The Truth of Right Now

by Kara Lee Corthron

  “Sure,” I say, relieved.

  We walk outside, so he can smoke, and I sit on the steps while he dials. He barely says, “Hey,” before I hear the muffled sounds of someone flipping out on the other end. He says he’s sorry, he didn’t mean it, whatever “it” is. He sits, head in hands, blowing gray smoke from his nose and mouth. I think about his mouth. I don’t think I’ve ever kissed a smoker before. I thought he would have gnarly breath, but somehow he even makes that work for him. He tastes like charcoal-laced cinnamon. Oh, no. I’m starting to swoon. Stop it. You never want to swoon when the object of your adoration is sitting less than two feet away. Get a grip, Rothstein.

  “I know, Izzy. I can’t really . . .” He glances at me briefly, then lowers his voice. “I’ll tell you about it later. I can’t go into it right now.”

  I feel an irrational pang of jealousy. I know he’s talking to his sister and he’s known her way longer than he’s known me, but I now have confirmation that there are still things he’s not comfortable with me knowing.

  “Yeah. Thanks. I just . . . I don’t know yet,” he stammers. More yelling on the other end. I thought she’d calmed down, but I guess that didn’t last.

  She says something and then she waits. Dari says nothing. He stares straight ahead. I now clearly hear her say: “Dari? Dari are you there?”

  “I’m here,” he says. “Yeah, I heard you. But I . . . I can’t do that.” He puffs on his cigarette, it’s burning down fairly close to his fingers. A little too close for my liking.

  “Can you go over there and get some of my stuff? Please?” he asks.

  They talk for another few minutes, and I don’t hear much more from Izzy. They seem to have gotten past the yelling stage. He tells her he loves her and hangs up. His I love you sounds robotic, devoid of all meaning. If he ever says that sentence to me, I really hope it sounds better than that.

  “She wants me to stay with her,” he says.

  Oh. Yeah. Of course she would. “Are you going to?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to. Her girlfriend Trisha’s a psycho. One time they broke up and Trisha called her sixty-three times in one day. I went to the movies with them once and it was horrible. Trisha made me get a separate popcorn because she didn’t want to risk accidentally touching me. Later, she pulled Izzy aside and made her promise to never bring me out with them again. Know why? Because she’s jealous of me. Her girlfriend’s brother. She’s a nutbag. You can’t reason with her. You can’t tell her things like not only do I share blood with Izzy, I have a dick! I’m not her type.”

  I can’t help but laugh even though I know Dari’s being totally sincere right now.

  “I don’t know. She’s gonna bring me some stuff and some money. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Well, our home is your home. As long as you want it to be,” I tell him, feeling my cheeks go pink. So embarrassing. But he smiles. A grateful smile. And kisses me. It’s short, but strong and just as electric as all the others that have come before it.

  “Thank you, Lily,” he says, his lips grazing the ridges of my ear. This time, he knows what he’s doing.

  * * *

  I sit in the plush red chair in Maalouf’s office. I chose it as mine the first day I came, and it feels right to go back to it.

  “How are things?” she asks like we’re just two friends having tea.

  “They’re not bad. I think they’re good, actually.”

  “Tell me more.” Dr. Maalouf sits forward on her seat. Perhaps she’s unaccustomed to good news.

  “Well, it’s weird and it all happened kind of fast, but, uh . . . Dari kissed me.”

  “Sounds like things are very good,” she says, smiling.

  “Yeah. There’s another thing, though. It’s good in a way, but bad in a way too. He doesn’t get along with his dad and, well, his dad kicked him out, so he’s kinda staying with us right now.” I don’t know why I phrase all this as if I’m making a confession. There’s nothing wrong with our situation, and if there were, Dr. Maalouf is not some all-powerful goddess from whom I should be asking absolution.

  “Wow. That’s intense,” she says.

  “I don’t know. It’s just unexpected.”

  “How long has he been staying with you?”

