Very Nice

by Marcy Dermansky

  What the fuck?

  Was I supposed to go to sleep?

  How was I supposed to go to sleep?

  I closed my eyes and I could see Jane’s hand on Winnie’s knee. I scanned my Facebook feed. I had three hundred–something friends; I didn’t even know who the fuck they were. I was almost never on Facebook.

  Somehow, all the posts were about guns.

  Not again.

  I am praying for Texas.

  26 people.

  Gun control. Blah blah blah. Something had happened. What else was new? So I went to The New York Times. There had, of course, been another mass shooting. The shooter had been another white man. Fuck white men. But I knew this already. I was a lesbian, for fuck’s sake.

  The news of the world would get you sick. I tried not to read it, except for the business section, which told me everything I needed to know, anyway.

  I didn’t click on the actual article. What the fuck did this shooting have to do with me? I drank more beer. Fucking guns. Fucking white men. I worked almost exclusively with fucking white men.

  Why had I chosen this work? I wanted the money. I loved money. I loved a stack of fresh bills. I loved buying white silk shirts from French designers. Three-hundred-dollar shirts. They gave me a thrill.

  Still.

  Fuck.

  I finished my beer. How many beers had it been?

  I was drunk and I was heartsick.

  She did not love me.

  Rachel

  My mother had acted strangely while Zahid was away, and now he was back and she was just as strange. For the first time that I could remember, she did not go grocery shopping. She did not wake up early to help me get ready for camp. I had opened the door to her bedroom the night before, convinced that I would find them. I found Princess and my mother on the bed together. My mother was sleeping. Princess wagged her tail. I put my finger to my lips and closed the door.

  Today I was up first. Made the coffee. I ground the last of the beans. Really, I wanted coffee waiting for me in the morning. I was angry at my mother for sleeping in. Gone were the days when my mother made me avocado toast. I wanted my avocado toast back. There were no avocados. We were out of bread. There was nothing for breakfast. I could not remember the last time this had happened.

  To me, this was a sign.

  Everything was wrong.

  I wanted my mother back.

  I heard a door creak open upstairs. Princess came running down the steps and my mother followed behind her. She was wearing her pajamas, a soft pink V-neck T-shirt and matching short cotton shorts. She looked good. Slim. Fit. I did not want Zahid to see my mother like this. He had been at our house for more than a month. It was time for him to leave. Either I would sleep with him again or he would have to go. Enough was enough. I took a large sip of coffee. The coffee was much too hot, burned going down. I dropped the mug, the red ceramic cup shattering, coffee all over the clean floor.

  My mother stared at the mess, confused. She did not make a move to clean it up.

  “I love that cup,” she said.

  Somehow this made me mad. I had not meant to break the cup. I liked it, too. That was why I had chosen it for my coffee.

  She did not ask if I was okay, if I had burned myself.

  “Do we have paper towels?” I asked her.

  The paper towels were on the paper towel rack under the cupboards over the sink, where they always were, but I wanted my mother to clean up the mess. She didn’t move. I found the dustbin under the sink. I grabbed the paper towels and I cleaned up the coffee and the broken cup, and then, because my mother still had not moved in any way to help me, I poured myself another cup and one for my mother, too.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” she said.

  My mother sat at the table. She took a sip of her coffee. I had given her the other red mug. At one point there had been six of them, all of them handmade, sold at a local store, but now we were down to one. “I didn’t know you knew how to make coffee this good,” she said. “What else don’t I know?”

  “I am nineteen years old, Mom,” I said. “I can do a lot of things.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I can’t remember the time when you were a baby.”

  I looked at her. This was strange, too. Why was she talking about this?

  “Sometimes, I look at babies,” my mother said. “And I think, Did I do that? Did I change your diapers? Did I wake up in the middle of the night and feed you? I can’t remember so much of that time.”

  “You don’t remember? My being a baby? Really?”

  “A lot of that time is lost,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  I felt hurt. I was her only child. Her only baby.

  “I know,” my mother said.

  “Do you have early Alzheimer’s?” I asked. “Is that it? Why don’t you remember?”

  “That is a horrible thing to say.”

  “Well, it’s sort of horrible you forgot my infancy,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.” My mother looked at her red coffee mug. She did not look at all sorry. “I didn’t know that would upset you. I was just thinking out loud.”

  “I saw Dad,” I said.

  “Jonathan?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Jonathan. That is my father’s name. The man you are still officially married to. Did you forget him, too?”

  My mother shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I don’t like to think about that son of a bitch,” she said.

  I stared at my mother. My mother didn’t curse.

  “Well, you are old enough to make coffee. I can talk to you like a grown-up, can’t I?”

  Maybe, I realized, I would prefer if she didn’t.

  “I thought you weren’t upset,” I said. “Remember?”

  That had been the party line. I remembered the weekend my mother drove up to see me, to tell me about Posey. My father was in Paris. We went for a long walk on campus. She looked at the people with dogs, her longing unmistakable.

