I Will Do Better, page 11
She winked, played up the curative powers of her soup. “Only one part of my domestic capabilities.”
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK, whatever else was going on, I made damn sure to be home, at my desk, smack in front of my laptop, for when that pair of dings sounded—first the high note, then the second one, sliding in lower, and then that familiar, oblong rectangle, expanding through the center of my screen.
Coming into pixelated focus from the desktop camera on Grandma’s terminal, the shot zoomed down, capturing hair that was beyond combed, beyond neat: I could actually see a part down the middle, Lily’s scalp visibly carved out like a river on a relief map. A thick braid on each side, clamped by colored ribbon, led into ponytails. Last night there had been a bun, held together with rubber bands and animal berets. How was Peg able to get her to sit still?”
“My girl, my girl,” I sang, the opening lyric from the closing song of Nirvana’s legendary acoustic set, one of the last shows Kurt Cobain had played. Continuing to entertain myself, I added my own lyrics, shoehorning them to fit inside the line: “Lilisita Mon Amita.”
Her forehead, a field of pale white skin, took up a good third of the screen. She glanced up from her comic book, caught sight of me, flashed a grin, sort of. She shook out a hello wave, then went back to examining the colorful images.
“Hey there, Daddy,” said the middle of Peg’s torso, visible from behind Lily’s chair.
The screen froze, parts of its image glitching: the straps of Lily’s new dress, their little white circle patterned on red fabric. Yesterday her dress had been light blue with yellow gingham.
“Can you still hear us? Is this working? Daddy misses you. Do you miss Daddy?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What did you do today?” I asked.
“Hello?” I followed up.
Swimming class at the Y; a visit to the Memphis children’s museum, where FedEx had donated a plane for kids to run around inside. Lily’s sentences were relaxed; they flowed, wound, swirled, showing her developing personality, a mind capable of imagination, making connections, working through an idea: “We are going tah visit Miss Martha tomorrow. She’s doing ah singing concert. I lahkes singing, but am a dancer; I dance like Liesl. You’re not supposed to run around in the rain but in Sound of Music, Leisl dances around in the rain. Liesl is seventeen.”
“Hold up. Am I hearing a drawl?”
Lily’s eyes darted, mischievous and caught.
“You’re developing a drawl?”
She giggled, then disappeared below the table.
When we reached this point, any question received the same answer. I plunged ahead anyway: “What are you guys having for dinner?”
“Good” came from beneath the empty chair.
TEN THIRTY AT night, whatever, whenever in the morning; either way, I was taking up as much space in bed as I wanted, my notepads spread out within arm’s reach, my glasses—where the fuck were they? okay—atop a near pillow, me not even worrying that a temple would end up chewed, mangled, the temple separated from the frame and thrown to the floor, yet another pair of glasses destroyed. I was free to watch any stupid, vulgar thing on my laptop. Was I eating a Reese’s Big Cup? Who can say?
All of a sudden deciding and heading out in the dead of night, aimless, wandering, sipping Coke straight from the can and feeling the summer breeze in my face and the humidity on the back of my neck, having the street life all around me, people buzzing, laughing, talking shit, everywhere flirting and strutting, bar-hopping techie hipsters, would-be punks hunting the latest three-star restaurants, stock market bros on the prowl for real estate, social media influencers taking sidewalk selfies, entitled New York University transplants holding court about how this city should work, and me, in the middle of it, at least partially, sort of, but also half-awash in memories: Diana and I coming down here, getting Belgian frites or eating at the communal table of that vegetarian kitchen. Oftentimes we used to remark about some beautiful couple, how it was their turn to have these streets, and how that was okay. It had been okay, too, then. But now, as I walked through the East Village, I’d be fully aware, in my reflection, in storefront windows: my receding hair, my sunken eyes, my aged bones. I was obviously so much older, generations older, foreign; indeed, for what felt like the first time, this new iteration of inhabitant felt distant to me. I’d wonder how various youngies I passed would fare if they took my class, what sort of grades they’d earn. I’d find myself drawn instead to the mother out so late with that stroller, that smart, not-young woman walking hand in hand with her aged father, the mom losing her shit at her child, himself having a tantrum in the street. I’d want to say something, maybe pound my heart at them, flash a peace sign, because this was it, this was how the river flowed.
Then also able to just sit at my desk, strap in, and see what kind of chaos emerged. Able to listen to the Mets on my old transistor radio with the broken antenna.
Any mother of small children who writes learns guerrilla warfare; they have to. Dads, no: Philip Roth wasn’t about to lose a minute at the desk taking care of Little Bubbie. But it’s not like Mom’s creative life shuts down once the little wonder wakes from a nap, gets home from day care, starts demanding snacks, spreading their toys, dominating all attention through all spaces. Mommy writers have long compensated, sharing their cheat codes: how they recognize opportunities, grab scraps of time. I did not read mommy blogs because of some stupid principle (I know, I know), meaning this was one more area where I’d had to learn the hard way, what amounted to a series of DIY tactics. I’d be lying if I said they didn’t have an appeal, my own curated set of tricks—like taking notes in the minutes before falling asleep, then typing them into the computer as soon as I sat down, so as to leap back into my thought process, then learning to write just keywords instead of full notes; this way I had to reconstruct the note while at the computer and, in those reconstructions, connected even more fully with my thinking …
Nowadays, just peck it into your notes function. Back then, my phone didn’t have apps.
