THERE’S A LULL AT the bar. Only a patient warrior stays at the same place from early evening to bar close.
I look around for Cal, secretly waiting for him to discover his missing wallet. He will have to take Summer home within the hour. This suits him just fine. He likes to be home early, where he can smoke a joint and kick back in his recliner, or roam around his property in the predawn light: an insomniac’s constitutional.
He shows Short Pete something on his phone. I lean over, hoping to see a picture of a naked lady, but it’s a home video of a big honkin’ gun.
“Check this out, guy. I bought a tactical twenty-two. Laser on the front, twenty-five-round mag, adjustable stock,” Cal says.
“Beauty,” Short Pete says.
“I got a scope for it too. This baby is lethal up to four hundred yards. In a situation, if we need to bug out fast, this is the one I’m taking,” Cal says.
There’s something about the way Cal says in a situation that appeals to me. I imagine he has planned for the gamut of possible, however unlikely, situations, ranging from social unrest to alien invasion.
Short Pete is three-quarters of the way through the twenty-dollar bill he put on the bar when he came in. Every time Amelia serves him a gin and tonic, she takes away a few dollars and change. He’s on just two legs of his low-back stool. His right knee pushes against the edge of the bar. He uses it for balance so he can tilt backward and rock forward. This is the least suave way a man can possibly position himself while sipping a gin and tonic. I try to imagine James Bond teetering on the back two legs of his bar stool. I can’t; it’s impossible. There’s something innocent about the way he moves. He does it to occupy himself. He’s not self-conscious about the way he looks, and he isn’t worried about falling. He encounters the chair like a kid: part game, part instrument of sitting.
“Ever fallen off?” I ask.
“A bar stool?”
“No, Pete, the wagon.” I smile.
“Honey, none of us have ever been on the wagon,” Cal says.
“Jimmy was in AA for a while,” Short Pete says. Jimmy is hovering behind us, taking a break from the pool table. Cal, Short Pete, and I are all bellied up to the bar.
I swivel around to include Jimmy in the conversation. Motion makes me feel the alcohol. I’m sober enough, but everything around me—the faces, the signs on the wall, the glow of the jukebox—everything appears a little bit grainy, like I’m watching the night unfold on an old TV.
“I’ve never fallen off a bar stool, no,” Short Pete says. “Amelia would kick my ass right out of here.”
“House rule,” Amelia says. “Don’t fall off your stool.”
“I thought the house rule was don’t fall asleep at the bar?” I say.
“I seen many a sleeping beauty get thrown outa this place,” Cal says.
“That’s Murphy’s rule.” Martin Yagla looks at me. “Lucas Murphy’s rule, not the famous Murphy’s rule.”
“That’s Murphy’s Law, ya dumbass,” Cal says.
“Murphy’s Law dictates that Pete will fall off his stool,” I say.
Yag grabs Short Pete from behind and gives him a tug. Short Pete gropes for the bar but it’s too late. His eyes pop open wide. Yag holds him there, suspended halfway to the floor. Then he pushes the chair with Pete still on it into its upright position: four legs on the ground.
“The golden rule,” Yag says. “I didn’t let you fall.”
“Rule of the jungle,” Short Pete says. “Do that again and I’ll kick your ass.” Everyone looks at one another and laughs.
“Whooeee, why all the rules?” Cal says. He grabs his belt and gives his pants a little tug.
“Let’s put on some Ja Rule,” Yag says. He walks over to the jukebox.
“The half-your-age-plus-seven rule,” Short Pete says.
“Yag doesn’t know that rule,” I say.
There is a jukebox etiquette at The Final Final. When someone plays a song that offends the sensibilities of the regulars, they verbally shame the person. They usually leave girls alone—they are a protected species in this bar, rare as they are. For this reason, all kinds of pop songs go unchecked—Taylor Swift and Katy Perry and Adele have all driven me to order another whiskey many times over. But all guys are fair game, college kids, old codgers, even the regulars themselves. As far as I can tell, there are three songs you absolutely cannot play: “Sweet Child o’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses, “Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners, and “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett. “Beast of Burden” by the Rolling Stones is okay, but only under certain circumstances (late enough so everyone is sufficiently drunk). You also cannot play anything by Neil Diamond. Billy Joel is acceptable, though. I once witnessed the entire bar sing along to “Captain Jack.” If you play “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and it happens to be raining outside, you’re a fucking hero.
The jukebox is yet another test. The guys use it as a measure by which to judge people, based on whether the entire bar is subjected to something unforgivable. Once, a guy played Mariah Carey and received so much verbal abuse he left his full drink on the bar.
“So many goddamn rules,” says Cal, repeating himself.
“Live free or die.” I make a rock ’n’ roll sign with my hand.
We decide to write up a list of bar rules, but in the end, we can agree on only one:
THE FINAL FINAL HOUSE RULES: #1 KARMA
ONE WEEK BEFORE MY due date, a rash spread across my belly: a peony firework, cherry red and dazzling. It didn’t hurt or itch. It seemed more like an announcement than anything. Or maybe a pronouncement. I am here. The doctors ran tests and found nothing. The baby was fine. They told me he could arrive at any moment.
