We were tangled up in Phil’s blues and you were married when we met but you gave me a gift and you are soon to be divorced and I’m helping you out of the jam that is your bad, blue life. I’m saving you! It’s almost like you knew about my situation with Melanda, and now I don’t have to feel bad about it because you don’t want things to go back to normal.
Why would you? You have me.
I open my box and look down on my six, Red Bed red strawberries, Murakamis cloaked in chocolate. I reach my hand into your box that is my box but some asshole body slams me. The box goes flying and the Adidas–sneakered ass who did this mad-dogs me like I did something wrong.
“Dude,” I say. I am so mad I’m saying dude. “What the fuck?”
He doesn’t speak or move and I don’t like this, Mary Kay. I don’t like him.
“Sorry,” he says. “Small sidewalk… small world, too, my friend.”
I am not his friend and he’s not one of us. He doesn’t live here. I can just tell. I step toward him—this is my town—and he shakes his head slowly, like a B movie gangster, as if someone wearing Adidas sneakers and a battered old long-sleeve T-shirt—SOMETHING BOATHOUSE—could ever be remotely intimidating.
A kid on a skateboard runs over one of my strawberries and the man who knocked the strawberries onto the sidewalk steps forward. “Nice gift,” he says. “Nothing says forever like a fruit box. You really know how to pick ’em, Goldberg.”
The sky falls down. He said my name.
Is he a cop? Is this about my dog back home?
I give nothing. I say nothing. I know nothing and he laughs. “Calm down,” he says. “They never taste as good as they look, do they, Goldberg?” I could punch his lights out right now. I make a fist. “All right,” he says. “I know you have a temper…” No I fucking don’t, not anymore. “So I’ll cut to the chase. I’m just here with a message from our friends the Quinns.”
The Quinns? Love’s family? No. It’s a new year. A new life. “Who are you?”
“It’s pretty simple, Goldberg. Stay away from Love. Stay away from Forty.”
“I don’t know who you are, but obviously you’re ill-informed because I have stayed away.”
“Oh, Goldberg,” he says. “Mind your Instagram activities or you’re gonna wind up like your little strawberries. Capiche?”
I looked at Love’s stories because IT WAS FUCKING CHRISTMAS AND SHE STOLE MY SON AND YOU TELL ME HOW TO NOT LOOK AT YOUR OWN FUCKING SON and I ask him who sent him and he chuckles.
I pick up my empty box. “Well, you stay the fuck away from me. And my family.”
He steps in front of me. “I wouldn’t talk that way to me if I were you, Joe.”
“You walk up here. You start shit with me and I don’t know who the hell you are and you talk about my family.”
The motherfucker snorts. “ ‘Family,’ ” he says. “Well, that’s one word for it, my friend.”
“Who are you?”
“Look, you’re not a member of the Quinn family, Goldberg. See, I work for the Quinn family. I’m here on behalf of the Quinn family. Think of me as your co-worker.”
“But I don’t work for the Quinns.”
“Huh,” he says. “How’d ya pay for your house?”
I don’t answer the question because he knows the goddamn answer and he laughs. Pig. Snob. “See,” he says. “The difference between you and me is that the family is on my side, not yours. Understood? So, stop stalking your ex, my friend, and stay offline. Because if you don’t stop…”
He smashes a strawberry with his shoe and looks at me. “Got it?”
He flips his hat around and walks away and I let him. I have no fucking choice.
18
I can’t get those mutilated, bleeding strawberries out of my mind—What else does the Strawberry Killer know?—and Melanda is doing jumping jacks and what the fuck happened? I was with you and you were with me and now your strawberries are gone—I didn’t get to eat one—and Melanda never ate the food I brought her. She claims she’s still fasting her body and her soul and that’s a lie. There’s nothing spiritual about her fucking hunger strike—she just wants to be thinner than you—and I don’t want her to be here.
But she is.
And she’s different, Mary Kay. She just finished The Anjelica Huston Story (a.k.a. Crimes and Misdemeanors), and she’s high on endorphins, sounding off on Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle—Who wouldn’t go nuts working for a barn jacket mommy who gets to be married to the nicest man on the planet?—and she takes a punch at Single White Female—Who wouldn’t go crazy shacking up with Bridget Fonda and her stupid swan neck?
