The One That I Want Read online

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “He was a very good man. We lost touch, but I remember him being a very good man.” What my father doesn’t say is that they lost touch when my dad alienated nearly everyone he knew with his drinking, and some people never came back to him, even when he had atoned for his sins.

  “He was.” Ashley nods.

  The counter lady calls out, “Darcy, hon, order’s done,” and she and dad say their good-byes. Ashley’s eyes follow them as they head toward the parking lot, then she looks back at me and sighs.

  “I see your dad has straightened himself out.”

  “Sort of,” I say, but then remember his perch just outside my door and decide to give him more credit. “He had a little relapse, but we’re working through it.”

  She laughs. “That’s you, Tilly. The glass is always half-full until the bitter end.” She pushes away her plate, and I take a bite of her buttered toast, the first thing I’ve eaten since yesterday afternoon.

  “Enough about that. I know how you feel about me,” I say.

  “Not really.” She shrugs.

  “Listen, Ashley, I just need some answers. I asked you to meet me because I need you to make it stop.”

  “Do you want it to?” she asks.

  “Yes!” I hiss after a beat. I’d thought—just for one woebegone second last week—that it could be fun, whimsical, that wild ride that I so rarely hitched myself to. But Tyler and his abandonment have shown me that it isn’t, it can’t be, it can only bring more havoc, damage, because all I am is a helpless observer, a witness to a future that I want no part of! These visions aren’t going to bring Tyler back, aren’t going to make me pregnant, make me happy, make me anything other than a haunted shell. Yes, God damn it, I want it to stop!

  “I wish I could help, but I already told you,” she says, plunking down her coffee, which spills over the rim and onto the Formica table. “I can’t do anything about it. You’re the one in control.”

  “But I’m not! I’m not!” I say. “I can’t speak, I can’t move, I can’t change anything! I tried to change what happened with Tyler, and I can’t, I couldn’t!”

  I slap my hands down on the table, sloshing my own coffee, which I mop up with my elbow.

  “You’re thinking about this all wrong,” she says before nudging the check toward me. “It really is a gift. If you give yourself a little more time, I bet you’ll find a way to see it that way too.”

  A week later, the bursting August air is even more humid than any living creature thought possible, and despite all odds, I have mustered the dignity to crawl into the shower, step into a mostly wrinkle-free pair of khaki capris, and drive in to work. Darcy has offered to accompany me, but I shake her off. She and Dante have booked another gig at Oliver’s, so I tell her to spend the day with him instead, honing their act—a small deflection of the fact that I’m a little embarrassed at the role reversal, at how, with one abrupt detour of my life’s plan, I’ve devolved into a total basket case. I was the one who took care of people’s messes! I was the one who always had an actionable solution. No, I assured her this morning, I could hold my head up fine without her.

  Of course, this isn’t true. This isn’t true at all. I can barely lift my head off the floor, where I want to splatter out my intestines to make my asshole of a husband feel worse about himself than I do, but alas, I have a prom committee meeting that I simply cannot avoid, and by God, if these kids can find a way to spare a few minutes between their summer jobs and their second summer jobs, then I can put that bastard aside and get over myself, if only for twenty minutes.

  I close my office door behind me, lean up against it, and exhale.

  “Hey!” CJ says from my couch, and I jump six inches, nearly ramming my head against the coat hook.

  “Oh, good lord, CJ! What are you doing here?”

  “You told me to stop by a few minutes before the prom meeting,” she says. “You e-mailed me about it last week.” Last week, I think. A lifetime ago. Who can even remember what I was thinking of last week?

  “I told you to stop by?” I have no recollection of doing so, though I have no recollection of the life I had when something like prom actually mattered, so I take her at her word. “Okay,” I say, dropping my bag by my desk and sidling up beside her on the love seat. “What did we need to go over?”

  “How would I know?” she says. “You’re the one with the lists.”

  “Well, I don’t have my list today!” I say, indignant. Why can’t anyone else around here take care of these stupid lists? “So please, tell me, what did we need to go over?!” My chin quivers, and it’s obvious to the both of us that I am not ready for this, that I am in no way prepared to either guide or counsel, much less perform the two of those acts together, but CJ’s eyes just widen, while mine fill with obese tears, which somersault down my face before I can command them to stop.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, batting my hands in front of my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit of a mess this morning.”

  “I heard what happened,” she says, wincing.

  “Who hasn’t?” I say, dropping my chin into my palms.

  “Probably no one.” She concedes, then smiles wistfully. “It sort of makes my point.”

  “About what?” I grunt.

  “About this town.” She shrugs. “About how it takes everything from you: your privacy, your identity … hell, just the fact that I can’t stand it here makes me an outcast.”

  “You’re not an outcast, CJ,” I say. “You’re the senior class vice president and social chair. And star of the musical. And about a million other things.” Just like I was, I think. Like being appointed to some silly position in your school government actually matters in the scheme of your life. Like being anointed as something, as someone special, back in high school really promises a spectacular future. Back then, of course, I thought it did. Now, it feels like CJ might be a much wiser version of my old self.

