“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” I ask Mom from the passenger seat of her dinky old Nissan. As if we’re not already barreling down the turnpike. “We had a lot of wine.”
“You had a lot of wine.” Her eyes are fixated on the road and we’re not swerving, so that’s promising. “I’m fine! Here.” She tosses her phone at me. “Put some music on.”
“What should I —”
“The Playlist,” she interjects. “Duh.”
“Oh, my God, right.”
The Playlist is our genre-spanning collection of highly pissed-off breakup anthems. Mom put it together years ago in the wake of the Leo debacle. The songs have always been like musical comfort food for us — audible evidence we can’t be that damaged if so many other people have been through the same experiences we have. I dig through her Spotify and refamiliarize myself with the selection:
“You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood. “Ring the Alarm” by Beyoncé. “Bust Your Windows” by Jazmine Sullivan. “Never Again” by Kelly Clarkson. “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” by Miranda Lambert. “Picture to Burn” by Taylor Swift. “Breakin’ Dishes” by Rihanna.
Our plan tonight is to pull a “Before He Cheats” on Luke’s car and then go to the Short Hills house for an explosive “Breakin’ Dishes” moment.
If you’ve never heard “Breakin’ Dishes” before, just know that it is perfection. You can feel Rihanna’s rage as she informs her ex that she’s gonna fight him, break his dishes (of course), burn (and bleach) his clothes, and then blow the entire house down. At one point she sings, “I ain’t demented,” then chuckles and says: “Well, just a little bit.” Queen! I press Play.
“I forgot how much I love this song.” Mom slaps the steering wheel and gives her own demented laugh. “Rihanna is that bitch.”
I roll my window down and stick my face into the cool nighttime air. Something about the wind blowing against my all-cried-out eyes makes me feel more alive than I have in days. I’m ready to smash some headlights.
“We gotta get in and out of that parking lot as fast as possible,” says Mom. “Anyone sees us, we’re fucked.”
“Totally.” I settle back into my seat. “We’ll do the quiet stuff first. Key the doors and slash the tires. Then you can get back in the car and get ready while I smash the headlights and windshiel —”
“Don’t mess with the windshield,” she interrupts. “We’re not criminals.”
“But Mom!” I protest. “The windshield is the most therapeutic part of the whole thing. Remember when Beyoncé did it in that big yellow dress in Lemonade?”
“Beyoncé has money,” she dryly replies. “She can do whatever she wants.”
“You don’t understand,” I tell her. “It would barely even count as a crime. Luke already has a big-ass crack in his windshield. He’s getting it replaced soon —”
“I said no.” Her eyes remain focused on the road as her voice shoots me down. The whole vibe almost reminds me of a normal mother–son exchange, like from a family sitcom or something. “Plus it would probably set off his car alarm. Let’s just stick with gentle vandalism on this one.”
“Oh, good point.” I guess I can let it go. “I didn’t think about the alarm.”
A few more angry breakup songs later and we’re pulling into the Rutgers campus in Piscataway where Luke lives. This place has always reminded me more of a giant shopping-plaza-slash-office-park than a traditional university campus. Lots of big, modern buildings. Not many of those charming brick castle-y structures or perfect green lawns you always see in college movies.
“Left,” I say, as we approach a sign with a list of facilities and arrows. “He’s in the Livingston Apartments.”
Being in this environment with her is surreal. I always felt like such a different person during my Rutgers weekends — like someone with friends and a life. Even if the friends were Luke’s and the life was a lie. Now I’m just here as… me.
“So this is where you’re gonna be living in five months.” Mom is going about two miles per hour. “It’s bigger than I expected.”
I think about the exchange I had with Nonna earlier and feel a heaviness rise in my throat. I don’t want to disappoint her — especially after she’s already committed to help out on the loans — but my vision of life on this campus was completely predicated on being with Luke. It occurs to me that he didn’t just ruin our relationship. He ruined Nonna’s family dream.
I can tell that Mom is reading my mind as I silently stew.
“We’ll figure it out,” she says quietly.
“Here!” I motion for her to turn right. “This is his parking lot.”
She pulls in and stops perpendicular behind Luke’s beloved Impreza. The spot he chose is only five cars away from the heavily lit back entrance of his building, which isn’t ideal. It would have been better if he parked in a faraway dark corner of the lot so we could really have some privacy. But I guess vandalizers can’t be choosers.
“Of course he’d park so close to the entrance,” I say. “The asshole.”
“At least he’s not in a handicapped spot.” Mom opens her door and looks around. “We’re far enough away from the cameras. Let’s go.”
I pick up our two pocketknives from the floor below me and toss one to her. Seconds later I’m hovering over Luke’s passenger-side door, peering into the same beige leather seat that used to make me feel so safe and wanted.
I pull on the handle. It’s locked.
This is when it hits me that there’s no turning back. Even if I did want to stoop to an entirely new level of desperation and forgive Luke for everything he’s done, there’s no way he’ll forgive me for everything I’m about to do. I pull up my phone and look at his text rant from yesterday for last-minute confirmation that I’m making the right decision.
you have no idea how unattractive your constant insecurity is
you and your mom deserve each other
Yup.
He can definitely go fuck himself.
I shift my gaze to his back window and see his golf clubs splayed out across the seat, which takes me back to that night at Topgolf.
