The Deluge, page 75
“Should I be nervous?”
“About Jefferey? I showed you the picture. He’s become a total cow.”
“I’m having dinner with Peter and Nate in Tribeca. Any chance you’ll want to join us?”
“I wouldn’t wait on me. Jefferey and I will have to get a hotel room—it’ll be a whole production.”
“You’re so funny, Jack! That’s what I love about you.”
I pecked him on the cheek and chose a black scoop-neck top and a crimson flare skirt.
I’d suggested Creole Slim, a new Haitian American fusion place I’d heard good things about. When Jefferey saw me walk in, he blurted out, “Oh goddamnit.” I met him at a cream-white island in a sea of similar tables, surrounded by couples talking low in dim gold light. He hugged me. “You look absolutely beautiful—this sucks.” There was a lot of him to hug. Even though I’d been prepared by his profile, it was still jarring how much weight he’d put on. He’d never been fat when we’d dated, but the potential was there. After we moved in together, and I could exert control over the shopping list, I did my gentle best to nix his snacking habits.
“Stop it, you look great, Jefferey.”
“Do not. Don’t you—don’t you dare”—he wagged a finger in my face—“pretend like I’m not the fattest fucking thing you’ve seen since we went to see the prize pigs at the Iowa State Fair in 2011. They have cranes pick me up out of bed to dress me in the morning.”
“Stop,” I told him. “You look terrific. You still have your hair!”
He smiled and batted his eyes. “Okay, go on.”
The conversation rolled effortlessly from there.
We somehow ended up recalling our Mario Kart battles, how I went from not knowing how to play to consistently beating him, and we’d spend entire Friday evenings at home getting wine-drunk playing every level. Then he started humming “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and I had a familiar pain in my gut from the man who used to make me laugh so hard I’d get a stomachache. Delivering our drinks, the waiter asked what was so funny. How could I ever explain to him? The first day after we’d moved in together, Jefferey had left a foul smear in the toilet bowl, and in utter disgust, I’d demanded to know why he hadn’t used the toilet brush.
“What do you mean?” he had said in genuine confusion. “Why dirty the toilet brush when you can pee the poop away?”
“What?” I’d choked.
“Babe, you gotta pee the poop away.” And to demonstrate, he’d gone to the toilet, lifted the seat, and right in front of me began urinating on his own shit stain, singing, to the Beatles tune, “You’ve got to peeee theeee poop awaaaaay.”
It was so stupid, and yet I thought I might cough up a lung laughing. From then on, he’d dutifully used the toilet brush, but he never stopped singing that song, and it never failed to get a rise out of me.
“There is no way,” I said to the waiter, wiping tears from my eyes, “in a million years, I could explain.”
He gave us a look like Okaaay. Jefferey winked at me, and I found it so unfair how no one ever grew any younger.
I told him about Fred, my work at the fund, trying to gloss over—just a bit—our financial situation. Jefferey lived in Oak Park on a teacher’s salary, and I wasn’t sure what his wife did, but from some internet snooping it seemed like the nonprofit sector. I definitely wasn’t about to tell him that Fred’s net worth was somewhere between $43 and $62 million, that my own had, in the last three years, climbed north of $13 million, that in the last eight months we’d vacationed or had business trips to Dubai, London, Hong Kong, Sydney, Paris, and Aspen. That we’d bought a home in London’s tony Marylebone district just because it had a residential tax haven, and we would probably spend less than two weeks a year there. That I’d spent $30,900 at Bergdorf’s the week before. “And what about the kids? Tell me about them,” I prodded.
“The kids? What a tripod of assholes! Brit’s our oldest, fifteen, and it’s devastating. She used to love me. Used to think I was the coolest, funniest, most incredible guy that ever walked the earth, and now she’s totally flipped. Can’t stand me. Thinks I’m an idiot, is embarrassed by everything I do.” He laughed. “Then Jeff Jr. hates his name, so he goes by Caspian. One day the kid just comes home from school, says he has no gender, and demands everyone call him ‘Caspian.’ He’s about to turn twelve, which we’re terrified of because that’s when Brit’s personality transplant began. But Casp is also a really talented musician and artist. He draws nonstop, really good stuff, so we send him to a special arts middle school—”
“I’m assuming that must come from your wife’s side.”
