by Ilana Masad
She dithers. “You can’t tell me where he lives? Please?”
He laughs. “And let you and every other stalker trying to get to the newly single Mac the Knife? I wish they hadn’t given him that nickname, he’s already talking about going back to theater.” He shakes his head. “No, honey, that’s not going to happen.”
This is crazy, Maggie thinks. And unsatisfying. At least Abe and Liam told her their story. At least with Karl she saw her mother’s side of it. This is like a box she can’t open, that has no seams to speak of, but that clearly contains something because it rattles when shaken. She could take the letter with her, open it herself. But that still feels wrong, especially now that she’s seen that its intended recipient is real and alive and fucking famous. It feels wrong even though everything her mother has done is worse.
“Fine,” she says. “Wait, actually, here—” She reaches for a square of sticky notes and grabs a pen from a jar full of them and scribbles her name, phone number, and email address. She adheres the note to the letter and holds it out to Mr. Miller. He looks a little stunned, as if no one has ever had the audacity to take his stuff without asking. He reaches for the letter and she yanks it back, like a bully pulling a prank. “You promise promise promise he’ll get this?” she asks. She hopes Mac, or Eric, has a change of heart, that he’ll contact her eventually.
Mr. Miller grins. “Well, I can promise, but you’re not going to believe me anyway, are you? You think I’m the big, bad corporate man, but you either have to take my word for it, or leave here with that letter knowing Mac will never get it.” This fucker loves to hear himself talk, Maggie thinks. He still creeps her out. She doesn’t know why he’s played along with any of this. Maybe he’s just bored. He plucks the envelope out of her hand. “I’m your best shot.”
“I guess,” she says.
“For what it’s worth, he’s not a bad guy,” Mr. Miller adds.
Maggie has no idea what that means, coming from this big, bad corporate man, as he conveniently labeled himself. She nods once, and leaves.
IRIS
MARCH 2, 2002
I can’t believe we’re starting another war,” Iris said, fiddling with her necklace. The newspapers and radio that morning had been full of the American invasion of Afghanistan, and Iris was still rattled. Everyone was, after September 11, at how quickly things were changing, shifting, the government’s paranoia and warmongering not yet clear to most.
Eric, sitting across from her at a table in the Pho Lantern Cafe in Costa Mesa, nodded. “Tell me about it.”
Iris had met him just a few months ago, when she and Peter were trying to decide which high school to send Maggie to. She had a year to go in junior high, but there were waitlists at a couple of the private schools. They were almost sure they were going to go public in the end, but they’d consulted with some parents of other kids in her class who had older children whom they’d sent to private school. One of those parents introduced her and Peter to Eric, whose daughter had just graduated high school and gone into basic training for the air force. Iris knew he must be worried sick about her, about where they might send her now.
The waitress came over to their table and asked if they were ready. “Can I have the vegetable pho, please?” Eric said. “Oh, and what appetizer would you recommend?”
“Our shrimp spring rolls are the best,” the waitress said, flashing a grin.
“Then those too, please. Thanks.”
“And I’ll have the 118, the chicken curry clay pot,” Iris said. The waitress poured them both more water and left. “So have you heard from her recently?” Iris asked.
“From Kim? Or Amy?” Eric asked, rueful. He and his wife had gotten divorced not long ago, but hadn’t quite let each other go yet. He’d confessed to Iris that they still slept together some nights. The reason they’d gotten divorced was never entirely clear to her, but it reminded her, as other people’s marriages falling apart always did, how lucky she was, how utterly blessed, that she had Peter by her side.
“Either, both,” she said.
“Kim, no. We’ve been good since last time. We haven’t talked in two weeks. I think I’m really getting over her this time,” Eric said, laughing at himself a little.
“That’s good!”
“And from Amy, yes, she called this morning, actually. She sounds tougher by the day. Like this grown-up lady. You’ll see,” he added. “When your kids leave the house, you’ll see how they start to sound different.” Eric and Iris were the same age, though he looked younger in that way some men did. He’d also married and had his daughter younger than she’d had Maggie. “How about you? How are your kiddies?”
