It is time for our family to do some fucking bonding.
8
I know life is ugly. I knew that Bainbridge Island was never going to be exactly like Cedar Cove. I’m waiting to board the ferry and this guy in line in front of me is wearing a knit fucking skullcap—someone made it for him, you can just tell—and yellow-framed sunglasses and he’s rubbing his son in my face, a lesser Forty with a runny nose. He’s also with his wife, the one who knit that stupid skullcap and lied to him, told him he can pull off yellow shades. She’s a puffy-jacket sourpuss and she sniffs her coffee—I think this is oat milk, babe—and I am alone and they are together and it is absurd.
But not for long, right? Right.
I am taking the 10:00 A.M. ferry to Seattle to get there before you and I’m a little pushy—Gently, Joseph—but I want to escape from the in-your-face family that isn’t mine so I move to the left side of the boarding throng into a pack of lawsuit-hungry retired lawyers just fucking hoping that someone’s landscaper mows their lawn because it would give them a project. Yes, it’s twee here. If you go to the police station on your birthday, you get a free donut—you don’t even have to show ID—but there are twenty-five thousand residents eating locally farmed beets and commuting to Seattle, forming little commuter cliques. Debbie Macomber would feel for me, alone on a Saturday, now marooned with techies talking soccer. I belong nowhere but this is temporary and I’m on board—that’s progress—and I put on my headphones and break left for the stairs—two at a time—up to the sundeck. The air helps. The sea, too, a far cry from that heady brown Malibu foam, and I sit on a bench but I’m faced with a wall clock covered by a sign that reads I AM BROKEN.
I find another place to sit—gotta be positive—because it’s a big day for us, Mary Kay. I’m not gonna interrupt your bonding with your daughter and I’m not “stalking” you. My plan is simple. I’ll have some “me time” and you’ll have your family time and I’ll watch for the signs; when I notice that the two of you are getting sick of each other, I’ll “bump into you”—Joe! What a nice surprise!—and we’ll ride back to the island together. Then, we’ll have dinner at my house. (I bought salmon steaks and they’re not fucking frostbitten like yours.) Thanksgiving is five days away and that’s plenty of time for you to cancel your trip to Phoenix, and you’ll do that after you realize that you can date me and be a good mom at the same time.
I walk toward the bow, to another bank of benches, and I zip up my jacket. It’s not freezing, but it isn’t springtime for Hitler and I take off my headphones because people up here are polite, alone like me. No one is forcing a neighbor to overhear one side of a cell phone conversation about a busy boring life and I can’t get that clock out of my head.
I AM BROKEN.
I check Love’s Instagram—I AM NERVOUS—and Forty is biting his nanny Tressa, who says that my son reminds her of Adam Fucking Levine and Love is laughing—it isn’t funny—and there is nothing I can do. I delete the fucking app and shove my phone back in my pocket but then I freeze. I blink. I wish I could delete my body because what the fuck, Mary Kay?
You’re here. You and Nomi are on this boat, my boat, the one you’re supposed to miss. You’re thirty feet away and you’re leaning over the railing and I scoot across the bench, closer to the center of the vessel and I pick up a newspaper and listen to my heart beat between my ears.
Calm down, Joe. This is like yesterday. If you see me, you see me. It’s fine. People go to Seattle and I am people. I bend the upper corner of the newspaper and whoever is driving this ship decides that it’s time to go and we’re on the move.
You pull a fleece hat out of your saggy, bottomless purse and you offer it to the Meerkat and she deflects. I can’t hear you, but I see you throw your hands up and look heavenward—help me, Jesus!—and the Meerkat sulks and stares at the horizon. You two are off to a rough start and I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls last night. They needed Luke at times like this and maybe I should just walk up to you right now and save your morning. I play it out in my head.
Joe, is that you?
Wow! Mary Kay, what a surprise! Do you want to go fuck in the bathroom?
I know. Too much. And the Meerkat might tell you that she told me all about your plans. Think, Joe, think. If you saw me, you’d come say hi. That’s what friends do. I’m still in hiding and you haven’t noticed me yet—long live print newspapers—and the Meerkat leans over the railing. “Ugh,” she shouts. “If you don’t leave me alone I’m gonna jump, I swear!”
You tell her that’s not funny and she tells you to stop being such a worrywart and this is adorable—I love our family—and then an oaf in a T-shirt stomps up the stairs and into the frame and Nomi points at this oaf like she knows him.
“Look at Dad,” she says. “He’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts and he’s fine.”
The word Dad is an iceberg and there is no dad. Dad is gone. Dad isn’t on your Instagram and Nomi has never said the word Dad and our ship is taking on water. Fast.
“Hey, Phil,” you say. “Husband of the Year, will you tell your daughter to put a hat on?”
Dad has a name—it’s Phil—and I am Leo in the ice water, I will freeze to death on this boat, in this water. The man you call Phil, husband—this is not happening—he shushes you and our ship is cruising, we are sinking—and he’s a rock ’n’ roll type of ass and you are Married. Buried.
No, Mary Kay. No.
You don’t have a husband—but you do—and this guy isn’t husband material—but he is—and he’s not Eddie Vedder and it’s not 1997 so why is he sitting there with his feet up—Doc Martens—wiping his slimy hands on his Mother Love Bone T-shirt while he dictates God knows what into his phone? He pecks you on the cheek—and you let him kiss you—and the ballroom on this boat is flooded and the water is cold—and you touch him. His face. You casually break every bone in my body and pull a sweater from your purse.
He won’t take the sweater and I can’t take this. Won’t take this.
Married. Buried.
You must think I’m a moron. The Mothballs didn’t tell me and Melanda didn’t tell me and Seamus didn’t tell me and your little community is a clique of mean-spirited liars but fuck me because this is what I get for being Mr. Goody Two-shoes because since when do I rely on strangers to tell me the truth about the people I love? You’re married. You really are. He’s whining about your upcoming trip to Phoenix right now and he sleeps in a bed with you and we can’t hang out like a family today because he is your fucking family. Not me.
Married. Buried.
He holds up a bag of chips and Nomi claps her hands and I snap a picture of the motherfucker and there’s a tattoo on his leg and the ink is black: Sacriphil. I remember that band, barely, one of those nineties, not-quite-Nirvana groups and WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T I GOOGLE YOU ON DAY FUCKING ONE?
Your husband is an overgrown fan boy in dirty cargo shorts and he has bad taste in tattoos and he produces another bag of potato chips like some third-rate magician—I hate magic—and I hate him and right now, worst of all, I relate to Nomi because I hate you, Mary Kay. You lied to me. You want Phil’s chips and you wave him on and I remember you in the bathroom of the pub, when you were mine, when you kissed me. He tosses the chips to you and you catch the bag like you’re in a bridal party, like it’s a bouquet.