I’d expect more from an MSW who lives in a semi-city, but at some point in life, I’ll learn to expect less.
Layla advises you and your rat to “fill the well” and “nest” and I know what she means—talk, bond, fuck—but you don’t want to talk to him. You don’t want to have sex with him. You just want to buy a whole bunch of new fucking furniture. You loved “nesting” when you were preparing for Nomi to arrive and you’re extrapolating like crazy, claiming that you and Phil nest well together. Your therapist thinks this is positive teamwork—such an idiot—and Phil made his feelings about material things clear a hundred years ago when he lambasted you in song about a crate in a barrel, a barrel in a gun, remember the summer, the end of all your fun. (Repeat 10X.) The trouble is, he doesn’t want to lose you, so he sits in the therapeutic box nodding as you wax on about “the symbolic value” of buying a new dresser like the heartless slab of phony baloney that he is.
“Whatever it takes, Emmy. Anything for us.”
So you bought a brand-new blue dresser and it wasn’t made in America—Nice job, China!—it doesn’t have cedar linings or metal undermount drawer glides. It weighs less than two hundred pounds and the “wood” is manufactured. They take real wood and disintegrate it and then mash it back together with artificial additives. Like your marriage, it’s not real. It arrived a week ago and your cheap lazy husband wouldn’t spring for the white glove delivery and assembly. So it waits for you, for him, in two giant boxes of unassembled slabs of fake wood on your back deck, where all the passing hikers and tourists can see it sit there festering, growing moldy. Dank.
Symbolism, much?
I watch from the Whisper Room as you stare at those wilting boxes. Phil’s around more these days because of “therapy” and you nag him about the dresser. He’s avoidant—Just ask your buddy Seamus, he gets off on that kinda crap—and he tells you he’s too worked up from an NA meeting.
Part of “working on your marriage” means focusing on your past. The rat won’t go to the meadow with you and he won’t hike up to the bunkers at Fort Ward—you know I have lower back issues, Emmy, and I can’t take a pain pill, obviously—so you’ve resorted to other shit. Sadder shit. You’re hosting a Reality Bites #TBT screening for couples in the library’s garden. (Gross. Sad. Just no.) All you need him to do is agree to show up and yet he grouses—Aw man, are you trying to put me in an early grave?—and you counter—It’s just one night—but he wants to go out that night because the boys are back in town. He picks up his pen—That’s a good line, I gotta write that down—and he puts down his pen—it’s someone else’s good line, you moron.
Nomi stomps downstairs. She can’t concentrate with all this bickering—Don’t worry, kid, the Edward Albee shit ends soon—and you lower your voice to a hiss—I need you to grow up, Phil—and he tells you to chill out, Emmy. Don’t take out your Melanda shit on me. I’m not your whipping post.
I clap my hands. You tell her, Phil! You steal from those Allman Brothers and drive her right into my arms!
You groan, you tell him that he’s the one who needs to grow up. He can’t choose his boys and some band at the Tractor over you and your work. He huffs that the bands are playing new songs and you’re playing old movies and he snaps his fingers—That’s a song—and he picks up his Gibson and he’s strumming and you miss me. Your cell phone rings and you want it to be me but it’s Shortus and Phil stops singing to give orders—Please tell me that asshat’s not coming over, Emmy, I can’t listen to him go on about CrossFit—and you are an obedient child bride. You send Shortus to voicemail, which means that he texts me.
Shortus: Isla later?
Me: Sure!
See, Mary Kay. Unlike your rat husband, I have empathy for single dudes who may not have the most scintillating personalities. I know it’s hard to be alone, so I’ll suck it up and have a beer with Shortus because I feel for him. It was Friends when RIP Melanda was around. It was okay for the three of you to be together, waxing nostalgic at the diner, always “popping by,” but two is not three. And now that she’s gone, you ice out Shortus.
Phil resumes playing his nonsong and you pour wine—Did you fix the stove?—and Phil is a child—Right after I finish this song.
