I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway

by Tracy McMillan

  The only thing is…if we’re both little girls who miss Daddy, which one of us is going to be the grown-up?

  A COUPLE OF HOURS AFTER I get to work, Paul phones again. This makes me terribly happy. Not just because I really like him, but because it means I don’t have to endure an excruciatingly long period of time not knowing if he’s ever going to call me again. And by “excruciatingly long,” I mean anything over two or three hours. I’m enough of an armchair marriage and family therapist to know that this is a classic sign of an attachment wound, but that doesn’t make the fear that the other person will simply disappear any less real. Kind of like how statistics about the relative danger of automobiles have never kept me from hyperventilating on a plane.

  “Hello, hello!” he crows.

  “Hi!” I’m hoping I sound saucy.

  “How’s work?”

  “Great!” Was that chipper? Casual? Fun?

  “When are you done?”

  Oh my god, I’m so glad you asked.

  Casually: “Ten.”

  “You want to come over?”

  “Sure.”

  “Doo-doo-dooooo!” He says it like the Imperial Margarine hat just popped onto the top of his head. “I can’t wait.”

  “Me neither.”

  “When will you be here?”

  “About ten twenty.” News people can be excruciatingly exact about times. At least I didn’t say 10:23.

  “Perfect.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Oh,” he says. “One last thing.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Bring your toothbrush.”

  Ooooooh.

  BETSY AND I ARE IN THE LIVING ROOM when the Yvonne school honeymoon ends. We’re playing our homemade version of The Price Is Right—we’ve got “prizes” displayed left and right, and I’m pulling double duty as both Bob Barker and the legendary spokesmodel Janice. Betsy is the contestant—bidding on a glass and stainless-steel floor lamp. I know that without a proper look at the lamp Betsy’s bid is going to suck, so I drag it a couple of feet across the hardwood floor to give her a better look. What I don’t know, probably because I just moved into this place a couple of months ago, is that the smoked-glass globe containing the oversize halogen bulb is only cradled in its metal holder, not attached to it. So the moment it hits a snag on the hardwood floor, it bounces right out of its cradle and—

  CRASH!

  It’s in fourteen million pieces, all of them special-ordered from Chicago, on the floor.

  Yvonne—who is most likely smoking a Parliament cigarette (possibly while playing solitaire) at the black slate dining table with the matching Naugahyde chairs—calls out from the kitchen.

  “What was that?!” She’s not saying it out of curiosity either.

  Betsy and I look at each other. We’ve been kids long enough to know we’re in trouble when we break something, so we’re fully expecting we’re fucked; we just don’t know how bad. When Yvonne comes around the corner, we see how bad.

  Really bad.

  There’s this look on her face. Something about it is out of control, but in a way that neither Betsy nor I have ever seen before. (I know this because we still talk about it, and it’s been thirty-five years now.) It’s a little like the notes crazy people send to news anchors, where the letters and words are all off-kilter, and the emotional intensity seems way out of proportion to anything you would send to someone you only know on TV.

  It’s very scary.

  As Yvonne surveys the extent of the damage to the lamp, her face draws dark and heartless in a way that makes you think about wicked stepmothers and wicked witches. And Doberman pinschers.

  She turns to Betsy and says, “You better go home now.” Apparently, whatever happens next is too terrible for a little girl from a nice family like Betsy’s to witness.

  Betsy and I have only been friends for a little while, but she shoots me a sympathetic look. This look will bond me to her for life. Because she is my only witness, the only living soul who knows what I saw that day in Yvonne’s face, who knows what it really looks like and how indescribable it would be to anyone who has never seen it. She knows that Yvonne is much more than what she seems, that her good side is wonderful and that her dark side is lethal—not literally, but deadening in the sense that it robs you of any feeling that the world is a safe place in which to explore and play and create.

  Betsy can corroborate my story.

  She knows how important it is for me to watch my step, my words, my eye movement for anything that might provoke this reaction. She knows what I am dealing with.

