“You met someone? Are you kidding? You think I’m two years old?”
“I met a crackerjack journalist, a Knight Fellow—do you know how hard it is to become a Knight Fellow?—and she’s smart and alive and she’s doing the work of the world. And, well, we connected. We had a Vulcan Mind Meld, you know?” Dan tried to draw him in. But Jack wasn’t taking the bait. He stared at his father like he was a crazy man.
Dan persevered. “She cares about the things I care about. She made me feel alive. So, you know, when she asked me to go with her, I thought, why not? All I do is lie on my bed every day staring at my computer, looking for work and not finding any, and here was work coming and knocking right on my door.”
“So you lied and went behind our backs. Didn’t you think about us? Didn’t you think about how we might feel?”
“I’ve been having an existential crisis,” said Dan, feeling naked and inept. “For months now, years even. How could you possibly know at your age what it’s like to be my age and be out of work and feeling like your life is over but you still have to live it every day? I had to make changes. Changes don’t come without costs or heartache.”
Jack shook his head. All that dirty-blond tangled hair. He really did look like a lifeguard. Or a golden retriever puppy with giant paws.
“I never knew you were an asshole until now, Dad,” Jack said.
“Don’t talk to me that way. I’m your father. I’m trying to acknowledge the pain that sometimes comes along with risk.”
“What you’re really saying is that it was worth hurting us for you to maybe feel better. Where’s your costs and heartache?”
“Believe me, I’m feeling some serious heartache right now,” said Dan.
“You’re an asshole, Dad,” Jack said, this time with certitude.
In Dan’s imagination, he slapped his son right then. His grieving wounded teenage baby man of a son. Right across his smirking ugly mug.
But on terra firma, Dan did nothing.
They walked the rest of the way home in silence, Jack a few steps ahead of his father. When they got to the house, they entered through the carport, Jack letting the back door swing in Dan’s face instead of holding it open the way he’d been trained to do. Dan stopped it from hitting him squarely on the nose with the heel of his hand.
“Hello,” Dan called out as he made his way past the laundry room and into the kitchen. “Anyone home?”
“We’re in here,” yelled Miles.
Where? thought Dan. But he didn’t feel like yelling.
Instead he walked through the kitchen and out through the dining room, past the living room and into the family room, where Donny and Miles were playing PlayStation 4.
“How was the funeral, Dad?” Miles said, eyes locked on the screen while he played and Dan stood in the doorway.
“Awful,” Dan said. “I’m fried.”
“Why don’t you kick back,” Donny said. “Miles and I are playing a game.” He was furiously pressing the buttons on his controller.
“You sure you don’t have to get to the office, Donny?” said Dan.
“I’m sure,” Donny said. “Go take a nap, Dan.”
“Yeah, take a nap, Dad,” said Miles.
“Okay,” said Dan. “I will.”
He started to walk toward the staircase. He turned back. “Did Jack say anything to you?”
“Jack who?” said Miles.
“Your brother,” said Dan.
“Is he back, too?” said Miles.
Dan walked up the stairs. The door to Jack’s room was closed. He almost knocked, but then changed his mind. There was no way they were going to get to a better place right now. The door to the master bedroom was open, so he entered it.
As soon as he sat on the bed, Dan was hit with a tsunami of exhaustion. He’d been traveling for days, without sleep, without end. He’d been around the world and back. He’d exited the atmosphere of his life and entered another and was enlarged, and then returned, changed, and small. He felt like a lost and forgotten cosmonaut, revolving endlessly in an unbreakable orbit. Everything he’d done had been a mistake. Everything he’d touched had gone wrong. This last bit with Jack, that took the prize. When hard-pressed, he’d told half-truths, fantasies, and out-and-out lies. Jack was right. He was an asshole. Would the kid ever trust him again? The trouble with being a parent was that even with the enormity of all that mind-bending paternal love, Dan still couldn’t be bigger than he was. You’d think it would stretch you, Dan thought, but it doesn’t, at least not far enough. He was the world’s worst father.
Dan reached into his pants pocket and brought out his phone. He pressed his thumb to the home button. The phone woke up.
