My dad and I ate tons of turkey, overcompensating for the fact that my mother only pushed hers around on her plate. I wonder if she knew she was dying then, whether she put on a last Thanksgiving show for us to tuck away in our memories, since it was the last one we would all spend around the large oak table. Maybe my dad knew too, and the show was all for my benefit, too young to notice the fragility of my parents’ smiles. Or just young enough to play along, to let the will to believe overpower what was so clearly written on both of their faces.
They canceled Christmas that year though, because Christmas was all my mother’s doing and she was too sick to get out of bed. I guess my father could have done the shopping, and put up the tree, and hung the stockings, the painstaking way my mother had done every year, but it would have been a mockery, a sham Christmas, and we had finally moved beyond pretending.
After being told that we weren’t celebrating the same way we had always done—there would be fewer presents, we would skip the tree—I slammed my door and sulked in my room, an impossible child, or a typical teenager, or a bit of both. I cursed loudly at them then, feeling power from yelling words that were ordinarily not tolerated in the house. I took advantage of the one perk of my mother’s illness; I could push boundaries.
“Why does fucking everything have to fucking be about her?” I screamed at the walls, at my parents through the walls, at God, though I am sure by then I had already stopped believing.
Skipping Christmas was their way of telling me that it was over, and when she was admitted to the hospital at the turn of the year, we all knew it was for the last time. No one sat me down and explained it to me; I am not sure anyone could. Instead, I learned by inference and by the fact that my mother kept getting smaller and smaller. Like Lily Tomlin in The Incredible Shrinking Woman, except not nearly as funny.
On her last day, my dad woke me up and told me to get dressed. All he said was “This is it.”
It was winter, so I put on a wool turtleneck sweater that tickled my jaw and made me sweat in the armpits. We drove to the hospital without speaking. My dad occasionally took in sharp breaths, as if to say something, then thinking better of it; each intake, so unlike him, was a declaration of fear. I stared out the window the whole time, not able to look at my father’s face, his chin decorated with something way past a five o’clock shadow, his eyes red-rimmed and watery, exactly like my own.
When we got there, my mother was asleep, or in a coma, or knocked out from morphine. It was never made clear to me, and I didn’t think to ask. We each took one side of the bed. My dad held her right hand, and I held on to her left; her fingers felt foreign—rough, and cold, and unnaturally heavy. Just to have something to do, I fixed her scarf so it wouldn’t slip down her bare forehead and drew on her eyebrows with makeup from her kit on the ledge. We sat there for hours, not saying a word. Just listening to each breath. Desperate for the one that followed.
At around two in the afternoon, the doctor stopped by, patted my father on the shoulder to get his attention, and said, “It won’t be long now.” He simply nodded at me, like I was an adult worthy of acknowledgment.
She died at exactly five p.m., as if she had clocked out of her shift for the day. We knew because the next breath just didn’t come, though we waited for it. Stupidly hopeful, but both of us thinking This is it. This is how it is going to end. Not like in the movies, where there is a noise to warn the viewer, a machine bleating loudly so doctors can come and start pounding forcefully on her chest. A dramatic crescendo.
No, the absence of sound told us it was over. Complete stillness and quiet. If it wasn’t me and it wasn’t my mother who had just stopped, it would have been beautiful really, like the end of the symphony, the tiny break before the applause. But it was me and it was my mother, and now, now, it is the quiet that I find most haunting of all.
Afterward, on the way home and before the phone calls and the chatter, my dad and I went to the Stop & Shop, filling the trunk with food for the people who would be paying their respects in the week to come. I picked out the cold-cut platter my mother had chosen for my birthday party the year before, thinking that seemed appropriate. We filled the cart without discussion of what exactly we needed. We bought cookies. And frozen lasagna. Mouthwash. Enough Q-tips for the next decade.
When we got back into the car, my dad cranked up the radio as loud as it would go, and we drove that way for the rest of the ride. The lyrics to songs from the ’50s—“Wake Up Little Susie,” “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “Love Potion No. 9”—danced just at the tips of our tongues, and our mouths moved along from habit. The sounds rang mercifully loud in our ears. We sat that way for a while, in the driveway once we reached home, the motor still running, both of us not ready for the music to stop.
