You Love Me

by Caroline Kepnes

  “Whoa, Ivan. That’s not what’s going on.”

  “Relax,” he says. “I’m not here to judge. I see the guilt eating you alive…”

  I never said I felt guilty and again he flips a little chunk of dead lamb and I miss the silence of our lambs and I can’t tell if you and Nomi are fighting or making up and he calls me your latest adoptee, another orphan from the library, and I am not your project and we take care of each other and you are crying and the Meerkat is crying and I want to go inside and help you but I can’t. Ivan flings innocent dead lamb parts onto a platter. He is the shark inside Phil’s shark circling, finding someone new, me. “I’m gonna make this easy,” he says with a smile. “We’re gonna eat lamb. You don’t like lamb. Why don’t you call it a night?”

  * * *

  Two days later, and I still haven’t heard from you.

  My cats are all over me. They feel my pain and I feel your pain too. You’re in mourning. You and Nomi need to heal and our love is a secret and my hatred of Ivan is a secret—I wouldn’t burden you with my opinions right now—but time is passing. You are nesting with another man and I’m alone. Oliver went back to L.A. to see Minka and he’s bugging me about David LaChapelle’s Jesus Is My Homeboy, which costs thirty-five thousand dollars. I buy it—ouch—and he says he’ll see me on Menopause Island soon, but when will I see you?

  Ivan is staying in your house and luring you into his cult and I can’t blame you for it because you lost your fucking husband and your daughter discovered her own father on the floor.

  Dead.

  You are the two most vulnerable women in the world and men like Ivan… this is what they do. They hunt for women like you. Nomi shares too many pictures of Denver, the city that Ivan calls home, and you don’t call me. You just send me questions via text and I hear Ivan’s voice in your voice.

  You, infected by Ivan: Question. How did you get into rare books?

  Me: I worked in a bookstore in New York. My mentor was amazing. It takes years to build contacts and learn how to read a book, to spot a fake. My eyes are permanently tired!

  You say nothing. You don’t laugh at my joke. But read between the lines, Mary Kay. I worked for my position in this world. I didn’t buy my way in like some people.

  You, infected by Ivan: Question. How come you don’t have a website?

  I placate you—My business is purely organic, people tell people about me—and you are turning cold on me—Thanks—and you’re sharing photographs of Ivan’s homemade duck-fat fries and your mind is turning to duck fat and of course he knows how to cook, Mary Kay. All sleazy bastards learn a few dishes to seem like husband material and you are not that woman who lives online but here you are on Instagram, defiling your non-brand brand and talking about… him.

  You’re not going crazy. You’re going sane. @IvanKing #Wordsof Wisdom

  You’re not going sane. You’re going crazy. Nomi is too:

  Denver here I come! #GoingSane

  That’s a big decision—she belongs in New York—and I should not find out about big decisions in our family-in-the-making on Instagram.

  Oliver interrupts me with a DM: Instagram is bad for your mental health. FYI.

  He shouldn’t know that I’m online but he hacked my account and changed my settings and I change my password—fuck you, Oliver—and I let two hours pass, as if I’m some fucking child with overbearing paranoid parents.

  I go back on Instagram and Ivan’s been busy. There’s a picture of the three of you in brand-new matching baseball caps on the ferry to Seattle.

  Bye-bye, feeling caps. Hello, thinking caps. #FamilyisEverything

  I grab my hat—fuck you, Ivan—and head out my door. Family is everything, Mary Kay. But he’s not your family. I am. And it’s time I helped you remember that.

  35

  I walk to Pegasus. It’s a free country, it’s a small island, so I keep strolling, as people do sometimes. I turn onto your street and then into your yard—we’re Friends, we pop by—and I enter through the side door—you didn’t lock it, tsk-tsk—and I toss my coffee cup into your recycling bin with all the other Pegasus cups and I walk upstairs and go into your bedroom. I take a deep breath. Okay. This is good news. You’re not sleeping with Ivan. I would smell him.

