All This Could Be Yours

by Jami Attenberg

  “Mom?”

  Alex put the iPad on mute and screamed, then unmuted it and returned to the screen.

  “Sorry, I got a text.”

  “So, what am I supposed to do when this kind of thing happens?” said Sadie. “Do I lie or not lie or what?”

  Alex realized that this was an important moment in the development of her child. A question was being asked that needed a responsible answer. She could teach her child about honesty, and about the way she deserved to be treated by a man, but also how it was possible to love someone even if they were deeply, deeply, deeply flawed. (And, if she were to be fair to her ex-husband, how it was possible to be attracted to two people at the same time, even have two separate relationships, but that was his line of defense, not hers.)

  Or was she supposed to tell Sadie that her father didn’t know how to keep his dick in his pants, and that he never had, not for as long as she’d known him, not in college when he was someone else’s boyfriend cheating with her, not when they lived together in Chicago when they were in law school, not after they got married and moved to the suburbs where they both were equally bored, but still somehow she had managed to remain faithful while he hadn’t. Not ever was there a time when that man’s penis stayed put where it was supposed to be, instead living its life as a free-flying dilettante, a party penis, as if it were some sort of rich-kid celebrity DJ hitting new hot spots, London, Paris, Ibiza, except instead of those cities it would be a paralegal’s vagina instead.

  “You know what? Put your father on,” said Alex.

  She watched as her daughter traveled through her ex-husband’s new home, a condo high above the city. Windows, light, windows, light. A framed picture of a motorcycle? That can’t be right. Surely not. She felt dizzy from the bounce and jitter of the iPad’s camera, so by the time her daughter arrived in what appeared to be the living room, where there was all white furniture as far as the eye could see—good lord, who had all white furniture?—she felt a little seasick. Spill something on that couch, Sadie, she thought. Spill everything.

  “Honey, leave us alone for a second,” said Alex.

  “But what am I supposed to do without my iPad?” said Sadie.

  “Go read a book,” said Alex.

  “But all my books are on my iPad.”

  “Go use the computer in my office,” said Bobby. “But don’t look at anything but the internet.”

  “From one screen to another,” said Alex. She watched her husband watch her daughter, and then she heard a door shut.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Our daughter would like instructions on how to behave when she runs into one of your sidepieces,” said Alex.

  “That’s not fair,” he said. “I like Catherine quite a bit. She has a master’s in social work. She’s very intelligent.”

  “Hey. Your daughter is your priority. She’s only there two months a year. Can you keep it in your pants for that amount of time and maybe also not lie in front of her?”

  “Is my life supposed to stop just because she’s here?”

  Oh my god, she hated him. She hated him.

  “Yes,” she said. “Please, I’m begging you, Bobby. Please put her first.”

  Her ex-husband stretched out on the couch, resting his cheek on a pillow, his dark, soft, full head of waves contrasting beautifully with the white leather. This is probably what his profile picture on the dating apps looks like, thought Alex. I’d swipe right. This handsomeness, this vaguely foreign look ensconced in an American sensibility, had been part of the reason he’d gotten everything he ever wanted. He was smart, to be sure. He was a gifted lawyer. But his extremely white partners had also liked that his last name was Choi, felt that it would expand their profile, check off some boxes, and they had only hazily hidden that fact from him. Together, Alex and Bobby had agonized over the fact that he’d been welcomed in such a cynical way. To make partner so young was a blessing; he had loans from law school to pay off, unlike Alex, whose rich father had footed the bill. “Take the money,” she said, “and we’ll use it to do some good.” They agreed he’d mentor minorities and earmark a percentage of his salary to go to different nonprofit organizations, both of which he’d done. But, of course, his mentees ended up being beautiful young women. Now he’d moved to Denver to open a new branch of his firm. Likely there was a long list of mentees-in-waiting.

  “You’re right,” he said. “And I’m capable of being a good father.”

  “You are,” she said.

