by S. G. Browne
“I’ve been ignoring you all week and dropping little hints,” she says, “waiting for you to figure it out and apologize, but you haven’t even noticed. You’ve hardly even spoken to me. It’s like you don’t even know I’m here!”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
I know it sounds flimsy and hollow but at the moment, I don’t know what else to say.
“What were you doing Saturday night?” she says, folding her arms beneath her breasts and staring at me. “Where were you that was so important you missed my birthday? More work-related bullshit?”
It takes me a moment to answer her because I’m not sure where I was. Then I remember Captain Kirk and Austin Powers and my rescue mission.
“I was with Nat,” I say.
Delilah stares at me, not saying anything, then she grabs the vase of flowers and throws it at me. I duck and the vase shatters against the wall, scattering glass and water and roses everywhere.
CHAPTER 35
There are flowers everywhere.
Roses, carnations, and daisies. Gladiolas, chrysanthemums, and snapdragons. Lilies, hydrangeas, and asters. In reds and whites and yellows. In sprays and wreaths and hearts. Mixed with lemon leaves and baby’s breath and dagger ferns.
The flowers are scattered all over the floor, near the closed casket, while I stand at the front row of folding chairs, looking around with my hands behind my back. I’m the only kid in attendance. The grown-ups stand around, some crying, some shaking their heads, some consoling others. A few chairs are knocked over. The sun pours in through the windows on one side of the room. Behind me, someone whispers my name and something about my father, but I miss the rest of it.
When I look back to see who it is, no one’s talking. No one’s looking at me. No one’s owning up to anything. They’re all just standing there wearing dark suits and black dresses and solemn faces.
So I turn back to look at the flowers.
Where I am is Emerson’s Funeral Home the week after my ninth birthday. The week after Alex Trebek came for a midnight visit. The week after my mother found out the truth about my father.
The flowers all used to be in nice arrangements, displayed around my father’s coffin, free-standing on easels, laid across the top of the casket. But now they’re broken and crushed and strewn around the viewing room, petals and stems and leaves all over the place like some kind of floral massacre, while my uncle and my grandfather hold my mother to one side of the casket as she strains to get free, her feet kicking at what used to be a wreath of white carnations and red roses.
“You bitch!” my mother half yells, half sobs at another woman who stands by herself. “You fucking whore!”
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard my mother swear, or even raise her voice. She’s never been the type to try to get her point across with shouting and violence. At least not for the first nine years of my existence. Apparently, my mother’s decided to reinvent herself.
Inventing realities seems to run in my family.
“How could you do this to me?” my mother shouts before she collapses to her knees in what used to be a spray of snapdragons and daisies. My grandmother rushes in and puts her arms around my mother, whether to offer comfort or hold her down I can’t tell.
I look around at the other mourners watching the show and wonder if this is the kind of service my father would have wanted. At least it tops the charts in entertainment value.
“I didn’t know,” says the woman standing ten feet away on the opposite side of my father’s casket. Her black dress is torn, exposing a bare shoulder and a black bra strap and a trio of fresh scratches that are starting to bead with blood. “I didn’t know!”
I’m standing alone in the front row, watching all of this, looking at my mother and the flowers and my father’s coffin, trying to figure out what kind of lesson my father is trying to teach me this time.
It turns out that for the past six years, my father had been living a double life.
Those business trips he took? Those two and three and four days of each week he was gone someplace like Des Moines and Phoenix and Reno? Those phone calls to my mother from the road? He never took any business trips. He never went to any of those places. Or at least if he did, he never went alone.
He was married. To someone else besides my mother. To the woman with the torn black dress and the scratch marks on her shoulder and the mascara running down her cheeks. The woman my mother now wants to kill.
My father had taken on another identity. He had another name and another job and he lived in another house in another town with another wife. I don’t know if he had a dog or a cat or a fish tank, but he didn’t have any other children. Just me.
No one told me any of this. I learned it all by listening to the conversations of my relatives and to my mother’s one-sided phone calls and to the whispers of my parents’ friends.
I don’t understand why my father would want to be married to two different women. It seems like a lot of work to me. But I’m sure he had his reasons.
Maybe after I was born he decided he didn’t really want children. Maybe he wanted one family with children and one without. Maybe he just wanted another life.
I glance down at my mother, surrounded by scattered lilies and lemon leafs, kneeling on crushed gladiolas and asters, sobbing and shaking, saliva and mucus dripping from her mouth and nose, and I wonder if she did something to drive my father away or if I did.
I look over at my father’s other wife, her face in her hands, her shoulder bare and bleeding, and I wonder if this is as hard for her as it is for my mother. I wonder if she ever went anywhere with my father. I wonder if he was the same man with her that he was with us.
Cold. Distant. Instructive.
The last thing my father said to me was to tell me how to properly chew my food.
I don’t know how he managed to live two separate lives. Or what made him think he could get away with it. He didn’t leave any note. He didn’t offer any explanation. He didn’t make any apologies. Whatever reasons he had went with him when he fell asleep while driving back home late at night, drifted onto the shoulder of the freeway, and slammed into the concrete support column of a highway overpass.
