Short People (17 page)

Listening in on the other extension—hearing her lie and you simper, both of you acting like children—I felt it was my duty to be the adult. Or maybe I just wanted to cause a scene, to hurl my anger in both of your faces. I told her she was full of shit, that her story had so many holes that it might as well be made of lace. Didn’t she know that the first rule of lying is to keep it simple, and the second to make sure it’s plausible? “Be straight with us,” I told her. “Show some respect.” If you were a sap who was willing to take her bullshit—I was attacking you, too—that’s all the more reason for her to be honest. Didn’t she know that with love comes the responsibility to have the courage to end it when you know it’s over, to make sure you don’t engender false hope, to allow the brokenhearted to begin getting over it as quickly as possible? She held to her story, still does, and maybe it really is true—I’ve heard of nastier things happening out there—but did you notice how quickly her tears stopped after I questioned her script? I was young and livid and I wanted everything to be stark and clear. If the truth was as cruel as I believed it was, I wanted the cruelty to be explicit, so we could all see what we’d stepped in. How was I supposed to have known that, even though this was the end of our family, you and I would still cling to what-ifs and how-comes?

And why didn’t you reprimand me once we’d all hung up? Was it because this was the night that you walked down to Love’s and bought razor blades? Was the pain so fierce that killing it overwhelmed all other concerns?

Or did you know I just wouldn’t listen, that I’d race off to the Continental to flirt with my own self-destructive impulses before you had the chance to say anything? Maybe knowing this released you, in your mind, from responsibility. I understand, Dad. I can imagine how abstract everything else must’ve seemed that night.

What did you do with the blades, though, when you got home? Did you set the little yellow box out on the table by the window so you could feel their presence as you drank your whiskey and smoked one more joint and, for the last time, watched the she-males work Hudson Street? Did it calm you down just to have them within view? Maybe you did what I do: I lie on the floor of my bedroom with the door locked and the light off, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars you stuck to the ceiling back when I was little, then I light a few candles and arrange them in a half circle around my head so I can watch the wax pool and drip for a while. It takes some time before I’m ready to open the box and take out a blade. How long did it take you, Dad? Or didn’t you get that far? Did you chicken out, throw them down the incinerator shaft in horror and get drunk instead? You did, didn’t you? That’s okay, everyone does that the first time.

I did go to the Continental that night, but they were carding, and by the time I got there, I didn’t really want to be anywhere anymore. I did what you do. I meandered around downtown, picking random destinations just so I’d have a direction to walk in, hoping that, maybe, I’d be ready to let myself be distracted by the time I arrived. First I headed for the Angelika, but halfway there I realized I couldn’t stomach sitting through a movie, movies and Mom being synonymous. I imagined myself sitting romantically alone at a corner table at Le Figaro, sipping cappuccino and writing my tortured thoughts down in bad verse on my napkin, looking like a fool, a tourist, and it made me want to throw up. Finally, I pushed through the metal bars closing off Washington Square Park and sat on a bench in the dark. “What about me?” I kept asking myself. “Who’s going to take care of me? Who’s going to love me?” I don’t know how long I sat there. It felt like a second, but must’ve been at least an hour. It was like I’d floated away. All that existed was me and my sad, massive loneliness. On the walk home, it occurred to me, Fuck it, why not get it over with and float away entirely. I stopped in at Love’s and bought razor blades—an impulse buy. But just like you, I didn’t use them this first time. I scratched lightly at my wrists, barely drawing blood, then panicked and threw them away.

