The Me That I Became

by Christopher Harlan

  I give Carla and Peter a hug and make my way to the woman of the hour. These dinners are my parent’s idea, but they’re really my mom’s thing. Dad loves seeing us, but he’s not as formal as all this. The place settings, the invitations and reminders via email —it all screams of mom. It all screams of formality and appearances. “Mom,” I say, reaching out my arms. “Everything looks great, as always.” I hate how fake I am right now. “The house smells amazing. A roast?”

  “Yes,” she answers, pulling away from my hug and looking me up and down. “Good nose.”

  Her look is the antidote to Dad’s compliments. He builds, she destroys. That’s how I grew up. I can see what’s leftover of Nana in Dad when he’s kind to me. Whatever else his shortcomings may be, he’ll always be her son. He’s a prince to the only real queen I’ve ever known. That will always count for something. “No Joel tonight?”

  And there it is, the question that I’ve been dreading. That must be a new record. Everyone in the room hears her question, and I can practically feel Carla’s eyes drilling into me. The band-aid is getting pulled off. The last thing I need is to drag the torture out. “Actually, mom, we broke up.”

  “When?” she asks. Her lack of reaction freaks me out, and it makes me think that Carla sold me out and told her before I got here.

  “A week ago or so, I’m not even sure.”

  I wait for her next words, and in the interim silence I play a little game in my head that I made up when I was a kid. It’s called guess what mom’s going to say? There are no real prizes, and I lose all the time. If she were easy to read the game wouldn’t be fun. Tonight, my guess is fake sympathy and another dead hug. Let’s see.

  “Oh,” she says, like she just walked in on someone masturbating. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, lying through my teeth. “I was going to. I knew we’d talk tonight, you just beat me to it by asking about him.”

  “Of course I was going to ask about him, Talia, the man’s been a guest in my home every month for a year. Didn’t you think his absence would raise a few questions?” A few things about this line of questioning. If I were one of the perps in a cop drama, this would be the moment where the friendly interrogation turned into something more sinister—when the cop revealed his true intentions towards the guy sitting under the hot lamp who he was just acting friendly towards. This would be the part where I ask for my attorney and shut the whole thing down.

  “I know he’s been a guest in your home, mom. I brought him, after all. I was just trying to explain that I wasn’t hiding it from you, is all.” I’m lying, and she knows I’m lying. My mom is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them.

  “Right,” she says, turning around and going right back to her place settings. I don’t know which is worse—the thinly veiled judgement that I was expecting, or the indifference that I wasn’t.

  My dad plays his part and follows my mom into the kitchen, and all I want to do is leave. Carla walks to me and puts her hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t tell her, I swear.” I believe her.

  “I know. Are you going to offer me one of those?” I motion to her now half full wine glass. Carla reaches around my shoulder and walks me a few feet, away from prying ears. Peter joins dad in the kitchen with the ice queen while I anticipate what my sister is going to ask me.

  “Are you on anything?” she asks.

  “Why? You holding?” I laugh a little too hard. There’s this internal dialogue I have when I know I’m going to lie—my therapist calls this rationalization. It’s when I wrap all of my bullshit up behind a wall of privacy and convince myself that stretching the truth or leaving out key details is okay because, well, it’s no one’s business. That’s what I’m about to do right now. “No,” I say, looking her right in the eye. “I’m not on any meds right now. The last one I took was two days ago.” And by days, Carla, I mean minutes.

  “Alright, then, let’s get you straight.” She pours me a glass of the red she’s drinking, and I take a gulp like I just crossed the finish line to a marathon. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but what I do know is that it’ll help me get through this dinner.