There was a mammoth text from Maryam, he kept rolling back the screen as her gray block of characters scrolled on:
Dan, I sent you my compiled Yoshi notes via email. I stayed up all night transcribing. They are fantastic. I also sent you the preliminary photo series. The pics are heartbreaking and also beautiful. Exquisite. When I finished, I had lunch with an old contact. He put me onto the most amazing story. I think we should sell these as a series! I don’t know if I ever told you but for a while I was a competitive surfer. As a teenager I summered in North Cornwall. My friend told me that at Tairatoyoma beach, 50km from the nuclear plant, the surfers have returned. There are thousands of bags of contaminated sand stored on the beach, and the radioactive water pours forth from the crippled plant continuously and yet nothing overawes the human spirit. One guy I interviewed said: “Who knows what this is going to do to us? Who knows what’s going to happen ever anyway? I’m alive now and it feels great.” What a metaphor for life. I’m going to suit up and go out with them tomorrow. More importantly, how is your family? Darling Jack? Remember, these things take time, but there is healing ahead. When there is love, there is hope. I send you kisses upon kisses upon kisses. As ever, M.
Dan read and reread the message. He was so tired he was seeing double.
He typed: You are crazy.
He erased it. He typed: Don’t be a fool! It’s too dangerous!
He erased that, too. Nothing was going to stop Maryam from going into the water. Nothing, not even his family had stopped him, and he possessed one-eighth of her courage, and used to be a man of honor who had sense; a man who didn’t knowingly go out and hurt the people he loved.
He clicked on his email. She had sent him forty-five pages of notes and several series of photos. The last one was of a somewhat younger Maryam in a wet suit standing next to a surfboard; she was waving happily at him, even from the past.
Dan was tired, but he brushed the tired out of his eyes with his hands. He decided he was past tired.
He walked over to his desk. His laptop was still sitting on it. He picked it up and brought it back to his bed. He kicked off his shoes. He took off his suit pants and hung them over his desk chair. He did the same with his shirt and tie and jacket. He went into his drawers and took out a T-shirt. He took out a pair of gray sweatpants. He put on his clothes and walked over to his overnight bag and took out his notebook and a pen. Then he went back to his bed. He put his laptop on his lap. He began to read Maryam’s notes. After a while, he opened a new Word doc. He read from her notes and then from his notepad, and then, returning to his own document, Dan began to type.
* * *
By the time the reception was over, Amy had filled up six Hefty bags of garbage, packed both the bottom freezer and the auxiliary freezer out in the garage with enough meals to feed an army, and supervised the flipping of burgers and dogs by enlisting Wei’s younger brother, Sam, who had agreed to do the honors at the grill. Amy had always liked Sam, and he seemed to appreciate having a job to do—Jack’s teammates had inhaled the food as fast as he could cook it, and even little Josie had come back for seconds, mustard dribbling a line of gold all the way down the front of her pretty tea-green dress. Sam smiled for what was probably the first time that day and grabbed his heart with a couple of staggering
steps backward, when Amy fetched him a cold beer and held out the frosty bottle.
After she had run out of obvious chores to do (and even the unobvious, like replenishing toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms and folding the top square into a little triangle), Amy had checked in on Marilyn, rescuing her friend from her own mother and ancient aunt who were clearly tormenting her. Tears were streaming down Marilyn’s face.
“I told you he didn’t look right at the anniversary party; he was too pressured, Mari,” Amy overheard the mom say.
“Nonsense,” said the aunt, “this generation doesn’t have enough to do. They are all too spoiled.”
Marilyn looked like she might collapse at any moment, so Amy grabbed Marilyn by the elbow, and said: “Excuse me, I need Marilyn in the kitchen,” pulling her inside, whispering in her ear, “Ugh, I hate them,” pouring them both a tumbler of scotch on the rocks and taking her out the front door for a walk around the block.
“I’m so sorry,” said Amy. “How could they talk to you like that?”
Marilyn shook her head and dabbed at her eyes and runny nose with the cocktail napkin Amy had handed to her.