My mother said that I had introduced myself in the exact same fashion, and that she had no way to confirm it, but she suspected my dad had done so too. “That baby is telling you he has the power,” she declared. “It’s in his blood.”
“Genetic peacocking,” I said. “Someone should give you a Nobel Prize.”
“I’m just telling you what I know,” she said.
“Why a rash? Why not a kick?” I asked.
“All babies kick. Kicks are boring. That baby wants everyone at attention. He wants the doctors scared; he wants Lucas scared; he wants you scared. He is your father’s grandson. Don’t forget that.”
Investors are the only people in the world who profit off pessimism. Dad did it in the early eighties when there were still buildings in New York no one wanted to buy, and he did it again in 2008 in the midst of the credit crisis. The key is waiting until everyone else is looking at a big, scary rash, and they freeze, and then bam! You make your move.
That was the day my water broke.
AFTER LIONEL WAS BORN, as many as three times a week, a homemade meal, plus enough to have some left over, appeared in the kitchen. A pot roast, a batch of lentil soup, a casserole. It varied. I accepted this charity because I was physically exhausted from breastfeeding and sleep deprivation and planning my upcoming book tour. Plus, I felt less guilty about Joan cooking than I did about Lucas cooking, either because I assumed she didn’t have anything better to do, or because of some unconscious sexist bias I’d rather not admit.
The details were always a little fuzzy on how the food appeared on the stove top. Once, I asked Lucas if his mom had a key. My tone was probably accusatory or maybe I rolled my eyes, because he insisted Joan did not. I made it very clear that I did not want my mother-in-law to have unbridled access to my house. Maybe Lucas met her at the house when she came by, or maybe she left it on the porch and he brought it in. Most likely, though, she had a key.
Lucas’s father married his mother when she was young and because she was hot. They were barely twenty. The old codger was a workaholic who built his drywall business from nothing. When he wasn’t on a job, he challenged himself with projects like building a boat. He was the restless type, so he either had to be drywalling or building boats, which meant he didn’t have much time for Lucas or his mother.
When Lucas was a young boy, his mother started seeing a therapist. Her primary takeaway was that her family’s domestic life was not her sole responsibility. She abruptly stopped cooking and cleaning. She also explicitly told eleven-year-old Lucas that his happiness was not her problem. Then she went to an ashram in India for the better part of a year.
These days, spending time at an Indian ashram is no big thing. The plane ticket is pricey but no one bats an eye. It’s like buying the six-dollar eggs because the yolks are orange. Back in the eighties, when Joan did it, it was like leaving the Shire to travel to the gates of Mordor. People would have been impressed if they weren’t so distracted by the magnitude of her maternal failure.
The casseroles might have been her way of making up for her own absence, but they felt more like an indictment of the choices I was about to make: day care, business travel, supplementing with formula.
EVERYBODY, NO MATTER WHO they are or where they come from—everyone over thirty—drinks for the same reasons. They have problems they cannot solve and subjects they’d rather forget. They drink because relationships are hard. They drink so self-loathing doesn’t get the better of them, even if that self-loathing comes from drinking too much. They drink because to be alive is to be in pain.
New York bankers, with their designer suits and Italian shoes, and townies, with their flannel shirts and workman’s boots, both consume two things in excess: whiskey and cocaine. Why? Because they haven’t figured out how to let the light in.
“What’s in the bag?” I ask. Cal is carrying a cheap, black nylon backpack. From the way he holds it, I can tell he’s not carrying anything heavy.
He starts unzipping the bag. “I have a croissant, headphones, and a bottle of water.”
“You have a croissant?” I ask.
Cal pulls a grease-soaked brown paper bag out of the backpack. He gives it a little squeeze. “Croissants are fucking delicious.”
“I bet you can’t even spell croissant,” Short Pete says.
“Of course I can spell croissant. I eat one almost every day. C-r-o-s—”
I give him a little poke in the gut. “Maybe you should lay off the croissants.” I change the subject. “I’m trying to decide what Addie and I should do in the event of the apocalypse. We’d probably make our way out to your place.”
Cal has a big piece of property outside of town. He calls it the ranch but it’s really just a one-story ranch-style house.
“Combine resources?” Cal nods vigorously. “Money’s no good in an apocalypse scenario.”
“How’s business these days, anyway?” I ask.
“I’m doing three times what I did two years ago. I just got this kitchen remodel. Eighty Gs.” Cal gestures like he’s throwing a lasso, catching some invisible beast called Money. Then he’s right back on the apocalypse scenario. “Everyone will need to pitch in—building, hunting, cooking. Lucas’ll do the shelter.” He looks at me when he says this. “Sorry, honey, we knew Lucas first. He’s in.”
“Postapocalyptic shelters don’t need drywall,” I say. Postapocalyptic shelters have level-one finishes.
“Lucas can do odd jobs too,” Cal says. “He doesn’t finish projects, but he sure can start them.” He winks at me, laughing.
