by Rachel Hulin
(AND YOU DO BELONG TO SOMETHING ALREADY.)
Maybe I should tell Vera to rein it in. I’m going to take her somewhere nice for lunch. Like the Algonquin.
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Matilda,
I’m not entirely comfortable with you seeing Vera. Please do me a favor and keep it surface.
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Harry,
Please. You know I hate it when you try to control me.
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Matilda,
And you know I hate it when you’re all domineering.
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Harry,
That’s not entirely historically accurate.
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Matilda,
Good lord.
Matilda, could you ever see me living in New York City?
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Harry,
No. Not least because a real New Yorker would never spell it all out “New York City” like that. It’s terribly Wyoming of you.
Mom called me this morning. I feel all turned around, between the two of you. It’s like that Alice in Wonderland quote—“I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed several times since then.” EXCEPT YOU ARE THE ONES WHO ARE CHANGING. I am the fucking same.
She was kind, loving, called me “darling” twice, and offered to come to IKEA with me, which will never happen but is quite the gesture. I felt like we really connected. You know, I think the biggest problem for us is that we’re just too much alike. She’s interested primarily in herself, and I’m interested primarily in myself, and thus a conflict emerges.
She wants to be connected and ask me personal questions and worry about me to my face.
How many times can I tell her I like her bamboo tunics and her essential oils before she believes me?
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Matilda,
How many times can she tell you she loves you before you believe her?
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Harry,
If you’re a special child but not a special adult, do you have half a successful life? I might end up chalking it up to that. The cult of childhood personality seems so important at the time. You were the smart one, Cousin Jack was the athlete, and I was the funny one. At least according to Grandma Florence.
Jack! I guess that’s a story for a different time.
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Matilda,
You have been special all the way through.
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Harry,
Do you remember our childhood phone number?
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Matilda,
Remind me.
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Harry,
203-597-0777
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Matilda,
Right. I always liked having so many sevens in a row. And the slow click sound of the rotary.
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Harry,
We’ll never have a rotary phone again, in our whole lives.
I shot a wedding in Wildwood this weekend. I’ve reset Sinead O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds” lyrics to reflect my experience.
It is called:
White Girls in Saris
New Jersey’s not the mythical land of Strip Malls and Factories
It’s the home of brides’ moms
Who put white girls in saris
And I love this bride and that’s why I’m leaving
I don’t want her to be aware that this
Gaucheness is scene stealing
And it was gauche. Holy shit. Holy garters.
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Matilda,
“Wildwood, New Jersey,” does seem like an oxymoron, but I do remember it as rather verdant.
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Harry,
Will you write about that summer vacation in Wildwood for me? I fear the past is growing vaguer. Must be that degenerative disease coming to claim me.
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Oh Matilda, how I oblige you.
At Wildwood they were left alone in a room
With two bunks and a swishing ceiling fan
Four beds in all
With a martyr for a mother and a dad on the lam
Dawdling near the shore, disturbing
The youthful pledge they’d kept intact
The wet green leaves and the
Sshhh shhh thwap thwap of the water
Left nature’s imprint on her back
The cherry cola, the slick smooth stain
Of purple lips upon her face
Four days and nights of cicadas humming
And Jersey moons
And Tanqueray
and just one mistake
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Harry,
I still have a Dr Pepper lip gloss somewhere.
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Matilda,
I’m feeling a bit strange this week. This town feels tiny suddenly, cloying. I keep running up into the hills to find something, but there’s nothing there, just far-off puffs of smoke (BBQs?) and the faint screeches of children. I’m almost looking forward to the hum of the city.
I feel suddenly like I’ve just entered my life, and nothing quite fits me here anymore, like an old jacket I have to discard.
And yet, I can’t get away from the fact that it’s all built on this transgression, this lie about the poem. I don’t know. Vera keeps talking about moving to New York permanently next year to advance her career, to converse with all the hot editors around town. Maybe I should consider it? Shake things up, push out of my comfort zone. If I don’t go with her, I fear I might lose her. I’ve barely seen her at all this summer.
