I Will Do Better, page 12
The next day we were on our laptops. Almost daring each other, we compared deals on travel websites, various hotel and airfare packages. A quick Marfa getaway? Didn’t three days on a Mexican beach sound great?
“Going away together would be a concrete step forward” is what Dr. Mark Roberts said, when he heard my recount. “Is this really a serious consideration?”
I leaned backward; the leather of his couch exhaled for me, making a pained squeak.
THE SHADOW OF the Washington Square arch didn’t stretch long enough to reach us, and though the park had as much tree coverage as anywhere in the city, still, the bench Kashmir and I found was open for a reason—at this hour of the day, this section of the park meant no protection. A tepid, sticky afternoon; while we had seats, the crowns of both of our skulls—middle-aged, thinning—were perspiring. We kept on crunching the dried plantains Kashmir had brought with him, watching as a trio of beautiful freaks pranced past. Neither of us allowed our necks to turn and follow.
I’d known Kashmir since grad school, more than fifteen years now, dating back to when friends called me Chuck. We were both young and single and used to stay up late in our dorm’s communal living room, Kashmir pounding out smooth little beats on the skins while we downed cheap beer and talked shit—about literature, writers we loved, the books we’d write. Kashmir was married now, the father of two, and even in July was schlepping back and forth from Brooklyn, through Manhattan, and into New Jersey, where he taught summer session at the same private school for boys where, during the school year, he taught English. During his commute each day, he wrote and edited his novel in progress, making the changes on his phone.
Today he’d hop on the train and teach right after our meeting. “It sucks, but what can you do?” he said. “The mortgage has to be paid. You want to write, you have to figure it out.”
“Gore Vidal used to tell writers who asked him about writer’s block, ‘Fuck off. Plenty more where you came from,’” I said. “When I was writing my first book, I used to remind myself of that all the time.”
Kashmir shielded his face from the sun’s heat, seemed to consider this. He reported that things were basically good. Some problems with the plotting, but he remained confident. He’d find his way through if he could just find the time to fix this draft. “My real problem, Chuck. If I just had a moment’s peace. Every day when I arrive home, I swear, before the front door is shut, my wife jams her boot straight up my ass.”
I munched, swallowed, listened.
“The one thing that keeps me coming home is the girls,” Kashmir said, referring to his daughters. His tone changed. “They’re my best friends; they keep me alive. You know how that is.”
It was the ideal moment. Bring up my dilemma with Lily. Tell him about Memphis, Peg, Lily, everything.
“Can I have more plantains?” I asked.
He acquiesced, shaking more chips into my hands.
“I didn’t mean to get myself in this situation,” I started unloading. “Not with Lily. Not either of these women. I never expected anything so complicated. Not any of it. And I have no clue how long I can keep up this pace … but I’m not exactly looking to extricate myself either.”
“What you are describing, two goddesses, all men our age dream about.”
“Because we’re too old,” I said. “Isn’t there something pathetic about being forty-four, chasing pussy across the city?”
Kashmir gave a thoughtful chew, the tendons in his jaw flexing. “Middle-aged men are teenagers. We see signs of our mortality, immediately old issues return, only they are stronger and we are weaker against them.”
From near the fountain at the middle of the park, a flock of applause rose, apparently prompted by a street performer. We both went silent, listening. The clapping diffused; to me the sound felt like an appropriate response to Kashmir’s insight. Kashmir gave a slight, comic wave, as if acknowledging the praise. Meanwhile, something else occurred: his remark dislodging a memory inside of me, one I hadn’t thought of in how long.
“When I was sixteen?” I said. “There’s no way to measure how much time I spent imagining. What does it feel like to have someone’s tongue in my mouth? Sixteen years old, I didn’t understand how people knew what to do, when it was okay to shove your tongue in someone else’s mouth.”
Kashmir’s eyes flashed delight. He revealed excellent canines, a winning smile.
“These days, almost every day, I can’t help but wonder: How long can I draw this out?” I paused, gathering my thoughts. “It’s almost clinical. How often will I be able to see each of them? When do I need to ease off the gas? How involved do I want to get? I tell myself, Nothing’s serious. Five seconds later: Maybe I want to make this legit. Do I really see things getting exclusive?”