  Betsy quickly takes her long dishwater-blond hair, skinny arms, and Jack Purcelled feet and scurries out the front door, back to the much more sane and predictable benign neglect of her own home two doors down.

  I, however, am stuck here.

  After Betsy leaves, Yvonne rages on me for the first time.

  “You little bitch.” That’s her opener. You little bitch. “Clean it up.”

  I am terrified. Because I have lived with a lot of people and have had more than a couple of moms, and no one has ever called me a bitch or looked at me in a way that scared me like this.

  I go into the kitchen to get the broom. I’m crying. “I’m sorry!” I say.

  “Well, that doesn’t matter now, does it?” Yvonne is tracking me ruthlessly as I attempt to operate the broom and the dustpan. I never did much sweeping at the Ericsons’. “You just make sure you get every last piece of it up.”

  Or?

  Or what?

  How does someone make you fear for your life when you know they aren’t actually going to kill you? Is it because the things they do and say to you make you want to die?

  This is a question that never gets answered. Precisely because there is no belt, no fist, no nothing—just words, a glaring look, and an unsettling energy—I have no way to prove what Yvonne is doing to me. Even to myself. It doesn’t sound “that bad.” Oh, so she called you a bitch, and now you’re all upset? And she gave you a dirty look—what parent hasn’t?

  Yvonne’s violence is more like germ warfare; it happens at a cellular level—you get infected, but you’re still able to walk around, and go to school, and have a paper route, and it’s not until years later that you come to realize that you’ve still got whatever it is she gave you the day you broke the glass lamp. And it might even be killing you, in a way. It’s definitely making you want to drink.

  The genius of it is that the germ—the poison—is traceless. It leaves no marks. There are few signs. Which means if you lived next door to us, you wouldn’t think to come and save me. Though a little voice would tell you not to befriend us, either.

  After I sweep every single shard of glass into the dustpan and, through my paroxysms of tears, manage to get them into a garbage bag and out to the big trash cans in the driveway (all while being supervised by Goebbels), I am dismissed.

  “Go to your room,” Yvonne commands. I am happy to escape and to cry alone.

  I STOPPED AT THE STORE and bought a toothbrush, which is now tucked into the outside pocket of my purse. I don’t know what I am thinking. I’m certainly not ready to have sex with Paul. He hasn’t even said anything about an actual relationship yet! I guess I just figure I can sleep over without having to confront the sex question. And if that doesn’t work, I can leave before things get too hot and heavy. Practice setting boundaries, you know? I’m in therapy. I know how to do that.

  Right.

  But then I sit down on Paul’s bed. Two minutes in that huge four-poster and all that is left of my “boundaries” is a pair of itty-bitty thong underwear. That’s not much to have between you and a throbbing member worthy of a Magnum-size condom. Better come up with a quick Plan C.

  “I have to say something,” I venture, coming up for air.

  “What?” he says. He’s devouring me with the intensity of a grizzly bear in April.

  “Just, um—” I put a hand to his chest to call a time out. “See, th
e thing is…” I hem. I haw. “The thing is…”

  “What’s the thing?” he asks, nibbling my pinky finger. He licks the tip, then slides the whole thing in his mouth.

  Ohhhhhh myyyy gawddddd. “The thing is…”

  I’m trying to tell him that I need to be in a relationship with him if I’m going to be having sex with him (after all, I am the marrying kind—for me to just sleep with a guy feels like going on one of those loop-de-loop roller coasters without bothering to wear the seat belt), but it’s exceedingly difficult to form any kind of rational statement when you’re starring in a foreplay scene worthy of Nine ½ Weeks.

  “Go ahead…you can say anything,” he coos in between nibbles. He’s not toying with me exactly. It’s more that he doesn’t seem to know I’m trying to say something really important. Or maybe he thinks I’m trying to tell him something awful, like I have herpes—which I don’t—and subconsciously, he doesn’t want to hear it.

  “Uh…Um…Ahhhh…” It’s a struggle to locate some actual words. All my brain cells have taken up residence between my legs, leaving only the amygdala, or whatever part of the brain moans and groans, in charge. Finally, after a lot of effort, I manage something that comes pretty close to a coherent sentence. “Um. I don’t know if I should ‘go there’ with you.”

