“That is hardly the point, Jo,” says Dad.
“Is it? Smells like double standards to me. If Becky wanted to get her grind on with a twentysomething lapdancer, more power to her.”
Dad taps the file with a forefinger. “And this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I am on somebody’s side,” she says. “Does anyone really know everything about the person they’re dating? It’s not like when I went to the sperm bank and found out everything – shoe size, IQ, SAT scores, likelihood of giving your baby that weird gene that means you can’t stand cilantro. I got all the information, but realistically, if you do it the old fashioned way, aren’t you always taking someone on sight unseen?”
“No,” says Dad. “That’s why there has to be some degree of honesty when you’re getting to know one another.”
“As in ‘can you really wrap both your ankles round the back of your neck?’ honesty?”
“Okay, I don’t know why you’re so fixated on that—”
“—I wasn’t, until Chris mentioned it. I had no idea she could do that—”
“—my wife’s ankles and where she can put them are in no way relevant to this conversation—”
“—except when you’re busting out double standards—”
“—for God’s sake, Josephine—”
My head is spinning. “Can the both of you just shut the fuck up?” I say, loud enough for the waiter to turn and look over at our table. But I’m beyond embarrassment. I don’t know where I am, but it’s nowhere good. “Is there any point to this? What do you want to me say? You want me to tell you it’s okay to overturn a dying woman’s wishes?”
“And what if she wasn’t in her right mind when she made them?” says Dad. “What then?”
“What are you saying? That Jody had some kind of hold over her?” I look over at Jo for support, but she’s gone again. There’s no denying that Jody has a gift for making people fall in love with him.
“Sweet-talk the old lady,” says Dad. “It’s not exactly an original con, and it worked, didn’t it?”
“No. Dad, this doesn’t make any sense. He wouldn’t do that. And he wouldn’t lie to me.” I know he wouldn't, I'm sure he wouldn't. And I have to keep telling myself that, because as much as I don't want to admit it, I don't think he's told me the whole truth.
15
Jody
I shouldn’t be doing this. That’s the first thing that goes through my head, the moment the words are out of my mouth. I should have let him say it, but who’s to say it’s even true? That’s a fucked up thing to think, when a parent tells you they’re dying, but that’s what happens in our family.
Corey – on the other side of the country – is silent.
“Say something,” I say, looking out of the diner window. There’s a light drift of snow coming down, but my eyes are fixed on the door of the hardware store opposite.
“What I am supposed to say?” he asks. “Good riddance? Thoughts and prayers? Is he really dying this time?”
“Well, it’s Jack, so who the hell knows?”
“Why did he tell you and not me?” he says. “What’s the angle here?”
“Maybe there is no angle. You were the one who convinced me he was dying.”
“No, I suspected he was dying. In hindsight, and with the benefit of distance, I’m a lot more skeptical.” Can’t really blame him for that. “Are you sure this isn’t like the time he had cancer? Or…what was the other one now?”
“Lou Gehrig’s Disease?”
“No, the other one. That time he said he had necrotizing fasciitis…”
“Oh, yeah. Or the tumorous brain thing – the seizure disorder or whatever it was.”
“Tuberous sclerosis,” says Corey. “I think. I lose track. I think the only thing he hasn’t tried to get diagnosed with is Munchausen’s Syndrome, and there’s a very good chance he has that, at least.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, still staring at the hardware store. I’m waiting – out of long, bitter experience – for the inevitable Jack-style exit. Either sneaking out with something out of his coat, or backing out the door with his hands up because he’s said or done something to cause the owner to reach for his shotgun. “It’s just…I don’t know. I think this might really be it, Corey. It was weird. He was so clearheaded about it. Like, he didn’t wail or yell or curse God or whatever. He just sat down and talked me through the stages of liver failure. Almost like he was talking himself through it.”
“Well, he never said a thing about it when he was in Oregon.”
“Maybe he didn’t know then,” I say, but I have my suspicions. “Do you know what he’s doing right now? Right this minute?”
“I have no idea.”
“He’s buying sandpaper. And a handsaw. In a hardware store. Like someone’s dad.”
Corey snorts. “Oh my God. Run, Jody. Fucking run. He’s probably got a body out there in the woods somewhere and he needs you to help bury it, but not before you’ve sanded off the fingerprints and sawn off the hands and feet.”
“Under normal circumstances I would agree with you, but this is different. We built a staircase.”
“A what?”
“A staircase. I know. I was as surprised as you. I didn’t know he even knew how to do actual work, but apparently he still remembers enough carpentry to do that. And it didn’t even collapse or pull chunks out of the wall or anything. Something big is going down. It’s like you and him and the apricot stuffing recipe…”
He sighs. “Yeah, all very touching, but now you got me wondering. Why are you the one he breaks the big news to?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because we had the worst relationship.”
“You did?” he says. “I was the ‘redheaded stepchild’, remember?”
“He’s an idiot. You look more like Mom, that’s all.”
“Oh, I know,” says Corey. “And he apologized for that, too, all those years he told me that my mother was a slut and I was the mailman’s kid. He even wanted us to take a DNA test. Closure, he said.”
