Family Affair (17 page)

“If you keep talking like that,” Trish says, “I’m gonna lose
my
breakfast.”

“Nobody is losing their breakfast,” Ginny commands. “And you shouldn’t interrupt, Trish, dear.”

I leap into the breach: “I’d like to add that while Brett simply mentioned fish, it’s salmon Ginny likes to eat, because it’s high in omega-3 fats and Ginny read Dr. Perricone’s book and tries to live by his code.”

Brett makes a face, and I make one back.

“Brett,” Burt says, “when is Trish’s birthday?”

“March,” he says.

“March what?” Hollander asks.

Brett is quiet for a moment. It’s March twelfth, but it’s not my turn to answer.

“This is just trivia,” Brett snaps. “Layla has a better memory for that stuff. Why don’t we talk about less superficial things?”

“Right,” I chime in. “Birthdays are totally superficial. You’d never care if everyone forgot your birthday. It’s just trivia.”

“My birthday’s the twelfth,” Trish says.

“I knew that,” I say.

“I know,” Trish responds.

“Great,” Brett grumbles. “You guys can make out later.”

Sensing the temperatures in the room rising, Hollander decides to take Brett up on his earlier suggestion. “Okay,” he says, “we’ll talk about less superficial things. What are your father’s views on politics? Is he a Republican? Democrat?”

“He’s a Democrat,” Brett answers.

“Is he ultraliberal? Fiscally conservative?”

“Is that really any of your business?” Brett asks. “I mean, don’t they say never to discuss politics?”

“Politics, religion, sex, and abortion, I believe,” Trish agrees.

“I’m just trying to gauge how interested you are in the views of your family members,” Hollander says. “How well you can answer these questions shows what kind of an interest you take in them.”

“I’m plenty interested in my family. Just because I don’t know what they like on their pizza doesn’t mean I should have to share them with a nonfamily member.”

“Layla is family,” Bill says, and winks at me.

“Thank you, Bill,” I reply.

Brett had picked up a pencil and now snaps it in half.

The rest of the mediation is more of the same. Hollander asks us each about Ginny’s views on parenting. Trish’s views on religion. Pizza gets left out of it, though I could have easily answered what everybody likes on their pie, whether they like thin-crust or deep-dish, and who likes it cold the next day. It doesn’t matter. The whole thing is pretty much Brett with his mouth agape, then fuming, and me getting all the answers right.

Head in hands, he starts moaning at one point. “None of this matters. The only thing that really matters are my and Layla’s feelings toward the family and vice versa!”

“Brett, you make an excellent point,” Burt Hollander allows.

“So I have one final question, and it is for each member of the family, excluding Layla and Brett.”

“Good,” Brett says. “Let someone else be in the hot seat.”

“Layla and Brett are both drowning and you can only save
one
of them….”

It’s total and complete bullshit. They can go on and on about how I was always a better swimmer, but I will never let them live this down.

So Layla wins her nonlegal, nonbinding declaration of joint custody of my family. It’s basically a sort of reverse restraining order (she can’t be prohibited by me from seeing them) or visitation rights on steroids. What a mistake I made, trying to be nice. Any real judge would not have just thrown her out of court but locked her in a loony bin.

This is what I get for listening to Matt, who swore up and down this was the way to go. I should never have called him after I couldn’t hang with Doug and Jared, or taken his suggestion about using this Burt Hollander schmo, his cousin who’s still finishing his social work degree and “occasionally does mediation work on weekends.” (“It worked when Kristi and I ended it!”) This is what you get for listening to a guy who lost fifty dollars and spent a weekend in the hospital after betting biologically produced methane, set afire, couldn’t burn through cotton boxers. I was glad to win the fifty, and he’d better go stay with Corey’s pal in Mexico, ’cause I’m going to find his ass and set fire to it again.

After leaving the therapy center, I take my mom out for lunch at La Scala, one of her favorite spots. I don’t know if I’m buttering her up or if I just want to connect with her. Dad said he had something to do but that he might meet us there.

Mom gets excited because Larry King walks in just as our waiter is setting down my Coke and her iced tea. “I just love that he’s bringing suspenders back,” she says.

“He’s not bringing them back,” I tell her. “He’s never
not
worn them, and nobody else is following suit—or suspender, as it were.”

