I Might Regret This

by Abbi Jacobson

  My mom had first discovered Jerome when I was in high school, on a trip with her boyfriend, Don. On my drive down from Sedona, I started to think about my teen years, that brief time that seems to hold an uneven amount of power over the rest of my life. When my parents first started dating new people after their divorce, believe it or not, I wasn’t excited about it. I was just starting to come to terms with my somewhat nomadic lifestyle—my brother had gone off to college, so from thirteen on, it was just me (and our pug, Luke) moving from my mom’s house to my dad’s house and vice versa, every Sunday night, all while managing the various confusions of daily life as an up-and-coming adult. I didn’t have time to deal with the fact that my parents were moving on and falling in love with new people, I had enough on my plate!

  Things I was preoccupied with during my teen years:

  How to not cough every time I smoked weed

  How much of a flare my jeans should have

  The concept of flirting

  How to manage my frizzy hair, and which headscarf I should wrap it in

  Finding the most unique black light poster to go with the black light I got in my room at my dad’s house (without a poster, the black light only served to reveal prior tenants’ stains on the carpet)

  Trying not to think about what specifically the stains on my carpet were

  All of the sexual firsts—doing them, how to do them, with who, where to do them…

  Taking advantage of this new freedom of being able to drive myself places

  Constantly trying to find some part of my body to be okay with

  Seeing for myself what this Atkins craze was all about, and determining how much cheese was too much

  Maintaining a solid B average

  Where I was going to go to college

  What college was going to be like

  SATs, and if it was okay to take them without taking an SAT prep class

  Trying to hide from my parents the fact that every friend of mine was taking an SAT prep class

  How far was too far for me and my friends to drive to see basically any jam band play live

  Being socially active, in real life by day, and on top of AOL chat rooms and instant messages by night

  How to play indoor soccer well, after I discovered marijuana

  Relying on potato chips for pain relief of menstrual cramps

  What it was like to have this new, portable phone that I was supposed to carry around at all times

  How to avoid getting caught drinking

  How to avoid getting caught smoking pot

  How to avoid getting caught hooking up with someone

  How to avoid getting caught throwing a party at one parent’s house when they were away and I was supposed to be staying at the other one

  So many important, worldly concerns to maintain and stay on top of—I didn’t have spare time to process how I felt about real, emotional developments happening at home! Do you know how hard it is to cover up and completely forget about stains on a fully carpeted bedroom floor? Just the sight of the black light, hanging on the wall above my closet, not even lit up, made me remember the stains.

  I was purposefully not thinking about my parents’ divorce, and how different my life was. But it was more difficult now, their new partners were unavoidable, new people in my life, out at dinners, trying to get to know me by asking about how school was going. School is fine. I didn’t want or expect my parents to get back together, but I didn’t want or know how to talk or deal with these new people.

  My mom dated Don for most of the time I was in high school. He was from Kentucky, and wore cowboy boots and had a big mustache like Tom Selleck. My mom is an antiques collector and they met at his antiques store a few towns over. He was sweet and caring and treated my mom like a queen. I remember they went on a vacation to Europe and her face lit up as she told me every detail down to the baroque twists in the metal railing on their hotel room balcony. She was smitten. I was happy for her, because I knew how difficult the divorce had been—my parents had been together for over twenty-five years. They met at overnight camp when they were fifteen and got married when they were twenty. They had my brother at twenty-six and me at twenty-nine, and they got divorced when they were in their mid-forties. Even at seventeen, I could see how they’d each changed, how her and my dad didn’t fit anymore. But understanding why the divorce happened didn’t make the fact that new people were in my life any easier. Don really fucking tried though; he’d cook us breakfast—scrambled eggs with these potatoes from a can—which sounds pretty terrible, but they were amazing, one of those unexpectedly delicious dishes you forever associate with someone, and are never able to replicate the flavors. He offered me side jobs raking his yard, and every Christmas, he’d pay me by the hour to wrap all the cookie tins he’d send out as gifts to everyone that worked at his company. We’d stack piles and piles of tins (there had to be over a hundred) in our living room, and I’d wrap them after school and on the weekend. It was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. It made me the talented gift wrapper I am today.

  Despite Don being so generous and lovely, I didn’t give him much back. I was just sort of “fine.” I was friendly at times, but I don’t think I was ever really, completely myself. I couldn’t fake it. I know Don wasn’t sure how I felt about him, probably because I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure about his cowboy boots or hats. I didn’t know how I felt about his mustache or him being at dinners all the time or any of it. I was at my mom’s house for one week, and now he was there too? It was the same at my dad’s house, with his girlfriend. Could I get some space?! I have to figure out how to stop coughing every time I smoke this weed, and the more adults there are in the house, the harder this is going to be! It obviously wasn’t just that—it was space in general. My life had just changed so drastically, I wanted everything to slow down or for my own life to pick up.

  You know when you look back on specific moments—I’m talking the big, bad ones that stay with you forever, the ones you push down and don’t think about until you drive across the country to a specific tiny town, situated on the top of a hill—how you wish you had been more mature, more equipped with the words and actions and vulnerability to deal with those things? How you wish you could have been more loving, and gentle and kind. I’m not sure what to do with those moments.