What kind of talk show fuckery is this? Way back in the day Jack used to keep family in line by threatening to appear on The Jerry Springer Show, which was – after all – his element. Surprise paternity tests, flying chairs, screaming, barefoot women aiming high heels at one another’s frontal lobes – these are all things that speak to his personality disorders.
“Is that all he said?” I ask. “Closure?”
“I guess. Wanted to put that shit to bed,” he says.
“Did you do it?”
“Yup. Sorry to break it to you, but I’m definitely your brother. Both parents.”
“Well, we knew that.”
He gives a small laugh. “Duh. We got a clue when I was like, ten, remember? When it turned out I could do that thing where you roll your tongue up like a cannoli and you couldn’t?”
I try, for old times sake, but it’s impossible. Dad can do it, Mom can’t. It’s genetic, and can’t be learned. “We had it all figured out, didn’t we?”
“Sure we did. I can roll my tongue and cilantro tastes like soap to me, same as Jack. Oh, and now I got this click in my thumb joint, so I’m pretty sure I also got his early onset arthritis, so yay for that.”
“That’s our dad. Always giving things to his children.” Lice, mainly. And not just the once. The door of the hardware store opens, and Jack strolls out, a bag under his arm. He looks chipper, and I think he might even be whistling. “Listen, I gotta go. He’s coming back, but I’ll keep you in the loop, okay?”
DNA. Those three little letters haunt me all afternoon. I can’t shake the feeling that they have the whiff of a scam about them, and I have a bloodhound nose for these things. Closure? No, I don’t buy it. I want to buy it. I want to believe that Jack has finally found the stones to live his life right, but I also want to believe in Santa and Bigfoot and aliens coming to Earth to tell us how to fix our shit and start living in harmony with the planet instead of destroying it. Wis
hful thinking won’t get me anywhere.
DNA. What the hell is going on this time?
I wish Chris was here. He’d talk me out of my half-formed suspicions. When I’m with him I can almost believe that not all human beings are basically rotten. Without him the house looks like a shithole, perhaps because when we’re both looking at the holes in the ceilings and floors we’re thinking back to how they brought us together. If it’s only me, then it’s just a hole in a series of holes, and I can see how this place could get overwhelming.
Was that what happened to Becky, in the end? Did she get to just shrugging when the door handles came off in her hand? When the back stairs started to feel like damp cardboard under her feet, did she simply close the door on that staircase and resolve never to use it again? This house was falling apart long before she got sick. Maybe it was another way to surrender, because giving up isn’t easy, she said. In spite of what everyone says.
“I always resented the fight metaphor with cancer,” she told me, when she’d had enough. “I’m dying, not losing a battle. I’m doing something perfectly fucking natural, but tell that to my nature. Human nature. I still feel guilty that I stopped counting my steps on my phone. What are ten thousand steps a day going to do for me at this point, huh? I might not be here next month, but I’m still going through the motions. Low fat milk, pedometers, counting my alcohol units, waking up in the middle of the night with my heart racing and thinking I’m having a heart attack. That’s why I can’t stand that whole ‘battle with cancer’ thing, because people would never say that if they knew how hard it was to give up.”
She looked out of the window then, at the ivy I was supposed to cut, and her eyes got wet. “In the Talmud,” she said. “There’s this saying – that every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers ‘Grow! Grow!’ And I always thought that was beautiful, but now it feels brutal. Because that angel never stops whispering, long past the point when you were officially done.”
There’s a message from Chris on my phone. A long message.
You’ll be happy to know I didn’t get fired, but we’re having ‘serious conversations about my future’ here in New York. It’s looking like there might be a possibility that I can work from home, assuming we can establish better wifi out there in the woods. Had an idea that maybe we can get a trailer or something and move that alongside while working on the house? We can’t go on the way we are, Jody. We need walls. And floors. They have both of those things in New York, by the way, although New York doesn’t have you. I miss you more than anything, and I might even trade stable floors and weatherproof walls just to have you in my arms at night again.
I’m sitting in my office and my mind keeps flying off to be with you. You keep coming back to me in bits and pieces – your smile, your thighs, your eyelashes. Through my whole last meeting I couldn’t stop thinking about the way your balls fill my hand when you’re soft, and how you never stay soft for long when I’m touching you. Or even when I’m not, like that time when you let me kneel and watch you play with yourself. I was only looking, breathing on your dick, but I was every bit as hard as you were. Do you remember? When you whispered ‘suck’ it was like you were offering me the universe.
I love you so much…
He’s written me an actual love letter. I have to wipe my eyes to go on reading. Nobody’s ever written me a love letter before.
…it scares me. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even sane to want someone so much, but then I look at you and I don’t care if I’m the craziest person on Earth. Because you are so lovely. So bright and sacred and full of life and love. See? Sane people do not slide into your DMs and write things like this. This is what’s happened to me. I’m so far out of my mind with love that it’s stupid. Every time I think of you I can’t stop smiling.
