by Rachel Hulin
3. Hungry (low blood sugar = hangry = temporary meanness)
4. Self-loathing
5. Hormones
6. Youth
I bet Dad is 1 and 4.
In Vera’s case—5 and 6.
Mom is clearly 3.
.
Matilda,
God, that sounds about right.
You know what I read today? That our daydreams of the future (which are generally quite rosy) are actually “memories” we make of the future, and they are, by definition, somewhat delusional.
.
Harry,
I feel I must counter that; I do think time exists on a different plane than we realize, and therefore our “memories of the future” actually shape our “knowledge of today.”
I need a working memory of the future, Harry. And maybe it’s Gary shaped. I just need to move forward with something. It’s OK if I don’t impress child-me and my memories of my future love life. Lord knows my expectations were all screwed up on that front, anyway.
I mean, divorces really are chic now. You can reinvent yourself halfway through, which god knows people need.
I had a chat the other day with a seventy-year-old in the nut section of Whole Foods about aging and omega-3s. I made sure to mention a few times how spry he seemed, how glowing his skin. He broke down the real shit for me:
35–45 early middle age
45–55 middle middle age
55–65 late middle age
65–75 early old age
75–85 middle old age
85–95 late old age
> 95 quite elderly
So we’re on the precipice.
It’s more slippery to be on the precipice out here in the country. If I’m not fighting to survive on a subway platform every single minute, time goes faster. I am going to slide right into middle middle before I know it.
.
Matilda,
That’s why it’s important to have children and families, I think. To stay young.
.
Harry,
If I ever have a baby I’m naming it Moon Wisdom Goodman.
NO! I’m going to have twins like you and me except not just half this time and name them:
COBALT AND SAFFRON. The best two colors. The only colors.
.
Matilda,
I read an article today on the train about a woman who was hit in the head with a wayward ceiling fan. She had a total brain reboot; essentially starting life over—she had zero memories, zero sense of how to interact with the world. Before her accident she had been a wild child, swilling booze and driving too fast and marrying young. And afterward she was tempered, quiet—and, of course, pretty naïve. She literally had to start over. Twenty years later she enrolled in college (for the second time).
Odd to see such a clear reminder of the fact that we’re all just a pile of cells and neurons, and if they are rearranged—well then, we change as well.
.
Harry,
Quite right.
You know what else?
John Wilkes Booth’s brother saved Abraham Lincoln’s son from sure death in a train accident.
Chills, right?
Robert Todd Lincoln. But it’s not like Robert went on to be president or anything. Maybe he was another Roger Clinton. God, don’t you just LOVE Roger Clinton? Even the thought of that guy makes me smile.
.
Matilda,
I’m going to find Vera and confront her.
.
Harry,
Really?
.
Matilda,
Do you think it will be a turn-off? Should I just give her space?
.
Matilda,
Helloooooo…where are you?
.
Harry,
I found Mom.
.
Matilda,
Really?? Where was she?!
.
Harry,
She was in the geranium section at her favorite greenhouse, the one halfway between home and Maine. I woke up yesterday at dawn and knew she was going to be there, as sure as I knew about that black Cabbage Patch doll named Maria.
The greenhouse she always made us stop at on our drive to camp—the one with the field of zinnias. The one that smells like rain-soaked dirt and growth and life and death and fish a little bit. (They have a sad koi pond in the middle with just a trickle of water. Not enough to be impressive, just to make you have to pee if you’re standing next to it.)
So I got in the car and went. I was there by 8 a.m.
The greenhouse lady was standing in the geranium section, too, next to a big stack of pots—green, like jade, with symbols on them that looked Asian.
Mom sort of spooked when I saw her but in an “oh that was inevitable” way. Like a kid when you catch them in hide-and-seek. They’re sort of relieved not to have to hide anymore?
She looked at me and kind of fluttered weakly and said, typically, “Oh…just one second, Matilda, I just have to go tinkle.”
And then she turned and fled to the bathroom.
Didn’t Mom spend our whole childhood having to pee? She said her pregnancy with us ruined her pelvic floor, but I guess she meant YOU, because I did not come out of her body. Because she is not my mother.
I’ll tell you this, Harry: It is as though Mom has died, in a way, to me. And yet I love her more than ever.
In the movie version of this recap, I would storm to the bathroom and slam open the door and cry “MOM!!!!” in an adolescent sob, but would be answered only by the sad flapping of the torn window dressing playing in the breeze of an open pane, with the squeal of hybrid car tires in the background.
In real life I stormed to the bathroom and slammed open the door and cried “MOM!!!!” in an adolescent sob that surprised me with its vibrato and feeling.