  “Am I upset that Jonathan left me for a younger woman? For a pilot named Mandy?” my mother said. “I’m not. Upset. What kind of name is Mandy anyway?”

  “Okay,” I said. “You sound upset.”

  “I’m not,” my mother said. “I just don’t much like to talk about him. Not on a beautiful day, with so much nice light coming into the room. Your father is not someone I want to think about.”

  “He misses you,” I said. “A lot.”

  “What?” my mother asked. “He said that?”

  “Not in those exact words, but I can tell.”

  “No,” my mother said. “He doesn’t.”

  I looked at my mother.

  “He misses having a wife,” she said. “He misses having a nice home. He didn’t think about any of that when he left me. He didn’t give it a second thought. He was just following his dick. I would say just like a dog, but he isn’t as good as a dog. Right, Posey?”

  Princess wagged her tail.

  “Mom,” I said. I didn’t like her like this.

  “Rachel,” my mother said. “You’re right. Why am I saying all of this to you?”

  “I don’t know. I wish you wouldn’t.”

  I still felt hurt that she had forgotten my childhood.

  “Can I make you breakfast?” my mother said.

  I shook my head. There was no time. There was nothing in the house for breakfast anyway. I was going to buy a muffin at the café on the way to day camp. I would get a sandwich, too, for lunch. We were out of turkey and lettuce and bread and even mayonnaise. Everything. My mother was in outer space. I felt unsure about leaving the house. About leaving her.

  “I have to go, Mom,” I said. “I have work.”

  “Okay, good,” my mother said. “Have a good day.”

  “Ok
ay,” I said, but my feelings had been hurt, again. Had she just said good, as in, Good, you are leaving? That was what it felt like.

  I was on my way out when I passed Zahid on the stairs, wearing a pair of my father’s striped pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt, sleep still in his eyes. I stopped in place, unnerved. It was not that I did not know that he was still here, in the house, but somehow, I never saw him in the morning. I could still remember what he looked like naked. Button by button, I had taken off his soft blue shirt.

  “Good morning, Rachel,” he said, and I felt my skin turn red.

  “Rachel made coffee,” my mother called from the kitchen, as if we were some kind of happy family.

  I grabbed my backpack by the front door. I realized, as if for the first time, that I was leaving them alone, alone in their pajamas. I understood why my father was so upset.

  “Where are you going, Rachel?” Zahid said. “It’s so early.”

  “Day camp,” I said. “One of us has a job.”

  It was a weird thing to say. It was as if my mother’s anger had infected me. Was I angry, too?

  I was.

  I was angry at Zahid. He was living in my house, eating the food my mother shopped and paid for. Who did he think he was? Was it somehow okay to fuck a student and then pretend it hadn’t happened? Was it okay to live in her house and flirt with her mother? It was not okay. It was definitely not okay. But nothing had actually happened. My father was just being paranoid.

  “I was offered a job,” Zahid said.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said.

  That was something. He needed a job. He could not keep living here for free, swimming in our swimming pool, drinking my parents’ wine, taking advantage of my mother’s kindness.

  “Zahid,” my mother called out. “You didn’t tell me that. You got the job?”

  Now we were both staring at him, still on the stairs. My mother had wandered in from the kitchen, holding her coffee, wearing her shortie pajamas.

  “I just got the offer,” he said. “There was a message on my phone. The call I didn’t answer last night.”

  This, of course, implied that my mother had been with him when he had not answered the phone. What was going on? This was getting beyond ridiculous.

  “I haven’t responded,” Zahid said.

  “What job?” I asked him.

  “Teaching,” he said. “The University of Iowa.”

  “Iowa Iowa?” I said.

  “Yes, that Iowa.”

  “That program is famous.”

  “I suppose it is,” Zahid said.

  “So that is amazing?” I said.

  “I suppose it is,” he repeated.

  “No,” I said. “It’s amazing. Congratulations.”

  And then, because I had a reason, finally, a real reason to touch him, I hugged him, my writing professor, Zahid Azzam, who was living in my house. I wrapped my arms around him, my breasts pressing against his chest. He smelled good. I remembered his smell. He stood still like a statue. My mother was right there, in the hall, her mouth open.

  Clearly, I was not supposed to hug him.

  I was not supposed to touch him.

  They were both appalled.

  It was horrible.

  “Day camp,” my mother said. “Rachel. You are going to be late for work. You are going to have to hurry.”

  I stepped away from Zahid.

  The look on his face was nothing less than fear.

  Three

  Jonathan

  I went to the house the next day. I had told Becca I would. I did not go to work. I wanted to see her.

  Becca was not home.

  I let myself in. There was a poodle, a dog I did not know, the one from the beach. I was afraid she might bite me, but I got down on my knees and let her come to me. “Here, girl,” I said, and I petted her. This dog had apricot-colored fur. Posey had been white. Otherwise, they looked eerily alike. I found a biscuit in the kitchen, where Becca kept the dog biscuits, and I made a new friend. She was a beautiful dog. I blinked.

