This Love Story Will Self-Destruct

by Leslie Cohen

  My father laughed, a hint of surprise still lingering on his face.

  “They’re very good,” Ben added. “Her articles. I, for one, never miss them.”

  My father gave me a look of admiration. I flinched and then darted my eyes away, like I’d been staring directly into the sun.

  “Tell them about the article you’re working on now,” Ben said.

  “It’s stupid,” I said, shaking my head.

  “No it’s not. It’s good.”

  “It’s about one of the original members of a band that was big back in the nineties. . . .” I stared at Ben as I talked. “He’s in this new band now that he formed with members of other bands that have broken up and . . . I talked to him about detaching songs from their emotional significance.”

  “Tell them the headline,” he said.

  I shot him a look. Nicole and my dad looked extremely curious. It all felt so stupid, that we were even talking about this, but it was too late now. “ ‘A Better Place,’ ” I said. “It’s cheesy.”

  “It’s great,” Ben said.

  I sighed and then replied, “Ben’s an engineer,” which incited a raucous response from everyone. “No music there!” my father exclaimed. The way he said it brought me right back to childhood, how he’d repeat a good line that he saw on television and thought was funny.

  At least Ben could always be counted on for a twenty-minute soliloquy on his work. He started talking about the sixteen acres of ground in Lower Manhattan that consumed his life. At first, when Ben mentioned the Freedom Tower, my father looked over at me, but I ignored him completely, kept my eyes on Ben as he talked. Don’t you dare, I thought. You are way too late.

  “It’s different than her world,” he said. “To say the least. We just unveiled the final design, but we have to address some security concerns raised by the police department,” he explained. “They want us to add an eighty-seven-foot concrete base to the design, which originally was supposed to be glass prisms. The architect is worried that the building will look too much like a concrete bunker. We’re trying to decide now whether the glass prisms without the concrete are even workable. Some testing has revealed that the prismatic glass shatters easily. We may have to add stainless steel panels and blast-resistant glass. So you see, Eve’s interested in how the world feels. I’m interested in how it works. Together, we might know everything.”

  I gave him a funny look. Okay, now he was going overboard with the talking.

  Nicole started telling us about herself. I listened but was only vaguely aware of what she was saying. She was a professor at a college in Brooklyn and had a studio in their apartment somewhere. What kind of professor and what form of art? I had no idea because I couldn’t bring myself to ask, couldn’t hold on to the details anyway. My mind took in all the information about her and then promptly spit it back out. Maybe it was some kind of self-protective measure.

  We moved to the dining room. In front of us on the table were clear noodles in a wooden bowl, a salad with chicken and mandarin oranges, a dish filled with soy sauce. I took a bit of everything but really couldn’t process much of what I was eating. It was vaguely Asian, and the whole thing seemed rather exotic for my father. The last time I saw him, he thought that grilled cheese dunked into ketchup was his own personal culinary invention.

  Nicole went back and forth from the kitchen, and we waited for her before we started eating. I remained friendly and upbeat throughout the two courses. I actually sounded genuine. There was no sign at all of the veritable shit storm occurring inside of me as I forked mouthfuls of greens and swallowed tender bites of noodles. I sat and ate and was vacantly compliant. Inside, I was straining to put that face forward, that passive persona. They talked about a recent trip to Tokyo. I couldn’t remember my parents ever leaving the country. And whenever we did go somewhere, my father was always pretty grumpy about it. He said once, after a bumpy flight, that he would never again get into a plane that he wasn’t flying himself. So if my father was interested in traveling and other cultures, it was this newish version of him steering the ship.

  He never mentioned what had occurred, and I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have known how to either. Every now and then, my eyes locked with his across the table for a few uncomfortable seconds. But that was it. I looked down at my plate and kept eating, each piece of lettuce individually, for fear of running out of tasks to occupy myself with. I must have chewed each piece a hundred times, until it was a tiny pulp. I chewed until the lettuce liquefied.

  It was an altogether tolerable lunch, until he mentioned Disney World.

  “We’re going to Orlando next,” he said, rolling his eyes at Nicole. “Her niece’s wedding. Anyway, it’s not exactly a trip to Disney World, but we’ll manage.”

  The forty dollars. The forty dollars that went missing, right after my father took off. My mind started spinning. How could he have taken it? How does someone do something like that? And it wasn’t just someone. It was my father. My chin looked like his. My hands looked like his. Was I capable of something like that? Did I have it in me, hidden somewhere deep inside? Would it come out someday?

  I had to talk to him. I had to understand. Otherwise, this whole trip would be pointless. But I couldn’t say anything at this table, with this perfectly pleasant woman and her noodles.

  “Can I interest anyone in some dessert?” Nicole chimed in. “Carrot cake and whipped cream?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. I kicked Ben under the table. He looked up and said, “What?”

  My father appeared insulted. Nicole stared off. It seemed to be not the answer they’d expected.

  “We should really get going,” I said. Ben seemed confused.

  “Okay!” Nicole said, although I could tell that she didn’t quite mean it.

  “Didn’t you . . . make the cake?” my dad said to Nicole.

