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It’s been a few minutes since you walked in on every mother’s worst nightmare and the Centipede is curled up in a ball on the sofa and she is screaming—He went after me—and you are screaming—I can’t take this—and you are in the game too now but your control pad is compromised because this is too fucking much. You defend me—Nomi, why are you saying this?—and you defend her—Joe, don’t say anything right now—and I abide and the Centipede cries and you cross your arms. “Okay,” you say. “Everyone needs to take it down a notch.”
The Centipede looks up at you like she wants to be hugged and you don’t hug your daughter. You don’t run to the sofa and hold her. You don’t believe her and you don’t know about Shortus and I can’t be the one to tell you that she’s projecting and she’s in a bad place right now—I don’t love her and she knows it—and she wants you to hate me and you don’t want to hate me and she picks up her can of spiked seltzer but the well has finally run dry. She slams the can on the table.
“Mom,” she says. “Can we please leave already?”
There is only one player in the game and it’s you. You fold your arms. “Nomi, honey, please stop crying. We’re not leaving this house. Not like this.”
There’s a foolproof way to make anyone cry: Tell them to stop. She’s bawling again now and I say your name and you growl at me—I said stay out of it—and then you growl at her. “Why the hell are you doing this? Why do you make things up?”
“Making this up? Mom, I forgot my phone and I came home and you saw him trying to kiss me. Are you blind?”
Your heart is beating so fast that I can feel it in my heart and your nostrils flare like RIP Melanda’s and you say it again. “Nomi, why are you making this up?”
She rubs her eyes. Part Meerkat. Part Centipede. “Mom. He kissed me.”
“I didn’t!”
You don’t look at me. You look at her. “Nomi…”
“Wow,” she says. “You believe him. Nice, Mom. Real nice.”
You tell her that you believe you. You trust your gut and you don’t think I would do that—I wouldn’t, but Seamus did, and your child needs you but you don’t know what I know—and you are blaming the victim, warning her about the danger of making false accusations and she springs off the sofa and the Meerkat is possessed by a barefoot Centipede. She throws her empty can at the wall and calls you a sicko because what kind of woman believes her fucking boy toy over her daughter? You storm by me and I don’t exist. Not right now. This is your Family Feud and I am powerless, locked out of the arcade, and you lash out at her. “Do not speak to me like that. We have to be honest.”
“Oh?” she snaps. “You want me to be honest? Well, Mom, honestly I think you’re a fucking sham. Most women believe all women and all you ever do is make excuses for every single piece-of-shit guy you drag into my life.”
“Stop it, Nomi.”
“Why? He’s dead. Dad’s dead!”
This is why we didn’t see the Centipede inside the Meerkat, because the Meerkat is like me, she stored all her pain deep inside where nobody could see it. You do that for eighteen years, you get good at it and this chasm was always here, it’s the reason RIP Phil was Philin’ the blues every night. The Meerkat hits below the belt—You feel sorry for yourself because you’re a mother and for that you can fuck off—and you hit back—You make it impossible to be your mother because you talk to me about nothing—and I sit on the sofa and all I wanted to do was make you happy and look at you now. You’re crying and she’s crying and you tell her it’s not your fault that he’s dead and you are right but she blasts you—Like hell it isn’t! You fucked his brother!—and you respond to the wrong part of what she said—Don’t talk that way about me—and you don’t look at me because you’re ashamed and there is no shame in our love and I want you to know it but I can’t go where you go, into your nest with your daughter. I am scared for our family and I’m supposed to be the father, the man of this house, but that’s a patriarchal thought and RIP Melanda would be right to tell me that it’s not about me.
It isn’t. I moved here to be good. I was good. I didn’t kill your cheating husband. I didn’t kill your lying best friend and I didn’t kill Seamus, the rapist. But I did make a mistake. I wanted to believe that everyone is like us, good, and in that way, I was naïve. You were too, Mary Kay. Your daughter says that you ruined her life and that makes you cry and I can’t hold you, I can’t go to you and you blow your nose on your sleeve and you won’t allow yourself to look at me, to take the love that you so desperately need. Nomi is crying too.
