Hope Makes Love, page 21
I’m no better.
[Unintelligible]
Sorry, Marcie.
Sorry for all this … Not what you signed up for, right? I know. Fuck. So, probably … I think I’m gonna … that’s it for now.
Tuesday, April 28 (evening)
LESLEY SENT ME A MESSAGE this afternoon. Its subject line said, “Adnan goodbye?”
When I opened it, I expected a long and heartfelt denunciation of my treatment of this blameless man, and a directive to put an end to whatever it was I was doing with or to him. Or I half expected it and fully wished for it, the way a child wishes secretly to be told what to do, because the weight of choice and possibility can be unendurable.
The only thing that gave me pause about the contents of the email was that question mark. That wasn’t like Lesley, because Lesley doesn’t traffic in doubt. She is clarity and certainty when you need it most. She is the staying hand on your wrist.
It wasn’t, however, a set of commandments or an excoriation. It was a picture. It showed a small white box, tied with kitchen string. Lesley prefaced the picture with a simple message: “A tall, sad man left this for you. I’m to keep it cold until you return.”
There is nothing left of the tarts I brought with me. I couldn’t throw out the last few crumbs of pastry and filling that had evaded the mould. So I gathered and pressed them together into something the size of a truffle and placed it in my mouth. There was no taste left, except a trace of salt from my hands, but it was another small thing he’d made, inside me.
BEFORE I RECEIVED THE EMAIL from Lesley, Zep came to my room. It had been a few hours since he’d sped off down Cleveland Avenue. His face was red and his tie was loose at the neck, but he didn’t appear to have been drinking. He stood in the hallway and told me he’d taken the flowers to a hospital and he hoped that was okay.
It’s fine, I told him. We don’t need them anymore.
He hesitated for a moment, looking at his shoes, and then off toward the elevators, and seemed to have something else he wanted to say. We were scheduled to meet in the conference room after lunch, but I let him enter. He came in trailing the faint smell of freesias.
At the end of the first bed he sat, stared at the dead TV screen and said he’d been thinking about what we’d done and he was ashamed. He couldn’t live with himself if anything like that happened again because of him.
“She was still shaking when I dropped her at work,” he said. “And she kept thanking me. She kept fucking thanking me, like I was some big hero instead of a son of a bitch.”
It was my fault, I told him. I should have been clearer about what to expect.
“No,” he said. “You explained it fine. I just didn’t let it sink in.” He leaned on his knees and buried his chin in his chest. “I wanted this so bad I thought anything that helped make it happen was okay.” And he added, “It’s not the first time, either.”
I asked him what he meant.
He cleared his throat and swallowed, and looked up at me as if he thought my opinion of him was about to change.
“Back when I figured out something was wrong between me and Em, when it seemed like she might leave me any time, I got a little desperate.”
Zep convinced himself that it wasn’t him that Emily had grown tired of, but his failure. His playing career had never amounted to what it should have. He’d had a couple of good years and tried to act like a success, but it was hard to do that at thirty-three, riding a bus from Scranton to Pawtucket.
The summer I had interviewed him for the study, in 2006, was his final season in baseball. His final chance ended when the Blue Jays gave him his unconditional release. He tried minor league coaching for a while but didn’t seem to take to that.
“I’m not much of a talker,” he said.
Then one of his friends in Tampa suggested he buy a small business, and he thought a car wash might work. With the name “Get Clean” he could play off his reputation as a former steroid user. And that had gone well enough that in 2008 he expanded to two locations.
The financial crisis was a blow. By the end of 2009 he had to remortgage his house to keep the business going, and after that it was a struggle. Within a couple of years Emily gave every sign of being a woman who was fed up. Zep thought the next time he walked in the door would be the time she’d tell him they were through. And when a former baseball player is down to his last chance, he can think of only one thing to do that will solve everything.
“I had to hit a home run,” he said.
So he launched two more locations, in another part of Tampa. He put money down to double the size of Get Clean Car Wash overnight.
But it wasn’t what he bought, or where he bought it, or that the new locations quickly failed. It was the money he used. A few years before, Emily’s parents, Joyce and Raymond, had sold a property and made a gift to Pebbles, putting $257,000 toward her education. Raymond had gone to Allegheny University and hoped one day Pebbles would too.
“I took that money,” said Zep, his voice gone hoarse. “I stole my daughter’s future.”
Neither of us said anything for a moment. I heard maids in the hall knocking on doors to determine which rooms they could clean, so I got up silently and moved past Zep to put out the Do Not Disturb sign. When I came back into the room, Zep was walking toward the window.
“I meant to take you up to Beaver Island Park while we were here,” he said. “Show you where Em and I used to hang out on my off days when we were just starting out. She said she liked going to the beach. I told her only somebody who’d never lived in Florida could call this a beach. She told me she didn’t need perfect.”
He was quiet for a moment, then heaved with the sigh of someone just waking up.
“Zep,” I said, “what does all this mean? Why are you telling me this now?”
He glanced over at me and shook his head.
“I just don’t know what made me think this would work.”