  “It’s okay! No problem!” She perked up. “It’ll be breakfast tomorrow.” She curled her fingers around a napkin.

  I helped clear a few plates. Nicole began to stack the dishwasher. Lunch had ended and it was fine. Civil. But it wasn’t right. None of this was right. I looked at my dad, and said, almost involuntarily, “Can I talk to you?” I pointed to the hallway, which led to other rooms.

  “We’ll just be a few minutes!” he called to Ben and Nicole. I paused and then followed him.

  From the bedroom, I could see the open door to the bathroom, clothing hanging from the towel bar, a package of toilet paper on the floor. Something inside of me was about to snap. Every object brought me deeper into despair. I tried to focus on the space between things so as not to look at any one thing directly.

  “I’m not sure I’m capable of this level of acting,” I said, meeting his eyes. I could hear the wind blowing outside, rattling the bedroom window slightly. “It’s not in my repertoire.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you call? Didn’t you ever want to see me? There were so many times when it would have really helped. . . .” My voice cracked. “For you to want to see me.”

  “I’m sorry.” He looked at the ceiling. He seemed like he was biding his time. He went over to the desk and sat down in the chair next to it. “Believe me. I know. But I was in such a bad place, back then. It wouldn’t have helped you to have me around. It would have only hurt you. And then, once I was finally in a better place, it became so hard to go back. . . . And tell you what? That I was selfish but that I needed to be?”

  I stared at him, unsure of how to fill the silence that followed. I waited for him to go on. I shook my head. I felt a ringing in my temples. All my thoughts were fixed on a single principle: do not cry.

  “That doesn’t feel like enough of a reason,” I said. “Didn’t you care about us? Didn’t you worry about us when Mom died?”

  He paused. “Of course,” he said, and then started rubbing his face. He was no longer trying to control his expression. “But I didn’t know how to solve the problem of worryi
ng about you. I didn’t know how to connect with you again, after I did . . . what I did.” He sat there looking disappointed, like he’d screwed up whatever small idea he had about how this day would go. “It was easier to block it all out. But things in my life are better. I feel happy. I’m with Nicole now. She’s such a good, decent person. She doesn’t have a bad bone in her body. You’d really like her.”

  That was so not the point. I wanted to scream at him, “That is so not the point!” And then, I did.

  “The point is that you left us, and we still needed you! Do you have any idea how that feels? You were our father. We were supposed to mean something to you. It defies logic in EVERY way, for you to stop caring, and just leave like that. No explanation. No nothing. And way to take the forty dollars on your way out, Dad. Way to really seal the deal of us hating you forever. Did you think that we wouldn’t notice? Guess what? I notice everything now. EVERYTHING. You taught me that lesson, not to take my eyes off anyone, not to trust a soul, not even the people closest to me.”

  I realized, as I was saying it, that I was starting to lie. It wasn’t quite true, what I was saying. At least not anymore.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he replied. That was his big answer, the words I’d been waiting nearly fifteen years to hear. “Do you want to go to the wedding in Orlando with us? We can go to Disney World. . . .”

  I looked at him like he was insane, which, at this point, could not be ruled out. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a porcelain turtle on the dresser, climbing up a sculpture of a wooden tree. Emma, I thought, and her stupid turtle analogy. She was right. He was 0 percent human and 100 percent turtle. But I wasn’t like him. No matter what my chin or hands looked like. I would never have done what he did. I knew better. Way better. My mother had made sure of that. I could get angry at him. I could ask a ton of questions. None of that would help me.

  “Clearly,” I said, “we aren’t going to resolve this now, or maybe ever. I have to get out of here.”

  “Okay,” he said. And then, I saw a familiar look in his eyes. Suffering. I saw an image of myself, from years ago, in the dark reflection of a bank, an ATM vestibule in midtown. He is suffering. No matter what happened in the past, when I thought of what it really meant to suffer, I did not want that for another human being, especially not for my father, who, at one point in time, had done a lot for me. Acceptance was the only way out for me.

  “But . . . listen . . . maybe we’ll have lunch again sometime,” I said, as if this one had been a great success.

  He looked at me again, the suffering gone, replaced by a mixture of pleasure and surprise.

  “That’d be great,” he said. “Anytime.”

  * * *

  Once Ben and I were outside and walking, I was going fast. He was trailing behind me. The cars on Atlantic Avenue were whizzing by. Two homeless people were fighting over a shoe. Now that I was out of that apartment, I was feeling the full weight of what had happened there.

  “Where are we going now?” Ben said. “Home?” His voice sounded distant, as if it were coming from far away. I turned back to him.

  “Take me to the nearest place that’s peaceful,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, catching up. “But you’re going in the wrong direction.”

  He took me by the shoulders and pointed me the other way. I didn’t know where we were going, but I trusted him to know. We walked, for a few minutes, in total silence.

  “I thought it went well,” he said. The worst part was that he was being totally sincere.

  “Are you kidding?” I turned around.

  “No? I thought it went okay. Did it not?”

  “Oh, sure. It was okay. On the plus side, he wants to take us to Disney World!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “But I mean, nothing happened? Aren’t you relieved? I thought that went pretty well. It was all fine.”

