by Rachel Hulin
Harry,
Yep. You were right. You’re not a total priss. Watch out, though; you might not get tenure if you bang your protégée.
.
Matilda,
Let’s talk about this in person. I’ll see you next weekend? I’m pretending to be your cousin, right?
Does Mom know about this?
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Harry,
Yes. She wasn’t even that surprised. It was she who created me, after all.
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Matilda,
Take responsibility for your life before it’s too late.
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Harry,
I’m afraid.
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Matilda,
Fine. I’ll take care of everything.
Part Three: December
Hey Matilda,
You can’t just leave like that in the middle of the night and then go radio silent for two weeks.
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Hey Harry,
But I did! Which proves that you can.
In any case, the holidays were a spectacular failure, I think we can all agree.
Harry, have you ever had a watershed moment where you have to choose the good version of yourself or the bad version of yourself, and they’re equally appealing? Because I think what we have here is a watershed moment.
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Matilda,
I have not.
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Harry,
I am going to tell you a secret. For a moment, just a moment, I drove the wrong way on the highway on my way back to New York. It was surreal, like a movie, the car lights all pointing at me, moving fast, hunting me down. I was blinded.
But you know what? I wasn’t scared. I didn’t even feel bad. It was like I was on fire, invigorated. I just calmly pulled over and made a U-turn in the breakdown lane. The sound of cars honking at me as they sped by felt like cheers—like adulation.
I thought: This is it. I am either going to die tonight, or I have truly gone bad. Like Johnny Cash when he was lit like a fucking Christmas tree. That shit is powerful.
When I pulled up in Brooklyn, Amit was standing on the doorstep. Remember him? Our insurance friend? Freddie Mercury? He was looking for Nate, but I know he was glad he saw me first. I said something to him I shan’t repeat in polite company.
We went back to his place and had RESPLENDENT relations. I was dizzy the whole time and we stayed up all night and listened to “Bohemian Rhapsody” over and over and over.
In the morning we went to a diner, where I had a grilled cheese on rye with a tomato with no red color and a sad pickle, and Amit started getting texts and was drawn further and further back into insurance or whatever and then looked at me, gravely.
“Mat, I’ve got to go. That was amazing, but you know. We should maybe keep our distance?”
He had crumbs and ketchup on his stubble and he was wearing jeans that fit incredibly well and he grabbed his briefcase like a grown-up and then he was gone.
And now I am going to sleep. Rent is due tomorrow and I don’t have any new bride deposits.
PS After Amit and I had sex he told me he had a girlfriend who died of a drug overdose and that, at the time, he was her dealer and that his heart will never be whole again.
Life, Harry. Couldn’t you just cry?
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Matilda,
Wow, this really, really scares me, thank god you’re OK. Where’s Nate? Mom and I have been very concerned.
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Harry,
Oh, Nate’s gone, as you might have guessed. I blew the whole damn thing up, didn’t I?
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Matilda,
And, apparently, you have now slammed the door on your relationship with a bang. The cherry on top.
Impressive! Even for you.
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Harry,
And there’s something to be said for that, right? If I could see past my deep anxiety and depression I might actually feel hopeful for the future.
Harry, write it like a movie, like you used to do.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and your rendition will turn into a stunning novella, which will win you tenure and the respect and love of your pretentious colleagues.
I’ll get you started:
*CASTING*
Mother: Middle-aged actress with a tasteful face-lift who’s thankful for the role
Boyfriend: Young, naïve, entitled actor
Vera: Half hippie, half haute, fully hot
Harry: Anyone with the last name Culkin
Matilda: OUTSTANDING ACTRESS WHO RADIATES POTENTIAL and self-doubt
Grandma (in a surprise appearance): A Golden Girl but with good hair
Dog: Fuzzy garden-variety mutt, well loved, poorly groomed
.
OK, Matilda.
The moon was just shy of full the weekend they arrived, an almost perfect circle but not quite, portending the realization of something happening—or maybe just a near miss.
It was right after Thanksgiving, which had gone uncelebrated, allowing for an early Hanukkah gathering to appease their mother and smooth the pathway for Christmas with their father.
His sister had been distracted of late—distracted and flighty and morbid, obsessive and paranoid about diseases she did not possess. Her city wasn’t good for her, though it certainly matched her current demeanor. He imagined Matilda and New York as competitive peers, egging each other on, hoping for the other to fail.
And so it was death that had brought them back together for the weekend. She had pretended that HE was dead, dead at birth for a good story, and now she was connected to her boyfriend through it, and Harry and his mother were going to be complicit.
Harry was there waiting for her, distracted himself with tenure, not to mention a fridge full of cilantro he was trying to keep fresh (omelettes). Side note: cooking a lot as of late. But still he wanted to help, and help involved the retelling of a lie that could only have come from a drunken mishap between narcissists, but he liked being in the service of others.
