Reckless Years

by Heather Chaplin

  Faith keeps staring at me.

  “I’ve said it a million times,” I say. “I’m very shallow. It’s not my fault no one believes me.”

  “You weren’t in love with him?”

  We sit in silence.

  “What about you?” I say. “Why did you marry Derrick?”

  Faith looks right at me and she narrows her eyes and they are fairly glistening with a kind of shrewd fierceness. “Fear,” she says. “I married Derrick because I was afraid no one else would want me.”

  “Jesus Christ, Faith.”

  “It’s true. I knew I wasn’t in love with him. I hadn’t been for years. But he wanted to get married and I was too afraid to say no.”

  Then she drops her head into her hands, and soon her body is heaving with sobs. “I feel so ashamed,” she cries. “Of what I let my life become.”

  I don’t know what to do except put my arms around her. I don’t have a good response, because when I think about my life with Josh, I’m too ashamed to even move. I think, what did we do to ourselves? And dear God, what did we do to our husbands?

  Went by my mother’s before taking the bus back to New York. She wants to move to Florida. I was like, How are you going to support yourself in Florida? My mother has a photography business in Baltimore, and when I mentioned that her customers might not relocate with her, she made noises like how could I be so boring and pedantic. Then she showed me pictures of mansions on the beach and tried to convince me to buy one with her, telling me what a good financial move it would be. This made me cry. Why would she want me to do something that would be ruinous for me? She’s already digging up her garden and giving away her flowers. She gave me some daylilies. At the first rest stop, I called Seth and told him I was going to throw those lilies away but he was like, “Well, you might as well put them in your garden.”

  Saturday, August 11, 2007

  Los Angeles

  I’m just back from the best date of my life. In fact, it might be the first official “date” I’ve ever been on.

  Daphne is in LA too, having a book party, and while I was there, just hanging around munching on a cucumber sandwich, this cute guy with a mop of dark hair made a beeline for me. A movie director. A minor one, but still.

  He takes me to an Italian restaurant on Sunset Boulevard where we meet up with these guys he’s writing a movie about. One of the guys is an ex-mobster who went into the witness protection program, then jail, and now runs a chain of limo services. There’s a woman there too who used to run strip clubs in Chicago. Her name is Scarlett so I say, “Were you named after Scarlett O’Hara?” And she says, “Honey, Scarlett O’Hara was named after me.”

  The mobster says he knows I’m from New York because of my “confident swagger.” Which makes me think, confident swagger? Who are you talking about?

  The mobster asks us when we are getting married. I say next June. Then they won’t stop toasting us. The minor director bites his bottom lip when he’s pleased. It’s cute.

  The mobster leans into the minor director. “She’s intense. You know that, right?”

  Now, it’s not like no one has ever described me as intense before. But I can’t imagine what I’m doing at this moment that is intense. How does he know this about me? Is it that obvious? I try so hard to be light.

  The waitresses, who all have boobs bigger than my head, keep coming to check on us and bring us bottles of Chianti wine. Then the guys from Cypress Hill come and sit down at the next table and start ordering lobster tails and rolling fat joints.

  When the director drops me off, he insists on walking me to the door. I keep thinking, who are you? Are you the kind of man I should be looking for? If I could be with someone this respectable, this well-mannered, should I grab it?

  The problem is, Summer says, it sounds like it was actually the mobster I liked. And God damn it if she isn’t right.

  Sunday, August 12, 2007

  Summer decides she wants to go on a date so we head out to Huntington Beach in search of surfers. It’s hard not to think of Josh growing up in this horrible place. The first time we went there together, I’d almost wept, thinking of him as a little flower trying to grow up between the inhospitable cracks of a Huntington Beach sidewalk.

  “Hello, Richard Nixon. Hello, Ronald Reagan,” I cry out the passenger window. “Hello, land of rich people with no values!”

