by Katie Henry
Maybe this is a way to tell my mom the truth without risking anything. Every time I thought about it before, I’d stop myself, remembering that I didn’t know how she’d react. She wouldn’t be happy, for sure, but how unhappy? All I could imagine was her losing her shit, calling up Alex’s parents, filing a restraining order. All I could imagine was her staring at me like I was a stranger. It seemed so much safer to say nothing at all.
But if it’s Naomi, Mom won’t do any of those things. She likes Naomi, though; she cares about her. She’ll know what to do, and she’ll tell me so I can pass it on. I’ll get the advice I need, but without all the questions and dramatics that might follow.
“Actually . . .” I pause for dramatic effect. “No. I don’t think so.”
Nothing in the world catches my mom’s attention like a problem she can solve. She all but flings herself on my bed.
“What happened?” she asks, and I can practically see the gears turning in her head, calculating the probabilities before I can even respond. Family illness? Failing grades? Eating disorder?
“She has this boyfriend—”
“Naomi?” Mom’s forehead wrinkles. “Since when?”
“Um. A few months.”
“And you don’t like him?”
“No, I—” God, even in my fake story I can’t bring myself to be mean about him. “He isn’t all bad. That’s the thing, if he were all bad and I didn’t like him at all it would be so simple. But it’s not like that. Half the time, he seems so nice. He’s always telling her how pretty she is, and bringing her presents, and acting like she’s his whole world.”
“And then . . . what about the rest of the time?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “She’s kind of quiet about it, but . . .”
“But?” Mom prods.
“Sometimes it seems like he’s a totally different person. Like he’ll yell at her for no reason, and she’ll apologize even though she didn’t do anything wrong, and then he’ll be all smiley like it never even happened. It’s so weird.”
Mom doesn’t say anything.
“He always wants to know where she is. He always wants her to be . . . available, I guess. He doesn’t want her talking to me, or anyone else he doesn’t like. Anyone who’s just hers. He wants to be in charge of everything she does.”
“Does he hit her?”
“No,” I say as forcefully as I can. “It’s not like that.”
She nods. “That’s good.”
“But—” I take a breath. “She’s scared of him. Sometimes. She worries he might hurt her. Even though he hasn’t, yet.”
Then it dawns on me, dark and sudden, like the sun burning out in the sky.
“And I think he knows. He knows she worries about what he might do, and I think . . . I think he likes that.”
My heart feels like a black hole. No light. No life. Only endless darkness.
Mom shakes her head. “What a mess. Why hasn’t she broken up with him?”
“It’s . . . complicated. I think.”
She laughs. “Sweetheart. I know you’ve never broken up with someone, but no. It is not complicated.”
“She’s tried. A couple times. But it never sticks.”
“What do you mean?”
“He even broke up with her but then, like a week later, pretended he’d never even done it and made her feel like she was crazy. I don’t know what to do.” Shit. I went first person there. “I don’t know how to help her,” I add quickly.
“Oh, honey,” Mom says gently, sadly. “You can’t help her.”
“Huh?”
“Isabel, I’ve had friends like this. There’s nothing you can do to help people like that.”
“Mom.”
“You can’t take this on yourself. I know she’s your best friend, but you aren’t responsible for someone else’s bad choices.”
I recoil. “Bad choices?”
“It’s not her fault this boy is such a jerk,” Mom concedes, “but the stakes are so low. She’s not a single mom with three kids who’s going to have to live in a shelter. The fact is, she could break up with this guy tomorrow and she isn’t doing it. What does that say about her?”
“You’re not being fair.”
She looks at me sadly. “I get it. I get what’s happened here. Frankly, Naomi can’t be that popular with boys. So this guy got her convinced he was the only person who would ever really love her. And she thinks, well, maybe he’s right.”
He didn’t have to convince me. I could see it for myself. I could see it in every canceled plan and all the weekends I spent alone and all the dinners where no one let me say a word.
