You Love Me(You #3)(72)

She bangs her bong on the table. “I told you I just like his poems. A lot of good writers are nutjobs.” She coughs and I hope she doesn’t overdose and she asks me if I live alone—with all those cats—and I nod and she coughs through a sigh. “I could never. I would be so paranoid. I would go nuts. And cats can’t even protect you.”

I won’t be insulted. Of course she has issues. Her father is a playboy and her parents aren’t in love. “It’s not so bad. You get used to it, Nomi. Cats are good company.”

She shrugs. “I always told Melanda that she should get a cat.” Wrong. She couldn’t keep that condo clean as it was. “I think she went nuts from being alone so much.” Well, that’s closer to the truth. “It’s cool to be alone in a city or whatever, but here? No offense.”

“None taken,” I say, and I have to remember that this is a child. A minor. A shit ton of perfectly well-adjusted people live alone, they don’t pair off, but still the family people act like there’s something wrong with us. “So,” I say. “Melanda moved?”

She smiles at me in a way that reminds me that she came from inside of you. Her grin is pure Alanis Morissette, a little too knowing. “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe she took off cuz she was pissed when I told her how much I loved that movie you told me about.”

I am the adult. The authority figure. “That’s crazy, Nomi. Don’t blame yourself. Not for one second.”

She’s a kid again, scratching her messy hair. “Yeah, she probably just got sick of my parents. They’re so annoying.” I can’t agree with her so I don’t respond but I can’t imagine living in that house either. “Did you know her?” she asks. “Did you know Melanda?”

I don’t like the question and I might be getting a contact high. Paranoid. I steer us back to the safe water, after-school-special seas. “Nomi, your parents aren’t annoying. All parents are annoying. That’s biological design. Otherwise no one would ever want to leave the nest.”

She takes off her glasses and wipes them with a napkin. “I can’t wait to get out of here. My parents… they act like everything since high school blows, like they’d get in a time machine if they could. It’s so sad. I mean life is all about what’s next, you know?”

I wish you were more like your daughter, Mary Kay, but it can’t be me and Nomi talking shit about you, so I defend you and your low-grade nostalgic depressive fever. I remind Nomi that we grew up in a different time, before cell phones and Instagram. “Your mom’s not living in the past, people our age just miss the way things used to be.”

She huffs. “Well excuuuuuse me.”

“No, Nomi, I’m not saying we were better than you. I’m just saying we were better off.”

“Totally disagree.”

I want your fucking Meerkat to listen and I snap my fingers. “Think of a meerkat.”

“Okay…”

“A meerkat in the wild is just living her meerkat life. But a meerkat in a cage, well she needs people to feed her. She tries to do meerkat things but she doesn’t have the space. And let’s face it. She wants people to look at her because she learns that’s the only way she gets to eat.”

Your Meerkat gives me a huh—she’s thinking about my metaphorical meerkat—but maybe not, because now she’s staring at me again. Alanis eyes. Piercing. “You want to know something sick?”

No. This is one step too far and I steal your words—“I should probably get going…”—but she leans in like the little meerkat that she is. “My mom is so paranoid about my dad that she put cameras all over the house.” All my blood stops midflow. She knows. She knows. Do you know? “So yeah, I think she kind of likes capturing the moment.”

I put my hand on The Listener and I will McCammon’s strength to funnel into my veins. I will not turn red. I will not cave in to paranoia. “Wow. How do you know?”

She rocks back and forth in her chair. “Well I don’t know. It’s just a vibe.”

Thank Christ, and I pick up her bong. “The rumors are true, Nomi. This really can make you paranoid. Once I got so high that I thought there was an earthquake in New York. I called 911.”

She’s a Listener and she’s backtracking, doubting herself. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. And my mom is so bad at technology, she wouldn’t know how to work cameras.”

We’re in the clear—I think—and I take a deep time-to-go breath but she pulls her knees to her chest and keeps talking. “You know my parents started going out in high school? Can you imagine?”

I can’t leave, not when she goes there. “I didn’t know that.”

“Everyone thinks it’s so romantic. They have this Nirvana ticket stub framed and she swears she remembers the night and I’m like do you even? Or do you just stare at that ticket stub so much that you think you remember it? She acts like her life is so good, like that’s how it works, like posting the ticket stub every year isn’t pathetic. She’s like ‘Do you have a crush on anyone at school?’ and it’s like ‘No, Mom. Boys my age are stupid. Do you think that means I’m gonna die alone?’ But then I’m like, whatever… I don’t like the guys and they don’t like me. I mean Dylan Klebold was like… bad…”