“Did your dad put up a fight when you moved up here?”
I smell onions, layers peeling away, revealing the truth under the truth. You tell me you didn’t understand the divorce. There was no scandal, no cheating. “It was like one day, my mom woke up and she didn’t want her pink Cadillac anymore. She didn’t want him either.”
“Were there signs?”
“I missed them,” you say. “Are you good about signs? Reading people…”
Yes. “Well, who can say?”
“I think we all see what we want to see.” You look around again, so nervous, as if one of these people is going to text Nomi and tell her that her mother is on a date. And then you relax again. “Well, my mom sort of just announced that she was done with Mary Kay, that we were moving to Bainbridge Island, that she was craving nature.”
“And you don’t know why she left him?”
“No clue,” you say. “It was amiable. There was no custody battle, no fight. He was so calm that he drove us to the airport! He’s my dad and he’s kissing us goodbye like we were going away for the weekend. We left him all alone. My mother made me complicit. But then, that’s not fair to say because it’s like I said. It was all so damn amiable.”
I feel for you, I really do. “Jesus.”
“One day my mom’s harping on me to use more eyeliner and the next thing you know… we live here and she’s telling me that I don’t need lipstick. I didn’t ask her why we left, but then… what’s scarier than your mom becoming a total stranger?”
I think of where I stand with Love, powerless against a woman’s blind determination to make our child her own. “I get it.”
“And then, after all that, my mom spent every night on the phone with my dad, egging him on to eat better.”
“Strange.”
“Right? And this was before cell phones. I couldn’t call my friends back home. I didn’t have any friends here yet. I felt so alone. She was always in her room, taking care of my dad, letting him tell her how beautiful she is as if they were still married. I remember thinking, Wow. You leave him… You move to another state. But you never leave a man, even when you do.”
“Jesus Fucking Christ.”
You air-toast me with your empty glass. “And that, my friend, is too much information.” We’ve come full circle, inverted the joke, and you signal for another drink and you’re in flow, the levee broke. “It’s like… we all know about sham marriages. But what about a sham divorce?”
“That’s a good way to describe it.”
You stare at the table and the waitress plunks our drinks down and you thank her and sip. “I just wish I knew why she left him at all if she was only going to spend the rest of her life on the phone with him, you know? Because why not just stay together if that’s what it is? Why uproot my entire life?”
I don’t answer your question. It was rhetorical. All you need is for me to listen.
“I look back and I don’t know how I survived.” You breathe. You are activating the most important empathy, the empathy we have for ourselves. “My mother and I were bickering nonstop. One night I lost my temper and threw my landline at her and she had this huge welt on her forehead, so bad she had to get bangs to cover it up.” I smile but you furrow your brow and oh that’s right: violence against women is always bad, even when it’s you. “It was like Grey Gardens minus the fun…” I love you. “I guess your Cedar Cove fantasy got under my skin because no one welcomed us with open arms.” You sip your drink. “Then, one day, Melanda asked me to eat lunch together. She told me all about her fucked-up family…” Foregone conclusion. They named their child Melanda. “I told her all about mine. She said I’d fit in really well because everyone on this island is fucked up, they just like to pretend they’re not and… I dunno. Life just went on from there. Melanda was my buffer. She showed me all that graffiti at Fort Ward. And that graffiti… well, it helped. It still helps.”
“How so?”
“It’s like a conversation that’s still alive. My mom and I, we never got around to hashing it out. But I go to Fort Ward and I feel like I can still talk to her even though she’s gone. Like maybe one day she’ll appear in the sky and tell me that I’m not doomed to mess up my daughter the way she messed me up…” That is why you stay away from love and you shrug. “I dunno. I’m probably just drunk.”
You’re not drunk. You just haven’t found anyone to talk to. You look at me—you can’t believe I’m finally here—then you smirk. You can’t believe I’m still here. “Pretty bad, huh?”
“No,” I say. “Pretty human.”
I said the right thing and you laugh. “Well, I swore I’d never confuse Nomi like that. Ever.”
You’re self-conscious. You felt so safe with me that you forgot about where we are and you glance around the pub, nervous. You wipe away a half-tear and you snort. “Sometimes I think I got pregnant just to piss her off, to remind her that if you really love someone, you know, you fuck them instead of just talking on the phone…” You are a little drunk now. “And once in a while when you’re actually having sex, the condom breaks. C’est la vie.”
“I get it,” I say.
Another anxious look around the bar. “Well, the timing was tough… but yeah, I did have this hunger to make my own little family, to kind of show her up.”
“And you did.”
“Have you met my kid?”
“Oh come on,” I say. “Your kid is fucking great. You know it.”
You do know it and it’s important for you to realize that you are a good mother because once you see that, you can let me in all the way. We are still treading water, even after all you said. You’re holding back as you open up about your father and explain that he calls you a lot. “I don’t always pick up, I mean I have Nomi, I have a job, and every call ends in frustration. I’m not my mother, you know?”
“It’s fundamentally different.”
“I can’t stay on the phone with him all night. I will not do that to Nomi.”
You think all men are a threat to your relationship with your daughter and I am here to help you change. “I’m sure he understands that.”
“I just… I will not do that to my daughter. I won’t let my life ruin her life.”
You think it’s your fault that your dad is sad and I know how that feels. I push my plate to the edge of the table. You look at me. You need me. “Look,” I begin. “You can’t fix someone who doesn’t want to be happy.” Hi, Candace. “You can’t make anyone see the light if they prefer the dark.” Hi, Beck. “You try to do that, you end up on a dark road. You make bad decisions.” I really did move to Los Angeles for Amy, the stupidity. “And then you get stuck.” I have a permanent bond with Love Quinn, a son. “It’s not easy, but you have to accept that there’s no right move with your dad. You can’t save him from himself.”