by Byron Lane
Reid and I moved in together. It was the easiest decision ever and logistically even easier. First, I never wanted to sleep without him again, and packing night bags was growing so tiresome. Second, my entire apartment could have fit in his living room. I actually didn’t move a lot with me. I downsized, selling my cheap bed, selling my little sofa. I have my lamp to remind me of the Greenwich Hotel. I have my newly reframed Lady of Shalott. And I have my one real albatross: Mom’s boxes, still unopened, stacked neatly in Reid’s garage.
FALL
My dad is losing it. He mailed me a Ziploc bag of white goo. I’m holding it up to the light streaming in from Reid’s (and my!) kitchen window, squinting, wondering.
“Dad, what is this?” I ask into the phone, having caught him, apparently, in the middle of some construction project.
“You can’t tell?” he asks, the sound of hammers banging behind him.
“No. Did you send me something that melted?”
“Maybe,” he says. “Taste it.”
I look at the glob. “Are you crazy? No. I’m not tasting it.”
I hear him breathing heavily—it’s a new thing with him, the breathing heavily. It’s replacing the yelling. He started this a few months ago without prompt from me. I’m dying to ask about it, about what led to this change, but why mess with what’s working? Why start trying to tinker with his settings so late in the game for both of us?
“It’s Oreo fillings,” he says.
“Oreo, like the cookie?” I ask, pulling the bag closer to my face, as if proximity will now render the contents decipherable.
“Yeah,” Dad says. “I know how you like the fillings.”
I squeeze the Ziploc and examine, now recognizing some of the patterns left over from the wafers, now placing the sweet smell. “Dad, did you buy a pack of Oreo cookies and scrape off the center icing and put them in a bag and mail them to me?”
“Yup,” he says, his voice choking. “I know you like the filling.”
“Is this because when I was a kid, I ate the fillings and threw away the rest of the cookie?” DON’T WASTE FOOD, I can still hear him yelling. I don’t mention the part about how he made me eat the discarded cookie parts from the trash. Maybe we don’t always have to say everything.
“Yup,” he says again.
I put the bag of Oreo filling down on the counter and brace myself on the edge. I shake my head and smile. I’m so moved, I’m surprised Dad doesn’t hear it through the phone.
“You there?” he asks.
“Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Dad.”
“I hope that between the cookies and the stuff I mailed you, you know I’m proud of you and all that.”
“Thank you,” I say, with the sounds of banging and shouting picking up in the background on his side of the phone.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Dad yells to the people around him. “I’m talking to my son in California!” Of him yelling again, I’m thinking, Well, nothing’s perfect.
“Dad, what is going on over there?”
“Construction,” he says. “I’m gonna finish this damn house before I die, even if it kills me.”
“Kills you? Nah. You’re a survivor. You’ll be around for decades to come. I’m convinced nothing can kill you,” I say, shaking my head. That old house, no matter the work he does, it’ll never be a cheerful home, not after all we’ve been through in it.
“This house is the one thing I can leave you when I’m gone. And I want there to be at least one nice thing I gave you, one nice thing I did for you,” he says.
The thought surprises me, paralyzes me for a moment. I’m thinking, I don’t want a house. I’m thinking, All I’ve ever wanted from you was kindness. I’m thinking, You don’t always get what you want.
A deep sniffle and a moment later Dad adds, “Yeah, I better go. Talk to you later, son. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” I say, and hang up the call. I pick up the bag of filling and I open the trash can, about to toss it in—Oreos are not my thing anymore; we all change—but I note something else is different, too: my father. Perhaps we all grow from age, weathering of time. The father I remember from childhood seems gone. No more fights, angst, screaming—or less of it, anyway. It makes me wonder about the yelling that still goes on in my head every now and then. I attribute it to my dad, this man now frail and tired, but maybe, like the broken, backward horn in my Nissan, I’m only yelling at myself.
