by Jenny Mollen
Looking up from my phone, I noticed six Moroccan men huddled together on motorbikes, pointing at me and nodding. One held a Koran in his hand, the other a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
Unsettled, I locked my door and tried to think positive thoughts.
Teets riding a bicycle.
Teets riding a polar bear.
Teets riding a baby polar bear.
The cab had started moving slowly again, when suddenly the six men surrounded us. I screamed at the driver to take off, but there was nowhere to go. A hand had reached through the driver’s window and unlocked the passenger-side door. Thinking fast, I did as Liam Neeson instructed and started screaming descriptions of each man at the top of my lungs.
“BEARD. FIVE FOOT TEN. PIERCED EAR. WHITE JEANS. TATTOO ON LEFT SHOULDER.”
A pillowcase was thrown over my head before I could finish, as the men fastened me to the back of a bike. I started babbling to my abductor.
“Are you sex traffickers? You’re probably looking for my mom; she’s in San Diego. Are you guys ISIS? Am I being taken to an abandoned bomb shelter to make a video? Because you should know that anytime I’m uncomfortable I immediately start laughing uncontrollably. Like even when I see other people in pain.”
The men shouted back and forth to one another as we buzzed through a network of crooked streets. From what seemed like above I heard sirens. Then, without warning, gunshots. The bike I was tied to spun out of control as a rocket-propelled grenade struck the vehicle in front of us. For a moment everything was dark. Then I came to, tearing the pillowcase off my head. My attacker was unconscious and bleeding next to his bike. I pulled myself out from under him and took off running down a dark alley. Before I could reach the end, a black SUV cut me off, stopping me in my tracks.
Doors opened on all sides and men in official uniforms seized me. I was too weak to ask questions. We drove in silence toward the desert, finally arriving at a large Moorish palace. The men in uniforms lifted me out of the car and escorted me through an archway into an opulent sitting room filled with vibrant silk pillows and rugs. I took a few deep breaths, shutting out the trauma of the last hour. I heard the creak of a door and turned to see the silhouette of a man veiled in shadows.
“Hello, Jenny. Would you care for some lavender-scented almond milk?”
A second man entered the room and set down a small tray before disappearing again into darkness.
“Who are you? Where am I?” I said.
The man stepped closer, his face now illuminated by sunlight.
“I’m the king of Morocco, Jenny. You still looking for a rug?”
6
MANHATTAN MARLBORO
MYSTERY
It was May and Jason’s play was nearing the end of its run. In less than four weeks we were supposed to be heading back to Los Angeles to set up shop for good. My nanny, Naomi, was eager to reunite with her family. Jason was anxious to play with his outdoor pizza oven. Sid was still too young to know where he was or how he got there. However, what all three of these important players had yet to realize was that I had no intention of ever going home.
I couldn’t! Going home meant living in my haunted house. And though I’d promised Jason I’d try to find peace with the property, I’d realized after my trip to the Atlas Mountains that my home was the scariest place on the planet. I’d confronted my fears like they were playground bullies and lost not only my pride but also a year’s worth of lunch money (on Etsy). As hard as I tried, I couldn’t sweep my feelings under the rug, Moroccan or not.
I broke the news to Jason at sunset. The salty air clung to my skin as we wandered aimlessly down the Hudson River Greenway, waiting for our dogs to pee.
“I love it here,” I started.
“Right? New York is the best!” Jason had been trying to sell me on New York from the day I met him. Raised just across the river in New Jersey, he was fiercely loyal to the city that blessed him with acting success at an early age and had gotten him away from his mother. To Jason, New York represented freedom, opportunity, and independence. We had all of those things in Los Angeles, but there was something about New York that brought Jason to life. I enjoyed the city, too, and romanticized it the way anyone who’s ever seen a Woody Allen movie does. I never pictured myself growing old there (old people in New York look like they’re made out of beef jerky), but I did enjoy picturing myself dressed like Annie Hall, walking the West Village, debating the absurdity and necessity of love.
