by David Arnold
The last thing I’ll say about him is that he’s my friend. I know it sounds cheesy, but I’d rather have that than all the rest. I’ve made some royal mistakes in this life, but one in particular trumps the rest. The remedy for this mistake is so simple it’s maddening, so important, I’m going to underline, capitalize, and cursify.
Ready?
Here it is.
DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE VALUE OF FRIENDS.
Any elaboration, I fear, will only serve to detract from the powerful simplicity of the statement. So we’ll leave it at that for now.
Signing Off,
Mary Iris Malone,
Part-time Morning Person
*****
THERE ARE FEW things more depressing than seeing your childhood home gutted. The coffee table with a thousand ringlets of stained condensation—gone. The watercolors purchased from, literally, a scam artiste on the streets of Paris—gone. The stained love seat no one could remember purchasing, yet everyone insisted on keeping—gone. No furniture. No lights. No life.
“I don’t think anyone’s here,” says Beck, shaking the digital lock attached to the doorknob.
I pull my face away from the front bay window of a darkened 18 Meadow Lane and swallow through the knot in my throat. “I mean it’s a great house, what’s the holdup?”
Beck walks over to the FOR SALE sign, sticks his hands in one pocket, then another. “Shit.”
“What?”
He jogs up to the truck and digs around in his duffel bag. “I must have left my phone at the motel.”
I pull my own phone out of my bag and walk over to the sign. “Beck, Beck, Beck. You’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached.”
“You mean my arm?”
We smile at each other, recalling one of our first conversations. I’d never tell Beck this, but I’ve come to think of that as our first date, complete with dinner (apples) and a show (Walt’s Rubik’s jig).
I dial the number on the sign, but no one answers. Lying over the phone is hard enough, but a voice-mail lie . . . I don’t think I have that kind of prowess in me right now. I turn up the ringer and check my call log. I only cleared it once, back in Nashville. Since then, Kathy has called sixty-eight times. (Stevie Wonder must be developing inflamed throat nodules.)
Walt is humming to himself, walking around, and staring intently at the ground.
“Walt,” says Beck, “you okay?”
He doesn’t answer. By the driveway now, he’s walking in figure eights, humming, looking down at his feet, and just when I wonder if he’s sick again, he stops dead in his tracks, and throws a finger up in the air. “Got it!”
Beck and I glance at each other as Walt picks up a stone the size of a softball.
“Walt?” says Beck. “What’re you doing, man?”
Suddenly, in an all-out sprint, Walt charges the front door.
“Walt, wait!”
But it’s too late. In one fluid motion, he swings the rock down on the handle, knocking the digital lock, along with the doorknob, clean off. Looking back toward me with, no kidding, the winningest grin ever, he bows low to the ground, then gestures for me to enter. “Ladies first,” he says.
Beck smiles at me as I pass. “Kid’s full of surprises.”
Inside my old house, a wave of musky familiarity rushes into my nostrils, and like that, I’m home. I feel Beck’s hand in mine, and while I’m beyond grateful for his presence, his touch, I need to do this alone. As if reading my mind, he gives a little squeeze, and lets go. “We’re gonna drive back to the motel real quick. See if they have my phone. You okay?”
I nod. “You’ll be back?”
“Definitely.” He gives me a little hug, throws his arm around Walt, and disappears out the front door.
I REMEMBER HEARING once that the section of the brain that triggers sense of smell is located next to the section where memories are stored. In this way, a person can literally smell a memory. (Maybe Beck is right. Maybe the body, in its enigmatic miraculousness, truly is of the divine.)
Standing alone in the middle of my old living room, I suddenly find myself craving cashews and bloody video games. I remember . . .
One Christmas, years ago, Mom went through something of an eighteenth-century kick and decided to decorate our Christmas tree with real candles instead of electric lights. The tree burned down, scorching the carpet and leaving behind a peculiar, not altogether unpleasant, musky pine scent. That was also the Christmas I received a new PlayStation and discovered the delicious cashew.