I’m jolted back into reality by the sound of Luke’s driver’s-side tire deflating. I walk around to the side and see Mom’s tiny frame crouched down in her black hoodie, digging her pocketknife out from the tire in question.
“Come on!” she whisper-screams. “We don’t have all night.”
Right.
I run back around to the passenger side and let every emotion I’m feeling travel from my hand to his tire. It’s weird that the expression is “slashing” tires when you really have to make more of a stabbing motion to get the desired result. That rubber is thicker than a bitch!
Pshhhhh.
And now: Eeeeeet. I drag the knife against his doors as I crawl my way from the front to the back, still crouched down like an undercover agent or something. Save for the light scraping and deflating noises, Mom and I are being remarkably quiet. Good for us.
Crack.
Drip.
I feel something gross and sticky slowly ooze onto the top of my head.
“Oh, my God, ew!” It’s egg. Mom cracked an egg on the roof of his car and it is now in my actual hair. “Mom! Hello? I’m right here! Now I have egg on my head.”
“Whoops.” She laughs. “Here.” She tosses me a few eggs. “Take it out on Luke.”
Right as I begin to press one onto his trunk, I’m blinded by a set of swirling orange lights about fifty feet away at the entrance of the lot. I squint to get a better look.
“Shit!” I say. “It’s campus security.”
“Be cool.” Mom wipes a strand of hair out of her face and tucks it into her hood. “He hasn’t even turned into the parking lot yet.”
And then he turns into the parking lot.
“Excuse me!” Mom yells out loud, jogging toward the security officer. She sheds her hoodie in the process and ties it around her waist, revealing a tight white tank underneath.
“What are you doing?” I whisper. To myself. She’s already gone.
The officer stops his cart at the entrance as Mom approaches him. My elbows vibrate in fear as I lean them against Luke’s keyed, egged, and tire-deflated car, doing my best nothing to see here impression. Mom presses her weight against his cart and starts giving him a speech. I wish I could hear what she’s saying. I keep leaning, extra casual, praying that he can’t see anything. Calm. Cool. Collected. He looks over at me.
Shit.
Then Mom looks over at me.
She’s… smiling? I hear them both laugh.
“Thanks so much!” She slaps the top of his silly little clown car. “Have a great night.”
Mom prances back as if everything about this situation is chill and normal.
“Oh, my God.” I breathe the heaviest sigh of relief. “How’d you get him to leave? Did you flash him or something?”
“I just told him you were my son.”
“And?”
“That you had a flat tire, but we called AAA and they’re en route.” She smirks. “But yeah. Having a pair of boobs probably helped.” She wiggles back into her hoodie. “That guy seemed like a fuckin’ perv. Okay. Let’s get out of here before he comes back.”
“Can you pop your trunk?”
“Spray paint,” I explain.
“Fine.” She rolls her eyes and jumps into the driver’s seat. “But hurry up.” The sound of her car’s engine starts buzzing into the air. “We gotta go.”
I know I told Mom I wouldn’t smash anything, but that was before I reread Luke’s texts. How can I let him off with just a couple flat tires and key scrapes? I need his car to be mangled, like my heart.
So I ignore the spray paint cans and go straight for one of the two Easton aluminum baseball bats we laid out in the trunk earlier. The feeling of its rubber grip in my fingers takes me right back to that night in Leo’s condo. I think for a moment about how other boys’ baseball bat memories are probably all rooted in normal activities like Little League games and piñata birthday parties. There’s gotta be a joke in there somewhere. I make a mental note to jot something down on the way to Richard’s.
“What are you doing?” Mom barks. “Gentle vandalism only! The alarm. Remember?”
“I’ll be quick.” I give her my best shruggy apologetic face. “I promise.”
“Stop —”
I turn back toward the front of Luke’s car and channel every ounce of strength I have into my wind-up — mentally zooming through our entire relationship, from the first kiss to the final text — and smash the hell out of his driver’s-side headlight.
The air remains quiet.
“No alarm!” I brag to Mom. “See?”
“You got lucky — now let’s go!” she snaps as quietly as possible. “People definitely could have heard that.”
I look back at her and sincerely mouth the word sorry.
I climb on top of Luke’s eggy front hood and survey the uneven crack that’s already in the center of his windshield. Somehow it’s doubled in size since we first noticed it a couple weeks ago. With luck, maybe I can triple it.
I execute another impeccable wind-up — closing my eyes this time, thinking about all my future plans that have morphed into giant question marks over the past two days — thinking not about just Luke but every man who’s ever made me feel bad about myself — from my middle school bullies to my nameless father to the Grindr creep who made my lip bleed — and hurl my entire body weight into a swing of the bat directly against the glass. I’m hypnotized as the existing crack swiftly expands out in every direction. The entire windshield is now covered in a spiderwebby mosaic of jagged white lines.
“Joey!” Mom yells. “What did you just do?”
Still no alarm. So I wind up again and give the windshield one final whack. The last one felt too good to not do it again.
This time the glass crumbles like a fresh biscotti. That passenger seat I used to feel so safe in is suddenly covered in a zillion tiny glass fragments.
I drop the bat to the ground in a daze. Mom pleads for me to get back in the car. I can barely hear her over the sound of Luke’s alarm, which I’ve finally triggered with that last whack. The mixture of siren and horn creates a blaring dissonance — echoing throughout the entire parking lot in a tortuous loop — reminding me of the mistake I’ve just made.