“She’s a human being, Lauren,” he says to me. Her being a human being was never in doubt. You don’t see doorknobs with cleavage like that.
She’s twenty-one years old. I am not. If you take a handful of my neck skin, you will see from its elasticity that I am decidedly older than twenty-one. Or else I’m a chicken.
“What time is your return flight?”
Without thinking I tell her my actual return flight time. “Eight A.M.” As soon as I say it I know it won’t be early enough.
“Perfect! The first train leaves downtown at Pioneer Square at four forty-five A.M. You’ll get to the airport in plenty of time.”
The plane touches down, but she doesn’t notice; she’s too preoccupied with insisting I call the theater right now and cancel my pickup.
“You’ll be able to catch them if you call now. The airport is twenty minutes away from everything. It was voted number one commuter airport in the nation. Portlanders love their airport. In fact, they put some googly eyeballs and a seat belt on a rolled-up piece of carpet that matches the carpet at the airport and named it the grand marshal of this year’s Grand Floral Parade . . .”
Walking to the baggage claim, I know Public Transit Lady is walking behind me. I can feel it. The first sign I see for the MAX, I crouch down and pretend to tie the laces of my loafers. She runs past me, yelling, “Hurry, the train’s on time!” I watch her neon-green Crocs disappear down the escalator.
A roll of carpet as the grand marshal of a parade is a million kinds of wonderful. A train that takes you from the airport and saves the planet is as well. I know I should take the train, but I’m not going to.
Tonight will be the first night my sweet three-year-old blond boy is spending at his father’s new apartment somewhere in the Valley. I don’t even know exactly where he is. I don’t care if I have to ride in a Hummer that runs on fuel made out of dolphin faces; I want to see Leo’s little blond head tonight.
My airport pickup is not a spry retired teacher in a vintage Prius but a very tall gay man named Kelsey in a teeny-tiny car that he’s just driven back from his parents’ wind farm; he apologizes if it smells like dog. He tells me he’s got exciting news for me that he wanted to wait to tell me in person—the hotel where I’ll be staying while I’m in Portland is a LEED-certified building. I’m letting out a huge sigh of relief—“Oh good!”—even though I have no idea what that means, when I see the child’s car seat in the back of the car. I forgot to tell the theater that Leo wouldn’t be joining me until after his preschool let out for the summer in two weeks. Kelsey arranges travel for the theater. He knew I was traveling alone. The car seat is for his disabled pug.
“Things have changed since I was a kid,” Kelsey says to me as he picks dog hair off the lid of his glass water bottle. “I’m from Pennsylvania. Missing two weeks of preschool when I was little would have meant missing two weeks of eating Play-Doh. If you live in Portland, pulling your kid for two weeks would mean they’d never learn to humanely slaughter a pig or say ‘It makes me angry that I haven’t had a turn holding the goat cheese’ in French during the class trip to the local farmers’ market.” I love that. I’ve got to remember to ask Kelsey if I can use those lines in my show and act like I came up with them. He’s so delightful, why stop at a few lines? I should steal his entire personality.
Leo’s preschool teachers advised me that in times of chaos, routine is key. Whatever they tell me to do, I do it. I’ve also been leaning heavily on my friend Chuck’s advice. Chuck’s a gay midwestern motivational speaker whom I’ve known since high school. He told me to bring Leo with me. “No matter what, he should be with his mother.” He’s right. I should have brought him with me. Or not. I don’t know. Chuck writes books about choosing to love and being nice to gay people, but last week he posted a photo on Facebook of his teenage son in a closet with his hands tied behind his back and duct tape over his mouth. “Look what the appraiser is going to find during his inspection today!” It’s possible his parental instincts can be a little off.
“It’s only two weeks,” I tell Kelsey, hoping I seem stable enough to continue to employ. “I can handle it. Army parents are gone longer than that, right?” Kelsey gives me a quizzical look. Coming to do a play in America’s top beer city and going to fight in a war. Same, same. I’m going to get my ass kicked in Portland.