Eleven
I’m not going as a fucking cat, or a fucking nurse, or a fucking flapper, or anything rubber.” I run my fingers over the grooves of a corduroy blazer at the vintage clothing store in the East Village. “But I want to look fucking hot.” Jess just smiles at me and nods her head. She indulges me in my rant, the same one I deliver every year around this time.
“I don’t want to be one of those women who use Halloween as an excuse to go naked, that’s all,” I continue, as if she hasn’t heard it all before. “This will be the first time I’ve seen Andrew since he found me sweating tequila on the subway. I need to look good. But I want a real costume too.”
“Dominatrix?” she asks, holding up a studded bikini with empty holes where the nipples should go. “That’ll get his attention.”
Jess smacks my ass with a long leather whip. It hurts like hell, but I don’t react. “Okay, okay, too trite,” she says.
“Please help me, Jess.”
“How about going as Monica Lewinsky? Or, better yet, Anita Hill?” Apparently it was a mistake to tell Jess about what happened in Arkansas. After cursing for about ten minutes straight and then trying to convince me to sue the firm, I guess Jess has now decided it is sort of funny. Which it is if it didn’t happen to you.
“Be serious. I need your help.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“Who? Carl?” I take the blazer off the rack and sniff it. For some reason, I expect it to smell like Grandpa Jack, musky and warm. It doesn’t. It smells like dust. It smells like death.
“No, idiot. Andrew.”
“No.”
“Did you call him?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“I haven’t.” She whips me again, this time harder.
“All right, once.” I slam the blazer back onto the rack. “But we didn’t talk. I panicked and hung up.”
“Uh-oh, Em. You are even more screwed up than I thought. You really need to get some help.”
“I’m fine. Really.”
“Prank-calling your ex-boyfriend? The one you chose to break up with? Yup, sure sounds like you’re doing great.”
We spend the rest of the day combing the neighborhood for costumes. Though Halloween is still a few days away, most of the people walking around look like they are already dressed for the festivities. We pass a grown man in a diaper, another in a unitard and roller skates, but Jess swears she has seen them both on First Avenue before.
Jess wants to go as a sorceress, so we buy her a big cone hat, and glitter, and a velour robe. Right now, when she puts the pieces together, she looks like a homeless pimp, but I am sure she will find a way to transform her costume into something glamorous. At our final stop, one of those Manhattan stores that sells everything from feather boas to digital cameras, I find a shiny tiara tucked into a display case filled with handblown glass bongs. I ask the saleswoman if it is for sale and where she found it.
“That’s from my days as Miss Mississippi, 1983,” she says, as she smoothes out a large I Love New York sweatshirt over her belly. Her skin has a sickly yellow pallor, and she is missing one of her front teeth. The last couple of decades have been cruel to her.
�
��Ah, hell, who’s kidding who? I’ll give it to you for twenty bucks,” she says, and the tone in her voice tells me this is just one more surrender in a long series of them.
“Deal,” I say, and the woman takes the tiara out of the case, careful not to touch the fake pearls and diamonds that meet in repeated arcs. It is beautiful. It is ridiculous. It is perfect.
After I hand over my money, she wraps the tiara in tissue paper, tenderly covering each of the sharp edges, again and again. She takes her time.
“Wear it in good health, wear it in good health,” she says, allowing herself one last long look before sliding it into the bag and handing it over.
On Halloween night, I transform myself into a prom queen. I slip on my bridesmaid’s dress from Jess’s sister’s wedding and enjoy the feel of the cool taffeta against my skin. I figure the plunging neckline and slit up the leg balance out the fact that I am covered in iridescent sequins.
“My little girl’s all grown up,” Jess says, as she places the tiara on my head and pretends to tear up.
