I sit. My ass aches, and there’s a grim satisfaction in that. I have no idea what to say to him.
We stare at one another for far too long, eye to eye against the background noise of traffic that passes for silence in New York. “How are you?” he asks.
In love. Really in love, with someone who’s honest with me. And you want to know the truth? He makes you look bland. “I’m good.”
He wears pale tan pants and an oversized fisherman’s sweater. The kind of clothes that wouldn’t last five minutes in the grime and chaos of Becky’s place. He was always so clean, and spent forever in the bathroom, while shutting me out. Sebastian had this pet theory that the real rot in a relationship starts in the bathroom rather than the bedroom, so that there was never any question of us using the bathroom at the same time, not even to pee. “If you’re ever taking a dump while I’m in the shower, we’re over,” he said, and shooed me out of the room, even when he was only flossing his teeth. Maybe that’s when I almost lost my mind when Jody looked at me with naughty, stoned sloe eyes and said, “Hey – you wanna watch me pee? Or is that weird?”
I can still taste his dick. Jesus.
“You look thin,” Sebastian says.
I shrug. “Guess I’d probably fit that wedding tux now, huh?”
“Don’t be cruel, Chris.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re adults. We should be able to deal with this.”
Lot of shoulds already. I should sit down, I should be able to deal with this. And he should have kept his goddamn knees together.
“I should have called,” he says, continuing the theme.
What the fuck makes you think I wanted you to? “Yeah.”
“Your dad recommended a therapist.”
“Uh huh.”
Oh, I could be nicer to him, but the truth is I just don’t want to be.
“It’s going well,” he says. “I’ve been working through some things. I’ve learned a lot about myself.”
“Good for you,” I say. “Are you selling the apartment?”
“What?”
“The apartment. Are you selling? The way I see it, we can do this one of two ways. We sell this place and split the profits, or you buy me out of my half.”
His mouth hangs open for a moment, and maybe for the first time it really hits me, how big a bullet I’ve dodged here. How did I even imagine for a second that I could live my life with someone so deep-down self-absorbed that he thinks I’d give a single purple flying fuck about his progress in therapy? “I don’t…I don’t understand,” he says.
“No, I know you don’t,” I say. “Which is a problem, because how did you think we were headed anywhere other than Splitsville? We’re over, Sebastian. We have been over since I came home and found Marco in my shower.”
“Fine, but what was I supposed to think? You ghosted me. You disappeared into the woods for months on end. You didn’t talk to me, even to yell at me. I was worried about you…”
I can’t help it. I have to laugh. “No, honey,” I say. “You weren’t worried. You were guilty. There’s a very big difference.”
This is the worst. I already want to be back in New Hampshire. Maybe I should get a hotel, although I can’t really afford it, and why should I be the one to move out? Again. Sebastian has money. Let him go to a hotel, or shack up with whomever he’s screwing in my absence.
Work is a further pain in the ass. Maybe if I’d returned in the immediate wake of my breakup they might have treated me more gently, but time has passed and I’ve burned through that supply of goodwill. Now, Amy says, we need to have ‘conversations about my future’ and I have a feeling it’s time to start sending out resumes.
Whatever my future holds, it’s not here. I don’t have the energy to sit through meetings about click throughs and demographics and calls to action any more. Impacting, leveraging, actioning – all those unlikely transitive verbs that gave Ron Weasley the shudders, way back in those strange days before Jody came into my life. Back then those words were simply ugly, but now they may as well be gibberish. I’ve had too big a dose of reality to see them as anything but hollow. Real life is a solid floor under your feet, the smell of yellow pine, the satisfaction of working with your hands, and then – at the end of the day – sinking into deep, effortless sleep in the arms of someone who understands you, and who wants to build the same thing as you do. I don’t know what I’m going to do for money, but after a while you can only stare at so many strings of zeros running into the red before they lose all meaning, too.
The sale of my half of the apartment should plug some holes, but I can’t think about that right now. Instead I retreat to the break room (my old office is already occupied by someone else) and text a long, feverish love letter to Jody.
That evening Sebastian finds enough tact to make himself scarce, and I’m left rattling around in what used to be our kitchen. Our home.
I loved this apartment. I loved the way the light slipped in through the cracks in the jungle of buildings outside. I remember painting the kitchen pale yellow and Sebastian – frowning as far as his recent Botox would let him – fretting that the yellow wasn’t nearly as stylish as the white on cream on pale grey kitchens of his most fashionable friends. I cooked elaborate dinners, for friends or just for the two of us, and worried about what wine to serve with fish. And all the time I took it for granted that I’d be enough for him. At least, until the first time he cheated.
It’s funny how the love you feel for a place can just drain away, like water in a bathtub.
I open a bottle of wine and call Jody.
“What are you doing?” he says. It’s the first thing he asks, like we’re teenagers. All those questions you ask when you’re in love for the first time, in love with the most fascinating person in the universe. Where are you? What are you doing? What are you wearing? What are you thinking?
“I’m drinking wine,” I say. “Alone. In my old apartment.”
He sniffs. “Ah. The one with walls.”
“Yep. And a floor. And I hate to make you jealous, but it also has an intact ceiling.”
