Multiple Listings

by Tracy McMillan

  I couldn’t cry when I was alone, but now that Peaches is here, the tears are pouring out of my face. It doesn’t feel like they’re about Jake, even. The thought that keeps happening over and over in my mind is How could I be so stupid?

  “I really did think things were fine! I mean, I brought him a picnic lunch! Would I have done that if I thought he was going to bail on me later that day?” I’m aware of how pathetic this sounds, like what a chick on a reality show would say in the interview part. You know, where there’s a Pottery Barn lamp in the background and it’s a super close-up of her face? “He said he’s going to explain. What does that even mean? Do you think he’s going to come back?”

  “Probably.” Peaches waves the question away. “But I kind of fucking hope not. Who does something like this? I mean, I have, in the past, but I am lame! Now that I see what it looks like, I get exactly how lame.” She thinks on that for a second, then goes back to her train of thought. “I know you love him, Nicki,” she says, putting air quotes on the word love, “and I know you guys are going for this whole life together, but maybe he’s just not up to it, you know? That’s why I always leave. Because I can see that the person wants more from me than I’m ever possibly going to be able to give.”

  “Whoa,” I say. It is not like Peaches to self-reflect. At all. “Did you just go deep?”

  “Shut up,” she says. She thinks some more. “You can figure out what to do later. Seriously. You are going to be fine. You really are.” She says this like it’s a movie title: You Are Going to Be Fine.

  I search for a dry corner of my Kleenex to wipe my eyes. I’m smiling now, almost. “You mean FINE—the acronym for Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional?” I read that on the Internet once and thought it was pretty accurate.

  “Precisely.”

  We laugh for a half second, until I start crying again. “How could he do this?” My mind has lurched into gear again—I’m retracing my steps through the past twenty-four hours, looking for clues to what might have set him off. The biggest thing that happened was Ronnie showing up at my door. Maybe that freaked Jake out somehow. “Maybe it’s my dad!”

  “Definitely Daddy issues,” Peaches says knowingly. “It’s always that.”

  “No, I mean my dad showed up on my doorstep last night!”

  I haven’t told Peaches this yet, partly because I haven’t had the time, and partly because I know she’s going to have a big reaction and I’m just not ready to deal with it. Jake’s disappearance has made me doubly unready.

  “He what?”

  Here we go. “He’s out of prison,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you yet. I literally haven’t had time.”

  “That’s bullshit, Nicki, and you know it.” Sometimes Peaches and I are like twins who share brain cells that continue to transmit information even though they’re in separate bodies now. “Who doesn’t have time to tell their best friend that their dad is out of prison?”

  The maddening thing is that instead of looking at herself, and the reasons why I don’t want to tell her stuff sometimes, she gets mad at me. Under normal circumstances I would try to point out this discrepancy, but right now I just don’t have the energy.

  “It’s not that big a deal. Calm down,” I say. I’d rather keep this abandonment slumber party focused on Jake. “It really isn’t. It was going to happen eventually and now it has. To be honest, it’s sort of been in the back of my mind for a while now.”

  I pick up my phone out of habit, to avoid the look on Peaches’s face and to check to see if Jake’s texted me again yet.

  “What are you talking about, Nicki, it’s not that big a deal?” Peaches is yelling and her eyes are practically bugging out of her head. She swats at my phone. “Shut that thing off!”

  “It’s really not,” I say, evenly. “I mean, maybe my dad had something to do with Jake leaving, but I don’t really think so. I think it was just really bad timing. I don’t know!” I start to cry again. “See, this is why I don’t even want to tell you stuff. I knew you would overreact.”

  “I’m hardly overreacting!” She’s shaking her head in tiny back-and-forths as if to say, I can’t even. Finally she just says, “Fuck him.”

  “Who, Jake? Or my dad?”

  “Both of them!” Peaches says. “Fuck them both.”

  We have a brief moment of uproarious laughter. High fives and all.