Even though I was in the midst of falling in love with Yegal, I almost bought a second box while Mom was in town to publicize
Say You Do.
I probably shouldn’t tell you that; she left a message on my cell and told me not to say anything. I was going to tell you anyway because I was sure you’d heard she was in town; but the more I thought about it, the more I realized you’d be tortured all week regardless of what I did. You wouldn’t sleep, just sit at your post by the window and watch the whores hopping in and out of cars, all the while hoping she’d disregard her worries about what might appear on Page Six, that you’d hear her feet shuffling in the hallway, keys rattling outside the door, and the door would swing open to reveal her, disheveled and distressed and needing you. The two of you would wander down to the Ear—your old haunt—for a drink and a couple hours of wistful remembrance of what it feels like to have soft, pliable hearts, a couple hours of memorizing each other’s faces all over again, this time with tears in your eyes. The more I thought about what you’d be going through, the more I realized that telling you she’d made contact with me would be sadistic and cruel. Mom doesn’t act on her feelings anymore, doesn’t let them show in front of her public (which now includes everyone except her agent, publicist and makeup artist); instead, she hides in hotel rooms until the feelings pass and she can walk, sealed off, iconic and correct, into the glare and assault of the visible world. She would never appear unannounced at our door, disheveled and needy, since the only need she’s willing to succumb to is the need for an audience. It’s not that the rest of her needs don’t exist, it’s just that they’ve been locked away for later, after her wrinkles and sags can no longer be hidden and her career sputters and falters and dies. I wanted to protect you from her. If I’d told you we were meeting, it would only have been a matter of days before you started pressing me for the details.

Seeing her was horrible, Dad. We sat on a bench in the part of Riverside Park that goes over the street—right around Eighty-sixth, I think—with that flower garden. She was explaining how her time is budgeted down to the minute when she’s on the publicity junket like this. And when she’s not, when she’s on the set, it’s hours and hours of absolute boredom. There’s only so much time one can spend learning lines. She gets cranky and the old feistiness begins bouncing around in her stomach, preparing to burst out at directors and costume designers and bust up her hard-won, easy-to-work-with, nice-girl rep. She asked me to come out and join her in L.A. I could be her personal assistant, since she needs one anyway. It would be fun and the work would be easy, basically just keeping her company, making appointments, keeping track of little details like telling the caterers what she won’t eat, balancing her bank book, getting her coffee. Can you believe it? “The best thing,” she said, “is we could be together without anybody knowing how old I am.” I laid into her. “Is this for real?” I screamed. “Are you really saying this? Why do you think I’d want to give up my whole life— I’ve got one, too, Mom, and it’s not so bad anymore—just to move out to L.A. and be your baby-sitter—not even your fucking daughter, your baby-sitter! I’ll stick with Dad, he at least
likes
me. Do you realize we’ve been here forty-five minutes now and you haven’t asked a single thing about me, not even something asinine like what I’m going to do next year after I graduate? And maybe you were going to, but it’s too late now. If you do it’ll just be because I called you on it.” I laid it all out. “Mom, I don’t like you and I don’t respect you and I’m only here today because you’re my mother and I feel like I don’t have a choice.” The dumpy Upper West Siders— probably the only New Yorkers alive who wouldn’t recognize her— made a big show out of giving us space, leering as if we had no right to be in their book-chatty little flower garden, using up their refined air with our trashy, messy lives. Mom’s a real pro, now, though. She acted like I was some crazy person who’d randomly chosen her to rant at, and instead of engaging me, she did the dignified thing: she waited for me to stop screaming. Once I’d exhausted myself, she smiled sickly-sweet and said, “It was only a thought.”

