Idiot

by Laura Clery

  “Yooooo, Claire! How have you been for the past eight years? By the way, I’m going to be in New York for a month. Do you think I could uh . . . stay with you?”

  “No problem!”

  Wow, this wasn’t going to be weird at all!

  Cut to . . . my first night sleeping over in her apartment. Claire’s smiling face was one foot away from mine, as we lay together in her double bed in her tiny Manhattan studio apartment. It was the size of a closet. And it had no closet. I’m pretty sure it was a closet.

  “How’s your mom?” I asked. I figured that if I was lying this close to someone else’s face, then I should probably talk to them.

  “Good,” she replied. “Remember how early we had to get up on Saturdays? That was fun.”

  “Totally.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure.”

  To make things a bit more difficult, the first thing Claire offered me when I got in her apartment was weed. I politely said no. Okay, I cannot stay here for a whole month.

  As I was walking from Claire’s apartment to the set the next day, I was overcome with fear. New York City had been the place where my addiction had reared its ugly head for the first time. It was where I fell into Damon’s grasp. I had no fond memories here. How was I going to stay sober here alone? I didn’t have The Log Cabin, I didn’t have Kristal or Stephen or anyone. Plus it was a bit awkward to get on my knees in the morning and ask God to keep me sober for the day, with Claire five feet away making toast next to the toilet.

  A week passed in Claire’s closet apartment, and I remembered that Michael, a friend whose short film I acted in, had moved to New York the year before. I stepped into the hallway and hit him up immediately to ask if he had any extra space I could stay in.

  “Totally, dude! You can stay on the couch in our basement.”

  Thank God. I thanked Claire profusely for letting me stay with her, and then went to the other house in Brooklyn. I was nervous: this was going to be a whole group of new people I’d have to meet and socialize with and live with for the next three weeks. If I was going to be uncomfortable, how would I be certain I wouldn’t drink?

  I walked into the house and set my stuff down. Then Michael’s roommate, Leslie, walked in and introduced herself. We talked for a moment, and then she said:

  “Welp. Off to AA bishes.”

  “Wait, what!!”

  “Yeah, I’ve been sober six months.”

  “I’ve been sober almost two months!”

  She smiled at me; she understood. “Come with me!”

  From then on, I went with her every day that I was in New York. It was inexplicable, like there was something watching over me. In AA, we call that a God shot.

  New York was a success. I played a dumb model named Bunny. What the fuck was up with the model thing? I did my Ivy character for it again.

  I came back to LA on a high, feeling stronger than ever. Stephen felt it, too. We got back together. Things were good again.

  “Move in with me?” he asked one day while we were laying on his couch, watching Millionaire Matchmaker. We had been dating for around five months.

  I smiled and kissed him. “Aw, I’d love to. But no.”

  I didn’t want to move in with another guy until I was married. Not because I was traditional or anything, I just really hate moving. I didn’t want to change locations unless I knew I would be living with this person for the rest of my life. It wasn’t a marriage ultimatum. Moving is just a real pain in the ass.

  “Fair enough,” he replied.

  A month later, he took me out to this beautiful restaurant called Inn of the Seventh Ray.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you taking me to such a nice place on a Wednesday night?”

  “Because I love you and I just want to take you somewhere, okay?”

  “Okay, okay, sorry!”

  The waiter seated us at a table, handed us menus, and then stepped away. Oh wait, I wanted sparkling water. I turned around to look for the waiter, couldn’t find him, and turned back to Stephen, who was gone from his seat. Wait, where did he go?

  “Oh shit.”

  Stephen was down on one knee in front of me. He was shaking with nerves as he opened the ring box. “Will you marry me? I love you.” He stood up.

  “Wait—you can’t stand up yet! You’ve gotta wait until I answer.”

  “Right, right. Sorry.” He knelt back down.

  “YES!”