WHENEVER CAL OR ANYONE else asked Lucas whether he’d finished a project, he’d always say the same thing: “Everything left to do is just cosmetic.” I’d heard that sentence so many times it became a running joke. Lucas would find me home writing in the middle of the day, wearing yoga pants and no makeup, my hair pulled up on top of my head sloppily, and I’d say, “Everything left to do is just cosmetic.” Or Lion would have boogers coming out of his nose and spaghetti sauce all over his face, and I’d say, “Everything left to do is just cosmetic.” Or Addie would get into the trash, tear through it, spread it everywhere, and we’d come home to a veritable garbage dump in our living room and say in unison, “Everything left to do is just cosmetic.” If you start saying this enough—I mean really take it on as a mantra—you start to realize it’s actually true. Food, shelter, clothing, sleep, education, healthcare—even these most basic needs are, to varying degrees, both essential and nonessential, maybe 80 percent necessary and 20 percent cosmetic for middle-class folks, and 20/80 for upper-class folks, or 10/90, more realistically.
The truth beyond economics is that people have different definitions of beauty, and when I was with Lucas, every hole and exposed joist and visible tuft of insulation was beautiful, like a freckle on a bare chest or a gap between two front teeth.
When Lucas took out the wall between the kitchen and the living room, he had to move an air duct. He completed the ductwork but left a hole in the floor (because it was just cosmetic). Through it, you could see right down to the basement. Lionel’s birth should have inspired us to seal it up. The looks on our friends’ faces—on Samantha’s face—the you’re-a-bad-mom looks, might have served as warnings. It wasn’t like Lionel could fall into the hole, though. It was about four inches by four inches, big enough, maybe, for an adult to twist an ankle, but it didn’t pose a real threat.
I can say also, in our defense, it wasn’t a laziness thing. I can say that. Other things were, like the way we maintained our lawn, or as Cal affectionately called it, our weed pit.
The hole was different. Addie was always dropping her ball down there. I’d go get it for her and she’d stay on the first floor, peering down at me through the hole. I felt a weird affection for the hole, the kind of affection a person might feel for something so ugly it’s cute.
Eventually, Addie taught Lion to put things down into it. After nosing her ball down one night, she stood over it with her ears perked up, and Lion clapped like she’d performed a profoundly difficult trick, one that she’d come up with on her own without any promise of treats. The treat, I suppose, was the joy of watching Lucas or me get up from the couch. After that, I started finding Lionel’s toys down in the basement. Sometimes these toy drops would be secrets between him and Addie. On other occasions, he’d hover over the hole, turning his face to the right so he could spy down into it with his left eye.
Lionel was not allowed into the basement. There were too many dangerous objects down there. When we installed the baby gate, I marveled at my child’s curiosity. Addie was afraid of the basement steps—she could see through them because they didn’t have risers. The basement was the one place she wouldn’t follow us. She was content to stay where she was. Lionel’s mind worked differently. The place we didn’t allow him to go was the place he immediately wanted to be.
For Lionel, the hole in the floor was a glimpse into another world, a world of laundry and spiders and tools, and I can only imagine the Candy Land he dreamed up for it. There wasn’t a woman in the county who could put her hands on her hips and shake her head, and make me want to seal off that hole. I never asked Lucas to fix it.
CAL CONTINUES TO HASH out the apocalypse situation. I shouldn’t have brought it up.
“Bottom line,” Cal says. “Lucas cannot make the decisions. We’d never get anything done. Have you ever seen that guy order a sandwich? Once, I waited for ten minutes while he decided whether he wanted a slice of tomato on it.” This is not true. Lucas doesn’t like tomatoes on anything. This was a point of contention because I love tomatoes. Tomatoes and mushrooms. I put them on everything. “Actually, ordering the sandwich isn’t the main problem,” Cal continues. “Eating the sandwich—now, that’s excruciating.” He pantomimes taking a bite of a sandwich, masticating the air in his mouth very slowly. “Takes, like, an hour.” This is true. Lucas eats slowly. Cal, on the other hand, can put away a foot-long in under five minutes.
“What can I do?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Ain’t no stock market in the apocalypse, hun. Don’t you worry your pretty face. You can still join us.”
I’m on Cal’s good side because I encouraged him to invest twenty thousand dollars in the market and his investment is doing well. Guys like Cal don’t trust the market. He puts money in the bank so he can run his business, but as I mentioned, he’s one of those bury-the-cash-and-jewelry-where-only-I-can-find-it nutjobs. Though I imagine Summer knows all his secrets. The idea of owning stock is anathema to a guy like Cal.
It took me several hours and three straight nights at the bar but eventually I wore him down and got him to set up a brokerage account. He called “his guy” at the local bank and had him transfer the money into it. Then I gave him a hot tip.
But Cal is right: in the apocalypse, my stock tips won’t be worth a damn thing.
“I could write everything down. Record what’s happened for future generations. That’s a really important job,” I say.
“You can just look pretty,” Cal says.