“Nomi,” you say. “Why do you… why do you hate me so much?”
You are mother and daughter. You stop crying and so she stops crying and I remain where I am, wishing I had turned off Family Feud instead of muting it when I heard you come in.
She picks at the hem of her little shirt. “Well, you don’t care about me.”
“Honey, how can you say that? You’re all I care about. I love you. I see you.”
The Meerkat is so focused on you that she doesn’t point at me to say that you’re protecting me and this is good, I hope. This is healing. “You don’t see me. You’re blind.”
“Nomi.”
“What do you think I was doing all the time?”
“All the time… When do you mean? What do you mean?”
I remember a line from Veep, when the tall guy running for president gets his followers to chant: When are you from? When are you from? I fight tears—it’s not my place to cry, that’s the last thing you need—and the Veep man was right. We don’t come from places. We come from time. From traumatic moments that cannot be undone.
“Mom,” she says. “Why do you think I got all those UTIs?”
“Nomi, no.”
“Mom,” she says. “I read Columbine for you. I thought eventually you would force me to go to some shrink… and maybe if I talked to some shrink…”
“No.”
“He told me that you knew. He said moms know it all. And you didn’t.”
You clamp your hands over your ears like a child and I know it hurts. That bastard raped your daughter and you cry as if you are the one who got hurt because you hurt right now but she wants you to let her cry and she’s mad at you for that, screaming that it was your fault, that you let Uncle Seamus into your house, that you missed every sign that a good mother would see. I want to tell her to stop but how do you tell a teenage girl to stop talking when she’s saying what she needs to say?
She slaps you across the face and you hold your cheek in your hand and that was too much but at the same time the fucking two of you need to learn once and for all that life is what happens right now, not what happened years ago and cannot be undone.
I say her name, like a stepfather. “Nomi.”
She stops moving and Centipedes don’t do that. They don’t stop. You tell her to go downstairs where the two of you can talk in private and you think I don’t love you anymore and it’s the opposite, Mary Kay. I never loved you more. This is it, this is our Empathy Bordello and it’s one thing to dream about it but it’s another thing to live in it.
And you can’t do it right now. I feel it slipping away—New York in November, Thanksgiving—and I don’t know how to grab it because you don’t know that I know about New York in November, Thanksgiving. You rub your face—it stings where she hit you—and she pats her hand—it too stings—but you didn’t like that and you huff. “So that it, then, huh? You blame me for everything, but I got news, honey…” Don’t do it, Mary Kay. “The one you should blame for this whole fucking mess is your father.”
The Centipede is breathing fire. “Stop it, Mom. Stop it.”
“He was supposed to protect you.”
“I said stop it.”
“Nomi, do you know why your Auntie Melanda really moved? Do you?”
No, Mary Kay. Don’t go there. She thinks Melanda loves her deep down and kids need that and do I barge in? Am I allowed? You cluck. “Well,
I’m done protecting your rock ’n’ roll father who never did anything wrong and your perfect little miss feminist aunt.”
No, Mary Kay. They’re gone. You know you should let them rest in peace but you feel so guilty about missing what happened with Seamus and you want her to feel sorry for you. I know this game, I do.
“Well,” you say. “At some point, we all learn that our parents are flawed. Your auntie Melanda was having an affair with your father, okay? Your father was sleeping with my best friend. So before you go putting them both on pedestals… well, that’s what your beloved father and your beloved aunt did to me.”
She says nothing. You say nothing. You know you made a mistake and you are better than this, smarter than this, and I know that being a mother is the hardest job in the world—RIP Love quit too—but the Meerkat didn’t need that right now and you’re about to apologize—I see it your eyes—but she throws a book at you. A Murakami and you swerve and the book hits the wall and she screams. “I am the child, Mom. Me.”
You make earmuffs again and my mother did that too when she was in the weeds, when she got home from work and I was on the floor watching TV and I would look up and say hi and she would wave, no eye contact, I’m beat, Joe. I’m beat.
