The Animators(112)

“Your mom is awesome,” Tatum whispers.

I watch her sneeze. Take a layer of dirt off the window with her hand, wipe the grime off on the back of her Lees. “I guess,” I say.

I unlock the door, bang it open with my shoulder. Mom’s the first to step in. “Pee yoo,” she bellows, throwing her purse onto the floor. “We shoulda come up a long time ago, Sharon Kay. Smells like shit in here.” She disappears into the kitchen. Yells, “Sharon Kay. There are mice turds in here and I wanna know what you’re gonna do about it.”

“Your mom is awesome,” Ryan whispers.

“So you’ve said.”

“I’m gonna marry her.”

“Gross.”

“It’s not gross. It’s saxy.”

I sigh and put my bag down. The place makes me ashamed. I sort of care that Tatum and Ryan, two kids who looked up to us, are seeing my negligence for themselves. I care that Mom is seeing it. Balls, I’m starting to care that I’m seeing it. On the end table near the door, a Post-it note. One of Mel’s old shopping lists. A dragon with clouds drifting from its nostrils burps toilet paper popsicles Activia smokes.

I carefully put the list back where I found it. Without turning, I say, “She’s here because I freaked out on Xanax and ran into traffic one night.”

The rummaging in the kitchen stops, then quietly resumes. The boys have their hands sunk deep into their pockets. Tatum rubs his head, looks out the window.

I nod toward him. “There’s probably a mug shot online. Right?”

He shrugs. “The picture’s good. You look pretty.”

“That’s sweet. But the fact remains, I got arrested for being fucked up and sashaying out into the road. And I wasn’t fully clothed. Did I mention that?”

Ryan looks to Tatum and giggles. “That’s kinda righteous.”

“Yeah. Kinda.” There’s a heady, yeasty mold smell in the air. It’s cold. A few monstertruck roaches skitter under the couch. I pass the little mirror Mel and I used to check our line work from the opposite perspective. There are silver hairs now, sprouting around my temples, my crown. I stop, stare. “This part of Brooklyn is sort of in the wilderness,” I tell them, “or it used to be. Some coffee shops and stuff have popped up. You’re about forty-five minutes away from Manhattan on the L train. There aren’t many grocery stores around, so you might have to use delivery or take the subway to get what you need. But this place was good to us. It’ll be good to you, too.”

I swipe an old T-shirt draped over the back of the couch, wipe down the Cintiq. The crack in the corner is small, hardly visible. “You guys ever use one of these?”

Tatum’s eyes go wide. “Those go for a lot. Like three or four thousand.”

“More. But we got this one cheap.” I draw back, finger the shirt. It’s M?tley Crüe. One of Mel’s. I bring it to my face, smell. Mildew and sweat and every empty day that’s passed since. “Use it,” I tell them.

Ryan is scuffling along the edge of the room, looking at our cork wall, peering out the windows. The Sharon Wall is at the end, still concealed by the bedsheet. He lifts the sheet, peeks underneath. Goes still. I hear him curse softly to himself.

I walk upstairs into the living area. Bedrooms. I stick my head into Mel’s. The sheets are ones she slept in, the pillows tossed against the wall—we were packing, late getting to LaGuardia. Later, I hadn’t wanted to move anything. There was half a hope in my mind that if I left the studio long enough, she would be there when I returned, twiddling at her drafting board. That when I came in, she’d glance up and say, “Well, where the fuck have you been? Yore tardee.”

I go back down. “Bedrooms are up top. We gotta clean them.”

Mom emerges from the kitchen with a bulging Hefty bag. “I’m gonna call that place that brings cleaning stuff. And you best be callin an exterminator or a damn exorcist or something. I never seen so many cockroaches in my everlovin life.” The door bangs shut.

I take the opportunity to ask, “So. How’s Teddy. How’s Ted.”

Ryan and Tatum exchange a look, do a mutual shuffle. “Uh,” Ryan says.

“He’s good,” Tatum supplies.

“Yeah, he’s pretty good.”

A big, fatty pause. I put out my hands. What.

“He’s getting married,” Tatum says.

When I hear the words, my entire diaphragm goes cold.

In the two years since Louisville, I’ve put Teddy through the same old paces I put them all through, nursing a weird little fantasy scenario I acted and talked out, all those Xanax nights, a prized and private delusion: a we’ll-go-through-hell-then-figure-it-out-and-end-up-together-with-killer-dialogue-and-a-charged-gasping-sex-scene narrative. I hadn’t decided on exactly when I’d planned on reaching out to Teddy and implementing this reunion plan. But I was convinced that it would happen. In the infinite future, there is always time.

Old habits die hard. He had become less Teddy and more my brain’s construction in the months between, but was still so palpable to me I could almost forget his real-life counterpart was out there in the world, living a life. If anything, it was a sign of further bounce-back from the stroke, a return to my old self. I could still make a Frankenstein. It was the only good news to be found. You forget, I tell myself bitterly. Anything vital and alive, even the way someone loves you, could never survive the hotbox that is your head.