  That’s when we hear Cody yell, “Can you guys be quiet!” from the other side of the wall. Oh shit. I thought he was asleep.

  “Sorry, mister!” Peaches yells back. Then she drops her voice to a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m scared I’m never going to trust another man again,” I say quietly.

  “You never did trust men, lady. Don’t you get that? That’s how you got into this madness. You don’t trust men, so then you pick men who aren’t worth trusting,” she says. For someone who would date Charlie Sheen, this is a pretty good insight.

  “I lent him money, Peaches. I’m supposed to know better than that.” I’d add I’m also supposed to be stronger than that. As well as smarter than that. “You told me I shouldn’t. And I did it anyway.”

  “Men are jerks.” Peaches says this like it’s common knowledge. “Don’t feel bad.”

  “Are they? Jerks, I mean.” I really don’t want this to be true. But right now, it definitely seems true. “All of them?”

  “Not all of them. Just the ones we want to get with.” Peaches explodes into laughter and holds up her right hand for another high five. She hugs me, and I still feel terrible, but with her here, I feel a little better about feeling terrible.

  “I’ll wait up while you go to sleep,” Peaches says. She’s settling into the pillows, touching my head in the nicest possible way. Just like when we were kids. I was the responsible one, the good girl who would always go to sleep first. Peaches would stay up reading Tiger Beat, or later, getting sex tips from my mom’s Cosmopolitan magazines.

  “You just drift off and don’t worry about a thing, because I’m here,” she says, grabbing a magazine from my nightstand. “We’ll deal with all this bullshit tomorrow.”

  I turn away from the light and comfort myself with the thought that tomorrow will be a new day.

  * * *

  I wake up the next morning, but it turns out to be 3 p.m. Peaches is gone. She had to go to work, but left a note saying to call her when I wake up. I thought it was going to be a new day, but I can already tell it’s going to be the same day. Why wouldn’t I be able to just get up the next morning and move on—Jake wasn’t my whole life or anything, right?—but this feels cataclysmic. I can’t get out of bed. My body feels like I haven’t slept in ten years. My mind is covered in a dark blanket. I feel nauseous.

  I guess it’s the money.

  It’s one thing to believe someone loves you. It’s another thing to believe they love you so much that you give them a bunch of cash. It makes me feel so foolish, so gullible, so so stupid. Like did he just want me for the money all along? Then I think, no, it couldn’t be that. Because the one thing he wanted the money for—the restaurant—he left behind. So maybe it’s not the money.

  Maybe it’s the restaurant.

  Miguel has tried to call me three times already today. I know he’s facing a thousand decisions—on countertops and espresso machines and chair styles and refrigerator equipment rentals, and now both Jake and I are just . . . missing in action. I’ll call him eventually, but right now it’s impossible. I can’t lift up my head, much less my phone.

  It’s like I got hit by a bus and now I need to be in traction—only traction is where I just lie here in the dark and pretend like I’m in a coma while wanting to throw up. I remember a therapist once telling me what it felt like to be an infant—she said it’s like you’re on a Tempur-Pedic mattress and life conforms perfectly to your body because you’re being held all t
he time. That’s what I’m doing here. Trying to be an infant. Except without food. I guess I should be excited that if this keeps up, I’m definitely going to be wearing those twenty-six-waist-size jeans when this is all said and done.

  From far away I hear a knock on the door.

  “Mom?”

  It’s Cody. He’s home from school and probably wants to know if I’m still alive. I’ve never lain in bed like this a day in his life. Even if I have the flu I get up and throw a burrito into the microwave. I’m that kind of overachiever.

  “Yeah, honey?” Boy, do I sound bad.

  “Are you coming out anytime soon?”

  Maybe. Maybe I’ll come out soon.

  “I’ll be right there.” I force myself to sit up, slide out of bed, and slip my feet into my clogs. I pass the mirror on my way to the door. I look like hell.

