Our love is a secret. Nomi doesn’t know either. She thinks I’m a loser like Shortus.
You open the freezer and retrieve a casserole and Ivan claps his hands again and you and the Meerkat freeze up like this is a fucking improv class and he is your teacher. “Rule One,” he says. “Those casseroles go in the trash. That food is something that other people needed to provide in order to express their condolences. But that food is not for you to eat, girls.” Girls and he’s just another insecure prick, a tall fucking Shortus. “Rule Two,” he says, on his feet now, rolling up those sleeves like he’s about to manhandle a baby at a political convention. “Same logic applies to Phil’s things.”
“Ivan,” I say. “You don’t want to go there.”
You don’t look at me. Your eyes are glued to him and he puts his hands on your shoulders. “Emmy, I know you… Trust me when I tell you that death is a part of life. We are animals and we have to move forward. Your feelings are intense. But feelings aren’t real.” He points at his head and I wish his finger was a gun. “We have to use our heads to protect us from the spontaneous, reactionary urges of our hearts.”
The word is reactive and he’s talking about me, Mary Kay. He may as well pick me up and shove me in one of RIP Phil’s fucking trash bags and he is wrong. Your feelings for me are not a reaction to that dead rat—we’ve been falling in love for months—but what do you do? You tell him that he’s right and you are gonna gather Phil’s things today and I offered to get rid of those fucking trash bags less than an hour ago and you bit my head off. You’re all hugging and I may as well be back in the woods, on the trail, behind the rock. My chair squeaks when I stand. “I think I should get going.”
You keep your head where I can’t see it, buried in Ivan’s chest, and your voice is muffled—Thanks, Joe—and Ivan pats you both on the back and offers to walk me out as if this is his house. You and the Meerkat hide in the kitchen and he opens the front door before I can get my hand on the knob.
“Thanks for helping out around here…” His voice drops to a whisper. “But you and I both know that a recently widowed woman needs time on her own.”
“Of course. I just came by to help her with some stuff around the house.”
He mad-dogs me and my fucking shirt is inside out and does he still smell you on me? “Well,” he says. “That’s what I miss about this place so much, all that generosity…”
I leave and there is nothing I can do because his presence doesn’t change anything—our love is a secret, it’s too soon—but his presence changes everything. No more lingering in the bed with me. No more working through your grief the right way, behind closed doors, with me. Right now, you’re in that house and you’re regressing at ninety miles an hour, putting on a proper widow show for your dead husband’s no-show brother. You were Phil’s muse, and that was a problem, but this is worse, Mary Kay. Now you’re the one onstage.
34
One day passes. No word from you. I buy Oliver a violin. Minka is taking classes.
Another day passes. No word from you. I buy Oliver a fucking piano. Minka didn’t like the violin.
Another day passes. No word from you. I bite Oliver’s head off when he calls and he laughs. “I know,” he says. “But there’s this Casio on 1stdibs. It’s super eighties, my friend. You don’t have to learn how to play it. It’s intuitive… or sort of intuitive? Whatever it is, we want it.”
I buy Oliver his non-intuitive Casio—am I ever going to see you again?—and my doorbell rings. Yes! You! I run to the door and I open the door and no. Ivan. I wish I wasn’t in sweatpants and I wish Riffic was a fucking Rottweiler.
Ivan laughs at my cats. “Sorry to surprise you.”
“No worries. Did you want to come in?” So I can lock you in my Whisper Room?
“Actually,” he says. “Nomi mentioned that you live here…” Nomi. Not you. “And I know how helpful you were last week…” Someone had to be, you prick. “I wanted to invite you over for supper tonight. It’s the least we can do to repay you for being such a good neighbor.”
The word is boyfriend, you asshole, and he better not tell you about all the cat hair on my sweatpants. “I’m always happy to help and that sounds great, but unnecessary. I don’t want to intrude.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He tells me he’ll see me at six and I start to close the door and he snaps his fingers. “Oh, one more thing,” he says. “Feel free to bring your partner, if you have one…”
I hate the word partner and I picture Rachael Ray riding one of her knives into the center of his chest and I smile. “Thanks,” I say. “But it’s just me.”
A couple hours later you call me and you are hiding in the garage, whispering, as if you’re the guest in his house. You are so sorry for all the radio silence and you say it’s so complicated. “See, Ivan and Phil didn’t have the best relationship and I feel like you got stuck in the middle of some ancient history.”
“Mary Kay, I’m gonna say what I always say. Don’t worry about me. Really.”
You blow me a kiss but I hear him in your voice and it’s so much better in my house, no fucking Ivans clogging the pipes. I go down to my Whisper Room to get ready for supper （a.k.a. read up on Uncle Ivan） and here’s my conclusion, Mary Kay.
He isn’t a life coach. He’s an aspiring cult leader.
He claps and women stop talking and women pay him for his authoritative “coaching.” The man is the real fake deal. But let’s be honest, Mary Kay. He’s a bad guy, and this is the problem with the fucking Internet. Thanks to his publicist, women are watching his videos and every hour he has more followers and “converts” than he did the hour before. It doesn’t hurt that he’s not a bad-looking guy who enforces a one-strike rule—that’s so cult—and stares into the camera and tells women what they want to hear, what we all want to hear: You deserve better.
No, Ivan. Most people are pretty shitty and they don’t deserve better and I wish RIP Phil would come back from the dead so that I could tell him that I get it, man. If this was my brother—God help me—even half brother, I would’ve been popping pills and singing about sharks, too.
Ivan’s also an Instagram junkie—women who love guys like Ivan also love Instagram—and here’s a brand-new post, a photo of a vintage BMW in his parents’ garage at their summer home in Manzanita. The caption is sexist, directed at you: Good to be home, baby. Missed you.
You are not a car and he went to Yale and is there anything worse than a forty-nine-year-old man still identifying by the college that accepted him before he could legally buy beer? Ivan isn’t famous-famous （yet）。 He’s not John Fucking Stamos. Three years ago, he was flying from one self-made bubble to another, speaking to “crowds”—trick photography—of women who then swarmed him in the lobby bars of various Marriotts all over the country. And this year, even before your husband died, Ivan has hit his fucking stride and the lie is coming true.