“How do I look?” I give her a final spin, knowing full well that I look pretty damn good, all things considered. The fabric clings in all of the right places, and I feel sexy. Not dominatrix sexy, maybe, but sexy enough. There is just something about a tiara.
“Fucking hot,” Jess says. “And me?”
“Fucking hotter,” I say, because she does. She has resewn the robe so it hangs like a glittery cape, and she wears a tight black dress underneath. Her sorceress hat sits jauntily on the back of her head, somehow provocative and edgy. And her face is glowing with sparkles, aligned to brighten her charcoaled eyes.
“Are you nervous to see Andrew?” she asks.
“Yeah.” Jess takes her wand and performs a spell over my head, as if to make everything all right. I squeeze my eyes shut while she does it, hoping that might help it to work.
“Well, then,” she says matter-of-factly, now that all is settled by her magic. She links her arms with mine and creates instant momentum, like we are about to embark on an adventure.
“We’re off like a prom dress.”
We can hear the party before we cross the street to Kate and Daniel’s apartment. I can’t make out any music, but there is chatter in the air. I feel that nervous energy, that kinetic buzz, that always hits before entering a room in which everyone is all dressed up and talking at once. I try to let go of my performance anxiety—Why should I be afraid of Andrew? Why should I be afraid of anyone?—and remember that I love Halloween. The best things in life, for one day, become socially sanctioned. The shedding of your identity. The conscious choice to assume a new one. The gluttonous sugar high.
When I was little, Halloween was a big family holiday for us; my mom, dad, and I would wander around the neighborhood in matching costumes, usually TV-themed—the Smurfs, the Bradys, the roommates from Three’s Company. My dad loved the strategizing part: We avoided the Hogans’ on the corner, because they handed out raisins, and consistently hit the Dempseys’, though they were a good ten blocks away, because they were generous with king-size candy bars. My mom loved the creative part, the turning of us into a single unit with a few well-placed stitches. I loved the walking-in-between-them part, leading the way and lapping up their attention. We did that every year until I hit twelve, when I unilaterally ended the tradition. Dressing up, I decided, was only for kids.
Kate and Daniel live in Tribeca, in a large loft and, unlike my place, a real grown-up’s apartment. All cement and exposed pipes and minimalist furniture. They like to describe it as “industrial,” as if this is a good thing, though I am not sure why, exactly, you would want your home to resemble a warehouse. As we walk in, the two of them run up to us. I look over their shoulders to see if I can spot Andrew in the crowded room, but I can’t make him out. At first count, I see six dominatrices, two black cats, and three naughty nurses. No Andrew. For now, at least, I am proud to say that I am the only prom queen in the room.
“Okay, I know you are going to hate me for this, but I thought I should let you know first off—” Kate says by way of greeting.
“Oh, no.”
“Yup, Carisse is here,” Daniel says, and walks away with our coats. This is how they do things. Tag team.
“Why’d you invite her?”
“I didn’t. Well, not specifically. I sent out an all-associates e-mail inviting everyone from the firm. I forgot that she might actually come,” Kate says.
I look over her shoulder and see Carisse standing in the corner holding a glass of wine. She wears a Hooters costume, her breasts spilling out of the official tight white tank top and her butt kept in place with the short, short orange shorts. I start laughing but stop when I see that she is talking to Andrew.
He has recycled the same costume he wears every year: thick glued-on sideburns, white studded polyester bell bottoms he found in his parents’ attic, and a pillow stuck under a wide-collared silver shirt. Andrew is the King, but the potbellied and sweaty later version. Last Halloween I asked him why he chose to go with that incarnation of Elvis instead of the hip-swinging one the world fell in love with. I didn’t expect a real answer, but I got one: “He was who he was, Emily. Wouldn’t it make you sad to only be remembered for who you were in your twenties, even if it were for something this great?” Andrew then did Elvis’s signature lip curl, which was so charmingly asymmetrical, I kissed it right off his face.
Tonight, he saves his best imitation for Carisse. She gets a curl and a leg gyration.
When Jess sees what I see, she leads me directly to the elaborate bar set up in the corner.
“Tequila?” she asks.
