I want to talk about incompetent social workers but the Meerkat doesn’t care about stupid Eric and this is why she doesn’t have friends, because she doesn’t understand that people take turns. She’s back to ranting about Dylan’s poems and this is my chance to save her, to help her.
“I get it,” I say, because that’s the first rule of helping any kid. You have to validate their feelings. “But I think your mom’s upset cuz… well, this therapist I went to once, he told me that sometimes we all get a mouse in our house.”
“Are you a slob?”
I picture her going home and telling you I have mice. “No,” I say. “See, it’s a metaphor. The mouse is something you can’t stop thinking about or doing.”
“And the house is your head. Yawn.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s a little simple but the point is that when you get really into something, it feels good. But it’s not necessarily good for you. I’ve been there a buncha times.”
She is quiet. Kids are a relief, the way they just shut down and think when they feel like it. And then she looks at me. “What was your thing?”
Women. Terrible city women. “Well, when I was a kid it was this movie called Hannah and Her Sisters.”
She turns her nose up at me and oh fuck that’s right. Melanda. “Eew,” she says. “That’s Woody Allen and he’s on Melanda’s DNW list…”
“Do Not Watch?”
“Yep,” she says. “And he’s at the top. Like the tippity top.”
“Well, your teacher is sure on top of things.”
“She’s more like my aunt.”
Melanda is the mouse in your house. “Well, my point was… that movie was my Columbine, the thing that changed my life. See, I lived in New York but I didn’t live in that New York and I wanted to live in that movie. I stole that tape from Blockbuster, watched it every second I could.”
Nomi responds by repeating that Woody Allen is bad, just like his movie and I won’t fuck up like I did in the diner. “Okay, but does Melanda think it’s okay for you to read Dylan Klebold’s poems?”
She growls at the trees above. “There is literally no comparison. He was my age.”
“Okay… but you have to admit, he did some terrible things… Explain why you think that’s okay.”
No kid wants a pop quiz and she groans again. “It just is.”
“Look, Nomi.” I am channeling Dr. Nicky. “We got off track. I was just trying to tell you that it’s not always good to have a mouse in your house, no matter what the mouse is.”
“Did you really read Columbine? The whole book?”
I’m not RIP Benji and I never lie about books, especially with my potential stepdaughter. “Yep.”
“Did you also read all the stuff Dylan wrote that’s online?”
Kids do this. They bring it back to them, especially a kid like Nomi, younger than her age, going to school every day in those glasses—so wrong—and wishing that some maladjusted boy or girl is writing poems for her but knowing it’s not possible because she’s watching too closely. She picks at a hangnail. “You know how he writes a letter to the girl he loves and tells her that if she loves him, she has to leave a blank piece of paper in his locker?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But he never gave her the letter.”
“But he wrote it,” she says. “And that was sweet.” I hope some exchange student with buckteeth moves here this year and rocks her world and she crosses her arms. “Anyway, I’m still not gonna watch a Woody Allen movie.”
“Well, that’s fine. Do what you want.”
“So you don’t care?”
I laugh off the question and maybe I’ll go back to school and become a guidance counselor. “Look, Nomi. It’s like this. Who cares what Melanda thinks? Who cares what I think? You only need to decide what you think.”
She kicks a rock. “Well I can’t watch any movie tomorrow anyway cuz we have our stupid family bonding.”
I’m not a part of your family but I am a part of your family and I force my voice to be steady, as if I’m asking for directions. “What’s that mean for the Gilmore Girls?”
“Well, first we oversleep. So we wind up on the eleven o’clock even though we said we’d take the ten.”
“And then…”
“We take the ferry and walk around and look at tchotchkes.”
“Tchotchkes.”
“We also go to bookstores or whatever, but you know how it is. Mostly tchotchkes.”
Your desk is crowded with tchotchkes and I laugh. “Yep.”
