Is she making this up as she goes along? “Can you just get to the point?”
She twirls her hair. “Go on my Facebook. Look at the pictures. It wasn’t a party for me, Joe. It was a fuck-you to me. All families. All kids and babies and it’s not like I don’t like kids and babies, but come on. I’m thirty years old and I don’t even have a boyfriend and Phil was supposed to bring this guy from his band who seemed decent and he’s not there and I’m literally the only person at my birthday party who doesn’t have a husband or a kid.”
I dig up the pictures on her fucking Facebook and I see you. I see all the children, but like most pictures, these don’t tell the whole story. Melanda curls up like a college kid in an emotional circle jerk. She says she got drunk and passed out on your sofa before the party ended.
“I woke up… I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know what year it was. You know that kind of drunk?” No. “That dirty thirty kind of drunk…” She’s Bridget Jones now, she’s fucking British. “Anywho, Phil comes downstairs.” She gulps, in a way that makes her story seem legitimate. “He whipped it out. I could have told him to bugger off. But I was just so mad at MK. I wanted to suck his cock, Joe…” Bridget didn’t talk like that. Too crass. “And I wanted to do that because of what she did to me with that pretend party. So I did it.” She arches her back, a mix of pride and shame and joy and you deserve better, Mary Kay. “And that’s that. Our ten-year anniversary is coming up and I do not want to be here to ‘celebrate’ it. I also don’t want to be forced to come back here for some stupid court hearing about all this… so this is where we are.”
“You expect me to believe that Mary Kay has no idea about you and Phil…”
“I’m a very good liar, Joe. You of all people should know that.”
I shove her phone in my pocket. “This has nothing to do with our situation.”
“Are you kidding? Don’t you get it? I want out. I hate the person I’ve become. I hate that I slowly, unconsciously settled for this man just because he calls me Ruby and I hate that I became someone who got off on pulling one over on my best friend. I hate my condo. I hate my job. I hate my noisy fridge and I hate the guilt and I hate that I’m actually happy I missed Christmas because it meant that I didn’t have to sit in their house like some overgrown orphan and go home and gorge on Hostess Cupcakes while I sit on my couch just hating myself. I swear to you, you are in the clear because I want to be in the clear. I want out.”
I see your strawberries on the sidewalk. I see the rain washing them away.
“Okay,” she says. “You don’t believe me. You need details…” No, Mary Kay. No. “So, a few years ago he got this day job… I mean the man does not belong at a desk…” She says that like it’s a good thing. “I would sneak out of school at lunch and park a block away and go into his office and… you know. He said he couldn’t live without me and it’s terrible, but it was so exciting, sneaking around, sucking him off, and going back to teach all the kids about Zora Neale Hurston.” She’s waving her arms as if this weight has finally been lifted and it all feels real but she might be faking it. She has been studying some of the world’s most phenomenal actresses and you’re a fox. You would know if your best friend and your husband were boning. Foxes see things. “I don’t know, Melanda…”
“Oh, come on,” she says. “Barn jacket Goody Two-shoes wives are always blind. These past few days… Being away from my life… well now I get it. Phil’s married to MK. You’re in love with MK. That’s the story of my life here. And here’s the kicker…” The long dramatic pause and I am the Bonnie Hunt to her Zellweger in Jerry Fucking Maguire. “You’re right, Joe. I’m not a woman supporting women. I don’t want to leave. I have to leave.”
She takes a stage breath and I feel played. “Melanda, I think you need to eat something.”
“You’re judging me. And you’re allowed. I was dumb like Anjelica Huston. Who knows? Maybe I’m too romantic…” Oh, for fuck’s sake. “And yes, Joe, yes, I have dreamed about Mary Kay catching a rare heart disease or a fast-moving cancer but that was only because I wanted Phil to be free.” She rubs her eyes. “And now I’m just… tired. Now I just want out.”
I picture her in Charlize Theron’s apartment in Young Adult, drunk and alone, calling you up in the middle of the night and telling you what I did to her as she underplays what she did to me and I knock on the glass and she sighs, ever the condescending teacher and she says she hears me. “Look at it this way. If there’s one thing you can be sure about, well, I know how to keep a secret. I never gave Phil an ultimatum. I never threatened to tell MK. And I don’t want to hurt her anymore. And this time around… this is a secret that I would hold on to because I don’t want her to know. I’ve done enough damage to them.”
“You’re not the one who’s married, Melanda. He took advantage of you.”
She looks me right in the eye. “No, Joe. I took advantage of them.”
She kicks the wall with her bare foot and now she’s rubbing her foot and she reminds me of my son, always banging himself on the head, his mother begging her Instagram audience of cunts for advice. How do I get my little boy to stop beating himself up? Do I put him in a helmet?
I tell her this is a very creative story and she accuses me of saying she’s not hot enough for Phil because she doesn’t prance around in miniskirts like you and I tell her she’s twisting my words and she tugs at the GUN on her T-shirt. “Did you read that book The Beloveds?”
“The Maureen Lindley? No, I haven’t read it yet.”
Her face is the reason people like RIP Benji lie about reading books and her eyes fill with judgment. Thick, ugly snobbery. “Well, it’s this theory. Some people get to be loved and some people don’t.”
“That’s a crock of shit. You just said that Phil ‘loves’ you. So which is it?”
“You’re a kidnapper. I’m a husband fucker. Let’s agree that we’re not model citizens. You want in, I want out.” She makes it all sound so simple, Mary Kay, like a bizarro-world Pacific Northwest fairy tale where it’s happy endings all around. But that’s what teachers do. They simplify things. She rubs her eyes. “Well, if you won’t put me on a plane right now, can you please bring the TV in here? I have such a migraine.”
I’m tired too, Mary Kay. And I can’t deal with her remains, not with the fucking Strawberry Killer out there. I’m a nice guy, and she’s starting to cry, so I bring the TV into her room. She rolls over and picks up the remote. “Thank you,” she says. “And if it’s not too much… I’d love a nice big fast-breaking last supper. Steak or salmon. Or even chicken.”
“It’s not your last supper, Melanda.”
She cues up the third and last Bridget Jones movie. “Can you just let me watch in peace?”