“You fucker.”
“I know. I’m the worst.” He doesn’t laugh the way he usually does, and some selfish part of me is gratified to hear that he sounds lost and tired without me. “How about you? How are things in our tumbledown neck of the woods?”
He sighs long and hard down the phone at me. “Jack’s dying.”
“Oh my God. Are you okay?”
“Truthfully?” he says. “I don’t know. I have no idea what to feel. It’s not the first time he’s yanked this particular alarm cord, if you know what I mean.”
“He’s come close to death before?”
Jody sighs again. “Oh, Chris. That would be the normal assumption to make, but this is Jack we’re talking about. He had leukemia about three years back. Cured it with essential oils.”
“Essential…?”
“Oils. Like lemon and sandalwood and shit. Short version, his cancer scam attracted way too much attention on GoFundMe and people started asking questions. Luckily for him some boss babe in one of those essential oil pyramid schemes got in touch with him, and he kind of leaned into that and hey presto. He cured his cancer with nice smells.” He listens to my silence for a moment. “So…yeah. That’s my dad. Scared yet?”
I would be, if Jody didn’t seem like he’s spent his entire life swimming against the genetic tide. If there’s one thing I can rely on, it’s his perfect – and often unvarnished – honesty. “What about this time?” I ask, because Jack didn’t exactly look well.
“Liver failure,” says Jody. “Which is…yeah. I mean, it’s more surprising that that hasn’t come up before, but again, this is Jack. I’ve seen him roll off the roof of a house, fall fifteen feet and walk away with a slight limp and a cracked rib. I don’t know – maybe that’s why this doesn’t feel real. The man’s indestructible.”
“But what if it is real?”
Jo
dy is quiet for a moment. “That’s just it, Boo,” he says. “I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m supposed to feel right now, but it’s definitely not what I think I’m feeling.”
“What do you think you’re feeling?”
“Relief.” He goes quiet again, listening to me breathe. “Does that make me a monster?”
“No, honey. No. It makes you the child of an appallingly bad parent.”
“You’re sweet to say that, but I think I might just be an asshole.”
“You’re not. You’re wonderful, and I miss you like crazy already.”
“I miss you, too,” he says. “Do you think we’re codependent?”
“Oh, probably. If it feels this good, it’s bound to be bad for you. Isn’t that how it usually goes?”
This time he manages a small laugh. “Well, I don’t care if it is,” he says. “Nobody’s ever written me a love letter before. I think I could get used to it.”
“Don’t get to used to it. I’m not going to have a lot of time for writing when I get back. Oh, some good news, by the way. I’ve set the ball rolling about selling this place, so with New York real estate prices versus rural New Hampshire…should buy us a lot of yellow pine.” He goes silent for far too long, making me nervous. “Jody?”
“Yeah. I’m here. I’m just…God, Chris. This feels…serious. Like a commitment.”
“It is,” I say. “Look, no matter what happens, opportunities like this don’t just fall in your lap. Did you ever imagine you’d be in a position to restore a nineteenth century Eastlake style farm house?”
“No. It’s safe to say that was never something I imagined for myself.”
I can picture the look on his face right now. The same ‘you’re so bougie I can’t even’ expression he wore when he found out I knew my way around a wine list.
“You said it yourself,” I say. “If you never go through life learning anything you may as well be dead.”
There’s another silence and I realize I’ve fucked up. Dead. It’s a raw subject.
“Do you know what I learned?” he says, and his voice is high and tight.
“What’s that, baby?”
“Stairs,” he says, and starts to cry down the phone at me.
“Stairs?”
He snorts and sobs and catches his breath. “Jack showed me how to build stairs,” he says, his voice full of tears. “There are stringers and offset angles and this little piece of wood called the kicker, that does so much work…” He swallows a sob. “And I can’t believe after everything we’ve been through that I’m crying over carpentry. Like, what the fuck?”
“Shh, it’s okay.” My eyes sting in sympathy, and the distance between us feels like half a planet right now. I want to wrap my arms around him and never let go.
*
Jody’s not the only one of us with daddy issues. On Sunday I meet Dad, at his insistence, and at a restaurant I’ve never much liked. Sure, the linen is white and the glasses gleam, but the food has never been much better than merely okay, especially considering the price tag.
“It’s good to see you,” he says, pouring me out a glass of Chablis. “Did you lose some weight?”
“Probably. Everyone keeps asking me that.”
“I guess moving to the middle of nowhere is one way to avoid the constant temptation of fast food joints,” he says, and sips his wine. “Don’t look so worried. You look as though I’m about to pull an intervention on you.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
The conversation halts and I imagine the crunch of grinding gears. I hope he’s not trying to have a heartfelt talk, because we suck at this, and I don’t buy his story: our table is set for three. Who else is coming?
“How’s Shelby?” I ask.
“She’s good. She’s working on a book, actually.”
“A novel?”
“Self-help, I think. Affirmations.”