  I come into the kitchen and Cody’s rummaging through the cupboards.

  “Hi, Mom,” he says. He looks worried about me.

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You look like you’ve been crying.”

  “I have. But I don’t want to talk about it. Okay, honey?”

  “Mom, can I just say what you would say to me?”

  “No,” I say. I really don’t want to hear what I would say right now.

  “You can’t just pretend nothing’s happening,” he says anyway.

  That is what I would say.

  “I’m a mess, Cody,” I say. Might as well tell him the truth. “Jake left last night and he hasn’t come back and I don’t think he’s coming back anytime soon.”

  Cody stands perfectly still. He doesn’t say anything for a breath or two. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  That was the perfect response.

  “I thought it was going to work this time. I really did. All I managed to do is just chalk up another failure. Another guy who has to come get his stuff and move out of the house.” I’m trying not to sound angry or sorry for myself, even though I’m a little of both. I bury my face in my hand. “I can’t believe I’m doing this to you again.”

  “Mom, it’s fine.” Cody does that thing where he shakes his head with a half smile on his face. It’s like he’s looking at me and the folly of the entire human condition. He’s not judging, he’s more like a Buddhist monk who already has knowledge that it’s clearly going to take me years more to figure out. “I’m fine.”

  But is he? I’ve only had two main boyfriends during Cody’s life. The first was Steve. Steve was short and quiet and didn’t smile very much. He liked to eat licorice and used to bring bags of it home for Cody. Dude loved licorice. Steve was a good guy. We never lived together, so our breakup didn’t have that much of an impact on Cody. Just the thing about the licorice. Cody missed the licorice.

  Then there was Dash. Cody loved him. Dash was a sculptor, and lived in this crazy warehouse near the bridge in North Portland that had giant pieces of metal everywhere. They used to play backgammon together and go to the park to play frisbee. We were the cute, artsy family and everything was great until it wasn’t.

  Dash broke my heart. He broke Cody’s heart, too. He cheated, of course.

  What made it doubly worse is that I’d broken my rule for Dash. No live-in boyfriends. I swore I’d never be like my mother—with a rotation of guys coming in and out of my kid’s life—but Dash was unlike anyone I’d ever met. He loved me and he loved Cody and I thought this time it would be okay. Because Dash was going to teach Cody how to be an artist, how to be a free thinker, how to do life on his own terms. Instead he hurt us in the worst possible way.

  The day we moved out of the warehouse, I sat in the living room chair, all these boxes stacked up around me, and cried. I thought I was alone, but I didn’t realize Cody had walked in and was watching me. I’m sure it was the first time he ever saw me cry. Up to that point, I’d successfully managed to present a pretty spotless version of “Mother,” or so I thought.

  After that, we moved into a one-bedroom apartment where there was this giant closet big enough for Cody’s bunk bed. I asked him what color he wanted to paint the walls, and in a last moment of boyhood innocence, he chose a pinky-purple color—which I went along with in a moment of gender-free mothering. I hung a curtain across the doorway and the closet became his “room.” Every night I would sit on the floor and read him books before bedtime. One night after I’d turned out the light, I heard him crying softly in bed. I asked what was the matter, and he replied, I miss Dash, and it was so crushing, so painful to admit to myself what I had done. I did this. I let this person into his life and then he hurt us both. But I had to admit it, because I knew that if I didn’t let it land on me—I mean really hold myself accountable for the fact that I chose Dash and I was the only person who was responsible for that choice—I knew I would do it again.

  And now I have.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Cody says. “Really.” He sounds so sure, it’s almost heartening. Is it possible he’s really fine? Or is he just young, or compartmentalized, or both? “What about moving?” he says. “To the new house, I mean. Is that still gonna happen now?”

  I slump over the kitchen counter. “Sweetheart, I think I have to go back to bed.” I can’t face it. Not right now. Maybe later.