  We got married one year after we met. The thought of either of us planning a wedding felt like the biggest joke in the world, so we just eloped and flew to Anacapri in Italy the next day. That was it. It felt easy, simple, and right.

  CHAPTER 9

  Two Apartments and a Home

  I moved into Stephen’s small one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica shortly after he proposed to me. We were so in love. Since both of us had jobs with irregular hours, we could stay in bed a bit longer in the morning, watching the sunlight streak into the room.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  This morning, our peace was broken by an angry-looking old woman hitting our window with a broom. I quickly pulled the sheet over my body. What the hell? She peered in through our window.

  “Stephen! RENT IS DUE IN TWO DAYS. DO NOT FORGET!” she yelled with a thick Russian accent. She spotted me and glared. Or maybe that was her resting face? It was unclear.

  When Stephen moved to America he had no credit. So no sane landlord would let him rent from them. Which is why he ended up with:

  “DO NOT FORGET, Stephen! TWO! DAYS!” She punctuated the last two words with whaps of the broom against the window.

  Stephen and I shrank down under the covers, waiting for her to leave. This overbearing Russian woman and her weird codependent daughter let Stephen rent from them because he is British. “These Americans are up to no good. You come with us,” they’d said. Stephen wasn’t really in a place to say no. I guess the landlord wasn’t accustomed to texting or phone calls or ringing the doorbell. Her communications were always through our window: “Stephen! Sweep the front porch. IT IS VERY DIRTY.”

  They had bought this apartment complex in the ’70s for dirt cheap. These tiny apartments were built in the 1920s, absolutely about to fall apart, but cute nonetheless. The old woman lived in the front one, we lived in the second one, another family lived in the third one, and the daughter lived alone in the last one.

  The mother and daughter would fight constantly. They were both codependent and hated each other. The old lady was always convinced there was going to be a war. One time, when we were invited into the old woman’s apartment, I used the bathroom and saw that her bathtub was completely filled with fruit. They hoarded so much food. When there was a news report about a bombing in London, the old lady ran to Stephen’s window and offered to let his entire family stay with them here. “We can keep them safe for when the war comes. We have bathtub of fruit. They will be okay.”

  “What war? This was just a random attack.”

  Her face darkened: “There will be war, Stephen.”

  As overbearing as she was, there was only one moment where she truly crossed the line. She popped up in the window holding a plastic bag. “Stephen, you must try these apples I just bought.”

  Stephen awkwardly reached through the open window and grabbed one. “All right, thanks.” She then went on to insist he take a bite while also saying, “I do not like Laura. She is not right for you. You must leave her. She is not the one!”

  Luckily, I wasn’t there at the time, but Stephen recounted the story to me later. “I don’t know what came over me, but I was so upset and offended that I pointed at her and said, ‘DO NOT EVER SPEAK LIKE THAT ABOUT THE WOMAN I LOVE.’ And then she nodded respectfully. I think she gets it now.”

  “Wow. We’re like Romeo and Juliet, but if your family was the landlord and there wasn’t really anything at stake.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly it.” Stephen nodde
d. We had a good laugh. Stephen’s such a gentle creature, it takes a lot to get him to yell.

  There were so many similarities between Stephen and me. We always joked that we were from different countries but the same town. Stephen grew up in Faversham, this suburb outside of London; I was from a suburb outside of Chicago. The towns even look strangely similar, with their long front yards and brick buildings. We both grew up working-class, his dad was employed at a furniture store and his mother was a waitress.

  Stephen is half Irish and half British. In the 1960s his father moved to London from a very poor town in Southern Ireland. His name was Sean Murphy, and it really doesn’t get more Irish than that. When Sean was looking for work, every business had a sign up that said: No dogs, no Blacks, no Irish.

  When he was walking home from another unsuccessful day looking for work, he looked up and saw the Hilton Hotel. Hilton, he decided, sounds British. He proceeded to change his name from Sean Murphy to John Hilton. He got rid of his accent and finally found a job ushering in a movie theater. He met his wife-to-be Mavis when they were both working as ushers. They got married and had Stephen. Then the three of them moved into this tiny one-bedroom apartment together until they moved into the slightly bigger two-bedroom town house, which they still have today.