“The things people say. ‘He’s in a better place.’ A better place? Better than here with me and Wei? ‘I don’t know how you can stand it, if it was my child I’d kill myself,’ as if they love theirs more than I love mine? As if I still didn’t have two little girls at home to take care of?”
“Oh,” said Amy. “Oh, honey, people are idiots. Don’t listen to people.”
But Marilyn was on a tear. She continued to mimic: “‘Didn’t you or Wei notice he was depressed?’ For God’s sakes, if I thought he was depressed, I would have taken him to a psychiatrist! I’m a doctor. I’m a doctor,” said Marilyn, sobbing.
“He didn’t look depressed, sweetie. I didn’t see it. Wei didn’t see it. Jack didn’t see it. None of us saw it. The people who ask you, they’re just scared. They want to have something to look out for, but there was nothing to look out for with Kevin. There was no, I don’t know what you call it, smoking gun? You’re the doctor. Symptoms?”
“You didn’t see it, either?” said Marilyn, with hopeless hope. And then, when Amy nodded, “I’m sorry, you just said that. You say it all the time . . .”
“You can ask me a thousand times. You can ask me for however long it takes. The rest of our lives,” Amy said. “I will always tell you, Kevin seemed fine. He seemed better than fine, he seemed great. He was a great kid and he was doing great.”
“Then why did he do this?” sobbed Marilyn.
“I don’t know,” said Amy.
“Last week, he wanted to talk to me about something, I don’t even know what, and I said, ‘Later, Kev, I have to do the laundry,’” said Marilyn. She was really crying now. “Why did I do the laundry? Who gives a shit about dirty clothes? I shouldn’t have done the laundry. I’d have my boy right here, right now.”
Amy said, “You did the laundry because it was dirty.” This time letting her just cry. Since Kevin died, sometimes she hugged, or patted, or tried to jolly Marilyn out of it, other times she didn’t. Amy wasn’t exactly quite sure why she responded one way or another at any given moment. Instinct? Maybe she gave Marilyn what she needed at the time? Or had she, Amy, entered a horrible new state? Was she becoming accustomed to her friend’s emotional tidal waves?
“The laundry didn’t kill him,” Amy said. “We don’t know why he did what he did. Maybe Wei’s right. Maybe it was the imp of the perverse, or some freak panic, or I don’t know, an ecstatic moment . . . But one thing I do know, he knew he was loved. That boy was bathed in love. Every single day. I’m a witness, I saw it. That I can tell you till the cows come home.”
Marilyn nodded weakly. Then she said: “I never heard you talk about cows before.” They both smiled a little as Marilyn brushed the tears from her cheeks with her fingertips. The waterfall slowing. The tears coming and going all day in surges.
“I never did,” said Amy. “I never said one word about cows before in my life. It’s my first time.” She handed her drink over to Marilyn. “Hold this for a second?”
Marilyn nodded yes.
Amy reached into her purse and brought out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Want your own?”
“No,” said Marilyn, softly. “Let’s share like always.”
“It’s a girl trick,” Amy had said when they first started smoking together this way, on the sly, in the parking lot behind the boys’ Little Fishes day camp. “Like eating tiny slivers of chocolate cake, rather than taking a whole piece,” said Marilyn, nodding in agreement. “Or scarfing all your boyfriend’s fries. You can’t get fat, because you didn’t order them,” said Amy.
They’d bonded that day. They both were mothers of boy swimmers, and weirdly they both had much younger identical twins—although Suz and Josie were more classically alike than Miles and Theo, who looked the same but acted fraternal. What were the odds? Amy and Marilyn instantly understood the other’s difficulties. And then neither one of them cared for the group of swim mothers who always went for fro-yo together during practice, and ran the bake sales, and fought over what to do with the money that they could have just as easily donated—the ladies were loaded and the kids didn’t need the sugar. Even by then, Marilyn and Amy were already sick to death of the constant schlepping to the pool that would prove to be the common thread of the next eleven years of their lives—one volunteering to drive the boys to one meet, and then the other to another, until they finally realized they preferred going together, so they could at least talk to each other in the front seat and slip out for a glass of wine or a cigarette while the boys did their thing in the cold water.