I push aside my bangs, then stick my hand in my pocket and grip the war paint. As an afterthought, I touch my dead eye to make sure it’s open. I may not be able to see the difference, but sometimes, it’s just nice to know everything is in its right place. Inhaling the musk, the tree ash, the happier times, I put my head down and let my strappy high-tops lead the way.
In the dining room now, the smell of musk gives way to a different kind of smokiness. Across the room, I open a window; my nose burns and the back of my tongue goes numb. I remember . . .
I couldn’t have been more than nine years old when I discovered Dad smoking in secret. I guess Mom knew, but it was a secret from me. He was right here, blowing smoke out the window when I asked if I could try one. He held out the pack with a grin on his face. “Sure,” he said. I studied him suspiciously. “What’s the catch?” I asked. “No catch. Go ahead.” I pulled out a cigarette, surprised by how light it felt in my fingers. Dad lit the end, then told me to breathe in deep. I followed his instructions and inhaled deeply, deciding Dad was way cooler than I’d given him credit for. This was immediately followed by my hacking my lungs out, then throwing up on my mother’s favorite Venetian blinds. I couldn’t taste anything for a week. It was my first and last cigarette.
Out on the back deck, I take in the fragrant yard: the chrysanthemums, the slight sweetness of fertilizer, the fall mastery of dying summer dirt. Instinctively, I look around for lightning bugs and feel unending loneliness. I remember . . .
Hot summer nights, at dusk, Dad would shove a Wiffle ball bat in my hands and show me how to smack the hell out of lightning bugs. A direct hit, he said, was rewarded with a splattering of neon goo. He called it Goo Ball. I always knew he wanted a son, but it was never more obvious than on Goo Ball nights. (I usually missed on purpose, poor things.)
And there—on the far right-hand side of the yard—the detached garage. I smell cheap beer and turtle wax. So many memories of my father washing and rewashing his precious, never-used motorcycle while Mom and I listened to records. And the old College Couch, which, like me, has been hauled south. I turn back to the house, thinking about the last conversation I had on that couch. I wouldn’t be one bit surprised to find more mischief than cotton tucked inside those plaid cushions.
Back inside, I peer at the door to the basement: tall and weighty, like a prison gate in some medieval movie. And its lock, forever broken, hanging there like nothing ever happened. Like my whole world didn’t fall apart down in that basement. Beyond that door, there will be no aromatic reminiscing.
Deep breath. And again. Now walk.
I head for the other staircase, the safe one, the one going up. Fourteen steps, just like I remember. At the top landing, I duck to avoid the slanted ceiling, pass the crawl space/storage closet (a nook I once sleep-pissed in), and walk straight into my old bedroom. I absorb the curled edges of the wallpaper, and the browned bloodstain in the corner (my first period). My unnecessary bunk bed is gone. My debauched Titanic poster is gone. My typewriter, my futon, my vinyl collection, my lava lamp—all the stuff is gone, but the essence of the room is the same. At least, to me it is. I saunter, I ponder, I inhale. The scented recipe of my room is equal parts Neutrogena, salty tears, and awkward self-discovery. I remember . . .
In eighth grade, Tommy McDougal dumped me by the tetherball pole. (The one with
no tetherball.) He said I looked like a boy. He said I didn’t have breasts. He said I was a nerd. He said he didn’t want to go out with someone who used bigger words than he did. I said I hoped he was prepared to copulate himself for the rest of his life, which I’d hoped would work on a number of levels, but as he didn’t understand the word, only worked on one: making me feel even worse. That night I locked myself in this room and sobbed, alternating between Elvis (circa Heartbreak Hotel) and Elliott Smith (circa Either/Or). I did the same thing when Erik-with-a-kay dumped me, and the same thing when the fights got loud, and the same thing when I just needed noise to drown out the factory of my insides. It’s sad really. I poured out a lifetime of tears in the springtime of my life with no one but my musical anomalies to feel my pain.