“Looking pretty is not a basic need. It’s like drywall,” I protest.
“Sex is a basic need.” Cal has this big, dumb grin on his face.
“I’m not having sex with you. Even if you’re the last man on the planet.”
“Not even for the benefit of the species? Okay, fine; you can cook. Lucas can cook too. He’s a feminist.” Cal draws out fem-min-nist slow and smooth. He adds, “I have enough bottled water to last us six months.”
“Food, water, and shelter,” I say. “And friendship.”
Cal raises his bottle to me. He pours whatever’s left down his throat. “Let’s go, Beautybelle,” he says to Summer. I picture them driving home in Cal’s truck—Summer with her legs up on the dash, Cal telling her how she will rule the world someday. It doesn’t matter to Cal what she does with her life. She’ll always be his Beautybelle.
Summer lifts her head. “Can we stay a little longer?”
“It’s almost ten,” Cal says.
“Nobody here minds.” She looks at me.
I nod.
“Amelia,” Cal says, “tell her what’s what.”
“No children after ten,” Amelia says, flashing a smile.
“Unless you’re a man-child. Then you can stay ’til close,” I say.
Summer laughs and allows Cal to slip a clear plastic poncho over her head, before putting on his rain jacket. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out his wallet so he can pay his tab. The wallet’s not there. He searches in the other pocket, and then, even though he knows it’s not there, in the breast pocket.
“Who took my wallet? Someone took my wallet!” He looks at Summer. “Did you see anyone suspicious over here?”
She shakes her head no.
“Shit,” Cal says.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I wasn’t watching,” Summer says. She feels responsible.
Cal kisses her on the head. “No, no, Belle. It’s not your fault. I didn’t mean that.”
I call across the bar, “I saw Yag creep over there about an hour ago.”
Collectively, every head turns to Yag, who is at the pool table, about to take a shot. He looks up, flabbergasted. “What the fuck, Emma? I didn’t go near that table.”
“Sure you did,” I said. “When you and Jimmy came in from your smoke. Jimmy went to the bathroom and you hovered over there by Cal’s jacket.”
The look on Yag’s face indicates his desire to attack me but he doesn’t have time because he is blocked by Cal and Jimmy.
Jimmy says, “Come on, man. We know you need the cash.”
Cal says, “My wallet has twelve hundred dollars in it. I need that money back.”
Yag throws up both hands. “Search me. I don’t have your fucking wallet. Emma doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.”
Cal pats him down, finds nothing.
Jimmy walks over to Yag’s rain slicker, which is draped on a stool next to the pool table. By the way Jimmy holds it up, everyone can tell it’s heavier than it should be. He pulls the wallet out of one of the pockets.
“That’s not mine,” Yag says. “It’s my jacket but I have no idea how that got there.”
I look down into my drink.
Yag points across the bar at me. “She did it. She put it there.”
“Why would I do that?” I say.
“Because you’re fucking crazy. You’ve always been a crazy bitch.”
“Leave her out of this,” Jimmy says. He hands the wallet to Cal.
Cal counts the money. It’s all there. He walks over to Amelia and pays his tab.
They briefly discuss what to do about Yag. There’s no way they’d call the cops, and no one’s going to lay a hand on him. Cal is holding Summer’s hand. He shakes his head at Yag, showing him he’s disappointed. He says, “This is our bar. I don’t want to come here having to worry someone’s gonna steal from me.”
Yag protests again, “I didn’t do it. You gotta believe me.”
“How about you take a couple weeks,” Jimmy says. “Pay off your debt. Get your head on straight.”
“Typical, Jimmy. Some things never change. You and Lucas can shut me out whenever you want, but you can’t ban me from the bar. You don’t own the place.”
“I can,” Amelia says. “Take a month. Then we’ll reassess.”
“A fucking month? Jimmy said a couple weeks.”
“We all know you’re not going to pay off ten grand in a couple weeks,” Jimmy says. “A month is reasonable.”
“You did this. This is all you, Emma,” Yag says. “This is no different from when you told me I wasn’t welcome in my best friend’s house.”
“If you need work,” Cal says, “I can throw some your way.”
“Ban Emma from the bar,” Yag screams. “She’s the one who took the wallet. No one wants her here anyway.” He closes his eyes and runs his hands over his bald head. He’s calculating something—I can’t tell what. He snatches his jacket from Jimmy, looks at me, and says, “Emma, step into my office.” Then he heads straight for the ladies’ room and lets the door shut behind him.
Jimmy and Cal both make a move toward the bathroom, but I stop them. “He wants to talk to me because he thinks I did something to him. I’ll handle it,” I insist, telling myself I’m doing it out of kindness when really, deep down, I’m worried Yag might actually convince someone I took the wallet.
I did what had to be done. And anyway, it’s not permanent. It’s just one month and then, as Amelia said, we’ll reassess. How civilized. If only everything worked that way. If only the justice system worked that way, or deportation, or illness. Let’s just give it a month, and then come to terms.
“Holler if he gives you any trouble,” Cal says. “We’ll be right here.”