“And what’s your answer?”
“I guess the calculations fluctuate. They recalibrate—like when I left my phone in a cab, then got an excess of shit about the pictures that might be in there, if the cabbie revived my cheap dead phone and magically unlocked my password.”
Kashmir drummed his knee. “Fucking hell, you left naked photos in a cab?”
“Oh, there’s more,” I said, then explained just what “more” meant.
“Both goddesses?” He kept staring at me. “A single day?”
“Didn’t bathe afterwards. Just to keep the smell lingering.”
Kashmir pursed his lips, nodded. A gaggle of healthy-looking undergraduates passed us, and we both worked hard not to look directly into their luminescence. Both of us went silent so they would not hear any of this. Kashmir poured me more chips. He clamped a hand onto my shoulder, giving it a squeeze, and I winced at his strength, remembered how he used to pound those drum skins.
“My brother,” he said, “you are in the fun part of the romantic comedy. Right before the hero gets discovered. Before everything turns to shit.”
IMAGINE AN OLD stone retaining wall. It threatens collapse: at any moment the landscape of its English countryside garden might tumble recklessly down into the street. That is what awaited me, at the precipice, when I opened the door of the fridge.
In the front was a cardboard pint with the dregs of an order of penne from that excellent place across the street (not much vodka sauce left, but if I nuked it long enough, it might get soft and good). Next to that, a rectangular Chinese takeout thing with condensation all over the inside of the plastic lid and a few burnt orange globules underneath, looking maybe like an unmotivated teen’s obligatory science fair experiment. (Hypothesis: What happens to sweet-and-sour shrimp if you let them alone forever?) Farther to the side: baby carrots with freezer burn where the bag had been ripped open; unopened broccoli florets that were not yet all brown; bushels of organic celery (Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee swears that celery kept his erections potent); a quart of green drink; a bottle of Caesar dressing with the cap off; a ketchup bottle new enough to not have gotten gunky at the top—
Did the fridge smell funky? Had I grown inured to the stench of my fridge?
I reached above and beyond that protective front wall, fumbling around until I found, half wrapped in a paper towel, a bunch of turkey burgers that I’d left on the burner for too long but could eat, I guessed, if nothing else called my name. Then the remains of a rotisserie chicken with aluminum foil hanging off it like some sort of negligee. I found a forgotten, sealed, empty tub of cream cheese; I found unopened hummus, an opened container of guac that had the color of a small, old family pet in desperate need of antibiotics. Two bagels in a plastic bag that looked fine but probably I should devour soon. What was Smartfood popcorn doing in there? A hint of an egg carton in the back. The Brita good and full.
The bottom level wasn’t quite as cluttered, but still provided more than enough reason to clean the fridge, or just grab something and shut the door and get back to my desk.
That pouch should have been easy to ignore.
Just what would it feel like to open the fridge and not see, in the bottom of my sightline, that flash of bright color?
To know exactly what I’d done—why the yogurt pouches were gone?
FOUR WEEKS AND a day after I’d taken Lily to Memphis, beneath the scaffolding on West Twenty-Third, there she was. Rushing toward me. Fake fur vest. Skirt made to look like rose petals. Knee-high socks in thick stripes, orange and pink.
Give her up and in the middle of an afternoon’s procrastination, I’d know that I relinquished my daughter so I could watch a cat play a keyboard on YouTube. Chasing down a cater-waiter at some literary function, I’d know that I surrendered my kid for a bunch of small talk and a shitty-ass meatball. Posturing on some awards podium, I’d be the guy who paid for his writing life by giving away his little girl.
I lifted Lily toward my face. Joy lit up her eyes. She leaned in, touched my nose with hers, squealed, “Eskimo kisses!”
A thousand balloons rose to the heavens. A million doves escorted their path. My refrigerator was already a sty. Who in their right mind wants a refrigerator without yogurt pouches?