I know where you are. I see you in your mind, kicking yourself. You never ripped up Columbine and dragged her to a therapist and you made nice to Seamus and this is why you cry. The guilt. You want the Meerkat to take care of you and she wants you to take care of her and you’re crying, she’s crying, and you both cry like sharks inside of sharks, deprived of fresh air, freedom. You put your hands on Nomi’s shoulders and she leans her head into yours and your foreheads are touching. “Nomi, honey, don’t worry. I’m not mad at you.”
That was the wrong thing to say and I know it and Nomi knows it and she grabs your shoulders and my floors are hardwood. Shiny. You twist like spaghetti and she hurls you at the wall and your foot slips—socks—and I’m too slow. I’m too late. You tumble down the stairs and the Meerkat screams and I freeze up inside, outside.
I picture the police report that’s coming.
Murder Weapon: Socks.
No. There is no murder and you are. Not. Dead. Time is slow and fast and fast and slow and Nomi is still screaming and of course she is screaming. She came home to find her father dead on the floor and now her mother is out cold—Are you dead? You can’t be dead—and Nomi shrieks—Mommy!—and it’s unnatural for a child to see one parent out cold on the floor, let alone two. Your body is in our basement—no, you’re not a body, you’re a woman, my woman, and I failed to protect you and my heart is in flames and you’re the love of my life and you’re the love of our life and Nomi clamps her hands on the banisters. She’s on her way down the stairs but every step is ten miles long and why are there so many fucking steps?
She stops on the second-to-last step. “She’s not moving.”
I want to rip Nomi’s heart out of her chest—this is too much for her, it is—and I want to rip mine out too—this is too much for me, it is.
She takes one step closer and stands over you. She’s afraid to touch you. Afraid to feel your hand for a pulse. “Omigod,” she says, and she is wailing and I know that kind of warbling sound. She thinks she killed you. She thinks the pain is going to kill her and she thinks there is less love for her in this world than there was forty seconds ago.
I lean over your body and hold your wrist in my hand. Your heart is beating.
“Nomi,” I say. “She’s alive.”
I take a deep breath, an end-of-the-book kind of breath, the last-book-the-author-wrote-before-she-died kind of breath. “I’m calling 911.”
Nomi nods. But she can’t speak. Not right now. She’s a Meerkat again, trembling and scared. The operator picks up and asks me about my emergency and Nomi screams—I don’t think she’s breathing anymore!—and the operator is sending an ambulance and they will save you, Mary Kay. They have to save you. Not just for me, not just for you, but for Nomi.
She thinks this is her fault and you have to survive so that you can wake up and tell her what she needs to hear, that this is not her fault. You try to love. You try to be good. But ultimately, you wear socks on hardwood floors and Ivan was right. We deserve better, all three of us. Your lips move and Nomi’s desperation transforms into hope and she feels the pulse on your wrist and looks up at me. “She’s alive.”
I stay on the phone—I am the adult—and I give my address—our address—and I follow their orders—don’t move her—and I say all the right things to your daughter—It’s okay, Nomi, she’s gonna be okay—and I hold your hand and whisper all the right things to you as well. You are lost at sea—See the boats go sailing—and my voice is your lighthouse. But I can’t say everything I want to say and I can’t give you my full, undivided attention. Your Meerkat is too close.
It’s not what Nomi said—She’s alive—it’s what she didn’t say—Thank God she’s alive—and was she… did she want you to be gone? Once I saw her push Luscious off an end table. He landed on his feet but you…
I know, Mary Kay. This is no time for doubts. When you wake up—and you will wake up—it’s gonna be you and me against the world. I promise. Your eyelids flutter, I think, I hope—I wish we were alone—and I stroke your hair and say it all out loud. “I love you, Mary Kay. You fell, I know, but now you’re gonna get better. I’m gonna take care of you every day, I promise. You got me, you’re my love. I’m here.”
The Meerkat is a Centipede. Quiet.
