Motherland

by Amy Sohn

  “But I thought we were going to—”

  “You want another chance?”

  “Yes.” She felt very clear and focused on the task. She wanted to get an A.

  “All right, then. I’ll let you know when.” He turned and went down the stairs.

  “But—”

  “I have your number.”

  At rehearsal, Teddy screamed at her for being late. She said she’d gotten food poisoning the night before, and he frowned as though disbelieving. Ruthie was rude to her, too, and Jon Hamm looked at her with pity, which was worse than irritation.

  Onstage Teddy spent a lot of time on one of Gwen’s opening bits, in which she talks about her terrible physical health in contrast to her family’s odd ability to live long. It was Melora’s favorite part of the play because the comedy was dark but authentic. “Listen, I’m a real case, no shit. Like a year doesn’t go by without me getting something terminal wrong with me,” she said. She thought about crouching over Ray’s tub, scrubbing the ring until it disappeared. Something had opened up in her. She didn’t need to control Gwen, she could be Gwen, she could let Gwen breathe through her. She had read an interview with Quentin Tarantino in which he said he wrote Reservoir Dogs like a stenographer, just hearing the lines in his head and rushing to get them down on paper. She understood, now. She was a vessel and not an actress. Gwen was coming through her the way Reservoir Dogs had come through Quentin. But in the audience she could see Teddy shaking his head, and she lost her mojo.

  After she said the line “If I didn’t have this history of longevity in my family, I’d’ve been dead before I was ten,” Teddy came bounding up onto the stage.

  “You’re still overplaying it,” he said.

  “I really wasn’t trying to,” she said quietly. “I was trying to let the comedy come from the words.” The others were onstage watching. One of the worst parts of theater was the lack of privacy. Even in her darkest, most desolate moments, shooting Yellow Rosie in Sofia, Adam Epstein had taken her aside to criticize her.

  “It’s not reading that way,” Teddy said. “Do less. Less! How many different ways can I say this?”

  “I don’t know how I can do less than what I’m doing,” she said.

  “Stop acting.”

  She got back into position, knowing before she opened her mouth that Teddy wouldn’t like this version any better. She thought of Lulu in a warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn, juicing the cast of The Vegetable Hamlet, and felt like a carrot being pushed firmly into a Cuisinart.

  Gottlieb

  “It’s so much about coming of age as a man in this country,” Jed Finger was saying on Skype. “And I don’t mean that in a bad-ejaculation-joke sort of way.”

  Gottlieb was too nervous to laugh, but Andy did and then choked on his own spit and coughed violently. They were in Andy’s home office on President Street, staring into his laptop.

  Jed appeared to be sitting on his couch, a cavernous living room behind him. It looked like an intimidating, huge Malibu house. Gottlieb wondered how many pools he had, whether there were topiaries shaped like Jed’s face.

  “We’re really glad you get that,” Gottlieb said. “It’s about the way we never break free of those demons from our childhood. There’s this idea that if you revisit your past, you’ll be cleansed. But we wanted to turn that idea on its head. Make a movie about someone who learns that revisiting his past doesn’t solve anything.”

  Jed Finger nodded slowly and stroked his chin. He had thick, unruly, Eugene Levy–esque Semitic eyebrows and a more sinewy neck than Gottlieb had imagined for Mikey Slotnick. His shoulders seemed broader since that boxing training. “I love the way you turn it all around like that,” Jed said. “Because you think it’s going toward some sort of self-empowering catharsis, and then—bam! And I don’t mean that in an Emeril sort of way. It reminds me of my favorite movie ever, The Heartbreak Kid. Not the remake. He gets what he thinks he wanted, and he’s still miserable.”

  “That’s my favorite movie, too,” Gottlieb said. “My e-mail is Lennycantrow@gmail.com. After the Grodin character.”

  “He’s not lying,” Andy said. “It really is.”

  “You’re funny on those commercials,” Jed said.

  “Thank you very much, sir.”

  “You’ve found a way to capitalize on what a nerd you are. I admire that.”

