“Come on,” you say. “I can play hooky but I can’t disappear.”
You want to know where I had sex in high school and I tell you about a guidance counselor and you’re mortified but I assure you she wasn’t my guidance counselor and… you’re still a little mortified and I let you take more Polaroids and I take some of you and we reach the parking lot—it’s just us—and I want to tell you this was the best day of my life.
You hand me the pictures. “You should probably hang on to these.”
I unlock my car and you unlock your car. You grab your phone and turn it on and I turn on my phone and you sigh. “I’m so glad we did this.”
“Me too.”
Your phone comes back to life and my phone comes back to life and my news is no news—Oliver wants more Eames chairs and Shortus wants beer—but your news is bad news. I know because you’re listening to a voicemail. I know because you gasp and turn away.
“Mary Kay.”
You thrash an arm at me. Bad sign. Did someone see us?
You drop your phone onto the pavement and you turn around and all the red I put into your cheeks is gone. You are white as RIP Melanda and do you know? You scream at the sky and is it your father? Did he have a stroke?
I reach for you but you crumple to the ground and your voice is a horror movie and your hands are in your hair and then you say it, barely yet loudly.
“Phil. He… he’s gone. He… I wasn’t there and he’s gone and Nomi…”
Phil. Fuck. I reach out to you and this time you don’t just flinch. You shove me away and you run to your car and you are in no condition to drive and you can’t even get the door open but you warn me to stay the fuck away from you right now—Why Phil? How?—and you are too mad for motor skills and you throw your backpack at your car and you look at that roof and all the rage transforms into sadness—you are sobbing—and then just like that, it turns back into rage.
You point a finger at me. “This day never happened. I wasn’t here.”
It’s not a request. It’s an order. It’s a sit. He’s gone—I am in shock, I didn’t do it—but the way you peel out of here and leave me in the dust, it’s like you think I did.
31
Here’s my problem with wakes. You lay out all these finger sandwiches, all these pizzas from Bene and then you glance at me as I’m biting into a tiny slice of the coppa—best on the menu—and you look away as if what I’m doing is somehow disrespectful to your dead husband because now that he’s dead, he’s THE BEST HUSBAND, THE BEST FATHER, THE BEST MAN. I’m alone at the buffet because I don’t have a date—you’re his widow—and I spit my pizza into the napkin and what a waste of food and okay, so he made your daughter a Christmas present and it took time—a whole lot of precious time—but your living room is a hotbed of lies and FUCK YOU, RIP Phil.
How could he do this to us, Mary Kay? You were doing so good—leaving him, leaving him behind—and Nomi was doing so good—she saw the divorce coming a mile away—but that rat fucker had to ruin everything. He didn’t get T-boned by a truck on his way home from “writing.” No. Your lazy, selfish (soon to be ex) husband had to go and overdose in your house. Your daughter had to come home and find him. And nobody will say what we all know: HE KNEW HIS WAY AROUND DRUGS AND HE WAS JEALOUS OF KURT COBAIN WHO DIED OF AN OVERDOSE IN HIS HOUSE. You’re a woman. So of course you feel like it’s
All. Your. Fault.
You’re wrong, Mary Kay. Dead wrong.
You should be disgusted and maybe deep down you are, but how would I know? You haven’t spoken to me since you fled from the parking lot at Fort Ward. We said I love you and we were having sex on an increasingly regular and exciting basis but now we are fucked. Nomi’s fucked. I’m fucked. You’re fucked. And lazy Phil’s dream came true. He’s a dead rock star, possibly lounging in heaven reading his obituary in Rolling Stone—remember when you asked if I believe in heaven?—and all I can do is stand here in the corner of your living room dipping a triangle of pita bread into what’s left of the garlic hummus.
Will I ever hold you again? Will you ever smile again?
I glance at you. You’re wiping your nose on a napkin while a Mothball pats your back and your dead-eyed daughter is just sitting on a chair, not touching the little sandwiches on her plate and the outlook for us is grim and fuck you, Phil DiMarco. Fuck you all the way back to the day you wormed your way into this unjust world.
