You Love Me(You #3)(86)
You flick the cigarette on your own lawn and shrug. “Nothing,” you say, your voice flattened by Klonopin and semi-Melandas and all the pressure of hosting people in your home while you just die underneath. “There’s nothing anyone can do or say to bring him back and honestly, that’s all I want. Anything you do is a waste. Anything you say is a waste. Right now all I want in this world is the one thing I can’t have. One more day with Phil to tell him that I know he’s hiding heroin in his nightstand, under his amp, to take all of it and flush it down the toilet and force him into a car, into a rehab clinic so that my kid doesn’t have to go the rest of her life without a father, so that she doesn’t have to go through the rest of her life being the one who found him. I’m a big girl. I know that I can’t have that. But that’s where I am right now.”
You don’t touch me. You don’t make eye contact. You are a zombie with a second set of teeth and they’re his teeth, constant proof that he was alive, and I will be patient. I’ve been there, Mary Kay—I know what it’s like to lose someone who was bad for you. I know you’re bleeding inside. That pain you’re in gives you no right to hurt me but I won’t make this about me.
Unlike your dead rat, I am a strong man. A good man who’s able to put you first and respect the reality that his death is harder for you than it is for me. But you’re a widow now. You’re anointed with a new title and I too could kill that fucking rat for what he did to us. His guys finish playing the one and only true hit song that Phil ever wrote and the clapping is loud, too loud. You start crying and shutting the slider behind you, leaving me on your deck alone and if you had any intention of a future with me, you wouldn’t have closed that door.
32
I went home. I pigged out. I played some Prince, I played some Sinéad and I was bracing myself for seven hours and fifteen days without a word from you. But I was wrong, in the best way possible. You called me last night at 1:13 A.M. and you cried and I let you cry and soon you were talking about Phil’s parents—They always treated me like I wasn’t good enough and they think it’s my fault—and then you were crying again—It’s all my fault—and then you were angry—How could he do this to Nomi?—and then you were guilty—I should have been there for him, I should have known this was too much. I was so good to you, Mary Kay. I encouraged you to let it out and you fell asleep and I did not end the call. I stayed up all night until you were coughing.
“Joe?” you said.
“Morning.”
“You’re still here.”
“Of course I am.”
You said it was the kindest thing anyone ever did for you—fuck that stupid grassy dollhouse roof—and it’s been almost two weeks. You’re in mourning, still guilt ridden. And I get it. Your separation was a secret and it’s complicated but you texted me that you forgot to buy toilet paper—it’s always something—and I went to the store and bought you toilet paper and you’re tearing the plastic.
“Huh.”
“What?”
“This is the right kind.”
I know because I’ve spent a lot of time in your house and I shrug. “It’s the best kind, so of course it’s your kind.”
I make a note in my head: Buy Mary Kay’s overpriced toilet paper before she comes to my house and then the sliding door opens and it’s Shortus, who’s somehow become my unworthy rival in this irritating episode of our Cedar Cove life. He cracks his knuckles and he cracks his back and sighs. “Your gutters are officially clean, MK.”
You’re a grieving widow and obliged to your Friends—Thank you, Seamus, you’re a godsend—and you rummage around the refrigerator. “Okay, boys,” you say, as if I am your son and Shortus is a friend I brought home from school. “Who’s hungry?”
He plops into a chair and he is not a man, he is a fourth-grade boy. “I burned a lot of calories out there, MK. I can eat!”
I wish he would go away. He’s different since RIP Phil died. It’s like one of those fucking reality shows where the loser thinks he has a shot because the guy in the lead pulled a muscle and backed out of the race. Shortus is actively competing with me to be the man of this house and that’s not what I’m doing. I love you. I miss being inside of you and I am your boyfriend but he’s a lonely CrossBore, a real patriarchal sexist who acts like you need us menfolk and what bullshit, Mary Kay. You don’t need men. You need me.
I pull The North Water out of my bag and set it on the table. “Almost forgot,” I say to you, not him. “This is that book I was telling you about.”
In other words, GET OUT, SHORTUS, and he huffs. “Jeez, Joe, I don’t think the woman can read right now. We’re still reeling, ya know?”
He didn’t even like your husband but I can’t fight with him because he’s your friend and if he wasn’t here, we would be talking about Ian McGuire, but he is here so you just smile at the book—Thanks, Joe—and then you’re on your feet, dealing with the casserole. This is a critical time for us. You’re processing so many emotions and we need to get Closer and I’m not stupid, Mary Kay. I know you want a buffer. That’s why you let Shortus come over and have an open-door policy for the semi-Melandas who “pop by” with casseroles—No one likes that shit when they’re alive, why would they want it after someone died?—and Shortus jumps up and pulls a chair out for you.