“I think we should move here.”
Jason looked at me, trying to figure out if I was serious. “You wouldn’t.”
“I’ve changed my mind. You’ve really sold me on the place,” I said, knowing the first rule of persuading your husband to do something is making that thing seem like it’s his idea.
“And you would be okay with seasons and not having the same amount of space? No yard, no pool, no pizza oven?”
“Well, lately I’ve started to question if houses and bread are really my thing. I think maybe I was just born to live the gluten-free condo life. One entrance, one exit, limited closet space, no scary driveways…”
“If this is just about the L.A. house—”
I stopped Jason before he could finish. It obviously was about the L.A. house, but I couldn’t let him know that.
“NO! I’m sick of L.A. and I’m sick of your pizza—” I caught myself, but it was too late. “I mean…I love your pizza! You should totally open a restaurant chain. American Pies! We could make millions!”
Jason looked at me, incredulous.
“It’s L.A. There’s no depth there. I don’t want Sid to turn into one of those privileged private-school assholes who wear James Perse, drink pressed juice, and buy their girlfriends micro-pavé jewelry from XIV Karats. I want him to walk places and wear Carter’s and interact with Caribbean people.”
Jason dropped the pizza debate and agreed that L.A. kids sucked. He also agreed that living in New York would undoubtedly offer more global exposure.
“You know I love it here. You don’t have to sell me. But if we’re really going to do this, I want you to be sure.”
“I am,” I said, praying I wasn’t lying.
The truth was, I didn’t know if Manhattan was the right answer. I just knew it was the answer for right now. I figured after my haunted house sold, I could always have a change of heart about the East Coast, hate the winter, become claustrophobic, miss my cryotherapist. But until then, I was determined to fall in love with the Big Apple.
Jason was overjoyed. The only person left to convince was my nanny, Naomi. Naomi was fifty-eight, with no children of her own. She had nieces in Los Angeles, but she also had an older sister in Brooklyn. I was never clear whom she liked better, but it felt good to know she had some kind of support system on both coasts. The bigger issue with New York was that it meant Naomi would be living in. Naomi never liked being a live-in nanny. She liked having her own apartment, her own car, and her own Bed Bath & Beyond coupons. I knew Naomi was fond of me, but I also knew how much her independence meant to her and how hard she’d worked to get it. This was a woman who got into the United States by riding across the Rio Grande on someone’s back with only two dollars and a switchblade.
Before being granted political asylum in the United States, Naomi was a nurse and human rights activist in the mountains of Guatemala. She’d borne witness as her country’s corrupt government took the lives of her brothers, lovers, and friends. After being torn off the street, kidnapped, and held at gunpoint, the militia threatened to kill the remaining members of her family if she didn’t stop working for the opposition. She refused, and her family threw her on a bus bound for Mexico, hoping to save both her life and theirs. Naomi was a survivor. She was a fighter. New York didn’t scare her. Ghosts didn’t scare her. Not even sleeping six feet away from me scared her. (And I can get handsy.)
Jason and I proposed the plan to Naomi, and to our surprise, she was receptive. She’d grown to enjoy living together as a f
amily and agreed that New York did present more opportunities for Sid.
Once the decision was made and the L.A. house was listed, a giant weight was lifted off my soul. I felt free again, or at least as free as I could feel with a baby. I’d narrowly escaped my ghost house, but I’d also narrowly escaped real adulthood. In New York I got to keep that piece of myself that Los Angeles tried to take away. Due to simple geography, L.A. forces you to choose between domesticity and freedom. After feeding and washing and rocking a child to sleep, the last thing you want to do is get in your car and drive for thirty minutes to eat a plate of jicama-wrapped guacamole. In Manhattan, I could be a mommy inside my apartment and, when the mood hit me, escape downstairs to a night out on the town complete with interactive theater and compost cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar. New York was like a giant cruise ship, one of the last remaining places where thirty-five was still considered young.