  Andy, unusual for him, was speechless. Jed got a serious, faraway look and said, “I had a bully in seventh grade in Malden. Name was Lars Nielson. He did junior wrestling, and he used to call me a kike. He would beat me up on my paper route and steal my money at least once a week. Then he moved away. I wonder what happened to him. Probably works at a CVS in Natick, selling ass cream. So, are you guys stoked?” It was unclear whether he was making fun of the word “stoked.”

  “God, are we,” said Andy.

  Jed was lifting his laptop and walking with it. Behind him, Gottlieb could see a pool table, a large flat-screen TV, and drapes with a design of Tom and Jerry. Jed opened a sliding door and was outside, on a deck. Gottlieb saw half a dozen surfboards lined up behind him, the Pacific Ocean in the background.

  “You surf, man?” Gottlieb asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Oh yeah? We’ll go out when you get here. There’s a clean point break right off my front porch.”

  “That would be great,” Gottlieb said, stunned.

  “So, is there anything else you guys wanted to ask me?”

  That was a tough question, mock generous. Andy and Gottlieb looked at each other. Gottlieb wanted to ask why on earth Jed wanted to do a small movie written by a nobody and a minor somebody. He wanted to know if he was easy to work with or difficult and hotheaded.

  “Not really,” Gottlieb said. “Except—I mean, how exactly do you see these meetings going?”

  “Topper’s going to get us an hour for each one. That’s long. Most pitch meetings are only twenty minutes. My producing partner, Ross, will be with us. You guys’ll dig him. He won’t say much. Just do the verbal version of the treatment. And take your time.”

  “You’re not going to talk?” Andy asked.

  “When they ask questions, I’m going to jump in. But I want them to have faith in you two, because you’re the ones who are going to be writing the movie. It can be tough when a star’s in the room, but I’ll try to be unobtrusive. Now let’s go sell this motherfucker.”

  Gottlieb could see something bleak in Jed’s eyes. With Jed as Mikey, Say Uncle could be dark and funny at the same time. Jed could be like Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love. Jed could darken the movie, maybe lead to some awards buzz. It could go further than Gottlieb had imagined when he had the idea to do a bully film.

  Gottlieb could hear the signature Auto-Tune of Jamie Foxx’s “Blame It (On the Alcohol),” and then Jed looked down at something and said, “I gotta take this.” The connection went out.

  “That’s weird,” Gottlieb said.

  “What?”

  “His ring tone is ‘Blame It (On the Alcohol).’ ”

  “You always focus on the negative,” said Andy, and Gottlieb decided he was right.

  Marco

  Harmony Playground was hopping when Marco got there with the boys. It was ten A.M. the first Sunday after Labor Day, and the playground had manic back-to-school energy. Mothers were everywhere, asking about each other’s summer vacations, going on about how big the children looked. The weather was warm and hazy, as it had been the past few Septembers, more like summer than fall. Wearing Jason in the sling, Marco changed Enrique into his trunks and let him run through the sprinklers. Rebecca was meeting him with her kids but hadn’t arrived.

  A few days ago he had bought a few small Poland Spring water bottles, emptied them, and filled them with vodka, hiding them around the apartment, behind books, where he knew Todd would never see them, and in the closet, in duffel bags. He had been taking the bottles to school, nipping at them during the day. After he had a little
, he was fine for a good seven or eight hours. The strangest thing about drinking was the way it seemed as though no time had passed. You erased your years of sobriety, but it was like you had never stopped. And then you thought, Why haven’t I been doing this all along?

  He’d had half of a Poland Spring bottle when he woke up and chewed Tic Tacs to hide the smell. That morning Todd had taken off early for a job in SoHo. Marco was relieved when he left. He went into the bedroom, sipped from one of the bottles, the baby in a sling on his chest.

  He was beginning to feel like he was meant to drink. It was like medicine, like the 250 milligrams of Antabuse. Milliliters, milligrams, what was the difference? He never drank to the point of becoming fully drunk, just enough to be buzzed. Todd had been remote since his return from Greenport, less attentive to the baby than Marco had expected. He acted as though they’d had Jason for months instead of days.