  “The funny thing is, he kind of stayed with me all weekend while my mom was out of town before the shit went down with his dad, so it feels like almost a week.”

  “What was the ‘shit’ that went down?”

  I draw a blank. All I know is what Dari tells me, which isn’t much.

  “He said he fought back. He didn’t tell me how.”

  She nods. I can tell she’s thinking. I can’t imagine what, though.

  “Do you know how long he’s going to stay?”

  I shake my head. In a flash, I remember why I don’t care for therapists and why I didn’t want to do this in the first place. They judge. Even if they don’t mean to, they do. They think they know best and, worse yet, they can convince you that it’s true.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to trust people.” Why did I say that out loud? She’s gonna jump all over that.

  “You having a hard time trusting Dari?”

  Where did that come from?

  “No! Not at all. I just meant . . . people in general. I totally trust Dari,” I say a little too fast.

  “That’s good, but it would be understandable to have your doubts. There is something mysterious about him, isn’t there? He has a way of keeping you at arm’s length. That’s what I’m sensing, but you can always tell me if I’m wrong,” she says. I don’t say anything. I have a feeling she’s leading to something. Why can’t we just talk about what a fantastic weekend I had?

  “Does he remind you of other people in your life?”

  “Like who?”

  “Friends? Family members?” Her face is still gentle, warm, but I can so see the little wheels turning in her head. She’s trying to make some weird connection so she can have an Aha! moment. Therapists love that crap.

  “Not really.”

  “It’s interesting that you’re so drawn to him.”

  No, it’s not.

  “But there’s something alluring about those who don’t feel familiar to us, huh?”

  “Do you want to talk about my assignment?”

  She smiles. “Sure. Did you give it some thought?”

  Huh. I thought for sure she’d forgotten all about it and I was gonna catch her. Unless I did and she’s just a master poker player. Very possible.

  “Yes. This is the question that I cannot answer. Why isn’t there another option for me right now besides school?” There. I thought about it and I think that’s quite a good question.

  “What would be your ideal option?”

  “No. I need you to answer my question first,” I inform her. I’m not gonna play her head games.

  “That’s not quite how this works. I wanted you to bring in the question so we could talk about it and work on it together. Sorry if I misled you.” She doesn’t look sorry.

  “That’s disappointing,” I say.

  “What’s the worst thing about school?”

  “Going there.”

  “How long have you been thinking about this?”

  “A while. Off and on. I’m just tired of it,” I complain. I know she’s not going to help me. I know when I leave here today I’m not going to have some magical school escape plan. I shouldn’t have bothered bringing it up.

  “Other than Dari, do you get along with other students?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Imagine for a second that tomorrow is going to be your perfect, ideal day. You get to spend the day doing exactly what you want and nothing else. What would you do?”

  “Like what? I can do anything?”

  “Okay, you don’t suddenly have supernatural powers or billions of dollars, but being who you are today, if tomorrow you didn’t have to g
o to school and didn’t have to for the foreseeable future, how would you spend your day?”

  Of all the therapist types I’ve encountered over the years, I’d have to say that Ariel Maalouf asks the most creative questions. These kinds of questions don’t feel nosy for some reason. I don’t mind them, even if they don’t end up helping me.

  “Well. I’d get up and eat breakfast—”

  “What would you eat?”

  “Specific. Um? Probably cereal and bacon. No! Blueberry pancakes and bacon. We never have bacon in the house because my mother is a vegetarian except on Thanksgiving. Then I’d—I’d play some music. Start on bass and move into some drums. Try to write a song if I still can. Early afternoon, I’d go all the way out to Queens to have Indian food in Jackson Heights, but the whole ride there, I’d be working on my song in my head. After lunch, I’d walk around the neighborhood, maybe go to some shops. Sometimes they have really nice handmade purses. They’re beautiful. Then I’d head home and have some dinner with Mom, and Dari, and maybe I’d play some music for them. The stuff I’d been working on earlier in the day. Then maybe we’d watch a movie on Netflix.”