“But it is working. This morning went well. We haven’t reviewed everything yet, but I saw how she reacted, and I was listening when you drove off. Whatever you think about what happened, I know it got you closer to where you want to be.”
Zep said nothing.
“You had a moment together, I heard that. Did you kiss?”
Zep nodded.
“See? You’re so close, Zep.”
He took another deep breath, turned his face toward the window’s light.
“I never … I never told you about this idea I had. It’s a personal grooming product. Those are big — you know, high-margin. You understand ‘high-margin’?”
“Yes.”
“I wanna call it Stay Clean Body Wash. The whole idea …”
With a hesitant but growing enthusiasm, Zep proceeded to explain his concept, and the hope he’d had of finalizing an investment deal to fund development before we arrived here. He’d wanted to be able to show Emily the contract, present her with the proof that he was going to pay back Pebbles’ money. He’d thought that was the only way his plan, to make her love him again, really stood a chance. And then it had all crumbled when his friend and business manager Lino had stabbed him in the back.
“Remember that guy in the restaurant?” said Zep. “That was him. Don’t ask me what the fuck he’s doing here.”
I was confused. I asked if he meant the man who had invited us to sit with him and his quiet wife, and Zep said no, that was Rick Kelsoe. Rick had actually offered to help.
“He’s throwing a party tomorrow night. He said there might be some investor potential there. He said I should go. And I should bring you.”
One of Lesley’s mantras to me, when I came to live with her, was always to listen to my body. It communicates in the language of tension, she said. Your body will tell you what you want, and what you don’t. It will tell you what interests you, what pleases you, and what makes you uncomfortable or afraid. When Zep told me that the man we had dined with wanted me to come to his party, my body stiffened in a way that made it very clear: I had to say no.
Whatever my face betrayed, Zep noticed it.
“That’s okay,” he said. “There’s no point anyway. I’ve been kidding myself about this whole thing.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and began to move away from the window. “I can drive you back to Toronto tomorrow if you want.”
In my mind an image came to me; it was the same one that had played behind my eyes since I’d opened Lesley’s email. Adnan was bent at the counter of his kitchen. He was labouring on some small, sweet thing. And this image held the knowledge that soon he would slip his treasure with care into a clean, white box and deliver it to my door, hoping that it would make me understand what somehow, inexplicably, had so far eluded me: the full scope, the wholeness, of how much I meant to him. As if that understanding was all I needed to be convinced to love him in return. As if, in answer to all my questions, that was the proof I required.
But it wasn’t. I needed something more conclusive. I needed to know beyond doubt whether real love was manifest, unmistakable, if I was to know whether it mattered at all.
“We haven’t finished,” I said.
Zep shrugged, defeated. “I just … I can’t keep playing games with her.”
I was thankful the freesias were no longer here to judge me.
“It’s because you’re afraid.”
His head jumped back. “No. Why —”
“You’re afraid that you’ll get funding for your idea, and give back your daughter’s money, and Emily still won’t love you. And then —”
“No.”
“— and then you’ll know for certain the reason for her leaving was you. It wasn’t your failure. It wasn’t the money. It was living with you she couldn’t bear. You’re afraid that’s true.”
He was shaking his head. I was nodding in return.
“I understand fear,” I said. “I understand.”
Wednesday, April 29
I KNOW I AM CRUEL. I have come to accept that I am not the daughter a mother would wish to raise. No one has been helped by me. No living thing knows a better life because of me. Those who think I have done them good have been fooled.
My own interest is all that matters, and if I must kill a thing to look inside it, I will. I hold minds in my hands like half-peeled oranges. Emotions are measurable compounds; passion and panic are needles that move. I don’t create, I consume. I take what I need, use what I need, leave behind nothing of value. I am larval. Depredatory. God, what kind of mother would I be?
Zep believes because of me, and he will believe for as long as I need. After that, it won’t matter.
But while he believes, I cannot distract him. Nothing must get in the way. So things will happen, events will occur, whether I want them to or not. I will go to his party, and I will be, and do, and endure whatever I must, as well as I can.
ZB Transcript 22
MARCIE, I WANT TO … that was bad what happened yesterday. I mean it wasn’t — I wasn’t really thinking when I started talking and … well I suppose you could say that most of the time, right? I guess that’s why they tried to keep me away from the mics back when I was playing.
Yeah.
Anyway. Sorry for all that. I’ll try to …
Listen, I talked to Hope yesterday and she made me feel a little better about everything. I went in there thinking I was gonna shut it down, the whole business, ’cause I was feeling like … well you know. I pretty much told you.
But, so, she said what’s done is done, right? And if we stop now then all that stuff was for nothing. Everything that we’ve done, everything that happened yesterday with Em. That scare we gave her and the … the memories she’s gonna have from that. That’d all just be wasted and pointless. That’d just be mean, is what Hope said, and then I’d feel even worse. And she’s probably right.
And she asked me, she said, do I think I’m the right man for Emily? Do I think I’d be good for her? And I said yeah.
