. “Of course, I taught physics, not biology, so maybe something got a little lost in translation?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t mean where do they come from . . .”
“Thank heavens,” Mom says. “I’m not sure I have enough blood pressure medication to explain this to you now. Plus my consolation that you were a boy instead of a girl was that I didn’t have to.” She playfully glares at Baba.
“Let me double-check my notes,” he says. “I’m positive we had this talk.”
“Yes, Baba. We did. I was just thinking how come they morph from tiny babies into overgrown ones so suddenly. Like there’s no in-between . . . you know what? Never mind.”
“I think this is a lack of food talking,” Mom says. “Come here immediately and I’ll make you my chili, okay? And mandel bread.”
“Yes, Mom,” I respond dutifully.
“You never make me mandel bread,” Baba says.
“You can make it yourself,” she responds.
“So can he! He’s a thirty-one-year-old man.”
“That’s true,” Mom responds. “But he’ll also always be my baby. Aren’t you, my little oogle-boogle.”
I shake my head, grinning despite myself, as my mom makes kissy faces at me. They’re punchy today.
But they’ve also made me feel better. Because at least there are some parts of my future that are crystal clear.
Like me, a month from now, sweating my balls off at their community pool as I swim laps, much to the delight of my mom’s lounging, loungewear-clad girlfriends.
CHAPTER 8
ZOEY
I thought Undersea would be a welcome escape. After my failure to ride the subway over the weekend, and a full evening of procrastination in which I Aced over thirty matches on Bree’s behalf, I fired up the DVD and some microwave popcorn. Unfortunately, fully sober at the midnight hour was not a good time to be subjected to wooden dialogue and so-so special effects. I wanted to appreciate the historical significance of the first fantasy-action film directed by a woman, but the outdated, 1980s-style, battle-of-the-sexes banter made me cringe more than cheer, and I abandoned ship halfway through, right at the moment Mary’s fins made their debut.
All it did was make me miss Mary, the real Mary.
I went online and Googled Mary Clarkson Undersea for the first time.
Playboy, 1996
Long Time No Sea: How Mary “Jane” Clarkson Went from Persona Non Grata to Hollywood’s Best-Kept Secret
Ten years ago, at the age of twenty-two, Mary Clarkson landed the role of a lifetime as Duchess Quinnley in the Undersea films. Well, film. What was intended to be a trilogy famously went off the rails when the actress, a self-described former adrenaline junkie, insisted on performing her own stunts. She tripped (while in the tight-fitting mermaid costume that launched a thousand wet dreams), hitting her head on a camouflaged rock submerged a foot beneath the water. After a month at the hospital recovering from a broken vertebra in her neck, she punched her physical therapist out cold when he told her swim therapy was the only way to achieve full spinal mobility.
Now, “running at 87 percent capacity,” as she puts it, “without ever stepping foot in a goddamn whirlpool, thank you,” she lives in a secluded fortress in the Hollywood Hills, as far from the ocean as one can get in Los Angeles without leaving earth. Over several hours, our conversation touched on her short-lived acting career and her new, behind
-the-scenes role as Hollywood’s most sought-after script doctor whose dialogue and plot tweaks you’ve seen in two dozen movies without knowing it.
On the assault charge that landed her in prison for four days
“All I ever wanted my whole life was a captive audience, so it was a dream come true, really. The other women, all of whom I’ve kept in touch with, would say things like, ‘I was at Bedford Hills maximum security before this’ and I got to say, ‘I was in Undersea.’ ”
On her Hollywood blacklisting
“Obviously, it’s sexist as all f*ck-out. Male artists get into fights all the time and it just increases their mystique, their virility. It’s the Hemingway effect. I give one asshole, who I think we can all agree deserved it, a concussion, and it’s lights-out for my career? I’m ‘uninsurable on set’? Come on.”
On the PEZ dispensers that bear her/Duchess Quinnley’s likeness
“I mean, it’s cruel. The neck unhinges! How would you like it if your most terrifying moment was captured in candy form?”
