Choose Your Own Love Story

by Ilyse Mimoun

  Maybe this posturing is a French thing, but you have to be very careful with someone who has a child. You can’t get too involved unless you think you’ll be able to be there for Amy for the long haul. She’s such a sweet and spunky kid, and tonight when Claude tucks her in, you feel a surge of love for her. The question is, Do you love Claude?

  You’ve only been pondering this a few minutes when Claude starts snoring, which doesn’t bode well. If you can fall asleep first, the snoring doesn’t bother you too much. But try to fall asleep while he’s snorting and snorkeling—who could do that? You decide to turn on the small lamp and read for a while, hoping he’ll let up. Your book is about a teenage girl who thinks she’s a mermaid and is in love with an alcoholic vet. You need to wake up early tomorrow, but you can’t stop reading. At twelve-thirty the bed shifts back and forth beneath you, silently.

  You leap out of bed and crouch under the desk. Claude undroops one eyelid and laughs. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s an earthquake!” your heart races and your throat feels dry.

  “It’s okay. It was a small one. No big deal.” Claude has become the king of No Big Deal. Since nothing ever scares him, it makes you seem crazy. Claude checks up on Amy, but she has slept right through it. Fine––maybe you do have a high startle response, but most human beings experience fear. Claude’s stalwart attitude is becoming a turn-off.

  “It’s okay, belle-fille. Come snuggle me. Viens ici.” Every time you mentally prepare to chuck him, Claude turns adorable. Plus, the room has stopped moving.

  “Well, I’m going outside just to be safe. You should come with me.” You collect some water bottles from the kitchen, pull a sweatshirt over your threadbare nightgown with pig snouts on it, and slip out to the street. Claude calls out, “Belle-fille, you don’t have to do that!”

  The night air is balmy and dipped in moonshine. No one else is out here, which makes you feel stupid. Obviously you are overreacting. Still, why don’t under-reactors get as much criticism? You don’t want to return to the little beach house just yet. You’ll wait until Claude is snoring again, which will probably be five seconds from now.

  Suddenly the ground shakes again, this time with violence. You heave forward, your forehead scraping the asphalt. “Shit,” you say, breathing heavily. The ground still shakes and a roaring sound fills your ears. Now people are sprinting outside, screaming, carrying puppies and wailing babies. A car has crashed into the pole of a power line. Amy runs to your side and grabs your hand.

  “Ma petite!” Claude strides out when everyone else runs, his face serene when everyone else’s furrows––until a tree collapses on him. You blink, unbelieving. Claude’s body is twisted and he grimaces in pain. He is stuck.

  “Claude!” you scream and run toward him.

  “Get help,” he gasps. “My back is fucked. Don’t lose Amy.”

  You scan the chaos for some big guys, but everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off. You run back to Claude, your fear overrun by grim determination. Claude’s face is ashen.

  “Daddy!” Amy cries.

  You lunge your legs forward and push the tree trunk, to no avail. Your face is beet red. You push again. Nothing.

  You need help, damn it!

  Turn to page 146, section 40.

  If you never met a challenge you couldn’t overcome, turn to page 144, section 39.

  18

  You wish you were stable enough to keep dating Max, but it looks like there’s still healing to be done. You need a little more cocooning before you can butterfly. And then one night your life changes forever when you fall into a mud puddle.

  You’re walking out of your therapist Dr. Stein’s office, no less. But any hard-earned morsel of positive feeling you gained in fifty minutes of bellyaching is lost as soon as your ass hits the dirty slop in the middle of the parking lot. It’s your own fault for texting (your mother) while walking. Wait—you’re supposed to stop blaming yourself for things. But this was clearly your fault—are you supposed to stop blaming yourself for things that are actually your fault?

  Dr. Stein would say no, but she would “question the usefulness of blame.” And Dr. Stein doesn’t think it’s your fault that you haven’t gotten married yet. She knows it’s hard in Los Angeles, a city you hate more with each smoggy breath. You’re sick of the traffic, the yoga pants, the trendy restaurants that only serve small plates––can no one eat a T-bone steak and a baked potato anymore? You’re sick of coming home to watch TV by yourself while eating peanut butter straight out of the jar.