“Well, I love that he’s got his own sense of style,” she says, and then waves at Larry like she knows him. He politely waves back as the maître d’ seats him at his table.

“That he does—and
please
don’t do that, Mom.” She does, though. She’ll see a celebrity and wave or say hello or comment on something irrelevant. She doesn’t get that just because she recognizes someone doesn’t mean she knows them.

I get momentarily distracted from my embarrassment by a woman sitting alone at the next table reading a book called
Never Be Lied to Again
. The title is in all caps, and the cover looks as angry as the woman looks hurt. An alternative title flashes through my mind:
Never Be Laid Again
. But then it’s gone.

“Sweetie,” my mom says, “I know you’re feeling angry with us, and I just want you to know that this isn’t a contest. It never was.”

“Yeah. I get that you think that, Mom. But can you see my side of it? Can you understand how frustrating it is for me to have you all side with her?”

“But we’re not siding with her, Brett,” she explains, as she touches my face and smiles, her crow’s-feet reminding me of both her strength and her individuality. When she and her girlfriends first started getting wrinkles, they all made appointments for Botox and collagen and all of the other BS that I don’t care to know about. But not my mom. She said she wanted to age gracefully. When her friends started shaving years off their age
here and there, she’d reprimand them. She’d tell them that she’d earned each and every one of those years, and ditto for the wrinkles. Of course they joked and offered to give her theirs, but this remains one of the many reasons I love my mom. Which is why it’s so hard to have her totally dog me right now.

“You
are,”
I argue. “You’re my mom. How many times do we have to go over this?”

“As many as it takes for you to understand that our loving Layla isn’t a threat to you. There’s room in our hearts for both of you. Of course you’re our baby. You’re our flesh and blood. But Layla doesn’t have anybody else. Do you want her to be all alone?”

“No.”
Yes
.

“That’s my boy,” she says, and looks out the window. “What do you and Layla have planned for the weekend?”

“Huh?” I ask.

“Do you have any plans for the weekend?”

I ignore the fact that she’s pretending that Layla and I are somehow seeing each other and emphasize the
I
in my response. “I plan to sleep, watch some football, and maybe sleep.”

“How exciting.”

My dad walks in and takes off his baseball cap. I see him before he sees us and wave him over. “There they are,” he bellows.

“Hey, look—it’s Larry King!” My mom points. I gently nudge her finger back down.

“Hey, now!” my dad says. “Biggest ass-kisser next to James Lipton.”

“Don’t say that, Bill,” my mom says.

“And Jeffrey Tambor on
The Larry Sanders Show,”
I suggest.

“He’s a fluffer,” my dad continues, razzing King. “He never gives anyone a hard time. He never questions anyone or digs deep. He just accepts their answers as they give them.”

I laugh. Then, “Dad,” I say. “Since I have both of you here …I was just trying to explain to Mom. It’s almost like I see Layla more
now than when I actually wanted to see her. We’re separated. And I don’t want her to be everywhere I turn. No matter what your personal feelings are on this breakup, you’re my family, and you’re supposed to stay loyal to me. Whether you agree with my decision or not.”

“I understand,” my dad says.

“Neither of us can move on with our lives with the situation as it is now,” I explain, because I finally feel like I’m being heard. “Which is making me think that’s what you want.”

“I get it,” my dad says.

“Thank you,” I reply. I’m not sure he’s going to amend his behavior, but at least I don’t feel like everyone is either siding with Layla or denying that they’re siding with her.

“Now, what’s here for me?” he asks, as the waiter delivers what my mom and I both ordered—the Leon Chopped Salad. It’s legendary.

“This was a mother-son lunch—you should have agreed to come right away if you wanted to horn in on the grub.”

“That’s rude, son. Though with the way your boys have been playing defense lately”—he picks up a fork—“I might just be able to sneak something up the middle.” He reaches over and snags some of my salad.

I pretend I’ve just been stabbed in the heart, and my mom playfully nudges my dad for saying such a thing. I’m not sure if this has made us all closer, but I’m certain that I still want to throttle Layla.

• • •

Later, at home, I’m thinking very seriously of canceling cable. It took me so long to get it connected at my new place. And after all that work, there is
nothing
on. Not even a
Rockford Files
rerun or an old Steve McQueen or Charles Bronson movie that can be stomached. Nothing. Not one thing.