  But there’s something you’re not telling me and I pick up one of your trash bags. My phone buzzes and it’s an electric shock to my nervous system—leave me alone, Oliver—but it’s not Oliver. It’s fucking Shortus—wanna go for a run?—and no, you asshole, I don’t want to go for a run. I tell him I already went for a run today and he calls me a pussy and I shove my phone back into my pocket and pick up a trash bag. This one isn’t soft like the others because this one is full of journals. It’s time for me to learn about what you really think of Ivan and I lie on your bed. There are so fucking many of them and it’s mostly you beating yourself up about not being a good mother, not being a good wife, wishing Melanda would find someone, wishing you had left when you had the chance. I can’t sit here all day and you’re a fox, you’re wily, so I pick up a yellowing notepad of grocery lists and errands. My heart is beating. I turn the pages. And sure enough, twenty-three pages into your errand book, I find the real diary, the one that doesn’t have a fucking sunset on the cover. The one where you use a pencil instead of a pen.

  -Nomi ballet slippers?

  -Phil therapist or couples therapist

  -dry cleaning

  Oh god I am going to hell and it will be an olive garden only not a restaurant. Just olives. Something shifted. He gave me an olive… and I slept with him. Am I a monster? I just feel so drawn to him and he’s so together and oh God I am a monster. I want him. But you can’t do this in life. You can’t leave your husband for his brother but they’re half brothers and oh god what is wrong with me? I want olives. I want Ivan.

  -yams, salmon, chips, diet coke

  Nothing was wrong with you, Mary Kay. You were young, married to an unstable man.

  Two days later, you used a sharper pencil, and my eyes thank you for that.

  -return ballet slippers

  -DRY CLEANING

  -pickles, frozen pizza, that mac and cheese thing that Nomi likes

  Well that’s that. Big news! I’m not good enough for Ivan. HAHA shock of the century right? Yep I threw myself at him, so smart, so smart MK! And he told me that it could never work out and yep, go to the head of the class you whore. Well done. And now… if Phil ever found out… well, good job, me. I sure can pick ’em.

  -haircut?

  My heart hurts for RIP Phil and I close your secret diary. So this is why Ivan has a hold over you. You slept with him. But it doesn’t matter what you did. You were young. We all were once upon a time.

  I leave your bed and I open your computer—it’s old and big and the password is predictable—LADYMARYKAY—and I open your email. On the fourth day of every month for the last several years, you have written to him:

  Dear Ivan,

  Someday we will pay you back. I know how that sounds. But I mean it.

  Love,

  MK

  And on the fifth day of every month, Ivan replies to you:

  Dear Mary Kay,

  We’re family. I’m happy to help.

  Love, Ivan

  I dive into the financial mess of your life and Phil blew his royalties and his trust fund—he didn’t like to work—but Ivan was smart. Straight edge. Their parents cut them both off and you and your rat were regulars at the Bank of Ivan and the house really isn’t yours. It’s his name on the mortgage.

  Your house smells like dead lilies and Ivan’s sweat and my phone buzzes and I want it to be you but it’s Oliver: Watching you, my friend. Not crazy about what I see…

  * * *

  Days pass and you get worse and you really are in a cult. I go to Pegasus early in the morning and I wait for you—I am reading The Girls and I can’t wait to say the word CULT to you—and eventually you enter the coffee shop. But you aren’t happy to see me.
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  “Joe, I’m in kind of a rush.”

  I close my book. “I get it,” I say. “But did you ever read this?”

  You shake your head no and you don’t ask about me or my fucking cats and it’s like you don’t even hear the Bob Dylan playing in the background. You just point at the counter. “I really do have to go… I know you probably want to talk but I just…”

  “I get it.”

  “We have company and it’s crazy at home.”

  That’s the right word, Mary Kay: crazy.

  “Oh hey,” I said. “Superquick… how’s Nomi? I just hope she’s getting through this okay. It’s a rough go those first few weeks…”

  I already know that Nomi is in trouble. She told everyone on Instagram that she’s taking a fucking gap year and putting NYU on hold to intern for Uncle Ivan in Denver. The hashtag made me sick: #ListenToYourHead

  But you don’t tell me about Nomi’s bad decision. You barely look me in the eye. “That’s sweet of you,” you say. “And I promise, we’re good. Hanging in. Everything is under control.”