You hate your life and you plod upstairs to your bedroom. It’s a minefield. Your old dresser is in the front yard—what must your cul-de-sac neighbors think?—and your sweaters and your tights are mixed up with his clothes in big black trash bags. You can’t deal with those fucking trash bags and you close your door and climb onto your bed. You read your favorite parts of Murakami—all but sucked inside—and you look at my Instagram—I can’t see but I know—and then you put on a silk sleep mask. Your hand delves into your Murakami and you tap your Lemonhead and I’m not a pervert but this sex fast isn’t easy.
You climax. I climax. For now, this is good enough because it has to be.
The next day when I get to your house, I climb onto your side of the marriage bed and I put on your sleep mask and I imagine you here and when I finish I’m dizzy. I smack my knee into your end table—Fuck!—and I rummage in a trash bag for your tights but I wind up with his shit-stained man-panties—Double Fuck—and I rush into your bathroom to wash my hands.
I’m getting tired of this shit and I dry my hands on a plush new hand towel—you are trying so hard—and I check your Instagram and it’s all #TBT of you and your rat. Your nostalgia is misguided, you should be looking toward the future—me—but here you are, circa the late nineties hanging all over your man. Instead of being sad about Melanda and the state of your life, you are snarky. You take a picture of yourself in your puffy nineties prom dress.
This is okay to wear to work, right? #RealityBites screening tomorrow night! See you crazy kids there! #DateNight
You really do need to get some boundaries, Mary Kay. This is your personal page and public library events have no place here. We need boundaries, both of us. My alarm on my phone goes off—it’s almost 1:45—and it’s time to get to work. The work I’m doing now is not unlike my work at the library—nobody is paying me to do this—but the feeling I get from helping you is payment enough. I open my notepad.
DIMARCO HOME RENOVATIONS: DAY EIGHT
-Pour Phil’s almond milk down drain, return empty carton to refrigerator.
-Delete Monterey Pop from DVR.
-Loosen screws in the leaf of dining room table.
-Jack up heat on thermostat.
-Disable Phil’s bullshit fix on the stove.
-Move charcoal to deck so it gets rained on.
-Hide the coasters.
-Turn on all the TVs. High volume. VH1.
Yes, I’m your handyman—you’re welcome—and you don’t know that I’m the prop master, staging things to advance the plot so that you blame each other when things go awry, when you come home to a hot house and he swears he turned down the heat before he left. I like the way he flies into an indignant rage, accuses you of being crazy. I hate the way you recover—I know I’m moody, I’m still in shock over Melanda—but soon you will jump off the building, away from your forty-five-year-old man baby. And he is a baby. Of all my tricks, it’s the milk that drives him to slam cabinets and rail on about his vocal cords, your selfishness—It’s not like I ask for a lot from you, Emmy. Jesus Christ. I need my almond milk!
I finish my projects and I get home and I fix dinner—old pizza from Bene—and I head down to the Whisper Room and turn on my TV to settle in for my favorite sitcom: You. Things are especially ugly in your house tonight. I signed you up for Pottery Barn catalogues, Restoration Hardware, and of course, Crate & Barrel. The rat is on a tear—What is this shit?—and you can’t find your favorite sweater in your trash bags—I moved all your things around—and you want him to assemble that dresser now but he can’t because he threw his back out at the Guitar Store—ha! Thanks for playing, Phil—and he can’t take a pain pill, he won’t take a pain pill—right on, brother!—and Nomi is fed up—I can’t wait to get out of here�
��and congratulations, Mary Kay. You’re in the twenty-years-later sequel to Reality Bites and there’s a reason why that movie doesn’t fucking exist. In real life, Troy and Lelaina split up three months later and Lelaina realizes that Ben Stiller actually loved her but Troy only wanted to control her.
Right now, your poor man’s Troy Dyer picks up his Gibson and you grab it out of his hands and is this it? Are you gonna ask him for a divorce? You sigh. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
He reclaims his guitar and strums. “Then don’t.”
You stare at his Michelob Light. It’s not on a coaster because I hid your coasters. You walk into the kitchen and tear a paper towel off the roll, you pick up his beer to move it onto your makeshift coaster, and he kisses the back of your hand—Sorry—and you rub the top of his head—Me too—and I scream at my TV—NO!