  At the beach, Summer plays along the surf’s edge while I sit on a hill of sand. I notice she seems to be frolicking in the direction of a guy in mirror sunglasses and low-slung swimming trunks.

  Then she runs to me.

  “I see what you’re doing down there,” I say.

  “Oh my God, am I some monstrous middle-aged lady with cellulite jiggling everywhere? Am I totally making a fool of myself?”

  “No fucking way,” I say. “You’re gorgeous. You’re like Cameron Diaz out there. I’m not even kidding.”

  “Really? Really?” she says, and then she’s back out on the water’s edge.

  The next thing I know the two of them are rolling around on the sand, like something out of From Here to Eternity. Personally, I don’t think I could enjoy making out while getting sand all over me, but I’m impressed nonetheless. Then they’re up again and walking toward me. Summer’s cheeks are rosy and her hair is sticking up in the back of her head.

  “George, this is my friend Heather,” she says.

  George still has his shades on. He’s slouching gorgeously. “Heath, man, what’s up?” he says.

  Then they’re off hububbing together, and finally George saunters off in the opposite direction and Summer sits down next to me.

  “Hey, I can go sit in a café,” I say.

  “No,” Summer says. “I only needed a few kisses. I’ve had just the right amount of George.”

  Then we’re pounding our fists into the sand and weeping with laughter.

  Later

  Back in her apartment, Summer is having a semipornographic text exchange with George. Then she sighs and tosses away her phone.

  “I don’t understand,” she says. “How do you do it, Heath? You are the living embodiment of the four-man plan.”

  One of Summer’s self-help books advocates dating four men at once.

  I’m quite pleased. I don’t think anyone has ever asked my advice on dating before. “It’s beyond obvious,” I say. “Why would you ever trust only one man?”

  “But don’t you get attached?” Summer asks.

  “No,” I say. “Why would I get attached? I’m just looking for a certain amount of male attention—if it’s scattered across the field, I have a better chance of getting my daily allotment.”

  “Do you care about any of them, at all?”

  “I care about all of them,” I say. “Each guy gives something different. It’s naive to think one man could be everything.”

  “Wow, you are advanced,” Summer says.

  “No,” I say. “Just realistic. If you don’t have kids there’s no reason to have only one partner.”

  “What about with the Irishman?”

  “What Irishman?” I say.

  Later

  The minor movie director emailed me to thank me for going out with him. Who is this guy? Should I go for it? Yes, I think I will. I will not be the kind of girl who likes the mobster. I will give the minor director a chance.

  Monday, August 13, 2007

  Last night I did not dream about the red wall. Last night I dreamed—of Kieran.

  Did I not just yesterday decide to give the minor director a chance? Why is Kieran back to haunt me? Why does just writing his name cause my heart to turn over? I just stopped calculating the time difference between Dublin and New York.

  I can kiss all the boys in the world, and none of them will kiss me like Kieran kissed me. When I wake up, it’s with a sob.

  Later

  Party on Thirteenth Street. Lots of disco music and men putting makeup on each other. Not really my scene.

  Pop into B
arnes & Noble at Union Square on the way home. This guy comes up to me and tells me how beautiful I am. This has never happened to me before. People used to stop me on the street and say things like “Why don’t you try smiling?” or “Hey, life can’t be that bad.” This is much better. He’s with a woman friend who’s perusing a Noam Chomsky book so I figure, how dangerous can he be? I give him my phone number. Summer says I’m no longer on a roll. She says I’m on a streak. I say, “Oh, I see.” But inside, I think, this isn’t a streak, this is me.

  Tuesday, August 14, 2007

  The hacker is back. He was gone for a while. Turns out he’d decided to be silent for a week. He was meditating. And finishing a commission from Maker Faire to build a TV controller out of an Altoids box.

  We sit outside on his steps and drink fine red wine that his friend, who runs a wine shop, brings us. “I tried meditating once,” I tell the hacker. “But I accidentally got so relaxed I pissed myself.”