  Today Dr. Stein told a story about how one person went to a hotel in a new town and found everyone there to be a jerk, and the next patron went to the same hotel in the same town and found everyone there to be a delight. The only difference was . . . their attitude! Can you believe you had to pay money for that?

  Anyway, there was no way Dr. Stein was going to win today—you are determined to be in a bad mood. You burned your toast this morning, your mother is texting you incessantly about your biological clock, and now this––stuck in a mud puddle and thoroughly soaked since you spent all this time silently cursing the universe. Such a shame, because you really like the tan linen slacks you are wearing. You trudge to your car and get on the freeway, where you get to drive zero miles an hour in soggy pants. It will probably take you two hours to get home. Then again, what else do you have to look forward to anyway? As your mood grows ever darker, your front left tire grows ever flatter and then just gives up in the middle of the freeway. What a day you are having!

  But then something happens just like in the movies. A ruggedly handsome man appears out of nowhere to help you change your tire. He’s so large that at first you think you may have encountered your first giant. He doesn’t mind that you are bawling. He doesn’t mind that you don’t have a spare tire. He notices your pretty pants are wet and says you probably deserve a nice dinner. Can you believe he seems kind, thoughtful, and down-to-earth? Well, he might be. And can you believe you two will fall madly in love and you’ll be married within the year?

  Yes, you believe! Love conquers all! Continue to page 64, section 19.

  Not falling for it. Turn to page 198, section 54.

  19

  Hooray! You believed in love, and it came true! You are cocoa for cocoa puffs for your tire hero, Jeff. At first it’s mostly lust. Jeff is a Marine, which means he’s so strong and tall and broad-chested, it triggers a primordial cave-woman lurking within you. Some ferocious inner primate that grunts, “Man kill cave intruders. Me want man.”

  But as you get to know him, it turns out he is sweet and gentle and even sentimental. He’s got a thing for antique quartz miniatures. And he needs his socks color-coordinated in the drawers. And when you’re wrapped up in his strong arms or laughing over biscuits with jam in the morning, you feel a peace you have never known.

  After eight months, when Jeff falls to his knees at an Ethiopian restaurant you dragged him to—you don’t even wait for him to ask the question. You just sit on his knee and bury your head in his neck.

  “Yes,” you murmur.

  Continue to page 65, section 20, cave lady!

  20

  Jeff is a simple fellow, which means you have a small, uncomplicated wedding with immediate relatives and a few friends in your mom’s garden. Crystal helped you pick out a cream-colored vintage flapper dress. Jeff tells you you’re the most beautiful creature in the world, and for a minute you’re tempted to believe him.

  You move back to Jeff’s lovely hometown in North Carolina, which suits you. People are friendly and authentic and consider you very worldly. You make some great friends, who help you create a popular food blog called In a Pickle because apparently everyone here loves pickles. You may even have a tip about helping someone open a restaurant! And you have a beautiful baby daughter named Corolla, named after the car that broke down that fateful night. Finally you feel at home and complete.

  Well, if this were a movie, i
t would end right here: happily ever after.

  In reality, Jeff’s Marine unit ends up being moved to Japan, which is hard on the relationship. For one thing, you are only an occasional sushi eater, and that is a serious problem. And you don’t speak Japanese, which makes Jeff and Corolla your only friends. You don’t have a job anymore. You’re thinking about writing some kind of online journal about being an ex-pat, but it’s amazing how many others have already done the same thing. You probably have nothing new to add to the genre. Even your seething hatred of Hello Kitty is unoriginal.

  Plus, much of what makes Japan exciting—the high-rises, the noise, the nightlife—stresses you out. It’s not all tea-sipping and bonsai-snipping, an upsetting fact that reveals you are either racist to have assumed that or have watched the Karate Kid too many times (or both). Moving to Japan also breaks your mother’s heart, especially when you quickly get pregnant again.

