by Noah Hawley
They take the BQE to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. The New York skyline rises up to meet them, and despite his smug veneer, David feels a swell of something like excitement rise up in his chest. The city has that kind of energy, like it or not. A sense of activity, possibility. There is also a different kind of stirring, this one more localized in the region below his belt. He has had some of the best sex of his life in New York, and most of it recently. Crossing the East River, his body responds to the signals his eyes are sending, the erect corporate towers rising before him, all that rock-hard concrete. It has nothing to do with his mind. The fact is, he has conditioned his body over the last year, week in, week out, to sense when Joy is near. His body knows that a five-hour plane ride is the first step to a night of extreme passion. It knows that descending from the bridge onto pitted city streets is a precursor to a certain animal release. New York is where he lets it all go—his heartbreak, his fear, his need for control—and though consciously he knows that this time is different, his body wants what it wants. He is like a rat that has been trained to salivate every time a red light goes on. And yet when you’re living a lie, it is important to establish boundaries, rules. There is no place for spontaneity. This is the key to success. When you’re trying to live two different lives, every move must be planned down to the smallest detail. Which is why this time he cannot see her, cannot let her know he’s here. The risk is too great. The chance for discovery. When you’re building a house of cards, you don’t open a window.
But the problem is, he needs her, his second wife, needs her silliness and her youth, her physicality. Now more than ever. His father is dead, and he is on a journey from hell, and deep in his bones he feels that if he could just spend an hour with Joy, listen to her giggle, watch her shave her legs, flirt, he could get through this. He wants more than anything to be restored, reborn, and this is her specialty. She is a magician, a hypnotist, an alchemist. Partly it is her disconnection from the rest of his life. She is his secret, shared with nobody. He is not himself with her. He is a better him, a weightless him. With Joy he has no past. With her there is no chaos. Needy alcoholic mother? She doesn’t exist. Dead father? Around Joy he never has to talk about it, never has to think about it. America is the land of reinvention, after all. It is a country of second chances, of makeovers, and Joy is his new beginning.
To this end, he has invented stories. As far as she’s concerned, David is an only child whose parents both died when he was in college. He is an orphan who rose above the tragedies of his life to become a successful businessman, the embodiment of the American Dream, a noble human being, an achiever. This is the nature of his secret life. Everybody should have one, he thinks. An escape, a place they can go to be someone different. Life is a cage, a set of railroad tracks, and before you know it—as you make choices, job, family—you find yourself locked in, unable to deviate from the course you’re on. Having a secret frees you. Give a man a key and his prison becomes his home. It sounds insane, he realizes, but it is his second wife who makes him appreciate his first. His secret life in New York allows him to enjoy his normal life in Los Angeles, truly appreciate it. When you are not tied to one woman, the women in your life become easier to love, easier to tolerate and forgive, their idiosyncrasies and habits.
For example, Joy pees with the door open. The first time she did this, David was shocked. Tracey wouldn’t even brush her teeth in front of him, but sitting on Joy’s bed watching her pad into the bathroom, pull down her panties, listening to her tinkle even as she continued to talk in that excited ramble of hers, he felt both the excitement of the new (mixed with a certain level of arousal) and also a deeper appreciation for Tracey, a love of the old. Someone once told him, when you are given a choice between two things, choose both. And this is what he’s done. He has decided to have it all: a smart, modest grown woman and an impulsive, passionate young one. In this way, his life has become an English lit essay test: Compare and Contrast. And the two women couldn’t be more different. Where Tracey is tall with brown hair, Joy is a tiny blonde. Where Tracey is a control enthusiast, Joy is delightfully unorganized, chronically late. Alone either trait might be infuriating, but combined they balance each other out. Being married to two women has made David more tolerant, he likes to tell himself. More patient. And personal hygiene is not the only difference. Tracey has always been cautious with money. She had her first savings account when she was five. Joy, on the other hand, has wads of cash crammed into every pocket. At the end of a spin cycle, her washing machine is filled with wet bills and loose change.
Tracey is physically reserved, shying away from public displays of affection. Joy has been known to throw herself at David on crowded streets, jumping into his arms and wrapping her legs around his waist. She can put on lipstick with her cleavage like Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club, has shoved her hand down David’s pants on a crowded street, grabbing his dick. The differences don’t stop there. Take motherhood. Where her children are concerned, Tracey is a woman with a plan. She was researching schools when Christopher was still a newborn, had David saving for college before Chris was five. By contrast, Joy can’t think more than an hour ahead. In her mind, tomorrow is a strange word in a South Pacific language that, loosely translated, means later on today. She likes to strap Sam to her body and go, take a trip, have an adventure. She believes that things will work out. It has taken David a few months, but he is beginning to come around to her point of view.
You have to have faith.