  Yes, Mary Kay. Ivan is controlling you and he’s controlling the Meerkat and you buy three lattes—none for me—and you leave with a sexless wave—Bye, Joe!—and that shark is moving fast and the Meerkat is adrift. Technically, she’s an “adult,” but she’s a young eighteen and she needs someone to tell her that you don’t make life decisions when you’re in mourning. The iPhone killed romance and turned us all into lazy, nasty stalkers and now Ivan the iMan is killing us.

  * * *

  Three days later, it’s like you’ve gone to the dark side. I really don’t exist to you. I don’t go outside. Oliver’s so “worried” about me that he sent me a fucking cheesecake via Postmates, as if one cheesecake makes up for the thousands of dollars I’ve spent on him.

  I’ve been playing “Hallelujah” on repeat, trying to hate you, trying to think of you as the woman who fucked your husband right in front of me, a semireformed brother fucker who didn’t catch on when her best friend was pleasuring her husband. I’m trying to accept that something about those men gets to you. Your rat dies and you immediately glom onto his brother. You have been brainwashed and I know that. I do. But I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop loving you.

  So I send you a text: hi

  You send me a text: hi

  I send you another text: is it bad if I say I miss you?

  You don’t answer me and eleven long minutes go by—oh, fuck you, clock—and I am the stupidest man on the planet and maybe I should kill your half brother-in-law because a man as stupid as me deserves to rot in prison for being stupid.

  And then there is a knock on my door and it’s you.

  “Hello.” You’re wearing a baggy dress I’ve never seen and it’s cult white.

  “Hi,” I say. “Come on in.”

  You enter in silence and you don’t notice the music and you don’t smile your foxy smile and you don’t cry your foxy tears. You are dead-eyed. You’re here but I don’t know who you are and you won’t sit on my Red Bed sofa and now your lips are moving. I follow your gaze.

  “Mary Kay, are you… are you counting the red stuff?”

  “Well, it is a lot of red, Joe. Is this meant to turn your house into a Red Bed?”

  Yes. “No, I just like red.”

  You nod. You’re still in there and you know when I’m lying and you tell me this says a lot about me and it does. But then you purse your lips. “You can’t make the world red. This was really confrontational of you, Joe. And overbearing.”

  “Whoa,” I say. “Where is this coming from?”

  You shrug. And I know where this is coming from. You listened to Ivan’s take on us. “Look,” I say. “I know you’re going through hell, but come on. It’s me. I love you.”

  You close your eyes. “Don’t say that you love me, Joe. That’s just a physical sensation. It’s just a feeling.”

  I recognize that you are in a cult and it is not your fault. The cult showed up on your doorstep and moved into your fucking house and you are in debt to the leader of the cult. But you’re in there, somewhere, and I have to try and reach you. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Mary Kay, but how’s that Kool-Aid?”

  “Excuse me?”

  And off you go, defending that monster who’s just looking out for you and I never should have brought him into this and you’re hiding from me by talking about him. You tell me that you know I didn’t mean to take advantage of you and I am on my feet.

  “I didn’t take advantage of you, Mary Kay.”

  “Oh no? You didn’t hang around my house knowing that I was weak, that my husband just died? You didn’t pop by with toilet paper and wait for everyone to leave and you didn’t prevent me from being alone so that I could take charge of my feelings and put my thinking cap on? You didn’t do that? None of it?”

  “Mary Kay…”

  “Because the way I see it…” I as in Ivan and he is worse than RIP Steve Jobs, hell-bent on owning the world’s most important pronoun, the one that makes you you. “Well, Joe…” You never talk like this. “I did not come here to fight with you…” Yes you did. “I did not come here to explain myself to you…” Yes you did. “I came here to hold you accountable for your behavior, your behavior that was very harmful to me, your behavior that, whether or not you intended it, did drive me off course.”