“They’re good. Maggie asked me if she was fat the other day, which worried me, but it doesn’t seem to be sticking around, so that’s good? And Ariel is having a serious train phase. He wants to know everything about them. I’m afraid he’s going to become one of those, whatchamacallits, you know, those nutty people who sit around and wait for trains to go by, like in that movie with Ewan McGregor?” Iris snapped her fingers, trying to remember the name.
Eric, ever the film buff, came to the rescue. “Trainspotting? Well, it’s not always associated with heavy drug use, you know.”
They chatted on as the spring rolls arrived, falling into a comfortable silence once the main dishes were served. The food was delicious, piping hot, and best eaten when fresh. They’d first come here with Peter on Eric’s suggestion to talk about schools. It was a long drive from Oxnard, but Eric had moved after his divorce and Iris had business nearby, so it wasn’t hard to convince Peter to come on out as well. The kids loved nights with the babysitter, because they were rare, and it meant they got to stay up late watching TV.
The three of them had gotten along swimmingly, and Iris wished then that Eric was still married so that they could do this again. She and Peter knew some couples from the kids’ schools, but going out with them always felt somehow forced, their lives diverging too much from these people with regular nine-to-fives, or the mothers who stayed home with the kids and the fathers who wore suits to work. Now, whenever Iris was in the area, she’d reach out to Eric and they’d usually go to Pho Lantern because it was so good and because they never felt rushed by the staff when they sat around talking after their meal, sated.
It didn’t take her long to realize that she was actually quite all right with Eric’s single state. She liked him a whole lot right from the get-go, and soon she was pretty sure she had a crush on him. What drew her to him was that he, like Peter, was creative, a working artist who didn’t flaunt his abilities but treated them as a profession and a calling. He was an actor, mostly theater, though he’d played a couple tiny walk-on roles. “Everyone goes on X-Files at some point,” he’d joked once when she’d asked him about TV. “I got to be the drunk city Injun and Mulder is convinced I’ve hexed this businessman who got my daughter pregnant because he’s found dead with feathers in his mouth. Isn’t that nice?” Iris had been rather horrified, but Eric had just laughed at her sputtering, saying that there were some things you grinned and bore and did for the paycheck and exposure and for him, that had been one of them.
When they finished their dinner, they decided to take a walk around the neighborhood before getting back into their separate cars and driving off, Eric home and Iris to her motel. She’d gotten a place closer to Costa Mesa than she really should have; her event was in Anaheim, helping out with a small portion of a larger Disney corporate event. It was an easy job for good money, but she’d have to be up a half hour earlier than she usually would be because of where she’d chosen to stay. She knew she’d done this just to see Eric. Which was stupid, but there it was.
The evening was chilly, and Iris shivered under her thin sweater.
“Here,” Eric said, and without asking her he took off his brown leather jacket and swung it around her shoulders, leaving him in just a GOT MILK? T-sh
irt.
“How gallant,” she joked.
He waved her off, embarrassed. “I’m just warm-blooded,” he said, but Iris could see the goose bumps rising on his arm.
APRIL 24, 2002
THE NEXT TIME Iris saw Eric was in LA. He’d called her, asking if she wanted to get a meal at a place a friend of his just opened in Studio City. Iris was supposed to help Maggie with a school project that evening, a family tree. She’d been looking forward to sharing with her daughter some of what she knew about her parents and their families. But she’d said yes to Eric immediately, almost without thinking. When she’d hung up, the guilt started to sink in, but she made excuses: she’d had a long week and she deserved to have a night off, Maggie could work on Peter’s side of the family tonight, she’d sit with her another time, it wasn’t a big deal.