Epilogue
I left America. I had to. How much tragedy can a person bear? Okay, so I didn’t cross the border, but my new home feels like another country. I live in Florida now, smack dab in the center, close to the Kingdom, yeah, but I’m not close as in Closer. I can pretend it doesn’t exist. I am alone. Safe. And I get it now. I’m better off on the wrong side of the tracks. You were special, Mary Kay. You saw something in me. But in the end, you turned out to be like my past coastal elite loves, too tangled up in your blue roots to pave a new road with me. No more hackneyed American dreams of a love that conquers all for this Florida man.
The shop is closed, as they say, and I turn on the lights in the Empathy Bordello. It’s too dark and it’s too bright and I’m trying to move on. Last night I watched a documentary about RIP Sam Cooke—he gets me—and I wanted to know more about his music but it was mostly just speculation about his murder, as if that’s all that matters. I am so sick of this obsession with death, Mary Kay. What about what we do with our lives? Licious meows—his brothers are back on Bainbridge—and you were right. He is the best cat, a baffled king on a perpetual victory march, as if he always just composed “Hallelujah” and if you were here, you would say that every suffix needs a prefix and I miss you, Mary Kay.
I do.
I wanted to build a life with you and I did everything right. I was a good man. I volunteered at the library. I opened my heart to you and I believed that we could be happy in Cedar Cove. But, like so many Sassy American women who trust their feelings, you spoke your truth and got thrown down the stairs. My heart is broken. Permanently.
I can’t talk to you so I play a Sam Cooke song, the one where he’s sad about a woman who left him. She broke his heart—she stayed out, she stayed out all night—and he begs her to come home. He offers his forgiveness. You can do that when the person you love is alive. You got pushed. Life does that to us. But you lost your footing and fell down the stairs because you were wearing socks—I warned you—and now you’re in a coma and you can’t burst into the Bordello to tell me you regret leaving, leaving me behind. You’re like every woman I ever loved. You didn’t walk away. You didn’t stay out all night. You left the fucking planet.
You wanted this Bordello before you ever met me and I wanted us to have Christmas together and leave the lights up all year and now you can’t even see our jukebox. You can’t do the most important thing we do as people: evolve. Apologize to your child for being human, for being a mother, for l
etting empathy make you go blind.
I look at my phone just to make sure it’s real and it is: They’re pulling the plug tomorrow. Thought you should know.
Nomi didn’t even call to tell me about you—she texted—and I flip the switch on the pink neon Open sign in my bookstore, where I serve Cocktails & Dreams alone. You didn’t help me build the Bordello and I can’t blame Nomi for being cold and I know she’ll be fine in the long run. She’s not one for empathy—I still see her hovering over you, I still hear those words, she’s alive—and it’s not her fault, Mary Kay. She’s moving on with her life, studying our fucked-up environment at NYU and young, wounded female victims turned sociopaths thrive in New York City and I should know.
I’ve been hurt by more than a few of them.
I try to stay upbeat. There are people out there who do love me. Ethan might visit—but he would bring Blythe—and here I go again, replaying it all in my head. I loved you like no other. The EMTs arrived and they gave me hope. The United States Injustice System cooperated this time around—cause of injury: accident—and there was no biased “investigation,” no online crazies trying to blame me for your fall. I tried to be the guy with a girlfriend in a coma—we have that book in stock at the Bordello—and I was dutiful. I was there. But every time I went to get a soda I came back to find one of your Friends in my chair by your bed. Erin disappeared and Fecal Eyes swept in with her multigenerational family of lookie-loos and I know you wouldn’t want me sitting there with that woman who brought out the worst in us.
I loved you. But my love wasn’t enough to save you. Now you sleep in a mechanical bed while a machine does all the heavy lifting. I was the man of your dreams—I didn’t think someone like you existed—and you always wanted to dance with somebody (who loves you). And I did love you and we did dance. But from the moment we met, we were stuck in the middle of the circle. Your Friends and family were holding us hostage every step of the way because they didn’t want you to be happy. And look how that worked out for them.
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