You Love Me

by Caroline Kepnes

  But look at you, still being so nice to him! The two of you are catching up and I’m in a chair in the corner of your kitchen reading about Ivan and the mental health situation in the Separated States of America is bad because of people like him. He followed up his BA with a PhD—he’s a doctor but he couldn’t save a life on a plane—and he made his fortune by greasing the wheels for big, bad pharma. And what does he do with all that extra money? Does he start a nonprofit? Does he build an incubator to ensure that the future is female? Nope. He builds a website—well, he pays someone to build it—and declares himself a life coach. I watch a short closed-captioned video of him “presenting” his “philosophy.”

  You took the first step. You’re here. I’m here to help you take the next step. Ready, Ladies? Because I’m about to blow your mind. (A long dramatic stare.) Don’t trust your feelings. (Another long, even more dramatic stare.) Your whole life you’ve been told that you have feelings. What if the people who told you that you’re emotional had told you that you’re smart? (He puts on a baseball cap that reads THINKING CAP and ugh, he made merch.) Welcome to a new world where you don’t trust your feelings. You see them for what they are: Cobwebs. Quicksand. Clutter. I’m here to make you think.

  No wonder there are so few views and yet look at you right now, pouring vinegar into your coffeemaker because he said to do it. Like his dead brother, he brings out the worst in you and I dislike the fucking video to focus on the show in here. He has an excuse for everything.

  Why wasn’t he at the funeral? I had twelve hundred clients with flights booked, hotels prepaid. I had to be there.

  Nope! He paid to attend a seminar on social media branding for life coaches and he did not have to be there.

  Why wasn’t he here for wake week? For the casserole parade? I had a sit-down with GQ in New York. I begged my agent to let me do a phoner, but they wanted the whole shebang, a photo shoot, the X-factor when I walk into the lobby of the Four Seasons, all that good stuff.

  The story was for GQ dot com and the story is only online and sorry, Ivan, but you didn’t have a sit-down. It’s a piece about CEOs with “second acts”—Ivan hired a publicist after his brother died and that publicist used RIP Phil DiFuckingMarco to get Ivan some press. I am a good guy and Ivan is a bad guy, a fake-it-till-you-make-it motherfucker who uses words like shebang. And again I say it: WHAT KIND OF A LIFE COACH SKIPS HIS BROTHER’S FUNERAL?

  He looks down at the coffee you hand to him. He looks down at you. “You better not be beating yourself up for what happened, Emmy. You know it’s not your fault, right? You know there’s nothing you could have done.”

  I don’t have a PhD in Psychology but this is projecting and you are fawning—Thank you for all those flowers, Ivan, they really did make the funeral—and I butt in. “What a good brother,” I say. “That’s generous, considering you couldn’t be there.”

  “Well, they’re half brothers,” you say. “And Ivan’s so busy in Denver…”

  He claps his hands and he almost hits your nose. “Stop that, Em. There is no half or whole. He was my baby brother. End of story.” His phone buzzes. He smiles and walks to the front door and you and I follow, like sheep.

  Nomi is on the street, running faster than I’ve ever seen her move.

  You are puzzled. “She said she was gonna stay in Seattle.”

  He is smug. “I told her I was here.”

  That selfish bastard pulled Nomi away from people who actually love her and she hugs him and he says she looks so grown-up and I don’t like his Rolex, sliding around his wrist so we can’t forget it’s there. “All right,” he says. “Where are we headed in the fall?”

  Ivan’s got his arm around Nomi and they’re walking into the house and do I stay? Do I go? You wave at me—come on—so I follow you but this is all wrong. I’m more in tune with this family than this Ivan Come Lately but he’s the one Nomi is excitedly telling about NYU.

  “You’re going to love New York,” I butt in.

  We’re all back in the kitchen and there’s an awkward silence.

  Ivan looks at you, not me. “Sorry, MK… who is this guy?”

  You rub your collarbone the way you do when a Mothball asks for help with a fucking e-card and Nomi answers the question. “Joe’s a volunteer at the library. And he’s from New York, so of course he’s biased about NYU.” She tears at a loaf of bread and laughs. “Also he has three cats.”