Moving on.
Down the hall, I walk inside my parents’ bedroom. It is potpourri. It is perfume. It is ratty slippers. Like a lost little orphan, Mom’s vanity sits alone in the far corner, the only piece of furniture left in the house. Impulses screaming, I walk over and pull the war paint from my pocket.
This is it.
Ground Zero.
My mother’s lipstick. My mother’s bedroom. My mother’s vanity.
I wonder: What would it be like if she walked in the room right now? If she found me painting my face like some politically incorrect Cherokee chieftess? What would I tell her? The truth, I hope. That in my longing for originality and relational honesty and a hundred other I-don’t-know-whats, this action, while strange and socially awkward, makes more sense than just about anything else in my world. And even though it’s cryptic and more than a little odd, sometimes cryptic and odd are better than lying down for the Man. Maybe I would tell her how the war paint helped get me through a time when I felt like no one else cared about what I wanted, or who I was. Maybe I could muster the courage to speak those words so few people are able to say: I don’t know why I do the things I do. It’s like that sometimes.
Maybe.
I twist the last bit of lipstick from the tube and stare at the reflection of my mother’s room behind me. In my mind, the dream is still fresh: our old feet crossing the room slow as a freighter; our lipstick the paint, our face the canvas, we get to work; time and time again, we draw, but nothing sticks. Nothing except the war paint. Our only color.
It’s a narrow place, where Mom ends and Mim begins.
Only a single letter’s difference.
“How fitting,” I say aloud, raising the war paint to my left cheek. The two-sided arrow is first, headed straight for the bridge of my nose.
At that moment, from the depths of his canvas tomb, Stevie Wonder interrupts my proceedings with a wail. I pull the cell phone out of my bag and silence the ringer. “Give it up, my man. It’s unrequited.”
I return to the mirror, ready for the stroke across my forehead, the bridge connecting both arr—
“I thought I might find you here.”
Hand to face, I am frozen. “What are you doing?”
A phone slaps shut. “Mim, I’m—”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nice, Mim. Real nice.”
Motion returns. Without bothering to remove my unfinished war paint, I spin around and face my stepmother head-on. Actually, the war paint makes perfect sense.
“Fuck you, Kathy.”
She smiles, and her eyes fill with tears. With one hand, she rubs circles across the very slight bulge in her stomach, up and down, round and round. I can’t help but wonder if little Isabel can feel her do this. Minding her own business, swimming along in the muck of her pre-birth—does she know there’s a whole world outside, just waiting to love her, ruin her, disgust and admire her, disappoint and awe her? Does she know about us? Probably not, seeing as how she’s about the size of a mango. God, if only she could plant those tiny little feet in there, just grab hold of Kathy’s uterus with all her might, and make that her home sweet home. I’m sure it’s tight quarters, but blimey, it’s not much better out here.
“Mim, I can’t imagine how you must feel. But you have to understand—your father and I have been out of our minds.” She steps into the room now, closer to me. “I know you blame me. But—”
“You’re not my mother.”
I state this calmly, as a matter of fact, as if we’re in court, and Kathy is trying to prove otherwise. She starts crying, and the thing she says next is a silver bullet.
“I don’t have to be your mother to care about you.”
She’s close enough to smell now: her recipe is equal parts sanitizer, tacos, and pigheaded denial. I remember . . .
36
BREAKING NEWS
“MIM, WHY DON’T you have a seat?” said Dad.
“Why don’t you drop dead?”
His signature sigh. Then, “Mary, sit. Your mothe—Kathy and I have something to tell you.”
“Oh my shit, Dad. Really?”
“God, Mim, language.”
I pointed at Kathy who looked like she was on the verge of tears. “That woman is not my mother. And I’m not Mary, not to you.”
“We have news, would you like to hear it, or not?”
“Barry . . .” Kathy started, then thought better of it.