“Then we go to a restaurant with a long line and my mom is too hungry to wait and I’m like ‘Just put our name in’ and she won’t do it and then the people who walked in after us get a table and I’m like ‘See, Mom?’…” You said that she was the problem and she says that you’re the problem and I can’t wait to be a part of your fucking family. “And then she wants pizza but then she wants dumplings and she’s like ‘Oh let’s go to this place I heard about from Melanda.’ ”
I laugh. “Been there.”
“And then we go and the place isn’t open yet cuz she can barely work Yelp and we just walk around starving and look at more tchotchkes and then she wants some tchotchke she saw in the morning and she gets paranoid that someone else got it and we run back to the shop and it’s gone and she’s all waaah.”
You’re afraid that you’re gonna lose your shot with me and I smile. “Then what?”
“She still can’t make up her mind about another stupid tchotchke because that would mean making a decision so we go to a coffee shop and she gets mad when I take my book out, like we’re supposed to talk all the freaking time. But it’s BS cuz she’s sick of me too and she takes her book out and then we come home. And that’s our family bonding. The end.”
I applaud and the Meerkat laughs, but then she turns into a young version of you, serious. “It’s really not as stupid as it sounds. I’m not mean.”
“You’re not mean. Family is… it’s a lot.”
“It’s just weird to like… try to bond, you know?”
I do know. I remember sitting with Love in prison and trying to feel in love with her and Nomi’s done with me. “I’m gonna get a coffee first. See ya.”
I wave. “Say hi to your mom.”
She heard my request but she’s already distracted because she ran into my fecal-eyed neighbors and I can’t rely on Nomi to tell you about our great conversation. She runs into people all the time because that’s life here and she’s mad that you took her Columbine away. I walk into the T & C and it’s bustling. I feel good. I bent the rules and the universe rewarded me, Mary Kay, because now I know about your plans for tomorrow and I am on board.
It is time for our family to do some fucking bonding.
8
I know life is ugly. I knew that Bainbridge Island was never going to be exactly like Cedar Cove. I’m waiting to board the ferry and this guy in line in front of me is wearing a knit fucking skullcap—someone made it for him, you can just tell—and yellow-framed sunglasses and he’s rubbing his son in my face, a lesser Forty with a runny nose. He’s also with his wife, the one who knit that stupid skullcap and lied to him, told him he can pull off yellow shades. She’s a puffy-jacket sourpuss and she sniffs her coffee—I think this is oat milk, babe—and I am alone and they are together and it is absurd.
But not for long, right? Right.
I am taking the 10:00 A.M. ferry to Seattle to get there before you and I’m a little pushy—Gently, Joseph—but I want to escape from the in-your-face family that isn’t mine so I move to the left side of the boarding throng into a pack of lawsuit-hungry retired lawyers just fucking hoping that someone’s landscaper mows their lawn because it would give them a project. Yes, it’s twee here. If you go to the police station on your birthday, you get a free donut—you don’t even have to show ID—but there are twenty-five thousand residents eating locally farmed beets and commuting to Seattle, forming little commuter cliques. Debbie Macomber would f
eel for me, alone on a Saturday, now marooned with techies talking soccer. I belong nowhere but this is temporary and I’m on board—that’s progress—and I put on my headphones and break left for the stairs—two at a time—up to the sundeck. The air helps. The sea, too, a far cry from that heady brown Malibu foam, and I sit on a bench but I’m faced with a wall clock covered by a sign that reads I AM BROKEN.
I find another place to sit—gotta be positive—because it’s a big day for us, Mary Kay. I’m not gonna interrupt your bonding with your daughter and I’m not “stalking” you. My plan is simple. I’ll have some “me time” and you’ll have your family time and I’ll watch for the signs; when I notice that the two of you are getting sick of each other, I’ll “bump into you”—Joe! What a nice surprise!—and we’ll ride back to the island together. Then, we’ll have dinner at my house. (I bought salmon steaks and they’re not fucking frostbitten like yours.) Thanksgiving is five days away and that’s plenty of time for you to cancel your trip to Phoenix, and you’ll do that after you realize that you can date me and be a good mom at the same time.
