A Very, Very Bad Thing

by Jeffery Self

  I began to type.

  Me too.

  I immediately deleted this because it was lame and it also made no sense.

  I began again.

  It was the best night I’ve had in a long time.

  I read this aloud to hear what it sounded like.

  “Creepy,” I said to myself, the delete button making its tapping sound with every dismissed letter. Come on, Marley, it’s just a stupid text message. But we all know that it wasn’t just a stupid text message. It was my first text message in our text thread; this text message would dictate the tone of our entire text conversation from now until who knew when.

  I was racking my brain when I heard a door slam from down the hall. Then the stomping of feet. Then the opening of the just slammed door and my mother’s yell.

  “It’s more than that, Greg, and you know it! It’s about trust!”

  Mom’s voice was strained and angry, a tone it rarely took except when discussing gun laws or any form of music written after the mid-1970s.

  “Sharon, if you’d just listen to me for one second without flying off the handle, I could explain,” Dad begged in a tone not unlike a kid begging for a second ice-cream cone on a super-hot day.

  The door slammed again, followed by the sound of my father’s slow, dejected footsteps down the creaky floor of the hall, then out the front door. Then came that weird quiet that follows after two people have had a huge argument and everyone waits for someone else to pierce the uncomfortable stillness.

  It was clear that Dad had broken down and told the truth. He’d confessed the news about the house and the debt. My parents rarely fought, so when it happened, it felt like the day-to-day rhythm of my life was somehow deceiving me. I felt helplessly like I should be helping, like when you know you should do some kind of exercise but you don’t know what kind, so you just sit on the couch and watch TV for three hours (aka my every afternoon).

  I had been so distracted by Christopher that it didn’t really dawn on me until I was sitting there, everything silent except for the distant sound of Mom’s muffled crying, that shit really had hit the fan. And life very well might be just about to change.

  My phone dinged again. Another text from Christopher—this time an emoji smiley face. Despite everything that had occurred in the past few minutes, I smiled, just from thinking about him. I wanted to text back something that would continue the conversation but in a smooth, cool, totally non-desperate way. That, however, would require me to embody at least one of those three things, which was almost as likely as my parents eating at a KFC.

  So I started with an emoji smiley face of my own. I couldn’t believe I was allowing myself to turn into the kind of person who would send an emoji, let alone the one of the winking cat.

  After avoiding it for a couple hours, I decided it was time to come out of my room. I was hoping I could sneak out the front door without having to confront what was going on. Dad hadn’t come back and Mom had stopped crying a while ago, so I figured the coast was clear.

  I opened my door very slowly, because when opened quickly the door would let out the kind of terrible high-pitched creak, more of a squeal really, that could be heard through the whole house and possibly next door. It sounded like a fourteen-year-old girl at the concert of her favorite boy band.

  I quietly walked into the hallway, then turned the corner into the foyer of our house and put my hand on the front doorknob. Just as I turned it, I was startled by my mom’s voice.

  “Marley?”

  I stopped and turned toward the living room, where Mom was standing on her head. Or rather, in “feathered peacock pose,” which I recognized from the three years of “children’s yoga” I’d been forced to attend back when most kids were learning how to ride a bike. By the time I had turned six I’d never played a video game but could recite almost all of the mantras by Bikram Choudhury.

  “Oh, hi. What’re you doing?” I asked, a pretty rhetorical question for someone standing upside down on a yoga mat and burning sage.

  “What does it look like?” she asked. “Aligning my center and nurturing my core.”

  But of course, Mom, I thought but didn’t say aloud. Instead I said, “Have you been out here long?”

  “Only two and a half hours,” she said, still upside down. “I hope you didn’t overhear your father and me quarrel this morning.”

  It was stupid to pretend I hadn’t. She knew just as well as I did how easily sound carried in our house.

  “I did,” I admitted. “Are you okay?”

  She let out a very deep breath, the kind of deep breath you can only let out if you’ve been upside down for two-plus hours and are still, shockingly, conscious.

  “I’ll be honest, Marley.” She sat down in a cross-legged position. “I am angry.”

  I stifled a laugh, because even when professing her anger, my mom seemed calm and zen. Growing up, that had always made getting in trouble even scarier. There’s nothing quite as spooky as accidentally breaking a super-expensive vase, then having your mother look at you, hold her hands together in prayer, bow her head, take a breath, and tell you, “I have never been more furious at a six-year-old in my life and I need to go outside to expunge this deep rage through dance.”

  “He told me that he already told you,” she went on. “But I just want to say that I’m not upset with you for not telling me. I understand why you didn’t.”

  I was off the hook on that front, a huge relief.

  “He said he was trying to figure out how to fix it before he told you. Has he?” I asked. I could barely pass middle school math; I certainly had no clue how banking and real estate and mortgages worked. If I’m honest, I’m impressed that I even knew what a mortgage was at all.

  “I saw the bills. He left them out on his desk and I went in there looking for my moldavite stones to bring into class. Do you know the biggest divine joke in all of this?” she asked, shaking her head at her own disbelief, as if to answer herself. “Moldavite is said to bring intense spiritual transformation.”

