Life After Coffee

by Virginia Franken

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Violet said I couldn’t fly, so I was trying to show her that I could, but when I tried to go up, I just went down and hit my head on the bar.”

  “Right.”

  Does he really think he can fly or was he just trying to prove Violet wrong about something? She can be annoyingly pedantic sometimes. Now that the bleeding’s stopped and I can get a proper look, I can tell that this could probably use a couple of stitches. I quickly pull the two sides of the wound apart and get a flash of red. Yeah, stitches needed. Even though Peter’s the one we all go to in a medical emergency, from my years traveling around developing countries, I’m actually the parent with the most hands-on medical knowledge. The wound’s long, from the top of his eye socket to out beyond his eyebrow. If Peter knew it was this bad, he would not be leaving me in charge. If Peter knew it was this bad, we’d be heading for urgent care right now. But he doesn’t know. He also doesn’t know that we have no medical insurance right now either, because I couldn’t afford to pay the last COBRA bill. I’m going to have to stitch this myself before Peter discovers what I’m doing and shuts it down.

  “Billy, I’m going to give you a couple of stitches, okay? Just so you don’t get a scar.”

  “But scar’s are cool, Mom.”

  “I know. But stitches are cooler. Trust me,” I say. I sneak into the bedroom, heave out my backpack from under the bed, and dig through, looking for my medical kit. Can’t find it. I upend the contents all over the bed. Still not there. Where is it? Oh yes, I packed it in the side pocket. I unzip the compartment and there it is. Being organized did not work in my favor today.

  Back in the bathroom I clean the wound again, this time adding a little soap. One more item needed. Should still be under the sink. Found it. Vaginal numbing spray. This is the stuff they gave me after I had stitches all the way up to my rectum after I gave birth to Billy. If Peter had moved that, I’d have really wanted to know why.

  Considering I’ve only done this a couple of times before, I make pretty quick work of the whole thing. Billy seems more fascinated than squeamish, which is handy. I heat the needle, douse the wound in iodine, squeeze the gash together, and then go for it. The vaginal numbing spray must work better than I remember, because Billy doesn’t make a peep, bless him.

  “What a brave soldier,” I say, looping the last stitch through and making a neat knot. Billy looks up at me with his kaleidoscope eyes, so like mine, and doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t need to. His look says it all: I love you.

  After Billy’s run back off to Peter Pan, the remake, I go in the bedroom to return my medical kit to the backpack with plans to ram the whole thing back under my bed again. Yes, I should probably get around to unpacking properly. But today is not going to be that day. I start picking up bundles of clothes and shoving them back in, unfolded, of course. As I pick up a pile of maps, a small envelope slides out from between them and falls to the floor. This will be my letter. Every time I go on a trip, Peter hides a letter somewhere in my stuff. He always uses the breadth and depth of his writerly skills, and its contents normally have me sobbing into a dirty T-shirt on some dusty continent miles away from him.

  I open the envelope. This time there’s no letter inside. Just a photo. It’s the photo. The photo that’s more or less the reason we got married so soon after meeting. The photo that’s been Peter’s “get out of jail free” card since the beginning. It’s a picture of him and me. And we’re both about seven years old. He’s in the foreground next to his mother. I’m a little hazy, about four feet behind him, holding on to my father’s hand and looking directly into the camera. We’re all at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. Just to clarify, this picture was taken in 1984, more than two decades before Peter and I ever met.

  This picture would be crazy coincidence enough if all the families involved had actually lived in Chicago all our lives, but none of us did. Peter’s family was visiting his grandparents that week, and my family was taking the one and only “city break” we ever did. The first time I saw the picture was after things had started taking a serious-ish turn between Peter and me, and we went to visit Peter’s family in Boston. His mother was doing the obligatory run-through of embarrassing childhood pics when she turned the page in the family album and all of a sudden, there I was. Seven years old, snapped in a shot alongside my future husband.

