When You Read This
Page 16
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
carl@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 10:20 AM
subject:
re: Fwd: A “Hairball” Idea: Grooming Salon for Pets and Their Humans
* * *
Absolutely not. Don’t respond.
* * *
from:
carl@simonyi.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 10:25 AM
subject:
re: Fwd: A “Hairball” Idea: Grooming Salon for Pets and Their Humans
* * *
Now that I think about it, the fact that the futon didn’t break is sort of a miracle. But truthfully—can we really afford to be turning down work right now?
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 12:11 PM
subject:
Divorce
* * *
I take it back. I am going to press you on it. I’m too curious.
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 12:14 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
About?
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 12:17 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
What was your relationship with your ex-wife like?
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 12:21 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
Oh, boy.
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 12:33 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
No rush. I’m here all day. Just driving my mom around . . .
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 1:40 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
Scratch that: I’m bored and refreshing my email incessantly, so anytime now . . .
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 2:20 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
Maybe I should just see if my old therapist will send me her notes, and you can read those. She was always scribbling away. I’m sure they’re juicy.
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 2:24 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
You really don’t want to talk about it, huh?
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 2:29 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
Just don’t tell me what they say.
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 2:30 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
All right, all right. I’ll drop it.
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 2:34 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
I’m struggling with how to describe it. Maybe I’ll just tell you a story.
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 2:36 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
That works.
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 3:00 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
The day before Clementine left me, I came home to find her on the balcony clutching a shimmery silver envelope and screaming, “FLY, DAMMIT!” at the ground. Next to her foot was half a butterfly. Or rather, a whole butterfly, folded. It wasn’t moving. Inside the envelope, she showed me, were dozens more, also folded. “Hibernating,” she explained. The butterflies, according to the company she’d purchased them from, were supposed to awake upon being flung, and fly away.
She has a slight accent from growing up in East Texas, which gets stronger when she gets mad.
“FLY, FUCKER!” she was yelling in her twang, so full of rage at the poor insects that I suspected (correctly) it had something to do with me.
“Maybe they’re just hibernating better than they’re supposed to,” I said. I’d never heard of hibernating butterflies. I pulled out a third and mimicked her technique. It fell. I asked what they were for.
She told me she wanted to release them at a baby shower for her friend who was having her “rainbow babies,” a set of twins. I didn’t remember anything about such a person, or what rainbow babies meant. This astounded and irritated her.
“The IVF one?” she said. “She’s had a bunch of miscarriages, and so these twins are a godsend? We talked about rainbow babies for, like, half an hour the other night.”
I still didn’t remember. Weary of me, she reached into the pocket of her sweater, and I noticed a box of Marlboros peeking out of it. I had never seen her smoke. I didn’t know she did. She lit a cigarette and sat in one of the patio chairs her mother had given us for Christmas. I sat in the other, wondering if I was allowed to ask when she started smoking. But she beat me to the questioning.
“Why did you marry me?” she asked.
I told her because I loved her, obviously. I asked back: why did she marry me?
“You weren’t a dick. That’s rare here,” she said, referring to New York City. She said she found it attractive that I’d come from nothing, made myself successful. And that when she’d learned I’d lost my dad and was taking care of my mom, she saw me as a kind of hero.
“But?” I said, because it was clear one was coming.
“But you’re more stoic than heroic.”
It stung, and I told her so. Then I asked when she started smoking. She looked at me, disgusted, and said that she’d been smoking since I met her.
“You couldn’t smell it on my breath?” She seemed to suggest that me not knowing she was a smoker was a metaphor for much more. I wasn’t observant enough or something.
The next morning before work, I had an impulse to go to the window and check the ground. The folded-up butterflies were gone.
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 3:08 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* *
*
What do you make of this story you chose to tell?
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 3:12 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
I was fantastic at disappointing her, and she was fantastic at making me feel disappointing. And even fucking butterflies couldn’t get off the ground in our presence.