Once I’m in my hotel room I set my computer up to Skype. We connect and I talk to David about how Leo is doing. Great, apparently. They’re watching Leo’s favorite Talking Heads videos, drawing pictures of monsters, and getting ready to read stories, but heads-up, the Human Being is there, so . . . Okay. I don’t want to talk to him with her there. I don’t want to abandon him, but I’m not ready for this. But he’s okay. He’s his normal fun hyper self. He’s okay. This is so odd. I’m used to dragging myself into hell, but mostly my hells are familiar to me. This is a new one. Worrying about someone else being dragged down with me is not familiar. I ask David if Leo is ready to talk to me.
He’s not. Okay. That’s fine. As long as he’s okay. Tell him good night.
Turns out, a LEED-accredited building means it’s dark all the time. I call the front desk to ask how to turn the lights on. The front desk girl gives me her “Welcome to civilization, you caveman,” speech and explains how in order to save energy the lights operate on a motion-detection system. If they don’t sense a human in the room, they shut off.
I’m jumping up and down, waving my arms, yelling, “I’m here! I’m here!” Nothing. I knew it. I’m dead. Good, now I don’t feel as bad about wiping with a towel.
Maybe I just need a cup of coffee. Seven P.M. may be a bit late for coffee, but I’m here to write a play about Portland and am supposed to be gathering material. Not sure how I should go about doing that. You know what? I’ll grab whatever the local Village Voice is here and hope that there are some wacky things happening this week in the city.
I’m one step out of the hotel and a full-grown man wearing cutoff jeans and no shirt rides up the sidewalk on a miniature bike. He’s wielding an enormous machete that he is swinging at anyone who passes by. It’s dinnertime, the sidewalks are busy, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who would rather not see an arm get hacked off, so I run back into the hotel to get help. My screams for someone to “call 911!” are met with bored shrugs from the front desk staff. “Oh, that’s just the machete guy. That’s Ron.”
Less than five minutes later, I’m about to walk into a coffee shop attached to a bike store when I hear what sounds like the wails of bagpipes, and here comes a man with purple hair riding a unicycle in a kilt and playing the bagpipes.
A chubby teenage boy walks by and looks up from the graphic novel he’s reading and says, “I assure you it’s way better when he’s got the fire coming out of the pipes.”
This play is going to write itself.
The barista is a twentysomething hipster dude. His beard is three times as long as his face.
“Hey, that’s my favorite candy bar. Did you know that when you got it?” I point to the Butterfinger candy bar on his right forearm. He responds with a blank stare. He was flirty and nice to everyone in line in front of me. Why doesn’t he like me? Do I look like some middle-aged blond lady from Los Angeles? Please god, don’t let me look like what I am, because that’s not what I am.
I order a pour-over and ask what it is I’ve just ordered. “Isn’t all coffee some form of a pour-over at some point in the process?”
Words like “bloom” and “pour length” and “angle” and “Himalayan” are coming out of his mouth, but I’m not listening. He could be being cold to me to hide his attraction.
“Your total is eight fifty.”
“Wow. Can I pay with two cards?”
My phone rings. It’s David. I start to answer it and the barista points to a sign on the front of the register: IF YOU’RE TALKING ON YOUR CELL PHONE, DON’T BOTHE
R ORDERING.
“It’s my kid . . . I’m going through a divorce and—” He stares at me with a mixture of hatred and boredom. I hit ignore and take my pour-over to go.
As I walk out the door, the barista calls after me, “Have a good day, LA.” How does he know I’m from LA? Out, out, damn spot! I can’t get the stench of that city off me.
Back in my hotel room, I’m not only depressed; I’m anxious, thanks to the coffee. Sure it’s a green building, but it smells like black mold. I can’t relax. I should go out. But what will I do? Wait a minute. What am I doing? I can do whatever I want. I’m . . . single now. In fact, this is the first night that I’ve been single, without my kid, in a hotel room, for years. Would you look at that? The depression has lifted.
Mama is going out tonight.
The concierge suggests I go to the Kennedy School. It’s a converted old schoolhouse, and there are bars, restaurants, movie theaters, little nooks to smoke cigars, and a soaking pool. “Skip the soaking pool. It used to be amazing but now it’s a bunch of depressed parents and their obnoxious kids. It’s hell.”