I walk toward the bow, to another bank of benches, and I zip up my jacket. It’s not freezing, but it isn’t springtime for Hitler and I take off my headphones because people up here are polite, alone like me. No one is forcing a neighbor to overhear one side of a cell phone conversation about a busy boring life and I can’t get that clock out of my head.
I AM BROKEN.
I check Love’s Instagram—I AM NERVOUS—and Forty is biting his nanny Tressa, who says that my son reminds her of Adam Fucking Levine and Love is laughing—it isn’t funny—and there is nothing I can do. I delete the fucking app and shove my phone back in my pocket but then I freeze. I blink. I wish I could delete my body because what the fuck, Mary Kay?
You’re here. You and Nomi are on this boat, my boat, the one you’re supposed to miss. You’re thirty feet away and you’re leaning over the railing and I scoot across the bench, closer to the center of the vessel and I pick up a newspaper and listen to my heart beat between my ears.
Calm down, Joe. This is like yesterday. If you see me, you see me. It’s fine. People go to Seattle and I am people. I bend the upper corner of the newspaper and whoever is driving this ship decides that it’s time to go and we’re on the move.
You pull a fleece hat out of your saggy, bottomless purse and you offer it to the Meerkat and she deflects. I can’t hear you, but I see you throw your hands up and look heavenward—help me, Jesus!—and the Meerkat sulks and stares at the horizon. You two are off to a rough start and I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls last night. They needed Luke at times like this and maybe I should just walk up to you right now and save your morning. I play it out in my head.
Joe, is that you?
Wow! Mary Kay, what a surprise! Do you want to go fuck in the bathroom?
I know. Too much. And the Meerkat might tell you that she told me all about your plans. Think, Joe, think. If you saw me, you’d come say hi. That’s what friends do. I’m still in hiding and you haven’t noticed me yet—long live print newspapers—and the Meerkat leans over the railing. “Ugh,” she shouts. “If you don’t leave me alone I’m gonna jump, I swear!”
You tell her that’s not funny and she tells you to stop being such a worrywart and this is adorable—I love our family—and then an oaf in a T-shirt stomps up the stairs and into the frame and Nomi points at this oaf like she knows him.
“Look at Dad,” she says. “He’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts and he’s fine.”
The word Dad is an iceberg and there is no dad. Dad is gone. Dad isn’t on your Instagram and Nomi has never said the word Dad and our ship is taking on water. Fast.
“Hey, Phil,” you say. “Husband of the Year, will you tell your daughter to put a hat on?”
Dad has a name—it’s Phil—and I am Leo in the ice water, I will freeze to death on this boat, in this water. The man you call Phil, husband—this is not happening—he shushes you and our ship is cruising, we are sinking—and he’s a rock ’n’ roll type of ass and you are Married. Buried.
No, Mary Kay. No.
You don’t have a husband—but you do—and this guy isn’t husband material—but he is—and he’s not Eddie Vedder and it’s not 1997 so why is he sitting there with his feet up—Doc Martens—wiping his slimy hands on his Mother Love Bone T-shirt while he dictates God knows what into his phone? He pecks you on the cheek—and you let him kiss you—and the ballroom on this boat is flooded and the water is cold—and you touch him. His face. You casually break every bone in my body and pull a sweater from your purse.
He won’t take the sweater and I can’t take this. Won’t take this.
Married. Buried.
You must think I’m a moron. The Mothballs didn’t tell me and Melanda didn’t tell me and Seamus didn’t tell me and your little community is a clique of mean-spirited liars but fuck me because this is what I get for being Mr. Goody Two-shoes because since when do I rely on strangers to tell me the truth about the people I love? You’re married. You really are. He’s whining about your upcoming trip to Phoenix right now and he sleeps in a bed with you and we can’t hang out like a family today because he is your fucking family. Not me.
Married. Buried.
He holds up a bag of chips and Nomi claps her hands and I snap a picture of the motherfucker and there’s a tattoo on his leg and the ink is black: Sacriphil. I remember that band, barely, one of those nineties, not-quite-Nirvana groups and WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T I GOOGLE YOU ON DAY FUCKING ONE?