I’m staring at the on-screen guide, and what is half of the
stuff? “Paid programming.” Well, I already paid for the programming, so where is it? And I think this infomercial guy is paying for his ad (“Learn Cooking by Hypnosis”?), and I’m not watching his shit … so one of us is getting screwed. Or both.

There’s no good music on my iPod—none that doesn’t make me think either of Layla and how angry I am at her or that I’ve already listened to it until I want to barf—and I have no good DVDs. Nothing in my refrigerator looks good. I leave the light off when I get ready in the bathroom, because I can’t stand to look at myself.

Come to think of it, I’m thinking very seriously of canceling the electricity.

At work, the days are as easy as finding Birkenstocks in Portland—and as hard as finding a clock in a casino. It goes up, it goes down, in no particular order. Trish and I are still waiting to hear the details regarding the prototype we want to deliver to PETCO, and we haven’t heard anything more about our loan.

Brooke and I meet at Quality, a favorite place of ours on Third Street, for an early breakfast before work and to catch up. She nonchalantly says to me, “You look good today,” and it floors me. Feeling so much like purple ooze inside, how could I possibly look good?

“I’m so annoyed,” Brooke announces next, as we sit down. “Why?” I ask.

“I bought a brand-new dress for a job interview. It was on sale. What I didn’t realize was that it was on sale because there was a hole in it. No returns. And I didn’t get the job.”

“Where was the hole?” I ask, knowing her interview technique. “A strategically placed hole could have helped you get the job.”

“I was talking with a woman, and the hole was in my armpit.”

“Oh, yeah, that sucks,” I admit. “Are you sure you didn’t get the job because of something you said?”

Brooke exhales and stares for a moment too long at the guy at the next table. His girlfriend and I both notice. Finally, she turns her attention back to me and answers, “I might have told her that her letterhead looked like it belonged to a little girl, her computer system was outdated, and that she should consider having the dark mole on her arm looked at for cancer.”

“Oh my Christ.”

“I was doing a good thing. What if it
was
cancer?”

I can’t argue. Partly because she has a point, but mostly because the word
mole
reminds me of the flesh-colored mole the therapist had when Brett and I attempted our one session of couples counseling. When I thought we might actually be okay. When I still had hope.

The rest of our breakfast I’m like a zombie.

“Just cry,” Brooke says, when she notices my chin twitching uncontrollably. “It’s only me. I don’t care. I mean, I care. But you know.”

“Thanks.” I sniffle as the tears stream down my face. “I’m sorry I’m such bad company lately.”

“It’s fine,” she says. “Kinda makes me feel better about myself.”

“You’re not a very nice person.” I grunt. But I smile for the first time in what feels like forever. She’s at least consistent.

“Part of my charm,” she replies.

I stretch our breakfast as long as I can, as I suddenly dread going to work. It’s a mixed bag of the merely irritating and the suicide-inducing, as my anxiety and depression cause every pre-Thanksgiving Chihuahua-dressed-as-a-turkey photo shoot to make me want to pound a wide-angle lens into some dog owner’s mouth—and a drumstick somewhere less pleasant.

In the week or so since the debacle with Matt’s cousin-cum-therapist/mediator, not a word from Brett. All I know for sure is
that his team is not doing very well. That I find out from the local paper. Not that I was expecting anything direct. But anything personal I now have to get secondhand. And the little news I can get is maddeningly sparse. It’s
USA Today
condensed.

“It’s hard, but he’s soldiering on,” Ginny said, when I asked.

“I think he’s a lot stronger than we all gave him credit for,” Bill says, with a knowing smile, but knowing what, I’m not sure.

“He’s fine,” Scott says. “Who cares?”

“The word that comes to mind is ‘peachy,’” Trish adds.

Zilch. So naturally my mind sees him already remarried with a daughter and a house in Rancho Cucamonga.

Did you ever stop to consider what a lonely thing a bus stop is? All those people keeping a safe distance from one another, not making eye contact, walking to the curb to squint down the road every eight seconds, longing for the bus to come and liberate them from the excruciating awkwardness of standing there with other strangers who, like you, are too broke or too self-righteous or too close to their last DUI to drive a car? Hoping against hope that this isn’t the time one of them turns out to be an escaped serial killer, doing thirty years to life for a mess of killings at lonely bus stops, using only the sharp edge of a fare card?