  Once the words leave my mouth, you can feel it. He knows exactly what I’m talking about. After all, he’s in his late thirties; he’s not stupid. He stops nibbling.

  I keep talking. Slowly.

  “I mean, if I ‘go there’ with you, I’ll get attached to you,” I say quietly.

  “Attached” is code for I’ll want a relationship, motherfucker, without scaring the shit out of a guy. I have learned over the years to be unflinchingly honest with myself: there is no way in hell I am going to “just be friends” (with or without benefits) with a guy that I am this wet for. I need to get very very very real with myself, even if the only words I can muster are awkward and euphemistic. If not, I run the risk of having my heart broken, or at least trampled on, and it will have been something I, and only I, could have prevented.

  I’m almost forty, and I finally get it: few guys will lie outright about not wanting to be my boyfriend, but tons of them will totally allow me to delude myself. It may not be entirely ethical for a guy to do this, but then, me being willing to delude myself isn’t entirely honest, either.

  On the other hand, I have found that a boundary, any boundary, even one as flimsy as a triangle of periwinkle-colored mesh on a Cosabella thong, will deter most men from sport-fucking me—but only if I am willing to say (in some way that is not super overly scarily direct) that I am the kind of girl who functions best in long-term relationships. Which is another, better way of saying that any sex we’re having is only casual for one of us. If it appears to be casual for me, it’s because I’m faking it.

  “Okay, you,” Paul says in that same sweetly affectionate tone of voice he used the other night. “I understand perfectly. With perfect”—he sweeps his top lip, just his top lip, against mine—“perfection.” We drift off to sleep, and that’s it for that discussion, maybe because it is four in the morning, but also because I think he gets it.

  In the morning, we make out for a while, then go to the coffee place across the street. We order double Americanos and perform the choreography of fixing them up—I cream, you sugar; I sugar, you cream—in perfect sync. We’re so comfortable, I think to myself, no one watching would know we only just spent our first night together. I want to be mistaken for his girlfriend.

  It’s almost time for me to go to work, so Paul walks me to my car. “Have a sweet, sweet day,” he says as I unlock the door. Before I can get in, he tattoos me with another one of those soulful kisses, the ones that make me feel where he came from…and where he’s going…and where I came from…and where he’s taking me.

  I climb into my car, besotted.

  And as the keys in the ignition do their ding, ding, ding, I watch him walk away, still in his furry slippers, and I think to myself:

  Jesus Christ, I’m in love.

  Six

  I Love You, but I’ve Got Work to Do

  THAT YEAR I HIT THE CHRISTMAS bonanza. After all, it wasn’t just any Christmas. It was our first Christmas as a “family” and my dad was eager to be the best Mike Brady he could be to his daughter, Cindy, and his new wife, played by Sharon Stone in Casino. After four years in the joint (not to mention ripping me from the Ericsons’ home), he had a lot of making up to do. A lot a lot.

  Pretty much all I knew of Christmas—if you don’t count the one I spent with Linda when we were robbed and all of our presents were stolen—came from the Ericsons, where the holiday was actually a spiritual affair. Okay, sure, I got an Easy-Bake Oven one year and a Barbie camper another, but the real party was down at Hope Lutheran, where the two blond children playing Joseph and Mary in the Nativity play were politely ignoring the fact that someone had made a terrible mistake and cast a biracial Baby Jesus. Me. On Christmas Eve we went to church, and on Christmas Day we went to church, and then Mrs. Ericson made a turkey with all the trimmings and somewhere in there we opened a couple of gifts, one of which was definitely going to be new pajamas. The big takeaway of the whole day: Christ is born! The King has come! Rejoice!

  Not so in the McMillan household. In the McMillan household it’s pretty much Fuck the King! We’re about to get PAID!

  Christmas is about presents.

