Unwifeable(48)
A little while after I told him that story, James showed up outside of my therapy appointment and handed me a mix CD that had this song he wrote called “I Can Do This.”
I can’t resist when I see it. I play the CD and listen to it once more.
“I can do this,” the song begins with a soft, uplifting melody. “There is nothing to this. I cannot find in myself. When strength has deserted, hope seems unreal. Take heart, in knowing That strength is filling A heart Far from yours but filled by yours.”
It’s wrenching. Another ghost in a city filled with them.
On the flight back to Manhattan, drained and seemingly cried out, I check my email and see that I have a potentially interesting reader note in my “User Quarantine” folder with the subject line “Love reading you!” It gives me a smile. These notes from readers always make me feel so good. It’s been a rough trip, so I decide I won’t release the message just yet, but that I’ll savor it later.
Once in Park Slope, I release it.
Subject line: “Love reading you!”
I click on the email to move it to my inbox so I can read the rest. Here’s what it says:
“Actually . . . you are the fucking worst. You are the reason men think women are crazy. Your teeth are worse than Austin Powers and if I were you, I would have put a gun in my mouth a long time ago.”
I just sit on my bed staring at it. Numb. I know I shouldn’t let things like this get to me, but the extra effort of someone trying to make me think it was positive so they could maximize pain inflicted when they pulled the rug out to tell me I should commit suicide hurts even more.
Wanting some kind of comfort, and with Blaine on a trip to Europe, I call my parents instead.
I ask them if they’ve read any of my recent columns, even though I know what the answer is going to be. They haven’t. Of course they haven’t. I do feel worse. It’s almost like I wanted to get there, to punish myself somehow.
My dad follows up our phone call with an email.
“Mandy,” he writes, “we are being hypocritical to tell you we love you and in the same breath admit that we don’t care enough to read your past columns. Whereas our intention is not to hurt you, I realize that we have not only hurt you in the past by not reading them, we are continuing to hurt you each day that we don’t.”
It goes on, and he apologizes and reiterates his love for me. But it feels like a punch in the gut. Physically revisiting this email from him (and of course, I have blocked it out of my memory entirely until finding it) inspires such sadness. It’s like the embodiment of a lifetime of not being good enough to warrant attention and care.
How could I expect Blaine to want to be associated with me? My father doesn’t even care enough to pay attention to what I’m doing. I’m not worth it.
But despite my wallowing briefly in self-pity, I resolve to not let myself go there fully. Because there is something else growing inside of me: resilience.
I take to my blog, and I compile a ton of reader emails that are kind, and I publish them with the email addresses blacked out and preface the entry by saying, “I never have enough time to thank all the wonderful readers, so I wanted to share some of their notes here.”
It is my fuck-you to the guy telling me to kill myself. It’s even a little bit of a fuck-you to my father. I’m not going anywhere.
* * *
WHEN LOLA’S TWINS arrive, her luxury apartment now houses me, the Trinidadian baby nurse, the two baby boys, and Lola. The only thing we’re missing is the international sperm donor, and we could have ourselves a reality show. It is about as modern family as you can get.
Looking back, I wish I never left—although I might never have found myself if I’d stayed.
The five of us live together for quite a while, and Lola’s fraternal twins are the sweetest little creatures on the planet: crawling around, playing in their bouncy, loving on their mama, and just being so grateful to exist at all.
But word is soon passed down the newsroom grapevine that the Post’s music critic Dan Aquilante has an apartment for rent in the SoHo building he owns (he bought it for a steal back in the ’70s, and if you get anything out of this book, let it be this: Invest in New York real estate). Inspired, I decide it’s high time that I get a place of my own. Dan and I agree to $1,600 rent for the initial eight months and then $1,800 after that. I’m right smack-dab in the middle of all the bustling action of SoHo, and it feels like the height of luxury. The apartment is so nice, with a separate office in the back, a spacious living room, a kitchen, big windows with a view to the street, and exposed-brick walls.
Blaine calls it “cute.”
As I settle into the apartment, I try to feng shui it according to one friend who’s an expert on the subject. “Always shut the toilet seat,” she says. “It keeps in prosperity that way.” Another maxim is to put mirrors over the burner for “abundance.” I learn peonies are good for marriage, so I buy an Isaac Mizrahi peony comforter, too.
The entire move is such a major undertaking, but I’m so psyched to finally prove myself a capable homemaker. Of course, I tell myself it is for me. But it’s so obviously a self-imposed “look at how wifeable I am” display for Blaine. On my first shopping trip to Bed Bath & Beyond, I fill up two carts and spend more than $2,000 on everything from boot shapers to three kinds of wineglasses because I don’t want Blaine to think I’m not cultured enough to know the difference.