  “Chaplin—”

  “I’m not kidding,” I say.

  And I’m not. I’d been in Costa Rica with Josh and, just to see what it was like, I’d signed up for a meditation lesson. Cut to a week later, and I’d had pee running down my leg on a public bus.

  The hacker has his head between his knees, he’s laughing so hard.

  “It’s not funny,” I say. “It was very embarrassing. It was like I’d been holding myself so tightly for so long that the second I let go, I lost control of my bladder.”

  What I don’t tell him is how during the second week of meditation, I’d been sitting there, visualizing each one of my organs, as instructed, and settling into a state of relaxation like I’d never felt in my whole life. And then, suddenly, it was as if all the little hairs on the back of my neck had stood up. It was fear as I imagine animals experience fear. Fear beyond intellectual reasoning, beyond the reach of language. It was no longer just the two of us in the room. There was another presence there, a breathing in my ear. I was huge and tiny at the same time. The breathing was next to me and inside of me. It filled up to be the whole room. I filled up to be the whole room. I disappeared into being not even a speck on a dust mite. Boundaries disappeared. It was the oldest feeling I’d ever had or could ever remember having, ancient and in my bones, as much a part of me as the marrow in my bones and as terrifying as if someone were dishing that marrow out to me in a spoon.

  “Chaplin, are you okay?” The hacker is peering at me.

  “I’m fine.”

  “It’s funny,” he says. “I get the feeling that you’re always pushing—trying to get somewhere. Like you think something is going to sneak up behind you.”

  I gulp the rest of my wine. “I’ve got to go home and walk my dog,” I say.

  Then I hop on my bike and pedal away home as fast as I can.

  Wednesday, August 15, 2007

  I’m making out with the stringer at an afternoon pool party in Jersey City when my cell phone rings. I don’t bother to answer it, because, you know, I’m making out.

  On the way to the PATH train to meet my date for the evening, I check my messages.

  “Hullo, beautiful girl. Hullo, sweetheart. I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. How are you, girl? How are you? Let’s talk soon, chick. Very soon, sweetheart, okay, very soon . . .”

  Please don’t do this to me, goes through my mind. Leave me alone, leave me alone. And then, he loves me! He does!

  I run through the streets of Manhattan as if running were an entirely effortless act. On my date, I’m fairly buzzing with excitement, but none of it is for the man in front of me.

  Sunday, August 19, 2007

  Summer sighs. “I get it,” she says. “He’s your vegan chef.”

  “No, this is different,” I say. “It’s like he knows. How could it be that I have a dream about him, and then two days later he calls?”

  “Yeah, that’s how it was with the vegan chef,” she says. “Men have spidey-sense. That’s just the way it works.”

  “Do I call him back?”

  “I wouldn’t,” she says. And then, “Well, that’s not true. I would. But my advice is you shouldn’t. Make him suffer. He’ll only want you more.”

  Eleanor says the exact same thing about the spidey-sense. She says men know the minute you’re slipping away and that’s the very minute they step in to reel you back. Is this something all women know, except me, because I was the dumb one who hooked up at age twenty?

  “I can’t stop thinking about him,” I wail.

  “I know,” Eleanor says. “The brightest sparks are the most dangerous.”

  Monday, August 20, 2007

  The minor director disappeared.

  I do not understand men.

  Tuesday, August 21, 2007

  I slept with the hacker last night. What a disgusting business sex is. Two grown people sweating and grunting and pushing themselves up against each other. It started hurting midway through but I didn’t want to make him feel bad so I didn’t say anything. He’s such a lovely guy. After he fell asleep, I talked to myself between my legs. I said, it’s okay. There, there. And I squeezed my eyes shut and scrunched up my face against the feeling of violation and loneliness that settled in around me.