  “I just needed you to remind me. I’m sorry. I lost perspective. And I didn’t think I’d run into Catherine in the mall. I never even go to the mall! I only went because Sadie wanted to go. I’ll stop fucking around. I’ll be a good dad. I am a good dad. You know I am.”

  Look how soft and gentle he could be. He adjusted the camera slightly. There, now the light caught behind him. He was a portrait of himself, presented for her viewing pleasure. She did not believe him for a second.

  “How’s your father doing?” he said.

  “He’s not dead yet.”

  “Well,” said Bobby, “he’ll get there eventually.”

  They said nothing for a moment, because what was there to add? He knew as much as anyone could about her father. Bobby was the one person who had heard all of her secrets, at least up until eighteen months ago. About all the times her father disappeared during her childhood, often for weeks, with her mother offering no explanation about the empty seat at the dinner table. His threats at various times. She’d seen him hit Gary on occasion. She thought of the lockbox in her father’s office, and also, pre-internet, those dirty magazines in the garage. Give those girls a bathrobe and a bowl of soup, thought Alex. What did a man need with hundreds of porn magazines? “Variety,” Bobby had said when she told him. Without thinking twice. And these were not collector’s items: they were distinctively used. Those pages had been flipped. Not to mention the outside-world things Victor had done, some of which she knew, but not all of it. Her gut told her he should be in jail right now, he really should. If he weren’t dying. None of this behavior ever questioned. She had never heard him say “I’m sorry” once in her life. Her father was one-way, and allowed to be, because he was the father.

  “All right. I’ve got a lot to deal with here,” she said. She couldn’t bear to look at him any longer, that handsome, handsome man. Nobody gets married and pictures themselves as a divorced person. “Get it together, Bobby,” she said. He stopped gazing at her, then lit his eyes elsewhere, moved the camera again, and the sun glanced across his chin, the sag underneath it. They were both getting old, she was glad to see. Not just me, she wanted to say, but you, too.

  He rose, took her on another bumpy tour of the house. A view of a mountain, clear blue skies, one puff of cloud, like a cough. Her stomach revolted. She looked from the screen to the horizon of the television set. A prosecutor spoke into a camera. Charges were being filed against another elected official. Outside the hotel room, down the street, a crane swung. Across the country her daughter leaned into the camera.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” said Alex. “Are you alone?”

  “Yeah, he went back into the living room.”

  “Your father is not a bad man,” she said. “But sometimes he’s not a good man.”

  “I know,” she said. “But do I lie or not?” Sadie sounded bored. The bad/good stuff, this was information she already had. But how was Alex supposed to know what the right thing to do was all the time?

  “Can I get back to you?” said Alex.

  * * *

  Eight floors down, in the gym, Alex ran, while hating. She ran off the hate she had for her ex-husband, a confusing man, now mostly useless to her. She ran off the hate she had for her father, seventy-three years of deviousness and control. She ran off the hate she had for herself, ingrained since a young age from a mesmerizing array of influences: things her father said and did, things her mother didn’t say and do, magazines, television, girls she went to high school
with, a hundred men whistling at her on the street, America in general. She loathed herself, she forgave herself. She loathed them, she did not forgive them. She ran. She made the worst faces when she worked out; she knew it, because she would catch glances of herself in the mirrors that hung on the walls of her gym. Here, in this hotel, there was another mirror, and she looked up and saw that she was frowning. Sweating and frowning, her face flushed like an infant’s, her hair loose and sloppy, her T-shirt clinging to her chest. Her arms looked good, though. Yeah, look at those guns. She ran faster. She hated them. Why was she supposed to forgive them? Why was she always the one who had to be the adult in the situation? Was closure really that important? Alex found herself suddenly growling and then yelling. “Fuck them! Fuuuuuck them.”

  She raised her arms in the air in victory and ran that way until the machine shut itself off, emitting only the briefest congratulation on the completion of her workout.