Out of the sweltering August heat. She held my hand. We led Peg into the Chelsea branch of Doughnut Plant. “This was one of Diana’s favorite places to get a treat,” I explained.
“It sounds wonderful,” Peg answered.
Her eyes were dull, missing their normal luster. She was perspiring around the lips. Peg never moved easily, today she shuffled along. We got her to a seat. I went up and ordered Lily the same kind of donut—Tres Leches—that her mother had loved.
Lily drank chocolate milk and remarked about which of the ceramic donuts on the wall she liked the most. Peg rehydrated with a glass of water. She mentioned a landmark donut shop back home in Memphis. Her voice was both chipper and shaky; she leaned back in her seat. For a moment her stare went vacant. The cliché holds that it’s easy for grandparents and sitters to be joyful with a small child because they know the visit will end. Here was the evidence, the effect of a month spent trying to keep up with a certain Tomato Tornado.
And it was while I was taking Peg in, reader, that a very odd thing happened.
Almost as if on cue, those candy-colored plaster donuts—on the wall above and behind her … how to put this: those donuts started twitching. Like, back and forth, syncopating.
Now their little donut hole centers puckered; they all started, uh, humming.
Immediately, the tourist couple at the next table jerked to their feet. In perfect coordination, the pair of tourists veered toward one another, clasping hands, looking straight ahead. The girl gave a high kick, showing off the best, most well-defined leg musculature on the planet. The couple pivoted toward our table, toward an astonished me, an overjoyed Lily.
I wasn’t tripping on acid. This was happening.
Every single person in the Doughnut Plant was looking toward our table, expressing, in song and dance, the satisfaction—the validation—I felt at seeing Lily’s worn-out grandmother. Was this a hallucination? One of those revelations that true believers are always sharing on street corners? The song’s first lyric concerned all the times this child had spent me to the marrow. Dancers motioned toward precious, deflated Peg. They chanted the chorus:
See?
It’s not just me.
I mean, yes, it’s me.
But not just me.
Toil for glee
Your soul is the fee
This shit’s way hard
It’s not just me.
Don’t you see-eee-eeeee?
MUSICALS ARE LOVE, I’ve been told. Musical theater wasn’t close to my area of expertise, but during my childhood, when I was no older than five, my mother sang and danced me around our kitchen, butchering lyrics to shows she loved. When Crystal turned twelve, she went into Theater Kid Mode, spending afternoons with like-minded, overly emotive friends, watching videotapes from Blockbuster. Some of that rubbed off on me. I was far from an expert; even now my thoughts on musical theater are crude and reductive. Nonetheless it’s apparent to me that the musical, as a device, embodies the best urges inside of each of us. Simultaneously, the musical channels those best urges, doing so through some of our most joyous, moving forms of self-expression—that is, using song and dance to play out versions of the drama of what life should be. In real life, your job is going nowhere, lovers lie and steal, the dice are loaded, dreams go down the shitter. The art of musical theater not only allows us to cope with the disappointments we know all too well; musical theater transcends life’s disappointments, unspooling the thinnest counter-narrative, impossibly strong thread, blindingly bright colors. Town meetings break out into song and dance; mobsters brush up their Shakespeare; the flower-selling urchin twirls around with the king; the inveterate gambler bets on love with the Salvation Army spinster; the guy who’s been hunted for decades about a loaf of bread is key to flag-waving revolution. Protests against an illegal war turn into pleas to let the sun shine in. We get graceful men lifting lovely girls in white.
“Someone to crowd you with love” goes that famous song from the production about not being tied down. “Someone to force you to care.”
That diva from that smash twentieth-century bohemian musical (which was based on that smash nineteenth-century bohemian opera)—what does she sing? “Today 4 U / Tomorrow for me.”
Tony and Maria, the duet of duets: “Tonight, tonight / The world is full of light.”
One step further—the most famous song, probably, in all musical theater: “Tomorrow tomorrow / I love ya / Tomorrow.”
This was the flavor of the spirit that I wanted to cultivate inside Lily. Goodness over badness. This time it would all turn out all right.