“Oh, I’m assuming she fucked the lawn guy.”
Laughing again, I chided, “Jefferey.”
“That boy could not be less like me if we’d tried to engineer it the way some of these rich-ass parents do with their designer babies. So yeah, Casp is a trip. And then the youngest is Kyle. Wonderful, sweet, beautiful Kyle. Nine years old, hardy as hell. Loves football. Loves baseball. Thinks I’m awesome. Thinks I know everything about every subject. I want to put him in a coma so he stays this way forever.”
“Sounds like you love it, though. Being a dad.” And I felt just the smallest tinge of hurt.
“It has its moments. It does come with this—” He stopped and squinted, his gaze traveling to the wall where a painting hung of Port-au-Prince under a vivid cerulean sky. “It comes with this undercurrent of always being sad. Like I understand how quickly it’s all going by. And now that Brit’s in high school, and there’s all this distance she’s put between us, I sort of realized, ‘Oh, I’m never going to be an invincible hero to her ever again.’ She might get less moody eventually, but it all just hurtles by you.”
A woman in a dress of flaky translucent sequins bumped into our table, rattling the glasses and silverware. I was grateful for the interruption.
“So you and Fred never took the plunge on kids?”
“He has a son from his first marriage, but by the time we met it was a little late.”
“It’s never too late.”
“At forty-eight it is.” And now I very much wanted to change the subject. “Do you ever see anyone else from the old days? The Wellington Brown Line years?” Referring to the L stop closest to our apartment.
“Not really. The U of Wisconsin guys all moved back home. I still see Dan Faulk, but he’s in Naperville, which is such a trek. He married this psycho Puerto Rican chick, who runs his life like a military barracks.”
“Faulk? That’s surprising.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Hey, what about that crazy bartender from Matilda. Kim Fox. Remember her?” I let fly my flirtiest smile of the night. On Jefferey’s twenty-fifth birthday, wild on tequila, Kim and I had made out in front of him and his friends as an impromptu birthday present.
But Jefferey’s face fell, and I thought I’d said something wrong, that bringing up this innocent memory had made him uncomfortable. He looked at the table and then back at me.
“She was at Wrigley.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The shooting. She was one of the—she was one of the people who got killed.”
This news crawled up my arms one hair at a time, and instead of Kim’s bright smile and heavy pours for the regulars, I thought of my mom and brackish water rising higher and higher. “Oh my God. I had no idea.”
“The bar had a memorial for her. It was all pretty fucking gnarly. The whole city was shut down for a week. Everyone was freaked there were going to be more shooters, like a whole army of white supremacists was going to descend on the streets. Awful thing was, me and Meg and the kids had gone to two Cubs games already that year.” He shook his head. “It was really freaky. Really awful.”
Snared among the memories of going to Wrigley with Jefferey was the actor, who’d been wearing that blue Cubs hat. That man melted into The Pastor, preaching at a rally, his eyebrows dark cuneiforms. He’d said such massacres were Christ’s judgment, that if we didn’t elect him, there would be many more to come.
The waiter took our plates, and Jefferey ordered a whiskey, so I got another glass of wine. Yet our conversation couldn’t seem to recover from the story of Kim Fox. Jefferey tried another avenue, and he chose exactly wrong.
“How’s your family doing? Erik, Allie, your mom? I’m sorry about your dad, I heard about that.”
I smiled as brightly as I could manage. There was no way I was sharing the story of my mom right now.
“They’re all doing great—yeah. Same old, same old. Allie can still be a pill.”
“A horse pill. But it’s comforting that nothing changes.”
I tried to pivot the conversation by treading where we hadn’t gone yet.
“And you and Meg, how did you meet?”
“We were both teaching at the high school.”
