In a tabloid in the waiting room I read that Blake Lively’s mother, lacking blush, once licked an Advil and rubbed its pink on her cheeks.
Dr. Lung talks differently to my mother than he does to my father. When my mother asks him how he’s doing, he tells her. He tells her that they went on a vacation—he and Mrs. Lung, without the kids—to the Bahamas.
“You see this?” he says happily, removing his glasses, showing her the white stripes of skin on his temples and nose, hidden behind the band—evidence of his tan.
Nearing the end of the appointment, Lung says that caregivers will often ask him what they can do.
There’s nothing really to “do,” he says. Just be present.
“Like in the moment?” I say.
“I meant ‘around,’?” he says. “But sure, that, too.”
June 6
The present: there’s this woman in the same aisle of the supermarket, curling a large dog bone like it’s a barbell.
June 7
The present: glancing in the mirror, I notice a segment of noodle on my cheek. But I can’t remember the last time I ate noodles.
June 8
The present: we pound schnitzel with Dad’s dictionary that we’ve plastic-wrapped.
June 11
The present: he doesn’t mention Joan. He doesn’t mention the physicist.
June 12
The present: he’s saying everything with a Southern twang and making Mom laugh and laugh.
The present: Mom laughs so hard she loudly farts.
June 13
The present: Linus and I are lifting Bonnie’s couch from the moving truck to her new living room. Vince, Bonnie explains, is shooting a commercial for Audi.
The present: on the freeway, on the drive back, I notice a black truck that says EAT MORE ENDIVE on the side.
The present: I scream, “That’s Carl!”
The present: “Drive, drive, drive!” I command Linus.
But when he pulls up beside the truck it isn’t Carl after all. This trucker is fatter and paler.
“Who’s Carl?” Linus asks.
“He drives endives,” I say, so disappointed.
June 14
The present: I wash the windows and clear, from the sill, what seems like a hundred perished ladybugs.
June 15
The present: Linus cooks us French toast for dinner and we’re out of syrup, so we go to the door of a new neighbor and inquire. She has a little Aunt Jemima.
June 16
The present: a little boy, walking between his parents, screams, “I don’t like dogs!” when a pair of joggers jogs by with their Chihuahuas.
His mother leans down to whisper something—maybe tell him that’s not appropriate? In response, he clarifies, very loudly, “I don’t like SMALL dogs.”
June 22
The present: I chip out a tile in the bathroom. I start to pull on the caulk, and it comes out in one long strip, like it’s the tub’s hangnail.
June 23
The present: the carpet cleaners are here. We push all the furniture—the coffee table and ottomans and armchairs—to the tiled kitchen. The shampoo takes the morning, and afterward, we open the windows and sliding glass doors to rid the room of the chemical smell.
The present: I go to the store to buy milk and when I get home, there is my dad, perched on top of the coffee table, head between his knees in the crash position: like he’s on a plane about to make an emergency landing.
June 25
The present: Mom’s asleep and it’s just the two of us, past midnight, watching TV, and Dad says, “You’re my daughter?”
“I’m your daughter,” I say.
“You sound different,” he says.
“How?” I say.
“More sonorous,” is what he says.
“Well, thank you,” is what I say.
June 29
The present: the phone rings and it’s Theo asking do I want to get breakfast tomorrow?
June 30
The present: we’re eating eggs. He’s telling me about visiting his older sister, and her toilet paper roll holder that plays “Ring of Fire” when you unspool the toilet paper. Why “Ring of Fire,” he’s asking, and not something more relevant?
“A Boy Named Poo,” he says.
“Pee of heartbreak?” I try.
“Exactly,” he says.
Now he’s lifting bacon and asking, “So you and Joel—that was your longest relationship?”
I tell him about the time, after the breakup, when I was sitting in the park having a picnic alone, a pigeon flew overhead and shat into my Tupperware of macaroni. How I considered simply scooping the shit out and continuing my meal.
How my friend Sam, who drives a refrigerated truck—he delivers produce and meat to restaurants in the Marina—was the one who helped me move to that new apartment. We unloaded it all together, and at the end, Sam patted me respectfully on the back, like I was an old, dying dog, and wished me luck, and I laughed, like, of course it was all under control. Sam liked Joel and me equally, or so it seemed, then—he hadn’t chosen sides.
How that first night, everything was cold: the couch was cold, the lamps were cold to switch on, my bed too big and too cold and my body couldn’t make enough heat to fill it.
How I’d swat at moths and reprimand myself. “You’re so mean!” I once said, loudly, to me.
And then it became pronouncing foreign labels out loud: yerba maté, I caught myself saying, really rolling the R. Jalape?o, I read the can. Like a crazy, broken-up-with person.
How, one of those first nights, walking home to what should have been our new apartment, it was after midnight, and I’d had a few drinks. Two point five, like Grooms advised. Not too many. And there was a hunched-over man with an eye stitched shut and a mouth of glinting gold teeth sitting on a stoop, and when I tried to walk fast, past him, without making eye contact, he said, “Be safe.”
“Thank you,” it took me a moment to say.
The present: I’m saying, “Your turn.”
She was his college girlfriend. They met in their junior year of college, on the Ultimate Frisbee team. She whupped him good. She had a beautiful voice. Has, I mean.
“Was she your longest?” I ask.
“Not the longest,” he says. “But the most severe.”
They broke up because things didn’t feel right, according to her. But two weeks after the breakup she was cavorting openly with a photographer, who took her pictures and posted them on the Internet. Theo would have dreams set exclusively in dark rooms—everybody whispering, and glowing red.
This is what he’s telling me now, in the present. I’m not cheating here.
The present: Theo reading from Dad’s textbook in a Katharine Hepburn voice.
The present: me saying, but why did everyone talk like that, back then? Like Katharine Hepburn?
The present: Theo dipping a chocolate-covered cookie into his tea and it dissolving immediately, and his panic.
The present: me laughing uncontrollably.
The present: me remembering, Don’t get me wrong. It was what Joel had said. But I did! I got it all wrong.
And: be present, and the words falling behind me, quickly, into the past, too.
July 1