Still, this battlefield, this catch-as-catch-can mindset—the maternal, all-hands-on-deck survivalism that I’d been acclimating myself to, that I’d been living inside of ever since Diana got sick—was diametrically on the other side of the continuum from the situation I faced now: the silence of an apartment when the child was away with Grandma, the silence that took over after I’d finished entering those notes into my computer, plus constructed new sentences to go with them, and gone and fortified those old paragraphs with new edits, and then reached that perfect situation I could move forward from, except where to, what direction?
Or the silence of an apartment after eating dinner and doing the dishes and showering and nobody else was home and the laptop screen was opened and waiting, waiting.
The silence when I’d dived down too goddamn many YouTube black holes and was hateful toward myself and no way was I going to be tempted by another one.
Lying on the couch and shutting my eyes and telling myself, Five more minutes … Three more minutes … Ten more minutes …
What it was, once again, to live inside so much stillness. To learn once again to reconnect, to look at a photo on our wall and soak in memories of Diana, those hard memories that used to make me just want to curl up in a ball and weep, and instead to take those memories and sit with them and think about their details, what I might be able to glean, repurpose, employ. Now I had the distance that was necessary for such a task. I had this silence to move through. During this uninterrupted stretch of time and space, I was learning, once again, inch by inch, how to chase, home in on, capture, the difference between a word and the right word, what Mark Twain called the difference between a lightning bug and lightning.
I opened the fridge. My eyes came upon a pouch—the same brand of organic yogurt pouch that park mothers discussed, and that I took pleasure in ridiculing. Half plastered to the top of the vegetable crisper, held in place by some sort of coalesced substance, its plastic shouted for attention, bright colors sky blue and orange. How long had it been there? Since the spring, I guessed—when a best friend had brought yogurt pouches to the playground and Lily had started demanding her own.
Just what would it be like to live in a world where my refrigerator was free of yogurt pouches?
“IF IT’S REFRIGERATED and still before the expiration date,” Crystal said, “you just wash off the goo. No biggie.”
“Right,” I said. “Thank you.”
“I don’t understand.” My sister took a break from folding her laundry. “You don’t have to get rid of it.”
“Crystal, don’t you ever just … not want to deal?”
My sister’s bob looked a bit ratty, her blond streaks faded, her roots showing. Her bloodshot eyes had rings under them. She likely hadn’t showered in a week. But her new baby had done us a solid, consenting to nap right before my visit. And her three-year-old, Declain, was in another room, occupied with his iPad. Her husband—who weeks ago had finished as an understudy on Broadway (the actor in the part had promised, “You will never get onstage”)—was off at another audition; soon he’d come home and change for tonight’s bartending shift. Still, though their apartment may have been momentarily calm, Crystal’s exhaustion, the fullness of her overload, was apparent in how she processed my question.
“What exactly are you talking about, Charlie?”
Her oldest nickname for me, recognition that something was up.
“Maybe I’m not the person to do this,” I began. “I’ve been thinking: What about Peg?”
The energy in the room turned, going stale. I pretended not to notice, forged onward: “First thing, seventy-plus years old, she’s living on a fixed income, so it would be a big matzo ball for her. But say I got her access to Lily’s monthly Social Security money. Maybe that would help with some costs. Dollars spent in Memphis have to stretch farther, yes?”
Crystal fixed her glare. Over the years, the narrowing of her eyes onto my personage had conveyed more messages than I could count. Its current meaning was unavoidable. I lowered my voice, not wanting to wake her baby over in the next room.
“And Peg has a brother; him, his wife, the extended Taylor family, they’re all down in Memphis,” I said, kicking into gear. “And Southern church culture. That’s its own universe: there’d be youth groups, day care, all sorts of other toddlers for Lily to make friends with.”
She took all this in, face frozen. “Uh-huh.”
“Peggy’s a member of two churches; that means two new support systems, two versions of a loving God to embrace Lily. All the women Peg honks at and does YMCA aerobics with, they’ll definitely get involved. An armada of well-meaning elderly Southern church folk, all fawning over Lily, teaching her how to act, how to be.”
“And you’ve brought this up to Peg?”
I could not meet Crystal’s eyes, used the opportunity to fold the sleeves on a sweater, place them atop a pile of folded clothes on her kitchen table.
“Charlie.” A slight shake of her head. “You’re serious?”
I kept avoiding, checked my phone—registering that three new texts awaited. I picked up the clothes pile, started toward Crystal’s bedroom.
“I’m still trying to decide,” I admitted. “I know she’d get a calmer life, soak in family, stories about her mom. Hell, she’s already getting a Southern accent.”
“You’re her father.”
“Peg nourishes Lily’s instincts for kindness. She brings out Lily’s gentle nature. I don’t know that I’m doing that.”
“How long are you talking about?”
“Maybe try a few months? If it works, who knows? Long weekends and holidays I could fly down.”
