But she just smiles. A centipede with eyes. “You remind me of him, you know.” Don’t say Woody Allen. “Dylan,” she says. “Dylan Klebold.” Dylan Klebold is a mass murderer and I am your common-law husband—why didn’t we go to the courthouse today? “You don’t just say things. You actually do things. I mean the way you gave me that Bukowski…”
“Your mom gave you that.”
She smiles. “I know. Well done there.”
“Nomi, I am not Seamus.”
She looks at me and laughs. “Oh come on, Joe. The way you both hung around my house after my dad died… I mean it was unbelievable. He wouldn’t let me go and you wouldn’t just freaking go for it… and my mom…ugh…” You resented your mother and she resents you and a nipple appears under her shirt. “You don’t have to be jealous, Joe. I didn’t break it off the day I met you but I mean… he’s gone. We’re here. Plus, honestly, when I started up with him, I was a whole other person. I was young so it doesn’t even count.”
“Nomi, you are young,” I say again.
She grins. “I know.”
I missed it. The man was abusing your daughter and I hear Oliver in my head. There is such a thing as too soft, my friend. Cedar Cove rotted my brain and broke my radar and the Meerkat was never a fucking Meerkat and kids grow up faster—fucking Instagram—and they know how to be four different people at once and I took her little round glasses at face value. I thought she was innocent and she was just playing innocent but she is innocent because HE WAS A FUCKING PEDOPHILE. I said the word out loud—someone has to make this right—and she throws a pillow at me. “Don’t use that word.”
“Nomi, that’s the only word there is right now.”
She’s quoting RIP Melanda—It’s not history. It’s HERstory—and she talks about Seamus like he was her equal—He did the salmon egg thing too when he was a kid and he could be sweet—and I tell her that’s impossible. “He was a grown man, Nomi. He had all the power and what he did was wrong. He should be in fucking jail.”
She snaps her fingers. “That’s why Melanda hated you. I thought she was just jealous as usual but you’re better than this. You can’t tell me how I feel. I know you know that.”
I tell her she needs to stop and she balks as if we are lovers at war. “Don’t tell me what I need, Mr. Woody Allen’s number one fan. Even Seamus knew better than to talk down to me like that.”
Seamus was a pervert who tried to kill me and I am the adult. The stepfather. “Nomi, what he did was wrong.”
She tells me that in a lot of cultures, girls her age have babies and that I don’t get to sit here and take it all back when I’ve been leading her on since the day we met. “It sucked when you disappeared. But I get it. I know it was too painful for you with me so close but so far away…” No. “And it doesn’t matter because you came back. You waited for me in the parking lot of the library and once again, I told you to stay. I told you not to give up.” She looks at me and the Centipede burns me alive. “And you didn’t give up,” she says. “Yeah, the wedding was a little icky, but we both know that you’re not going through with my mom’s little eight-eight plan. You’re not even really married.”
I am down to one life now and she laughs. “Stop being so freaked out. It’s me, Joe. It’s me.” But then she stops laughing, like the Centipede she’s become. “I almost forgot,” she says. “You should have seen your face when I told you Melanda texted me. Another classic.”
This is the part of the game where you kill the enemy and the screen changes colors and the enemy is reborn stronger, faster. She says she’s not stupid. She knows Melanda’s gone for good and I tell her it’s not like that. “You’ve been through a lot and if your mother knew… if she knew that Seamus… that he raped you.”
“Jesus, will you let it go? We broke up. It’s over. And then the idiot went and got himself killed hunting. Honestly, it’s not the biggest surprise in the world… He was so depressed about being dumped, he was in no state of mind to be off in the woods, going off about what he was gonna do to you…”
The Centipede is staring at me, slowing down and daring me to move into defensive mode. I am not stupid. I am quiet. Does she know what he did to me? Does she know what Oliver did to him?
She crosses her arms again. “Don’t look at me like that. I know he was spiraling. And he got so pissy about you…”
He didn’t get pissy. He tried to murder me. She’s on her feet—the Centipede has feet—and she pulls at my pillow and I hold on to my pillow and she picks up her bottomless can of spiked seltzer, a drink designed to appeal to children, to make them feel older than they are.
I tell her she has the wrong idea and this game isn’t for me because even when I win, I lose. The game gets harder. She appreciates me for holding out, waiting for her to graduate, buying time for us and I can’t beat the Centipede, can I? She takes the pillow out of my hands and hugs me and I am numb. Game Over. I think fast. Hard.
Let her hug me. She won’t tell you about this. In four days, she’ll get on a plane and go to New York and become obsessed with some Dr. Nicky professor type and you don’t need to know about this Feud. Shortus is dead. Revenge is impossible and Cedar Cove damaged your brain too. You didn’t see it either—you were worried about your husband and there are only so many worries a heart can bear—and I would never judge you for that. I have to let her say what she needs to say so that she can move the fuck on, so that we can move the fuck on.
I grab her shoulders. We are close now, so close that I can actually see the innocence in her eyes—she really does love me—and I have been where she is. I have loved people who didn’t love me back and I tell her this will hurt—Jude Law in Closer—and my voice is firm.
“I don’t love you, Nomi. And that’s okay because you don’t love me.”
Her teeth chatter inside of her mouth and her shoulders tremble beneath my hands and the hardest thing about a Centipede is that a Centipede is always moving. That’s the nightmare of the game. I stay with her as I fire my bullets because I wish any woman who broke my heart had been so kind with me, willing to be here for me as I realize that I am not loved. My hands are still on her shoulders when you burst into the room. You kick off your shoes and slip into your cozy socks. “All right,” you say. “You win, Buster. I’m home.”
51
It’s been a few minutes since you walked in on every mother’s worst nightmare and the Centipede is curled up in a ball on the sofa and she is screaming—He went after me—and you are screaming—I can’t take this—and you are in the game too now but your control pad is compromised because this is too fucking much. You defend me—Nomi, why are you saying this?—and you defend her—Joe, don’t say anything right now—and I abide and the Centipede cries and you cross your arms. “Okay,” you say. “Everyone needs to take it down a notch.”