  Don died suddenly in October of 2001, of an aortic aneurysm. When I think of that night, it plays like a movie, scene after scene, scored by the random mix CD playing in my Jeep Wrangler as I drove home from the hospital in the middle of the night to my dad’s house after my mom told me I should go. Even in that moment, sitting in the waiting room after the doctor gave us almost zero hope, she was being a mom. It was late, and scary, and I don’t think she wanted me to see what she was about to. I should have stayed with her.

  A month after Don died, I went to visit colleges in New England. I was supposed to go with my friend Mary and her dad the day after he died, but my plan changed, obviously, so my dad ended up taking me a month later. We also took my mom. This just felt right. Weird, but right. I didn’t end up going to any of the schools we visited on that trip, but this adventure with my parents was necessary. That month had been so unwieldy. 9/11 had just happened, and then Don. I was supposed to pick a college and leave home and start the rest of my life. There was nothing to grasp onto, only trying to move forward. I never even processed what a bizarre situation that was: a two-day road trip with the people who made me, a month after my mom’s partner had died suddenly, or the fact that I hadn’t been alone with my parents for this long in over five years. But it was like we hadn’t skipped a beat—my dad drove my mom’s car as we sang along to oldies. We shared food at restaurants, we navigated (with a paper map!) together, my dad did bits through the connecting door of our hotel rooms. My mom laughed again. It was like we’d somehow figured out how to time-travel. It was a much-needed distraction for her, being with my dad, the person who knew her best, during the time that might have been her
worst.

  The resilience my mom showed in bouncing back from Don dying is astounding to me. Especially now as I find myself on the last leg of a road trip trying to get over my own broken heart. Pain shouldn’t be quantified or compared, but I can’t even imagine how much pain she must have been in. If I’m depressed and can’t seem to get back to normal from this bullshit (it’s not bullshit, but you know what I mean)—how must she have felt? However my mom felt, and still feels from that time in her life, she somehow moved through it. She always has.

  Don and my mom had loved Sedona, but even more, they loved Jerome. It was a tiny town they discovered while on vacation, one they talked about so much it felt like it was only theirs. They were both antiques collectors, filling their weekends with early-morning flea markets and estate sales, so stumbling upon Jerome was like opening a treasure chest full of weird eccentrics and southwestern art. Even bringing up Jerome makes my mom joyous. She has a painting of the steep main street hanging in her house right now. It’s one of her favorite things.

  The Christmas after Don died, my mom presented me with a ring that he’d bought me in Jerome. He planned on giving it to me then. My mom put it in an antique ring box and hung it up on our Christmas tree (I am 100 percent Jewish) as an ornament for me to open last. It’s a gold band, with a flower on the top, an opal in the center with turquoise stones surrounding it. I wore that ring all through senior year of high school, every day of college, and throughout my twenties in New York City. Wearing that ring felt like a connection to him, the only way for me to show I cared, to apologize for being an angsty teenager who never gave him the time of day. When Broad City got picked up, I decided to give the ring to my character. Getting to make a television show was unbelievable, but also very scary. I knew I’d feel better wearing his ring—whenever I got nervous or felt insecure or scared, the ring was my amulet, always right there with me. It is the one thing my character has to have on, the one thing the entire wardrobe department knows means the world to me. The significance behind that ring is so big, so heavy, like a Pandora’s box of my adolescence I don’t choose to open often, but the sight of it is enough, a CliffsNotes version of my past, a headline of where I’ve been.

  So, I went to Jerome. I ate eggs and toast at the counter of a tiny café on the main drag, in one of the buildings on that steep street in my mom’s painting. I thought of my mom, her courage and her enthusiasm. I thought of Don and his cowboy boots and his mustache, his ring, and that time in my life. I thought of my parents and that trip we took all those years ago. I thought about how pain is also a symptom of transformation. I thought about bouncing back. How we can start again. And again.

  WHEN AND WHERE

  It’s unbelievable how happy my ex-girlfriend is.

  There isn’t anyone happier in the history of people or happiness. It’s a modern miracle. Her day-to-day is jam-packed with boundless joy and she’s never felt more fulfilled or satisfied in her whole life. She dances to places instead of walking. Her face hurts from smiling, every coin she sees on the street is faceup, and she gets TRIPLE punches on her coffee punch card, every time, no matter who is the cashier that day. She’s fucking all the hottest, smartest, funniest people, and they’re doing stuff in bed I haven’t even heard of! She’s keeping all her plants alive and not only that, flowers are blooming out of plants that don’t even grow flowers. She’s moved on in a way that has somehow deleted any trace of our relationship, and found herself in a land of abundance, chock-full of perfect dates and new romantic adventures. It’s astounding how well she’s doing. I can’t believe it. And not only in love, but also with work, with friends, intimacy, fashion, even bagels—there isn’t one area of her life that hasn’t been improved since we dated.

