You Love Me(You #3)(62)

“Emmy, I’m the worst piece of shit on the planet.”

“Phil, stop it.” Your voice is soft.

“I never deserved you. You think I don’t know that? And Melanda… she… she threatened to ruin our life. She got off on hurting you and I didn’t… I’m a piece of shit.”

“Phil, come on. You’re making yourself sick.”

You hold a paper towel up for him like he’s a child and he blows his nose and you wipe his tears away and I throw my popcorn at the TV because no. You need to get mad. He’s casting aspersions on Melanda and you’re assuring him that she’s out of our lives and she wasn’t the bad guy.

Phil is your fucking husband, Mary Kay. And if Tyler Perry were here he would tell you to grab that pot and fill it with hot grits and smash it over his head. If Melanda were here—Goddammit—she would remind you about the fucking sisterhood. But look at you, mopping up his tears as you soak in his manipulative words.

“I don’t deserve you, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. It’s like, my old man’s been telling me I’m not good enough since I’m a kid, and then I get clean but I gotta find another way to get dirty to prove my old man right. I should blow my fucking brains out.”

“Phil, stop it. I mean it.”

This can’t be happening, Mary Kay. You’re forgiving him for what is unforgivable. Ask the Bible. Ask anyone, Mary Kay.

HE FUCKED YOUR BEST FRIEND AND THAT IS WRONG THE END.

You blow your nose into his flannel and your marriage is ugly, unhygienic. “Okay, Phil… Look, I can’t be a hypocrite. I’m not perfect either.”

He pulls away, slightly, and I zoom in, slightly. Your empathy is your own worst enemy right now. And he knows it. Don’t you see that?

“What do you mean you’re not perfect?” he says. “Is there something I should know about? Someone I should know about?”

He’s not crying anymore. He can fuck your best friend and demand immediate forgiveness but you say one tiny thing about your own life and he shuts down on you. Opposites attract. But opposites destroy.

“God, no,” you say. “I only meant that I should have figured this out sooner.”

You’re not a very good liar and you can’t compare our relationship to what he did to you.

He grabs a Ulysses saltshaker and throws it at a cabinet—broken! Broken as the clock on the ferry!—and he exits stage left screaming at you, calling you all kinds of names. He’s in the living room stomping back and forth—what a big strong man!—and he says he always knew you’d do this to him and you want to know how he can say that after what you just found out about him and he spits at you.

“You’re a fucking tramp. Look at the way you dress.”

“The way I dress? I wear a skirt so I’m asking for it? Do you really wanna go there right now?”

“Do you see other women around here wearing skirts?”

“Fuck you, Phil.”

That’s more like it and he growls. “Who is it?”

“Well,” you say. “I’ll tell you this much. It’s not your best friend.”

He grabs a ceramic Bront? sister doll and throws it at a picture frame—BAM—and he wants to know who it is. “I told you. I deserve the same honesty, Emmy.”

“Do you hear yourself, Phil? You didn’t tell me anything. I’m the one who confronted you. And I’m trying to be compassionate. I’m trying to be reasonable.”

“Who the fuck is it? Is he here? Do I know the bastard?”

“That’s your question? Do I know the bastard? Oh Phil, I just… That’s all you care about. If you know him. I tell you that I have feelings for another man and you don’t want to know what I’m missing… you just want to know if you can talk about him on your fucking show. And the answer is no, by the way. Unlike you, he doesn’t air his grievances five nights a week. Unlike you, he reads.”

That was for me! An Easter egg just for me and I’m off-camera but I’m on the only screen that matters, the one in your head. “Yes! You go, Mary Kay!”

Phil kicks at the carpet like a bull in a pen. “Who is he, Mary Kay? Who’s your fucking boyfriend?”

“This isn’t about my boyfriend and this isn’t about Melanda either. This is supposed to be about us. About me.”

You called me your boyfriend and I pop a little more popcorn into my mouth and Phil picks up another tchotchke but this time he doesn’t throw it. Hopefully it will break in his hand and he won’t be able to play guitar anymore. You’re tense. You’re walking in circles. And then you stop. “Hello.”

He says nothing.

You slap your thighs. It’s so over. “So that’s it? You’re gonna shut down and act like nothing happened?”

“Well, that’s me, Emmy. You hide in your books. I play my guitar.”

“Oh right. Shame on me because I like to read. Shame on me for wishing I had the kind of husband who wanted to go to the meadow with me and curl up in the bunkers with our books.”

“That was high school.”

“So was your fucking music.”

Down goes another tchotchke and I love this show. You do too. You clap your hands. Disgusted golf claps. “Well done,” you say. “More for me to clean up. Tell me, were you off with Melanda when I was reading and being stupid enough to believe that you were writing your fucking ‘songs’?”