  “Are these all mine?” I say, eyeing the booty under the tree. It’s like that old segment on the children’s show Wonderama, where greedy kids go around grabbing gifts until either time runs out or they can’t hold any more.

  “All for my little gyurl,” Daddy says proudly. I can see why he’s happy. We haven’t had a Christmas together since I wore diapers.

  It’s ridiculous with gifts under that tree. There are big ones. Little ones. Ones in between. More than you could ever use or want. If the Ericsons were the personification of what a New Age person would call Christ consciousness, my dad was pretty much the definition of anti–Christ consciousness. No, not like the devil. Like, materialist. Like, temporal. Like, Donald Trump. To my dad, god can be touched, tasted, worn, driven, and best of all, had sex with. Combine this with the need to atone for all those years of being gone, and you’ve got a pile of gifts bigger than Mount Sinai.

  And it was a pile of surprising novelty and range, unless you consider that they were given by a man who painted a thousand square feet of hardwood floor in a blue, yellow, and orange psychedelic pattern for a party. Here is just a partial list: a rock polisher, a crystal radio set (never opened), a Baby Alive, a Barbie town house (my dad probably figured the Barbie and the girls could do some pretty lucrative “dating” out of that thing), a white Panasonic tape recorder I would use to conduct interviews with “Diana Ross” (played by me, of course), a pajama-and-robe set, and too many articles of clothing to mention. Thirty-eight in all.

  After what seems like hours of ripping tape and paper, the mountain of presents dwindles to that one, final gift. I lean over to pick it up, but it’s too heavy.

  “Let me get that for you,” my dad says, sliding it toward me. As it scrapes against the yellow swirl on the floor, the box makes one of those awful sliding sounds that usually make my skin crawl, but for once I don’t care.

  I get down on my knees, in prayer to the box. I can’t believe it’s all mine.

  “Can you guess what it is?” Yvonne chimes in. This is one of her good days. When all the gerbils in her mind are working overtime to convince her that life with her recidivist new husband and his emotionally disturbed child is really just a disco version of Leave It to Beaver. I hope the gerbils are getting holiday pay.

  Well, let’s see. “It’s not a bike,” I say, stumped. I shake my head.

  “Go ahead,” Freddie says, eyes sparkling. “Open it.”

  I tear into the paper and open the box. Inside is a gift a nine-year-old girl could never, ever, have
imagined. A perfect, glossy, seven-pound bowling ball. With my name engraved on it.

  Tracy.

  Looking at it, I know one thing with more certainty than I have ever known it before:

  My daddy does love me.

  PAUL NEVER CALLED. First two hours went by. Then four. Then a whole evening. Then a whole day. My anxiety starts like a coffee headache—at first a murmur I hope will subside, or go away completely, but instead it gets more and more insistent until it’s a shout. At this point, it’s a bullhorn.

  I’ve been to enough therapy, read enough books, and been rejected by enough men to know that this is not what it seems to be. Oh, the racing heart is real. The sleeplessness is real. The feeling of abandonment is real. But like a ventriloquist who throws his voice into a creepy little puppet, none of this anxiety is coming from where it seems to be coming from, which is to say, Paul. It’s actually coming from a time long ago and far away where a little girl without a mother is waiting for her dad to come get her—her dad who is probably out screwing some chick, or pimping some ho, or caught up in some other activity. Her dad, who could be anywhere, returning anytime. But even though I know all that, I could swear the puppet’s talking.

  Swear it.

  And here’s what the puppet is saying: There is something wrong with you. You are not pretty enough, not smart enough, not well-bred enough, not skinny enough, not rich enough, and not sexy enough, not sexy enough, and definitely not sexy enough to be chosen. There are people who would love you, yeah, but not anyone you really, really want.

  I call up Siobhan, one of my most therapied, most yoga’d, most kooky, most spiritual girlfriends, and ask her for something, anything, to help me understand what’s happening here. “What in hell is this guy thinking? He called me, like, twenty times in three days, and now—nothing!” I’m seriously confused.

  “Dude, that sucks. But it’s also really rad,” she says in her born-and-raised-in-Berkeley voice.