  “It’s going to be okay, Mom.” Cody takes a couple of steps toward me. He doesn’t quite know what to do, but he reaches out and puts his right hand over the top of my shoulder and sort of half hugs me. Oh, my son! I am both moved and heartbroken that he is trying to alleviate my pain. Then he perks up. “I got an A-minus on the English test,” he says.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. I studied,” he says.

  “That’s amazing, honey.” I lift my body up to a full sit. It’s a little like starting the car by popping the clutch, but I want to give this boy some positive reinforcement. “I’m so proud of you for making that effort.”

  “It’s not that big a deal,” he says, going back to his cereal, “about Jake, I mean.” He takes a couple of bites and thinks. “You didn’t like him as much as Dash, or anything.”

  He’s right, I didn’t. But I didn’t know that Cody knew that.

  Dash was a big deal—the only guy besides Gio I ever truly let in. But our relationship was so painful—his lies and drinking and flirting with pretty retail girls—that by the time he finally left, for me at least, it was a relief. The moment he was gone I realized I’d been living with a form of tinnitus: a pinging noise so constant, so pervasive, I couldn’t rest. Ever. I lived in constant fear (without even knowing it) that Dash was going to just wander off, or be stolen by dingoes, or decide that whatever intriguing stranger he just met could do more for him than I could. Dash’s cheating wasn’t like one of those spiritual journeys where the person goes looking for some lost part of themselves they left behind somewhere along the way. Dash was a beautiful, tragic, empty soul who didn’t come equipped with his own oxygen supply—so he had to borrow from women. Women at the coffee place, women in the parking garage, women working behind counters or sitting in parks. Each of them was a breath of—some were a gulp, I suppose—life-giving air. How ironic that he couldn’t breathe without them, and I couldn’t breathe without him.

  And how amazing that Cody has this perspective on it all. It feels like this is maybe a moment of closure for us.

  “Dash was really special,” I say. I really don’t harbor any grudges toward Dash. Now that I think about it, maybe he was just another swan man. “Bless him wherever he is.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “I don’t.”

  Cody drops his spoon in the bowl, seemingly done with this discussion. “Mom?”

  “Yeah, honey?”

  “Is it okay if I go play Magic?”

  “Sure, honey.”

  “Thanks, Mom,”
he says.

  He grabs his backpack and leaves. I watch him step into the fading afternoon light, feeling humbled. Life problems don’t care that you have a kid, do they? Life problems barge into your house, tell you to move over, and sit down on the couch until they decide to leave. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

  I really, really have to go back to bed.

  10

  * * *

  RONNIE

  No one answers the front door when I knock. But I see Nicki’s car in the driveway, so when I try the door and it opens, I take a chance and let myself in.

  “Nicki?” I take a few steps into the house and call out softly. There’s still a spot on the white rug where she dropped the platter of meat the other night, but other than that, it sure is nice in here. My daughter obviously is doing a lot of things right to live in this place. “Are you here? Cody?”

  The house is strangely silent. I can tell Cody’s not here because I can see a bedroom door with a C on it, and it’s open and there’s no life coming out of it. I take a few more steps and call out again.

  “Nicki?” There’s another bedroom door, it’s open a crack and I move toward it. “Baby?”

  I push lightly on the door and I can see her lying there, asleep, looking just like she did when she was a baby. My God, she’s beautiful! Her wide, slanted eyes are closed and there’s this calm perfection on her face. When you look at someone sleeping, it’s like you’re seeing what she is for all time: what she was the moment she got born and what she’ll be the moment she leaves. Nicki taught me that when she was a baby. After that, I realized it was true for all women.

  Seeing her like this takes me back to the very beginning. Beth was so overwhelmed. I wanted the baby more than she did! I begged her not to drink and go out there and hustle. I wanted Nicki so bad and I didn’t even know why. I think I knew she would save me somehow, or I wanted her to.