  7

  Barbra, walking up St. Charles Avenue, along the streetcar line, beneath the live oaks, past the dignified mansions, all exquisitely, rigidly maintained. The sun rising behind her, and the green of the trees revealed themselves slowly in it, dangling Mardi Gras beads occasionally sparkling in a flash of light. At least the trees were pretty, she thought. Well, the trees were fine. My husband is nearly dead, she thought. Three days now in the hospital. A thing I must contend with soon. But first, I must walk.

  She would spend all day in the hospital room, perhaps the next day, too, until his time came. It was good to get her steps in before then. A small band of plastic and technology, strapped to her wrist amid several gold bangles, kept count of them. All this to clear her head before a fog of feelings descended upon her.

  She noticed the mansions on the avenue, as she did every day. I used to have one of you, she thought bitterly. Back in Connecticut. She missed Connecticut. It had surprised her that she could miss a place, that she could miss anything at all. But they’d had a life there. And she’d appreciated their suburban trappings. She knew, in theory, what she was supposed to love about New Orleans, but she was sixty-eight years old, and if she hadn’t sought the soulfulness this city was supposed to be so rich in before this moment, she wasn’t sure why she was suddenly supposed to appreciate it now. Give me chilly Connecticut, she thought. Give me seasons.

  But here was Audubon Park at last, the outrageous, enormous trees, bent with moisture and green and life, hundreds of years old, she had been told once by her granddaughter Avery, chubby, cute, with thick blond hair and straight bangs, chunky legs, and freckles.

  “Older than me?” Barbra had said drily.

  “Much older than you,” Avery had said.

  All of her visits to parks in New Orleans resulted in her contemplating the outdoors in a way she hadn’t previously, because of Avery, who was obsessed with science and nature and animals and bugs and plants—and living things in general. Their only connecting moment thus far had been when Avery had admired an amethyst-and-diamond ring on her finger and Barbra had said carelessly, “You like this? I’ll leave it to you in the will.” Otherwise, Avery was constantly spouting facts that Barbra wasn’t necessarily interested in learning, although she understood that it was important she listen, that this was what a grandmother did, find a grandchild fascinating. The only animal that Barbra appreciated was the swan, which was exactly her type: shapely, quiet, pretty, refined, and somewhere off in the distance. That was what she was looking for today, in this walk to the park. Something soothing for her mind.

  Of course, Avery found swans boring. She was more interested in dirtier, more devious, dangerous creatures, ones with a real story, like the nutria, a fat rodent, a beaver-like animal that was destroying the wetlands by eating necessary plants and grasses. They had seen a mass of them once, at an aviary in a park in the suburbs. Barbra and Victor had taken Avery there last year and had noticed them swarming the stream that ran through it. The sight of them chilled Barbra, and her granddaughter was delighted to share what she knew about them, including their history, how the nutria was brought from South America to Louisiana fur farms in the last century, then escaped to the wilds in the 1930s. “But this environment was never meant to be their home,” said Avery with grim enthusiasm. “And those wetlands will never return.”

  Victor seemed fascinated with the nutria’s insidious power and focus, kept prodding Avery for more information, but Barbra felt she might die right where they stood. It was hot, and she was sweating, and her makeup had run, and she wished she had worn better shoes, and she barely knew this child, related to her, certainly, but not evidently, and then she began to consider how her husband was a bad man whom she still loved, and how she was with him after all this time, after all he’d done, the entirety of these thoughts unpleasant, and then she saw some swans nearby. She walked away from her husband and this mysterious grandchild, toward these gorgeous, chic, gliding birds, and her eyes cooled, the sweat paused, and she momentarily felt that there was still some beauty left in the world.

  So now she looked for the swans again in the park, walking the perimeter of the lake. Show yourself, she thought. Come to me. If I can just see one, she thought, I can handle this day and everything that comes after that. Give me one goddamn swan.

  She rounded a corner, and there, at last, was the bird, sailing along, the water flat and still everywhere in the pond except in the swan’s wake. Barbra allowed herself to smile, although, of course, she hated those lines around her mouth. The sun was blazing overhead now. It was nearly time to see Victor again.

  8

  At Victor’s bedside, Twyla flipped through her Bible.