  “What movie?” she jumps in.

  “This is Spinal Tap. Or if we’re in the mood for drama, Mona Lisa Smile. Then I’d go to bed—in an ideal world, with Dari—and I’d go to sleep and I’d have the most peaceful dreams. Like dreams of being on a sailboat in the ocean at night and the moon is blood orange and the waves rock me to sleep. To sleep in my dream.” I stop myself and it feels like I’ve been talking for an hour. It feels like I’ve lived this day because I am a bit fatigued, but in a good way.

  “That sounds like an amazing day,” she says.

  “But it’s not reality.”

  “Can you have a day like this anyway? Maybe not everything on your wish list, but I bet you could achieve at least 90 percent. On a Saturday? Or a holiday? There’s nothing to stop you from having a day like this whenever you can. You just can’t every day.” She looks a little proud of herself, like she learned this exercise in a junior psych class and had no idea she’d ever use it in the real world. Proud. But not smug. I wouldn’t be able to handle smug.

  “It’s not the same thing,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s like taking a vacation from real life, and real life is mostly terrible.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. It just takes work,” she says softly.

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  She stares at me intently for a moment. Her lips purse just slightly, and I can tell she’s taking a deep breath, but doesn’t want me to notice.

  “I think we need to talk about what happened last spring.”

  I stop breathing. Nirvana’s “In Bloom” blasts inside my head. Why Nirvana? Mom is way more of a Nirvana fan than I am. There are at least ten other groups that should go off in my mind before Nirvana. Then I think, Do I have some kind of a dark connection to Kurt Cobain? Am I going to be a heroin addict? Be betrayed by the love of my life? Put a gun in my mouth when I hit twenty-seven and pull the trigger?

  “Lily!” Dr. Maalouf has just raised her voice for the first time with me, and she looks more frightened than I feel.

  “Where did you go?” she asks, lowering her voice to almost a whisper so I strain to hear.

  “Nowhere.” My voice cracks like a tiny kid hidden in a cave.

  She looks concerned, afraid she screwed up. She did. She pushed me too hard, too fast.

  “Do you keep a journal?” she asks, with a hint of desperation.

  “No,” I answer and before I’m aware of it, I’m easing into my jacket.

  “We still have fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s okay. I feel fine,” I say, standing and grabbing my backpack.

  “Lily, please just listen to me for one minute. Please.”

  She sounds so worried. I feel bad for her, so I sit back down, but teeter on the edge of the red chair, prepared to escape.

  “I want you to write your story. All of it. As you see it. Everything that went down. Everything that hurt. Everyone that pissed you off. If this means you write a bunch of songs, that’s great. If it means you write a two-hundred-page memoir with illustrations, that’s great too. I just want you to try it.”

  “Why? I know what happened.” I tremble.

  “To get it outside of yourself. So it doesn’t become an ulcer or, God forbid, a tumor in there. I might be wrong, but I truly believe it will make things better.”

  I have no interest in looking at all of that shit written down. I would rather have a root canal. In 1705.

  “I’m just asking you to consider it.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I bolt. I can hear her saying something behind me, but I don’t need to know what it is. I remember the deal I made with my mother. Four weeks is all I committed to. Two weeks down. Two to go.

  SAVANNAH THE CELEB

  Dari waits outside for Izzy. He hopes Savannah doesn’t know about his sad nicotine habit, though she can probably smell it on him. He considers quitting. Again. Maybe he can try the patch. Nicorette? Of course, that’s the least of his concerns at the moment.

  His phone vibrates. He checks it. A photo from Kendra. It’s a selfie with her new beau. They look happy. Dari texts congrats and hits send. If she’s hoping he’ll get jealous, she doesn’t know him that well.

  A few minutes later, a yellow cab pulls up and Izzy steps out carrying a large box. Dari runs over to grab the box from her as the cabbie speeds off.

  “There’s a bunch of clothes, some art supplies, toiletries, and I tossed in a few books. I don’t know,” she tells him.