And Mom said, “One second, Matilda, I’m just finishing up here.”
It was a bathroom without stalls, so she said this to me from the actual toilet, which was low to the ground like a child’s.
So I looked at her at that moment, Harry—I looked at her and waited to be annoyed. I usually am—about everything. Why can’t she call tinkle pee like everyone else? Why can’t she find a bra with an underwire? Why can’t she be more proud of me?
So then she looks up from the child toilet (her knees are up high because the toilet’s so close to the floor) and she says:
“Matilda, I just want you to know that I love you and I’m so proud of you.”
And then I saw her for what she is. A lady who is doing her absolutely fucking best to love me. A lady who is scared, and who is trying very hard, a lady on a tiny toilet. Human, breakable, ridiculous.
A lady who did not give me her genetics after all. Her faults are not a personal insult to me, or tarot cards for my future. They are just regular person faults.
They are your faults, Harry, to be honest. The self-delusion and the fear. My future just broke wide open, Harry. Because I don’t belong to any of you, anymore.
Well, except for Dad.
Talking points:
“It was a long time ago, Matilda.”
“We made a decision to save our marriage and to make a family. And you came out of it, and it was such a gift.”
“Dad had a sex addiction, which is a real thing. He made a huge transgression. And I stood by him, even though he’s now forsaken me.”
“You and Harry were always so fond of each other, it just seemed like fate, that you were born on the same day, just to different mothers.”
“How could we let the baby be adopted by someone else? I never questioned that I was supposed to raise you.”
“I’m reminded of my failures as a mother every day—but I’ve never been lacking in love.”
“We gave you two everything, which is perhaps why you both have issues with entitlement, like the rest of your generation.” (!)
To which I replied: “Well, your generation of women just preten
ded they were men in the name of feminism, and took PRIDE in having latchkey kids, which simply left us feeling abandoned and also frustrated because there were no lipstick samples to raid!”
And then I said, “I love you, Mom. I was really scared when you had cancer.”
SO that’s it, Harry. You’re my half brother. Also, from Mom’s understanding, my real mother is kind of a crack whore somewhere. And I’m guessing not a Jew. Not even a little.
.
Matilda,
Wow. IS this true? My god. I’m totally shocked. I mean…are you OK? We’re not twins?
.
Harry,
Oh, quite. Isn’t it funny after all this that Mom and Dad are big liars, too? The BIGGEST. Harry, I just thought of something.
.
Matilda,
What?
.
Harry,
Maybe that barmaid name story was true. Remember? How you’re named after Dad’s favorite Beatle and I’m named after his favorite barmaid?
.
Matilda,
Jesus Christ.
.
Harry,
It’s OK, actually. My whole body is floating. I feel free, like I did right after I dropped the bucket on that horse. I don’t have to conform to anything, because I don’t belong to anything. I am a lone wolf. I can be bad. Lord knows my birth mother was. Who do you think she is? I guess we won’t find out until the sequel.
.
Matilda,
Is Mom OK?
.
Harry,
I think she’s in Maine somewhere. I don’t know. I found a lot of Passover wine in the basement here, Harry. Viscous, never spoils.
I wish you were here. Any Vera news?
.
Matilda,
I haven’t found her yet.
I did get some good news this morning, though. Seems unimportant now. But I’m a tenured professor. Set for life. I’ll have to live in the country forever, I suppose.
.
Harry,
But that’s amazing, Harry! It’s what you wanted!
.
Matilda,
Yes, it is.
.
Harry,
I found some Willa Cather on my old bookshelf. More fitting than Lolita, so I switched books.
Here’s the stuff:
I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.
I feel that way now, Harry. I really do. I’m going to embrace my new truths.
.
Matilda,
What is your new truth?
.
Harry,
Well for one, I am going to be a writer. A writer who takes wedding pictures sporadically, just for the love of it. I’ve finished my Wedding Photographer manuscript. It’s a fucking masterpiece, naturally.
.
Matilda,
That’s great, really. Hey—I wrote something for you.
Seventeen (You Wore Blue)
it amazes me still
how the pavement can sparkle with marcasite
down the ashen new york sidewalks
you wore blue
and tapped your feet not impatiently,
just for something to do.
in the 23rd row, 5th seat
we came from over 100 miles away
boys’ choirs harmonized lushly
a soprano in the highest row
played herself to the dance of the song
voices sank in like almond oil smeared across my skin
yet the music did not move me
you adjusted your collar, flattened your hair,
ran a finger across your slick pink mouth
and I could not help but think
it is these things God notices,
the shine of a moistened lip,
the glimmer of glass upon a city street.