“WHY ARE WE IN the ladies’ room?” These are the first words that spew out of my month upon seeing Martin Yagla sitting atop the closed lid of the toilet. The swinging, louvered saloon doors, which cordon off the toilet from the sink, hang open. From my position, having just entered through the heavy door that separates us from the rest of the patrons, I feel a certain intimacy, perhaps a shared insanity.
“The men’s room is dirty,” he says. “You and I both know I didn’t go anywhere near Cal’s jacket. Why’d you finger me? Why’d you set me up?”
Even if Yag is not conscious of his intent, I’m sure he chose the ladies’ room because, deep down, he knows Cal and Jimmy will leave us alone in here. I don’t feel threatened, though, which has something to do with his demeanor. His body language suggests he just wants to talk.
“Did you see what just happened?” he asks. “Jimmy’s trying to excommunicate me. My best fucking friend wants me gone.”
I’m surprised that Yag considers Jimmy his best friend, but I don’t say anything.
“Ever since Lucas dipped out—”
“What do you mean since Lucas dipped out?” I interrupt.
“We don’t see him anymore, not since—” Then it hits him. “They hang out without me, don’t they?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say. “I mean, they’ve been friends for so long they have their own way of communicating.”
“They think I’ve never lost anyone,” he says. “Like they have.”
The fake pine smell of the bathroom hits me again.
“That’s not how it works, Martin. I know you want to make sense of it, but loss doesn’t push people together. It tears them apart. If Lucas and Jimmy are still close, it’s because they found a way around the loss. They tapped into something that existed long before we ever knew them. Bottle rockets in the backyard or summer nights in the cemetery.” I’m not sure if this is true, or if I’m saying it for Martin’s benefit or my own. He’s not really listening.
“You know I took an extra year to finish med school?” he says.
“I know that, yes.”
“Everyone just assumed I went off the deep end, like I went off my meds or something.”
“So why did you?” I ask.
“I was in love,” he says. “Just once. I loved her as much as Lucas loves you.”
“With who?”
“Maeve,” he says. “Jimmy’s sister.”
I do a little mental math. Yag’s time in med school coincided with when Jimmy returned home. Maeve’s cancer had already spread.
“When Jimmy arrived, he made us stop seeing each other. I wasn’t allowed in the house.”
“Why?” I ask, even though I know why.
“Same reason you later banned me from your house, I guess.” He shrugs. “Jimmy said she was too fragile for me.”
“She was dying,” I say for no reason.
“Exactly,” he says. “And I loved her. I loved her and I wanted a little more time with her, and she wanted more time with me. One night I snuck her out. Jimmy was at the bar. Their parents went to bed at nine. Maeve asked to see a ten o’clock movie, just to feel normal for a night. It was a good idea until we ran into Lucas, who understood Jimmy’s wishes and sided with him. He ratted us out, of course. Jimmy was at the theater within ten minutes. He dragged her out in her wheelchair as she protested. I would’ve fought him but Lucas held me back.” He chuckles. “I thought Lucas was my bro. To tell you the truth, we weren’t close. We weren’t anything. Just two guys who hung out at the same bar.”
There are other women at the bar—the group of college girls that came in for shots. One of them could barge in at any time. I bolt the lock on the outer door, an action I usually forgo because the toilet stall is private. Yag is telling me something he needs to tell me, for whatever reason, and I don’t want to be interrupted.
“I’d told my parents I couldn’t go anywhere that summer. They’d planned a trip to Montreal, but I didn’t want to be away for two weeks, so I insisted on staying behind. Jimmy and Lucas made sure I never saw Maeve again, though.”
“You loved her,” I acknowledge. “She must have known.”
“She died that summer.” Yag starts crying. I’ve never seen him like this. I always thought he was just another Peter Pan asshole.
“Imagine if Lucas was dying,” he says. “And someone thought you were so worthless that you weren’t allowed to say goodbye.”
I can imagine exactly that, I think. Except someone would be me. I’d keep myself away.
I squat down to look at Martin at eye level. Shifting my weight from the balls of my feet to my heels, I realize I can’t hold the position for very long. My knees ache. I drop my butt to the floor and sit cross-legged at his feet. My body reminds me how badly I need to pee. I will hold it for as long as I can. “So why’d you keep hanging out with Lucas and Jimmy?”
“We took a break,” he says. “Maybe six months after Maeve died, I started seeing them around the bar again. I dunno. I guess I was lonely.”
Looking at Yag now, I can see how Maeve would have been attracted to him. He has smooth, milky skin, almost feminine, and before he lost it, he had a mop of curly blond hair. He’s short for a man but not too small, not scrawny. He’s lean and muscular, and in his twenties, he wouldn’t have carried the softness on his gut. To top it all off, he has these beautiful, serene green eyes—eyes that, until now, I don’t think I’ve ever looked into. I want to tell him Lucas and Jimmy were wrong to keep them apart. I want to say I’m sorry because that’s how I feel, but sorry doesn’t mean anything. I wish Yag had told me this story before I’d planted Cal’s wallet in his jacket. If only I’d known his story, or considered he had a story at all, beyond what he’d shared with the guys at the bar, I’d have cut him some slack. If only. If only.