You know, I’m a better guy than I used to be, definitely. I’ve thought a lot about stuff. About being a good husband and a good person and I know — the big thing is I know how easy it is to lose everything, if you’re not careful. I mean, it’s like love is this thing that’s alive, right? And if you don’t keep feeding it then it’ll die. And that’s what happened before. Em and I had love between us and she fed it as much as she could, but I didn’t feed it at all. Never even thought about it. And it died. And so that’s on me and I know that now. I learned my lesson. And I know there’s a lot of guys out there that are still like I was. And she could end up with one of them and go through the whole thing all over again.
But if she’s with me then … there’d be a better chance at least.
So Hope said then let’s try and finish it. Let’s give it another day. Let’s do one last thing to see if she’ll love me again. And I said okay.
It’s not gonna work, me giving Em a lift in the morning anymore. After what we did … Hope said it has to be something else. Some other reason for us to be together. I said, fuck, I got no idea other than, like, asking her for a date. And then I thought, why not, right? I mean, she kissed me. And like I told you yesterday, it wasn’t just a friend kiss. So why don’t I ask her for a date?
But, uh, Hope said no. She said it can’t be that ’cause Em can’t be thinking about it ahead of time. It’ll bring up doubts and cause resistance. Hope said the feeling has to sneak up on her. It has to grab her before she’s ready for it. Like what happened before, in the car. Just more so.
I couldn’t think of anything so she said sleep on it. And that was a stretch because I didn’t sleep at all last night. I mean, for a bunch of reasons.
But anyway, Marcie, it’s all gonna be okay. Somebody’s smiling on me I think. ’Cause, like, I needed something to break right for me and it totally did!
What happened was, this morning, when I was taking Pebbles to school, she said she has a music thing she wants me to come to. She’s in the school orchestra and she plays some kind of horn. Basso? Bosno? … She told me what it was … Bonsoo? There’s an ‘n’ in there somewhere … Anyway, some goddamn thing. Maybe it’ll come to me.
Point is they’re having a show tomorrow night, like a concert, for parents. And she wants me to come … Bassoon? … Bassoon … Yeah I think that’s it. So, she asked Em if it was okay and Em said sure, so it’s happening. I’m gonna meet them there. I offered to take them myself but Em said no ’cause Pebbles has to get there early.
So this morning, after I got back, I went up to Hope’s room. Which I probably shouldn’t’ve done because she fuckin’ hates it. But I did it yesterday, right? So I wasn’t really thinking.
Anyway, she opened the door and I said, “Hey! Guess what?”
And she just waited. She didn’t play along with me. Which, okay, fine, it was stupid. So I told her about the concert and going to see Pebbles.
She was all business, like usual. She said, “Will you be sitting with Emily?”
And I said, I guess so. That’s the point, right? I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s why Pebbles wants me there. She admitted to her mom that she took the keys ’cause she was trying to put us together. And they had a big talk. And she seemed to be in a good mood about it, so that’s a good sign.
I don’t think Em told Pebs anything about what happened yesterday, on the ride to work. Pebs would’ve just felt guilty, so luckily I didn’t have to get into any of that with her.
Uh, what else? … Hope asked me a couple of other questions, like about timing, when the show’s gonna start, when Pebbles has to be there, where it’s happening in the school. She thought about it for a second and then she nodded. Said, “Good.” And started closing the door.
I said, “Wait! Like, what’s the plan?” And she said she had to think about it. And then I asked her about the party tonight at Rick Kelsoe’s. I said, “Hope, this is my chance. I mean, if I can tell Em at the concert that I’m gonna be able to pay back Peb’s money, that might be the capper. That might be the last piece I need. Everything could come together.”
So I basically pleaded with her. I said, “Will you come? Will you come to the party?” I said, “I know it’s not what you want to do” — because she didn’t look happy about it at all — “but Rick and Tammy, they really like you. They really want you there and if I walk in and you’re not with me … it’s not gonna be good. In business, you don’t want to start off by disappointing people, right? You want people in a good mood.”
She asked me what she’d have to do. And I said, “I dunno, what, you’ve never been to a party? Just be nice. Be friendly. Talk to people who want to talk to you. Have a drink. Loosen up. Have a good time for once!”
She looked off into space for a minute with this face that looked like somebody’d just told her she was dying. And then she said okay. I said, “I’ll pick you up at eight.” And she closed the door.
I dunno. Should I feel bad about that, Marcie? I mean, “Go to a party with me.” I don’t think that’s asking too much, is it? And we’re both trying for the same thing, right?
Fuck. I never met anybody more complicated.
OKAY SO, THIS IS A BIT different, Marcie. I’ve got Hope with me in the car and we’re heading to the party.
Woman’s voice: Should you be doing that while you’re driving?
Yeah, it’s fine. I do it all the time.
Anyway, Marcie, I told Hope about this whole dictation-transcribing thing we’ve been doing and she’s okay with it. Right?
No, don’t just nod. Say it so she can hear you.
Hope: Yes.
Right, because you’ve been doing your own notes and stuff too. So it’s like we’ve got these two sides to it, which is kinda cool. And you’re even taking your notebook with you to the party. So, does that mean you’re going to spend all your time at the party writing stuff?