Amy lit the cigarette now and took a drag. She handed it to Marilyn, who took one, too.
For a while, they mostly walked without speaking. Then at some point, Marilyn slipped her hand into the crook of Amy’s elbow.
“If people are not knifing me in the gut every five minutes with their platitudes and their stupid questions, they’re giving me that horrible face.” Marilyn made a face of mock sympathy. “It’s both pity and aversion,” said Marilyn, “with a soupçon of ‘I’m so glad it’s happening to you, not me,’ right around that patronizing fake smile. And except for the idiots and the narcissists, and the sadists like my mother, everyone else is being too nice to me. I can’t stand it. Even Jody Bledsoe.” Marilyn took another drag on the cigarette. “And she’s a cunt of the first order.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll get bitchy again,” said Amy. “I bet you Jody’s being a bitch right now somewhere.” Then she reached out for the cigarette. “Hey, quit hogging that thing.”
Marilyn smiled and passed it to Amy.
“You are like another sister,” said Marilyn. She rested her beautiful head on Amy’s shoulder. It felt so good there, it was all Amy could do not to kiss her soft black hair. Instead she took another drag and blew the smoke away in the other direction.
Marilyn’s gratitude was a gift. What would the day be like if Amy could not have serviced her friends this way? Could she have borne it? They graced her with their needs. Like Wei’s brother, Sam, Amy had craved a job to do to mitigate her own fears and pain.
“How long has Sam been divorced?” asked Amy. She took a drag from the cigarette.
Marilyn looked over at her. “Why? Are you interested?” She took the cigarette out of Amy’s hand and inhaled, too.
Was she? He was certainly handsome enough. Her own husband was sleeping with another woman—the one thing she couldn’t abide—and when she’d asked him if he loved this person, he’d replied by text message: I can’t say that I don’t. She’d discussed some of this the past few days with Marilyn, in between bouts of crying and planning the funeral, taking calls and fending them off, and making the Choi girls breakfast and lunch, telling the various sitters what park to take them to, giving them money to go to the movies.
“I’m determined to stay neutral,” Marilyn said, �
��but on the Fourth of July Sam told Wei he thought you were cute. Plus, Dan’s an asshole, in a textbook midlife crisis-y way. Teexxxxtbook.” She drew out the word. “But I’m neutral,” Marilyn said. She passed the cigarette back to Amy.
Marilyn’s mother was waiting on the front steps when Amy and Marilyn turned the corner. She was a diminutive woman, even in grief, where Marilyn was lithe and elegant, her mother was short and dowdy. However, standing on the steps that way, too tiny for the world, but mighty enough to come out to search for her shattered child, Marilyn’s mom suddenly looked a whole lot more like Marilyn; or Marilyn had somehow shrunk and, now more wraithlike, looked a lot more like her mom.
Marilyn nodded at the cigarette and said: “It’s officially yours. She doesn’t know that I smoke.” She rolled her eyes.
When she spotted them, Marilyn’s mother commenced waving frantically; she must have been worried.
“She looks worried,” said Amy. “Maybe she realized she said the wrong thing.”
“She always has,” said Marilyn. “She’s always been mean. Why change now when I need her?” She paused and downed the rest of her drink. “I think it’s time for me to go back inside.”
“Okay,” Amy said, and handed Marilyn her own highball glass, which she had somehow emptied, although she had no recollection of drinking that much in that short a time. “Will you be okay?”
Marilyn started to nod, and then she started crying again, the crying came and went so quietly, by this point in the day it came in sighs. “No,” she said, “I’ll never be okay. But thank you, Amy. And thank Jack for me. For us.”
Amy kissed her friend’s wet cheek and stepped back, giving Marilyn’s mother a little wave.
“You know what kills me,” Marilyn said as she began to walk away. “I don’t think he ever had sex.” She climbed the steps, and her mother opened the door, and they both retreated into the house.
Amy was alone outside.
There was no reason for her to go back into the kitchen or the yard. No reason to dive back into the murk and fury of another family’s anguish. So, what now? What should she do?
Come With Me Page 26