My feelings toward Martin are softer now. I even decide to give him a pass for the succession of young girls, one after another, each one more attempt to bury the memory of Maeve.
I point at the bathroom door. “Those people are your friends. Lucas too.”
“Jimmy sold me out in a hot second when you planted the wallet. You know what? I’m glad you did it. Now I know where we stand. It’s got nothing to do with his sister.”
“It’s been a long night. Jimmy’s drunk. No one’s thinking straight, yourself included.”
He wipes the tears from his face. “Beer tears. That’s what my mom calls them,” he says. “Screw Jimmy. He and Lucas can have their sad-sack friendship.”
“Lucas always cared about you,” I say. “I’m not sure if he can be there for you now, but that’s got nothing to do with you.”
“How am I gonna come up with ten grand anyway?”
“Borrow it from your parents. Go to work for Cal. Pay it back over time.” I stand up and shake my legs out. “Give me the stall for a minute, or I’m going to piss my pants.”
He stands up and walks over to the mirror.
I close the swinging stall doors, yank down my jeans, and talk as my bladder empties. “Any minute, some drunk college girl is going to start banging on this door, needing to pee,” I say. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna walk out into the bar. I’m going to tell everyone that I planted the wallet, that it was just a gag. I’ll buy everyone a round as a show of goodwill, and the apologies will come just as quick as the blame. Then you’ll play another game of pool with Jimmy. Take the edge off. And we’ll all go home and tomorrow will be another day.”
I flush and step out of the stall to wash my hands. He nods, seemingly pleased with the plan. As I begin to unlock the door, he puts his hand over mine. “Everything you do turns to gold,” he says. “Your book. The fund. Maeve was the only one who made me feel like somebody.”
“I am a mother—” I begin. He throws me a look of recognition, and I don’t have to finish the thought. He accepts my use of the present tense, or doesn’t question it. I was a mother. I am a mother. I will always be a mother. Even Martin Yagla understands that. We unlock the door together and exit into the bar.
There’s a girl waiting outside on her phone, legs crossed, holding in her pee. She looks annoyed. “What?” Yag says to her. “Never fucked in the bathroom?” We both laugh at the look on her face, mouth contorted upward in disgust.
I point at Amelia and tell her the next round, for all the regulars, is on me. Then I come clean about the wallet.
I READ SOMEWHERE ONCE that drinking is healthy for relationships. Statistically speaking, couples who drink together are more likely to maintain lifelong bonds. Never mind that the study was probably funded by the alcohol industry. This finding was congruous with what I believed to be true about relationships, in spite of the fact that my parents had split and Lucas and I had also split. I’m not talking about a glass of wine with dinner. I’m talking about a sustained habit of drinking together for several hours at a time. The kind of drinking that forges pathways of communication that would not otherwise exist; the kind that replaces therapy altogether. Lovers and friends can cover quite a bit of ground in eight hours of uninterrupted time. Aside from college dorms, that kind of time only exists in bars.
Sometimes I think that’s where Lucas and I went wrong—we stopped going to the bar together. Maybe if we’d kept up the habit, we could have worked through things. Maybe we’d still be together. Don’t get me wrong: the bar can’t make the pain go away. Drinking can, for some hours, but it always comes back. The bar is simply a place where a person can live with the pain, because it isn’t home, with the trappings of loneliness, or work, with the slow torture of avoidance. It is just a place where one human in the world chooses to be among other humans.
We didn’t stop going to the bar when we had Lionel. We met here twice a week, when my class let out at four o’clock. Lucas’s mom watched our son on those days, and she seemed happy to spend a few extra hours with him.
On weekends, we’d have friends over for barbeques in our backyard, or, every now and again, we’d take our son with us to the bar. Some combination of the chatter and the clanking glasses put him to sleep as a baby, and everyone seemed to appreciate his wide-eyed wonder as he started to grow. The regulars all called him Lion, and they let him sit in their laps and grab on to their legs, dangling from bar stools. Amelia gave him maraschino cherries, on the house, which I pulled apart into little pieces so they could slide down his tiny throat. For our little Lion, the bar was a tiny world, better than a playground.
We stopped going to the bar when I started traveling to promote my book.
AFTER THE FIRST FEW months of touring, exhaustion set in. I’d been doing it so long that the excitement had waned but not long enough to fully acclimate. I can’t remember what city I was in at the time. Tolstoy said, Happy families are all alike, but what he really should have said was, Hilton Garden Inns are all alike. That was the reality of my life: hotel art, patterned carpets, forced air.
FaceTime had a special ring, not even a ring, really—more like a digital beep, quick and repetitive. The sound of joy—it always preceded a glimpse into Lucas and Lionel’s world: our home on Catherine Street.