  Mom, Dad, and Peter (he’s such a good son-in-law) bring out dinner, one serving platter at a time. Mom loves Peter. He’s everything that Joel wasn’t — stable, successful, really good looking. He’s the perfect match for their chosen daughter. He also has the same name as my Dad. Maybe that’s it. And despite the fact that Carla’s Peter is several inches taller, and generally a larger man than my father, somewhere along the line everyone got into the ironic habit of calling dad ‘Big Peter’ and calling my brother in law ‘Little Peter’ whenever the two of them are in a room together. I think the whole thing is dumb cause it makes no sense. It would have been more logical to say, ‘older Peter’ and ‘younger Peter’, but I guess that would have hurt Dad’s ego. Just because I’m me, I’ll sometimes call my brother in law ‘Big Little Peter’ just to mess with everyone. It thrills mom to no end.

  The only issue mom ever had with him was when he and my sister got married four years ago. It’s too fast and you’re too young, mom told Carla, even though she was younger when she married my dad and they had been dating less than a year also. That’s my mother for you, the woman never met a double standard she didn’t like. I take another gulp of wine, not stopping to care what anyone thinks.

  Two hours pass by quickly, especially when you’re as drunk as I am. By my third glass of wine I’m fucked up—the alcohol is mixing with my meds and making me feel completely out of it. Carla notices—she’s leaned over twice during dinner to ask if I’m okay, and each time I shrugged her concerns off. But I’m not okay at all. After dinner we all have the cake I brought over, and I stay at the table while everyone helps clear and reset everything. I’m afraid if I get up right now I’ll fall over. Mom would love that—it would give her material for years.

  “You sure you’re okay? I can drive you home. You’ve been hitting the wine a little hard. Mom and dad don’t realize but I do.”

  “I’m fine, Carla.” I’m not fine, Carla, not even a little bit. Please don’t listen to me.

  Mom puts the dessert I brought over out and slices a small piece for everyone. Things haven’t been that bad. Maybe Carla didn’t tell them any details about Joel, but I suspect she told them to lay off of me. She’s always been a buffer for me—running interference between me and our parents. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she said something to them about my relapse. I’m fine with it. Even so, I’m drunk as shit, and when I’m drunk I tend to blurt things out that I wish I hadn’t.

  “So, mom and dad, remember when I told you about Joel before?” They just look at me. I know I’m yelling a little. They don’t answer, which means they know I’m drunk and they’re just tolerating me. “Well I met someone else. Someone better. His name is Brandon and he’s like electricity.”

  “He’s like what?” my dad asks. I realize how that sounded as soon as it was out of my mouth. I decide to run that one back.

  “Forget that last part, I’m sorry. But the rest is right. I met Brandon. I’m in his reading group at the bookstore.”

  I can see everyone looking at me like I’m nuts. I don’t like the way it feels at all, but I took it here. Dad jumps in to be supportive and make this a little less weird. “Well that’s. . . great, baby. I’m glad you met someone, and about the reading group. What’s his name again?”

  “Brandon,” Carla says, saving me the trouble of speaking any more than I have to.

  “You knew about him?” my mom asks. No matter how much I try I can’t stay out of her verbal traps. Carla just jumps on the grenade.

  “Yeah, mom, I know about him. From what Lia tells me he’s a great guy.”

  Mom listens to Carla. She respects her. I could have brought a newspaper clipping of Brandon saving kindergarten students from a burning building, and it would have held less weight than Carla’s word. Mom smiles and nods. “Next Sunday,” she says abru
ptly. “Bring him over for dinner. Your father and I would love to meet him.”

  I want to protest. I want to say, ‘hell no’, I want to. . . “Sure, no problem, I’m sure he’d love that.”

  “Great.”

  I lean into Carla and tap out. “Okay. I need you to drive me home. We need to talk on the way.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I’ve grown to hate the sight of tissues.

  Conditioning, right? Associating a stimulus with a response. That drink you can’t stand the scent of because it reminds you of your tragic, vomit filled twenty-first birthday; the food that you still can’t get down because your mom practically force fed it to you every night for dinner. We all have a trigger. For me it’s tissues. They’re benign to most people, but to me they’re anything but.