.
Harry,
I like that very much.
.
Matilda,
I found her.
She was in the karaoke joint in Chinatown. The one she’d tried to drag me to after the reading, but at which I was too tired/too distracted/too stuck in the mud to join her. I knew she’d be there. I suspect she’s there most nights—Vera loves nothing more than to hear her own melodic voice at high volume. And why shouldn’t she, Matilda? She’s resplendent. There’s nothing she can’t do.
My entrance into the karaoke place was Kubrick-worthy—a hidden entrance off a side street, three concrete steps down. Rain hard on the grates that are used for food market commerce all day long. The kind of grates I have a fear I’ll fall through, being washed clean by the rain of cabbage or squid or hot sauce detritus.
A woman in front of a red velvet curtain manned the pin-drop-quiet entrance. She was wearing dark lipstick and nails and severe hair and appeared to have been waiting for me, but I couldn’t get any words out exactly. I just motioned at the space behind her, and she parted the curtain.
A fifty-yard hallway of private rooms appeared, each entrance lit by a single spotlight in a sea of black lacquer. Doors covered in shiny red leather with little porthole windows which invite you to look inside and witness the raucous, sound-proofed action—each window a vignette, a mime of great enthusiasm, of joie de vive, of expensive drinking. I didn’t know which room she was in, Matilda, or if she was even in one at all! So I looked through each porthole in turn. My shoes squeaked moisture on the floor.
There were college boys with beers singing metal tunes, there were middle-aged women with bright lips and ill-fitting tube tops, there were bodies draped and bodies seizing and some folks fighting and some people kissing. She was in the one about halfway down. I saw the back of her first; I recognized that red silk top.
I stopped cold at the window, my breath fogging the glass. She was with a few of her friends from work (lots of tortoiseshell and good if ironic hair, and champagne in each hand). She had the microphone and her head was tilted back and she seemed so infected with joy. I’ve never seen her quite like that—almost out of her body, still controlled but feral.
I tried to turn and leave before she saw me but she saw me. Actually, her friend in glasses said “Oh, shit” first, before she turned, but since I couldn’t hear anything, it was more like Ohhh, shittt, silently mouthed in slow motion.
So then I walked in, and all the sound washed over me like a wave. And my ears were ringing a little bit and she touched my arm and I sat down so that she was standing, facing me, and my eyes were level with her stomach. And it was flat.
Her hand fluttered down. And then she sat down, too, and she said, “Oh god. I’m so sorry, Harry. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”
And I said: “You lost the baby?”
The room was sort of fuzzing and spinning and almost kinetic in the way it was in Wildwood when we drank Dad’s Tanqueray and laughed at the ceiling all night, except this time it wasn’t as funny and I’m not as young anymore.
And she said: “There never was a baby.”
“What do you mean?”
“I tried, Harry. I tried to get pregnant so the fortune-teller would be right and we could be together. And I just assumed I would be pregnant soon enough without the birth control, so I just told you about it a little ahead of time! It was so cinematic and perfect, remember?
“But then it just didn’t happen, the universe didn’t behave, and…I guess it all just took on a life of its own. I never meant to hurt you. I tried to tell you—how the universe has many possibilities—with the Riemann sphere. But maybe I was too vague.”
Matilda, here the room sort of slowed down and I saw Vera moving and talking verrrry slowwwly and I saw her as she truly is—not some sort of savant or savior or perfect human or my true love, but a young, young half-formed person. A person who does not benefit from the addition of m
e, and whom I do not benefit from the addition of.
“It should have been true—the universe wanted it to be true, and in another parallel universe it was true. Harry, do you think—do you think we could start over?”
“You know what, Vera? This is OK. This is fine. This is better than fine.”
“What? I’ll make it up to you, Harry. I will. Let me just get my things and we’ll go to my place to talk. You know—I feel quite relieved actually. We have this out in the open now. We can start again, Harry!”
Now Vera was gesticulating wildly and grabbing her things and knocking over some glasses in the process…
And I have to tell you, Matilda—while she was talking, and she kept talking—her words started to float farther and farther away from me, so that I couldn’t even quite catch them, only snippets.
And instead of hearing her, I started instead to focus on the music that was playing, and it was Freddie Mercury. Matilda, it was the song, the song we both agree is the best song of all time—our song.
BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
And I knew—I knew in that moment, it didn’t matter what she had to say. I was free. I was fucking free, just like you are. She will be happier without me. But that’s not the point.
.