On fans who wish she’d Mermaid Up and complete the trilogy
“While I value the opinion of strangers much, much more than my own health and sanity, my scarlet L for liability is not going away anytime soon, even if I wanted to perform again, which I don’t. Life is much safer behind a typewriter.”
If she could clear up one misconception about her assault charge, what would be it?
“Okay, first off, it was not a punch that knocked him out. No, I threw a copy of Dorothy Parker’s collected works at his head. I mean, he should be so lucky. Probably increased his IQ points by double digits.”
Is it true you sometimes put on a Duchess Quinnley mask and go to midnight screenings incognito?
“I’ll never tell.”
You’ve testified in front of Congress multiple times advocating for medical marijuana on the federal level. What was that like?
“The C-Span footage is some of my best work. And I think we could’ve solved the Cold War faster if everyone on Capitol Hill had gotten stoned, I really do.”
On becoming a so-called script fixer
“Now I punch up jokes instead of people, hyuk hyuk! Is that what you want me to say?”
I heard you used to rewrite headlines about yourself and mail them back to magazine editors—is that true?
“Jesus Christ, they weren’t even trying. How many times did I see some variation of Undersea Actress Under Investigation. It’s not difficult to make a punny headline.”
Give me an example . . .
“I don’t know, how about ‘Mary Clarkson Fin-agles a Role in Jailhouse Rock’? Now that’s funny. Feel free to use it.”
I fell asleep and dreamt I was in the audience of Cheese: The Musical, starring young Mary as a golden moldy (“I am bleu / I’m filled with penicillin / Best leave me on the plate / Or you’ll be illin’ like a villain”).
On Sunday, I invited myself to a pity party. According to Sex and the City, everyone but me spent sunup to sundown at brunch, guzzling mimosas and howling with laughter over their latest romantic escapades. I was lonely in a way I’d never been in LA, not with weekly visits to Nana, and not with Mary’s round-the-clock inspirations.
On Monday, the gods sent me a gift of my own, in the form of GreatSc0t. With Bree’s approval (“HELLZ TO THE YEH!”), I have free rein to contact him again.
It’s Tuesday now, and I’m eager to instigate a follow-up, but before I do, I need to finish watching Undersea, which is why I’m still at home instead of at Café Crudité. (Don’t get comfortable, Miles.)
I managed to sidestep a real discussion of the film during my first, admittedly promising, exchange with Jude, but if I’m going to be true to Bree’s personality, I can’t freeze up during topics that are key to her profile. She’s told me more than once she wants to “own her fandom,” and the sooner I get Bree situated, the sooner I can collect a paycheck and a new client.
If you get her situated, you’ll never chat with GreatSc0t again, a little voice replies. It’s the same voice that tried to trick me into taking the subway on Saturday.
Inappropriate, I chastise back. He’s not chatting with “you.” He’s chatting with Bree. And everything you say to him is on her behalf. Still, I’m deluding myself if I pretend it wasn’t fun flirting with a young, gorgeous Scotsman who’s also charming and quick-witted. No one could fault me for that, right?
A spear of doubt lurches through me: What if he’s already found someone else to chat up, and he prefers her? Hurry up and watch the movie, woman!
Still in my pajamas, lying on my couch-bed (freelancing has its perks), I click through the chapter menu on Bree’s DVD, looking for the spot where sleep claimed me, and trying not to wonder if there’s a way to watch the film without, you know, having to watch it. That’s when it hits me: Somewhere, someone has already asked and answered that question. Of course they have! I settle in for a YouTube deep dive, hoping to locate a fan-made summary.
What I discover is quite entertaining.
Twenty minutes later, I log on as Bree and type a message to GreatSc0t:
TheDuchessB: Good morning! I have an extremely important question for you: Have you seen the video where some guy sped up Undersea by 123% or something, and now the dialogue sounds like “West Wing on the Moon”? It’s a whole different experience!
GreatSc0t: Blasphemous! Someone gave Undersea the Chipmunks treatment?
TheDuchessB: Minus the dubious moral lessons of “doing what’s best for the band vs. Alvin’s narcissism.”
A janky tennis ball animation complete with swish noise arrives in a new text bubble. I’m being served by a guy named Andrew. Just “Andrew”? That means he was an early adopter with his pick of usernames, which means he’s been on Game, Set, Match since it started, which is a red flag. Against my better judgment, I click “accept.”