  I remember the first time I placed an order for a whole case, when the individual boxes started running up my monthly CVS bill way higher than it should have been. What did depressed people do before Amazon? One-click later twenty-four boxes were on their way to my house. I’m so fucked up that I was happy to see that cartoonishly large box waiting on my porch when I got home from work that day. Imagine that—a depressed person—someone who struggles to feel happy, feeling happy at the sight of thousands of little white cloths meant to soak up your illogical tears and snot.

  Now I can’t stand the sight of them, bunched up all over my place like aloe coated animal droppings. Every trashcan in my house is full of silly amounts of them—crumpled up, barely wet, a symbol of my weakness. But my bedroom is the worst of it. That’s where the magic happens. The demons always shout a little louder in there, and always at night. It’s where I cry myself to sleep, and where I cry when I wake up. In between? Nightmares, usually, but sometimes I’m lucky and wake up with no memory.

  This morning is different. The tissues are all over the place because my sister drove me home last night and all of my towels were apparently dirty, so tissues were my wiping up tool of choice after I was done vomiting all the wine I gulped last night. I don’t know what I was thinking. Carla was nice enough to drive me home and Peter followed us in my car. Even though I can be a pessimist about my issues, I’m really lucky to have Carla and Peter.

  I hear my doorbell ring and I sit up in bed. My head is pounding, and I still feel a little nauseous, but I force myself out of bed and put on a pair of pants. I have no idea who could be here right now. Maybe it’s Carla, bringing me coffee. I vaguely remember her saying she had something to do in the area today. God, I hope that’s it, I could really use the caff. . . oh my God, it’s Brandon!

  What the hell is he doing here? Jesus, he even looks good through a peephole, but I look like a hot mess. He knocks again. “Hold on!” I yell. I try to calculate how long it would take me to get dressed, throw on some make up and answer, but before my mental calculations are done he yells also.

  “I’m know I’m dropping in. You can open the door, you always look beautiful.” I smile even though my head is pounding, and he’s completely taken me off guard. If anyone else said those words to me I’d think, yeah, right, I’ll be right back after I put myself together, but I believe Brandon when he says I’m beautiful, and I surprise myself by doing what he said and just opening the door. “See?” he says, “I was right. Always beautiful, even when you don’t think you are.”

  “You’re a sweet liar,” I say, refusing to just accept a compliment at total face value. “But thanks. What are you doing here?”

  “I know, this is rude as hell, but you never answered my texts last night and I thought something might be wrong.”

  Oh shit. I put up my finger and tell him to hold on a minute. I run to my room and scoop my phone off the bed, where it’s sitting in the mess of my sheets. I open it and see that I missed four texts and a call from him. Fuck. I was passed out, drunk. I run back, phone in hand, and start apologizing. “I’m sorry, Brandon. I wasn’t ignoring you. I was. . .”

  “Fucked up?

  “Is it that obvious?” I ask.

  “Well you smell like you’re a bottle of 80-proof vodka and even though I think you’re beautiful, an unkind stranger might think you look like. . .”

  “Shit?”

  “That’s not coming from me. That unkind stranger, though.”

  “Right. He can be such a prick. Is that coffee?” I hadn’t noticed when I first answered the door, but now I see that he’s holding a tray with two large coffee cups from Starbucks in them, and once I hone in on it I can’t look anywhere else.

  “It is, indeed. Do you like coffee?” He’s smiling sarcastically. He knows I’m a coffee fiend, and he has this evil grin on his face like he’s trying to tempt me. I nod. “If you invite me in I might let you have this other one. . . If you want.” I reach out and grab him by this shirt, playfully, and pull him over the threshold of my door.

  “I got it black, because I didn’t know how you liked it.”

  “That’s funny, you seemed to know exactly the other night.” Now it’s my turn to have the evil smile, but it doesn’t last because my head hurts so much that I can’t sustain the muscles in my face doing anything except relaxing and drooping. Brandon catches it and takes pity on me.