That was why we spent time every night watching those scenes, why we returned to them.
I wanted her singing and dancing in the rain. Yes. But there was more to it. I see now. I was trying to buoy my own spirits. I was playing those videos to convince myself.
Well, I was convinced, finally—and in the Doughnut Plant underneath the Chelsea Hotel, of all places. I was accepting her— not just because there were no other choices, but because she was my choice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Three days after Peg returned to Memphis, Lily threw a fit in Walgreens when I did not purchase a toaster oven like she wanted. An employee, alarmed by the horror film screams from aisle five, sprinted toward us, poised to call the cops. Lily tantrumed harder. That night she raged against dinner, procrastinated extra about brushing her teeth, squirmed against bedtime. Waking in the dead of night, she unleashed three alarms: “My legs hurt.” I had been recalibrated for her return, prepped to be a willing, positive dad. I coolly rubbed lotion on her hamstrings. I helped her get good and comfy back under the covers. I led her through our visualization exercise where we lay on the beach and imagined our feet in the sand, the birdies in the sky, the lapping sound of the waves coming to shore. I did the deep breathing alongside her, lay motionless in bed with her in the dark.
Back when Lily was just a few weeks old, when she was occupying the role of the baby who stayed up and cried all night, at four in the morning, Diana was up with her. Fully healthy Diana. Fully exhausted. Cuddling infant Lily, she paced the apartment, singing to her, maybe breastfeeding. Loads of tension between us—side glances, uncomfortable silences, the passive-aggressive putting away of dishes. The birth had been hugely stressful and there’s no way I wasn’t freaked out about the kid actually having arrived, what our lives were going to be like now, all of that. I’d tag off, take my turns with the baby, but part of that was because I knew she felt I didn’t want to do it, and though she was right, I wasn’t going to let her know it. So while I put in my time, holding the baby on the couch during arranged late shifts, the larger truth was, Diana had been wanting to shoulder the bulk of the responsibilities herself, trying to prove to herself that she’d be a good mother, that she was a good mother. I’m sure Diana was super aware of the tensions between the two of us in the house as well, which couldn’t have helped. Anyway, she lost it. Holding the baby and weeping, sort of raving at Lily, exhausted, end of-the-rope venting: “Why won’t you fall asleep? You have to fall asleep!”
This memory reminded me it was okay that it wasn’t easy for me.
I ended up dozing off in the bed next to Lily, falling asleep before she did.
The fourth night of her shenanigans, my efforts were less extravagant, my patience less fortified. Day five, Dr. Melfi squeezed me in for a special noontime meeting. “It sounds like it was an intense month for Lily,” she said. “She experienced so much with her grandmother in Memphis. Wherever she looked, she saw all those pictures of her mother. That’s obviously significant. Lily couldn’t know how to take them, what her grandmother wanted from her, if she was supposed to replace her mother. And now she also just left her grandmother, which means leaving behind all the bonds she and Grandma just strengthened. I’m sure Lily’s still processing. And she was away from you for a long time. Lily is very protective. She wants to care for you. That’s a lot to put on a little girl.”
I’D BEEN UNDER the impression that embracing fatherhood, deciding I wanted this, would magically change the flow of our river. I should have known: searching clouds does not mean that clouds hold answers. Maybe it was possible to alter the scene in the sky a little, though, throw in a new constellation. Maybe a change would foster different energies.
A and I hadn’t ended up in Puerto Rico for that weekend; some hard feelings over that remained, not exactly what you would call a burning cauldron of passion between us. Still, our attraction was consistent—and mutual. It wasn’t not working. After some schedule negotiations, she came over for dinner.
Lily concentrated, taking her time, making sure each stroke was straight, working to make sure A’s pinkie nail was completely covered with sparkly yellow polish. A considered, blew on her hand, posed a bit, mooned with genuine glee. “It’s divine.” (After Lily was asleep that night, she’d tell me it really had been fun, allowing her a brief return to the traditions of femininity that had loomed so large through her Midwestern girlhood. “A step back on a road that I rejected, just because of some catty eighth-grade bitches.”)