  There’s something about growing up the same way that gives you a deep connection. We both unconsciously poured water into the dish soap to make it last longer and had parents who didn’t pressure us to go to college. Instead they supported our artistic endeavors even though the odds were against us.

  Stephen will sometimes look at me with fear in his eyes and ask, “What if we go bankrupt and lose our house and our careers?”

  I’ll just smile at him and say, “Then we’ll move to a cheap city and get a one-bedroom apartment and have a baby and I’ll still make comedy and you’ll still make music and we’ll still be in love and happy.”

  Stephen will smile back at me, then. “That sounds bloody rubbish, doesn’t it?”

  It does a bit.

  Stephen’s mom raised him on pop music. She’d have the radio blasting, and Stephen would contribute by banging pots and pans. When he got older, he traded the cooking utensils for piano, and then piano for synthesizers. By the time he was a teenager, he was creating elaborate musical soundscapes in his room alone, not coming out until he was satisfied with what he’d made.

  When high school rolled around, his mother would drop him at the entrance of the school and he would immediately walk out the back door. He was completely over it—there was just no way he was going. He had music dreams to make happen, and they did not feature algebra.

  He completed his angsty demeanor with all-black outfits and dark eyeliner. He and his friends would drop acid, travel to London, and walk around at four in the morning. One early morning when they were taking an acid-walk, a cop stopped them. “What’s going on?” the cop asked after blocking their path.

  Pupils dilated, Stephen smiled at him. “We have emotional problems.”

  The cop stepped forward menacingly. “It’s four in the morning, bud. You got drugs in your pockets?”

  He and his friends looked at each other . . . then ran! Hey, Stephen didn’t have time to get arrested—he had a music career to attend to. When he was fifteen years old, he got a record deal, dropped out of high school, and moved to London. The record label put him up in this abandoned, repurposed church attic, where he would sit alone and compose music twenty-four hours a day. I’m not exaggerating. He started taking speed to keep himself awake and working, and he became addicted to it. In that music scene it’s common, even celebrated, to go to work fucked up. I can’t speak for him, but I’d guess that it’s even harder to realize you have a problem and fix it when you’re submerged in that world, surrounded by people who are also fucked up all the time.

  Stephen really had his own crazy story. He’d start every morning with straight vodka, and pepper it through the day with drugs to keep the high sustained. He was even worse than me when he finally woke up from his addiction. But thank God, he did. He changed himself and figured out how to create music and use his genius without supplementing it all with drugs.

  A short while before I met him, he got a call from Hans Zimmer. Hans said that he loved Stephen’s music and he wanted him to come out to LA to compose films with him. So Stephen hopped on a plane and came out here. It was that simple. I mean, when Hans Zimmer tells you to move, you move.

  That’s when I met him. He was eight years sober. When we got engaged, when we got married, I had never even seen what Stephen was like when he was drinking or using. If he had been using, he wouldn’t have been able to handle the pressure of working under Hans Zimmer, he wouldn’t have moved out to LA, I wouldn’t have met him or liked him, and we wouldn’t have been together in this one-bedroom apartment cuddled up on the couch, peacefully ready for the rest of our lives, with our crazy Russian landlady skulking outside the window.

  When things got more financially stable for us, we moved out of our one-bedroom apartment and into a two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. It was beautiful, with big windows and sunlight and a kitchen that wasn’t super-busted. But . . . our neighbors at the new place made us miss the Russian lady and her bathtub of fruit.

  Our downstairs neighbors had this strange energy about them. They were full-on hoarders living in filth, and they were so angry all the time. Stephen and I held our breath while passing their front door. “Their scent makes me appreciate the sweet smell of our apartment even more!” Stephen would say, trying to look at the bright side. They paid only four hundred dollars a month because of rent control. Both of them just stayed in the apartment all day, every day. They barely ever came out.