That’s when I stormed off to buy razor blades, but at the last minute I called Yegal instead. He took me out to Veselka for cold borscht. We sat in the back and I stabbed at the purple hard-boiled egg with my spoon. The egg spun and slipped, bobbed in the beet broth, bounced against the plastic edge of the bowl. Yegal ate slowly and watched me. I knew he was watching, and part of what I was doing was manipulative—playing the sullen teenager, dour and sour and dwelling on indescribable troubles, in order to make him feel helpless, to see if he’d get angry and frustrated, or earnestly pressure me to “open up,” or treat me like a child, or what. He did the perfect thing, though. Every time I glanced over, he’d say something innocuous. “You know, a beet is a tuber. How does that make you feel?” or “Okay, I was out at Coney Island last weekend, right, and did you know the old Puerto Rican guys who fish on the pier out there use spark plugs as sinkers? It struck me as somehow, I don’t know,
real.
” or “Stick out your tongue . . . see, it’s bright purple. Mine, too. That’s the best part. It’s like when you’re eight years old eating Now and Laters.” He kept saying silly things like this until he got me to smirk a little. Eventually, I felt so comfortable that I started babbling about what had happened with Mom. I showed him the faint scratches from the last time I’d bought razor blades. I went on and on about how much I hate her. I’d never told him who Mom was because I’d been afraid his demeanor would change when he found out, but he just listened, cool, unsurprised. He was so sympathetic. Not what I’d expected. I think I subconsciously believed that, by virtue of her fame, Mom was more justified in her negligence than I was in my anger; as if there was something horribly inappropriate, disgraceful even, about my rage when really—her being the star she was—I should be thankful she had time for me at all. But Yegal saw my side, and for the first time I thought, Wait a minute, I’m not the fucking problem, I don’t
deserve
this shit. He let me go on for probably forty-five minutes before he pointed at his empty bowl and said, “Soup is good food. Eat up.” I laughed and laughed and laughed. I couldn’t stop. “Who—” I tried to speak, but speaking made me gag. “Who—” I held up a finger and gulped for air. “Who do—” I doubled over and clutched my stomach—“you think you are—” Holding back laughter made me wheeze. “My mother?” He smirked out the side of his mouth. “No, just her understudy. Come on, let’s go look at the river. It’s cathartic.” He was absurd and perfect and he even paid.

We walked down Ninth, dodged cars across the FDR and climbed the concrete barricade into East River Park. I wrapped my arm around his waist. He rested his on my shoulder, and every few minutes he played with my short jagged hair. He told me how sometimes he forgets he’s on an island surrounded by water, and feels trapped and isolated from everything he really cares about— solitude, space, the shapes of the natural world—by the bustle of so many people striving to keep up with their own ambitions. Sometimes he just needs to get near the water, to let his thoughts dissolve into something bigger and more meaningful than a roomful of career-obsessed hipsters. If he were to kill himself, he said, this is how he’d do it: he’d step out into the river, open his mouth and let his lungs fill to overflowing. We watched the tugboats pull barges out toward Staten Island. We watched the traffic speed back and forth across the Williamsburg Bridge. We talked in brief snippets that swirled skyward almost as soon as they entered the air, spun over the retaining wall and fell into the river, mixing with debris and oil as they followed the current downstream. Mom didn’t come up once, she wasn’t important enough for us to waste our breath on. I felt slightly clichéd, but that was just my cynical resistance to the idea that maybe the reason people have gone down to the river with their sweethearts for so long that it’s become cheesy is because watching the river really
is
romantic, maybe the river really
does
renew and humble you, maybe love still exists and standing by the river with someone you care about allows you to float out toward the deep seas where it gathers. I let myself give in and be unironically happy. We kissed for half an hour, ears and nose and eyes and chin and tongue—the best kiss I’ve ever had. My stomach hurts when I think about it.

See, unlike with Mom, when I think about Yegal, it’s all happy memories. I’d be in better shape if I could dislike him. Two months ago, when he took off, I was getting close to finishing a new painting called
Flight.
I told him about it during our goodbye. He said if I ever wanted an outside eye, he’d love to take a look at it for me. So a week and a half later, I mailed it to him in Vermont. We hadn’t spoken since he left, but I assumed that this was because he was settling in, setting up shop, figuring out how to adjust his habits to this new place. I thought it would be sweet, that he’d be touched to get the painting itself instead of just a slide. I thought he was probably lonely and this would make him feel loved. I basically thought that, maybe, he’d care. But I never heard from him. For a while, I called and left messages at the colony’s office, but he never got them, or if he did, I wasn’t important enough for him to bother calling back. I imagined taking the bus up to Vermont and demanding he give my painting back. Stupid idea, of course, since he was only there for five weeks and by now he’s gone off somewhere else. Probably sitting in some Starbucks with a new student, drinking ginseng tea and whispering aesthetic theories into her ear. It’s really a compulsion, isn’t it, making up present-tense lives for the people who’ve left you behind? I can just hear him complaining about the conceptual stuff coming out of England, his clothes smelling spicy, like turmeric, because he hasn’t washed them in two months, his head tilting and his brow tightening as he nods and frowns, pretending to listen to the flow of his new student’s childish thoughts.