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Harry,
I keep repeating in my mind “goodbye to all that.” I’m not sure why. It’s like I’m on a precipice of some sort, and Joan Didion is to be my spirit guide. It’s like something is going to happen again. Bigger than Michael Jackson.
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Matilda,
Tell me you think I’d be fine in a city.
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Harry,
Check out the awesome email I just got from a bride:
I had some face work done (as a teen), and I have to say, I much prefer pictures of myself from the top down—which is to say: avoid my chin.
(Surprise: You thought dealing with my bipolar alcoholic brother was going to be your toughest challenge!)
I know it might sound a touch ridiculous to ask you to only take pictures from above me, if not particularly feasible, but if you could do that, say, 80% of the time, I’d be eternally grateful.
I love this. I love it when people are just HONEST about their flaws. It’s just the best how weddings bring out the true human condition, you know?
Harry, I don’t think you would do well in a city. Cities are aggressive, you know, and you’ve been soft for a long time.
Just this morning I went to CTown Supermarket. Aside from the very strange meat section (goat with no clear provenance), which would worry you greatly, there was no accountability for the shopping carts. Everyone just threw them to the side when they were done, running for the bus with bags or trying to load up a handcart on the street to truck five blocks home in eighty-eight degrees (me). No time to line up shopping carts all politely and smile at the checkout boy. Or to tip him, or get into a discussion about composting methods, or why watermelons no longer have seeds.
And it’s all anonymous because there are so many people, and it’s every person for herself, because everything is so hard here that poor manners are expected because we’re all just trying to survive.
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Matilda,
I always return my shopping cart, but I’m not as soft as you think I am.
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Harry,
You are too.
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Matilda,
You underestimate me.
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Harry,
I have never, ever underestimated you. By “soft” I mean human; I mean sensitive and kind and personable.
Never think I underestimate you, Harry. I expect the MOST from you. Come to the city! I would love that. Get dirty, be alive in the way that paying h
igh rent makes you alive (a fearful way), drink overpriced mojitos at an outdoor café with rats—do it now, before you’re a dad with a twenty-year-old wife with major literary aspirations and a fabulous, redheaded mother-in-law.
You know, now that I’m saying this, I’d actually really like to move out of this apartment. It still has the ghost of Nate, and the yellow bodega sign feels a bit brash lately—maybe you, Vera, and I could share a place. A three-bedroom, with space for the baby.
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Matilda,
Are you serious? I think three might be a bit of a crowd. And you’re not really a fan of babies, or noise in the morning.
How did you know Vera’s mom is a redhead?
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Harry,
Heard of the internet lately? She’s also a JUDGE, and from the look of her, quite a hard ass. (I do hate mornings, you’re right.)
You know, I think I had Vera all wrong in my head, Harry. You need to work on your characterization skills a touch.
I’m really good with kids, Harry. Babies love me. Just the other day I made one smile on the subway by growling at it.
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Matilda,
Did you have your lunch? Why didn’t you tell me about it? You know, I think it’s better if you don’t come to the reading tomorrow. I just don’t trust it, between you and Dad and Vera’s mom Millicent, it’s too much.
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Harry,
Dad is coming? What a fucking famewhore. Fine. I have a date I was going to have to change with Gary anyway. He wants us to be serious. I need to work on looking him in the eye, but after that there’s a high likelihood this could work.
Give him the middle finger for me.
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Matilda,
I won’t. But good luck with Gary.
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Hey Harry,
Did I ever tell you what Dad gave me when I left for college? A card. You know what it had in it? A check for $1,000 and the letters AMFYOYO.
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Matilda,
? I don’t know what that means.
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Harry,
Adios Motherfucker, You’re on Your Own.
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Matilda,
That must have been a joke. He adores you, you know.