“I like Naomi. You know I do. But she’s not very . . . you know. Strong. Boys like that can see it. They can see the weakness. They prey on it.”
She’s right. She’s right, even if she doesn’t know who she’s right about. If I was strong, none of this would be happening to me.
“And I’m sure it only makes it harder that Naomi doesn’t have her mom around all the time,” Mom says.
I think: Naomi’s not the only one.
I think: She’s not the only one who doesn’t have her mom.
I say: Nothing.
“But maybe I should call her dad. If he doesn’t know about this boy—”
“No,” I blurt out. “He knows. Almost all of it, I think. He doesn’t like her boyfriend, either.”
“Ah, well,” she relents. “I won’t get in the middle of it, then.”
Of course she won’t get in the middle of it. She won’t see what’s happening right in front of her.
“All you can do is be there for her. Be a good friend. But you can’t save her.”
No one can save me. Of course they can’t. I can’t even save myself.
Mom stands up. She smiles at me. “I’ve got to tell you, Isabel, I’m just so grateful.”
“For what?” I ask.
She cups my face in her hands, soft and sure. “You’re too smart for anything like that.”
It’s just me and Mo tonight at the Forest, and based on how my set is going so far, I’m glad. At least only one of my friends has to see me crash and burn. There are some nights everything feels natural and right, like this stage is my home.
And some nights, I feel like I’m two seconds away from curling up in a fetal position and never saying another word.
“My brother and sister are way closer to my parents than I am,” I say into the mic. “Or at least, they’re way more similar to my parents, than I am. They’re—um. I mean, I’m—”
I can’t remember the next line. Has there has ever been a next line? All that’s pounding in my head is bringing this on yourself you’re not that strong you’re not that smart.
I wipe a sweaty hand on the skirt of my gray dress. What does Mo always say? Stand-up means on your feet. So you have to think on your feet.
“I’m not like anybody in my family, but I used to think I was like my mom. We look alike. That’s what everybody always said, you know, ‘You look just like your mom.’ But that doesn’t mean we are alike.”
The words are spilling out too fast for me to choose any with care. It’s almost like I’m not choosing them at all. Like I’m possessed by Asrigoth, the Demon of Bad Stand-Up, and any second I’m going to start vomiting pea soup. Or trying prop comedy.
“My mom’s a lawyer. Like a big-time, criminal defense lawyer. But not for the people who get busted with an ounce of weed or something. She’s only for people with a shit ton of money who stole a shit ton of other people’s money. You know how in crime shows the police get this totally obvious serial killer in the interrogation room, and he’s just about to crack, and then the lawyer waltzes in like, ‘Don’t say another word, Jeremy! They can’t prove you murdered the mayor’s daughter who was also a call girl!’ That’s my mom.” Then I feel like I should clarify. “Not the call girl. The lawyer. Except she doesn’t defend murderers. She defends white-collar con artists.”
I call fe
el the room shift as everyone starts to realize this wasn’t supposed to be part of the set. No one stops me, though. The floors might be sticky and the bar might be the site of several health code violations, but there’s a code. You can say what you want up here. No matter what it is.
“Everyone likes to watch shows about serial killers, but trust me when I say my mom’s clients are just sociopaths with better PR.” I pause, to give the next part weight. “Oh, and they’re all guilty. Super guilty. Even if they weren’t guilty of fraud or Ponzi schemes or whatever, which they are, they’d be guilty of something else.”
I take a step closer to the audience, like we’re friends, like I’m letting them in on some legit gossip. Which I guess I am. “My mom has this one client, this guy whose been accused of defrauding some of his investors, and my mom went to his house. She told my dad he collects these little clown figurines. Just, like, dozens of tiny porcelain clowns all over his penthouse apartment.”
That doesn’t get a laugh, and why would it? It’s just creepy. And, unfortunately, true.
