“I don’t feel like saving lives right now.”
I’ve noticed showing I care about an outcome tends to work against me, so I stick with questions. “What will you do all afternoon?”
Eve purses her lips, annoyed. “Mom found plenty to keep busy around here.”
“But how will you earn spending money?”
She shrugs. “You only need money if you’re going places.”
Apparently, that’s the end of the conversation, because she walks away. Of all my behaviors, it serves me right that this is the one she emulates.
Clearly Eve needs therapy, but even thinking about that conversation makes me wince. Her moodiness gives her an upper hand. I’m the lion in The Wizard of Oz, searching for my courage. Maddy once shared this whole working theory about professional men who spend the day building an empire and ego at work, then come home assuming they deserve the same status, despite the fact that it’s a different audience. I’m such a moron; I missed the obvious connection that she was referring to me. Maddy made the fa?ade succeed in our house. She was the liaison between Eve and me, negotiating my sense of entitlement down while playing up my role as provider with Eve. Without my wife’s intercession, Eve doesn’t see me as successful at work, at least not as much as she sees the failure I am at home.
I am trying. I put a moratorium on travel until Eve leaves for school, and I get home from work by seven with dinner in hand, cognizant that forgetting to secure food for my daughter over the past several months is a substantial parenting offense. But these are easy, tactical changes. My temper still wins more than it loses, and I end each day housing reprehensible thoughts, like, What if we never had Eve? Appalling, I know. But when night hits and loneliness takes over, I imagine our life as it was in our late twenties, when all Maddy and I had was work and each other. Without a child, we wouldn’t have gotten rid of the cappuccino machine we sold when Eve turned one and it consumed prime bottle-cleaning, baby-food-making real estate. And if we still had the cappuccino machine, I would’ve had coffee with Maddy every morning instead of alone at Starbucks. And if we had that extra time together, I would’ve known she was unhappy. It’s at this point in my nightly spiral that I start to gulp the bourbon I’m plowing through, drowning my despicableness until Maker’s Mark tucks me in for the night.
Perhaps my daughter isn’t the only one in need of therapy.
The doorbell rings. Hearing Eve greet Bobby brings me back to the now. My daughter won’t be impressed. I should’ve had Paige host a sleepover. Bobby is an entertainer who never found a career that sponsored his talent with a paycheck. Twenty-seven years after high-school graduation and he’s an insurance adjuster for auto claims, the same job he held when I left for college. It seems a cruel waste of a great personality, but the job does feed him good material. When I get to the kitchen, he’s already started on a story.
“She didn’t want her husband to know she’d hit the boat trailer, but she had a huge dent that needed to be fixed, so the genius decided to hit her mailbox too.”
“How do you know it was intentional?” Eve asks, I assume to be polite versus actual interest.
“When the mailbox didn’t tip on the first try, she backed up and hit it again. A neighbor called nine-one-one thinking she was having a stroke or something.”
“For real?” Eve questions, skeptical.
Bobby holds up a hand. “Take everything I say, divide it by three, and it’s exactly what happened.”
They laugh until they see me standing there. “Wow,” I say. “I really know how to bring down a room.”
I expect Eve to disappear to her bedroom straightaway, but somehow the three of us end up parked in the living room listening to Bobby’s tales. They all end with an observation like, “Look at any couple where both people have a visor on and one person will also have a fanny pack.” Or, “Women tell their estheticians everything. Eve, you should know there’s no client confidentiality just because some lady did your Brazilian.” I don’t appreciate his uncouth delivery, but Eve seems to be enjoying herself.
Bobby and I are a six-pack in when he gets going on a guy who totaled a classic Corvette by self-installing a six-hundred-pound chandelier in his garage. “The wiring was old, and apparently the installation was shoddy too, because when he flipped the switch it pulverized the car.”
“Why would someone put a chandelier in a garage?” Eve asks.
Bobby’s lighthearted air evaporates. He shifts his weight on the couch and takes a sip of beer. “His wife liked them.”
“I bet his wife died.” I meant to think it, but I can tell by their faces I said it out loud.
Bobby takes another sip, bigger this time. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry, man, I forgot that part.”
“I bet they fought over it,” I continue, not wanting to put myself out there, but unable to shut up. “Now the guy understands what a waste that was, and he wants to make it up to her, but he can’t.”
I’m greeted with silence. I can read Eve’s mind; she’s wondering about my failures with Maddy, about the regret behind the tears in my eyes.
I am too. Until this moment, I’ve allowed anger to grant me absolution. Who jumps off a building? Now the chandeliers of our marriage present themselves. Who refuses to go on vacation? Who routinely comes home an hour late without calling, knowing two people are waiting to eat dinner? The epiphany would be meaningful if Maddy were here and I could do something about it, but she’s not, so I get up and head to bed. There’s no off switch once my mood sours. I need to sleep it off.
Not wanting to be left sole hostess, Eve also stands and exits without a word. I hear Bobby finish his beer in the living room before calling it a night. I’m sure he spends the time lamenting his decision to visit.
I apologize the next morning on the way to golf, but the awkwardness can’t be undone. Bobby waits until we’ve finished a Bloody Mary to attempt a serious discussion about loss, but some people aren’t wired for topics like that. Neither of us knows how to pull it off. I’m trying now with Eve, but it’s not smooth. I say things like, “I missed Mom a lot today,” or, “You sounded like your mother when you said that.” She just nods. Now, with Bobby, I take Eve’s approach and stay silent, hoping he’ll shut the hell up. But, like me, he doesn’t. On the sixth hole he says, “It must suck.”
I don’t stop walking until I get to my ball. “It does.”
“If you want to talk about it, I’m here.”