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Hey Harry,
How did it go? Did Dad say he adored me last night?
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Harry,
A new one for you. I stayed up late to write it. (Oscar Wilde helped me.)
I caught the tread of well-trod feet
And loitered down the moonlit street
And stopped beside the bookstore house
Inside, above the din and fray
I heard my brother read and play
“Gary the Frog” to a standing crowd
Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
Millicent and Daddy clapped and bowed
I watched the brave teen mother spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.
Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
You went sidling through the slow SoHo.
Then Daddy took you by the hand,
Vera danced a saraband;
Her laughter echoed thin and shrill.
Sometimes the mother Millicent pressed
Her wayward child to her breast
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.
Sometimes a horrible hipster man
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the street like a live thing.
Then, turning to my doctor, I said,
“The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust.”
And off we went and tried to rest
But instead succumbed to lust.
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Matilda,
You followed us?
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Harry,
Nah. I happened to be in the neighborhood. My friend tends bar at Balthazar. Boy can she tell some stories.
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Matilda,
Dad imparted something to me that I should pass along.
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Harry,
What, syphilis?
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Hey Matilda,
He’s getting married again. To Marjorie.
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Harry,
Oh! That’s fucking fantastic. I’m listening to the perfect song for this, right now. It applies to every male relative in my immediate family.
You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
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Matilda,
Well, what did I do this time? Dad and I are not the same.
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Harry,
Nothing. Everything. And just for the record—I would be an amazing mother.
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Matilda,
Of course you would be. I’ve always thought that.
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Harry,
You have?
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Matilda,
Of course.
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Harry,
So what’s going to happen to me? Who is going to be my family? Marjorie?? Watch, maybe the two of us will be hanging out ten years from now, somewhere on a sad couch in New England.
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Matilda,
You never know. Dad seems happy this time. I’m going to try to be supportive.
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Harry,
News item: I have a voice message from Jonathan Lethem’s cousin. She’s getting married and needs a photographer. I guess I’m lighting up the literary world, too. If only by proxy.
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Matilda,
Congrats! It’s the first of many. Take notes for the book, and you’ll have a smash hit.
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Oh hey Harry,
Alexis just emailed me. They’re laying out the September issue of the Paris Review, with Vera’s poem. Have you seen it?
Both of Us
They were brother and sister and they were having sex.
We talked about it behind the metallic shields that were our high school locker doors.
She was a classic outsider, but beautiful, with her fake, luminescent red hair.
He was on the tennis team, almost fey with his delicate hands and nose in a book.
I started the rumor.
You didn’t believe me.
You obsessed later when you saw them brush hands in the parking lot, lingering too long by the station wagon.
I thought the romance could be a good premise for a screenplay, or maybe for an independent film director with a quirky bent.
He would be done justice by a rising star’s red lips.
She would be played by an ingenue in Clairol.
We had the entire plot fleshed out.
They left for college in the fall separately
But both of us remembered them
Together
Part Five and a Half: July
Jesus, Matilda—
Well, this is just fabulous. Go ahead and tell me about the hand you had in this, because I certainly have not had this discussion with Vera.
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Hey Harry,
It’s definitely a surprise to me, too!
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Hey Matilda,
What the hell did you say to her at lunch? This poem is a bit enthusiastic, if not exaggerated.
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Harry,
I was totally charming at lunch. Did you know Vera used to run a camp for toddlers in the summer?
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Matilda,
I did. Did you know she lived for a year in the Caribbean as a teenager?
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Harry,
I did know that. She absolutely told me that. Bermuda.
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Matilda,
That’s not the Caribbean. It w
as the Bahamas.
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Harry,
Right. My public school didn’t do “geography.”
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Hey Matilda,
Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened that day. See—we’ll play your game. Write it like a scene.
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Harry,
I can’t write. I’m all progesterone this week. I could probably act it out for you in charades or draw you a picture of it. Maybe I could sing it—or Vera could. She has a very nice voice.