I look up from my father’s two wives to his casket at the front of the room and I think about all of the lessons my father taught me. How he told me life wasn’t a game. How he taught me about choices and sacrifices and commitments. How he said that everyone had a role to play.
As it turns out, my father’s role was pretending to be my father.
I think about how he told me not to believe in anything or anyone but myself. Not Santa Claus. Not the Easter Bunny. Not the Tooth Fairy. Not God. But considering that my father was lying about who he was all of this time, I don’t know what to believe anymore.
So I just watch my mother and the woman who was my father’s secret wife as they both cry on either side of the coffin while I pretend that I’m a normal, happy kid.
CHAPTER 36
“I’m wet just thinking about you. I’m like a dripping faucet.”
I’m sitting in my office the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, the last day of November, listening to Kurt play his voice mail on speakerphone and trying to stay on top of things after everything that’s happened to my team and what’s happening to me, when there’s a loud crash followed by someone shouting, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
I’m not sure if that’s Neil’s voice or if Kurt’s phone calls have taken a turn for the homoerotic, but before I can get up to find out which one it is, Emily appears in my doorway. “You better come quickly.”
I follow Emily to the break room, where Neil is pacing back and forth from wall to wall, his lips moving in a silent mantra, his arms folded around his chest, hugging himself. Then his hands go up to his head, one on either side as if he’s trying to hold it in place or keep something from getting out. The entire time his eyes are clamped shut.
Today he’s dressed all in green, which strikes an uneasy
chord. It also reminds me that we’re behind on the reports for The Kermit.
Kurt shows up a moment later, with Vincent trailing behind him.
“What happened?” asks Kurt.
Emily shrugs. “I have no idea. He opened up the refrigerator and started screaming.”
The refrigerator door stands open, one of the shelves on the floor, half the contents of the refrigerator spread out across the tile, bottles broken and containers leaking. It looks like an appliance terrorist bombing, with condiments and soda cans and Subway sandwiches among the collateral damage.
“Hey Neil,” I say. “What’s going on?”
His lips continue to move in a constant whisper, like he’s saying a prayer. I can’t hear what it is, so I step farther into the room.
“What did you say?” I ask.
Neil stops pacing and turns to look at me, his face red, his lips twisted in fury. “They’re gone!”
“Uh oh,” says Vincent. “Here we go again.”
“You’re not helping,” I snap. But he’s right. This doesn’t seem like just an OCD freak-out.
I turn back to Neil. “What’s gone?”
He walks over to the refrigerator and points an accusatory finger at it, his hand shaking and his lips quivering. “They were in there this morning, same as always. And now they’re gone. There’s nothing left. Nothing!”
“Okay, what was in there?” I ask in a soft, soothing voice, trying to calm him down. But I’m pretty sure I know the answer before he gives it.
“My juice boxes!” He walks away, his hands alternating between hugging himself and trying to hold his head on while he repeats “fuck” in triplicate.
When he resumes his pacing, I walk over to the refrigerator and bend down to look inside. Neil did a pretty thorough job of emptying the contents, so I don’t know what I expect to find. Maybe Mrs. Butterworth and the Pillsbury Doughboy looking out at me from one of the shelves, shrugging their shoulders, their forefingers circling the sides of their heads.
Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.
I stand up and turn around. “Are you sure you didn’t—”
Neil is in my face before I can finish my sentence.
“I didn’t do anything!” Spit flies from his lips, hitting me in the face. Not just a couple of strays but a full deployment of spit. It’s like I’m the USS Enterprise being bombarded with saliva photons.
And just like that, the attack is over and Neil is pacing back and forth again, hugging himself and whispering some secret phrase over and over.
I walk over to Emily, Vincent, and Kurt as I wipe the spit off my face with one sleeve. “Does anyone know what happened to his juice boxes?” I keep my voice low and my eyes on Neil, who is now standing in the corner like Little Jack Horner with his back to us, his hands holding on to his head instead of his Christmas pie.
Kurt shrugs.
“I didn’t take them,” says Vincent.
“Me either,” says Emily. “But I swear I heard him slurping this morning when I got in to work.”
Neil always drinks one of his juice boxes at the exact same time every morning. Never a minute early. Never a minute late. He’s as inevitable as a Hollywood sequel.
“Should I call someone?” asks Vincent.
“Not yet,” I say. “Stay here and keep an eye on him. I’ll be right back.”
I walk through the office to Neil’s workstation, where I pull out his garbage can. Inside are five empty juice boxes. I’m not sure what I find more troubling: the fact that he’s finished all five juice boxes and doesn’t remember doing it, or that he’s finished them all and it’s only Tuesday.
I walk back to the break room carrying the garbage can, which I show to the others. Kurt looks in and raises both eyebrows and gives a whistle. Emily and Vincent say nothing.
I walk over to Neil, who is still standing in the corner. “Neil?”
He turns around so fast I nearly stumble back. That’s when I notice his left nostril is bleeding. Just like Emily and Chloe.
“I . . . found your juice boxes.” I say it soft and easy, hoping to engender a sense of calm.