“So you’re both still there? I thought I saw a picture of her working at a garden?”
“Right, she quit teaching to work for this farming cooperative. This Fierce Blue Fire thing.”
My ears might as well have twitched.
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, these agrarian community projects in the city—it’s like farming and carbon sequestration and teaching and voter organization all rolled into one.”
Of course, I was familiar. The Outposts.
“I was just watching the interview with the two families—”
“Justice for Letitia,” he said immediately.
“That’s right, yeah. That whole thing was just such a nightmare. I’ve always admired Kate Morris, but what they did… To this day, I just can’t believe it happened.”
Though I’d thought this was a safe perspective, especially since his wife worked for FBF, which had told its members not to join the illegal occupation, I could tell from the blankness of his face that this comment had not landed. So I found myself stumbling on, maybe saying things I believed, maybe parroting Fred.
“Obviously, what happened was appalling, and I don’t want to see Love reelected, but Morris put people in danger, and—she was almost courting it, you know?” My voice went too high on the question. Jefferey’s entire bearing had changed. While raining jokes on me, there’d been an eagerness to his posture. He’d leaned in, looking slightly uncomfortable and apologetic about his weight. Now he lounged back in his chair, staring at the table.
“Meg and I almost took the kids to D.C. for it.”
“Really?” I said, as neutrally as I could.
“Right after Kate gave that speech and people started showing up, we talked about pulling the kids out of school, buying a bunch of camping gear. Maybe quitting my job to do it. Then we decided to wait until school was out, and if it was still going on…” His eyes caught mine and then looked away. “But we were nervous about having the kids there. For good reason it turns out.”
Clearing my throat, I tried to carefully double down and back away at the same time. “That’s admirable. I just think that doing what she did—and it was so appalling what happened to all those people—it was an action like you’d expect from the Weathermen.”
Jefferey’s brow narrowed. “How do you figure?”
“She wanted to create a big spectacle, that’s all I mean. She wanted chaos instead of doing what your wife is doing with FBF. Trying to find solutions, trying to work with industry and government.”
“I think Meg would probably tear you a new asshole if she heard her work described like that.”
His tone was conciliatory, like he wouldn’t be able to stop Meg if she heard, and this was too bad. I was frustrated and anxious because I kept finding myself saying things I didn’t actually believe, but it was like I’d driven into quicksand and throwing the car in reverse was only pulling me deeper. I’d found what Morris did unbearable, but only because, when it first began, I did not want to see her embarrassed. And then I did not want to see her fail. And then I did not want to see her harmed.
“Morris and her followers are misguided is all I’m saying. There are better ways to go about this.”
“Such as? What’s your boyfriend’s hedge fund doing to avert planetary catastrophe, I’m curious?”
I sat with my spine rigid and met the hostility of his voice with calm.
“The fund’s invested in a range of climate solutions and adaptations. It’s very forward thinking, and we work with a proprietary computer model designed by Ashir al-Hasan. I doubt there’s an investment firm in the world that’s thought more about climate change than Tara.”
“No, I get it. You have to convince yourself that doing well and doing good are the same thing. The whole world’s run by people who think even when the dark days come, they’ll just sub in money for justice and it’ll all be fine.”
A defensive heat rose to my face. Who was this person? I had never heard him talk like this in the years we’d dated. When I’d known him, he’d been mostly apolitical with a bit of a conservative bent. I’d had to persuade him to vote for Barack Obama in 2012, and he’d been lukewarm about going to McCormick to see the president speak on election night.
“I’m just saying, there’s a way to go about things that works, and a clear way that doesn’t. Kate Morris and her disciples—or whatever you want to call them—they have to know they can’t win.”
Jefferey pushed his gaze into mine, his eyes moons of certainty.
“Of course they think they can win. They know they are going to win.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe you can’t understand. You don’t have kids, so it’s hard to think past your own lifetime. But a parent has to.”
He might as well have punched me in the stomach. I could feel the red splotches forming on my neck.