I close the trash can. I decide to keep the bag of goop, at least for a day or so. And I wonder about what other things Dad is quietly doing to mend our past. I wonder what other things Dad has maybe quietly already done.
I walk out to Reid’s garage, to Mom’s boxes stacked in the corner. By now the duct tape holding the contents together is older and dry. I tug at the strips until one box opens, bits of dust flying about like when you pull a tab to open a FedEx envelope. I look inside. Then I rip open another. I look inside. I rip open another, another, another. And these are not Mom’s things in these boxes—these are mine, my things. My notebooks from high school that I thought were long lost. My book reports Dad tore up and made me rewrite, now taped back together, the ink old and drifting. There are childhood clothes, pictures from my teenage years, newspaper clippings from being listed on the honor roll—these are things from after my mother died, things he kept for me. There’s the Priestess Talara action figure, stuffed unceremoniously at the bottom, her cape creased and wrinkled, her face the same as I remember it from way back then as a kid and from way back months ago, from the real woman. We’re reunited at last—and now I have two, the one from Reid and the one from my childhood; like both sides of the coin, a woman I find amazing and frustrating; Kathi Kannon, you can’t escape her.
Also, in the last box, there are my cassette tapes, in their tattered jukebox casing, including the tape with the song “Mother-in-Law,” my Star Search audition number. I open the case and a black mist falls—the decayed magnetic strip that stored the music, like the rest of us, it’s older now, worn and more and more fragile by the day. I pull out my phone, I open iTunes, I buy the ditty for 99 cents, and I dance in the garage, alone and silly and exquisite, at last surrounded by my favorite toy and favorite song, surrounded in so many ways by the childhood I always wanted.
WINTER
There’s death to deal with. Agnes, finally succumbing to the tumor she nursed while working in Kathi Kannon’s kitchen for forty-nine years, much of which featured Judge Judy blaring by her side.
ME: I’m so sorry about Agnes.
KATHI: So crushing, life ever the fickle bitch; but from you I love the love. I Missus you. Everyone is a ding-a-ling … and here I sit, missing my ole Cockring.
SPRING
I’m parked and panicked outside the estate of Hollywood royalty Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine’s Best Comeback list. She invited me to a birthday party she’s throwing for herself here at her mansion, my old stomping ground.
I’m nervous, I’m self-conscious, dressed in my fanciest outfit with my favorite accessory, Reid, by my side, chill and confident, not worried at all that I’m finally, after a year away from her, about to introduce him to the Kathi Kannon. Him, dapper and poised. Me, sweating and flinching.
“What’s wrong?” Reid asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, clenching my teeth, squeezing my hands into fists in my coat pocket. It feels just like the first day I was outside these gates.
“Remember, I’m here to make your life better,” he says gently. I warm to the reference, the kindness, the moment from way back in our early days that helped facilitate bittersweet changes, new chapters in my life. But it doesn’t ease my tension, my distrust of whether Kathi has really forgiven me for ending my time with her. It doesn’t ease my curiosity about why she invited Reid to come here with me, accepting him, welcoming him into her home, her life—what used to be our life, as she put it. There was a time I’d wonder if she was inviting him into my life with her, instead of Reid
and me welcoming her into my life with him. Had I stayed working for her, would Reid be the third wheel or would Kathi? It doesn’t matter now.
Kathi considered having birthday parties during the years I worked for her but always said she didn’t have the money to do them right. Now her resources have increased. Priestess Talara is back. The film is a huge hit, a franchise alive. I was thrilled to see it, but had to watch it multiple times before Priestess Talara became the character versus me just seeing my old friend Kathi Kannon up there on the screen. Suspension of disbelief is harder when you know what someone’s thinking, when you know someone’s deep, dark tells. I see Priestess Talara’s right shoulder move forward and I know Kathi’s costume is too tight. I see Priestess Talara blink slightly off rhythm and I know Kathi is too warm. I can see from her face whether she’s hungry or thirsty. I can see from her smile if she’s tired. That Assistant Bible is still in me; I wrote the book on Kathi Kannon.