You shouldn’t feel guilty and I don’t feel guilty, Mary Kay. Sure, I bought M30s for him—it was a particularly dark moment in our courtship—but Oliver took them away. And yes, I bought heroin for Phil. I put heroin in his room because heroin is (was) the devil he knows. But I am a rational person. I know that your rat didn’t die because of me. He didn’t even die from a heroin overdose. He died because he drove to that shithole in Poulsbo and picked up some of those poisonous M-fucking-30s all by himself. I didn’t kill Phil and you didn’t either, but you’re saying it again right now, telling that sympathetic Mothball that you pushed him over the edge.
I want to storm through these mourners and grab your shoulders and tell you to stop it.
People get divorced every day, Mary Kay. There’s nothing scandalous about it and your rat was a brat. He couldn’t wait until he was living in some shit box too-old-to-be-called-a-bachelor-pad to jump off that wagon? Nope! He swallowed those pills in this house. All he had to do was drive to the Grand Forest or one of the countless places on this island where people go to do bad things. It turns my stomach, Mary Kay. Even Oliver cringed and made aggressively passive-aggressive remarks about my being “the other man.” I told him to read the Basic Fucking Text and learn that recovery is an uphill battle, that no one is to blame, especially not me. He cut me off and told me that my body count on this island is up to two—BULLSHIT, I KILLED NO ONE. What Phil did to this family is terrible, Mary Kay. I could never do something like that. Neither could you. Now you pull at your hair—How did I miss it?—and I want to comfort you. I have been trying to comfort you for three days now. But you always shiver and turn away, as if you wish I were dead, me, the one who made you happy.
I know. Life isn’t fair. But just once, I wanted love to be fair. I did everything right. Everything. And now I’m losing you, aren’t I?
You knock over someone’s glass of beer and you snip. “Damn it, Lonnie, there are coasters.”
Lonnie apologizes and you’re crying again. “I’m sorry. I just… I’m so mad I could kill him.”
Lonnie says that’s natural—since when is nature a synonym for good?—and she’s encouraging you to let it all out and no! You know better, Mary Kay. You don’t want to kill him because you read his favorite fucking book and I read it too. We both know that addiction is a disease and these “friends”—you’ve never mentioned Lonnie, not once—they’re not on your side. They’re not helping and if anything, they’re making it worse by validating every mistruth you speak and in that way, they’re like Phil’s fucking family.
What a bunch, Mary Kay! His mother and father are already gone, as if they have somewhere else to be, and the brother never even came. Classy. According to the obituary, the brother is a well-known life coach, which might be why he couldn’t afford a fucking plane ticket. Well-known is code for 21,000 followers and Tony Robbins he is not and I want things to go back to normal. I want Phil’s parents to get on a plane and go back to Florida. Maybe they’ll leave tomorrow. They didn’t show up at your wake party tonight—We’re mourning privately—but oh fuck you, Phil’s family. Nobody likes hospitals and nobody likes funerals but we all know that sometimes you have to suck it up and go. And if they were decent people, you might not be quite so bad off.
You’re so guilt-stricken that you’re rewriting history and hiding behind your invisible, brand-new rose-colored glasses. “He really was amazing…” Oh come on, Mary Kay. “People don’t realize, he gave up his career to be home…” Lie. He couldn’t get along with his bandmates and he had songwriter’s block. “He was the
best dad, we had all these great day trips to Seattle…” That’s another lie. He was your teenage son storming off to play with guitars while you and the Meerkat wasted money on tchotchkes. You blow your nose into a cocktail napkin. “And I just should have known.”
The Mothball takes you in her old lady arms and you’re weeping again and now I feel guilty for being so hard on you. I know it’s hard to lose someone, but Jesus Christ, Mary Kay, you should lean into your rage because you’re right to be mad. Addiction is a disease, yes, but he was a husband and he was a father and instead of getting help, instead of taking care of himself so that he could stay alive for his daughter, he jumped off the wagon. You slip off to powder your nose—poor choice of words, considering—and you cry more. You know it was a poor choice of words and the Meerkat is still in a coma on the sofa. Staring at you. She’s not crying. She can’t cry because you won’t stop crying. I grab another slice of Bene pizza, a bigger one this time, and I fold it in half and pop the whole fucking thing in my mouth.
Shortus elbows me. “ ’Sup. Where you been? I haven’t seen you at the gym.”