  “Cream and sugar?” he asks. I nod. He grabs all the stuff and makes my coffee and carries it over to me on the couch, where I’m sitting with my fingers resting against my temple, wishing I was capable of making better decisions in my life. “Here. If it’s cold let me know I can heat it in the microwave.”

  “It’s fine,” I say, taking a sip. It is cold, but he’s being a prince right now, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful. Plus, the taste of coffee is so amazing that temperature isn’t even a consideration. He could have taken the cup out of the freezer and I’d gladly lick my coffee ice pop to extract the caffeine.

  “So, you want to talk about it?”

  “What’s that? You dropping by unannounced? I’m fine with it.”

  “Nope, not what I meant.” He looks at me seriously, so I decide to just tell him what’s going on so he doesn’t think I’m an alcoholic.

  I take two gulps of coffee, one after the other, and then I tell him about my family, and what happened last night. He listens, as he always does, never interrupting, and giving me the kind of intense focus that lets me know that what I’m saying is the most important thing in his world while I’m speaking. “They sound. . . challenging.”

  “You’re too nice.”

  “I’m not, actually, I just don’t want to insult your parents. I have issues with my family, too, like everyone does, so I’m just listening.”

  “It’s okay, you’ll never hear me defending or protecting them. Except my sister Carla, I’d fight you if you insulted her.”

  “Then I never will.”

  “Carla’s great. So is her husband, you guys would get along.”

  “I’m sure we would. He sounds cool from what you described of him.”

  “Well you don’t have to take my word for it, you’ll find out when you meet him on Sunday.”

  Band-aid pulled! I look at him, waiting for him to make an expression or say something before I do. “Huh?”

  “Oh, I forgot that part. My wonderful mom insisted that you come to dinner on Sunday and I accepted on your behalf. Granted, I was drunk, but I think it’s still valid. I hope you don’t have any plans.”

  “I do now. Dinner with your family.” I wasn’t expecting him to be so easy about it, especially after what I just told him about the dynamic between me and my parents, but he seems almost excited. “Just one question, though. How’d they even know about me?”

  “I told them. Right after I told them I’d broken up with my ex.”

  “Oh,” he says. “How’d that one go over?”

  “It’s hard to tell with my mom. Dad was dad, Carla’s excited to meet you, but she’s actually a normal human being. It’s only my mom you have to worry about.”

  “I’m not worried, don’t worry. I don’t get rattled easily.” There
’s his quiet confidence again. It’s so sexy. But sometimes I find it unbelievable, like, how could he be so secure in himself?

  “That’s great. I wasn’t expecting you to be so amenable. My mom can make a simple dinner feel like an interview for a government job.”

  “It’s okay, I do well on interviews. I always knock it out of the park. I make good impressions.”

  His confidence puts me at ease about the whole thing, at least for the time being. I know on Sunday I’m going to be a nervous wreck, but I can’t cope with it the way I did last night. Getting hammered at a family dinner not only in front of my parents, but also in front of a guy I’m seeing would be the worst look ever. I have to keep my issues under control. Easier said than done.

  I finish my coffee, savoring the very last drop at the bottom of the cup—the one that has all the leftover sugar and coffee grinds in it, and swallow hard. I start to feel better now that my energy is up. The edge is coming off my pounding headache, and the pain devolves into just a regular headache. I hold onto my stomach. It feels like a giant bowl of acid. Brandon picks up on it.

  “We already established that I’m not the best cook in the world, and I don’t want to piss off your already disgruntled fire department guys any more, so how about I take you out to the diner for lunch?”

  It’s the best invitation ever. It’s just what I need.

  There’s a diner a few blocks away from my place that I mentioned to him last time he was here, and I also told him how in love with their pancakes I am. We get a booth even though it’s just the two of us and sit down. I put my head on the table. I feel like it’s about to explode. “Here,” he says, reaching into his pocket.

  I lift my head up just enough to see the two Tylenol in his outstretched palm. “Is there anything you can’t do?” I ask.

  “A few things, here and there, but I always come prepared.”