Nomi pats him on the back—“Thank you, Uncle Seamus”—and he pulls away the way he should because he’s not really her fucking uncle and the girl needs her space. “Tell you what,” he says. “When my mom died, everyone was like, watch TV, binge, relax, but none of that worked for me…” Because you have no attention span, you lightweight. “What did help me was endorphins.”
That’s the second time he’s used that word in twenty minutes and he will never get married, will he? “Thanks,” she says. “I’ll remember that.”
He takes a deep breath and looks up at the trees. “I’m gonna go do a Murph in honor of your old man,” he says. “I know he’d like that.”
Phil was a lazy fuck who never broke a sweat deliberately and he would not like that at all. I smile. “That’s so nice, Seamus. Seriously.”
The second he’s gone it’s like he was never there and the Meerkat goes right back to where we were. “Do you really think I can do anything I want right now?”
“Yep.”
“And my mom won’t be pissed?”
“Nope.”
“Well, in that case, will you tell her I went to Seattle?”
I never offered to be her accomplice but she’s wearing a Sacriphil T-shirt and her Columbine is poking out of her backpack and it’s one thing to have a birthday party and have no kids show up but this is her father’s funeral and she has no one in there. I know that feeling. When someone you loved in spite of their imperfections is dead and no one in the world seems to care about what that’s like for you.
“Do me a favor, Nomi. The bong stays here.”
She salutes me like JFK Jr. at his father’s funeral and takes off through the backyard to the trail.
Inside, the guys from Sacriphil have picked up their instruments—I knew it was only a matter of time before we had an Unplugged Phil-less jam session—and there is an acoustic shark inside my shark—and I have a purpose now. I have to find you. I worm my way around the room, skirting my fecal-eyed multigenerational neighbors and for you this is a sad room, but for me this is a hot zone. Mrs. Kahlúa is here and this cannot, will not, must not be Jay’s coming-out party.
I cut through the kitchen but I’m fucked here too. The young woman who warned me about Phil is standing in front of your refrigerator. The door is blocking her face—thank you, door—but I recognize her hand. Two diamond engagement rings. She’s having small talk with a court-ordered older alkie I’ve seen at Isla and I am trapped and the guest bathroom door opens and I slip into that bathroom again.
I close the door. Safe.
Someone knocks on the door. “If it’s yellow let it mellow. The pipes are taking a beating!”
I run the faucet and eavesdrop on the NA people whispering about how long they have to stay—GO NOW GO—and they are going—yes!—and I flush the toilet—oops—and I exit the bathroom and here you are, in your kitchen, surrounded by second-and third-tier Melandas. I clear my throat. “Mary Kay,” I say. “You got a second?”
You’re mad at me but it’s not like I walked up to you and kissed you and there is no way to put the toothpaste back in the fucking tube. We did go to Fort Ward and you did mount me in a bunker—twice—and Dr. Nicky’s blog is right: I have feelings too and I am allowed to have feelings.
You excuse yourself, and my palms are sweating. What I say now matters and is it possible to say the right thing when you’re not yourself? You open the side door and now it’s you and me by the planter and you light one of the rat’s cigarettes and blow a smoke ring and who knew you could do that? “I don’t want to do this right now, Joe. I can’t do this right now.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know, Joe. You don’t know what this is like for me.”
“I know.”
You look at me. Validated. And then you blow smoke in a poisonous straight line. “I had no business turning off my phone. I have a child.”
“Let it out.”
You grit your teeth because it would be so much easier on you if I was being an asshole right now but I’m not gonna do that for you. “All we had to do was wait. You don’t know Phil…” Yes I do. “You don’t know that we had something of a deal. I looked out for him and he…” Did nothing for you but drag you down. “He needed me. I knew he was down and there I was off running around with some fucking guy I barely know behind his back while my own husband was dying inside.”
That was cruel but I am strong. “And you must feel horrible about that.”
“Well I feel like the biggest piece of shit that ever lived. He deserved better from me.”
And you deserved better from him but this is the other thing I hate about funerals, about wakes. We don’t get to blame the Deathday Boy. He’s like a bridezilla. It’s his day and he gets to whine and cunt out about every stupid thing in the world. “What can I do to help?”
You flick the cigarette on your own lawn and shrug. “Nothing,” you say, your voice flattened by Klonopin and semi-Melandas and all the pressure of hosting people in your home while you just die underneath. “There’s nothing anyone can do or say to bring him back and honestly, that’s all I want. Anything you do is a waste. Anything you say is a waste. Right now all I want in this world is the one thing I can’t have. One more day with Phil to tell him that I know he’s hiding heroin in his nightstand, under his amp, to take all of it and flush it down the toilet and force him into a car, into a rehab clinic so that my kid doesn’t have to go the rest of her life without a father, so that she doesn’t have to go through the rest of her life being the one who found him. I’m a big girl. I know that I can’t have that. But that’s where I am right now.”
You don’t touch me. You don’t make eye contact. You are a zombie with a second set of teeth and they’re his teeth, constant proof that he was alive, and I will be patient. I’ve been there, Mary Kay—I know what it’s like to lose someone who was bad for you. I know you’re bleeding inside. That pain you’re in gives you no right to hurt me but I won’t make this about me.
Unlike your dead rat, I am a strong man. A good man who’s able to put you first and respect the reality that his death is harder for you than it is for me. But you’re a widow now. You’re anointed with a new title and I too could kill that fucking rat for what he did to us. His guys finish playing the one and only true hit song that Phil ever wrote and the clapping is loud, too loud. You start crying and shutting the slider behind you, leaving me on your deck alone and if you had any intention of a future with me, you wouldn’t have closed that door.
32
I went home. I pigged out. I played some Prince, I played some Sinéad and I was bracing myself for seven hours and fifteen days without a word from you. But I was wrong, in the best way possible. You called me last night at 1:13 A.M. and you cried and I let you cry and soon you were talking about Phil’s parents—They always treated me like I wasn’t good enough and they think it’s my fault—and then you were crying again—It’s all my fault—and then you were angry—How could he do this to Nomi?—and then you were guilty—I should have been there for him, I should have known this was too much. I was so good to you, Mary Kay. I encouraged you to let it out and you fell asleep and I did not end the call. I stayed up all night until you were coughing.