“For real, that is a man just one bad night away from pushing tourists off Navy Pier. If there were any justice in the world, he’d be in prison for a few years. But there isn’t any justice in the world, because even though he’s totally guilty, my mom is going to get him off. Legally. Not sexually. And the worst part is, the worst part other than now I’m imagining my mom and fucking Greg having sex, is . . . she knows.” I shake my head. “She knows he’s guilty. She’s said so. I’ve heard her. She knows he’s a bad person and she’s going to make sure he never faces any consequences.”
And then I realize something. In the worst place to have one, I have the worst realization.
“No, you know what? That’s not the most messed-up part. The really messed-up part is, she cares about him more than she cares about me. That fucking guy, who bankrupted a dozen people and just will not give up on his bad comb-over, that’s her priority. Keeping him out of the prison he so clearly belongs in.”
The weight of it sinks into my limbs, and I almost drop the mic. All the frustration, and rage, and pain bubble up in my throat, and my voice almost breaks.
“I mean, I’m just her daughter. Her only kid who still . . .” I swallow. “Her only kid who still needs her. But what’s a daughter, when you’ve got clients?”
The red light flashes. That’s okay. I’m done, anyway.
“Thank you,” I say to the totally silent crowd. “I’m Izzy V.” I clear my throat. “I kind of wish I wasn’t right now, but . . . here we are.” I put the mic back on the stand. “Hope you have a better night than I did.”
There’s some polite clapping, and what I’m guessing are less polite whispers. I walk like a horse with blinders back to the table.
“So . . . how do you think that went?” I ask Mo, and my voice is about an octave higher than usual.
She shakes her head. “Man, Izzy.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
“It would explain why no one laughed.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It’s generally considered rude to laugh during a therapy session.”
Ugh. I know it wasn’t great, but that’s melodramatic. “It wasn’t a—”
“All it needed was a couch and a lady with long gray hair and statement jewelry asking how that made you feel.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Like your mom doesn’t get it?”
Silence.
“Talk to her about this, okay?” Mo lays a hand on my shoulder. “Not a bunch of dudes in a bar. Trust me, they will be of zero assistance.”
“Okay.”
“Great.” She drags her bag up from the floor. “I’ll see you later.”
“You’re not going to stay for a drink?”
“No, I’m going back to campus.”
“Can I come with you?”
“I have a test tomorrow,” Mo says.
“Please?” I ask. “I don’t . . . want to go home. Right now.”
Mo sighs, world-weary. “Okay. But you have to help me study.”
“The Treaty of Troyes.”
“Um . . .” Mo picks at her bedspread. “Agreement that Henry V would get the French crown when Charles died.”
“Yeah.” I put the flash card down. “Scottish rebel nobleman. Captured by Hotspur.”
Mo looks unsure. “Archibald the Grim?”
“Right.”
“Is it?” Mo grabs the card from me.
“Yeah.”
“It’s not.” She sets it down. “It’s his son. Archibald the Loser.”
“Close enough,” I say, suddenly feeling defensive.
Maybe Mo’s feeling defensive, too, because she shoots back, “Like what you did onstage tonight was close enough to stand-up?”
“Wow, straight for the jugular.” I pick another flash card. “Chevauchée.”
She pushes my hand down. “Forget the cards.”
“You said you had to study.”
“I do, but you’re making it pretty hard,” she says. “Tell me what’s going on, because you clearly want to.”
Why does everyone think they know what I want? They don’t.
“You know, breakups can be really tough,” she says. “I get it.”
I shuffle the flash cards around, avoiding her eyes. “Uh—my boyfriend and I—we, um, got back together.”
She shifts on the bed. “Oh.”
“It was a misunderstanding,” I try to explain, but she looks unmoved. “I thought he broke up with me, but I misunderstood him, so everything’s good now.”
“Is it?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
Mo pauses. “I’ve noticed he . . . texts you. A lot.”