Thankful for the good advice, I hobble out on my high heels pretending to search for a bus stop and hail the first cab I see. Texting in a moving vehicle makes me yack; I wish I’d remember that before I started texting Jack. Is Jack my “ex” stepson now? No. That’s awful. In fact, Jack’s the only one who intimately understands the impact of what happened. In a way, he’s the only witness to the family that was lost. Jack and Simone are the same age. Maybe that’s gross, yet kind of “my dad’s still got it!” David was an amazing father to Jack; I’m not going to ask him any questions where he feels pressured to trash talk his father. I have plenty of friends who love to do that. My text “Miss you, Jack. Don’t get too high at work” sounds like I’m hinting for him to call me so I can talk about Simone and David. It is. That’s why I’m worried it sounds that way. Jack’s been living in Boston since he graduated high school. Jack and I talk on the phone now more than we ever used to. I haven’t felt this close to him since he was in juvie. All the big bombs—divorce, death, and parole—really bring people together. It’s been a year since I’ve actually seen Jack’s face. I miss that face. “Your face misses my face,” as Jack would say. My text was halfway done—“You’re still my stepson even if”—and I have to throw the phone on the taxi seat and stare at the horizon to let the nausea pass.
I’m scurrying up and down the long, empty hallways of the Kennedy School. It’s like a horror movie, and not just because I can’t find a bar. It’s the black-and-white photographs of the blank-eyed schoolchildren with bowl haircuts dancing around a maypole circa 1919 staring out at me that are creeping me out. If a kid on a Big Wheel appears at the end of the hallway, I’m not waiting for his finger to say “Redrum.” I’m out.
Finally, I pass by what I think must be a bar. It’s so tiny I can’t be sure. There are three empty barstools and a young male bartender behind the bar staring straight ahead and slowly cleaning a glass with a white-and-red-striped dish towel. If the lights in the hallway weren’t on, I would’ve had to go back to my “I’m dead and I just don’t know it” theory.
Nothing says “I’m a middle-aged white lady from LA” more than ordering a buttery Chardonnay, but I don’t care. If this is death, sign me up. This Chardonnay is delicious. A young lesbian couple joins me at the bar. After downing shots of whiskey, they start making out. It’s a graphic, slurping make-out. I lean my body to the left to give them some privacy, but it still feels like I’ve crawled into their mouths; the smacking noises are deafening.
The bartender and I make eye contact. I start sweating because I can’t think of a good quip; their passion is so heavy and I’m so close to it. Should I reach over and tweak a nipple or something? They unattach with a pop! and I hear one of them whisper, “If I don’t get you home right now, I’m going to lose my mind.” Followed by fifteen minutes of clicking noises as they put on all their bike gear. Helmets, shin guards, shoes, reflectors. “Remember the days of ‘I have to get you home, right now’?” I ask the bartender after we’ve watched them clomp out on their biker shoes. He doesn’t answer. “Me neither,” I say and sip my buttery Chardonnay. That was a lot of passion in a tiny haunted bar. I wonder if they were sneaking around. Recently, anytime I see people being openly passionate in public, my first thought is, look at the people having an affair.
An affair is inherently thrilling. Also, stressful. I imagine it would be the most incredibly exciting thing ever until it was the most awful, depressing thing ever.
“David is the kindest, deepest, most amazing man I’ve ever known.” The Human Being said that to me one night after babysitting Leo. How sweet, I’d thought. There’s somebody out there who worships him. That’s got to make a middle-aged man feel good about himself. We all could use a little perk like that once in a while. I’ll tell him she said that, I thought. I bet he has no idea she worships him like that. Her gushing about him reminded me of how I’d gushed about him after our trip to Baja.