“Good for her.” I’m already exploring possible titles in my head. Trophy Wife Blues. Mansplaining And How To Survive It. I picture a hefty chunk of book dedicated to how not to lose your shit when your husband goes off on one of his rambles about how John Coltrane was never quite the same when he got clean, and what does that mean about our expectations of artists and their inner turmoil? Shelby hates jazz, but I doubt she’s ever told Dad that. If she had they’d probably be divorced by now.
Dad looks up, and I follow the direction of his gaze. Jo has just walked into the restaurant. When I meet her eye she looks sheepish, and I think I know why.
“Intervention?” I say, as she takes her seat at the table.
“What?” she says, trying to look innocent.
“He thinks we’re doing an intervention,” says Dad.
“Are we not?”
“Jo.”
“So you are?” I say.
“We’re worried about you,” she says.
“Et tu, Brosephine? You met Jody. I thought you liked him.”
She shrugs. “He seemed nice, but I know nothing about him.”
“I, on the other hand, do,” says Dad.
What is he talking about? “Am I going to need something stronger for this?” I ask, holding out my wine glass for more. Dad orders more Chablis, then reaches down the side of his chair and pulls out an A4 binder. It looks worryingly legal.
“I get it,” I say. It was bound to happen. “You’re contesting the will, aren’t you?”
“Chris, what was I supposed to do?” he says. “Your Aunt Becky leaves half her house to a stripper. What kind of father would I be if I wasn’t protecting your interests?”
“This is bullshit. Jo, tell him. Tell him about Jody.”
“I did,” she says, and I realize that right there is the problem. What did she say about him? Stripper? Amateur porn star? None of these things look great on the surface, I admit.
“Really?” I say, meeting Dad’s judgmental look head on. “You’re gonna sit there and give me that face?”
“Chris…”
“No, really? The same person who married a woman young enough to be your daughter?”
“She was an adult,” he says. “And mature for her age.”
“Right. So the fact that she does yoga and can get her ankles around her neck had absolutely nothing to do with it?”
Josephine leans forward and swallows her wine very carefully. Dad has turned purple.
“Christopher, that is no way to talk about your stepmother…”
“Oh, stop. You’re acting like I’m some sucker who fell in love with a hot stripper, but look me in the eye and tell me it wasn’t a physical attraction between you and Shelby? Hell, I’m gay and I even I can tell her ass looks fantastic in skinny jeans. Besides, what I have with Jody is…”
Jo raises an eyebrow. “Deep?” she says, parroting one of the many bullshit excuses Dad trotted out when he got caught out banging his TA. “Meaningful? You connect on a spiritual level?”
“You asshole.” I can’t believe her right now. I thought I could at least count on her to be on my side.
She presses her lips together and meets my glare with some difficulty. “Chris, I’m sorry,” she says. “I want you to be happy – I do. But I think you need to hear Dad out on this.”
“What do you really know about this person?” says Dad.
“Enough. And I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response.”
“So you know he’s been picked up for prostitution?”
“I know he’s done sex work, yes,” I say, hating the way my stomach lurches.
“Burglary?”
“He may have had a sketchy past, I admit…”
Dad flips open the file. “Illegal gambling?” he says, and every fresh accusation feels like a rock thrown at my head. “Assault and battery? Drug dealing? There’s a charge of corruption of a minor outstanding in Pennsylvania…”
I reach across the table for the file. Dad snatches it out of reach.
“No, show me,” I say. “What
the hell is that? Where did you get it?”
“My attorney has a private investigator.”
“A private investigator? Right. So in other words, some boneheaded office jockey who thinks he’s living in a Raymond Chandler novel?” I look to Jo for support, but I’m alone. She’s obviously sold on the bullshit contents of that dossier.
“Actually she’s a woman,” says Dad. “And she didn’t have to dig that far. Jody Ohanian has quite the rap sheet. These charges go back over eighteen years. Got started when he was eleven – accessory to breaking and entering…”
This doesn’t make any sense. Maybe he got sucked into doing some shady shit with Jack before he was old enough to say no and know better, but if he had then surely he would have told me about it? And he hasn’t. He hasn’t told me he was arrested for prostitution. Actually he never even told me he’d done that. He told me about the porn, but not prostitution. My chest feels tight.
“Then there’s the arson,” Dad says.
“Arson?” My mouth is suddenly dry, and I think if I so much as smell the wine in front of me I’ll throw up. My hand shakes as I reach for the water. Jo leans towards me, but I’m in no shape for comfort, or to forgive her.
“Three of his childhood homes burned to the ground. And then his school caught fire.”
Arson investigators are really good at their jobs, he said, that time when I was desperate enough to consider taking a match to the place. Oh God. Jody, what haven’t you told me?
“But he was taking care of Becky…” I say.
Dad arches an eyebrow. “Well, that’s one way to put it, I guess.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I heard from some colleagues of hers,” he says. “I didn’t want to mention it at the funeral, but apparently she’d been making a fool of herself with a much younger man.”
“Maybe he was an old soul,” says Josephine, duplicating Dad’s raised eyebrow. “Mature for his age.”
“Oh, now you come back on side.”
“I am not on anyone’s side here,” she says. “I’m just saying. Let he who hasn’t married a twenty-five year old part time yoga instructor cast the first stone.”
The Other Half Page 21