The taxi pulls up in front of the Waldorf-Astoria. Around them, Park Avenue slumbers under blackened snow, dreaming of April tulips. The doorman comes out to get their bags. Scott helps Doris out of the cab. She is shaky, fumbling. She stands on the corner trying to catch her breath. It is seven o’clock at night. Her tiny, hungry breaths form shrunken white clouds in front of her face. David got them a corporate rate for three rooms. He could have expensed it—the company doesn’t care—but he believes in paying what you owe.
“The Waldorf-Astoria, Mom,” he says. “Didn’t you always want to stay here?”
She shrugs, lips puckered, exhaling. Watching her struggle for air, David feels that combined human wavering, a simultaneous desire to rescue her from illness and push her down a flight of stairs. He spent so many years watching his father die, watching that agonizing slow-motion erosion, that the idea of investing another five (ten?) years observing his mother’s slow decline is enough to make him want to shove her in front of a truck.
Doris says she’s tired from the trip and wants to lie down, so they help her to her room. Then, as if by unspoken agreement, David and Scott head down to the bar. They get a table, order a couple of drinks. David can’t remember the last time he was alone with his brother. He has been a married man for so long, always surrounded by a blur of children’s bodies. Ten years maybe. God. He studies his brother’s face. They are getting older, the both of them. Their faces have broadened. Wrinkles have appeared. How does it happen? In his mind David is still ten years old. His children might as well be his peers. It’s crazy how you can be a grown-up for so long and still feel like an impostor. Even though his father has been reduced to ash, David still doesn’t believe it is possible to die. Actually die. You reach the end of your life and then what? Nothing. Silence. Space. The idea of it is too terrifying to contemplate.
“Everything okay?” asks Scott, who seems pale, a little jumpy.
“You’re kidding, right?”
The waitress comes with their drinks. David is having beer. Scott ordered tequila. He raises his glass.
“To Pop,” he says. They clink glasses.
“Still listening to other people’s phone calls?” asks David after a moment’s silence.
Scott sips his drink.
“They offered me a promotion—floor supervisor—I turned it down. I like my voices to be anonymous. I don’t want to have to deal with real people, personalities, office politics—Frank’s a pedophile, Sarah’s on heroin—I don�
��t want to know the people I work with that well. They make you supervisor and you never have a moment’s peace again.”
David studies his brother like he’s a strange form of undersea life, some kind of bulbous, translucent cephalopod.
“Is that what matters to you most,” he says, “peace?”
“What most people don’t understand,” Scott says, “is that peace and quiet are not the same thing. Everybody always treats them like they are, peace and quiet, but peace is a state of mind, and quiet is…not always helpful. We grew up in New York City. Too much silence makes me crazy.”
David smiles.
“Try living at my house for ten days and see if you still think quiet is overrated.”
Scott chews an ice cube, brow furrowed. He has never been good at small talk. He takes things too seriously. You can see it on his face. He doesn’t understand that David was making a joke, trying to lighten the mood.
“Sure,” says Scott, “too much is too much, but I’m starting to think that life is about seeing yourself in other people. All the voices I hear, people’s problems. They’re all me, you know. The housewife who’s not sure if baby aspirin is safe for her baby, the mechanic who calls poison control because he accidentally drank a bottle of motor oil.”
“How do you accidentally drink a bottle of motor oil?”
“I hear these people, their problems, and I—I want to believe that we’re all in it together, you know? Life. Society. We’ve set up these governments, these countries, a whole architecture of social systems and rules, all to try to create some kind of harmony. Democracy, right? A system of checks and balances. We’re supposed to protect each other. This is what I do. It matters. I am the man on the phone who makes sure everything is being handled correctly, that you are getting the help you need. I listen to your calls. I make sure you’re not being lied to, misled. I am there to assure quality, to give you peace of mind. And I like that. Say what you want. Career advancement, blah, blah, blah. I like my job. The world needs people like me. I talked to this guy, this limo driver, who said, We can’t all be Brad Pitt. Some of us have to clean the toilets.”
David mulls the yeasty aftertaste of his beer. His brother doesn’t sound exactly sane right now. To David’s ears he is like one of those late-night radio hosts, high on Benzedrine, ranting about secret governments.
“And what about girls?” he says. “Mom says you found another lunatic.”
Scott sits back, sighs.
“They find me. I’m beginning to think I’ve been implanted with some kind of homing device, like an ear tag you see on a big cat on the Nature Channel, and these women are just honing in. How else do you explain it?”
“Well, for one thing, you like crazy girls.”
“Absolutely. Absolutely.” He sips his drink. “Do you want to know why?”