  His first night back, Todd hadn’t wanted to make love; he couldn’t get it up. Though their sex had become infrequent, Todd never had erection problems before. He told Marco he was tired, but Marco suspected something else. Guilt.

  On a whim, Marco had grabbed Todd’s phone while Todd was sleeping, convinced he had cheated in Greenport. He found a few dozen texts, to some guy named Steve. They included “Be there in fifteen,” and “I wanna suck it again.” Todd had deceived him, all these years after Marco’s affair, while Marco had been stuck in Wellfleet with a toddler and an infant, a baby he had never wanted in the first place. Marco was galled by the selfishness, and hurt. Someone cheated only if he was sexually unhappy. Marco didn’t like the idea that he was no longer satisfying. Todd was the one who was overweight. Marco worked hard on his appearance, he ran in the park, he made time to lift weights. He was good with Enrique, he cooked at night, he was loving and let Todd talk on and on about his work problems. What had made Todd stop wanting him? Did Todd no longer see him as attractive?

  When he read the Steve texts again, he was able to discern that they had been together a couple of nights in a row. Then he scrolled through Todd’s apps. No Grindr. But it was obviously how they’d met. It had to be.

  Marco was on one of the few shaded benches in the playground. Two mothers nearby were deep in conversation, one a redheaded woman with bright cheeks, the other a tall, slim woman in pants with slits at the knees. “I am telling you, something is not right,” the rosy-cheeked one was saying. “He hasn’t been this interested in it since we first started dating. It’s like he has unlimited energy. I don’t know what it means.”

  “Is he on any new medications?”

  “Lexapro, but he actually cut his dose down. He’s started doing yoga and says he doesn’t need as much.”

  “You know,” the friend said, “Sonya Carr-Edelstein was just telling me the same thing about Brendon. She says dining at the Y is his new occupation. He wakes her up to do it.”

  “It’s a regular epidemic,” the redhead said.

  Marco was incredulous. Only in the Slope would mothers complain about oral sex. “I think it’s a midlife crisis,” said the redhead. “He’s filled his Netflix queue with bad eighties movies like Short Circuit. Says it’s genius.”

  Marco took out his phone and tapped Grindr for the twentieth time that day. He went to a few of his favorites, Bboy and Frankie and Touchbyangel. Bboy and Frankie were online and he texted them, just dirty talk. He had to be sure to keep the guys straight, you didn’t want any of them to think you were too much of a player, you had to flatter them all enough into wanting to see you again. Bboy was an Israeli sports agent, and Frankie was a competitive barista.

  Marco was about to try to put the phone away when he noticed a profile of a guy a little older than the others, in glasses. Don. He wasn’t hot, but his location was “1/2 mile away,” and Marco wanted something soon. It couldn’t possibly be harder to get laid in Brooklyn than in Well-fleet.

  “So do men make passes at boys who wear glasses?” Marco chatted.

  “Oh yeah.” Don said he was single, thirty-eight, and neg, though in the picture, he looked older.

  “Can you send another pic?” Marco typed. “You look so cute but I can’t see your body.”

  A few minutes later, it came through, a head-to-waist shot. Don was paunchy and pale. Marco had a strange feeling when he saw the picture, and after squinting at it for a bit, he got an image of the guy with an Ergo carrier on his back. It was the gay dad down the block with the three adopted kids. “Do you live on Fifteenth, between Seventh Avenue and Sixth?” Marco typed.

  “Why?”

  “I’m the Latino guy with the Latino son. You have three kids, right?”

  Don was gone. Marco laughed. Everyone on Grindr was lying. It was like a Shakespearean comedy, dissemblers dissembling.

  He glanced up for a second and saw Rebecca and the kids coming through the playground gate. She was waving. He put his phone away.

  “Who are all these new moms?” Rebecca said as she approached. “Where did they come from?”

  “Manhattan,” Marco said.

  He swooped up Abbie and Benny for kisses. Rebecca changed them into their bathing suits and sent Abbie off to the sprinklers to find Enrique. Benny followed, and she watched them both, her brow tightened and alert. She always watched her kids more closely than he did. She said she didn’t want them to get snatched.