  She didn’t know if she believed in anything she was reading out of it, or if she believed any of the Bible at all; she just needed something to cling to at that moment. Everything had fallen apart, was still falling apart, and would continue to deteriorate for the foreseeable future. But here was a man who was dying. Whatever he said, whatever he did, he was still her child’s grandfather. And a dying man. There but for the grace of God go I.

  Twyla’s parents had both been Christian, and thus so was she, or at least she had been as a child, when they still dominated her life. They went to church on Sundays, but her father didn’t like the preacher, too much regular talk of hellfire, too much criticism of the actions of others, when her father was seeking peace, solace, and the opportunity to thank God for all he had given him. Her mother didn’t mind the preacher like her husband did: he had an opinion, and he was sharing it. She believed in the importance of free speech. In particular, though, she liked the hymns. She liked praising things out loud, sharing a connection with a group of people. They discussed finding a new church, for months it seemed, and finally he conceded. “I don’t have time to be driving all over Alabama in search of a sermon I like,” he said. “So, he’ll have to do.”

  Her mother’s concession was a sermon of another kind. When they returned from church in the afternoon, on days with mild weather, the family would sit under the gazebo, the pecan groves gracing the land behind them like their own kind of family, to have what her father called “Christian discussions.” Mostly he was the one talking, though, about the earth and nature and blessings from God, how to be a good person, all pleasant subject matter, but her father was not a born storyteller, and the messages grew repetitive. There were only so many times he could read the Sermon on the Mount, or tell the story of Francis of Assisi. Twyla was bored. She was six. Her gaze began to wander out around them. There was an anthill, there were some bees. Pecans almost ready to pop off the branches of a tree.

  “It’s been a long day,” her mother said. “Let’s let her play. It’s Sunday.”

  Her father was disappointed, she thought. He bowed his head, and she could see through his neatly combed, golden-colored hair to his pink scalp. His arms were freckled and muscular. A short-sleeved button-down shirt. She loved him. He was the daddy. Her daddy. He flipped through his marked Bible; he had more to say. “It’s OK. I
’m listening,” she said. And that was the day she invented it, this particular glazed expression of hers. She had created it to please her father, but it had served her well in her life. When she wore it, most men thought she was listening to them, and most women knew that the conversation was over.

  The things the Bible teaches you, she mused in the hospital room. She weighed the copy in her hand.

  I’ll give you the best that I have right now, Victor, she thought. I’ll be here for you in this moment. After that, I’m gone.

  Without thinking, she pulled a tube of lipstick out of her purse and applied it to her lips. And then she began to pray.

  9

  Gary, at a Korean day spa on Wilshire, flat on his back in an oak-paneled sauna heated to 231 degrees, and swathed in a stiff cotton robe the fibers of which tickled his skin unpleasantly. An hour before, he had received a massage from a silent middle-aged man with immaculate hands, to whom he had made a bad joke about his wife, Twyla, one that involved him naming the knot in his neck after her, and the masseur hadn’t laughed, not because it wasn’t funny (although it wasn’t funny), but because he didn’t speak English particularly well. I’m garbage, Gary had thought anyway.

  Next to him now in the sauna, two young men, both as pale and slight as crescent moons, whispered and touched their fingertips together, the intimacy of their gestures inflicting little cuts upon his heart. He was not in the mood to witness love in others. When you feel, I have to feel, too, he thought. His emotions gathered, huddled, waiting to make a break for it at any moment. He had kept them caged for days, and these two men, who had since moved on to audible self-satisfied murmurs, were not helping him in his attempt to be the person he wanted to be. The man he wanted to be.

  He shifted his body away from the two of them, breathed into the heat, and curled himself up like a baby, dampness revealing itself beneath him. Another check mark on the to-do list of Los Angeles, he mused. Sweat, hike, smoke, drive. I am doing everything I am supposed to be doing except the one thing I should, which is to go directly home to New Orleans. But tonight he would do it, he swore to himself; he would fly home at last.