“Look closer,” you say. “It’s right there in the corner… Empathy Bordello.”
I smile. “Bordello, eh?”
You touch pearls that aren’t there. You feel it too and your phone rings. You say you have to take this and I ask if I should go and you want me to stay. You pick up the phone and your voice changes, high as a kindergarten teacher in a well-funded school district. “Howie! How are you, honey, and what can we do for you?”
Howie tells you what he wants and you point at a book of poems and I pick up the William Carlos Williams and hand it over and you lick your finger—you didn’t really need to do that—and your voice changes again. You murmur a poem to Howie and your voice is melted ice cream and then you close the book and hang up the phone and I laugh. “I have so many questions.”
“I know,” you say. “So that was Howie Okin…” You said his whole name. Do you like him too? “He’s the sweetest older man…” Nope! He’s a Mothball. “And he’s in hell right now…” No one knows hell more than me. “His wife passed away and his son moved away…” My son was born fourteen months and eight days ago and I haven’t even met him. And he’s not just my son. He’s my savior.
“That’s so sad,” I say, as if my story isn’t sadder. I’m the victim, Mary Kay. Love Quinn’s family dipped into their coffers to pay my defense attorneys because Love was pregnant with my son. I thought I was lucky to have money on my side. I thought I was going to be a dad. I learned to play guitar in that fucking prison and I rewrote the lyrics to “My Sweet Lord”—Hare Forty, Hallelujah—and I told Love that I wanted our family to move to Bainbridge, to real-life Cedar Cove. I went online and found us the perfect home, complete with a fucking guesthouse for her parents, even though they never let me forget that they were footing the bill, as if they had to mortgage a fucking beach house.
Fact check: They didn’t.
Your phone rings. And it’s Howie again. And now he’s crying. You read him another poem and I look down at my phone. A picture I saved. My son on day one. Wet and slick. A little risk taker. A rascal. I didn’t take this picture. I wasn’t there when he emerged from Love’s “geriatric” womb—fuck you, doctors—and I am a bad dad.
Absentee. Invisible. Out of the picture and not because I’m taking the picture.
Love called two days later. I named him Forty. He looks just like my brother.
I went along with it. Fawning. I love it, Love. I can’t wait to see you and Forty.
Nine days later. My lawyers got me out of jail. Charges dropped. The parking lot. Fresh hot stale air. The song in my head. Hare Forty, Hallelujah. I was somebody’s father. Daddy. I got into a town car. My lawyers all around me. We need to stop by the firm for you to sign a few papers. Next stop, the parking structure of a concrete fortress in Culver Fucking City. No sun underground. No son in my arms, not yet. Just a few papers. We rode the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor of the building. Just a few papers, won’t take long. The conference room was wide and indifferent. They closed the door even though the floor was empty. There was a goon in the corner. Thick torso. Navy blazer. Just a few papers. And then I learned what I should have known all along. My lawyers weren’t mine. Love’s family wrote the checks. The mercenary attorneys worked for them, not me. Just a few papers. No. They were injustice papers.
The Quinns offered me four million dollars to go away.
Bequeath all access to the child. No contact. No stalking. No visitation.
The Quinns are happy to pay for your dream house on Bainbridge Island.
I screamed. There is no dream without my fucking son.
I threw an iPad. It bounced and it didn’t break and the lawyers didn’t scream. Love Quinn feels that this is in the best interest of the child. I wouldn’t give up my flesh and blood but the goon put his gun on the table. A private dancer, a dancer for money can get away with murder on the twenty-fourth floor of a law firm in Culver Fucking City. They could kill me. They would kill me. But I couldn’t die. I’m a father. So I signed. I took the money and they took my son and you spin around in your chair. You grab a notepad. You scribble: You okay?
I think I smile. I try to anyway. But you look sad. You scribble again.
Howie is the nicest man. I just feel terrible.
I nod. I understand. I was a nice man, too. Stupid. Locked up in jail mainlining Cedar Cove, trying to stay positive. I believed Love when she said we’d move up here together, as a family. Ha!
Again you scribble: The world can be so unfair. I can’t get over his son.
You go back to consoling Howie Okin and I’m not a monster. I feel for the guy. But Howie raised his asshole son. I’ve never seen my little Forty. Not in real life. I only see him on Instagram. Love is a real sicko, yes. She kidnapped my son but she didn’t block me. Chills every time I think about it. I lower the volume on my phone and open Love’s live story and I watch my boy hit himself on the head with a shovel. His mother laughs as if it’s funny—it isn’t—and Instagram is too little—I can’t smell him, can’t hold him—and it’s too big—he’s alive. He’s doing this right now.
I make it stop. I close the app. But it doesn’t stop, not really.
I became a dad before he was born. I memorized Shel Silverstein poems and I still know them by heart even though I don’t get to read them aloud to my son and I miss my son and Silverstein’s boa chokes me out, that boa slithers in my skin, in my brain, a constant reminder of what I lost, what I sold, technically, and it is wrong, so wrong, it is up to my neck and I can’t live like this and you hang up your phone you look at me and gasp. “Joe, are you… do you need a tissue?”
I didn’t mean to cry—it was allergies, it was William Carlos Williams, it was the saga of poor Howie Okin—and you hand me a tissue. “It’s so comforting that you get it. I know it’s not my ‘job’ to read poems when some of these patrons have a bad day but it’s a library. It’s an honor to be in here and we can do so much and I just…”
“Sometimes we all need a poem.”
You smile at me. For me. Because of me. “I have a good feeling about you.”
You’re moved because I’m moved—you think I was crying for Howie—and you welcome me aboard and we shake hands—skin on skin—and I make a promise in my head. I’m gonna be your man, Mary Kay. I’m gonna be the man you think I am, the guy who has empathy for Howie, for my evil baby mama, for everyone on this terrible fucking planet. I won’t kill anyone who gets in our way, even though, well… never mind.
You laugh. “Can I have my hand back, please?”
I give you your hand and I walk out of your office and I want to kick down the shelves and tear up all the pages because I don’t need to read any fucking books anymore! Now I know what all the poets were talking about. I’m doing it, Mary Kay.
I’m carrying your heart in my heart.
I lost my son. I lost my family. But maybe bad things really do happen for a reason. All those toxic women won me over and fucked me over because they were part of a larger plan to push me onto this rock, into this library.
I see you in your office, on the phone again, twirling the phone cord. You look different, too. You already love me, too, maybe, and you deserve it, Mary Kay. You waited a long time. You gave birth. You give poems to Howie and you never got to open your bookstore—we’ll get there—and you pushed your Murakami on that Mothball, as if that Mothball could ever appreciate being all but sucked inside. You’ve spent your life in your office, looking up at the posters you held onto since high school, the pop star and the rock star. Life never lived up to the lyrics of their songs, to the passion, but I’m here now. I have a good feeling about you.