The first thing Lindsey says when she opens the door is “Jesus Christ!” Then she squints at you and says, “Are you doing the steps?”
Her apartment is in a sprawling brick complex in Brooklyn. She’s number H5 (which makes no sense; she’s on the second floor). You stood outside, pretending to look at your flip phone, until a guy with keys came up and you slipped in behind him; you didn’t want to explain yourself to Lindsey over a loudspeaker. Standing in the hallway now—too late—you realize it’s weird to show up already inside her building.
You give her a big, stupid smile. She’s right. You’re doing the steps. (Lindsey has always been one step ahead of you.)
You say, “Would you rather I were here to borrow money?”
She rolls her eyes but gives you half a smile, and you feel a tick of satisfaction. You’re surprised how much you still want to impress her.
“Well,” she says, then steps aside and widens the door. “I guess it’s been a long time coming.”
You keep your hands in your pockets as you follow her inside. Her apartment is unmistakably the domain of a child. In the narrow kitchen, a few pieces of letter-shaped cereal are scattered across the floor; the refrigerator is covered in finger paintings.
“You have a kid,” you say.
Lindsey just nods. “Why are you here?” she says. She’s got her arms crossed and you have the feeling she’s trying to restrain herself, but from what—hugging you or hitting you—you can’t tell. You mirror her, unconsciously folding your own arms.
“Look, I know it’s been—”
“Nick!” Lindsey exclaims.
You shove your left hand back in your pocket, but it’s too late. Lindsey claps her hands over her face like she’s hiding from the gory part of a movie. “What happened to your hand?” she says.
“I had an accident,” you say. “Just a couple of fingers.”
Lindsey doesn’t say anything, her face still tucked in her hands.
“Really, it’s no big deal. I’m totally fine.”
She exhales and looks up at the ceiling, tears pooling in her eyes. “I just always knew you were going to hurt yourself, and, oh God, of course you did.”
There’s so much you need to explain. Things have changed. You know she’ll understand. You just don’t know how to start. And then there’s a flurry of feet on the floor, a child enjoying the sound of her own stomping, and in comes Lindsey’s kid.
Short blond curls pulled up into uneven pigtails and her mouth open, her tongue sticking out, as she focuses on a My Little Pony she’s trying to balance on her head.
You recognize her right away. She looks like all the baby pictures of you hanging in your mother’s front hallway.
“Look, Mama!” the child says, her eyes crossed up toward her own forehead as she holds the plastic horse in place with one hand, fooling nobody.
Lindsey transforms, some bright maternal magic; you can barely tell she’d been upset. “Wow, Katydid,” she says warmly, rubbing one eye with one fingertip as if to dislodge a stray lash. Of course Lindsey is an excellent mother. You asshole.
You look from Lindsey to the girl and back. You say, “When were you going to tell me?”
“Not right now!” Lindsey says, firmly bright. “Katie, this is Nick. He’s an old friend of mine.”
“Katie,” you say, slowly.
Katie doesn’t say anything. The pony drops off her head and falls to the floor, but she rolls her eyes and twists her small torso backward, posed. She’s got her eyebrows raised, like she’s doing another impressive trick. She doesn’t make eye contact, but she glances your way once, then twice. She’s checking to make sure you’re watching.
She wants you to be impressed.
The pain is like falling, accelerating into despair.
“I’m an idiot,” you say.
And now your daughter, delighted with her own sense of humor, won’t call you anything but Idiot Nick.
LINDSEY SPENDS TWO DAYS thinking about it. You’re in a hardware store, buying a strip of flypaper for your motel room, when she calls with her answer.
“You owe back child support,” she says, “but if you make it square, you can be in her life. And if you really are sober.”
You promise you really are sober.
Lindsey has done some calculations. Taking into account your earnings over the course of Katie’s life so far, and your future earning potential—which, let’s be honest, is almost nothing, after all the jobs you’ve lost—she decides you owe her ten thousand. “Actually, it’s twenty thousand,” Lindsey says. “But I don’t have to hire a lawyer, and you’ll pay me under the table, so we’ll do ten.” She wants a monthly payment plan, and she wants it in cash. As you hang up the phone, you realize she wants you to prove you’ll stick around.
Goddamned right you’re sticking around.
You go straight to the nearest ATM. You overdraw your account as much as it lets you—four hundred dollars. You take it directly to Lindsey’s apartment. To put an anchor on her. Once she takes your cash, she can’t change her mind.
She meets you at the door, says, “Thank you.” She even kind of smiles. She doesn’t invite you in, but you can tell she’s impressed. You walk away feeling like a new man. This is your chance to do things right.
You move to New York in May. You miss that month’s payment, but only because your landlord in Virginia rips off your security deposit. Lindsey doesn’t mind. You figure she’s impressed that you’re moving to be closer to Katie. She’s impressed that you’re following through. She adds another five hundred dollars’ interest to the total you owe, but that’s fair; you’re just glad she never asks where your money is coming from.
By the fall, the three of you have a routine. On the first Saturday of the month, you meet them at a coffee shop near Fort Greene Park. Katie gets an apple, because Lindsey doesn’t want her to associate you with treats. Lindsey gets a giant latte and you get a black coffee, and then the three of you walk together to the playground when the weather’s nice, and to the library when it’s bad.