She won’t stop talking and I can’t stop thinking about the Strawberry Killer and why is every fucking person lining up to get in our way? Finally, she stops jumping and sighs. “You were so right about Beaches, Joe.”
“I’m gonna go back upstairs. You seem okay for now.”
“Wait,” she says. “I mean it. You were right, Joe. You were right about a lot.”
Sorry, Melanda, I’m not some dumb asshole who gets off on a woman telling him he’s right. “See,” she says. “I don’t cry when Barbara Hershey dies. You want to know why?”
I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. “Why?”
“Because she deserved to die, Joe. She stole her roommate’s boyfriend.” She touches her toes and rises, Jane Fucking Fonda, and now she’s jumping again. Clap. Swish. Clap. “I want to go to Minnesota, Joe. I’m ready.” This should be good news. She wants out and I want her out—LIFE IS SUPPOSED TO BE EASY WHEN PEOPLE WANT THE SAME FUCKING THING—but she’s here. She knows things. She jumps and she jacks and she pushes. “I’m tired of this island, where women are expected to go around forgiving the women who shit all over them. Right now, I just want to forgive you, Joe.” She stops jumping and takes her pulse and her poor parents, no wonder they died early. “And I promise you, Joe, I will never breathe a word of any of this to anyone…” She’s saying my name way too much. “You helped me. And I’m ready to move on.” She flops onto the futon with a “Woof, I’m dizzy” and she picks up the gallon of water and drinks directly from it even though there’s a plastic cup on the nightstand. She’s relaxed and I’m tense, riddled with Silverstein’s Whatifs—What if someone saw me with the Strawberry Killer? What if you see your strawberries mashed on the pavement?—and why didn’t I scrape up that mess and what am I gonna do about this mess?
“I fucked him,” she says. “I fucked Phil.”
“In high school. I know.”
“No, Joe. I’m talking about a few weeks ago, when MK was outta town. Go back to my condo. I dare you. I am so behind on laundry so you can take my panties to a lab. They’ll find Phil’s DNA, I promise you.”
Another story, no doubt. I want your panties not her panties and I take her phone out of my pocket and she laughs. “Oh come on,” she says. “I’m a teacher. I don’t sext with him. It’s an affair. You just have to trust me…” She rubs her calf, as if she’s pretending her hand belongs to a man, to your fucking rat. “Remember when Jennifer Jason Leigh mounted Bridget Fonda’s boyfriend in Single White Female? It’s kinda like that. We are talking a ton of blow jobs.”
She drinks directly from her jug.
“Melanda, this doesn’t matter.”
“Wrong,” she says. “This changes everything. Now you know my dirty secret. You can let me go because I don’t want Mary Kay to find out about me and Phil. And you don’t want her to find out about you and me.”
I don’t want there to be a me and Melanda—why can’t your friends be normal?—and she crosses her legs. “You don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So, it started after my thirtieth birthday, not the best time in my life, as you might imagine… MK wanted to throw me a surprise party, but you know how it is…” What the hell would I know about surprise parties and would you recognize your strawberries if you saw them on the sidewalk? “I told her no, but she
insisted. So I got all dressed up, figured we’d be at the pub, maybe somewhere in Lynwood…” Oh, Melanda, learn how to tell a story and oh, Mary Kay, I am sorry about your fruit. “But then MK picks me up. She drives us to her house…”
Is she making this up as she goes along? “Can you just get to the point?”
She twirls her hair. “Go on my Facebook. Look at the pictures. It wasn’t a party for me, Joe. It was a fuck-you to me. All families. All kids and babies and it’s not like I don’t like kids and babies, but come on. I’m thirty years old and I don’t even have a boyfriend and Phil was supposed to bring this guy from his band who seemed decent and he’s not there and I’m literally the only person at my birthday party who doesn’t have a husband or a kid.”
I dig up the pictures on her fucking Facebook and I see you. I see all the children, but like most pictures, these don’t tell the whole story. Melanda curls up like a college kid in an emotional circle jerk. She says she got drunk and passed out on your sofa before the party ended.
