There’s a man standing there, staring at me as if I’m the intruder and did Oliver send him? His face is familiar but he’s too old to be Oliver’s brother and he’s wearing a Rolex so he’s not a cop.
He breaks the silence. “Who the fuck are you?”
I turn that shit around. “Who the fuck are you? And how did you get in here?”
He clocks the sink full of dirty dishes. “I’m Phil’s brother. I have a key,” he says. Blithe. Cold. “And I guess you do too, huh?”
33
This no-show, middling life coach starts washing your dishes like he owns this place, like casserole dishes don’t need to soak, and he’s a straitlaced version of Phil and I want him gone—we don’t need this right now—and I hear you upstairs. You’re scrambling into your clothes and washing your face and now you bound down the stairs. You smell of soap. You washed me off.
“Ivan,” you say, breezing right by me, putting your arms around Phil Part Two. “You’re here.”
You should hate him—he skipped the fucking funeral—but you don’t hate him. You’re obsequious. You thank him for doing the dishes as if they aren’t still scabbed and you fawn on him for pouring dish soap into the compartment in the scrub brush—oh, please—and you treat him like a human gadget. Like he’s Mr. Fucking Fix-It. We have the iPhone, the iPad, and now we have the motherfuckering iMan.
Yes, your brother-in-law Ivan is a textbook Ivan—entitled, arrogant, starched on the bottom and wrinkled T-shirt on top—and he’s the missing piece of the puzzle, the shark inside Phil’s shark. Better nose. Smarter. Colder. He’s only Phil’s half brother—they share a mother—and we should be talking about Phil, but it takes eleven seconds or so for Ivan to announce that he’s been taking things to the next level with his “life-coaching business.” It sounds like bullshit and you’re busy doting on him so I google him and yes. Okay. Ivan’s getting some press and he’s “trending”—that word needs to die—but anyone can see that his entire “career” is driven by his desire to be a rock star like his brother. Can you stop salivating over this fucker and remember the facts? He showed up after your husband’s funeral—what a monster—and a life coach should have compassion, not to mention a fucking shirt with some buttons.
But look at you, still being so nice to him! The two of you are catching up and I’m in a chair in the corner of your kitchen reading about Ivan and the mental health situation in the Separated States of America is bad because of people like him. He followed up his BA with a PhD—he’s a doctor but he couldn’t save a life on a plane—and he made his fortune by greasing the wheels for big, bad pharma. And what does he do with all that extra money? Does he start a nonprofit? Does he build an incubator to ensure that the future is female? Nope. He builds a website—well, he pays someone to build it—and declares himself a life coach. I watch a short closed-captioned video of him “presenting” his “philosophy.”
You took the first step. You’re here. I’m here to help you take the next step. Ready, Ladies? Because I’m about to blow your mind. （A long dramatic stare.） Don’t trust your feelings. （Another long, even more dramatic stare.） Your whole life you’ve been told that you have feelings. What if the people who told you that you’re emotional had told you that you’re smart? （He puts on a baseball cap that reads THINKING CAP and ugh, he made merch.） Welcome to a new world where you don’t trust your feelings. You see them for what they are: Cobwebs. Quicksand. Clutter. I’m here to make you think.
No wonder there are so few views and yet look at you right now, pouring vinegar into your coffeemaker because he said to do it. Like his dead brother, he brings out the worst in you and I dislike the fucking video to focus on the show in here. He has an excuse for everything.
Why wasn’t he at the funeral? I had twelve hundred clients with flights booked, hotels prepaid. I had to be there.
Nope! He paid to attend a seminar on social media branding for life coaches and he did not have to be there.
Why wasn’t he here for wake week? For the casserole parade? I had a sit-down with GQ in New York. I begged my agent to let me do a phoner, but they wanted the whole shebang, a photo shoot, the X-factor when I walk into the lobby of the Four Seasons, all that good stuff.
The story was for GQ dot com and the story is only online and sorry, Ivan, but you didn’t have a sit-down. It’s a piece about CEOs with “second acts”—Ivan hired a publicist after his brother died and that publicist used RIP Phil DiFuckingMarco to get Ivan some press. I am a good guy and Ivan is a bad guy, a fake-it-till-you-make-it motherfucker who uses words like shebang. And again I say it: WHAT KIND OF A LIFE COACH SKIPS HIS BROTHER’S FUNERAL?
He looks down at the coffee you hand to him. He looks down at you. “You better not be beating yourself up for what happened, Emmy. You know it’s not your fault, right? You know there’s nothing you could have done.”
I don’t have a PhD in Psychology but this is projecting and you are fawning—Thank you for all those flowers, Ivan, they really did make the funeral—and I butt in. “What a good brother,” I say. “That’s generous, considering you couldn’t be there.”
“Well, they’re half brothers,” you say. “And Ivan’s so busy in Denver…”
He claps his hands and he almost hits your nose. “Stop that, Em. There is no half or whole. He was my baby brother. End of story.” His phone buzzes. He smiles and walks to the front door and you and I follow, like sheep.
Nomi is on the street, running faster than I’ve ever seen her move.
You are puzzled. “She said she was gonna stay in Seattle.”
He is smug. “I told her I was here.”
That selfish bastard pulled Nomi away from people who actually love her and she hugs him and he says she looks so grown-up and I don’t like his Rolex, sliding around his wrist so we can’t forget it’s there. “All right,” he says. “Where are we headed in the fall?”
Ivan’s got his arm around Nomi and they’re walking into the house and do I stay? Do I go? You wave at me—come on—so I follow you but this is all wrong. I’m more in tune with this family than this Ivan Come Lately but he’s the one Nomi is excitedly telling about NYU.
“You’re going to love New York,” I butt in.
We’re all back in the kitchen and there’s an awkward silence.
Ivan looks at you, not me. “Sorry, MK… who is this guy?”
You rub your collarbone the way you do when a Mothball asks for help with a fucking e-card and Nomi answers the question. “Joe’s a volunteer at the library. And he’s from New York, so of course he’s biased about NYU.” She tears at a loaf of bread and laughs. “Also he has three cats.”
I don’t need Ivan to know about our cats and I was a mentor to Nomi. I listened to her talk about books. I helped her discover how rewarding it is to help old people and this is how she repays me? You lighten the mood by pouring coffee and there are three of you and one of me and I’m not even allowed to be mad that you didn’t tell Ivan I’m your boyfriend because oh that’s right.