That’s Shortus for you. We’re at a fucking funeral luncheon and he’s talking about CrossBore. He picks up a celery stick and chomps. “Don’t be letting yourself go,” he says. “Don’t wanna wind up like this guy.”
The insensitivity of this poor dolt, and I pick a red pepper flake out of my mouth. “It’s just a little pizza.”
“You ever try it?” he asks. And then he drops his voice to a whisper. “Heroin?”
“No,” I say. “You?”
“I never would.” He shudders. “I don’t get it… Don’t these people know about endorphins? Honestly, don’t they know about sex?”
It’s the worst thing to be forced to imagine right now, Shortus sticking his Shortus inside some toned, nerve-ending-less CrossBore addict and it’s a reminder that three days ago, in another lifetime, I was one of the happy people on this planet. I was having sex with you. I scan the room and you’re not back and in the library, you never slip out without letting me know where you’re going.
You’re crossing over and it’s like I don’t exist, like you don’t want me to exist and the Meerkat isn’t on the couch anymore. She’s gone too. I pick up my plastic glass of Eleven Winery wine. “I hear you,” I say, because I learned my lesson and I won’t waste my time debating with another stubborn, irrational dog. “I’m gonna get some fresh air.”
You’re not in the powder room and I can’t go upstairs—we’re still a secret, even if you haven’t kissed me or talked to me since you deserted me at Fort Ward—and I step out the side door because maybe you are smoking. You did that with the rat long ago.
“Hey.”
It’s the Meerkat and she’s smoking, ripping on her bong. “Nomi,” I say. “I realize it’s a stupid question, but how are you?”
“Fucked in the head. You?”
I sip my plastic wine and she motions for the cup and she’s underage but she saw a dead body for the first time in her life—been there—so I give her my plastic chalice and she gulps it all down, too much, too fast. “Are your parents alive?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“What did they do to you that was so shitty that you don’t know?”
“They ignored me.”
She nods. “Fuck ’em.”
“Nah,” I say, Good Joe, Compassionate Joe. “I used to feel that way. But you get older, you realize that you don’t really hate anyone, even your shitty parents, because everyone’s just doing the best they can.”
She coughs. Still not good at working that bong, still doesn’t have any friends. I counted two teenagers inside and one was here with her parents and the other was here for the wine. “That’s deep, Joe.”
“Not really,” I say. The last thing I want is for your Meerkat to feel that on today, the second-worst day of her life, she has to be polite and grateful. See, Mary Kay—I wish you could see me right now. I am Jack Nicholson at the end of Terms of Endearment. I am stepping up with your kid and I am ready to be a stepfather. I am here to help.
She puts her bong in an empty planter and she yawns and her arms are outstretched above her head and she bursts out laughing. I don’t laugh with her and I don’t judge her and soon she’s doubled over—I’m gonna pee my pants—and I tell her it’s okay to do that, it’s okay to do anything right now.
She rolls her eyes and snorts. “Yeah right.”
“I mean it, Nomi. It’s hard to lose someone. Your mother knows that.”
We hear footsteps and the door opens. Shortus. “Oh,” he says. “So this is where the party’s at.”
It was his way of trying to ease the tension—fucking idiot is scared of real emotions—and Nomi doesn’t laugh at the joke and he throws his arms around her.
“I’m so sorry, Nomi. I just know that he loved you more than anything on the planet.”
Except for heroin, the sound of his own voice, a woman’s mouth wrapped around his Philstick, and his music, but that’s funerals for you. They bring out the stupid in everyone, especially the stupid.
Nomi pats him on the back—“Thank you, Uncle Seamus”—and he pulls away the way he should because he’s not really her fucking uncle and the girl needs her space. “Tell you what,” he says. “When my mom died, everyone was like, watch TV, binge, relax, but none of that worked for me…” Because you have no attention span, you lightweight. “What did help me was endorphins.”
That’s the second time he’s used that word in twenty minutes and he will never get married, will he? “Thanks,” she says. “I’ll remember that.”
He takes a deep breath and looks up at the trees. “I’m gonna go do a Murph in honor of your old man,” he says. “I know he’d like that.”
Phil was a lazy fuck who never broke a sweat deliberately and he would not like that at all. I smile. “That’s so nice, Seamus. Seriously.”