  The Whisper Room is right downstairs and you are in a cult and you’re not eating enough—he’s starving you, it’s part of the brainwashing—and I want to keep you, save you. I want to wrap my arms around you and you stand.

  “I’m not obligated to listen to what you have to say to me because it’s not my job to take care of you…” Yes it is. We take care of each other. “And yes, I have feelings for you… but you can’t trust your feelings.”

  “Mary Kay, do you hear yourself? This isn’t you. This is him.”

  “And you don’t like him.”

  I won’t lie to you and I can’t lie to you so I don’t say a word. You look down at your white cult dress. “Well,” you say. “I will leave you to process your emotions and do for you what you did not do for me. I will give you the space to feel your feelings about the dissolution of this relationship.”

  “Mary Kay, what are you trying to say?”

  I know damn well what you are trying to say but maybe if I force you to say it, you will change your mind. “You know what I’m saying.”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t.”

  You ignore one of my cats when he marks you as his territory and you tense up on me, on my cats, our cats. “It’s over, Joe.”

  “So you want to break up with me.”

  “No. People have to be in a serious relationship in order to break up…” We were serious to me. We are serious to me. “I was in a fog…” You are in the fog right now. “And Phil might be alive if you and I hadn’t been running around…” You make it sound like I grew the fucking poppy seeds and you wipe away a tear and the fog thickens. You shiver when I take a step toward you and your tear ducts go into lockdown. “No,” you say. “It’s over.”

  Ivan won your head. He reconfigured your heart. I can’t give up. I tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way and I remind you of how long we’ve known each other, how hard we worked to get here, and you huff. “Yeah,” you say, and you’re not Ivan’s puppet and I wish you were but no, this is you, the woman I know. “You said it, Joe. And we really did fuck up. But I don’t want to hash it out with you.” You purse your lips. “And there’s no point…”

  I step toward you and you step back. “I’m moving,” you say.

  “You’re what?” No no no no no.

  “We put the house on the market.”

  NO NO NO NO NO. Your insanity is supposed to be temporary. “Mary Kay, come on. Slow down a minute. You can’t tell me you want to move away. Not with him.”

  “I just did tell you.”

  “Hang on a minute. This feels a little unfair, Mary Kay. I lov
e you. You know that. You said it.”

  And now finally you do meet my eyes. “I told you, Joe. That day never happened.”

  That was the best day of my life—I have the Polaroids to prove it—and you cut me off when I try to reason with you. “I’d appreciate it if you would respect my feelings and stay away.” You take my doorknob in your hand. You squeeze. “Goodbye, Joe. Good luck.”

  You close my door—you don’t slam it—and I walk to the window and I wait for you to look back—the woman always looks back at the one she loves—but you don’t do it, Mary Kay. You don’t love me anymore.

  36

  It’s quiet in the Whisper Room and in the great tradition of so many authors on this island, I open Microsoft Word and I open Chrome because the old adages are true: Write what you know and know thy enemy, especially if you’re going to write about him.

  I open my mind—ouch—and watch a video of one of Ivan’s newest female converts—possibly a paid actor, actually let’s go with probably—and she’s wearing her thinking cap and she is energized. “Ivan should be the biggest life coach on the planet,” she says. “He changed everything for me. No more pop music, no more Air Supply when I’m PMSing, and no more sappy movies. Ivan taught me to stop feeling my feelings and start leading with my mind.”

  I dig up Ivan’s bio on his website and there he is with his wife and her kids—second marriage—and her name is Alisa and she’s a mousy brunette who tends to everything at home. She is rigid. She wears a sweater set. She’s from another time and she’s on Facebook—of course—and she’s “busy” raising their sons… who are away at college. None of these people showed up at Phil’s funeral and Ivan and Alisa met in grad school—bite me—and the quote at the top of her profile would make RIP Melanda feel sick: “Stop your feelings before they stop you.”—Ivan King, my husband

  Ivan really wanted his new career to happen, and at some point, an intelligent woman must have gotten on his nerves and told him to back the fuck off.