“I guess.” Crystal sipped from her diet soda. “Right now you definitely seem to have other priorities.”
“Hey.”
“I saw you checking your phone. And you’ve bumped hanging out with me multiple times. Where there’s smoke …”
She took another sip, one I felt showed a decent amount of satisfaction with herself. When ready, she said, “This is not what you planned. We all know it.”
“It’s not like I haven’t devoted every minute to that kid.”
“You’ve been doing everything you can, Charlie. It’s hard. Even with a partner. Believe me, I know. And after what you’ve been through—”
“I’ve been fucking doing it, haven’t I? And how’s that been working out?”
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that.”
Now it was my turn to stare.
“Maybe there’s a connection,” she said. “There’s something unsettled in you. I don’t know what, exactly. But when this unsettled thing radiates, it affects what happens, how things go.”
“Crystal, what—”
“You love her; we all know that, Charlie. It’s not like you want Lily hurt.”
“What are you saying?”
“You shouldn’t be parenting by yourself. Everyone sees that. No one should, but definitely not you. Still, you are parenting by yourself. And you have to figure out how to accept this, you have to decide. Do you want her around? If you really don’t—honestly, Charlie, is that what you’re saying here?”
We were near her bedroom door now, both of us carrying stacks of folded clothes. My sister stopped. She was balancing her laundry on her arms, but she still managed to grab my wrist. Through the entirety of my adult life, Crystal had been my best friend, the person who I knew was looking out for me; more than that, among those I trusted to deliver, straight, whatever had to be said, she was first among equals.
One side of her mouth twisted. Her voice was low but strong. “I’m telling you something. Bring this up to Peg, give that woman a chance to raise Lily—even for how long?—you don’t know what you’re letting out of the box.”
She thought about it, squinted, fixed me with her look. “This is really what you want?”
THAT NIGHT WAS night seventeen without her: yes, turns out I was counting. She wore yet another new dress, again purchased by Grandma and appropriate for one more afternoon at church. Hair up, or in braids, but as near to perfection as was possible, barely a thin strand visibly out of place on my screen. Lily told me about her day at the library. She ran out of the shot and came back with a library book, then ran away again, returning this time with a new dolly. Lily shared the dolly’s name with me, and that the dolly was acting up, needed a time-out. Lily laughed at whatever I said in response; she batted her eyes, flirted, got distracted, wound down, ran out of things to say, and lingered in front of the desktop anyway, giving a crooked, almost sly smile, staring at me, wanting to stay on Skype, to keep our connection.
My stomach was a knotted metropolitan freeway at rush hour. It would have made sense to tell her it looked like she was having fun with Grandma. To ask if she felt like staying longer. I could have asked to talk to Grandma privately. Go and do it, fool.
“Do you want to hear about Daisy?”
She clapped. “Daisy!”
A new member of our world: the little witch who wanted to be good. “A student at the School for Young Witches in Wichita, Kansas,” I began, starting off the riff that always began these stories. “Daisy wanted to wear a sparkly tiara instead of a pointy hat.”
“And a magic wand instead of a broom,” Lily said.
I had plans in Brooklyn; if I left right at that moment, I’d still end up being late.
I stayed on, told the story.
Day eighteen without her, middle of the afternoon. Instead of working through a troubling chapter in my novel, I found myself in aisle five of Kmart, a store whose presence in the East Village made me aghast, and what I was doing there was this: I was shopping for a child’s desk to put in our bedroom, double-checking the measurements on the box against whatever I’d scribbled on the back of an envelope.
I imaged Lily meeting Z, how my child would take to Z’s long, princessy lashes and thick curls, her pulsing, obvious charisma, to say nothing of that braying laugh. I found myself hoping—maybe half hoping—that Z and I ended up in a relationship, that Lily and Z would meet, hit it off.
Z and I joked around on the couch. She grabbed the back of my head, shoved it into her sweaty armpit. I gagged, laughed, worried: Dear God, am I in love with her?
Afterward we lay in one another’s arms. Z started telling me about something that took place on a shoot. She unpacked another weird detail, followed by what sounded like a horrible decision. The more she talked, the more the oddness escalated; instead of a weird, funny anecdote, the story turned into a professional disagreement, one where she knew what she was doing but kept exacerbating the situation, which made no sense.
“I know you’ve worked with this magazine awhile,” I said. “You’re comfortable with these people. But you rely on them for a decent chunk of your assignments? So then—”
She looked at me like I had dirty underwear over my face. “You’re on their side?”
Then it was A and a meandering afternoon. We wandered around a park in Queens, wrapping ourselves in minutiae: a certain comedian’s rise through the world of alternative comedy; the different things I could do to my diet that might reduce my sodium count; exercises that might allow me to feel more healthy in my body and maybe deal with stress better. A let down her guard some, sharing the practical challenges of public relations when you were in green rooms with men who were in some stage of inebriation and felt their oats and kept coming up with the original idea to paw your ass. “I’ve set up a few exploratory interviews at talent agencies,” she admitted. “I was thinking, maybe getting into artist management.”
“You’re going be an agent?”
She shrugged. She didn’t really know what was happening.
“That seems to be going around,” she said.