  “Thank you,” he says. “Did he give you a hard time?”

  “No more than usual. He asked where you were. I think he misses you. But you know how he is.” Izzy shakes her head. “I don’t like this, Dari. I’d feel a whole lot better if you’d reconsider.”

  “I just don’t feel comfortable staying with you and Crazypants.”

  “Call her by her name, Dari,” Izzy says through a tightened jaw. Proof for Dari that their potential Three’s Company arrangement would be a disaster.

  “Lily and her mom like me. I won’t go where I’m not welcome.” He searches Izzy’s face for signs that he’s in any way wrong about how her partner feels about him. He finds none. She rubs her forehead, opens her wallet, and pulls out a wad of cash.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Dari says.

  “Just take it, Dari.” He does, recognizing the impatience in his sister’s voice. “Are you ever gonna tell me what went down?”

  “When?”

  “You know when.”

  “Didn’t he tell you?”

  Izzy shakes her head again. She takes the cigarette from Dari’s fingers and inhales big before handing it back to him.

  “I tried to hurt him. Bad. I just lost it. He was whaling on me and I lost it.”

  Izzy closes her eyes but doesn’t look surprised. She probably suspected as much. “I know you don’t want to, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to apologize. He’s old. I don’t think he knows how to be anything else.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe I should move back home,” she says, and her spine seems to crumble right before Dari’s eyes.

  “That wouldn’t help anything.”

  “I might be the buffer that keeps you two from killing each other,” she reasons.

  “I’m not going back,” Dari announces.

  “You won’t stay with me. You won’t go home. Dari, what are you gonna do? Just freeload off your girlfriend and her mom forever?”

  “I’ll get a job. I’ll find a place,” Dari decides.

  “I don’t think you have any idea how hard that’s gonna be. I’m an adult and it took me months and months.”

  Dari understands that Izzy is worried about him. Nonetheless, he does not appreciate her doomsday attitude. Yeah, it’ll be hard. Any harder than living alone with his father? He doubts it. He believes he
can do it. And even if he fails, at least he tried. Can’t be worse than giving up before he’s even done anything.

  “Thanks again, Izzy. I should go inside.”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  He honestly hadn’t considered that. Dari has a tendency to keep the different parts of his life separate, and that is how he likes it. But she did go out of her way for him. It couldn’t have been fun going over to the apartment to pick up his things.

  “Come on,” he says and carries the bulky box into the lobby as Izzy trails behind.

  “This is a nice building,” Izzy observes as they wait for the elevator. “What does her mom do again?”

  “She wrote some huge bestseller.”

  Izzy nods. “Gotcha. You know the title?”

  “Think it was called Heal Your Beautiful Self, Grow Your Beautiful World.”

  The elevator arrives and Dari’s inside it before he notices Izzy still standing in the hallway, mouth agape.

  “Izzy, get in.”

  But she just stands there, so he plunks the box down and pulls her inside before the doors close.

  “Savannah Price? Her mom is Savannah Price?”

  “Yeah,” Dari answers, unfazed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I didn’t know you’d heard of her.”

  “Dari! I’ve read her book like fifty times. I’ve quoted it to you! I can’t meet her. I’ll sound like a crazy fan.”

  “Apparently, you are.”

  “Goddammit, Dari!”

  “Shh. Don’t be dumb. She’s just a regular person.”

  Izzy bounces around nervously.

  “I can’t believe you’re living with Savannah Price. The best things happen to you.”

  When they get to the door, Dari drops the box again and rings the doorbell.

  Izzy whispers, “Do you have to do that every single time you come in?”

  He shrugs.

  Lily opens the door and smiles in surprise when she sees Izzy standing there.

  “Oh, hi, I’m Lily. You must be Izzy.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Lily,” Izzy greets.

  Lily runs to get Savannah. They sit down and Izzy stares at Dari with an inquisitive expression. He tries to ignore her, but she’s not the type that can be easily ignored.