  This time you panic right along with your mom. How can you be pregnant on the other side of the world, so far from everything you know? What kind of life will your children have if you never know where you’ll be deployed next––Afghanistan or Hawaii? How will you communicate with your doctor for the next ten months? (You learned last time that pregnancy actually lasts ten months—why do people keep saying nine?!)

  Your husband tries to soothe your frazzled nerves, but he can never understand how scary it is to be pregnant, let alone in a strange country. Plus, you do not have the hardy disposition of a Marine. Sometimes it feels like he doesn’t get that. Which makes you want to smash his favorite quartz elephant, Trunky.

  One day, when you are making a little Bento box of snacks for Corolla, you notice tears slipping into the seaweed. This is only temporary, you tell yourself.

  You Skype your mom, who just cries along with you.

  You Skype your dad, who says, life is a crapshoot—why do you think I’m on my fifth wife? It’s a stupid joke, but you love him for making it so you can laugh for a second. You wish your dad were here now. Even though you rarely even saw him in the States, as he travels constantly, you remember him tucking you into bed at night when you were a kid. You remember his reassuring smell—a combination of cigar smoke and Chiclets chewing gum. By the end of the call you’re sobbing in your futon. Everything is new. Everything is weird.

  You remember those old relaxation tracks Dr. Stein made for you, the ones that say that no matter what happens, you can handle it. You start listening to them every day. Dr. Stein used to say that resilience is something we cultivate, not something we’re born with. And this is an important attitude to have because your second child turns out to be cross-eyed, which is first scary and then stressful. It also brings out a nurturing aspect of Corolla’s personality that warms all of your hearts.

  In fact, Corolla is such a wonderful big sister that she becomes the spirit guide for the whole family. You learn to lighten up and appreciate the little things, like cherry blossoms blanketing the street during spring. Even on the lousiest days Corolla picks up the baby and says, “Baby! Your face smells like raindrops!” and you all crack up. Or Corolla reads to the baby from Tales of Frog and Toad and does funny voices for each character. Or Jeff takes your face in his hands and lets you breathe. You don’t know how long you’ll be here, but you know now that you can handle it.

  And here, once again, a mud puddle was actually a blessing, depending on how you looked at it. And in that sense Dr. Stein’s hotel story wasn’t so bad after all.

  THE END

  21

  You know a good thing when you see it, so you pull your act together and open up to Max. Sometimes he’s corny or obnoxious, but while one part of your brain is criticizing him, the other part of it is learning something very important, something you didn’t realize with Greg and previous boyfriends: it’s not enough to be dazzled by a man; he has to be dazzled by you. And he has to actually be good at partnership—listening, expressing feelings, taking you into account before making decisions. These aren’t glamorous traits like being impossibly witty or Clooney-like, but they’re the stuff that actual working relationships are made of. The more you quiet your little judger, the more Max enchants you. You’ve figured it out!

  You two fall madly in love and start spending every minute together. When you’re apart, he sends you emoji of hearts, kissy-faces, and rainbows. You send back hearts, kissy-faces, and baby chickens. Swooping declarations of love are made over crème brûlée. Even going to the movies or grocery store is intoxicating when you’re with Max. In the movie theater he licks the butter off your fingers and throws popcorn at you. It feels like the most hilarious and fun game that was ever invented. In the grocery store you kiss in the frozen foods section and wonder if Cathy and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights ever felt such passion. Everything is glorious when you’re in love—even taking the garbage out is glorious when you’re in love!

  In fact, your heart is actually racing one night when you’re both carrying smelly garbage bags stuffed with dried egg salad and leftover lemon fettuccini. Something funny is in the air. Max has his head buried in his garbage bag, mumbling about losing something, and then his head pops out, along with his hand, which holds a ring.

  He barely gets the words out before you grab the ring and embrace him passionately, no matter that he smells likes garbage. Your moment has finally arrived. You live happily ever after . . . for a good long while.