  I told him what my father said to me. “He had zero answers. Do you know how fucked up that is? I can’t believe I actually thought that seeing him would be worth something. I actually fell for it.”

  “All right.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “I’m not going to tell you what you’re supposed to say. You’re supposed to just understand.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “Exactly. I just want to have an intellectual discussion about what has taken place.”

  “No, you don’t. You want to have an emotional discussion.”

  “Yeah, so that I don’t have to feel like such an alien in the world.”

  He looked at me with a smile, and I started to smile too, despite everything.

  He shook his head. “You are an alien,” he said. “Unfortunately, you’re my alien and I have to deal with you . . . at least until you go back to whatever planet you came from.”

  “I’m from here,” I said, stomping one foot against the ground.

  “So you say.” He put his arm around my shoulders and we kept walking.

  “That place made no sense,” Ben said, after a few blocks of quiet. “The layout just made no sense. Every room was open to the other room. There wasn’t a single room with privacy from the rest of the house. They had this big center room, which was fine, but then the rest of the house seemed like an afterthought. All the other rooms were odd shapes and sizes, and it was unclear what they were meant for. . . . Very odd.”

  “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

  “Yeah. What’s on your mind, Aristotle? You’re probably thinking about what snack you’re going to get next, so don’t get all high-and-mighty with me.”

  “No I’m not. And by the way, when someone kicks you under the table, you’re not supposed to say ‘What?’ You’re supposed to silently acknowledge it and then act based on what you think that person is trying to tell you.”

  “I had no idea why you were kicking me,” he said.

  “Because I wanted you to say no to dessert.”

  “And I was supposed to infer that from a kick?”

  “Yes!”

  “But you always want dessert.”

  I sighed. “Not in this situation.”

  He shrugged and said in a low voice, almost to himself, “A kick means no dessert. Who would have thought?”

  It took a while for me to adjust back into the outside world. I was waiting for something to wear off but it was still sitting with me. We reached Prospect Park, where we sat for a while under a tree, on the grass. I could see the windows of all the nice town houses around the park from where I was sitting. I pictured cozy scenes inside those town houses, imagined curtains and fireplaces and families cuddled under blankets. The people inside those houses could have been miserable, for all I knew, but somehow I was convinced that they weren’t. I had a certain perception of it, looking through the windows and the panes of glass alongside the doors. I felt like those bright family scenes inside were something I was watching from a dark room. What separated us? What was more real? Why did it have to feel like a vision of what I would never have? Why did I feel like Ben belonged there and I didn’t?

  I started watching this family in the park. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Honestly, the whole scene was ordinary. There was a man, a woman, a child, and a dog. They were having a picnic. It was the first day of winter that felt a little bit like spring. On top of a grassy mound, a blanket was spread out beneath the picture of a perfect young family—the parents both still attractive and slim, the dad with his hair tousled in the breeze, his jeans hanging just right, his T-shirt worn, soft, sexy. The mom had her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore shorts and a striped sweater. Her clothes were comfortable, but not unfashionable. The little boy was around a year old. He was just barely strong enough to stand on his own, and that seemed to be the momentary focus—he was learning how to walk, and the dad was holdin
g him up by his hands, as he attempted to take a few unstable steps. The mom was filming it all, smiling behind her phone. Their fluffy dog had, up until this point, been observing from a slight distance. Suddenly, the little white fluff ball came soaring into the scene, galloping as fast as its legs could take it. It went right for the child, knocking him down, deterring whatever progress had been made. Luckily, the dad was holding the kid up anyway. The child didn’t absorb the full impact of the collision. It was just enough to jostle him slightly, for his knees to buckle under, and for him to plop back down onto the grass. Basically, it was enough for comic effect, but not enough to cause any fear or damage. The dad leaned back in laughter, the mom smiled widely, happy she’d managed to capture the whole thing on video. One for the bloopers reel! I imagined one saying to the other later, at home, exhausted from their day of activities. They would theorize that the dog was just vying for attention, that he’d lost his place in the spotlight, since the baby was born. I didn’t understand it. I should have seen all this and thought: THIS is it. This is what a person sees and takes the plunge. This is what a person sees and thinks: I want this.

  But instead, I waited. I waited and thought, No, no, this can’t be right. It couldn’t be. It was too cute, too perfect. I didn’t believe. I kept watching, waiting, hoping. And then, sure enough, when some time had passed, the baby started to cry, the father took him in his arms and back onto the blanket. The dog started sniffing at other passing dogs. The mom walked a few feet away from all of them, lit up a cigarette, and started tapping on her phone. I imagined that she was composing a message to an ex-boyfriend, but that was probably overkill. The father tried to get her to come back over, back toward the blanket, but she shot him a nasty look. My eyes felt heavy. I started to fall asleep in Ben’s arms, thinking, This I understand. This, I believe.

  “There are too many families here,” I mumbled to Ben. “Take me back to the land of Lower East Side Jewels and Biker Bill. They make me feel like I have my shit together.”

  He started to untangle from me, brushed grass from his legs, then stopped moving.