“Fine, whatever.” I plopped down on Mom’s old College Couch, the setting of so many vinyl-spinning memories. (Back in Ashland, after Mom left, Dad said he didn’t want the couch anymore. Said it wouldn’t match any of “our things.” I asked him who he meant by “our.” He said nothing. I said I would literally jump off the roof while simultaneously swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills before I’d go to Mississippi without this damn couch. That pretty much ended the conversation.) Before I knew it, Dad and Kathy were on the couch, too, wedging me in the middle. In the peripheral of my good eye, I saw them holding hands behind my head, and for a second, I tried to command my misplaced epiglottis into action. God, that would have been a vomit for the ages.
Kathy spoke first. Two words, simple enough on their own, but whose combined forces conjured a catastrophic pandemic of madness.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispered. Blushing, she traded smiles with my dad, then looked back at me. “Mim, you’re going to have a baby sister.”
I knew my reaction was being carefully studied, as if, at any moment, I might jump through a closed window. Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.
“What are you, kidding?” I looked from one to the other. “You guys just got married, like, yesterday.”
Their smiles, already forced and nervous, grew downright twitchy. They looked at each other, then back at me, and before either could say a word, I knew the inevitable ending of this horrible story. It was just too damn predictable. I studied Kathy: for the first time, I noticed that yes, in fact, her breasts were slightly bigger; and yes, in fact, she had put on quite a few pounds since the wedding; and yes, in fact, her face looked a little reddish and inflated. Tears gathered in her eyes as she watched me figure it out.
I blinked.
The divorce had barely been finalized when they got married.
I breathed.
The wedding had been beyond quick, everyone said so. The move south, even quicker.
I was Mary Iris Malone, and I was not okay.
“How pregnant are you?” I whispered.
Dad put his hand on my knee. The same hand that polished and repolished a never-used motorcycle. The same hand that put distance between a golf ball and its hole so I could win. The same hand that, as a small child, spanked and fed me, the ultimate personification of a villainous hero.
And wow, had my hero fucked. up.
I met Dad’s eyes for the first time in weeks, shocked at how sad they were. “You cheated on her?” I whispered.
He tried to say something but choked on the word.
I was crying, too, but the words came out just fine. “You cheated
on Mom?”
“Mary,” he said, “this is—”
“Don’t ever call me that again.”
I sat there frozen, wondering if this icy truth could ever melt, if the madness of the world could ever be cured.
In the back den, someone had left the TV on . . .
“. . . no way to know how many soldiers are missing or whether they’re even alive. Sources close to the Pentagon are, as usual, keeping quiet. In these moments of uncertainty, one can only pray for their families and loved ones. Back to you, Brian.
“Thanks, Debbie. That’s Debbie Franklin in Kabul. Once again, for those who are just tuning in, BREAKING NEWS from Afghanistan . . .”
I sunk into my mother’s old couch and let my breaking news wash over me. Like some giant jigsaw puzzle, a thousand separate things took the shape of one whole thing, ugly and shameful.
“We’re calling her Isabel,” said Kathy through tears.
“What?”
“Your sister. We’re naming her after your aunt. We’re calling her Isabel.”
Of course they are, I thought. But I said nothing.
Dad pulled a small paper sack out of nowhere and set it on my lap. It had a big red ribbon tied haphazardly around the top.
“What the fuck is this?” I was intent on cursing as frequently and offensively as possible.
“It’s a journal,” said Kathy. As if that explained everything. As if a journal was fair exchange for my dad cheating with, and impregnating, a replacement mother.
“What the fuck do I need a journal for?”
Kathy cleared her throat, looked at Dad.
“So you can write letters to your sister,” he whispered.
I looked down at the bag, but only to avoid eye contact.
“I read about it,” he continued, “and thought this might be something you’d like to try. This way, you can talk to her before she gets here. And, I don’t know—it might help you process things. Or something.”