  It’s not that I’m not happy, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not happy at all. The difference in our happiness is extremely large. If I had an appropriate state or “big thing” to compare this “large” difference with, like Texas or some sort of prizewinning gourd compared with a normal-size gourd, I would, but numbers and state sizes and farming statistics weren’t ever something I excelled at. I try and stick to what I know. With that said, you can only imagine what it’d be like for me to run into her. It’d be interesting for sure. As I drive closer to Los Angeles, the city I know she’s in, the thought of the inevitable chance encounter brings a steady trickle of anxiety throughout my body. The fact that she and I haven’t talked in months and my main news source about her heavenly life post-me happens to be the deepest, darkest parts of my brain and heart makes my mind spin. I could see her anywhere. ANYWHERE.

  What if I’m in a bookstore and I see her? What if I’ve been there awhile at this point. I was browsing the cool aisles, filled with memoirs and short-story collections. I picked up some of the employee suggestions, rifled through a few art criticism essays. I was over there for so long, in those aisles. But what if when I see her I am holding a book by Guy Fieri? What if I remembered I had to get a gift and I picked that book up and thought, Hey, this would be a perfect book for the person I need a gift for, just as she walked in. What would I say then? I don’t hate Guy Fieri, but I would want to tell her that I was actually interested in so many other books in the store, and if it was up to me, if I didn’t need to get this fucking gift at this fucking moment, that I’d instead be holding a stack of Raymond Carver and Rebecca Solnit and other notable writers that make me think about life and not tacos or root beer floats. I like tacos, sure, but this trip wasn’t about that initially. I’ve never had a root beer float, but that’s another story altogether. I couldn’t say any of that. So, here I am.

  What if I’m walking past a string of shops, and I happen to peek into a salon and see a woman getting her hair cut inside? The haircut is incredible, one of those short-but-not-too-short, wavy-but-not-too-wavy, messy cuts that you look at and are immediately jealous of. I realize I haven’t had my hair cut in a while, and I could use a change, so I go in and ask for exactly the same haircut as the woman before me—if she can pull it off, I sure as hell can! I’m a modern woman! I sit in the chair and smile as my damp hair is combed and cut. I read a five-year-old Glamour magazine, pondering how “women really can do it all,” when an employee slips on the freshly mopped floor (that he just mopped!) and falls into my hairdresser, making him slip and cut a huge chunk of my hair off. It’s a wreck and there’s no going back. There’s just NO way this cut can be salvaged. So, I leave. They don’t charge me of course, that would be absurd, though I’d probably pay if they didn’t insist. The mopper slipped and sprained his ankle for crying out loud. My hairstylist was mortified and got a small cut on his pinky finger from the incident. He might not be able to work tomorrow, it’s his cutting hand. “It’s just hair,” I say, “it’ll grow back.” I feel good about being so kind and forgiving. Maybe this was a lesson—outward appearances aren’t the most important thing. It’s inner beauty that matters. I leave the salon, waving and smiling. They look at me, their eyes all silently say, Wow, what a generous soul, and I wish I could be more like her. What if at that moment on the sidewalk outside the salon, she walks by? We haven’t seen each other in months and here I am looking like I have a ripped piece of construction paper, bouncing on top of my head. There’d be no way to convey the series of events that just occurred. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to pull someone out of the salon to back up my story. She’d think I chose this haircut, was smiling about it! I couldn’t correct her, explaining that I was smiling about how kind I was, how forgiving. Oh, boy. I couldn’t tell her about the freshly mopped floor or the cut pinky finger, or that I wanted to pay. Could you even imagine if that was where I saw her? That’d be a mess for sure.

  What if I’m dressed up to go to a wedding? I happen to be a bridesmaid, like I am sometimes when I go to weddings. Not all the time, obviously, but sometimes I am a bridesmaid. What if I’m wearing a pastel-purple bridesmaid dress, a dress selected for me? A dress from a bridal shop that only sells dresses just like this, in
pastel purple or ochre or grass green—dresses that will be worn one time and then hang in a closet as a distant memory, reminding us of that night. Forever a relic of the mismatched grouping of girls brought together by the bride. The awkward forced bonding of people who don’t know each other. A bridesmaid’s dress cannot be thrown away or donated. If the bride comes over, this dress must be hanging in the closet. What if she looks through my closet while I’m in the bathroom or out back and the dress isn’t there? I’d have to get an “out back” of course. I imagine one day I’ll have one though and I could be out there pruning the flowers or something and the bride would be over for dinner and find herself in my closet, and if the dress isn’t in there, it could be bad. I’d have to lie right there on the spot, out back. If I’m going to have an “out back,” I don’t want to have to lie out there. So, what if I’m wearing that dress on the way to the wedding and I see her? I’m with the bride, so I can’t stop and explain the whole dress situation. I can’t say how I didn’t pick it and that it isn’t my new style. I couldn’t mention anything about the asymmetric neckline and how I was the last bridesmaid asked to be in the wedding, thus getting the last choice in necklines. I’m not gonna say that right in front of the bride. It’s also totally fine—we’d lost touch, the bride and me, but I care about our friendship, so I’m happy to be a part of her big day. I think it would be clear that I’m in a pastel-purple asymmetrical dress for the wedding. She’d see the bride and get it, right? I mean, she would probably put two and two together. But who knows? Dresses are complicated and who knows. What then?