  I don’t need Ivan to know about our cats and I was a mentor to Nomi. I listened to her talk about books. I helped her discover how rewarding it is to help old people and this is how she repays me? You lighten the mood by pouring coffee and there are three of you and one of me and I’m not even allowed to be mad that you didn’t tell Ivan I’m your boyfriend because oh that’s right.

  Our love is a secret. Nomi doesn’t know either. She thinks I’m a loser like Shortus.

  You open the freezer and retrieve a casserole and Ivan claps his hands again and you and the Meerkat freeze up like this is a fucking improv class and he is your teacher. “Rule One,” he says. “Those casseroles go in the trash. That food is something that other people needed to provide in order to express their condolences. But that food is not for you to eat, girls.” Girls and he’s just another insecure prick, a tall fucking Shortus. “Rule Two,” he says, on his feet now, rolling up those sleeves like he’s about to manhandle a baby at a political convention. “Same logic applies to Phil’s things.”

  “Ivan,” I say. “You don’t want to go there.”

  You don’t look at me. Your eyes are glued to him and he puts his hands on your shoulders. “Emmy, I know you… Trust me when I tell you that death is a part of life. We are animals and we have to move forward. Your feelings are intense. But feelings aren’t real.” He points at his head and I wish his finger was a gun. “We have to use our heads to protect us from the spontaneous, reactionary urges of our hearts.”

  The word is reactive and he’s talking about me, Mary Kay. He may as well pick me up and shove me in one of RIP Phil’s fucking trash bags and he is wrong. Your feelings for me are not a reaction to that dead rat—we’ve been falling in love for months—but what do you do? You tell him that he’s right and you are gonna gather Phil’s things today and I offered to get rid of those fucking trash bags less than an hour ago and you bit my head off. You’re all hugging and I may as well be back in the woods, on the trail, behind the rock. My chair squeaks when I stand. “I think I should get going.”

  You keep your head where I can’t see it, buried in Ivan’s chest, and your voice is muffled—Thanks, Joe—and Ivan pats you both on the back and offers to walk me out as if this is his house. You and the Meerkat hide in the kitchen and he opens the front door before I can get my hand on the knob.

  “Thanks for helping out around here…” His voice drops to a whisper. “But you and I both know that a recently widowed woman needs time on her own.”

  “Of course. I just came by to help her with some stuff around the house.”

  He mad-dogs me and my fucking shirt is inside out and does he still smell you on me? “Well,” he says. “That’s what I miss about this place so much, all that generosity…”

  I leave and there is nothing I can do because his presence doesn’t change anything—our love is a secret, it’s too soon—but his presence changes everything. No more lingering in the bed with me. No more working through your grief the right way, behind closed doors, with me. Right now, you’re in that house and you’re regressing at ninety miles an hour, putting on a proper widow show for your dead husband’s no-show brother. You were Phil’s muse, and that was a problem, but this is worse, Mary Kay. Now you’re the one onstage.

  34

  One day passes. No word from you. I buy Oliver a violin. Minka is taking classes.

  Another day passes. No word from you. I buy Oliver a fucking piano. Minka didn’t like the violin.

  Another day passes. No word from you. I bite Oliver’s head off when he calls and he laugh
s. “I know,” he says. “But there’s this Casio on 1stdibs. It’s super eighties, my friend. You don’t have to learn how to play it. It’s intuitive… or sort of intuitive? Whatever it is, we want it.”

  I buy Oliver his non-intuitive Casio—am I ever going to see you again?—and my doorbell rings. Yes! You! I run to the door and I open the door and no. Ivan. I wish I wasn’t in sweatpants and I wish Riffic was a fucking Rottweiler.

  Ivan laughs at my cats. “Sorry to surprise you.”

  “No worries. Did you want to come in?” So I can lock you in my Whisper Room?

  “Actually,” he says. “Nomi mentioned that you live here…” Nomi. Not you. “And I know how helpful you were last week…” Someone had to be, you prick. “I wanted to invite you over for supper tonight. It’s the least we can do to repay you for being such a good neighbor.”