So she told Peter she had last-minute plans and asked if he could possibly help Maggie out and went to get dressed in their room, but he followed her.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on? You promised her. You don’t break promises, Iris. That’s not like you.” He sounded impatient, even upset, and he had reason to be. She and Peter had talked about this years ago, about how they didn’t want to be the kind of parents who promised things they couldn’t provide. They didn’t say Everything will be okay, but rather Let’s hope that or Odds are that. They didn’t promise to buy things eventually or go places someday, but used Maybe and We’ll see. And they didn’t promise to help out with homework or go to a school talent show unless they knew that—barring an emergency—they would absolutely follow through.
Iris pulled her head out of her closet, where she was trying to find a shirt she didn’t hate. “What do you mean, what’s going on?” She tried to keep her tone light. “I told you. There’s a restaurant Eric’s friend opened and he wants to show it to me. He’s only going to be in LA tonight, so it’s a good opportunity . . .” She trailed off. Peter knew her, and while she was a foodie, and the new restaurant featured Sichuan food, which was some of her favorite, she still didn’t usually go out impulsively. She planned her life and her schedule carefully, deliberately. And with her job keeping her away so often, she cherished the nights she could spend with her kids. She stood, shirtless, and wondered: what was going on with her?
“Love?” Peter said, his voice concerned. He went to her and hugged her naked shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Let me call Eric and cancel.”
“No, it’s okay, go,” he said. “I know you, my lovely extrovert. You crave people that you can talk to about grown-up things sometimes. I get it.”
Iris pushed her head into Peter’s chest harder, trying not to cry. He was so good. He never seemed to find homework help boring, which Iris sometimes did. He never seemed to need the kind of grown-up time she needed, where she could feel like a woman rather than a mom or an embodiment of a profession. He was too good.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
NOVEMBER 8, 2002
THEY WERE TEXTING every night and emailing through the days. Not since the early infatuation with Shlomo had Iris felt this preoccupied. The communication was constant to the point where she was beginning to feel dragged down by it, not getting enough sleep, making little and as yet handleable mistakes at work—purple tulips instead of red ones, an error she’d told the client was the florist’s fault and told the florist was the client’s bad memory; a hall that wasn’t set up with the projector that was vitally necessary. She was sure there were others. She was paying and getting paid on time, and so far no one had entirely lost their shit, but she missed her focus.
Nothing had happened between them yet. Neither of them ever acknowledged the growing obsession with each other. Once, Eric leaned over their dumplings and chucked her chin and told her she was his best friend. She’d blushed, thinking that he might mean something else. When he put his arm around her outside and they walked down the block that way, entwined, she was certain of it.
But still, she didn’t make the first move. There was something about Eric that prevented it—in person, anyway. He worked as much as she did—auditioning, rehearsing, and performing each seeming like its own distinct job, and he also bartended on the side—which meant they rarely saw one another. But in writing, he was extremely open and vulnerable. He shared his emotional life with her in a way no other man, not even Peter, did: They always talk about the body-image issues women have in this industry, he wrote her one day last month, but men aren’t usually allowed to talk about that. Today, during tech, the costume designer told me I had no ass, and that she didn’t know what to do with me. I spent an hour staring at workout videos at Blockbuster on my way home, trying to figure out how to get ass definition. I found a bunch of personal trainers in the yellow pages and I’m going to call them tomorrow and find the one who can give me an ass and make an appointment with him. I’m not supposed to care about these things, but I do. She’d wanted to hug him then.
Now she was parking in Boyle Heights in LA, where Eric had recently moved, since he was in a big new production that was paying him a semi–living wage (“I’m still going to be bartending, though, obviously”) and the commute had stopped making sense for him. They were going to get lunch and then take a free tour of the Evergreen Cemetery, the oldest one in LA. “It’s been around since 1877,” he’d told her on the phone, excited. The reason he wanted to go see it was less about its history and more about integrating into the neighborhood. He told her that he always spent his first few months anywhere new making an effort to participate in community events, to show that he wanted to be supportive of it. She’d wanted to kiss him all over when he’d told her that. He was good, she thought over and over again. A good man.
He didn’t show up. She waited for fifteen minutes, thirty, an hour. She called him. Repeatedly. She texted. She drove to the cemetery, in case they’d gotten their wires crossed about the plans. The tour group met up and went off without her.
