Ivan is staying in your house and luring you into his cult and I can’t blame you for it because you lost your fucking husband and your daughter discovered her own father on the floor.
Dead.
You are the two most vulnerable women in the world and men like Ivan… this is what they do. They hunt for women like you. Nomi shares too many pictures of Denver, the city that Ivan calls home, and you don’t call me. You just send me questions via text and I hear Ivan’s voice in your voice.
You, infected by Ivan: Question. How did you get into rare books?
Me: I worked in a bookstore in New York. My mentor was amazing. It takes years to build contacts and learn how to read a book, to spot a fake. My eyes are permanently tired!
You say nothing. You don’t laugh at my joke. But read between the lines, Mary Kay. I worked for my position in this world. I didn’t buy my way in like some people.
You, infected by Ivan: Question. How come you don’t have a website?
I placate you—My business is purely organic, people tell people about me—and you are turning cold on me—Thanks—and you’re sharing photographs of Ivan’s homemade duck-fat fries and your mind is turning to duck fat and of course he knows how to cook, Mary Kay. All sleazy bastards learn a few dishes to seem like husband material and you are not that woman who lives online but here you are on Instagram, defiling your non-brand brand and talking about… him.
You’re not going crazy. You’re going sane. @IvanKing #Wordsof Wisdom
You’re not going sane. You’re going crazy. Nomi is too:
Denver here I come! #GoingSane
That’s a big decision—she belongs in New York—and I should not find out about big decisions in our family-in-the-making on Instagram.
Oliver interrupts me with a DM: Instagram is bad for your mental health. FYI.
He shouldn’t know that I’m online but he hacked my account and changed my settings and I change my password—fuck you, Oliver—and I let two hours pass, as if I’m some fucking child with overbearing paranoid parents.
I go back on Instagram and Ivan’s been busy. There’s a picture of the three of you in brand-new matching baseball caps on the ferry to Seattle.
Bye-bye, feeling caps. Hello, thinking caps. #FamilyisEverything
I grab my hat—fuck you, Ivan—and head out my door. Family is everything, Mary Kay. But he’s not your family. I am. And it’s time I helped you remember that.
35
I walk to Pegasus. It’s a free country, it’s a small island, so I keep strolling, as people do sometimes. I turn onto your street and then into your yard—we’re Friends, we pop by—and I enter through the side door—you didn’t lock it, tsk-tsk—and I toss my coffee cup into your recycling bin with all the other Pegasus cups and I walk upstairs and go into your bedroom. I take a deep breath. Okay. This is good news. You’re not sleeping with Ivan. I would smell him.
But there’s something you’re not telling me and I pick up one of your trash bags. My phone buzzes and it’s an electric shock to my nervous system—leave me alone, Oliver—but it’s not Oliver. It’s fucking Shortus—wanna go for a run?—and no, you asshole, I don’t want to go for a run. I tell him I already went for a run today and he calls me a pussy and I shove my phone back into my pocket and pick up a trash bag. This one isn’t soft like the others because this one is full of journals. It’s time for me to learn about what you really think of Ivan and I lie on your bed. There are so fucking many of them and it’s mostly you beating yourself up about not being a good mother, not being a good wife, wishing Melanda would find someone, wishing you had left when you had the chance. I can’t sit here all day and you’re a fox, you’re wily, so I pick up a yellowing notepad of grocery lists and errands. My heart is beating. I turn the pages. And sure enough, twenty-three pages into your errand book, I find the real diary, the one that doesn’t have a fucking sunset on the cover. The one where you use a pencil instead of a pen.
-Nomi ballet slippers?
-Phil therapist or couples therapist
-dry cleaning
Oh god I am going to hell and it will be an olive garden only not a restaurant. Just olives. Something shifted. He gave me an olive… and I slept with him. Am I a monster? I just feel so drawn to him and he’s so together and oh God I am a monster. I want him. But you can’t do this in life. You can’t leave your husband for his brother but they’re half brothers and oh god what is wrong with me? I want olives. I want Ivan.
-yams, salmon, chips, diet coke
Nothing was wrong with you, Mary Kay. You were young, married to an unstable man.
Two days later, you used a sharper pencil, and my eyes thank you for that.
-return ballet slippers
-DRY CLEANING
-pickles, frozen pizza, that mac and cheese thing that Nomi likes
Well that’s that. Big news! I’m not good enough for Ivan. HAHA shock of the century right? Yep I threw myself at him, so smart, so smart MK! And he told me that it could never work out and yep, go to the head of the class you whore. Well done. And now… if Phil ever found out… well, good job, me. I sure can pick ’em.
-haircut?
My heart hurts for RIP Phil and I close your secret diary. So this is why Ivan has a hold over you. You slept with him. But it doesn’t matter what you did. You were young. We all were once upon a time.
I leave your bed and I open your computer—it’s old and big and the password is predictable—LADYMARYKAY—and I open your email. On the fourth day of every month for the last several years, you have written to him:
Dear Ivan,
Someday we will pay you back. I know how that sounds. But I mean it.
Love,
MK
And on the fifth day of every month, Ivan replies to you:
Dear Mary Kay,
We’re family. I’m happy to help.
Love, Ivan
I dive into the financial mess of your life and Phil blew his royalties and his trust fund—he didn’t like to work—but Ivan was smart. Straight edge. Their parents cut them both off and you and your rat were regulars at the Bank of Ivan and the house really isn’t yours. It’s his name on the mortgage.
Your house smells like dead lilies and Ivan’s sweat and my phone buzzes and I want it to be you but it’s Oliver: Watching you, my friend. Not crazy about what I see…
* * *
Days pass and you get worse and you really are in a cult. I go to Pegasus early in the morning and I wait for you—I am reading The Girls and I can’t wait to say the word CULT to you—and eventually you enter the coffee shop. But you aren’t happy to see me.
“Joe, I’m in kind of a rush.”
I close my book. “I get it,” I say. “But did you ever read this?”
You shake your head no and you don’t ask about me or my fucking cats and it’s like you don’t even hear the Bob Dylan playing in the background. You just point at the counter. “I really do have to go… I know you probably want to talk but I just…”
“I get it.”
“We have company and it’s crazy at home.”
That’s the right word, Mary Kay: crazy.
“Oh hey,” I said. “Superquick… how’s Nomi? I just hope she’s getting through this okay. It’s a rough go those first few weeks…”