  Since they were on the bottom floor, they had free rein of the front yard, where they kept their huge, angry dogs. The dogs would lunge at anyone who passed in front of their apartment, and they would only be stopped by this tiny little gate that looked like it was weakening with every lunge. It was terrifying. Their rabid barking would be our morning alarm clock and our soothing bedtime soundtrack. But tell me all about that bright side again, Stephen?

  Then, next door to us was this sweet young family with two children, ages one and three. The dogs would lunge at the kids every time they left their apartment. The family would constantly ask the hoarders to put their dogs inside, and the hoarders would ask them to go die. Stephen and I had moved into the middle of a full-on feud.

  One day, the barking from downstairs stopped. Wait, how was I supposed to sleep without their vicious barking? I was used to it now, and the silence was unsettling. The next day, the young mom knocked on our door with tears in her eyes.

  “So . . . I called animal services on the dogs.”

  “Ohhh, that’s why things have been so peaceful here!”

  She nodded sadly. “I wasn’t trying to be mean! I had to. They just kept lunging at little Elliot. So . . . they got back at us by calling Child Protective Services on us and said we were abusing our children.”

  Damn, that was cold. “Oh no.”

  The woman continued shakily, “And the worst part is that little Elliot just fell and hit his head and . . . he has a . . . a . . . BLACK EYE.” She started sobbing. “So if anyone from Child Protective Services comes to your door, can you tell them Jeff and I are—are good parents?”

  “Yes, yes of course.” She hugged me for an awkwardly long time.

  It was a fucking weird place. Beautiful apartment, though! Big windows.

  We had been married a year and a half when we were in this apartment, and both of our careers started to get really busy. Stephen was doing well at work, which meant he was getting more responsibility, which meant more pressure. He slowly started to change. At first, he just became reclusive, staying awake at his keyboard, figuring out musical cues until late into the night. I’d go to sleep alone in our bed and wake up much earlier than him to pray and meditate and go to yoga. We were on completely different schedules. I’
d eat dinner at seven, and he . . . well, I wouldn’t even see him eat. He would bring all food to his desk.

  He became more testy when things would go wrong. Things used to roll off his back so easily before, but now he fixated on his mistakes and became angry and frustrated . . . and then mean and spiteful to me.

  Then he spiraled further. He would bang his head against the wall as hard as he could after trying to come up with a particular tricky cue for a film. I wondered if he was losing his mind. Who the fuck is this person? In the back of my mind, I wondered whether he had relapsed and was hiding it. I never knew Stephen when he was using. I had been a different person when I was using, so maybe this was Stephen on drugs.

  Things were tense between us. We would fight constantly, with me wondering what the hell was going on and him in complete denial of his state. One day we were having a particularly loud yelling match in our apartment and I heard a knock at the door.

  It was the young mother from next door. “I heard you guys yelling.”

  I awkwardly wiped the tears from my eyes. “Um, I’m sorry. We can quiet down.”

  “No, no, I get it. I understand.” She pulled a book out of her purse. The title read, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence. “I wanted to give this to you.”

  I read the back cover. “Mating in Captivity takes a hard line against one of the most time-honored institutions in human history . . . the sexless marriage?”

  She looked at me sympathetically. “It helps.”

  I just stared at her, dumbfounded. “Thanks?” I shut the door.

  I later found out that Stephen had stopped going to meetings. He stopped praying and meditating and calling his sponsor in the morning. He wasn’t using the tools we had both built for ourselves. Those steps are like insulin for a diabetic; if we weren’t actively doing them, we were getting sicker. In the absence of those tools, the voice of his addiction got really loud, and suddenly, just like I had during my relapse, he had forgotten the healthy tools he had used to solve life’s problems. Suddenly, he didn’t know how to deal with his stress. He became riddled with anxiety and fear that he couldn’t cope with.