For a little while you coexist, living your separate lives, but then you try to start dinner. You turn on the stove but nothing happens.
“Phil!”
“Writing!”
“The stove’s out again.”
“Nope, fixed it, Emmy.”
He did, but I unfixed it today and this is the final act where it all comes together because the pot isn’t boiling, you can’t cook, and now he’s playing the almond milk card—Good boy, Phil—and he shoves a Pottery Barn catalogue in the trash and you grab your phone. Do it, Mary Kay. Lawyer up!
“What are you doing, Em?”
“I’m gonna find someone on Craigslist to assemble the dresser.”
“Oh, come on. I dig the trash bags, it’s like the good old days.”
You groan—kick him out—and you collapse onto your old blue sofa. Did you finally give up? Do you finally see what needs to happen?
“Okay,” you say. “Should we just order Sawadty? I’m exhausted anyway.”
You can order all the beef and broccoli in the world but it won’t satisfy your desire to eat beef and broccoli with me and Phil is fine with Thai, fine with anything, and you lecture him like he’s your indolent teenage son—We do have to finish the house before Nomi graduates—and he huffs—It’s only March, I’ll stick the boxes in the garage—and you are calm—We have a hundred people coming to this house—and he is a child—To hang out in the backyard, Em, in two months. Relax. No one likes being told to relax and you harangue him about the minefield in the bedroom. He snickers—The party’s not in the bedroom, Em—and grabs his guitar—That’s a good line. That’s gold. He buries his head in his music—I’ll take care of the dresser tomorrow—and you pour more wine—I’ll hold you to it. But you won’t hold him to it, Mary Kay. You never fucking do. You go upstairs and masturbate and I shut off this bad TV show: frumpy husband and foxy wife, how original! I don’t have it in me to jerk off. Not tonight.
I have to work harder.
Oliver bugs me for an update—he’s easier to deal with when he’s out of town—and I tell him I’m at home—the truth—and I don’t bitch at him for stealing my M30s because Ajax sold me some heroin and sadly, we’re gonna have to use it now.
I am back in your house less than twelve hours later and I am retracing your footsteps. You’re always sniffing around his nightstand because you are Married, Worried. I plant a baggie of horse in the copy of Catcher in the Rye that he keeps in his nightstand. There’s a sticker on the cover—PROPERTY OF BAINBRIDGE PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL—and oh Phil, grow up. I cross the room and slip another bag under an amp—who keeps an amp in the bedroom?—and then I walk over to your nightstand. This is where you keep a little book that I can only presume must be your diary. I know I shouldn’t read it. But we’re in a rut so I open your drawer and I pick up your diary. The first few pages are to-do lists—almond milk, sell dresser, find one that comes assembled—and you are a fox. Sneaky. The good stuff is in the back.
The dresser, the damn dresser. It’s like a box of Joe and it’s like he’s on my porch in those goddamn boxes and what am I doing? I am punishing Phil because I want to be with Joe and I can’t be mad about Phil about Melanda because come on. I knew. And in some sick way I felt good letting it go on because we all know that I really did steal him and maybe I hoped he would leave me for her? But he didn’t and now he’s never leaving and I can’t leave but what about ME? When do I get to be happy? God I miss Joe. But is that only because I want what I can’t have? Joe in the bunkers at Fort Ward. Joe in the meadow. Joe Joe NO AHAHAHAHAHAH
The danger of a good book is that it swallows you whole and animals in the wild don’t read because if you get lost in a book, you lose sight of your surroundings. You don’t hear the predator. For all of Phil’s laziness, the fucker did do one thing you asked him to do last night. He sprayed WD-40 on your sliding glass door. And I couldn’t reverse that fix. That’s why I didn’t hear the door open.
But now I hear the footsteps above all the TVs. Someone is here, inside this house.
The floorboards on the stairs whinny beneath feet. “Dad? Is that you?”
It’s your daughter. It’s Nomi, the Meerkat.