“Nope. Vodka. I try not to make the same mistakes twice.” She pours me a shot, which I throw back fast and clean. I barely feel it burn as it goes down. Jess mixes a vodka and tonic for me next and drops a lime into it. She hands it over wordlessly. I scoot over as a man dressed in what appears to be a hamburger costume sidles up to the bar and reaches for the bottle of gin.
“It looks like we are a match made in heaven,” he says, and nudges me in the ribs with his plastic patty. He pours himself a drink.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a prom queen, right? Well, I’m Burger King,” he says, pointing proudly to his head, and, sure enough, he too is wearing a tiara, but his looks as if it is made of tarnished gold.
“Clever,” I say, because I can’t think of anything clever to say. My eyes keep returning to Carisse and Andrew, who are now chatting in an opposite corner.
“Nice tiara,” Jess says, pointing to the guy’s head.
“It’s not a tiara. It’s a crown,” he says, and rubs his hand against the gold spokes.
“It’s a tiara. Crowns go all the way around. Tiaras go only halfway. That’s a tiara,” Jess says. I look at her, unsure why she is picking a fight with a hamburger. He looks at her, confused too, like we are more than he bargained for.
“Yeah, whatever,” he says, taking his drink and walking away, bumping Jess with his bun as he passes by.
“What was that about?”
“I wasn’t going to stand by and let you get hit on by a guy wearing an ugly tiara. You’re above that. Anyhow, I wanted him to leave us alone. Now, please stop staring at them. You’re embarrassing me.”
“I’m not staring,” I say, and turn my gaze to look at Jess, because of course I’m staring.
“He won’t go home with her, you know?”
“I know.”
“He’s probably just talking to her to make you jealous.”
“I know.”
“You should probably go over and say hello. Play it cool.”
“I know.”
“Just remember, you broke up with him.”
“I know.”
“Why’d you do that again?”
I look at her and take a slow pull from my drink.
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah,” she says. “That’s what I thought.”
It doesn’t t
ake too long for some of my discomfort to get washed away by the alcohol. I don’t stop staring at Carisse and Andrew, who now look even chummier than before, but I no longer feel enough shame to try to hide it. I reason that she is asking for people to stare, since her breasts look like they may eject from her tank top at any moment. Andrew, despite the fact that he is dressed up as an aging Elvis, looks fantastic. His hair is mussed into a cross between a pompadour and a fauxhawk. He has crinkles around his eyes, more brackets than commas, which get exaggerated every time he smiles. I am tempted to go over there and lick them, stick my tongue into their soft grooves. I am not sure why it has never occurred to me to do that before.
Carisse leans into him as they talk, both of them clearly flirting, and I wonder how I could have let him go. Andrew had wanted to marry me. Me and not her. Me. And I had been the one to walk away. Who does something like that? I could have said yes. It is just one word after all. A whole path would have unraveled then, and I could have followed it, let it lead me somewhere, anywhere, really. And now it would have been us over there in the corner, not them.
People say yes all the time. It is a choice, like anything else. I am going to be one of those people who says yes, I decide. Like they teach in twelve-step programs, that you should act “as if” you are a person who does the opposite of what you do naturally. Alcoholics should act “as if” they don’t want a drink. I should act “as if” I am someone who says yes. It seems so simple. Three letters.
I intentionally ignore the thoughts that sound like Jess. You are not ready for an Andrew. And the ones that sound like me, the ones that hurt the most. Andrew would have been the one to eventually walk away. You did what you had to do. You left first. But the words are fuzzy, like white noise, and I don’t have the energy to parse them out. Instead, through the haze of four vodka tonics, and a few shots, it’s becoming clear that I have to talk to Andrew. Right now.
I tell myself that I have no reason to be nervous. The man in the corner is someone who has seen me naked more times than I could ever count, someone who used to take up half of my bed, and possibly even more of my life. Never mind that he is now a man in the corner who pretends like he didn’t see me walk into the party, a man who would rather talk to a Hooters waitress.
The Opposite of Love Page 9