“Idiot!” Katie says as soon as she sees you, and runs up to give you a big hug. You love it, although you suspect she only does it to annoy her mom.
One Saturday, on your way to the coffee shop, you pass a man selling knickknacks on a table on Joralemon Street. You notice a packet of stickers for sale, twenty-five cents. They’re dog stickers. Katie is crazy about dogs. Whenever she sees a dog on the street, she runs straight up to it with her arms spread and gives it a huge kiss. You dig in your pocket for a quarter.
Lindsey doesn’t let you bring Katie gifts. You like to buy things anyway. Like you’re going to somehow sneak them to her. Say you got this at kindergarten. You know that telling your daughter to keep secrets is not a great way to make progress on joint custody. But you can’t help buying her things. You’ve got a whole stack of toy ponies and snap bracelets on your kitchen counter. It accumulates in pieces, like an hourglass, as you try to earn your way into Lindsey’s good graces before Katie gets too old for toy ponies. Or too old to get attached to her biological dad.
In line at the coffee shop, you feel the stickers in your jacket pocket. For twenty-five cents, it’s basically like you found them for free.
So you wait until Katie is distracted—carefully inspecting her apple for worms—then you say, “Lindsey. Do you mind if I give Katie these dog stickers I found?” You pull the stickers out of your pocket to show Lindsey how small of a gift it really is.
But Katie spots them. She stops, midbite, and removes her teeth from the apple. “Doggies?” she says. She reaches up and holds your good hand, pulling the stickers down toward her face.
It would be weird to hide them from her at this point. “Yeah,” you say. “Do you know anyone who might want them?”
Lindsey folds her arms and sighs. But you’re watching Katie—her eyes wide, her chin tilted down in exaggerated modesty. You’re impressed with her savvy. She understands that you’re breaking the rules, and she’s being extremely careful to play along. Trying her best not to ruin her chances.
“Well . . .” she says, dragging out the last consonant. “Maybe I could have them?”
Lindsey lets it go, and Katie skips in delight all the way to the park, tapping her fingers on the packet of stickers and singing, “Doggie doggie doggie doggie dogs!” At the park she sits between you and Lindsey on a bench, peeling off the stickers one at a time and flattening them onto Lindsey’s purse, your coat, her own cheeks, naming each one as she does. “This is Licker,” she says, sticking a golden retriever on her own jacket.
You lean back and try to soak up this moment. It’s nearly perfect. You look around the park, trying to appreciate the sunshine and the smell of fall and these precious hours with your daughter.
That’s when you notice a pale man sitting on a bench, maybe twenty yards away. Right when you look at him, he looks away.
“This one is Wicker,” Katie says, sticking a Labrador on the bench.
Was the man watching you?
You glance away, then back, studying him. He’s tall and thin, pale and pasty, with gray hair; he’s reading a magazine, wearing a trench coat. He glances over at you again, and then again away. You frown.
“Idiot!” Katie says, patting your shoulder urgently. You look down, and your daughter’s sweet face reminds you that you are probably being paranoid. Imagining strange men following you is a thing of your alcoholic past. You’re sober now. You’re trying to stop seeing things.
“I said, this is Kicker,” Katie says, and pats the small terrier she has stuck onto your coat.
THE DOG IS COVERED in glitter and wearing a red plaid beret. You keep it on the coat for the rest of the day. It gives you a real feeling of optimism. You’re nearly at the halfway mark—you’ve paid Lindsey four thousand dollars. And maybe letting Katie keep the dog stickers is a sign she’s easing up on you. Maybe you did something right for once.
That night you go to a mindless action movie. It’s your standard treatment for the depression that sinks in after your monthly visits with Katie, when the lonely month stretches out ahead of you like a sore throat. Today, the movie actually helps. As the credits roll you feel a little lighter than usual, you can see the future more clearly, when you’ll be looking back on this hard time instead of living it.
Then you’re walking home and you pass a bar with its door open. There’s a jukebox in the back outlined in neon red, and a woman with the low-cut back of her blue dress turned to you. The urge to go inside and buy her (and you) a drink is so strong you stop and put your hand on the outside wall to steady yourself.
You look through the door at the jukebox and the woman. It’s a perfectly composed scene. Like a noir film still. You shift your body weight, willing yourself to walk away.
You hear the sound of metal and look down. You’re standing on one of those basement hatches that dot the sidewalks of New York. There’s just a few millimeters of steel between the duct-taped soles of your shoes and a break-your-neck fall down a steep flight of stairs. What a metaphor.
“You are not going inside,” you say, out loud.
Then you zip up your coat and notice that Kicker has fallen off and is gone. Whatever was left of the day’s good feeling vacuums out of your chest. You gasp twice. Two loud sobs without tears.
You stumble home and spend the night lying on your back on your hand-me-down mattress on the floor, listening through the old plaster to your upstairs neighbors having a fight and wondering whether asking yourself Am I thinking of killing myself? counts as thinking of killing yourself.
The jury is still out, and you’re still awake, at six o’clock in the morning when your phone dings with a text message from an old friend: Urgent job. Come ovr.