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 3:20 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
Did you really not know she was a smoker?
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 3:21 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
I really didn’t.
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 3:33 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
She must not have smoked that much then. Did you know Iris was a smoker?
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 3:35 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
By the time I hired Iris, she had quit. I never knew she smoked till I read her blog. How long, do you know?
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 5:10 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
The first time I saw Iris smoking, she was thirteen. We were living in Little Rock, and I found her squatting behind a dumpster in the parking lot, her arms wrapped around her bony little knees, puffing on a Camel. She frantically put it out and begged me not to tell our mom, but of course I wouldn’t have. It was two against one.
I told her smoking was stupid, but that’s all I said. I could have told her to give me the pack.
In my mind, I was already on my way out, counting down the months until I could start culinary school, move to one city and stay there, with my own room that wasn’t a hotel room. Iris, though, was a little kid when we became transient. The bulk of her childhood was spent on the move. It’s hard to have no friends and live on pizza and Chinese takeout and cold cuts on white bread that you eat on hard, scratchy sofas. Changing schools every few months, in a new town in a new state with people who have known each other for years and have their cliques and norms and inside jokes. Trying to break into that again and again, withstand the awkwardness, the discomfort—no wonder she started smoking. It gave her something to do with her hands, if nothing else. I certainly never got used to the conversation:
“What do you mean, you live in a hotel?”
“Have you heard of Winsome Beauty Brands? Our mom is a national director, and so we move around a lot.”
“But why do you live in a hotel?”
So I joined her behind stinky dumpsters along highways, and later, once Mom finally settled down in Virginia, behind the toolshed where she stored all of our stuff from childhood that she hadn’t thrown away—our drawings and certificates and diplomas all became stiff and blurred in the first winter’s snow. I didn’t smoke with her, but I sat.
One time I almost scolded her. I was twenty-four. She was twenty. We were at this club in Soho, talking to some guys, and I went to the bathroom. When I came back out, they were all gone. I figured she’d stepped outside for a cigarette. But it was February in New York, when “freezing” is an understatement. (These were the days before cell phones were ubiquitous, and though she had a flip phone, I didn’t.)
I passed by the bouncer and coat check where our coats were—Iris had the tag—letting him stamp my hand so I could get back in. Shivering in my dress, I scanned the sidewalk and spotted the front tips of her heels poking out from the other side of the building, a poof of smoke rising against the blue Manhattan skyline.
“Dammit, Iris, it’s freezing!” I yelled. I hurried over, preparing to tell her once and for all that her smoking had gotten out of hand because she had scared me, and it was fucking cold, but when I reached the corner she was crying.
I asked her what was wrong. She didn’t answer. I put my arm around her, holding my breath and trying not to lose my temper as she took drag after drag until all that was left was the butt.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I finally asked, relieved we could go back inside. She shook her head.
As we hobbled back—I could no longer feel my toes—she said “Thanks for not getting mad at me.” And I was glad that I hadn’t, after all. We both were so conditioned to brace ourselves for anger, stiffening up like abused cats. We tried to give each other understanding.
But if I hadn’t let it go, if I’d been a bossier big sister—would she have continued? Would she have gotten lung cancer?
I just made this about me. Sorry.
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 5:24 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
Are you kidding? I would much rather talk about you than me.
I don’t think you should blame yourself. One conversation, or even two, would not have changed things.
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 6:10 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
If you say so.
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 6:12 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
Let’s get back to the lighter stuff. If you lived on cold cuts, how on earth did you end up a chef?
* * *
from:
jademassey@yahoo.com
to:
smith@simonyi.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 6:22 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
I guess because I used to cook with my dad. But that wasn’t when I knew I wanted to be a chef.
* * *
from:
smith@simonyi.com
to:
jademassey@yahoo.com
date:
Thu, Sep 10 at 6:25 PM
subject:
re: Divorce
* * *
When did you know?