David took me to Baja, Mexico, in the early days of our dating. Hiking around the Sea of Cortez, I’d suggested to David that we go swimming. The water was the most perfect clear blue I’d ever seen. It would be rude to not take off all our clothes and jump in. David warned me against it. “The cold water could give you a heart attack, Lauren. What if someone threw a lawn mower into the sea and we stepped on it with our bare feet? There are no hospitals around. We’ll have a heart attack, bleed to death, and die.” By the time he got to our clothes being stolen and us freezing to death after the sun went down in the middle of nowhere, I’d taken off my clothes and jumped in. The “spontaneous, fearless, adventure-seeker chick” was not a role I’d ever played. I wanted to show David that it was no big deal. That we could do crazy life things together, survive them, and enjoy the afterbuzz of near-death experiences together. The water felt fantastic. I turned back to shore expecting to see David waving his arms above his head and begging me to swim back. Instead there he was, walking over the jagged rocks in his bare feet—“Ow! Ow! Ow!”—in his tighty whities to join me. He didn’t look any less nervous, but he was coming in the water. Blissed out of my mind, I’d started laughing and crying and laughing. The sight of him looking so nervous but doing it anyway busted my heart wide open. He didn’t need to be a macho superhero about it. I didn’t need him to not be scared to fall in love with him; I needed him to be scared and dive in anyway. By the time we were swimming to shore to check out what the group of teenage boys carrying brooms who were heading toward our clothing were up to, I’d fallen in love with the kindest, deepest, most amazing man.
Sadly, I never cheated on David. (I’m kidding. I’m glad I didn’t. Being able to sob “I was never with anyone but you!” like a daytime soap star is so much more satisfying when it’s true.) I hope I believe in love again. For Leo’s sake. I hope that by the time he’s a teenager I stop referring to marriage as “the festival of lies.”
Well, this is fun. Look at me, out on the town. Woo-hoo.
The bartender dryly informs me that I look “very dolled up” this evening. I do? How does he know that this isn’t my norm? My god, he thinks I’m a prostitute. What am I doing? I’m a mother on the road. I’m not even officially divorced. It’s not appropriate to be sitting at a bar by myself boozing it up. No, no, no. Wipe that paint off your face, Jezebel, and go see a movie. That’s exactly what I should do. Go sit in the dark.
Shockingly, I find the movie theater right away without the help of bloody handprints or a child’s breathy voice singing “La la la . . . follow me.” It’s a living room–style theater where people watch the movies sitting on couches and La-Z-Boy recliners. The sign out front reads GEEK TRIVIA NIGHT. I thought it was the title of a movie. It’s not. It’s a trivia night—but on a level I didn’t know trivia could reach. The place is packed. There must be about three hundred people shoved onto love seats and sitting on recl
iners. This was the wholesome place to be. It’s Portland, so there’s a bar. I’m ordering a beer that’s described on the menu as “a bong hit in the bar” when the game starts.
“Where do Klingons go when they die?”
A high-pitched male voice calls out for clarification. “Uh, sir, would that be an honorable or a dishonorable death?”
There’s no place to sit, and I notice that everyone is on teams. They all know one another. This may not have been the best thing to do when I’m alone. It was the worst thing. I’m old. I’m the oldest one here by far. I must have looked very dolled up to these trivia geeks.
“If you’re looking to join a team, you are welcome to join ours.”
A cute blond boy—he couldn’t be more than twenty-three years old, maybe twenty-eight, I’m bad with ages—invites me join his team, which includes two other boys who are somewhere in their twenties. Their team name is the Nerdy Sanchezes. Their invitation touches my heart. How kind. I thank them and cram myself onto the love seat next to the cute blond one. You know what? I love people in their twenties. They’re so much more open, so much more willing to take risks. In your twenties you want adventure. The Human Being would sit and talk to me for hours after she got done babysitting. I didn’t want her to go home. Talking to a young girl was so interesting, I thought. I actually liked hearing about her hopes and dreams for the future, the frustration of living at home with her parents and trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. “Stop talking to her, Lauren, or she’ll never go home,” David would say to me.
“What two ingredients were used on the sandwich Ally Sheedy made in the movie The Breakfast Club?”
My teammates know every answer. No discussion needed. One writes it down; the others glance at the answer, give a quick a nod, and wait for the next question. They don’t look like they’re having fun, but I sense that maybe they are.
A nerd fight over which font was used in the movie title Jurassic Park breaks out. The answer was multiple choice and a team has accused the hosts of the game of fraud: “Sir, none of them are correct. How dare you!”
Miss Fortune Page 26