  Continue to page 71, section 22.

  22

  Disney movies and rom-coms promised you that happiness is a destination you definitively reach when you say I do . . . but it’s not exactly like that, is it?

  The first few years are fantastic. You’re thrilled to be in the married club, and there’s a lot of morning sex, exciting dinners, and all the cuddling you could ever want. But after a while, well, morning sex is sort of a hassle. Your muscles ache after sleeping, and you really want to get out of bed and do some stretches. You can have sex whenever you want now, which means now is never the perfect time. And eating out is great, but you’re usually scribbling on your notepad about the food instead of gazing soulfully into Max’s eyes like the old days.

  Cuddling is still awesome, and Max squeezes your butt a lot, but it turns out the phrase “the honeymoon is over” is not just a cliché. Banality trumps romance. You used to talk about how good it felt to hold each other or how haunting the moonlight was. Now you talk about the incessant yapping from your neighbor’s dog. Or you complain about your broken toe, which you stubbed against Max’s dresser. And then Max gets kidney stones and acts like a big baby while you experience the TEN months of vomiting, peeing, and inflammation that is pregnancy.

  And once your darling son, Artie, is born—forget it. No matter how much you both try to keep the romance up, life is mostly about the kid. You’ve given up on cute clothes since they’re always spit up on. Some nights you vow to throw on a dress and maybe some heels, but you’re just so tired. Parents who constantly complain about exhaustion used to drive you crazy, but now you understand. Mommy Tired is a different kind of tired. It’s bone-deep.

  Still, it’s a happy fatigue, and you’re okay with the status quo. After all this, this is just what you said you always wanted.

  And then one night Max tells you something strange. There is a mermaid at his gym and she’s interested in a threesome.

  You burst into laughter. “Ha ha. You wish.”

  Max whips out his Google Glasses and shows you a picture of a beautiful young woman alone in a steam room. Jet-black curls cover her breasts, but beneath her belly button is an unmistakable purple tail. It’s crazy, it’s absolutely ridiculous, but it’s right there. Apparently Max had accidentally walked into the women’s room and spied the lovely creature. They got to talking, and soon an offer was on the table.

  Your feelings are mixed. You believe in marital fidelity, but this is an unusual circumstance. And though you aren’t terribly lesbian, does a mermaid’s gender even count? Even if you weren’t into it, w
ouldn’t Max resent you for the rest of your life if you don’t give it a shot? At least he’s including you. Plus, you have to admit the image of a magical creature disrupting your banal world of diapers and deadlines is a little . . . titillating.

  So you set the date for a week hence, and excitement starts buzzing inside you.

  “I have to admit it’s flattering that a mermaid would be interested in us,” Max says on The Night, squeezing your butt.

  “I know!” you respond in good fun. Your stomach is full of jumping beans.

  Not long after your mom picks up Artie for Grandma night, Shelly the mermaid arrives at your door. Dry, she looks like a pretty and sullen college kid with a pouty mouth and lots of black eyeliner. She wears jeans and a black tank top, and her cell phone rests comfortably on her hip. Her curls are clipped into a messy bun.

  “So you wanna get started?” she asks. She tugs at the gym bag hanging on her shoulder.

  You and Max are both surprised at her demeanor. It’s not like Shelly is a prostitute—was this some kind of dare? Is she mocking you? You’ve been imagining fascinating wine-soaked conversation about Shelly’s unusual life. But Shelly denies the aged Gruyere and Petite Sirah (apparently both lactose intolerant and a sober alcoholic), and the three of you awkwardly make your way to the upstairs bathroom.

  While the tub fills with steamy water, Shelly sits on the edge and smokes a cigarette.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, you can’t smoke in––” you begin, but Max cuts you off, saying surely you can make an exception. You nod nervously and gulp more wine.

  When Shelly finishes her cigarette, she reaches into her gym bag and pulls out a giant purple tail. She unzips her jeans and tugs them off. You are crestfallen.