  I had to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to the Omni in Midtown, where I interviewed Colm McCullough. Colm starred in that movie about the Irish real estate developer in Dublin who falls in love with a Ukrainian governess, which my neighbor took me to see the night before last. I nearly wept through the whole thing. I kept thinking—that’s St Stephen’s Green, where I had lunch with you-know-who. That’s Grafton Street, where I went shopping with Seth. That’s the Northside, where I wandered around and felt so happy. There’s the market where you-know-who helped the city start a farmer’s market.

  Why is it that happiness remembered feels like despair?

  Afterward, I spent the whole day on the phone tracking McCullough down. In real life he’s a rock star. (Well, an Irish rock star. I’d never heard of him.) And then it turned out he was in New York doing a show and I bullied his PR person into getting me an interview.

  We talk for three hours. Every time he says my name, with the th turned into a d, and the long rolling r at the end, my heart contracts and then goes to jelly. When I’m leaving, Colm scribbles his number in my notebook and says to call him anytime. He says, “I feel like I’ll be seeing you again soon.” Maybe I just like Irishmen?

  Later

  It’s 3:30 a.m. I just got home. I met the Ukrainian governess from the movie. She’s only twenty-two and Colm McCullough’s girlfriend in real life. They fell in love while making the movie. I wanted to punch her in the face. She’s so tiny and pretty. Why does she get to live a fairy tale? Colm told me to come visit backstage after his show, but Miss Fairytale put the ixnay on it saying she didn’t want any press around. So I headed out with the rest of the band to this bar the Scratcher on Fifth Street and drank Guinness with them and basked in the sounds of all those lilting voices and thought, why, why, why. I was so happy in Dublin.

  It’s strange, isn’t it, how Josh never even crosses my mind? How can it be I was with him for thirteen years and then one day he’s just gone and I don’t even seem to care?

  I will not call Kieran back. I will not call Kieran back. I will not call Kieran back.

  Friday, August 24, 2007

  Should I go upstate? Am I a terrible person for being here having the summer of my life while they’re all upstate recovering from the worst thing that can happen?

  Sunday, August 26, 2007

  Friend’s baby shower. Lots of exposed brick and high-end Viking kitchen equipment. I am the only single person here. I am surrounded by moms in skinny jeans and oversized tops, all with dainty chains around their necks with little gold circles engraved with the initials of their children. They must hand these out at maternity wards. All the women have rocks on their fingers—not Upper East Side rocks, as no self-respecting Park Slope mom wants to be mistaken for an Upper East Sid
e mom. Rather, the diamonds are just big enough to say “I shop at the food co-op for the organic produce, not the cheap prices.” The buffet is artisanal cheeses and figs, chunks of dark chocolate, bunches of red grapes.

  I am simultaneously baffled by their need to make their lives look like a magazine spread and trying not to drop to my knees weeping that I’ve failed to pull it off myself.

  Everyone knows I’m recently separated. I’m treated with a kind of gentle deference like I was just in a car accident but no one wants to mention that my face has been disfigured. No one says Josh’s name but everyone says, how are you? To which I think, better than you, asshole, married to that slob you know you hate, with your brain turned to playdate and diaper-infested mush. I think, you’re lucky oversized tops are in right now, because I know what’s going on under there. You may have your children, but I have my waist. And I think we both know who got the better end of the stick. And then, oh God, these women look so tired. None of us knows anyone else’s pain, do we?

  Tuesday, August 28, 2007

  My bench has crumbled. It’s gone. Totally wiped out. It was here just last week. I don’t understand. What happened to everybody? Is it possible I was just on a streak? That I’m not smarter and cooler than everyone else?

  I’m going upstate.

  Thursday, August 30, 2007

  Upstate

  Seth wants my advice on hanging a few pictures.

  Seth is not the fastest decision maker in the world. “Here?” he says, holding them up above the couch.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Or what about here?” Up behind the dining room table.

  “That works.”

  “Or maybe here?” Up over the easy chair.

  Cecilia comes in through the kitchen door. She puts her hand in her hair. “Oh my God, is this still going on?”