I feel myself bristling. This is Naomi all over again. “You text me a lot, too.”
She’s slow to speak, careful with each syllable. “He wants to know where you are, a lot.”
“Yeah.” I look away, pick at the threads in her bedspread.
“He’s got a lot of opinions about what you wear.”
I feel like I’m being trapped. “Yeah.”
“And he’s never come to see you perform.” She pauses. “I don’t think he even knows you do perform.”
“He wouldn’t like it,” I jump in. “It’s better this way.”
“Putting all of it together . . .” She hesitates again. “He seems kind of controlling.”
She’s just another person who’s going to judge me. Just another person who looks at the mess I’ve gotten myself into and thinks there must be a reason for it. She’d never let herself be treated this way, so there must be something wrong with me.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding sagely. “And you don’t even know about how he locks me in a storm cellar and feeds on my blood like a vampire.”
She closes her eyes. “Izzy—”
“What? Vampires make great boyfriends. They’ll even watch you sleep.”
She shakes her head. “I’m being serious.”
“Anything can be funny. That’s what you said. So why can’t that be funny?”
“You’re changing the subject,” she says accusingly. And correctly. But I’m not defending this to her.
“Didn’t you say that?” I ask. “That anything can be funny?”
“Yeah, but it matters how you tell it.”
I have a flash of terrible inspiration. She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn’t.
“Anything can be funny?” I say. “You just have to tell it right?”
“I think so.”
Yeah. We’ll see.
“I have a new bit.” I lean forward, as if this is something big and exciting. “Can I try it on you?”
She looks skeptical. “A new bit? I think you should keep working on the material you have.”
“It’s rough. But just to try it out.”
“Um. Okay.” She gestures with an open hand. “Go for it.”
“A priest, a rabbi, and a lemur walk into a ba
r,” I start off, putting on my best hack comic voice, trying to sound like the most over-the-top, unfunniest jerk I’ve ever seen onstage. “Sorry, no, that’s not right. A girl, her boyfriend, and whatever demon lives in his soul walk into a house party. It’s October, and they haven’t been dating that long, so this is the first party they’ve gone to together.”
I don’t know why I’m pretending this happened to someone else. I’m the girl. Or maybe I’m the demon. I like to keep my audience in suspense, you know?
“So we go into the party and I don’t know anybody. Because they’re all Alex’s friends, and they’re cool, and I’m just three raccoons in a trench coat.” I pause. “And then this guy comes up to me. He’s really nice, and super friendly, and cute in like the way Pomeranians are cute, you know? Nonthreatening. Basically a pillow with eyes. Like, you want to snuggle a pillow, but no one wants to fuck a pillow.”
Any other time, that would get a laugh. But Mo just shakes her head, flipping through her flash cards like I’m wasting her time.
“So Pomeranian Boy and I are talking, and definitely not, like, flirting, because he’s a human cotton ball and I have a boyfriend. I’m just happy to have someone to talk to, you know? Then all of sudden, my arm gets yanked back. It’s Alex, of course. The kid is instantly gone, and I don’t blame him, because Alex is furious.”
Mo’s head jerks up, and I can see it in her eyes. She knows I’m not doing a bit. She knows I’m about to tell her something important. I swallow and keep going.
“And he’s all like, ‘Why the fuck were you talking to him? Why were you smiling like that? He’s going to think you’re a whore. You’re dressed like a whore.’ And I’m like, whoa. Because this is coming out of nowhere.” I take a breath. “And Alex was the one who picked out that outfit! Men, am I right?”
I hold my hands out, as if inviting audience response. Mo says nothing.
“So he pulls me out of the party, out of the house, and all the way to the L station. The platform is totally empty and I’m standing right in the middle, which I always do, when they’re elevated, because I really don’t like heights. And this station, there isn’t even a wall, there’s just, like, a railing, so if you looked over, you could see all the traffic, the cars and stores and things, fifteen feet below.”