Finally, tired and hungry and pissed, which was better than being worried, she drove home.
* * *
• • •
SHE NEVER HEARD from him again. It wasn’t until years later, when he’d gotten semi-famous and then famous-famous, that she learned that his daughter, Amy, had died in Afghanistan—and that he’d gotten the news on November 8, 2002. She didn’t know why he’d decided to cut off contact with her. Perhaps he’d gotten back together with his ex-wife for a while, each of them unable to bear the pain alone. For a long time, she kept emailing him occasionally—angry emails, hurt ones, eventually just once- or twice-a-year check-ins, telling him she hoped he was doing well.
When she sat down to write the letters to those few men she’d loved over the years, the ones she wanted to reassure, to acknowledge the pain she might have caused and explain her feelings, she wrote his without even thinking about it. Of course she’d loved him. Of course.
AUGUST 28, 2017
Maggie calls Lucia in the car on the way back to Oxnard, but Lucia doesn’t pick up. So she leaves her a voice message that Lucia will be able to get on her computer. “I miss your voice. This sucks.” Then, reminding herself to trust Lucia, and more than that, to trust herself, that she wants to be here, that she doesn’t want to sabotage this like she’s ruined things in the past, she records another message. “Sorry. I sounded bitchy. I’m not mad, just sad. Okay. Sorry again.”
She wants to tell Lucia about the famous man her mother may or may not have slept with. More than that, she wants to be in Lucia’s arms, to feel the grip of her flesh and the warm, often orange Tic Tac–tinged breath on her neck. She wants comfort.
When I get home, she decides, I’ll snap Dad out of his shit. She begins making a list in her head of things to research in order to do this: How to fix grief; how to snap someone out of mourning; how to make your dad pay attention to the world; how to confront someone about their cheating spouse; the list goes on and on
in her mind as she sits in traffic on the 101.
When it begins to ease and her speed gets back up to seventy, Maggie remembers in a sudden flash a dream that she had last night about Lucia. It’s not fully clear, more like a fuzzy photo, and she tries to piece together its story, its context. She’s pretty sure Lucia was angry at her in the dream; livid, in fact. Gina was there also. The details slowly emerge:
She was in the playground where she and her friends in high school used to hang out at a lot on weekend nights. There weren’t many places to go, after all. It was just her and Gina in the dream, and they were older, the ages they are now. When Lucia arrived, she and Gina started holding hands, and Maggie went up to both of them and kissed them each on the cheek. And that’s when Lucia started yelling at her in the dream, using her hands to gesture wildly, chastising Maggie for trying to steal her girlfriend.
Yes, Maggie is pretty sure that’s what it was. She smiles. You don’t have to be a psychologist to figure out where the dream is coming from. She decides to call Lucia’s cell and leave her a message that she’ll get when she finally gets her phone back. Maggie will describe the dream to her, the way she and Iris used to do. Those were, she thinks now, some of the least fraught conversations she had with her mom in recent years. They’d speculate, or bullshit really, about what the details of their dreams meant, and Maggie would send Iris funny or weird articles, occasionally memes—often with accompanying explanations—about dream symbolism, to which Iris would reply with smiley faces, WOW!s, hahahaha!s and occasionally a longer missive. These back-and-forths weren’t deep in any way, or they didn’t seem so to Maggie then, but she wonders what it means that she and Iris communicated by sharing their unconscious minds.
Now Maggie wants Lucia to know she dreams about her, even if it’s a twisted, evil version of her—or, rather, a reflection of Maggie herself, probably. But nothing happened with Nelly, she reminds herself, even if it could have. She isn’t planning on telling Lucia about Nelly, which might be stupid, but she can’t help it—she’s still too frightened of losing her to confess to a flirtation. And anyway, Maggie thinks, trying to escape the parallel to Iris she can’t unsee, dreaming about someone means you care about them, doesn’t it? That you’re anxious about them, about what they think of you. That they fit into your life in a way you can’t let go of.