26
When I was a kid, my mother didn’t read to me. She was always groggy, tired. I work a double and I get home and now you want me to read to you? No one was going to read to me so I learned to read to me. You can do that, you can read the story out loud and if the story is good enough, you transcend the limits of your ego. You split. You become the reader and the listener, the child and the adult. You beat the system. You beat your doom. Reading saved my life when I was a sweaty little kid and it saves my life again today because I always carry a book. I’m carrying one right now: Robert McCammon’s The Listener. You gave it to me last week, Mary Kay, and come on, book, work your magic and save my life because Nomi is at the bottom of the stairs clutching her chest.
“You scared the living shit out of me!”
“You scared me too, Nomi.”
She grips the banister. “What are you even doing here?”
I walk, one step at a time. “Your mom gave me this book and I was bringing it back. I thought someone was home… Do you guys always leave so many TVs on?”
She sighs, the fear in her voice waning. “That’s my dad. And they wonder why I always have my headphones on.”
I reach the bottom of the steps. “I’m sorry I scared you…”
She shrugs. “I thought it was just Seamus,” she says and oh that’s right, that fucker is like your handyman and she really isn’t scared, not anymore. She yawns. “Can we go outside? It’s such a relief when I have the place to myself.”
I open the sliding glass door and it glides—Damn you, Phil—and Nomi and I sit at the table on your deck. It’s my first time hanging out here like one of your Friends and Nomi picks up my book. “So why didn’t you just bring this back to the library?”
I won’t let her ask the questions and I smile. “So you’re home early, yeah?”
I caught her good—ha!—and she begs me not to tell her parents—I won’t.
My phone buzzes and she yawns. “Who’s that?”
Oliver. “An old friend from home…”
Oliver found a $35,000 bedazzled horse at some gallery in a casino and I tell him it’s tacky and he tells me to fuck off and then he fires back.
Oliver: Being good?
Me: Yes. And you do NOT buy art in Vegas, Oliver. Rookie move.
I look at the Meerkat. Her eyes are glazed and she’s puckering her lips and wait. Is she stoned right now? Well, that means she won’t tell you about our little run-in.
“Nomi, I’m not a narc but I do have to ask… are you high?”
“A narc? Are you high?”
She laughs and pulls a bong out of her bag. “It’s legal,” she snaps. She barely knows how to work the thing and her lighter is almost dead and she’s awkward. Uncoordinated. She coughs. “They say this stuff makes you paranoid. But I was born paranoid. Maybe it will make me normal.”
She shows me the “new” book she’s reading—a reissued copy of In Cold Blood—and it pains me to
see a young woman filling her mind with more darkness, but at least it’s not Columbine and I smile. “So, then I assume this means you’re all done with Dylan Klebold?”
She bangs her bong on the table. “I told you I just like his poems. A lot of good writers are nutjobs.” She coughs and I hope she doesn’t overdose and she asks me if I live alone—with all those cats—and I nod and she coughs through a sigh. “I could never. I would be so paranoid. I would go nuts. And cats can’t even protect you.”
I won’t be insulted. Of course she has issues. Her father is a playboy and her parents aren’t in love. “It’s not so bad. You get used to it, Nomi. Cats are good company.”
She shrugs. “I always told Melanda that she should get a cat.” Wrong. She couldn’t keep that condo clean as it was. “I think she went nuts from being alone so much.” Well, that’s closer to the truth. “It’s cool to be alone in a city or whatever, but here? No offense.”
“None taken,” I say, and I have to remember that this is a child. A minor. A shit ton of perfectly well-adjusted people live alone, they don’t pair off, but still the family people act like there’s something wrong with us. “So,” I say. “Melanda moved?”
She smiles at me in a way that reminds me that she came from inside of you. Her grin is pure Alanis Morissette, a little too knowing. “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe she took off cuz she was pissed when I told her how much I loved that movie you told me about.”
I am the adult. The authority figure. “That’s crazy, Nomi. Don’t blame yourself. Not for one second.”
She’s a kid again, scratching her messy hair. “Yeah, she probably just got sick of my parents. They’re so annoying.” I can’t agree with her so I don’t respond but I can’t imagine living in that house either. “Did you know her?” she asks. “Did you know Melanda?”
You Love Me Page 21