  I took it as a sign. How could I not? Peter did too. A lack of imagination was never one of his weak points. Not long after we saw the picture, we were engaged and then married. And anytime I’ve ever been really seriously close to throwing in the towel on our relationship, I remember—or he reminds me—about the picture and we relive the moment all over again. For how can such synchronicity be random? How can it not be significant that two kids, living hundreds of miles apart, have a picture of themselves together at an out-of-town zoo, only to fall in love years later in a completely different part of the country? I met a statistician once who told me that the odds were high, but not impossible. Peter and I think the odds are way too high for it not to be meaningful. We’re fated to be together. It’s just too weird and wild to think about otherwise. He and I are meant to be.

  As I look at the picture of us both as sweet seven-year-olds, with no clue that we’re feet away from our future spouse/tormentor, I start to cry. Maybe that dinner-party statistician was right, and I’ve put too much meaning onto this coincidence. Maybe it’s not written in the stars that Peter and I are supposed to be together. Maybe no one’s up there writing anything at all. Perhaps the only writers are down here on earth and it’s simply a snapshot taken at a zoo. Just a random occurrence out of the millions upon billions of occurrences that happen every day. We, the silly humans, are the ones who have attached significance to it when in reality there is none. It’s just something that happened.

  Peter’s standing in the doorway, holding a basketful of laundry. When he sees I’m crying, he balances it on the bed, on top of the other mound of clothes, and comes to sit down next to me. He gives me a soft kiss on the cheek and strokes the hand that’s holding the photo.

  “You and me,” he whispers. “Together before we were even together.”

  “I know,” I say, and snuggle in to his neck. His beard’s got so fulsome now I can almost disappear right behind it.

  “I know I’ve been driving you crazy with this script,” he says.

  “Um, just a bit.”

  “It’s the only way I know how to make our lives right again. Half measures aren’t going to fix this. Whatever needs to happen to pull us out of this, it’s got to be big.” We pause. I think we’re both contemplating the “bigness” of what we might have to do in order to make our lives even nearly livable. “It kills me that you haven’t had the relationship with the kids that you’ve wanted, that I haven’t been able to give you that. I love you so much. I just want to make you happy.”

  “If you do this course, you will make me completely happy. I promise. That’s all I ask. Do the course. I’ll be so happy, you won’t even recognize me.”

  I come out from under his beard. He’s looking down at the picture. It’s always meant so much to him. Out of the two of us, I think he’s the one that always put more meaning on it.

  “It is my mission,” he says, and kisses me hard on top of my head, “to make you happy. I’ll do it. Just don’t say that we’ll split up ever again. Even if you don’t mean it. Promise me that and I’ll do the course.”

  “I promise,” I say as he slips the picture out of my grasp.

  “Good,” he says.

  “I love you,” I say.

  This makes him smile; he’s normally the one who says it first. Is this love, or is this feeling of eternal attachment, of no boundaries between his brain and mine, because we’ve just been in this for so long? Maybe I love Peter just because he’s become part of me? If I don’t love him, that means I don’t love myself either.

  “I love you too. And I always will.”


  CHAPTER 20

  I’m officially having a bad morning. I just got back from dropping Peter off in Malibu, and now I’m going through the cupboards in an attempt to comfort eat my way out of my emotional state, only to find there isn’t one carbohydrate-based food substance in this house. I’m starving. Delivering Peter to the “nuthouse” (his words, not mine) was always going to be a little bit fraught. But the way things went down this morning, it ended up being downright traumatic.

