And it’s not just the tchotchkes that alarm me, Mary Kay. Your house is a shrine to the nineties and the early aughts, when you all lived up by Hidden Cove in Manzanita. It’s like the two of you are sending a dangerous message to your daughter, that everything good, every memory worth preserving was almost twenty years ago, before she was even born.
You have his debut album framed, but all the other albums are in your garage, as if they don’t exist. I pick up a picture of you that’s almost nineteen years old. I recognize the background, the tiny one-home island they call Treasure Island. You cradle your newborn baby and you look like a child bride. Your smile is a cry for help and you are trying to hide a second set of teeth while you just die underneath and I see what no one else wanted to see. A woman trapped, held at gunpoint but in this case the gun is your husband’s Philstick.
I could spend hours exploring your photographs, tracing the disintegration of your love and your marriage, as spontaneous photos of your family bonding by the bunkers at Fort Ward—RIP Melanda—give way to uncomfortable staged shots on holidays—Say cheese for the timer on the iPhone and everyone be sure and mask your misery!—but Costco’s not that far away and I’m not here to visit your family museum.
I’m here to help you shut it down.
I set up cameras in the living room—one across from Phil’s chair—and I set up cameras in the kitchen—this is where you hide from your rat’s guitar—and I put cameras in the most fetid part of your house: your bedroom.
It smells like him, not you, and the rat has a bunch of his own scratched-beyond-repair compact fucking discs and what is it with you people and the past?
My phone buzzes and I flinch. It’s Oliver: Update.
I’m so sick of that word. He’s requested eight updates already today. The rule is simple: When he asks for an update, I have to give him a fucking update.
I leave your house the way I came in and I’m on the trail and the trail is empty and I send Oliver a picture I took earlier of the view from my hotel room—and I follow up that picture with a link to Mackintosh chairs on 1stdibs. He sends me an order—Good eye, buy ’em—and I purchase the fucking chairs and send him a screenshot of the confirmation. It’s another eight grand gone but I’ve noticed a pattern. The more I lean in to my role as Oliver’s personal shopper, the more time passes between his fucking Update texts.
I stop into T & C and pick up spicy popcorn—gotta nosh while I watch the Very Special Episode of your family sitcom tonight—and I put the popcorn into my reusable tote bag—we save the planet together—and I walk home and head down to my Whisper Room—cleaner now than it was when I moved in—thanks, Oliver!
The cameras are A-plus level of good and it’s like magic. There you are in the kitchen! Here comes Nomi with her backpack.
“I’m going to the bookstore.”
“Now? They close soon.”
“Well, you forgot to order my book at the library.”
“Nomi, the loan system is tricky… I don’t want to fight but can you at least consider reading something that isn’t Columbine-related? It’s getting a little… Nomi, please.”
Nomi stares at the stove top and my cameras are high def. Top shelf. “Soup’s on fire.”
The soup’s steaming but it’s not on fire and the Meerkat is gone and you pour that goddamn soup into the disposal and the door slams as Nomi leaves and Phil walks in. The TV show is about to get real and I shove a handful of popcorn in my mouth.
Phil doesn’t sit at the table and he doesn’t ask you what happened to the soup. He just stands there. You rinse out the pot. You don’t greet him. It’s a Mexican standoff and this is it. I can already hear you saying it in my head. Phil, I want a divorce.
You drop the pot in the sink and clench the edge of the counter with both hands. He doesn’t move. As if he knows you want to kill him.
“What now, Emmy?”
“I have one of your songs stuck in my head.”
He smiles and oh you’re good. “Oh yeah, which one?”
“Well, the one about the shark, of course.”
He’s a little disappointed because everyone knows that one. “Ah,” he says. “Well, I’m working on something now that’s gonna put that shark to sleep. Something way better…”
“You know, Phil, I always loved that song…” You gaze at him and he smiles. “I loved it because it was so raw. It was about us, the tension of a new baby… the feeling of your life changing from the inside out. It’s funny, though. I never knew that it was actually about Melanda.”
BOOM. I turn up the volume and Phil digs his hands into his dirty pockets. “Shit… Emmy. Hang on now. That song is about us.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Phil, I don’t give a shit about the fucking song right now. You and Melanda? Behind my back? For how many years?”
“Emmy, let me… shit.”
“Yeah,” you say. “That’s what you are. Both of you. A couple of pieces of shit.”
You pick up a sponge and squeeze the dirty water. Sponges are filthy by design and you can run it through the dishwasher but it will never be clean again. You pick at the dirty grout on your counter. “The worst part is… Jesus, all this time I think of myself as the person who makes you happy…”
“You do.”
“Oh fuck you, Phil. You do not get to say that right now. She was my best friend and you… I want you out.”
I clap my hands. YES.
“Emmy, you don’t mean that. You know there is no me without you. Baby, I’m a fuckup, okay?”
He drops to his knees and he’s pawing at your legs like the dog that he is and he’s crying and I want you to kick him in the face but now you’re crying and I drop my popcorn on the floor and no. Don’t cry, Mary Kay. This isn’t your fault. He’s bellowing that he deserves to be dead and you’re taking care of him as if he didn’t FUCK YOUR BEST FUCKING FRIEND.
You help him to his feet and he’s blubbering and shaking and sobbing in your soup-stained pot and he pukes in your pot and you rub his shoulders.
“Emmy, I’m the worst piece of shit on the planet.”
“Phil, stop it.” Your voice is soft.
“I never deserved you. You think I don’t know that? And Melanda… she… she threatened to ruin our life. She got off on hurting you and I didn’t… I’m a piece of shit.”
“Phil, come on. You’re making yourself sick.”
You hold a paper towel up for him like he’s a child and he blows his nose and you wipe his tears away and I throw my popcorn at the TV because no. You need to get mad. He’s casting aspersions on Melanda and you’re assuring him that she’s out of our lives and she wasn’t the bad guy.
Phil is your fucking husband, Mary Kay. And if Tyler Perry were here he would tell you to grab that pot and fill it with hot grits and smash it over his head. If Melanda were here—Goddammit—she would remind you about the fucking sisterhood. But look at you, mopping up his tears as you soak in his manipulative words.
“I don’t deserve you, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. It’s like, my old man’s been telling me I’m not good enough since I’m a kid, and then I get clean but I gotta find another way to get dirty to prove my old man right. I should blow my fucking brains out.”