  The word is boyfriend, you asshole, and he better not tell you about all the cat hair on my sweatpants. “I’m always happy to help and that sounds great, but unnecessary. I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He tells me he’ll see me at six and I start to close the door and he snaps his fingers. “Oh, one more thing,” he says. “Feel free to bring your partner, if you have one…”

  I hate the word partner and I picture Rachael Ray riding one of her knives into the center of his chest and I smile. “Thanks,” I say. “But it’s just me.”

  A couple hours later you call me and you are hiding in the garage, whispering, as if you’re the guest in his house. You are so sorry for all the radio silence and you say it’s so complicated. “See, Ivan and Phil didn’t have the best relationship and I feel like you got stuck in the middle of some ancient history.”

  “Mary Kay, I’m gonna say what I always say. Don’t worry about me. Really.”

  You blow me a kiss but I hear him in your voice and it’s so much better in my house, no fucking Ivans clogging the pipes. I go down to my Whisper Room to get ready for supper (a.k.a. read up on Uncle Ivan) and here’s my conclusion, Mary Kay.

  He isn’t a life coach. He’s an aspiring cult leader.

  He claps and women stop talking and women pay him for his authoritative “coaching.” The man is the real fake deal. But let’s be honest, Mary Kay. He’s a bad guy, and this is the problem with the fucking Internet. Thanks to his publicist, women are watching his videos and every hour he has more followers and “converts” than he did the hour before. It doesn’t hurt that he’s not a bad-looking guy who enforces a one-strike rule—that’s so cult—and stares into the camera and tells women what they want to hear, what we all want to hear: You deserve better.

  No, Ivan. Most people are pretty shitty and they don’t deserve better and I wish RIP Phil would come back from the dead so that I could tell him that I get it, man. If this was my brother—God help me—even half brother, I would’ve been popping pills and singing about sharks, too.

  Ivan’s also an Instagram junkie—women who love guys like Ivan also love Instagram—and here’s a brand-new post, a photo of a vintage BMW in his parents’ garage at their summer home in Manzanita. The caption is sexist, directed at you: Good to be home, baby. Missed you.

  You are not a car and he went to Yale and is there anything worse than a forty-nine-year-old man still identifying by the college that accepted him before he could legally buy beer? Ivan isn’t famous-famous (yet). He’s not John Fucking Stamos. Three years ago, he was flying from one self-made bubble to another, speaking to “crowds”—trick photography—of women who then swarmed him in the lobby bars of various Marriotts all over the country. And this year, even before your husband died, Ivan has hit his fucking stride and the lie is coming true.

  A guy couldn’t so easily become an Ivan twenty years ago—fuck you, Internet; fuck you, images—and I put on your favorite black sweater and I can do this. Your brother-in-law didn’t invent the snake oil game and I can make nice with him.

  And if not I can… well, no, I can’t.

  I turn the corner on the trail and Ivan is on your deck, dumping charcoal into the grill. I hoist my bottle of Bainbridge vodka and he waves his tongs, longer than my bottle, and he stares at my vodka. “Wow,” he says. “Hard stuff on a school night. Yikes. You don’t see a lot of the hard stuff in wine country.” We’re not in wine country and you like vodka and it says BAINBRIDGE on the bottle. “I don’t drink it. It’s like they say, perfume going in, sewage going out.”

  It takes a lot for me to punch someone with an actually, but I do it now. “Actually, Ivan, that’s what they say that about champagne. Not vodka.”

  He doesn’t cop to being wrong even though he was wrong and he sighs. “When did you say you moved here?”

  “I didn’t.” Pause for dramatic effect. “A few months ago.”

  He wants to ask more but here you come in a Red Bed red sundress and I shrug, affable houseguest, changing the subject, and you keep your distance from me but Ivan watches, assessing our body language like the unlicensed pervert that he is. You pour wine and Nomi puts a cheese board in the middle of the table and Ivan starts telling some long, boring you-had-to-be-there story about the time you and him and your rat had an olive-eating contest and Ivan nods at me. “Go ahead, Joe. Have an olive.”