I need him home. I need him here, in our house, even though there are holes in the ceiling and the dining room floor is sagging further and further towards the cellar. It’s a little thing, our love, but it’s as though Becky’s angel has taken up residence above it and started whispering once more. Grow. Grow.
*
And then he calls me.
I know something’s up straight away, because there had to be a reason he got all fatalistic before he left. Family members muttering in his ears that it’s normal to disappear into the woods and fall in love with strangers, even though most people are strangers to one another before they fall in love.
“They’re contesting the will,” he says, and I exhale like I’ve been gut punched. I don’t know why. I should have expected this. Well-to-do New Yorkers don’t take the likes of me at face value.
“Okay,” I say. “Well, that was bound to happen, I guess.”
Chris pauses. I can hear him breathing, then he gives a sad, thin sigh. “My dad hired an investigator,” he says.
Shit. Oh shit. And there was me worrying that Jack’s cat story would make me look like trash. Yeah, that and the rest.
Jack is singing in the living room, something buoyant and sassy – Sinatra, I think. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off. Been doing that his whole life, and mine. I can feel my heart in the base of my throat when I speak. “I never pretended I didn’t have a sketchy past, Chris.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
Tell him what? That I sold Xanax in junior high? That I accidentally on purpose started a small fire in the chemistry lab? “I don’t know.” Maybe never. “Does it really matter now? I learned my lessons. Don’t I get a second chance?”
Or a third, and a fourth, and fifth. Figured Jack never asked me for a DNA test: I was always doomed to turn into him.
“When were you going to tell me about Becky?” says Chris.
“What?” He knows I sold her weed. What the hell is going on?
“About your relationship with her. Your real relationship.”
Oh, here we go. The same as it always is with people like him. They fall in love with you and say you’re everything to them, but as soon as you do something even slightly outside the lines of their narrow little social framework, they go bugfuck. “What have you heard, Chris?”
“Were you banging my aunt?”
“Yes. Not that that’s anybody’s business but ours.”
Except he thinks it’s his. I can tell by his silence.
“You lied to me,” he says, after a short pause.
“Um…how?” God, what have they told him back in New York? I knew his sister didn’t like me. She’s probably spun a whole spiel about how I deliberately dicked my way into Becky’s will.
“You said you were friends.”
“We were, and sometimes with benefits. Again, how is this your business?”
“You said you’d be honest with me,” he says. I can hear the tears in his eyes, but there’s nothing I can do about them, because he’s being a goddamn lunatic right now. “Especially when it came to sex.”
“I am. I was. Chris, what do you want, exactly? An Excel spreadsheet of everyone I’ve ever slept with in my life?”
“No, of course not. But don’t you think you might have mentioned that you were…whatever with my aunt?”
“Not really,” I say. “It was over, what with her being dead and all. I may have done some freaky shit in my time, but I can promise you I’m not a necrophile.”
He sniffs, and there’s an ugly silence. One of those ones where you can almost hear the other person’s thoughts churning.
“What did they tell you about me, in New York?” I say. He was supposed to be better than this, and while my heart’s breaking, there’s still that asshole part of me – the Jack part – that’s delighted to be proved right.
“Lies,” says Chris. “Or so I thought. Then I remembered that time you said that arson investigators were really good at their jobs.”
“Oh. That.”
“I didn’t believe them,” he says, and I can hear the hurt two states away. “And now it turns out you were…that it was true. You. And Becky.�
��
“I really think you’re overreacting—”
“Oh, really?” And now he’s overreacting. Shouldn’t have pushed. “You think I’m overreacting because you didn’t think to mention you were fucking my sixty-five year old aunt?”
“Well, that’s ageist.”
“Ageist isn’t the goddamn point,” he says. “What kind of Max Bialystock fuckery is this?”
It takes me a moment to get the reference, and when I do, I see red. Max Bialystock, from The Producers, the tubby middle-aged creep who whores himself out to little old ladies in order to get them to fund his latest play.
“Okay, you want to know what happened?” I say. “So I did lie, a little. I didn’t meet her in a history class like I said, okay? I changed that part because I didn’t know if you’d be open-minded, and it turns out I was right about that—”
“—Jody, don’t even—”
“—no, I’m talking now. I did take her history class, but that wasn’t the first time she saw me. The first time she saw me I was modeling for life classes at the college. It was one of the things on her bucket list – to take a life drawing class. She was dressed, I was naked, and afterwards she came up to me and said, ‘I know you’ll think I’m a dirty old woman, but I just wanted to tell you that your body is beautiful.’ And after that we started talking, and hanging out, and I’d bring her weed and it just…happened. I knew she was sick, and one day she said she was worried she’d go to her grave without knowing the touch of another human being again. And I don’t know, Chris. It just felt like the only decent thing to do was offer.”
I pause for breath.
“So…it was a mercy fuck?” he says, his voice trembling.
“At first. A little. Maybe. Look, she was still an attractive woman. And you can’t beat experience.”
He draws in a shaky breath. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you need to grow up,” I say, and it feels way too good to bite back. “And because I knew even then that some people would take what we had and turn it into something sordid.”
The Other Half Page 22