“Where are they?!” he screams. “Where are my fucking juice boxes?!”
So much for calm.
“They’re in here.” I nod toward the garbage can in my hands, which I hold out for him to see.
Neil looks in the garbage can, then up at me, then back down in the garbage can. “Who put those there?”
“I think you did.”
He looks into the garbage can one more time, then back up at me, his face turning red, his mouth opening in a scream.
“WHO?! DRANK?! MY?! FUCKING?! JUICE BOXES?!”
An explosion of spit flies from Neil’s lips, so I back away to avoid the barrage and step in something spilled on the floor. Ketchup or yogurt or a ham sandwich. Whatever it is, my foot slips on the tile and I lose my balance and start to fall—my arms flailing, both feet coming out from under me, the garbage can flying from my hands and the empty juice boxes tumbling out like dice. I hear Emily calling out and Neil shouting a string of profanities that turns into an unintelligible scream.
Then I hit the floor and my head snaps back and everything goes dark.
CHAPTER 37
It’s dark and quiet and I can’t see a thing. My eyes are blindfolded as Chloe leads me by the hand, telling me we’re almost there. When she finally stops and lets go of my hand, the blindfold comes off and everyone shouts:
“Surprise!”
Where I am is the meeting room at our EGOS office three months ago in August for my birthday party. The members of my team are all shaking my hand or giving me a hug or patting me on the back. Someone brought a cake, a store-bought monstrosity covered with white frosting and candles and HAPPY BIRTHDAY spelled out in blue letters. On the table next to the cake sit half a dozen gifts wrapped in paper and bows and ribbons. Helium-filled balloons in assorted colors float in the air. Everyone’s wearing party hats. On the overhead speakers, the Beatles are singing “Birthday.”
You say it’s your birthday. It’s my birthday, too, yeah.
Chloe gives me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. Kurt shakes my hand and grins and says something about being ready for another year. Neil raises a plastic cup of punch in my direction, avoiding any physical contact but offering a smile and a nod. Angela cuts up pieces of cake and puts them on plates as Vincent sucks helium out of a balloon and pretends to be a Munchkin from the Lollipop Guild. Emily stands next to him, laughing.
I look down and there’s a glass of punch in my hand, so I drink half of it. It’s just sugar and water and artificial flavoring and a little rum, but it tastes like a tropical drink on a beach in the Caribbean.
Then the glass of punch is empty and someone takes it from me for a refill and someone puts something else into my hands. When I look down I see it’s a small box about the size of a paperback book, wrapped in bright, festive birthday paper. When I look up, I see Chloe standing in front of me, wearing a smile as big as Texas and saying, “It’s from all of us,” and then asking me to open it. So I do. At least my hands do. It seems like they’re operating independently of my brain. And they’re taking a long time.
I’m suddenly aware that no one is talking and everyone is watching me, smiling and waiting in anticipation for my reaction. I don’t know what’s in the box, but I suddenly feel a pressure to love whatever it is.
When I finally get the paper removed, I’m holding a white box. I open it to find a smooth silver case with the words THE CATCHER IN THE RYE engraved on the front.
My favorite book is The Catcher in the Rye.
I take the silver case out and open it. Inside, the case is lined with blue velvet that surrounds a small Plexiglas bottle labeled HOLDEN CAULFIELD.
“We all chipped in and placed a special order,” says Chloe. “We knew how much you wanted it.”
I look up and see Chloe and Vincent and Emily, all of them watching me. Somehow I manage to say, “T
hank you.”
I look back down at the Plexiglas bottle in its cushion of blue velvet, then I close the case and run my fingers over the engraved title. Nobody’s ever given me a gift like this before. Not Nat. Not Delilah. Not my parents.
My throat is tight and I’m having trouble talking.
My face is an ear-to-ear smile to fight off the tears.
On the overhead speakers, the Beatles are singing “In My Life.”
Emily puts a plate with a piece of cake into my hands and asks me if I’m surprised. I manage to say “Yes” and “Thank you,” then I set the plate down and excuse myself to use the bathroom. As soon as the door shuts and locks behind me, I start to cry.
I don’t remember the last time I cried. My father always told me crying was a sign of weakness and that to show weakness was to show that you’d given up, that you were no longer in charge. No matter whether you feel pain or grief or joy or madness, the trick is to maintain the appearance of equanimity.
I’m nothing if not my father’s son.
I take a few deep breaths and splash some cold water on my face, then I look in the mirror, at the water dripping from my chin and glistening on my cheeks, and for a moment I get the impression that my face is melting and I no longer recognize who I am. Then the moment passes and I dry my face and head back out to join the party.
CHAPTER 38
It’s all become clear to me. Or at least as clear as it can, considering I’m still having moments and days when I’m not able to think straight. The mild concussion I received from hitting my head on the break room floor isn’t helping matters.
I’ve never had a concussion before so I don’t know how it’s supposed to feel, but my thoughts are getting mixed up, like they’re being copied and not collated. Other times I see something on television or read something in the paper or have a conversation and twenty minutes later, whatever I saw or read or heard plays back in my head as if I’m experiencing it for the first time.