“I thought you didn’t even want children,” I snapped, before I could stop myself. “At least that’s what you told me when you were wheedling your way out.”
“I never said that.”
“Liar,” I shot back, and the heat on my throat and face burned harder. “We stayed up till four a.m. that night talking about nothing else.”
“I don’t remember it that way.”
“You strung me along for three years. And sometimes I think it was just because you wouldn’t have been able to tie your own shoelaces, let alone pay down your loans, without me. And I’ve never forgiven you for it.”
As soon as I said it, I realized how true it was. I couldn’t even forgive him for popping up in my dreams sometimes, carrying the anger into my morning even as his image leached away. He chewed his tongue for a moment, glaring at me.
“Do you remember what you said to me when I told you I wanted to quit C. H. Robinson and go back to get my teaching degree?”
“I told you I thought it was impractical. Because it was. You wanted to take out another hundred grand in loans.”
“Sure. You were always… displeased. You didn’t think I took my job seriously. You didn’t like that I hated going to look at condos, that I didn’t really want to tie myself to a thirty-year mortgage. We went to Faulk’s apartment that one time—and I mean, this is a bro in commodities trading—and all you talked about for two days was how beautiful his place was.”
“So? Jefferey, I told you what debt did to my dad. But that never concerned you, so it meant it would have to concern me. You never cared about the consequences. I’m the one who had to worry about being financially insecure our entire lives because you thought it would be fun to never grow up.”
“Yeah, but your version of growing up just meant buying more bullshit. Just spending our whole weekend in some depressing lifestyle store blowing money on more useless fucking garbage we didn’t need. The longer we were together, the more I didn’t like the person you were underneath. Or the person you were trying so hard to become. So maybe I did lie, yes. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have kids, it was that I didn’t want to have them with you.”
The waiter came, and we got the check: $423.87. Jefferey tried to reach for it, but I handed my card over before he could. He tried to stop me, and I told the waiter to run it. We sat there in silence until he returned. I tipped, signed the slip, and got up, pushing my way between tables. The streets were dry and cold. I folded my arms and set out west, toward Central Park, without any clue where I was walking. Jefferey caught up to me, pulling on a green corduroy jacket that no longer fit. He touched my shoulder, but I shrugged him off. I turned my head only once more, saw his devastation at having told me the truth. How stupid. This fat, childish man, who’d somehow set my entire life on an unknowable course. Someone I shouldn’t have given a second thought to after about 2014.
“It was nice seeing you again, Jefferey,” I told him. “I wish you the best.” Then I breezed down the street, and after calling to me again and again, first exasperated and then defeated, he let me go. His voice, carrying my name, died on the wind.
Before I reached the park, I turned south. I’d had only two glasses of wine but felt the sense of driving drunk down an anonymous highway. Two teen girls wearing VR goggles and giggling at something they saw in another reality whisked by, grasping each other. Two police in full tactical gear ambled up the sidewalk, nodding at me as I passed.
I walked down the east side of the park where spring was struggling in fits and starts in the buds of the trees, past the dual spires of the Plaza. Yellow cabs snarled the Manhattan grid, a din of horns and the scent of exhaust mixing with hot dog and halal carts. Shafts of light from the lobbies of graceful apartment buildings pooled on the sidewalks. I studied the glow of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Empire State Building, and in the distance One World Trade, and recalled the thrill of walking this route for the first time in my twenties and feeling how far I was from Iowa. Steam drifted from the sewers, cut through by the strides of people out for the night, tossing their careless bodies at each other. I passed an older couple, walking too slowly, talking about movies they’d seen when they were young. The open wound of a new skyscraper going up. Old New York still breathing through the luxury condos and glass towers. I kept on through the raucous technicolor glare of Times Square, stuffed with slow-shuffling tourists, holograms dancing over our heads, an ocean of digital life swarming in the sky above. Eventually, I caught a cab home. Passing the gas station on Eleventh and Fifty-First, the teenagers were still there, camped out in little pup tents, taking shifts holding their signs.