“I woke up… I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know what year it was. You know that kind of drunk?” No. “That dirty thirty kind of drunk…” She’s Bridget Jones now, she’s fucking British. “Anywho, Phil comes downstairs.” She gulps, in a way that makes her story seem legitimate. “He whipped it out. I could have told him to bugger off. But I was just so mad at MK. I wanted to suck his cock, Joe…” Bridget didn’t talk like that. Too crass. “And I wanted to do that because of what she did to me with that pretend party. So I did it.” She arches her back, a mix of pride and shame and joy and you deserve better, Mary Kay. “And that’s that. Our ten-year anniversary is coming up and I do not want to be here to ‘celebrate’ it. I also don’t want to be forced to come back here for some stupid court hearing about all this… so this is where we are.”
“You expect me to believe that Mary Kay has no idea about you and Phil…”
“I’m a very good liar, Joe. You of all people should know that.”
I shove her phone in my pocket. “This has nothing to do with our situation.”
“Are you kidding? Don’t you get it? I want out. I hate the person I’ve become. I hate that I slowly, unconsciously settled for this man just because he calls me Ruby and I hate that I became someone who got off on pulling one over on my best friend. I hate my condo. I hate my job. I hate my noisy fridge and I hate the guilt and I hate that I’m actually happy I missed Christmas because it meant that I didn’t have to sit in their house like some overgrown orphan and go home and gorge on Hostess Cupcakes while I sit on my couch just hating myself. I swear to you, you are in the clear because I want to be in the clear. I want out.”
I see your strawberries on the sidewalk. I see the rain washing them away.
“Okay,” she says. “You don’t believe me. You need details…” No, Mary Kay. No. “So, a few years ago he got this day job… I mean the man does not belong at a desk…” She says that like it’s a good thing. “I would sneak out of school at lunch and park a block away and go into his office and… you know. He said he couldn’t live without me and it’s terrible, but it was so exciting, sneaking around, sucking him off, and going back to teach all the kids about Zora Neale Hurston.” She’s waving her arms as if this weight has finally been lifted and it all feels real but she might be faking it. She has been studying some of the world’s most phenomenal actresses and you’re a fox. You would know if your best friend and your husband were boning. Foxes see things. “I don’t know, Melanda…”
“Oh, come on,” she says. “Barn jacket Goody Two-shoes wives are always blind. These past few days… Being away from my life… well now I get it. Phil’s married to MK. You’re in love with MK. That’s the story of my life here. And here’s the kicker…” The long dramatic pause and I am the Bonnie Hunt to her Zellweger in Jerry Fucking Maguire. “You’re right, Joe. I’m not a woman supporting women. I don’t want to leave. I have to leave.”
She takes a stage breath and I feel played. “Melanda, I think you need to eat something.”
“You’re judging me. And you’re allowed. I was dumb like Anjelica Huston. Who knows? Maybe I’m too romantic…” Oh, for fuck’s sake. “And yes, Joe, yes, I have dreamed about Mary Kay catching a rare heart disease or a fast-moving cancer but that was only because I wanted Phil to be free.” She rubs her eyes. “And now I’m just… tired. Now I just want out.”
I picture her in Charlize Theron’s apartment in Young Adult, drunk and alone, calling you up in the middle of the night and telling you what I did to her as she underplays what she did to me and I knock on the glass and she sighs, ever the condescending teacher and she says she hears me. “Look at it this way. If there’s one thing you can be sure about, well, I know how to keep a secret. I never gave Phil an ultimatum. I never threatened to tell MK. And I don’t want to hurt her anymore. And this time around… this is a secret that I would hold on to because I don’t want her to know. I’ve done enough damage to them.”
“You’re not the one who’s married, Melanda. He took advantage of you.”
She looks me right in the eye. “No, Joe. I took advantage of them.”
She kicks the wall with her bare foot and now she’s rubbing her foot and she reminds me of my son, always banging himself on the head, his mother begging her Instagram audience of cunts for advice. How do I get my little boy to stop beating himself up? Do I put him in a helmet?
I tell her this is a very creative story and she accuses me of saying she’s not hot enough for Phil because she doesn’t prance around in miniskirts like you and I tell her she’s twisting my words and she tugs at the GUN on her T-shirt. “Did you read that book The Beloveds?”