  She let out a “ha” and looked at me like she was asking, “Can you believe this?” I merely shook my head, hoping to rattle up a reply in there somewhere. I wasn’t sure what kind of spiritual transformation losing our house would bring, and found it best to merely traverse ahead.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “Now,” she said, standing up slowly, stacking vertebrate by vertebrate like she taught her students to do, “we hope for the best, we try to fix it, and if we don’t, then we don’t.”

  “You mean if you don’t, we lose our house?” I asked, attempting to make my personal panic subside. What did this mean for college? My future? And where would my parents live?

  “Well, perhaps this is all some sort of sign. Like I said, moldavite is said to bring intense spiritual transformation. Perhaps this will be the transformation it brings.”

  “But, Mom—” I started, frustrated by her ambivalence. I wanted to demand she cry, freak out. That’s what you’re supposed to do in situations like this. Figure it out. Don’t just let the universe settle things for you. Don’t stand on your head for two hours, then give up. DO SOMETHING.

  “But what, Marley? What else are we supposed to do?” she asked, looking directly into my eyes. I could see that behind her groovy demeanor was something far more real, or at least far more familiar: fear.

  I swallowed whatever words I had intended to lecture her with next and merely shook my head.

  “Whatever,” I said, staring at my shoes. “I’m going to go for a drive.”

  I WAS STUPID ENOUGH TO think I could scam my way into helping the world, helping Christopher, helping his parents and so many others to see what’s right.

  Harrison comes back into my dressing room, cradling four giant bottles of Fiji Water like someone holding infants who has no idea how to properly hold infants.

  “Margaret Cho is running late. Of course.” He spits out his words like those frogs that spit poison. “So they
’re rearranging some things. The cast of Wicked isn’t going to close the event—they’re pushing them up and you’re closing. I told them it would be suicide to close with a speech. Oh God, no pun intended.”

  He doesn’t laugh, but I can tell that was his impulse. Harrison has made me hate sarcasm almost as much as I once loved it.

  He looks at himself in the dressing room mirror, runs a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair, makes a duck face, then turns to face me.

  “Hey, let’s grab a selfie while we wait!”

  I don’t want to.

  “Let’s do it in the mirror; the lighting is gorgeous,” he goes on, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and flashing a big, excited smile.

  I join him. I hate myself, but I join him.

  SOMETIMES THERE IS NOTHING BETTER for the soul than going on a long drive all by yourself with your favorite playlist and no destination in sight. Ever since I’d turned sixteen and gotten my driver’s license, this had been my favorite form of therapy. I found nothing more comforting than the open road. And comfort was definitely something I needed that afternoon; between the drama with my parents and the happiness of my night with Christopher, both my heart and mind were in the midst of a tug-of-war.

  I pulled over and texted Audrey. And yes, I make an obvious point to mention that I pulled over to text because I make some pretty poor choices in this story, but texting and driving is not one of them.

  WHAT’RE YOU DOING?

  The little symbol indicating someone is typing popped up immediately.

  PUTTING TOGETHER A CHARCUTERIE. Join.

  When I got to Audrey’s house, I found her wearing a silk kimono that would’ve seemed odd on someone else but on her just looked comfortable. She was the type of girl who wouldn’t grow fully into her own until she’d tossed a martini into a man’s face and said, “Take that, you bastard,” before storming out of a penthouse.

  It had just been Audrey and her dad ever since her mom passed away when we were in fifth grade, and while her dad loved her as much as a dad could love their kid, he basically let Audrey do whatever she wanted. This probably came from a combination of being overwhelmed by raising his daughter alone and the fact that Audrey was so bossy that even a decorated Navy SEAL would be terrified to cross her. She’d turned their house into a retired gay couple’s Palm Springs villa full of vintage movie posters and antiques.

  “I have Gruyère and Brie,” she said, holding up two expensive-looking cheeses. “Which one would pair better with the blue?”

  I shrugged. “Why not both?”

  “I love the way you think, kiddo!” She delicately placed the cheeses onto her board of cured meats and olives. It was so nice it was almost restaurant quality.

  We carried the plate of classy deliciousness into the TV room, where some old movie was playing on the screen.

  “What’re we watching?”

  “Torch Song.” Audrey squinted at the screen before finding the reading glasses she had taken to wearing on the end of her nose, glasses that I was 100 percent certain were just for show. “It’s a moderately unknown Joan Crawford movie. I found it online. Besides the scene where she does blackface and ninety percent of the script and acting, it holds up.”

  I took the remote control and lowered the volume of Joan Crawford shouting an aggressively unmemorable song.

  “Okay,” I said, in that tone people use when they’re announcing that they’re on the verge of unleashing a solid five minutes’ worth of talking and they don’t want to be interrupted until they’re finished. “So last night.”

  Audrey cocked her head to the side in confusion, then smiled.

  “Oh, thanks for asking! It was great! Auditions ran long and I missed seeing the movie and I’m not sure if I’ll get the lead in the show but I have a feeling I’ll get one of the supporting roles. However, that is perfectly fine with me because the supporting role is where I can really shine. Steal the show and never give it back!” She rambled on. If I knew one thing about Audrey, it was that it was easier not to interrupt but to instead allow her to finish the story and pretend that something she’d said sparked whatever I was actually waiting to say myself.