  Marco told Rebecca about the brutal drive home and the baby’s unrelenting colic. While he talked, she was twitching. He could tell she had gossip. “What is it?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Stuart kept calling. He beat me down. We’re going to the Montauk Club on Tuesday night.”

  “You’re a member?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I needed more elitism in my life. It only costs five-fifty a year, with a fifty-dollar monthly minimum.”

  “What if somebody sees you two together?”

  “It’s just a drink. And most of the other members are in their sixties. The only movies they see are by Nia Vardalos. I told Theo I was going to dinner with you. He said he was seeing a friend in the city, someone from college. A name I hadn’t heard before. I think something’s going on. Last night I asked him to come on my tits, and he said, ‘I’ll take a rain check.’ ”

  “He’s not cheating. It’s not his style. You married someone loyal.”

  “I’m not sure. There’s this architect in his office. Veronica, like the Veronica from the Archie comic books. All legs and hips and tight sweaters.”

  “I’ve been cheating on Todd,” Marco said.

  “What? How? Are you serious?” He nodded. “Only a gay man could find time to cheat when he has a brand-new baby. So where’d you meet him?”

  “Them.” He told her about Grindr.

  She listened, wide-eyed. “It’s Manhunt meets MapQuest,” she said.

  He told her about Kyle in Wellfleet, and Lukas at home, and his date with the competitive barista. “He’s a barrister?” she said.

  “No, barista. They make designs in coffee and do competitions. You get more points for asymmetrical designs.”

  “Guy like that doesn’t sound like he’d be on Grindr.”

  “It’s all types. Nerds, jocks. Everything.”

  “Show me how this thing works,” she said, putting her hand out. A little embarrassed but excited by the idea of sharing his secret with someone, he showed her the screens and screens of guys. “Everyone has his shirt off!” she said.

  “If you don’t put a frontal shot, nobody texts.”

  “Let me see your picture.” He showed it to her. “Why does it say ‘Carlos’?”

  “It’s good to be Spanish on here. Gay men like Latinos.”

  He gave her a little tutorial and showed her his text history. As he came to a cock shot inside the text bubble, he held his thumb over it so she couldn’t see it. She snatched it from his hand and her eyes widened. “I had no idea,” she said. He blushed. She handed him his phone. “How do you have time
for all this with Jason?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t take long. It’s men.”

  “And Todd has no idea?”

  “I don’t think he wants to. He’s the one who told me about it. I never heard of Grindr before. He’s been cheating on me, too.”

  “What?”

  He told her about the texts from Greenport. “He must have been with the guy before he told me about Grindr,” Marco said. “He felt guilty, and that’s why he told me about the app. He’s getting exactly what he asked for.”

  “Is that why you’re doing this—out of revenge?”

  That was what he had told himself, but it had started before he knew. It was obvious why he was doing it, any gay man would understand, but Rebecca wasn’t a gay man. “Sort of. And horniness,” he said.

  “Are you safe?”

  “Of course.”

  “For everything?”

  “Yeah,” he lied.

  She shook her head gravely. “I just don’t want to see you get sick.”

  “I’m not going to get sick,” he said. She liked to play herself off as a sex-positive Barnard grad, but when it came to gay life, she was pretty stupid. He often wished he had more gay friends so he could talk to someone. There were assorted guys from his single days, and the gay Latino writing community, but since he had become a father, he wasn’t in touch with most of them. Some had stopped going out with him when he got sober, as though no longer interested in his friendship if he couldn’t be a drinking buddy.

  He and Todd liked to joke that they were “freaks,” gay men with no gay friends. It had been stupid to tell Rebecca about Grindr. She wasn’t as liberated as she pretended to be. There was a wall between them now, a wall of judgment, and he didn’t like it. He was on Grindr because he felt alone, and he felt alone because he was on Grindr.

  Enrique ran over. He lifted his shirt, pinching his nipples and crying, “Look at my titties!” A few mothers turned to stare. Then he pulled down his trunks and said, “Look at my chocha! I have a chocha, I have a chocha!” Abbie and Benny ran over, too.