I put my hand on The Listener and I will McCammon’s strength to funnel into my veins. I will not turn red. I will not cave in to paranoia. “Wow. How do you know?”
She rocks back and forth in her chair. “Well I don’t know. It’s just a vibe.”
Thank Christ, and I pick up her bong. “The rumors are true, Nomi. This really can make you paranoid. Once I got so high that I thought there was an earthquake in New York. I called 911.”
She’s a Listener and she’s backtracking, doubting herself. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. And my mom is so bad at technology, she wouldn’t know how to work cameras.”
We’re in the clear—I think—and I take a deep time-to-go breath but she pulls her knees to her chest and keeps talking. “You know my parents started going out in high school? Can you imagine?”
I can’t leave, not when she goes there. “I didn’t know that.”
“Everyone thinks it’s so romantic. They have this Nirvana ticket stub framed and she swears she remembers the night and I’m like do you even? Or do you just stare at that ticket stub so much that you think you remember it? She acts like her life is so good, like that’s how it works, like posting the ticket stub every year isn’t pathetic. She’s like ‘Do you have a crush on anyone at school?’ and it’s like ‘No, Mom. Boys my age are stupid. Do you think that means I’m gonna die alone?’ But then I’m like, whatever… I don’t like the guys and they don’t like me. I mean Dylan Klebold was like… bad…”
“Yes.”
“But it was kinda like mistaken identity…”
No. And I hate drugs. I do. “Okay, Nomi, but—”
“See if I had been that girl, that girl he was in love with, I mean I would have gone up to him and like… who knows? Eric would have bugged him to help with his psycho mission but Dylan woulda been like no… I’m good. I mean nobody had to die, you know? Like… that girl… she could have saved him.”
That’s a fantasy of a child who thinks that love can cure anything, even mental illness, and I relate on some level. I tried to save Borderline Beck and my parents were like Nomi’s parents—minus the nostalgia—but there is nothing for me to say to fix the damage that Phil has done to this child. You’re complicit, Mary Kay. She’s a soulful kid, an artist without a medium, and for all your Nomi needs me you don’t seem to be getting into it with her and does she fucking know about my cameras?
She yawns. “Sorry,” she says. “This is why I can’t smoke pot. I get stupid.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Nomi. Don’t ever be sorry for talking.”
She squints, a Meerkat again, a child full of doubt, wonder. “Do you know my aunt Melanda?” she asks again.
She committed suicide in my basement and I nod. “Not so well. I heard she moved.”
“Well, do you know why?”
Because she thought she’d never find true love and she realized she’s not Carly Simon. “I think it was something about a job.”
The Meerkat fights a smile. “That’s what she said, but everyone at school says she was… you know… doing this freshman kid and the parents didn’t want to press charges so they were like, leave. This kid in my orgo class says he saw her sticking something in his butt on this trail where we went to release salmon eggs when we were little. I mean I believe it. And my mom’s not speaking to her and she was always in my face about stuff but now she’s like… silent. I bet it’s true.”
“What does your mom say?”
“She says I can’t believe everything I hear but I mean I’d go crazy if I was her age alone here too. No offense…”
“None taken.”
I tell the Meerkat I have to go and she says to wave goodbye to the cameras—chills—and I am offended, Mary Kay, but not in the way you might think. The Meerkat is high, pretending to be so cavalier about her aunt disappearing, but beneath that adolescent bravado, your daughter is in pain. RIP Melanda wasn’t perfect, but she was Nomi’s fucking aunt and she was a regular in your home. The Meerkat misses her aunt and she wants to believe the bullshit story about the freshman because it’s easier than thinking that one of the only people on this planet who cares about her just walked out of her life. That would be like if Mr. Mooney had shut down the bookstore on me and skipped town without a word and you just can’t fucking do that to a child. I would have gone nuts if I had lost the only mentor in my life and don’t you see, Mary Kay? Phil isn’t just bad for you. He’s bad for everyone. Because of him, Melanda is dead to you—not to mention dead in real life—and you have to cover for her. You have to encourage Nomi to believe an outright lie because you’re a good mother and you’ve wondered what’s worse: your daughter knowing that your husband fucked your best friend or your daughter thinking Melanda was a sexually deviant spinster child molester.
I get it. You don’t want Nomi to despise her father and I know you can’t tell Nomi what Melanda did to you, what she did with Phil, but Nomi is in pain. You’re in pain. You women suffer while he tries out guitars, man, and enough is enough.
It’s time for reality to take a bite out of Phil but then I hear the Meerkat in my mind—Wave goodbye to the cameras, Joe—and I hope reality doesn’t bite me first.
27
It’s 12:36 P.M. and I’m at Starbucks and it’s one of the stranger things about this island. You’d think people would look down on corporate coffee but it’s always packed in here and that knit cap fucker from the ferry is blocking the mobile order pickup spot with his stroller and what can I say? I’m in a mood. Oliver’s back—four tables away, as if all that trust we built is gone—and my favorite hate-watch TV show is getting canceled—thanks, Nomi—and people get grumpy when they lose their binge shows. I push the knit cap dullard’s empty stroller and he glares at me as if his unremarkable lesser Forty is in the fucking stroller.
“Sorry,” I say. “Just trying to get my coffee.”
He looks through me, Seattle freeze style, and I grab my latte and I really am trying, Mary Kay. I wait outside and sure enough, Oliver is out the door.
“You seem a little moody, my friend. Do I have to worry about you snapping?”
“Oliver, no one likes to be stalked.”
“I dunno about that,” he says. “Minka got two thousand more followers after this bikini shoot and when those pervs DM her about coming to get her… that shit makes her happy.”
I laugh and fake a sneeze. “Oh right,” I say. “Seth MacFarlane follows her, doesn’t he?”
I don’t know if Mr. Fucking Family Guy “follows” Minka, but it doesn’t matter. Seth MacFarlane has the career that Oliver wanted, so Oliver is backing away, muttering about emails that need sending when we all know he’s going to take a nice, deep, time-sucking dive into Minka’s verified followers.
He waves at me. “Have fun with your cats, my friend. Stay safe.”
He’s starting his car and opening Instagram—I knew it—and thank God for that because I do need my space. I’ve been trying to make things better for us but your daughter is a paranoid truancy case and I don’t have a choice, do I? I have to scale back my renovations on your home as if she issued a STOP WORK order via some state compliance agency. I studied the footage all night in the Whisper Room and Nomi never once looked directly at the cameras, so I do think we’re safe. I don’t think she actually knows about them. But Shel Silverstein’s Whatifs are upon me and they will not be ignored.