  I had worried about Becca, alone in this house without a dog. She had gotten a new dog. She had found herself a lover. The pool was open, the water was turquoise blue, the filter was running. It looked good. It looked perfect. I was tempted to take a swim. She had hired someone. I was replaceable. I had not realized it until then. Just like that. Only this writer, this asshole she had shacked up with, he was not a keeper. I would see to that.

  I walked through the hall, touching the walls, the books, the art on the walls. This was my house, too. I walked up the stairs, listening for the front door, wondering how long before Becca came home. In my office, I found a comforter folded neatly on the end of the couch. A pillow in a white pillowcase. This man was sleeping here. Some of my clothes were still in the drawers. She had moved them out of the bedroom, but at least she had not thrown them away. There were also his clothes. Khaki shorts. Linen shirts hanging in the closet.

  I waited for an hour or so. I was bored. She would have to come home. I found a purple J.Crew bathing suit in the drawer and I took a swim in the pool. I did not recognize this bathing suit. It looked like something Becca would buy me. I grew hungry. I opened the refrigerator to make a sandwich. There was no food. I looked at the clock. I did not want to be home when my daughter came home from her job at the day camp.

  I sat at the kitchen table. I drank a glass of filtered water.

  Where was she?

  Eventually, I left.

  I went back to Tribeca.

  The small apartment had become even smaller.

  * * *

  —

  For the second time that day, I waited.

  Mandy came back from a flight, late, nine o’clock. We had not had sex in several weeks. I was reluctant to touch her. Of course, Mandy had noticed this. We had spent our first night together in a hotel, fucking our brains out. Sex was the basis for our relationship.

  “Sex,” Mandy had once joked, “and our passion for Hillary Clinton.”

  She did not like that I had stopped touching her and yet I felt reluctant to have that conversation. The reason why. It would be, I knew, the end of everything. I had been putting it off for as long as I could.

  Mandy wheeled her travel bag into the bedroom and then came over to me on the couch. She kissed my neck. That should have been enough. That should have been enough to send shivers down my spine. I could have turned to her, begun to unbutton her black silk blouse and pull down her trousers. We had certainly made love on her tiny sofa before.

  “Mandy,” I said.

  I patted the spot next to me on the couch. Mandy was pretty and trim. She had the haircut of a little girl. I loved her hair. I still felt affection for Mandy, of course. I wondered how I could appease her without sexual contact. There was a dystopian series on TV she wanted to watch. Up till now, I had been reluctant to watch it with her. But I had recently learned how easy it was to go out and see a movie that you did not want to see. You simply paid an exorbitant amount for the tickets and you went. It meant something to the person you were seeing it with. It was a way to spend time with a person you loved without having to talk.

  “You want to watch that show?” I said. “The feminist one?”

  “The Handmaid’s Tale?” Mandy said. “You told me you wanted to watch that like a hole in the head.”

  She was sweet, Mandy. There was some depth to her, too. She flew an airplane. She was a female pilot, the only pilot I had ever had the privilege of knowing, and I knew her in the biblical sense. Her job, certainly, had been a turn-on for me. As I’d told Becca, I would have never left her for a mere stewardess. I always thought about the guy who landed his plane on the Hudson River. I had asked Mandy if she could do that and she’d said she didn’t think so. Most of the flying now, she’d explained, was preprogramme
d. I had found her answer disappointing. I was sorry that I would have to end things, but if we were to work it out, I would have to reinsert my penis into her vagina. I was not willing to do that.

  “Let’s go out,” Mandy said. “I’m hungry.”

  The idea of this did not appeal to me.

  “Order in?” I said.

  I was getting the hang of living in the city. I had my favorite places. I was not against eating a bite or two of sushi. Most of the restaurants, however, that Mandy liked were too loud. The music, the people talking. I often had to ask her to repeat herself. The restaurants made me feel like an old man.

  “Let’s go out,” she said again.

  I put on a pair of shoes.

  We went to the hamburger place in the lobby of our building. I bought Mandy a twenty-eight-dollar cheeseburger and shoestring fries and a twenty-six-dollar martini. It was more than a little bit silly in Manhattan these days. I was wealthy, of course, but I still cared about the prices of things. I raised my eyebrows at her. It was not just the prices.

  “Cheeseburger, huh?” I said. “Since when did you start eating meat?”

  I had lived with Mandy for three months. She was a vegan, which sometimes made life boring. Unlike my daughter, who told the occasional arbitrary lie, I knew this to be true. She would cheat from time to time, like when we were in Paris, but nothing like this.

  “Somehow, I feel like tonight I need the protein.”

  I nodded. We were going to have that conversation. Right now.

  “What’s going on?” she asked me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I kissed your neck, Jonathan,” she said. “Your sweet spot. And nothing. Not nothing. You cringe when I touch you.”

  “You gave me herpes,” I said.

  “Oh, shit,” Mandy said. “Shit.”