You Love Me(You #3)(74)

He waves at me. “Have fun with your cats, my friend. Stay safe.”

He’s starting his car and opening Instagram—I knew it—and thank God for that because I do need my space. I’ve been trying to make things better for us but your daughter is a paranoid truancy case and I don’t have a choice, do I? I have to scale back my renovations on your home as if she issued a STOP WORK order via some state compliance agency. I studied the footage all night in the Whisper Room and Nomi never once looked directly at the cameras, so I do think we’re safe. I don’t think she actually knows about them. But Shel Silverstein’s Whatifs are upon me and they will not be ignored.

Nomi’s at school and you and Phil are with Layla—sorry to miss out on our therapy, but my car needs to stay in the driveway in case Nurse Oliver pops. I slink out the back door of my house, into the woods. I make it to your house—thank you, woods, for the camouflage—and I walk into your house and I put my coffee on the counter. I go room to room and I remove every one of my high-def cameras and it’s not fair. Even with this kind of access, you shut me out. I didn’t know about your little talk with Nomi about Melanda because that must have happened in your car or at the library and now how am I supposed to keep up with you fucking DiMarcos?

I’ve got all my cameras in a reusable tote bag and I leave the way I came in and I won’t be like Phil and allow myself to turn blue on you. I’ve always been good at lifting myself out of the muck. Okay, so the TV show is over but you know what? I was getting a little sick of watching the three of you anyway. Last night it was more of the same and I can remember it word for word as I walk on the trail by the sea.

You swore you’d get almond milk, Emmy.

You swore you’d assemble that dresser.

Well I would if the Allen wrench was where you said it was.

Are you calling me crazy?

Am I that stupid? Hell, no, Miss Perfect. I know I can’t call a woman crazy.

You know what, Phil? Maybe this hiatus is bad. Maybe you should go back to your damn show because your moods are out of control.

Well, maybe I wouldn’t be in a mood if there was some coffee in this house.

I bought coffee. I told you it’s in the freezer.

Emmy, I’ve been in the freezer. There isn’t any coffee.

Coffee. My coffee. I drop my tote bag and the cameras fall out and oh heck it’s up to my neck and I shove the fucking cameras into the fucking bag and I am backtracking, running faster than I did in New York, faster than I did in Little Compton and this isn’t happening but this is happening and it’s not as bad as the mug of piss. It’s worse. It’s a paper cup of coffee with my name on the label and it’s on your kitchen counter and this trail is fighting me every step of the way, roots and other joggers—get out of my fucking way—and this is why all you people drink your coffee out of travel mugs because my name is on that cup.

My name.

It’s a common name but there’s no Joe in your house and now I’m in your house and the cup of coffee is a mug of piss, the one that nearly ruined my life. I grab it—yes—but no because the front door just opened and it’s you. It’s him. I can’t open the slider and I slip into your guest bathroom and there’s no shower in here and there’s no window and I can’t turn on the light because what if there’s a fan?

I close the bathroom door—was it open when you left the house?—and what if you have to pee and is this how it ends? Because we’re all slaves to caffeine?

“Well,” you say to him, not to me, and you should be at work. “Should we do it?”

Oh no. This is not a time for you to get Closer. Not while I’m so close. He mumbles and you open a drawer and you riffle with your hands and every sound is an engine in my head.

“Okay,” you say. “So the contract. I promise to stop nagging you about stupid stuff.”

“Stupid stuff,” he says. “Can we get a little definition here?”

“Christ, Phil, don’t nitpick already. We have to start somewhere.”

No you don’t, Mary Kay. You can leave.

He sighs. “Well all right then. But what do we mean by ‘stupid stuff’?”

You, rat. You are the stupid stuff and it’s hard being a statue, holding this mug of piss. Coffee. Coffee.

“You know what it means, Phil. You were there. The dresser. House stuff.”

He is silent and the silence is worse than the engines because what does the silence mean? Are you making eyes at each other? Are you noticing that the bathroom door is closed when it’s usually open?

Your voice is flat. “Okay, just say it. What’s wrong? And don’t bullshit me about how it’s hard to be vulnerable. This only works if you are vulnerable.”

I love you like crazy and look at me in here. The definition of vulnerable.

“Well I dunno,” he says. “I was hoping that ‘stupid stuff’ was more about… Emmy, for fuck’s sake, you know I don’t wanna go to this movie night thing.”

“And you know I do, Phil. You know I planned it.”

“I know.”

“And I have to go.”

“Emmy…”

“I don’t know, Phil. You used to like the way I am…” I like the way you are. “You used to say how you needed me because I plan things, because I care, because I’m someone who makes the world go round. And now… it’s like I repulse you.”