  “That’s cool!” I said, as convincingly as one could without formal acting training. “That reminds me—my night with Christopher was pretty great.”

  “Oh, right!” Audrey popped a piece of Gorgonzola into her mouth. “Did you get laid?!”

  I nearly spit out my Diet Mountain Dew. “Audrey!”

  “Oh, please. Don’t pretend to be a prude, darling. I’ve seen your web browser history.”

  “No. I did not get laid, as you so crudely put it. We had a really lovely time at his aunt’s house. Then we went to The Spot.”

  Audrey contorted her face into a look of disgust. “You’re telling me you went to The Spot and you didn’t get laid? What’s the point of going to The Spot, then?” She stuffed a few pieces of cured meat into her mouth, and I was relieved to see she’d be busy chewing for at least another thirty seconds.

  “Because it was a quiet place to hang out,” I said, as haughtily as Joan Crawford had just sounded on the TV when kicking a maid out of her dressing room. “Okay, we did make out.”

  “Aha! There’s the story I’m looking for!” she shouted, flailing her arms around, the sleeve of her kimono slapping me in the face. “How was it? Good breath? Bad breath? Tongue? No tongue? Does he have all his teeth?”

  “Good breath. He has all his teeth. And his tongue is none of your business.”

  “Okay, then, so yes. Tongue.” She rolled her darkly lined eyes. “But wait, isn’t he some kind of religious right-wing basket case?”

  “His family is. He isn’t,” I quickly explained. “It’s incredible. His parents have sent him to all these ‘treatment retreats’ and those horrible pray-the-gay-away camps, but he’s not a rambling lunatic like you’d imagine. He’s actually pretty secure and evolved.”

  “Wow,” Audrey said, shaking her head with a hand to her heart. “I’d do so well in one of those camps. Everyone would be obsessed with me.”

  I decided it was best to ignore that comment, not because it was offensive but mainly because I was selfish and wanted to keep the focus on myself.

  “Okay. Indulge me for a second,” I began, sputtering my words as quickly as I could, humiliated to show my inner colors of desperation and borderline obsession. The way you rush through the story when you have to tell your parents you backed your brand-new Honda Accord into a Dumpster behind Rite Aid a week after getting your driver’s license after the third time of taking the test. Not that I speak from experience or anything. “So. He texted me this morning, I texted him back, and then he texted me again, and I haven’t replied yet. It’s been over two hours. I want to write back but I also have no idea what to say or if it’s too soon or—”

  Audrey held up her hand, her face exhibiting the kind of expression you’d give a person with a clipboard on the street asking you to give them money to protect endangered fire ants.

  “I do NOT like this age-appropriate demeanor you’ve started developing, my friend,” she said with contempt in her eyes. “I don’t like it one bit.”

  I felt not just my face but my entire skull blush.

  “I know. I know. I am turning into the kind of person I hate. Not even hate—loathe. I feel like that time I tried tequila at Matt Robson’s party and woke up the next morning in his parents’ pool house in your skirt with dried Play-Doh stuck to my forehead with zero recollection of how I got there.”

  Audrey grimaced, remembering that chaotic evening.

  “Seriously, Audrey. I don’t know what’s happening. It feels like I got struck by lightning and electricity is buzzing through my veins and I can’t make it stop. It feels like I could break out into song, and you know how much I hate singing. This is going to sound crazy, but I feel like I’m already falling for him.” As I unloaded this monologue, my words sounded even more grotesquely precious out loud than they did
in my head.

  “After one date?” Audrey’s tone was dry and mocking. “Why would that sound crazy?”

  “Hey,” I said, but I had nothing to follow it up with because she had every right to mock me. Hell, inside my own brain, I was mocking me.

  But I also knew, with deep conviction, that Christopher was worth being completely and utterly on the nose for.

  “I’m just kidding with you,” she said. “I think it’s really cool that you’re experiencing this. It’s about time you got out of your own head and let yourself be a stupid teenager. Go for it, darling.”

  She leaned back against the sofa, arms crossed, with a smile. I could tell she was genuinely happy for me.

  “But promise me something,” she added. “Don’t ditch me in the process.”

  “Never!” I told her.

  “Promise?” she asked, lowering her voice to what would have been a normal volume for most people but to Audrey was her version of a hushed whisper.

  “I promise, dummy.”

  She smiled, and when she did so, I could see inside, past the self-constructed facade of the theatrical grande dame somebody to the insecure, gangly teenage nobody she really was.

  Hanging out at Audrey’s all day and talking over both Christopher and what was going on with my parents was just what the doctor ordered, but my mind couldn’t pry itself from obsessing over when and what to text to Christopher next. I was new to text anxiety, which sounds more like the name of a terrible action movie and less like a real problem.

  I racked my brain from the time I left Audrey’s house and pulled into our driveway, my theory being that in the fifteen-minute drive I was sure to come up with something. Unfortunately, this had proven to be incorrect.