He was a teacher by trade.
And it went fine, at first. Though he couldn’t see the adoration and importance placed on an awkward manboy who was wearing what appeared to be black briefs in the hot tub behind their mother’s house. Matilda held the boy’s hand under the water and only glanced at Harry occasionally. Her asides were self-conscious, trying, but mostly she was quiet. He wondered if this Nate kid really knew her at all. Nate and Harry chatted a little.
“So what do you do?” Harry asked Nate. The first question ever asked among ambitious young adults.
“Oh, you know, this and that.”
Harry didn’t know.
They were all in there, keeping up this reasonable if meaningless conversation, when Grandma joined them suddenly, like a ghost coming out of the swirling steam, into the scene like a stealer, flanked by Mother, twenty-five years younger but miles less secure, flitting.
Grandma was strong and sure of herself and even elegant coming into the hot tub. She had a streamlined shape that belied her actual heft, only revealing itself when the water level rose to the edge of the tub, lapping over with a hiss onto the fake wood of the new deck Mother had made such a fuss to build. Her “bosom” rose up like a black shiny buoy and rested at the top of the water, seal-like.
Grandmother ate only five things:
Sesame bagels
Caffeine-free Coke
Tuna fish with mayo on Rye
Tomato juice
Roast beef
It didn’t take her long to grab the reins of the conversation, which up until now had been feeble: Matilda, boyfriend, and Harry all in a row in a hot tub suited to five.
She got right to it, heaving her one-liners into the night like hard-hit baseballs over the right-field wall—with gusto.
You wouldn’t believe all the teenage doctors at Hartford Hospital. A world-class hospital!
Cousin Sarah’s baby girl looks so much like you, Matilda, it’s uncanny. Except you were very
dumpy at that age. Do you remember?
You used to be the bossy one, Harry, but now it’s Matilda, I suppose. Why? No children to boss around! That’s why.
She was picking on Matilda, as usual.
Matilda was palpably uncomfortable, trying to steer the conversation anywhere but near the cliff that would reveal her brother was well and fine, that Harry was not actually her cousin, and that she’d been creating a drama for herself all this time! She clutched her margarita, swirling the bits of banana that had become lodged in the ice. She shoved the home-tie-dyed bandanna back on her head, revealing a widow’s peak and a small strip of flat brown roots beneath the red.
Matilda would have made as good a lawyer as an artist, since her chief concern in any conversation was winning. So while she really wanted to strike out at Grandma with a put-her-in-her-place rejoinder, she was stuck faking nice to keep her lie adrift. Perhaps she should focus on travel.
“Grandma, tell Nathan about your trips with Grandpa. About Egypt?”
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to Egypt, or Tunisia, actually. And Morocco, especially,” said Nate.
“Yes, well, traveling on that scale takes quite a bit of money and planning.”
“I used to travel a lot with my grandfather, actually. He was always doing research for his books.”
“Oh, was he a writer?”
“Yes, you may have heard of him; his name was Saul Bellow.”
“Oh, well! Of course I have!” The seal shape played excitedly on the water, and Matilda smiled just a little. So HERE was the golden egg about the boyfriend.
“SAUL BELLOW! WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO!” Mother came out of the shadows, holding Freddy, their old dog. Half Pekingese, half poodle, very smelly, overloved.
Harry kicked Matilda under the water, not too hard (maybe slightly harder than he meant to), and she yelped. She kicked him back, quite hard.
“You two, for siblings you’re awfully aggressive, I always thought so!” scolded Grandma loudly.
Shit.
Matilda downed her drink. Harry slid into the water. Nate leaned forward.
“Wait, what?” Nate said. He turned to Matilda for a beat, pushed what flop remained of his hair out of his eyes. He looked a little steely, if such a thing were possible for him. He looked almost mean, Harry thought.
“Fuck! I’m sorry, OK! I’m not fucking perfect!” Matilda smacked her hand down on the water, splashing it up into the night. The droplets rose high, and one caught the glint of the outdoor spotlight, which was red, leftover mood lighting from high school. Freddy jumped at the light, out of Mother’s arms, right into the tub.
The dog seized and sank, blond matted hair rising above him like a wounded mop, bubbling on its way down.
“Freddy!!” Mother jumped into the tub after him.
Harry dove for the dog (heroically). Nate jumped out of the tub. Grandmother perched on the edge, out of her depths now.
“Koala, koala!” screeched Matilda as she ran across the yard, a streak of red in her old swim-team Speedo and her dyed hair, heading for the woods. Only Harry understood this, of course, as “koala” was a code word between them and was to be used only in a true emergency scenario. It had never been used before.
Freddy was beyond saving: HEART ATTACK, said the emergency vet.
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Hey Matilda,
There you go.
My rendition for you. Not a boring holiday weekend, for sure. Please try not to take it terribly hard. Freddy was old and you were not going to marry Nate in the end anyway; let us be honest.
