A guy couldn’t so easily become an Ivan twenty years ago—fuck you, Internet; fuck you, images—and I put on your favorite black sweater and I can do this. Your brother-in-law didn’t invent the snake oil game and I can make nice with him.
And if not I can… well, no, I can’t.
I turn the corner on the trail and Ivan is on your deck, dumping charcoal into the grill. I hoist my bottle of Bainbridge vodka and he waves his tongs, longer than my bottle, and he stares at my vodka. “Wow,” he says. “Hard stuff on a school night. Yikes. You don’t see a lot of the hard stuff in wine country.” We’re not in wine country and you like vodka and it says BAINBRIDGE on the bottle. “I don’t drink it. It’s like they say, perfume going in, sewage going out.”
It takes a lot for me to punch someone with an actually, but I do it now. “Actually, Ivan, that’s what they say that about champagne. Not vodka.”
He doesn’t cop to being wrong even though he was wrong and he sighs. “When did you say you moved here?”
“I didn’t.” Pause for dramatic effect. “A few months ago.”
He wants to ask more but here you come in a Red Bed red sundress and I shrug, affable houseguest, changing the subject, and you keep your distance from me but Ivan watches, assessing our body language like the unlicensed pervert that he is. You pour wine and Nomi puts a cheese board in the middle of the table and Ivan starts telling some long, boring you-had-to-be-there story about the time you and him and your rat had an olive-eating contest and Ivan nods at me. “Go ahead, Joe. Have an olive.”
This isn’t your style. I’ve watched your sitcom and I know you. You’re not a foodie. You binge on Tostitos in bed and you let the frost bite your salmon and I pick up a piece of white cheese. “This is quite a charcuterie board.”
“Nicely done,” he says, clapping like this is NA. “A lot of people can’t pronounce that word…” As if it’s surprising that I can. “Do you not like olives, Joe?”
I hate olives, but I pop one in my mouth—I belong with you—and my body recoils and you’re all laughing at me. He hands me a napkin. “Just spit it out. You do you, Joe.”
You bite your lip and sip more wine and Nomi opens her Columbine and she’s telling Uncle Ivan about the book, and Ivan knows Dylan Klebold’s mother, he met her at a publishing lunch at a restaurant and he loves the resy app—Resy isn’t a word, you prick—and he shows us an email confirmation that begins with empty validation: You’re popular.
I know you’re just as disgusted as me and I laugh. “Imagine taking that personally.”
You don’t laugh—you can’t, our love is a secret—and Ivan puts his phone away and Nomi jumps out of her chair—she has to pee and she says so, the way girls her age do—and now it’s just us. Adults. “So,” Ivan says, as if he’s your father and I want to take you to the prom. “Emmy tells me you’re a volunteer?”
He was too happy to use the word volunteer, so I tell him about my book business and he’s Tom Brokaw and I’m the terrorist and he slaps me on the back. “Don’t be so self-conscious, guy.”
I’m not self-conscious but I remain calm. He says he was thinking about writing a book—aren’t we all, Ivan—but opted to go with a website instead. Yes, Ivan, because you could never write a fucking book and you are drinking too much, too fast, and you praise the olives and ask where he got them—YOU DON’T FUCKING CARE ABOUT OLIVES AND YOU DON’T EVEN LIKE THEM—and you wash down those pungent things with wine.
“Sorry,” you say. “I get these waves… I can’t believe Phil is gone.”
That’s more like it, Mary Kay. You don’t need to please this man and compliment his fucking cheese board. You just lost your husband.
He nods. “There are gonna be waves, Emmy. Ride them. Stay strong.”
He says this like it’s a grand fucking insight and he flashes his put-me-on-TV eyes at me again. “So, Joe, what’s your take on all this?”
I don’t have a hot take on your life because you’re a human, not an issue. “I think it’s been a really rough couple of weeks on the family…”
Meaning the family that Ivan is not a fucking part of, and Nomi opens the screen door and looks around the table. “Wait,” she says. “Mom, did you tell him?”
You rub your forehead. “Nomi…”
“Uncle Ivan, you know Mom and Dad were gonna get divorced, right?”
Ivan frowns. “No? Emmy, is this true?”
You cough. “Nomi, it’s a little more complicated than that. Let’s not get into it, okay?”
“Why?” she says. “I mean he was sleeping on the couch for like two weeks, right?”
I should have stayed home and you slam a plate and march into the house and order Nomi to follow you and Ivan motions for me to follow him. “Joe, do you eat lamb?”
I shake my head no and he wants to know if it’s for political reasons and I laugh him off. “I just don’t like the taste.”
He lays his lamb shanks on the grill and inside, you and the Meerkat are screaming and I can only hear bits—she says you broke his heart, you say he wanted to leave you—and Ivan closes the lid on the grill.
“So,” he says. “You never met my brother, is that right?”
I nod. He opens the lid of the grill and flips a helpless lamb and I want to flip him. “That’s a shame,” he says. “He wasn’t perfect… but he was a good guy. Emmy and Nomi, they were everything to him…” Not true. “Joe,” he says. “I don’t want to pry…” Liar. “But what exactly is your relationship with Mary Kay?”
“Ivan, look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I live around the corner, things were bad… you can imagine how bad, Nomi finding him… Mary Kay just reeling.”
A normal person would let the guilt bomb hit him but Ivan just flips his shanks. “It must be hard for you right now… your girlfriend feeling so guilty about cheating on her husband…”
“Whoa, Ivan. That’s not what’s going on.”
“Relax,” he says. “I’m not here to judge. I see the guilt eating you alive…”
I never said I felt guilty and again he flips a little chunk of dead lamb and I miss the silence of our lambs and I can’t tell if you and Nomi are fighting or making up and he calls me your latest adoptee, another orphan from the library, and I am not your project and we take care of each other and you are crying and the Meerkat is crying and I want to go inside and help you but I can’t. Ivan flings innocent dead lamb parts onto a platter. He is the shark inside Phil’s shark circling, finding someone new, me. “I’m gonna make this easy,” he says with a smile. “We’re gonna eat lamb. You don’t like lamb. Why don’t you call it a night?”
* * *
Two days later, and I still haven’t heard from you.
My cats are all over me. They feel my pain and I feel your pain too. You’re in mourning. You and Nomi need to heal and our love is a secret and my hatred of Ivan is a secret—I wouldn’t burden you with my opinions right now—but time is passing. You are nesting with another man and I’m alone. Oliver went back to L.A. to see Minka and he’s bugging me about David LaChapelle’s Jesus Is My Homeboy, which costs thirty-five thousand dollars. I buy it—ouch—and he says he’ll see me on Menopause Island soon, but when will I see you?