But now I hear the footsteps above all the TVs. Someone is here, inside this house.
The floorboards on the stairs whinny beneath feet. “Dad? Is that you?”
It’s your daughter. It’s Nomi, the Meerkat.
26
When I was a kid, my mother didn’t read to me. She was always groggy, tired. I work a double and I get home and now you want me to read to you? No one was going to read to me so I learned to read to me. You can do that, you can read the story out loud and if the story is good enough, you transcend the limits of your ego. You split. You become the reader and the listener, the child and the adult. You beat the system. You beat your doom. Reading saved my life when I was a sweaty little kid and it saves my life again today because I always carry a book. I’m carrying one right now: Robert McCammon’s The Listener. You gave it to me last week, Mary Kay, and come on, book, work your magic and save my life because Nomi is at the bottom of the stairs clutching her chest.
“You scared the living shit out of me!”
“You scared me too, Nomi.”
She grips the banister. “What are you even doing here?”
I walk, one step at a time. “Your mom gave me this book and I was bringing it back. I thought someone was home… Do you guys always leave so many TVs on?”
She sighs, the fear in her voice waning. “That’s my dad. And they wonder why I always have my headphones on.”
I reach the bottom of the steps. “I’m sorry I scared you…”
She shrugs. “I thought it was just Seamus,” she says and oh that’s right, that fucker is like your handyman and she really isn’t scared, not anymore. She yawns. “Can we go outside? It’s such a relief when I have the place to myself.”
I open the sliding glass door and it glides—Damn you, Phil—and Nomi and I sit at the table on your deck. It’s my first time hanging out here like one of your Friends and Nomi picks up my book. “So why didn’t you just bring this back to the library?”
I won’t let her ask the questions and I smile. “So you’re home early, yeah?”
I caught her good—ha!—and she begs me not to tell her parents—I won’t.
My phone buzzes and she yawns. “Who’s that?”
Oliver. “An old friend from home…”
Oliver found a $35,000 bedazzled horse at some gallery in a casino and I tell him it’s tacky and he tells me to fuck off and then he fires back.
Oliver: Being good?
Me: Yes. And you do NOT buy art in Vegas, Oliver. Rookie move.
I look at the Meerkat. Her eyes are glazed and she’s puckering her lips and wait. Is she stoned right now? Well, that means she won’t tell you about our little run-in.
“Nomi, I’m not a narc but I do have to ask… are you high?”
“A narc? Are you high?”
She laughs and pulls a bong out of her bag. “It’s legal,” she snaps. She barely knows how to work the thing and her lighter is almost dead and she’s awkward. Uncoordinated. She coughs. “They say this stuff makes you paranoid. But I was born paranoid. Maybe it will make me normal.”
She shows me the “new” book she’s reading—a reissued copy of In Cold Blood—and it pains me to see a young woman filling her mind with more darkness, but at least it’s not Columbine and I smile. “So, then I assume this means you’re all done with Dylan Klebold?”
She bangs her bong on the table. “I told you I just like his poems. A lot of good writers are nutjobs.” She coughs and I hope she doesn’t overdose and she asks me if I live alone—with all those cats—and I nod and she coughs through a sigh. “I could never. I would be so paranoid. I would go nuts. And cats can’t even protect you.”
I won’t be insulted. Of course she has issues. Her father is a playboy and her parents aren’t in love. “It’s not so bad. You get used to it, Nomi. Cats are good company.”
She shrugs. “I always told Melanda that she should get a cat.” Wrong. She couldn’t keep that condo clean as it was. “I think she went nuts from being alone so much.” Well, that’s closer to the truth. “It’s cool to be alone in a city or whatever, but here? No offense.”
“None taken,” I say, and I have to remember that this is a child. A minor. A shit ton of perfectly well-adjusted people live alone, they don’t pair off, but still the family people act like there’s something wrong with us. “So,” I say. “Melanda moved?”
She smiles at me in a way that reminds me that she came from inside of you. Her grin is pure Alanis Morissette, a little too knowing. “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe she took off cuz she was pissed when I told her how much I loved that movie you told me about.”
I am the adult. The authority figure. “That’s crazy, Nomi. Don’t blame yourself. Not for one second.”
She’s a kid again, scratching her messy hair. “Yeah, she probably just got sick of my parents. They’re so annoying.” I can’t agree with her so I don’t respond but I can’t imagine living in that house either. “Did you know her?” she asks. “Did you know Melanda?”
I don’t like the question and I might be getting a contact high. Paranoid. I steer us back to the safe water, after-school-special seas. “Nomi, your parents aren’t annoying. All parents are annoying. That’s biological design. Otherwise no one would ever want to leave the nest.”
She takes off her glasses and wipes them with a napkin. “I can’t wait to get out of here. My parents… they act like everything since high school blows, like they’d get in a time machine if they could. It’s so sad. I mean life is all about what’s next, you know?”
I wish you were more like your daughter, Mary Kay, but it can’t be me and Nomi talking shit about you, so I defend you and your low-grade nostalgic depressive fever. I remind Nomi that we grew up in a different time, before cell phones and Instagram. “Your mom’s not living in the past, people our age just miss the way things used to be.”
She huffs. “Well excuuuuuse me.”
“No, Nomi, I’m not saying we were better than you. I’m just saying we were better off.”
“Totally disagree.”
I want your fucking Meerkat to listen and I snap my fingers. “Think of a meerkat.”
“Okay…”
“A meerkat in the wild is just living her meerkat life. But a meerkat in a cage, well she needs people to feed her. She tries to do meerkat things but she doesn’t have the space. And let’s face it. She wants people to look at her because she learns that’s the only way she gets to eat.”
Your Meerkat gives me a huh—she’s thinking about my metaphorical meerkat—but maybe not, because now she’s staring at me again. Alanis eyes. Piercing. “You want to know something sick?”
No. This is one step too far and I steal your words—“I should probably get going…”—but she leans in like the little meerkat that she is. “My mom is so paranoid about my dad that she put cameras all over the house.” All my blood stops midflow. She knows. She knows. Do you know? “So yeah, I think she kind of likes capturing the moment.”