I arrived at her mansion driving my new little Fiat, Reid squeezed in the passenger seat, a ride far from the old Nissan that first entered these gates those many years ago—a different car, and me, its very different driver.
TV cameras are across the street from her gate. Paparazzi are clicking away. When I worked here, no one cared who lived up that hill. Now celebrity tour buses are stopping out front and playing Priestess Talara theme music and movie clips, and those tourists are just like me: outsiders.
There, on the wrong side of the gate, before the same smoking Santa painting, the same CLOTHING OPTIONAL banner, I’m thinking, I want to be back inside. I’m thinking, All that time I spent with Kathi Kannon and there’s still so much unsaid between us, so much I want to tell her at this party.
First, I want to tell her I’m sorry. I never thought she was telling me the truth. About my appearance: I thought she was making fun of me. About my abilities: I thought I was inherently inadequate. Introducing me as part of her family: I thought it was a contrived convenience. Calling me her friend as I told her I was leaving her: I thought that was a delusion. And now, looking back, I’m so fucking ashamed. I feel so stupid. I was so trapped in my own inner drama that I couldn’t see she genuinely cared. And in the end, I treated her like some random employer. In the end, I’m the one who put the space between us.
I want to tell her that I wish I would have done it differently. That sometimes—often, in fact—I regret leaving her at all. That she’s someone who raised me from the dead, who helped me see my reflection in the mirror again, who showed me that everything—just checking in to a hotel—could be an adventure, that humor was everywhere, even in airplane bathrooms, mental hospitals.
I want to tell her how much I miss getting those nonsensical text messages every day. I miss her nicknames for me, words made up from thin air, words that now carry me as I remember the room, I remember her tone, I remember what she was wearing every time I heard a new one: Niblet, Jimmy, Cockring, even darling.
I want to tell her she’s with me in my friendships, acquaintances, moments of mingling at parties where people are no longer bound by asking, “How’s Kathi Kannon,” but instead ask about me, how I’m doing, about Reid, about my actual life, not just the sitcom version of it. I talk about my moments with her as fond memories, not fodder, not my life’s only value. And the same with my new friends I picked up along the way, like Drew and Ben, who both kindly wished to stay in touch. And like Melody—who also goes by the nickname Jasmine—whose friendship I pursued and nurtured mostly because she was with me during the best times, at the beginning, my equal in the shadow of celebrity, and because she’s the only assistant who ever emails me back. As for Bruce, all of his haircuts and fancy shoes couldn’t keep him in Los Angeles. He never did get the promotion he desperately wanted. He’s back home in Iowa, working for his father, his Facebook now dark, his life now a secret; I’d look him up if I knew his real name. Turns out, both of us are silt.
I want to tell Kathi that I hear her in my head, the things she taught me. Life is meant to be lived. It’s not meant for the safe choice all the time. It’s not meant to be stubbornly shielded. Not meant to be like the magazines in her bathroom, with their Amazon protective covers.
I want to tell her—confess to her—that sometimes I google her name to see paparazzi photos of us, she and I forever online, some of the images painful, regretful (did I let her wear that?). I examine her clothes in the pictures to trigger memories of the things she loved or lost. To try to place a date: Are those glasses from our years together? Is that the jacket I had repaired for her? Is that the brooch I said looked like a uterus?
I want to tell her I’ve signed up for weather alerts. I get notified of each aurora borealis, each alert like a little “hello” from my famous friend. The aurora borealis will always remind me of her, will always be her. The messy, beautiful colors take me to her side, become her, the way the lights look foggy in real life but complete perfection in photos, the way their electrons and neutrons and chaos swirl around to make something pointed, marking some memory, something you can only really appreciate while standing on a frozen lake in Yellowknife, with the warm body of a friend at your side, in a coat she bought for you, in a world she illuminated.