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Harry,
A touch self-congratulatory (“service of others”!), but otherwise you’re a reliable narrator.
I am drinking a Bloody Mary through a straw right now, extra horseradish. I’m sitting by my window, willing the woman with the pubic hair from 1974 to walk by again, but she’s a no-show. She must be in her kitchen with Lars, who has fantastic man pubic hair and is from an unnamed Scandinavian country and has once eaten reindeer. Which delights her! Tonight is a spectacular crescent moon, Harry. The moon controls the freaking tides, Harry. That’s more incredible than the goddamned post office. If the moon controls the tides, can you imagine what it’s doing to our brains this very second? The astrologists are all completely right.
The astronomers, I don’t know what they’re doing. I’m still upset about Pluto.
Harry, did you know the sound of the cosmos is essentially a rain forest of chirping birds? That’s what it sounds like, with the ghosts of asteroids and space trash pinging all about, bouncing off the atmosphere.
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Matilda,
Did you know that physicists on the whole are very religious? That gives me comfort.
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Harry,
Yes, that’s a nice thing.
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Matilda,
You know who else is very religious? Mom. Call her.
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She’s not religious, Harry, she’s spiritual.
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Matilda,
Either way, she’s confused and concerned.
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Harry,
She’s not worried about me. She’s worried about why her perfect parenting resulted in such an off-kilter daughter.
Harry—do you remember at camp, how we had the big trivia bowl between the boys’ camp and the girls’ camp? The best part of it was when they gave you a clue and you had to make little rhymes for the answers. They were called stinky pinkies. Anyway, I made some for this particular situation.
Stink pink: Hot dog
Stinky pinkie: Guppy puppy
Stinkety pinkety: Deadity Freddity
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Matilda,
I noticed Freddy’s smell as he sank to the bottom of the tub. It’s true, after all, how time slows down at such moments. God, that dog is disgusting, I thought, even as he was dying. I feel really bad about that now.
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Harry,
Well, he was disgusting, and well loved. You can be both things at once.
At the trivia bowl between the boys’ and girls’ camps, I was onstage killing it with the stinky pinkies in the outfit my best friend Alexis Loreda had styled for me (Grateful Dead shirt and purple reflective round sunglasses), while Alexis, who was from Miami where she had a best friend named Colt, gave a hand job to a boy under the floorboards. Apparently she just thwapped away as a hundred pairs of white Keds excitedly rumbled the floor above her.
Announcer: “For the win: stink pink of…a happy boy!”
Young Matilda: “Glad lad!!!”
Applause applause, stomp stomp stomp.
Alexis was always so much more advanced than me. Her father was the ambassador to Bolivia! I mean, come on. How can you even compete with someone like that? She was a willowy five feet nine inches by fifth grade, her hair down her back in self-woven shiny French braids. She had a working knowledge of all the Latin roots, and a Saks wardrobe bought for her by a trilingual nanny who was, herself, more sophisticated than I could ever hope to be.
I knew it at the time—the smartest thing was to become her sidecar, her confidante. We were editors together on the camp yearbook. Every summer there was a new theme. Ours was: WEDDING.
We can’t all be born to ambassadors, but we can adore their daughters. And we can learn the dress code.
It took three more years until I finally knew what a hand job was, Harry, do you remember?
ACCEPTABLE SHOES AT SUMMER CAMP
1. Bluchers (L.L. Bean moccasins with the laces done in little knots)
2. K-Swiss
3. White Keds. Leather, not canvas. The Wonder Bread of shoes.
And that’s it.
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Matilda,
You really have an outsized attachment to the past. It’s so interesting; I barely remember anything from camp at all. Also—and don’t take this the wrong way—Mom and I both think it might be good if you take a break from the city and come stay
with her for a while.
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Harry,
You really switch alliances so quickly, Harry, I’m not even sure what to think anymore about you! I thought you were always on my side, and now you just want me to give up? I feel like you don’t even realize how hard I am trying. I am going to be SOMEONE, not just a professor at a midlevel state school with ironic elbow patches, phoning it in.
I saw you in there with her, just so you know. In the Freddy-soiled cauldron of shame, after Grandma and Nate both left—I woke up to pee and saw you two from the window. At first I thought you were alone, swimming under the water, and I thought since when did Harry have such long hair, did I miss it, was it in a ponytail all night, how uncharacteristically cool of him.
You had the blue light on in the water just like I like it and I’m glad the window was shut or I might have heard music, like I LIKE IT.
I’m assuming this was Vera. She is your student, Harry. You could be in real trouble if someone reported this.
Why didn’t you come comfort me, instead of going to her?
And you are attached to the past. You just can’t admit it. And that’s worse.
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Matilda,
I did try to come comfort you. Nate and I both tried to comfort you, actually, but you screamed “Go away” and curled up like a ball on the ground.