David thinks about it. Part of him doesn’t want to hear another word. Once you know someone else’s problems, you become responsible somehow for helping them solve them, and the last thing David needs right now is more problems. He signals to the waitress for another beer. He remembers when they were kids, the girl Scott had his first crush on, Sally Embrecht. How Scott, moon-eyed, puppy-dog smitten, stole his mother’s jewelry and gave it to Sally. How he wrote her love letters, and how Sally’s dad called the principal, who called Doris, who sat Scott down and said, What the fuck are you doing? This is Scott’s M.O. In his world there’s no such thing as halfway.
“Tell me,” says David.
“The crazy ones are easy to read,” says Scott. “They fall hard and fast. They flirt. Everything about them is oversized, like those books you get with large print. When they’re sad they’re really sad. When they’re happy they’re manic. Sure, they can turn on a dime, but there’s never any mystery to it. I mean, other than the underlying—that seductive funk of unavailability. It makes the fucking hair stand up on the back of my neck just talking about it. With the crazy ones you never have to wonder—do they like me? Not in the beginning. That comes later.”
The waitress brings two more drinks.
“God bless you,” says Scott. He sits back, rubs his eyes. Looking at him, David thinks, Our lives are set, our fates. There is nothing that can happen to knock us off the paths we’re on. What David doesn’t realize is that these things are not always your choice—which direction you take, what happens to you along the way. But then this has always been his problem. He is way too invested in his own sense of control.
“Well,” he says, “maybe you should find a nice girl for a change. Somebody boring.”
But the look on Scott’s face says he’s not sure they exist.
“How’s Tracey?” Scott says. “The marriage. Three kids.”
David purses his lips. Typical, he thinks, I say boring and he thinks of Tracey. He should say something, but he doesn’t. This is how it is in their family. Their relationships are all based on things they won’t say out loud.
“Great,” he says. “I mean, it’s chaos, don’t get me wrong, but that works for us.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of it, the same thing day in day out?”
David laughs.
“Believe me,” he says, “if you only knew. My life is full of adventure.”
Scott’s expression says yeah, right. Somewhere along the way, they got so awkward around each other. Brothers, but with the body language of strangers. David can’t put his finger on when that happened. They used to be close. Growing up, in high school, they told each other everything. Now you could measure the distance between them in light-years. This is what happens when people grow apart. Life happens to them and before you know it, you’re no longer speaking the same language. All your points of reference disappear. It’s like someone from Omaha talking to someone from Budapest, trying to give directions like they still live in the same town. Make a left at the post office, go ten blocks, turn right at the French restaurant. And you expect to end up in the same place? It’s madness. And yet deep down who knows you better—the real you—than your brother? Even in disguise, even after all these years, fundamentally aren’t you the same people?
“So,” says Scott, two drinks in him, feeling better, “what are we gonna do?”
“About what?”
“About her.”
They sit in silence for a minute.
“She’ll never agree to go into a home,” says David.
“I know, but she almost blew up her hotel.”
David runs a hand over the back of his neck. There is a headache starting there, threatening to climb into his brain.
“What does she want?”
“Who cares what she wants?” says Scott. “She’s drinking herself to death, smoking with emphysema. It’s crazy-person behavior, so why does everyone keep asking her what she wants? She’s a danger to herself, that much is clear. And after the hotel thing, I’d have to say others, too. We should just dump her in a home and throw away the key.”
David thinks about this. He wonders why life is increasingly filled with impossible choices.
“Maybe she’ll just…,” he starts, but doesn’t finish.
“What?”
Die, thinks David. Maybe she’ll just die.
They finish their drinks. It’s eight-thirty. Scott says he’s going to try to catch a movie. He asks David if he wants to come.
“No. I think I’ll take a walk, clear my head.”
The two brothers part ways on the sidewalk, their breath commingling in clouds. There is an awkward pat on the shoulder, a stiff good-bye, and then they are walking off in two different directions. This is the story of their lives. They’re like magnets of repellent polarities that can get only so close before some kind of invisible field pushes them apart. Scott heads downtown. David walks northwest, toward the park, his hands jammed down into his pockets, scarf fluffed beneath his chin. Everything around him is brake lights, yellow taxis. An arid wind blows across the park, sucking moisture from his face. His lips chap. He takes out his ce
ll phone, calls home.
“I wanted to say hi to the kids,” he says. “Are they around?”
The sound of Tracey chewing crosses the miles—celery maybe, a carrot. She’s on a health-food kick these days, trying to rescue her figure.
“Yes, we’re having a mutiny about dinner. I’m not sure we’re really in control here, you and me. I think the kids are making all the rules. The trick is not to let them see you sweat.”
David crosses Madison Avenue. He feels the cold settle in the base of his spine. It makes him jittery, nervous.
“It’s like five degrees here,” he says.
“Is there snow? I miss snow.”
He switches the phone to his other hand. His right thumb feels frozen.
“There’s snow, but it’s that black snow. The gutters are slushy lakes.”