Your husband is an overgrown fan boy in dirty cargo shorts and he has bad taste in tattoos and he produces another bag of potato chips like some third-rate magician—I hate magic—and I hate him and right now, worst of all, I relate to Nomi because I hate you, Mary Kay. You lied to me. You want Phil’s chips and you wave him on and I remember you in the bathroom of the pub, when you were mine, when you kissed me. He tosses the chips to you and you catch the bag like you’re in a bridal party, like it’s a bouquet.
Married. Buried.
This is why you ran away from me and this is why we’ve been treading water and Nomi screams at the top of her lungs. “Dad! Come look!”
Your husband is an iceberg and I can’t take it anymore. This is the story of my life. Everything that should be mine, everyone, they’re all snatched away from me. I lost my son and I’ve tried so hard to be decent. Good. I’ve tried to forget all the Shel Silverstein poems I memorized when I was incarcerated, when I thought I’d actually get to be a dad, and now you do the same. You steal my shot at family and I can’t forgive you, the same way I can’t forget those fucking poems. You used me, Mary Kay. Love stole my son, but you have stolen my dignity, my self-respect, and I should have staked out your house the day we met.
Everything looks different now. You weren’t hazing me at the diner. You were playing fast and loose, weren’t you? You thought one of your Friends might say something about your husband in passing. And that’s why you were looking around in the pub so much on our date. You were afraid we’d get caught. You’re a dishonest woman. You don’t wear a wedding ring and you criticize your mother for her sham of a divorce but what the hell do you call this?
Your husband’s angry teenage boy outfit is embarrassing—you must be the breadwinner—and okay. I never directly asked if you’re married but that’s because you’re my boss. And okay, it would have been presumptuous of you to passive-aggressively declare your marital status—So my husband loved the Lisa Taddeo book—because that’s not your style. But who the fuck are we kidding?
Your husband would never read the Lisa Taddeo book. He’s not a reader. I can tell and you are right, Mary Kay. We see what we want to see and I didn’t want to see it. Same way I didn’t want to believe that Love was capable of stealing my child.
I grab the railing. The ship hasn’t sunk just yet. Yes, you’re married, but if your marriage was any good, you wouldn’t be so into me. I can still save us. I google you—I sh
ould have done this weeks ago—and there you are, Mary Kay DiMarco and oh no, oh no. Your husband isn’t a fan of that fucking band. He is in the band, the lead singer—of course—and Google knows his name because Phil DiMarco was that guy who sang that song.
You’re the shark inside my shark, you’re the second set of teeth and I just die underneath.
I’m the one who dies underneath because that’s you on the cover of his album and the history is sinking in, sinking our ship. Those are your legs under your black tights and gender-reveal parties are nothing compared to this big reveal—It’s a dad! It’s a husband! It’s a has-been rock star in shorts!
We’re getting close to the dock and I’m not gonna be intimidated by your husband. You were his muse and you’re not my muse. I respect you as a person. And okay, so he was kinda semifamous but he would never be in a clue on Jeopardy! and I’d rather be your work husband than the husband you loathe so much that you can’t even speak of him in casual conversation.
He walks up to you and puts his arms around you, and again, the boat is flooded and the water is cold, but I won’t let it get to me. I will not fucking freeze to death. You are telling him he needs to put on a sweater—I know you—and it’s mind-bending to see you like this. Married. Buried. How long did you think you could get away with this, Mary Kay?
We’re slowing down and you’re searching for something in your purse, and I bet you’ve been winging it because that’s what you do—Nomi was “the surprise of your life”—and before I came into your life, you were on cruise control. You married a music man and I’m sure you loved him at first. You were his tiny dancer and foxes do like attention—your body parts are on the cover of his album—but times change. You told me that you never understood why your mother left your father. You called it a sham divorce. That’s why you’re still in the cage with Phil. You don’t know how to leave that rat, do you?
You Love Me Page 7