“It’s like she thinks she deserves it,” Linus had said, “or something.”
“That makes no sense,” I’d said. Outside, kids I recognized from my dorm were patting snow into giant men: snow people engaged in erotic acts.
It doesn’t matter who remembers what, I guess, so long as somebody remembers something.
May 28
Today you asked me what “Dick” meant, and while I was deciding what direction I should take, you said, “Mom said you were one.”
Today you put on your mother’s earrings inside your ears, and we had to shake them out.
Today you asked me, “What are nerds?” And when I said, “They’re people who are smart, and really interested in studying a subject,” you said that your mother had told you there were no nerds in your elbow, and that’s why it didn’t hurt when you pinched there. Nerves! I thought, but didn’t correct you.
I rip up the page. I mean to throw the pieces away but can’t. I put the pieces into my pocket to throw away later, or to forget to take out of my pocket and have destroyed by the washing machine.
It’s all so messed up. I think what it is, is that when I was young, my mother was her best version of herself. And here I am, now, a shitty grown-up, and messing it all up, and a disappointment.
What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we can care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person—what we felt about that person.
Here’s the fear: she gave to us, and we took from her, until she disappeared.
May 29
At four this morning, there is loud knocking at the door, and someone shouting, “POLICE!” From the top of the stairs I see my mother and Linus, squinting at the cops—there was a woman, a man—shining their flashlights and asking if this is Howard Young’s house. Mom says it is.
“He was two streets over, sitting on a porch,” they say. “We got a phone call. The neighbors were worried.” And there is Dad, behind them, in only boxers.
“Well, it looks like your clothes are here,” says the man cop. The pants and shirt are spread across the couch—they look as though they’ve been laid there. The cop reaches into his pants pocket. “Seems like your wallet is here, too.”
Dad looks stunned. He sits down. Mom thanks the police, and when they are gone, she sits beside my father, who starts to cry. Still wordlessly she wraps her arms around him, kisses him on the side of his face, and repeats, very softly, “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” and kisses him some more. This is how we leave them.
May 30
Sometimes what I wonder is if it counts, I hope, for anything. All that time with Joel, I mean. There was the day, for example, we went fishing, and used chicken nuggets as bait. What I remember is the day itself—brisk with a breeze—and what the sun looked like, and how we laughed. In the end, we threw back all the mullet we caught.
“Christ, these fish eat chicken,” was what I had said.
“Christ, these fish eat nuggets,” Joel said.
Then he ushered me into Tommy’s, where we drank pitcher after pitcher of sangria until the sugar became too much to bear.
That was a good night. But here I’m conceding it wasn’t anything.
What I want to know is what counted for something and what counted not at all. Now I feel like a shit for spending that time—that’s the word it’s convention to use: spending—on what turns out not to matter, and neglecting the things that did, and do.
After Joel and after Franklin, there was, very briefly, a painter named Adam who used to say, “Bore goo,” and it took me a long time to realize he meant bourgeois. But I forgave it, because who am I to judge? For a long time I thought touché meant touchy, and also that homely meant resembling home.
After the breakup, which was nasty, an envelope came in the mail, from Adam. There was no note, only a piece of string. I couldn’t figure it out. I kept it laid out on my desk until I realized what it was: string cut to the length of the circumference of his penis.
David, the attorney, took me on three dates—each of them to steak houses. Always, it seemed, he would eat and drink less than I did. It caused me this private anguish. The second date, at a different steak house, over another top sirloin, he said, “I’d like to do this again,” and as he said it, I knew that I didn’t.
Patrick was a policeman. He was mild and kind and he looked all right.
Late one night, at somebody’s housewarming party, he turned to me and held my right hand in both of his, as though he had something important to say.
“What is it?” I said.
“I was thinking,” he said. He wasn’t very bright, and really looked like he had been.
“You know the rescue dogs, after 9/11?” he said. “The ones who would look for survivors in the rubble? Something I heard, the other day, is that, during the searches, they would grow depressed, going long stretches of time without finding anybody. The relief workers would take turns hiding in the rubble so the dogs could find them and have the strength to carry on.”
“You’re calling me a dog? That’s what you’re doing?” I said, drinking my beer, which was by now warm. I had been struggling to identify the taste while Patrick was talking and now I realized what it was: tortillas. This beer tasted like tortillas. Listening to Patrick, I’d been hoping—against hope, that much was clear—he had something to say that could change my mind.
“No, what I’m saying is, I could be the relief worker,” Patrick said. “I could surprise you. It could give you strength to go on.”
“Look, I’m sorry, Patrick,” I said. “It just doesn’t work,” I said, “if you tell me how it’s supposed to go.”
There was a pause then.
“I’m sorry, too,” was what he said, finally.
The other day, talking with Bonnie, I said something about Joel. Something reminded me of Joel and I mentioned it, offhandedly. We fell into a silence.
“If I were you, I’d forget about Joel,” she said.
“I didn’t mean anything.”
“I know you didn’t. I’m just saying, if I were you, I’d forget about him.”
If I were you is something I’ve never really understood. Why say, “If I were you”? Why say, “If I were you,” when the problem is you’re not me? I wish people would say, “Since I am me,” followed by whatever advice it is they have.
I have always felt bad about the year of friendship that Bonnie and I lost: the year I left college to be with Joel in Connecticut, Bonnie and I fell out of touch. She kept asking if being with him—leaving college to do that—was a good idea and I, not wanting to entertain the possibility that it might not be, stopped returning her calls.
When I finally answered one, two months later, she didn’t bother to pussyfoot.
“This is a dumb idea,” she said. “You’re not thinking this through.”
“You went to art school,” I said, meaning: That doesn’t even count as college.
“I’m trying to help,” she said before hanging up, “and you’re being a bitch.”