Naomi took two weeks off to pack up her life in L.A. and returned feeling liberated from the burden of car payments and electric bills. We were happy and hopeful and looking forward to the future when out of nowhere a cloud of doubt appeared—in my bedroom.
“I’m literally getting cancer as we speak!” I kvetched, as I crawled on my hands and knees along the floorboards, trying to sniff out where the scent had originated. There was no sign of anything on the floor. But I knew what I smelled: cigarette smoke. Naomi boosted me up with her hands so I could stick my head inside the air vent and detect if it was coming from upstairs. Still nothing. Whenever I called the building maintenance guy to investigate, the smoke would invariably stop. Then, usually right after dinner, it would kick in again. Jason tried to downplay the seriousness of the issue by pretending he couldn’t smell anything.
“Jason! That’s cigarette smoke! How do you not smell it?” I said, stomping neurotically around the room.
Jason stopping flossing his teeth to film me, the same way I filmed Sid whenever he threw an unwarranted tantrum in public.
“Baby, this is an old building. The smell is just part of the charm. It’s probably just in the wood. And I don’t even smell it, anyway.”
“Naomi! There was cigarette smoke trapped in here earlier. You smelled it, right?” Naomi had been a live-in for less than a week and already I was triangulating her in every fight.
Naomi nodded her head yes, then ducked out of view in order to avoid landing on Jason’s Instagram page.
“Have I mentioned yet that you need to get back on Zoloft?”
“I’m telling you, Jason, someone is smoking in this building and I’m going to find out who,” I vowed, straight to camera.
After kissing Naomi good night, I took a shower and got into bed next to Jason, who I didn’t plan on kissing for at least the next five years. I racked my brain, trying to piece together the mystery, but none of the facts added up. To my knowledge nobody in our building smoked. And the fact that the smell ebbed and flowed implied that it wasn’t just a permanent feature of the apartment. Somebody somewhere was lighting up! The later it got, the crazier I felt. Maybe Jason was right. Maybe the smoke wasn’t coming from an outside source. Maybe my Los Angeles ghost had followed me to Manhattan the way Jaws followed Ellen Brody from Amity Island to the Bahamas in Jaws 4: The Revenge (“This time it’s personal”). Maybe the smoke was personal! Maybe it was payback for thinking I could save Sid’s soul by selling my house.
Jason was snoring behind the wall of seventeen pillows he used to protect himself from me while he was unconscious. He claimed he needed the pillows for back support, but I suspect if I’d Sharpied fewer dicks on him in the beginning of our marriage, his back would feel fine. I had stumbled into the bathroom to pee without turning on the lights when I noticed something just outside my window. Across the courtyard in the building adjacent was a woman smoking out her window. Her apartment was one floor beneath mine, and the rings of smoke billowing out of her dragon mouth were rising directly toward me.
“Naomi!” I knocked. I knew she was still awake because I could see the light of her iPad from under the door (where I was lying on my stomach).
Naomi obligatorily cracked opened her door, undoubtedly regretting her decision to move in.
“I found the smoker!” I said, dragging her out of her room and over to the window.
Together we watched as the dragon lady sucked down three cigarettes back to back. Like with Juicy Fruit gum, she kept packing a new stick in the second the previous one had lost its flavor. My stomach turned as I watched each cloud rise from her lips and hit the porous brick surrounding Sid’s nursery window.
“What the fuck! This can’t be legal! Should I shout at her?”
“No. We must wait,” Naomi said, like a trained assassin.
I watched as she took in the scene. But before I could ask another question, she turned and silently walked back to her room.
“So, wait, what do I do?” I trailed after her, trying to get more information, but it was no use. Naomi was done talking. When the time was right, I would be given further instructions, but until then, I had to wait. Naomi disappeared into her bedroom and closed her door, this time locking it.