  We were heading down the Pacific Coast Highway and everything was going as well as could be expected when Peter got a call from Nico, his old agent. Apparently, somehow the script that Peter thought would be a career stopper if it made its way into circulation, made its way into circulation. And how did the beast get free? Nico got an e-mail from Peter’s account with the script attached. He was calling Peter about it not because he thought the script was fabulous but because he was furious. No one likes to receive an unsolicited script—especially not from a writer who’s known for his tendency to lawyer up at the drop of a hat. Right after Peter hung up from talking Nico down, he started laying in to me. He’d decided that I must have sent Nico the script in order to sabotage his writing career so he’d retrain as a dental hygienist (I mentioned that once) and start earning a normal salary. I told him that I didn’t send his stupid script out, but he refused to believe me, and within seconds the whole thing flared up into one of our hugest fights ever. I pulled over on the side of the PCH, told him to get his butt out of the car and walk the rest of the way to the nuthouse, and then I sped off. In my defense it’s been a somewhat stressful time. Of course, I circled around to come and pick him up again, but it takes longer than you’d think to find somewhere you can do a U-turn on the PCH, and by the time I got back to him, he was steaming. At least when we finally arrived at the clinic, they got a good sample of the kind of behavioral problem they’re supposed to be dealing with.

  Despite the fact that we were both spitting mad at drop-off, when it was time for him to go, we clung to each other like we were being separated forever. We’ve had some good-byes steeped in drama before, but this one took the chocolate cake.

  I shake the last of the pumpkin flax granola into the kids’ cereal bowls. The doorbell rings and I hear Billy open the door. I search the bread bin. Empty. Looks like I’m skipping breakfast today. I need to get right on that food stamps thing.

  “Mom,” says Billy. “It’s Lizzie—she wants to talk to you.” Oh, great. Just what I need when my blood sugar is so low I can barely remember my name: a visit from the Organic Goddess herself. Maybe she’s found it in her heart to bring us some of those minipancakes I could smell her microwaving this morning. And how did I know she microwaved them? My kitchen window looks into hers, and if I stand in the right spot, I can see directly to the place where the microwave is. For someone who has a produce basket attached to the front of her bicycle, she uses the microwave more than you would think. I get to the door and see it’s not minipancakes she’s come to offer us; she, in fact, is holding Banksy aloft for my inspection. Poor Banksy seems to have been what I can only describe as shorn—which might seem a strange word to describe a cat’s haircut, but the only one I can think of to sum up the look accurately. But perhaps that’s just because of the low blood sugar. His shearing doesn’t seem to be completely uniform. In some places I can see the skin; some places the hair is still as long as it always was. This was not an expert job.

  “What happened to your cat?” I ask.

  “I thought you might be able to help me answer that,” she says. I notice her outfit today isn’t nearly as concocted as it normally is. Just a pair of jeans and an oversize T-shirt that reads “twerk.” The jeans aren’t even skinny jeans. No fashion parade plus premade breakfast? What’s going on over there?

  “How so?” I ask.

  “Billy,” she says to him, “I need you to be honest. Did you do this to Banksy?”

  Billy does a great show of being completely surprised and also scandalized by the question.

  “Of course not,” he says. “Why would I do that to your cat?”

  “Well, someone did it.” She glares at us both.

  “Why would it be Billy?” I ask. I’m about ninety-nine percent certain it most definitely was Billy, but in case we all forget, I’ve been making tentative steps into my eldest’s good books recently, and I’m not about to give all that up in order to satisfy Lizzie the Pet Detective that her case is closed. She’s going to need to produce hard evidence before I’ll even entertain the notion.

  “Oh, why indeed?” she asks.

  “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” I reply. The law is on my side here.

  “Are these your kitchen scissors?” she asks, holding up a pair of scissors labeled “Amy’s Kitchen Scissors” on one blade. Don’t ask. Okay, one day a couple of years back Peter and I deviated from our usual “who has it harder” fight into a “who brought more furniture and household items to the marriage” argument. It resulted in him getting the labeling gun out to make a point. Peter’s spoon. Peter’s microwave. Peter’s nasty vintage Plymouth mantel clock. Et cetera. The only things I could find that were definitively mine were the kitchen scissors and the coffee-making equipment. So I labeled them. It seemed like a sassy thing to do at the time, but now it looks like my sass has come back to haunt me. “They were found in my front yard. They had Banksy’s hair on the blades,” she says.

