“Phil, stop it. I mean it.”
This can’t be happening, Mary Kay. You’re forgiving him for what is unforgivable. Ask the Bible. Ask anyone, Mary Kay.
HE FUCKED YOUR BEST FRIEND AND THAT IS WRONG THE END.
You blow your nose into his flannel and your marriage is ugly, unhygienic. “Okay, Phil… Look, I can’t be a hypocrite. I’m not perfect either.”
He pulls away, slightly, and I zoom in, slightly. Your empathy is your own worst enemy right now. And he knows it. Don’t you see that?
“What do you mean you’re not perfect?” he says. “Is there something I should know about? Someone I should know about?”
He’s not crying anymore. He can fuck your best friend and demand immediate forgiveness but you say one tiny thing about your own life and he shuts down on you. Opposites attract. But opposites destroy.
“God, no,” you say. “I only meant that I should have figured this out sooner.”
You’re not a very good liar and you can’t compare our relationship to what he did to you.
He grabs a Ulysses saltshaker and throws it at a cabinet—broken! Broken as the clock on the ferry!—and he exits stage left screaming at you, calling you all kinds of names. He’s in the living room stomping back and forth—what a big strong man!—and he says he always knew you’d do this to him and you want to know how he can say that after what you just found out about him and he spits at you.
“You’re a fucking tramp. Look at the way you dress.”
“The way I dress? I wear a skirt so I’m asking for it? Do you really wanna go there right now?”
“Do you see other women around here wearing skirts?”
“Fuck you, Phil.”
That’s more like it and he growls. “Who is it?”
“Well,” you say. “I’ll tell you this much. It’s not your best friend.”
He grabs a ceramic Bront? sister doll and throws it at a picture frame—BAM—and he wants to know who it is. “I told you. I deserve the same honesty, Emmy.”
“Do you hear yourself, Phil? You didn’t tell me anything. I’m the one who confronted you. And I’m trying to be compassionate. I’m trying to be reasonable.”
“Who the fuck is it? Is he here? Do I know the bastard?”
“That’s your question? Do I know the bastard? Oh Phil, I just… That’s all you care about. If you know him. I tell you that I have feelings for another man and you don’t want to know what I’m missing… you just want to know if you can talk about him on your fucking show. And the answer is no, by the way. Unlike you, he doesn’t air his grievances five nights a week. Unlike you, he reads.”
That was for me! An Easter egg just for me and I’m off-camera but I’m on the only screen that matters, the one in your head. “Yes! You go, Mary Kay!”
Phil kicks at the carpet like a bull in a pen. “Who is he, Mary Kay? Who’s your fucking boyfriend?”
“This isn’t about my boyfriend and this isn’t about Melanda either. This is supposed to be about us. About me.”
You called me your boyfriend and I pop a little more popcorn into my mouth and Phil picks up another tchotchke but this time he doesn’t throw it. Hopefully it will break in his hand and he won’t be able to play guitar anymore. You’re tense. You’re walking in circles. And then you stop. “Hello.”
He says nothing.
You slap your thighs. It’s so over. “So that’s it? You’re gonna shut down and act like nothing happened?”
“Well, that’s me, Emmy. You hide in your books. I play my guitar.”
“Oh right. Shame on me because I like to read. Shame on me for wishing I had the kind of husband who wanted to go to the meadow with me and curl up in the bunkers with our books.”
“That was high school.”
“So was your fucking music.”
Down goes another tchotchke and I love this show. You do too. You clap your hands. Disgusted golf claps. “Well done,” you say. “More for me to clean up. Tell me, were you off with Melanda when I was reading and being stupid enough to believe that you were writing your fucking ‘songs’？”
Phil huffs and he puffs. Literally, he’s lighting a cigarette. “It’s always the same,” he says. “You wanna hide from life and I wanna live it.”
You gawk at him as well you fucking should. “Oh, that’s rich, Phil. Really, really rich. So I suppose you’re the hero because you’re the writer. You humiliated me with your fucking songs and you fuck my best friend and somehow that’s okay because oh right! Phil is an artist!”
This is it, the end of your marriage, and I pump my fist in the air. “You tell him, Mary Kay!”
“And as we all know, artists are gifted. And they need things to write about so I guess I should just bow my head and stock the fridge because music comes first in this house! Never mind me, never mind oh I don’t know… never mind loyalty.” You are trembling now. “She was my best friend. She was like my sister. She was Nomi’s aunt… and you wrecked it. All of it.”
He flicks ashes on a dirty plate. “Yeah,” he says. “Well, that’s one thing the three of us have in common. We deal with you, Emmy. And being in it with you… well, that’s the loneliest kinda lonely there is. Ask Melanda. Ask Nomi. They’ll back me up all night long, babe.”
You march up to him and slap his face and I want to give this show a thousand stars and Phil just shakes his big fat head. He reaches for your hand. You let him hold it and he starts to cry—fake news, fake tears—and he’s groping you and he’s all apologies and he says he didn’t mean it—yes he did—and he’s begging you to forgive him and over and over he says the same thing: “I never wrote a song about her, Em. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
That’s a lie—he sent me the song—and you know that sorry doesn’t cut it but the man is a performer. He’s a good crier. You rub your forehead. You know this man doesn’t understand you and how could he? You’re staring through your glass doors and you’ve wasted the bulk of your life with this artist. You want a new life. A life with me. You said it at Hitchcocks. I didn’t think someone like you existed. I am your fresh start. Me.
Tell him, Mary Kay. Tell him you love me.
Tell him you would be happier in the Nirvana meadow in the tall grass with the one you love, being innocent with me, forever young, forever old, feeding our hungry souls with words, with stories. Tell him you’ve outgrown him and that you can’t go on pretending that any of this fits. Tell him that you wanted it to work for Nomi’s sake, but now you have this friendless unfiltered daughter who wants to read about teenage serial killers and you see the light.
You walk away from him. It’s a step. Literally, metaphorically. You are even closer to the window.
Tell him, Mary Kay. Tell him that he was the love of your young life, that you don’t hate him. You wanted to be on a pedestal and tell him that what hurts the most isn’t that he cheated with Melanda, but that deep down you don’t really care because of how you feel about me, the partner you want, the lover you deserve. Me.