The next day, Jason’s little sister, Veronica, showed up for the weekend. Veronica still lived in Bergen County and made an effort each week to drive into the city to spend time with Sid. Recently, she’d been spending more time with us than usual, due in large part to a dramatic breakup with a one-legged man. She didn’t know right off the bat that he had only one leg. It was something that was revealed with time. Veronica pursued the relationship anyway, but things went south when the man became convinced Veronica was humping his stump during sex. After accusing Veronica of having acrotomophilia, or an amputee fetish, the one-legged man threw her out of his house. The relationship ended in a dramatic screaming match on the man’s front porch, where he used his fake leg to barricade the front door, prohibiting Veronica from entering.
Hearing her talk, you would never guess that the five-foot-tall Snooki look-alike was in fact a Montessori schoolteacher. Outside of work, she was as refined as Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. She screamed, she cursed, she gave people the bird while driving. But Monday through Friday, she headed up the Parent-Teacher Association and was an authority on the rail industry of Sodor Island.
“You know I stopped smoking my menthols nine months ago!” Veronica said, emotionally stuffing her face with a crumb cake she’d sneaked into the apartment while I wasn’t looking.
Normally I enjoyed watching others ingest empty calories, but there was something different about Veronica’s urgency. It was as if she knew I was seconds away from snatching the cake out of her hands and jamming my fingers down her throat in a desperate attempt to get her life back on track. Part of Veronica liked having me police her and the other part of her hated me for it. Veronica needed a mommy figure in her life, and when I met Jason, I filled those shoes. After all, I liked having a project. Over the course of seven summers together I’d encouraged Veronica to switch jobs, break up with various (two-legged) boyfriends, and, most recently, to stop smoking. But now that I had an actual kid, my patience with Veronica had run thin and I found myself resenting her for not taking better care of herself and for placing any of that responsibility on me.
“I know it isn’t you,” I said, charging across the room toward the window, like a mother bear protecting her den. “It’s whoever lives in that apartment.” I pulled Sid up and bounced him on my hip, hoping to lock eyes with the offender. The smoker across the way was igniting something inside me that I hadn’t felt since Jason’s ex had written me, telling me to stop posting photos of myself in her old beach caftan. Peeking out the window, my blood boiled with outrage, but also my body tingled with excitement. Some kind of confrontation was in the imminent future.
“Does my brother know about this?” Veronica was accustomed to her brother having no idea what we were up to. She was merely asking so she’d have her story straight. In the past we’d omitted all sorts of details and facts
in order to protect Jason from his reality.
Fact. Veronica and I spent every summer obsessing over Jason’s ex.
Detail. I set Jason’s ex up on a date with my former acting coach, then went on the date with them (sadly, not in her beach caftan).
“Not really,” I said. “Naomi and I are gonna walk around the block to see if we can collect more intel.” I pulled a baseball cap over my head and wedged Sid’s swollen baby feet into a pair of sandals before grabbing my keys and leaving.
“What about me?” Veronica asked, wounded that she’d been excluded from the caper.
“You’re too depressed. I need someone who can focus.” I brushed past her out the door.
The sun was just beginning to set as Naomi, Sid, and I slowly made our way around the block. Sid had been walking since his first birthday but still hadn’t mastered the art of bending his legs. Instead, he just sort of willed himself forward with his upper body, leaving his rigid lower half no choice but to follow. He was becoming a person before my eyes. He was sweet and yet sadistic; his favorite pastime was pretending to run me over with a car. He showed signs of being an OCD clean freak, walking behind me, picking up towels and folding them. There were also signs of him being a total raging disaster, pouring oatmeal over his head and spinning the dogs around the room by their heads. He reminded me of all the things I loved about myself coupled with all the things I hated about Jason. But like a hot guy who never texts you when he says he’s going to, even his annoying qualities were adorable. He was perfect. And he was gorgeous. More gorgeous than I ever thought a person could be. I was humbled every time he cast his eyes on me. I didn’t feel good enough for him. I suspected I never would.
When we approached the smoker’s building, Naomi and I spotted an older man with dark, wavy hair haggling with his dry-cleaning deliveryman out front.