I sat cross-legged in bed, holding my iPad up high, level with my face so my chin looked good. Lucas appeared, only half on-screen. He moved from the kitchen to the living room. I caught a glimpse of his left hand, holding a cup of tea.
“Since when do you drink tea?” I asked.
“Oh, this,” he said, angling the camera toward his mug. “It’s a hot toddy.”
“I want one,” I said.
“Check this out!” Lionel’s little back appeared on the screen. He sat on the floor, facing the wall. The plastic baby tool set that Lucas’s parents had given him was next to him on the hardwood. From it, he’d taken what looked like a drywall trowel, a flat rectangle with a handle protruding from the middle of the backside. Lucas had apparently also given him some joint compound, which was all over his hands and arms. “He’s my little apprentice,” Lucas said.
Lionel stuck a glob of compound on the wall with his left hand and then attempted to rub it in with the trowel. Lucas panned back to his own face, again only half on-screen. He put his drink down on the coffee table. “Hang on, he needs help,” he said.
He sat down behind Lionel with his legs bent around him. Lionel handed him the trowel and, for the first time, saw my face on the screen. His eyes lit up. He raised his arms to the air. He squealed.
Lucas ran the tool across the small section of wall near the floor in a fluid motion, smoothing out the mud. “Like this,” he said. Lionel’s attention shifted from my face to the wall. He grabbed the tool from his father’s hand.
Lucas repeated, “It’s fun. It’s fun. Isn’t this fun?” as if he were trying to talk himself into it. He reached back toward the coffee table for his drink, and on-screen I could see the face I loved so much, half covered by the mug.
“Maybe he’ll take up the trade someday,” I said.
“Oh, the kid will know how to drywall,” Lucas said. “But he won’t go into the business.”
“No?”
“He’s independent, like his mom.” Lucas pushed his body back so he could lean against the edge of the couch. Lionel maintained focus on the wall.
“He does seem to like it,” I said.
“How’d the talk go today?” Lucas asked. “Did you give someone hope?”
“Doing my part,” I said.
“Restoring faith in capitalism by charging thirty bucks for a hardcover?”
“Teaching people they are special,” I said. “I’m like Rachael Ray for wannabe bankers and consultants.”
“Capitalism at work!” he said. “You should launch a product line focused on longevity.”
“Goop already exists.”
“Immortality, then?”
“ ‘Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,’ ” I said. “Lemme see Lionel again.”
Lucas turned the camera back to Lionel. He had a clump of compound in his hand and it was smeared on his face, across his cheeks, on his lips, and into his mouth. He flashed a devilish smile. “Shit,” Lucas said. “Put that down, child.”
“That stuff’s probably toxic!” I yelled.
“It’s not toxic,” he said. “I mean, maybe just a little.”
“How much did he eat?”
“I dunno. I was talking to you.”
“You’re supposed to be watching him. Who gives their baby toxic joint compound to play with?” Lucas put down the phone. I could only see the ceiling fan. “What are you doing now?”
“I’m wiping him off.”
Lionel started crying.
“You need to call poison control,” I said.
“You call poison control,” he said. “I’m busy. You’re just sitting in a hotel room.”
“I’m a thousand miles away, and I’m not the one who let him play with a toxic substance.”
“I told you I don’t think it’s toxic, at least not until you eat a lot of it.”
“You just said you have no idea how much he ate.”
“I know it wasn’t a lot. He probably just put a little in his mouth and swished it around. He’s fine.”
I opened my laptop and googled baby ate drywall compound. I clicked on hospital-data.com, which had a page about accidents related to children ages zero to five ingesting caulking or spackling compounds. The site estimated 1,029 accidents over a ten-year period, which didn’t seem like a lot. I scanned several instances. They all said, “Examined and released without treatment.”
I googled how to make edible playdough and read the recipe aloud for Lucas.
“Em,” he said. “I don’t need you to google for me.”
“Well, you clearly need help,” I said.
“So come home and help me.”
THERE’S A VOICEMAIL ON my phone from Grace, time-stamped fifteen minutes ago. I figure I should check it. She’s usually more of a texter.
Emma, I need you to take an Uber to Samantha’s house. Please. We’ve incurred considerable expense, both in time and money, to arrange for Elisa to meet with you. This is important. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me and Samantha.
She tells me to take an Uber because she suspects I’m already drunk.
A New York Times profile on Elisa Monfils reveals that she’s something of a therapist for Wall Street junkies and Silicon Valley nerds and D.C. attorneys. She talks them off the ledges of their high rises.
Oh my God—I get it now. Grace planned an intervention. I text her immediately: What the hell, Grace? Are you worried I’ll appear on MSNBC with a bottle of whiskey and a doobie, and all our investors will back out?
It’s not about the fund, Emma. It’s a birthday gift. Elisa works with the best of the best. Steve Jobs was her client. She doesn’t mention Elon Musk or his doobie.
Today is my thirty-fifth birthday. I’m not advertising this fact at the bar, because people over twenty-one who still celebrate their birthdays are either narcissistic or simpleminded or both.
STEVE JOBS WAS OFF HIS ROCKER!!! I write.
