You Love Me(You #3)(83)
31
Here’s my problem with wakes. You lay out all these finger sandwiches, all these pizzas from Bene and then you glance at me as I’m biting into a tiny slice of the coppa—best on the menu—and you look away as if what I’m doing is somehow disrespectful to your dead husband because now that he’s dead, he’s THE BEST HUSBAND, THE BEST FATHER, THE BEST MAN. I’m alone at the buffet because I don’t have a date—you’re his widow—and I spit my pizza into the napkin and what a waste of food and okay, so he made your daughter a Christmas present and it took time—a whole lot of precious time—but your living room is a hotbed of lies and FUCK YOU, RIP Phil.
How could he do this to us, Mary Kay? You were doing so good—leaving him, leaving him behind—and Nomi was doing so good—she saw the divorce coming a mile away—but that rat fucker had to ruin everything. He didn’t get T-boned by a truck on his way home from “writing.” No. Your lazy, selfish (soon to be ex) husband had to go and overdose in your house. Your daughter had to come home and find him. And nobody will say what we all know: HE KNEW HIS WAY AROUND DRUGS AND HE WAS JEALOUS OF KURT COBAIN WHO DIED OF AN OVERDOSE IN HIS HOUSE. You’re a woman. So of course you feel like it’s
All. Your. Fault.
You’re wrong, Mary Kay. Dead wrong.
You should be disgusted and maybe deep down you are, but how would I know? You haven’t spoken to me since you fled from the parking lot at Fort Ward. We said I love you and we were having sex on an increasingly regular and exciting basis but now we are fucked. Nomi’s fucked. I’m fucked. You’re fucked. And lazy Phil’s dream came true. He’s a dead rock star, possibly lounging in heaven reading his obituary in Rolling Stone—remember when you asked if I believe in heaven?—and all I can do is stand here in the corner of your living room dipping a triangle of pita bread into what’s left of the garlic hummus.
Will I ever hold you again? Will you ever smile again?
I glance at you. You’re wiping your nose on a napkin while a Mothball pats your back and your dead-eyed daughter is just sitting on a chair, not touching the little sandwiches on her plate and the outlook for us is grim and fuck you, Phil DiMarco. Fuck you all the way back to the day you wormed your way into this unjust world.
You shouldn’t feel guilty and I don’t feel guilty, Mary Kay. Sure, I bought M30s for him—it was a particularly dark moment in our courtship—but Oliver took them away. And yes, I bought heroin for Phil. I put heroin in his room because heroin is (was) the devil he knows. But I am a rational person. I know that your rat didn’t die because of me. He didn’t even die from a heroin overdose. He died because he drove to that shithole in Poulsbo and picked up some of those poisonous M-fucking-30s all by himself. I didn’t kill Phil and you didn’t either, but you’re saying it again right now, telling that sympathetic Mothball that you pushed him over the edge.
I want to storm through these mourners and grab your shoulders and tell you to stop it.
People get divorced every day, Mary Kay. There’s nothing scandalous about it and your rat was a brat. He couldn’t wait until he was living in some shit box too-old-to-be-called-a-bachelor-pad to jump off that wagon? Nope! He swallowed those pills in this house. All he had to do was drive to the Grand Forest or one of the countless places on this island where people go to do bad things. It turns my stomach, Mary Kay. Even Oliver cringed and made aggressively passive-aggressive remarks about my being “the other man.” I told him to read the Basic Fucking Text and learn that recovery is an uphill battle, that no one is to blame, especially not me. He cut me off and told me that my body count on this island is up to two—BULLSHIT, I KILLED NO ONE. What Phil did to this family is terrible, Mary Kay. I could never do something like that. Neither could you. Now you pull at your hair—How did I miss it?—and I want to comfort you. I have been trying to comfort you for three days now. But you always shiver and turn away, as if you wish I were dead, me, the one who made you happy.
I know. Life isn’t fair. But just once, I wanted love to be fair. I did everything right. Everything. And now I’m losing you, aren’t I?
You knock over someone’s glass of beer and you snip. “Damn it, Lonnie, there are coasters.”
Lonnie apologizes and you’re crying again. “I’m sorry. I just… I’m so mad I could kill him.”
Lonnie says that’s natural—since when is nature a synonym for good?—and she’s encouraging you to let it all out and no! You know better, Mary Kay. You don’t want to kill him because you read his favorite fucking book and I read it too. We both know that addiction is a disease and these “friends”—you’ve never mentioned Lonnie, not once—they’re not on your side. They’re not helping and if anything, they’re making it worse by validating every mistruth you speak and in that way, they’re like Phil’s fucking family.
What a bunch, Mary Kay! His mother and father are already gone, as if they have somewhere else to be, and the brother never even came. Classy. According to the obituary, the brother is a well-known life coach, which might be why he couldn’t afford a fucking plane ticket. Well-known is code for 21,000 followers and Tony Robbins he is not and I want things to go back to normal. I want Phil’s parents to get on a plane and go back to Florida. Maybe they’ll leave tomorrow. They didn’t show up at your wake party tonight—We’re mourning privately—but oh fuck you, Phil’s family. Nobody likes hospitals and nobody likes funerals but we all know that sometimes you have to suck it up and go. And if they were decent people, you might not be quite so bad off.