  This isn’t your style. I’ve watched your sitcom and I know you. You’re not a foodie. You binge on Tostitos in bed and you let the frost bite your salmon and I pick up a piece of white cheese. “This is quite a charcuterie board.”

  “Nicely done,” he says, clapping like this is NA. “A lot of people can’t pronounce that word…” As if it’s surprising that I can. “Do you not like olives, Joe?”

  I hate olives, but I pop one in my mouth—I belong with you—and my body recoils and you’re all laughing at me. He hands me a napkin. “Just spit it out. You do you, Joe.”

  You bite your lip and sip more wine and Nomi opens her Columbine and she’s telling Uncle Ivan about the book, and Ivan knows Dylan Klebold’s mother, he met her at a publishing lunch at a restaurant and he loves the resy app—Resy isn’t a word, you prick—and he shows us an email confirmation that begins with empty validation: You’re popular.

  I know you’re just as disgusted as me and I laugh. “Imagine taking that personally.”

  You don’t laugh—you can’t, our love is a secret—and Ivan puts his phone away and Nomi jumps out of her chair—she has to pee and she says so, the way girls her age do—and now it’s just us. Adults. “So,” Ivan says, as if he’s your father and I want to take you to the prom. “Emmy tells me you’re a volunteer?”

  He was too happy to use the word volunteer, so I tell him about my book business and he’s Tom Brokaw and I’m the terrorist and he slaps me on the back. “Don’t be so self-conscious, guy.”

  I’m not self-conscious but I remain calm. He says he was thinking about writing a book—aren’t we all, Ivan—but opted to go with a website instead. Yes, Ivan, because you could never write a fucking book and you are drinking too much, too fast, and you praise the olives and ask where he got them—YOU DON’T FUCKING CARE ABOUT OLIVES AND YOU DON’T EVEN LIKE THEM—and you wash down those pungent things with wine.

  “Sorry,” you say. “I get these waves… I can’t believe Phil is gone.”

  That’s more like it, Mary Kay. You don’t need to please this man and compliment his fucking cheese board. You just lost your husband.

  He nods. “There are gonna be waves, Emmy. Ride them. Stay strong.”

  He says this like it’s a grand fucking insight and he flashes his put-me-on-TV eyes at me again. “So, Joe, what’s your take on all this?”

  I don’t have a hot take on your life because you’re a human, not an issue. “I think it’s been a really rough couple of weeks on the family…”

  Meaning the family that Ivan is not a fucking part of, and Nomi opens the screen door and looks around the table. “Wait,” she says. “Mom, did you tell him?”

  You rub your forehead. “Nomi…”

  “
Uncle Ivan, you know Mom and Dad were gonna get divorced, right?”

  Ivan frowns. “No? Emmy, is this true?”

  You cough. “Nomi, it’s a little more complicated than that. Let’s not get into it, okay?”

  “Why?” she says. “I mean he was sleeping on the couch for like two weeks, right?”

  I should have stayed home and you slam a plate and march into the house and order Nomi to follow you and Ivan motions for me to follow him. “Joe, do you eat lamb?”

  I shake my head no and he wants to know if it’s for political reasons and I laugh him off. “I just don’t like the taste.”

  He lays his lamb shanks on the grill and inside, you and the Meerkat are screaming and I can only hear bits—she says you broke his heart, you say he wanted to leave you—and Ivan closes the lid on the grill.

  “So,” he says. “You never met my brother, is that right?”

  I nod. He opens the lid of the grill and flips a helpless lamb and I want to flip him. “That’s a shame,” he says. “He wasn’t perfect… but he was a good guy. Emmy and Nomi, they were everything to him…” Not true. “Joe,” he says. “I don’t want to pry…” Liar. “But what exactly is your relationship with Mary Kay?”

  “Ivan, look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I live around the corner, things were bad… you can imagine how bad, Nomi finding him… Mary Kay just reeling.”

  A normal person would let the guilt bomb hit him but Ivan just flips his shanks. “It must be hard for you right now… your girlfriend feeling so guilty about cheating on her husband…”