Steve Jobs sat atop an empire, she retorts.
Well, he’s dead so if he’s sitting atop anything, it’s a money bag in the fourth circle of hell. I shake my head and add an eye-roll emoji even though emojis are beneath me.
Everyone uses consultants from time to time, Emma.
Call it what it is, Grace. It’s not a consultation. It’s an intervention.
She doesn’t deny it. She texts, Pick up the phone, Emma. It vibrates in front of me on the bar.
Even if she believed my lie about driving up from the city, she would assume I made it home by now. I slip out back. Standing under the overhang next to a can full of cigarette butts, I take her call.
“Where are you?” Grace asks.
“I stopped at the bar for a drink.” I picture her pinching the cartilage between her nostrils. “I have no interest in your little intervention.”
“You’re stuck, Emma, in a terrible and understandable loop. We think Elisa can help you out of it.”
“You and Samantha have no idea—”
“I know,” she says. “I can’t even imagine—”
“That’s just it,” I say. “You don’t have to imagine. What happened to me would never happen to someone like you. Your life is perfect.”
“We’ve known each other too long for you to believe that, Emma.”
This is true, of course. Less than a year after her son was born, Grace was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was with her when she tried on bras and contemplated whether anyone would notice that her fake breast sat higher than her real one. Her daughter, the oldest, repeated kindergarten after falling behind and was later diagnosed with multiple learning disorders by a throng of specialists. Her mother died last year in Taiwan, where she’d moved when she divorced Grace’s father late in life after many unhappy years in Ohio. These are just a few examples from the last five years, the ones I know about. So yes, even Grace is like drywall, all those layers of mud plus a skim coat. But her eyes are so clear and bright, always looking toward the future. Sometimes I forget she has a past.
I’M TIRED. I MISS our old bed, the one I left behind when I moved out. The guy at the mattress store told us we should buy the biggest bed that fit in our bedroom, so Lucas and I picked a king. It occupied most of the room, with just barely enough floor space for a dresser against the opposite wall and narrow passageways on either side. When we told Lucas’s dad about the purchase, he said, “That’s so bourgeois.”
It was a great decision. That bed was a home within a home. It was where Lionel said his first word.
He cried out from his crib around six a.m. I remember it was a Saturday, because on weekdays, Lucas was always up by six, getting ready to head out to a jobsite.
Addie jumped up and sat, ears perked, at the foot of the bed. She was the most awake of all of us, anxious to rush downstairs and wait for Lucas to fill her bowl. Together, they plodded down to the kitchen. A bit later, they scurried back upstairs.
Lucas carried Lion into our room so I could feed him. I propped myself up in bed with pillows, gave him the bottle, and watched while he filled his tiny belly. We’d switched to formula pretty quickly, much to Samantha’s chagrin. She’d sent a series of articles espousing the benefits of breastfeeding. I deleted her emails before clicking on the links. Lion was a hearty little thing, strong and growing. We could tell how smart he was by the way he explored the world. If Samantha wanted to judge us for giving him formula, that was her prerogative. I didn’t give a rip.
When Lionel finished, he fell asleep on my chest. I scooted down, a little closer to Lucas, and let myself drift away. Addie knew well enough to give us a little more time, but our half rising had riled her. She wanted to be a good dog, her deep desire was to please, but she couldn’t help herself. She jumped off the bed, ran downstairs, her nails clicking on the wood, and back up again. She returned with her ball, which looked like a tennis ball but it squeaked when she closed her jaw around it. As soon as I heard the squeak, I fake-scolded her. “Addie, shhh! No playing on the bed!”
This was an invitation to play, of course. Lionel was awake again now, sleepy but gleeful. He turned from me and toward Addie, opening his arms. She dropped her ball on our clean French linens and licked his face. He smiled with his perfect cherub mouth, showing his tongue and little teeth that had just come in.
“No playing on the bed!” I repeated.
Lucas grabbed Addie by the neck and began to wrestle with her. He put his hand in her mouth, gripping her fangs, shaking her head back and forth.
I picked up the gross, slobbery ball from our duvet and threw it on the floor. Addie mistook my gesture for a game of fetch. She jumped down off the bed, picked up the ball, and jumped back up. She dropped it from her mouth and it rolled toward Lionel. He said, “Ball!” and clapped his hands together.
Lucas picked up the ball and shook it in front of Lion’s face. “Yeah, it’s a ball. It’s a ball!”
Lion repeated, “Ball.”
Lucas repeated, “Ball.”
Lion repeated, “Ball.”
Lucas said, “That’s right! It’s a ball.” He threw it off the bed. Addie fetched it. She stood over us, holding the ball in her mouth, waiting. Addie was never a good listener. Perhaps we gave her mixed signals.
“No playing on the bed,” I said. Lucas and Lionel laughed. Addie wagged her tail.
After I moved out, the post office forwarded mail from Catherine Street for a full year, and every time I saw my old address with that yellow forward sticker, I thought about this morning, together on the bed with my family. Each time, it was hard to catch my breath again.