  “Circumstantial evidence,” I respond, grabbing the scissors out of her hands. “Have you checked your spy app?”

  “Spy app?”

  “Your cameras.” I’d better backtrack a bit here. If she’s got footage of Billy doing this, I’m going to have to apologize.

  “It’s surveillance. Not spying. And the cameras are down,” she says. “The Internet’s been cut off.”

  “Cut off?” I ask.

  “I mean, it’s not working,” she says. She’s lying. And I’ve no idea why. My phone starts ringing from the dock in the living room where I generally keep it these days so it can act as our alternative sound system. (We sold Peter’s fancy audio equipment a while back.) I ignore it.

  “Do you want the password to our Wi-Fi?” I ask. It’s an olive branch.

  “Sure,” she says.

  I’m using “our Wi-Fi” in a rather loose sense here. It’s the Wi-Fi of the bed-and-breakfast across the street. We stopped paying our Time Warner bill weeks ago. Peter stayed the night over there once, back when we had money—wanting to drive home his point that it was He Who Has It Harder. It seemed a bit insane at the time—and a complete waste of money—but now I can see how he felt justified in sleeping away from home for one night after I’d had weeks and weeks away. The cost of his one-night rebellion has more than paid us back in Wi-Fi access over the last few weeks.

  “Username: The Lemons. Password: Lemons,” I say, my insides turning ice-cold as I suddenly realize that if by chance she or Daniel has ever stayed there, this situation could get very embarrassing very fast.

  “Is that because of your lemon tree out front?” she asks. Phew.

  “It’s a lovely tree, isn’t it?” I say. “Help yourself to lemons anytime.” Lie technically avoided.

  “Billy, I just need to know you won’t do this again,” says Lizzie.

  Poor Banksy really does look a sight. I always gave him the benefit of the doubt and thought his big hair was why he looked so stocky, but with his fur mostly gone, you can see he’s just a very portly animal. Quite the potbelly.

  “I won’t do it again,” he says. I give Lizzie a weak smile. “Because I didn’t do it in the first place!” He thunders back into the house. A moment later I hear his bedroom door slam. He’s five! I didn’t get into slamming bedroom doors until I was at least fourteen. The foundations of our house will be shaken to dust by the time he leaves home.

  From the corner of the room, my phone starts up again. I go over and pick it up. It’s Matt, calling for a second time. I hit “Decline”
and stick it in my pocket. What does he want?

  “Well, I’ll catch you later,” I say to Lizzie, closing the door. “Enjoy the Wi-Fi.”

  “What about my ca—” And the door is closed. I suppose it’s a rude way to terminate the conversation, but I don’t think there’s much more room for negotiation today. My son gave her cat a terrible haircut, he denied it, and I gave her a Wi-Fi password to compensate. I’m not sure where else there is to go from here. Suddenly I get a flash of how wearisome life must be for a member of Congress.

  I knock on Billy’s door and then carefully open it. There’s a boy-sized lump under the bedcovers.

  “Billy,” I whisper, and slowly pull back his comforter. “You can’t slam doors like that. I know you feel angry, but please, think of the poor doorframes.”

  “Thanks for telling her I didn’t do it,” he says. He looks like he’s been crying. This is terrible.

  “Of course,” I say. I seem to remember my role more as questioning his involvement than flat-out denying it—but I’m not about to point that out.

  “You’re an okay mom, you know,” he says, and my heart flies through the sky like a liberated helium balloon. Maybe this is how it all starts. Twenty years from now I’ll be on the stand at Los Angeles Superior Court: “I swear he didn’t do it, Your Honor—he was in all night, virtual-hiking through the Schiaparelli crater.”

  “Do you think you’re going to go away again soon?” he asks, but instead of looking expectant like he normally does when he asks that question, he looks worried.