Andrew: What’s up?
TheDuchessB: Not much, you?
Andrew: Do you have pretty feet? And if the answer is yes, I’m about to go to the bar an have a dink, wanna cum?
I clap my hand over my mouth. Is this really happening? When Best Foot Forward got jettisoned as the company name, I figured I was done with this particular population. How naïve I was.
Andrew: Whoops autocorrect LOL. wanna “come” I meant. To the bar for a drink. I see your close by . . .
Before I can stop myself, I’ve copied the conversation to my clipboard. Then I return to messaging Jude. Handsome, hot, NORMAL Jude.
TheDuchessB: Sorry for the delay. REALLY sorry. I had to Ace someone. You will not believe what he just said to me.
Freelancer’s Handbook: Never bring up the other people you may be chatting with. No one wants to hear about the competition. Exceptions include: When the exchange is so batsh*t you need someone to laugh with you about it. Forming a conspiracy of mockery just might bond you together, “us against the world”–style.
GreatSc0t: Sometimes I think they should call it Mace. Can’t imagine what you ladies have to deal with out there.
TheDuchessB: Case in point . . .
I paste Andrew’s message into Jude’s window. Jude (understandably) needs a moment to absorb it.
GreatSc0t: Wow. On behalf of all men, I apologize. Not just for the creepy foot fetish, but the grammar.
TheDuchessB: Thank you! “An” have a “dink”? Should we assume “dinking” has long since begun?
GreatSc0t: YOUR offended me most, personally.
TheDuchessB: It’s a toss-up. I think before anyone’s allowed on a dating site, they should have to pass a basic grammar test.
GreatSc0t: Co-signed. And a breathalyzer.
TheDuchessB: Anyway, before we were so rudely interrupted, I was going to say I heard somewhere that when Blanca Hinley went over budget in the first half, they couldn’t afford the wave machine anymore, so it’s literally Mary Clarkson swaying back and forth in the scenes with King Oceano, who’s, you know, threatening to replace her legs with fins. Swaying ba
ck and forth was a 1000% price reduction from renting the wave machine.
GreatSc0t: Ha ha! I love behind-the-scenes info. Where’d you hear that?
TheDuchessB: Not sure, probably a con.
(Crap. It’s not common knowledge. Mary told me that in the midst of a rambling, regretful story while on day five of a bee-pollen-and-charcoal-lemonade fast. I should stop before this gets out of hand and he realizes I’ve only seen the movie at 123 percent speed. Keep things moving and snag the Hot Scot for an in-person assessment.)
TheDuchessB: Anyway, if you want to see the Chipmunk’d version for yourself, here’s the link. Though I hope you’ll at least keep my tab open while you watch . . .
GreatSc0t: I’ve bookmarked the link for later. Your tab has a better view.
TheDuchessB: Oh yeah? *bats eyelashes*
Before he calls BS on my Undersea bona fides, I make an impulsive decision.
TheDuchessB: What are you up to later?
A pause, while he checks his calendar. Or wants me to think he’s checking his calendar.
GreatSc0t: Working til 5:30.
TheDuchessB: Want to meet for coffee after work?
The first time I spoke to Bree, she said she dressed up in character for midnight movies and could even do “the hair.” It’s probably something sexy/adorable, i.e., catnip to Undersea fans, right?
TheDuchessB: I’ll wear a certain hairdo we all know and love.
GreatSc0t: . . . seriously?
Do the ellipses connote lust or horror?
TheDuchessB: Go big or go Flirtville, right?
GreatSc0t: Are you a Flirtville refugee, too?
TheDuchessB: Couldn’t get out of there fast enough. There’s a DuchessB-sized hole in the wall where I fled.
I’m rewarded with the heart-eyes face emoji. I can’t help smiling back at it.
GreatSc0t: Can we make it a brewery? I’m on a mission to test out the local taps.
Shit. Bree and beer don’t mix. They’re literally an anagram of each other, and anagrams are how the devil communicates with humans. Red rum, etc.