I want to tell her I’m still looking for my passion. And maybe that’s my passion. Thinking, seeking. Seeking teachers, seeking answers, seeking people who need help, seeking my tribe. But what if it’s just a tribe of seekers? Dogs chasing our tails. Followers following followers following followers. Therapista says seeking actually takes you away from what you’re looking for, which is peace, peace in the right now. I haven’t found peace yet. I hope Kathi has. Kathi and I, both extremes in our own way.
I want to tell her thank you for being a mother figure. I have two now. One I hardly remember, and one I’ll never forget.
In front of 1245 Beverly Canyon Drive for the first time since I left more than a year ago, and it’s all so different. Everything has changed.
The code to her front gate has changed—I have to use the buzzer again, push that difficult little call button, give my name, get approval from icy security guards.
“Are you family?” they ask.
“No,” I say. I’m thinking, Not really. Not anymore, if ever.
They ask my name; they ask for my ID. Don’t they know I used to be her right hand?
Past security and the valet, Reid and I are holding hands as we wander up that magical hill—the dangling porpoise, the hologram hand flipping me the bird, the colorful bricks. The landscaping is new, fresh, more flowers, more color—as if that’s even possible.
We walk through the front door with the ball-sac door knocker. The light switches I had installed. The picture that hangs beside the piano to hide the stain on the Sheetrock where I had an old thermostat removed. Walls now have fresh paint; there are new holograms and works of art everywhere—all signs of her new money, her new life, the one without me.
The crowd here to celebrate her birthday is strange, a group of people who seem out of place standing on her brick porch, on her endangered floors, in my old office. I recognize some of the faces from television and movies, smiling and laughing, drunk on her magical ambiance. There’s a joyousness to the event, a fog of celebration wafting around in the air-conditioning from the living room to the red room to her bedroom. I slip into some old thought patterns—noting drinks without coasters sweating on the furniture, noticing trash cans that are too full, noticing pictures hung askew, knickknacks not in their exact places. And then the other thought pattern, the new one, the reminder to myself: I don’t work here anymore. And as a sentimental longing fights for voice, Reid squeezes my hand. I’m not here alone.
I almost turn and leave Kathi Kannon’s party right away, fleeing the people who think they know her. I feel confused, angry. In my time with Kathi, I never saw them in her life. I have to remind myself that I was only with her for part of her life. I’m doing the math in my head in her crowded living room, standing beneath Mateo the Moose.
I’m calculating: How many hours were all these people with her? Is it possible that in my three years, eight hours a day, I was actually with her longer, with her more, that I have more claim to her than they? So selfish of me, and yet I humor the ill thoughts. I never heard her talk about some of these people. Some of them, I know she doesn’t even like. I want to run out of there. I want to never come back. I want to only remember this place the way it was. The way it was when I was alone in this giant living room—tap, tap, tap—loading pills into her containers. The way it was while she was sleeping—still and dreamy, a beautiful lump in the covers. The way it was when she was awake, the smell of her baking cookies in the kitchen. Just her and me watching deer in her backyard, eating peanut butter from the jar.
“Where do you think she is?” Reid asks, snapping me out of my trance.
“I know where she is,” I say.
The party is filled with people in every room, every square foot occupied. With Reid at my side, I walk past Mateo. I walk through the red room—fireplace still raging the same flames from my last day, even more boats now piled, teetering on that mantel; it’s going to be a spectacular crash one day. I walk past the bar and the bathroom and through the second living room and down a hallway back to her bedroom, my feet retracing the same steps we once took while dancing down this corridor. Sure enough, in her room, in a ball gown, lying in her bed, Roy appropriately at her side, is Kathi Kannon, film icon. At a party filled with Hollywood elites, Kathi Kannon sits isolated from the crowd, surrounded by people I don’t recognize, protected in her cocoon of quiet and not quiet.
Kathi and I spot each other at the same time, like a strange sort of telepathy. She stops mid-conversation with John Mayer and hops out of bed and marches directly toward me.
“Cockring, your hair looks so great,” she says, reaching up and feeling it.