“The Maureen Lindley? No, I haven’t read it yet.”
Her face is the reason people like RIP Benji lie about reading books and her eyes fill with judgment. Thick, ugly snobbery. “Well, it’s this theory. Some people get to be loved and some people don’t.”
“That’s a crock of shit. You just said that Phil ‘loves’ you. So which is it?”
“You’re a kidnapper. I’m a husband fucker. Let’s agree that we’re not model citizens. You want in, I want out.” She makes it all sound so simple, Mary Kay, like a bizarro-world Pacific Northwest fairy tale where it’s happy endings all around. But that’s what teachers do. They simplify things. She rubs her eyes. “Well, if you won’t put me on a plane right now, can you please bring the TV in here? I have such a migraine.”
I’m tired too, Mary Kay. And I can’t deal with her remains, not with the fucking Strawberry Killer out there. I’m a nice guy, and she’s starting to cry, so I bring the TV into her room. She rolls over and picks up the remote. “Thank you,” she says. “And if it’s not too much… I’d love a nice big fast-breaking last supper. Steak or salmon. Or even chicken.”
“It’s not your last supper, Melanda.”
She cues up the third and last Bridget Jones movie. “Can you just let me watch in peace?”
I leave her to be loved vicariously through Bridget Fucking Jones and there are moments when I want her to be happy. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she really does want a fresh start. I imagine a world where you and I are living together. Phil is gone, finding new women to suck on his Philstick and Melanda calls you once a week from her new life in Minnesota. She never tells you about that night in the woods and you never find out that she betrayed you. We take our secrets to the grave and people do that. I want to do that because I want to be the man who fixed your life. Not the man who killed your best friend.
But then I remember her Sorel boot in my ribs. I remember how the corners of her Carly Simon mouth turned up as I left her just now. I can’t fucking trust her, Mary Kay. I have to fact-check her soap opera saga so I throw a salmon on the grill. I pop a steak in the oven—Nice Joe! Chef Joe!—and I play the Sacriphil songs from the year Melanda turned thirty. It’s no use, Mary Kay. This is a concept album about a day in the life of a ghost—oh, Phil, you should have quit after your Sha
rk—and I turn off the fucking “music” and text Phil from my burner phone: Hey, you around?
A good five minutes later my man Phil responds: Hell yeah Joe!
I step on Riffic’s tail and he hisses and my veins shrink up on me. Phil called me Joe. To him I’m Jay. Does he know? Am I fucked? Ten seconds later: I mean Jay. Sorry man!
Fucking prick.
I write back: Question. Banging the girlfriend’s best friend. Am I going to hell for that, or is that kinda shit good for the music?
Phil responds with an all caps warning—FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, HAVEN’T LAID DOWN THIS TRACK YET—and a page of his notepad. The title of the song is “A Diamond for You, A Ruby for Me” and I scan the lyrics and he’s mining rubies at Fort Ward and Jesus, Mary Kay. It’s true. Her story wasn’t “creative” and sometimes truth really is more repugnant and useful than fiction.
I’m mad for you and I’m sad for you. Of all the places they could have gone, Fort Fucking Ward. The salmon is sizzling and the fat in the meat is bubbling and Melanda is right. She knows my secret and I know hers. Could I do it, Mary Kay? Could I let your best friend go?
I never wanted to kill her—I don’t want to kill anyone—and okay. It’s insane to imagine her walking up the stairs, going to an airport, and starting over. But once upon a time, it was insane to imagine a woman like you walking into my life and I want to do right by you.
I placate your lying, cheating rat with all the caps I can manage—YOU ARE THE KING—and I put Sam Cooke on repeat to sanitize my eardrums.
And then my doorbell rings.
That’s not a thing my doorbell does and is it the Strawberry Killer? Is it Phil? Did he somehow find out where I live? I don’t like the sound of my doorbell and there it goes again and now there is knocking and what if the rat found out my address and now it’s the doorbell and the fists pounding on the door and my skin crawls.
I don’t look in the peephole and I don’t run. My hand sweats as I grip the doorknob.
And there you are.
You Love Me Page 15