The second he’s gone it’s like he was never there and the Meerkat goes right back to where we were. “Do you really think I can do anything I want right now?”
“Yep.”
“And my mom won’t be pissed?”
“Nope.”
“Well, in that case, will you tell her I went to Seattle?”
I never offered to be her accomplice but she’s wearing a Sacriphil T-shirt and her Columbine is poking out of her backpack and it’s one thing to have a birthday party and have no kids show up but this is her father’s funeral and she has no one in there. I know that feeling. When someone you loved in spite of their imperfections is dead and no one in the world seems to care about what that’s like for you.
“Do me a favor, Nomi. The bong stays here.”
She salutes me like JFK Jr. at his father’s funeral and takes off through the backyard to the trail.
Inside, the guys from Sacriphil have picked up their instruments—I knew it was only a matter of time before we had an Unplugged Phil-less jam session—and there is an acoustic shark inside my shark—and I have a purpose now. I have to find you. I worm my way around the room, skirting my fecal-eyed multigenerational neighbors and for you this is a sad room, but for me this is a hot zone. Mrs. Kahlúa is here and this cannot, will not, must not be Jay’s coming-out party.
I cut through the kitchen but I’m fucked here too. The young woman who warned me about Phil is standing in front of your refrigerator. The door is blocking her face—thank you, door—but I recognize her hand. Two diamond engagement rings. She’s having small talk with a court-ordered older alkie I’ve seen at Isla and I am trapped and the guest bathroom door opens and I slip into that bathroom again.
I close the door. Safe.
Someone knocks on the door. “If it’s yellow let it mellow. The pipes are taking a beating!”
I run the faucet and eavesdrop on the NA people whispering about how long they have to stay—GO NOW GO—and they are going—yes!—and I flush the toilet—oops—and I exit the bathroom and here you are, in your kitchen
, surrounded by second- and third-tier Melandas. I clear my throat. “Mary Kay,” I say. “You got a second?”
You’re mad at me but it’s not like I walked up to you and kissed you and there is no way to put the toothpaste back in the fucking tube. We did go to Fort Ward and you did mount me in a bunker—twice—and Dr. Nicky’s blog is right: I have feelings too and I am allowed to have feelings.
You excuse yourself, and my palms are sweating. What I say now matters and is it possible to say the right thing when you’re not yourself? You open the side door and now it’s you and me by the planter and you light one of the rat’s cigarettes and blow a smoke ring and who knew you could do that? “I don’t want to do this right now, Joe. I can’t do this right now.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know, Joe. You don’t know what this is like for me.”
“I know.”
You look at me. Validated. And then you blow smoke in a poisonous straight line. “I had no business turning off my phone. I have a child.”
“Let it out.”
You grit your teeth because it would be so much easier on you if I was being an asshole right now but I’m not gonna do that for you. “All we had to do was wait. You don’t know Phil…” Yes I do. “You don’t know that we had something of a deal. I looked out for him and he…” Did nothing for you but drag you down. “He needed me. I knew he was down and there I was off running around with some fucking guy I barely know behind his back while my own husband was dying inside.”
That was cruel but I am strong. “And you must feel horrible about that.”
“Well I feel like the biggest piece of shit that ever lived. He deserved better from me.”
And you deserved better from him but this is the other thing I hate about funerals, about wakes. We don’t get to blame the Deathday Boy. He’s like a bridezilla. It’s his day and he gets to whine and cunt out about every stupid thing in the world. “What can I do to help?”
You flick the cigarette on your own lawn and shrug. “Nothing,” you say, your voice flattened by Klonopin and semi-Melandas and all the pressure of hosting people in your home while you just die underneath. “There’s nothing anyone can do or say to bring him back and honestly, that’s all I want. Anything you do is a waste. Anything you say is a waste. Right now all I want in this world is the one thing I can’t have. One more day with Phil to tell him that I know he’s hiding heroin in his nightstand, under his amp, to take all of it and flush it down the toilet and force him into a car, into a rehab clinic so that my kid doesn’t have to go the rest of her life without a father, so that she doesn’t have to go through the rest of her life being the one who found him. I’m a big girl. I know that I can’t have that. But that’s where I am right now.”
You Love Me Page 25