  “Well, whatever,” she says, which feels like a reasonable enough argument for me right now. Yeah, well, whatever, Tyler, you asshole! “No one here has any aspirations other than to live here, die here, and long hail the Westlake Wizards.” She flops back on the couch.

  Suddenly, I realize that I can’t be here, in my office, with this child who is wiser than I am. I cannot deal with this right now!

  “The Arc de Triomphe,” I say.

  “What?”

  “The Arc de Triomphe. That was on our to-do list—bring it up at the meeting. You’re in charge for today. I found one online, and I want you guys to order it and be sure that it can be here on time.” My mind flashes with a vision of Eli at prom, with that willowy girl swaying by his side, and my perpetual nausea resurfaces.

  “I can’t stay,” I say, rising abruptly.

  “Um, okay, but also, I hate to ask, but community service?” CJ says.

  “Community service?” I ask back, wondering if she’s suggesting that I need mental help, which, actually, I might.

  “For Wesleyan,” she says. “You said I needed it. I applied for an after-school position at the hospital, if you think that’s okay. I’ll just mostly be restocking supplies and shuffling paperwork, but they were the only ones who could give me something between school and my shift at the restaurant.” Oh, yes, this is what I wanted to talk to her about in the first place.

  “Oh, yeah, this is why I told you to come in, but yes, yes, I’m sure that’s fine. To be honest, it’s puff work. Just something for your resume. Who really cares?”

  She cocks her head at me, at my unusual brittle candor, as I fling myself out the door, then down the hallways, past the judgment and the whispers and the shattered comfort of place that once hugged me like a life vest. Now that the outside world has weaseled its way in, nothing will ever be the same, can ever be the same, and the question becomes, without that life preserver, do I sink or do I swim? At this point, as Tyler might say, it’s anyone’s game.

  sixteen

  The
bottle of tequila is half-empty on my nightstand when I finally force my eyes open. They’re crusty, and I slap the back of my hand against my lashes, but still, the hardened goo remains. My mouth is like flypaper, sticky with condensed saliva, and my tongue tastes like rotten tuna fish. My pupils slowly focus on a figure hovering above me, and I squint to make it out.

  “Get up,” his voice says. “Come on, get up. You’ve been this way since Wednesday. Enough.”

  My dad strips my sheet from me in one billowing swoop, but rather than acquiesce, I yank a pillow over my head, fending off the headache that is threatening to overtake my brain.

  “Go away,” I say, muddled, from beneath the pillow. My voice is a scratch, like it has gotten comfortable not being used in a while.

  “No. Get up. You need to shower, get out of this house, and do something with yourself.”

  I pull the pillow back from my face.

  “Ironic, coming from you.” I meet his eyes. “Come on, join me. Have a drink. The bottle’s right there.”

  If he’s surprised at my retort, at my heartlessness, he doesn’t show it. Maybe he thinks he deserves it, or maybe, more likely, he’s just used to the way that alcohol draws out our family’s less enticing attributes. His was mindlessness, absence when we needed him. Mine appears to be unfiltered, raw honesty.

  He wiggles his hands underneath my armpits and hauls me into a seated position, folding me like a Raggedy Ann doll on the bed. The mattress bounces beneath me, and I’m surprised at his strength, how easily he lifts me. My father crouches onto his knees, his old joints cracking.

  “Listen,” he says. “You can’t do this. Getting drunk and sleeping through your life is not an option. Not for you.”

  “It was good enough for you.”

  “You’re not me,” he says, placing his hands over mine.

  “I need Tyler to come back,” I say. “I can’t do this if Tyler doesn’t come back.”

  “Well, he’s not coming back,” my dad offers. “At least not right now.”

  I vaguely remember calling Ty just after I peeled out of the school parking lot on Wednesday, already on my way to the liquor store before heading home. He picked it up on the second ring.

  “Really?” I started with. “This is what you’re going to do to me? Really?”

  He sighed. “Hi, Till.” I heard him suck in his breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “You said that already in your e-mail. In your e-mail.”

  “I can’t come home.” He said it so softly I had to mentally replay it to be sure that I’d heard it correctly.

  “You certainly can come home! You’re choosing not to come home! But I’m here! Your wife! Your marriage! Your life!”

  “I need to do this, Tilly. I tried to tell you that.” He paused. “And I’m truly sorry that I’m hurting you. I wish you could understand it, how I feel, how I’ve felt.”

  “This is our marriage, Tyler!” I flew into the strip mall parking lot, the tires squeaking on the pavement below, and dove into a spot, hitting the brakes too late, so the SUV bounced off the concrete sidewalk.

  “You think I don’t know that?” he yelled back. “You think this was easy for me? You think that I wouldn’t choose to go back and figure out a different life?”

  “A different life?” I asked, my breath spinning away from me, my heart expanding, exploding in my chest cavity.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, more gently.

  I didn’t answer, because I could tell that this wasn’t going to end well, that the more he confessed, the more I’d understand the extent of his discontent, and I’d already heard more than my psyche could bear.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he repeated. “I just meant … I do wish I’d gotten a handle on this sooner. I should have told you. I guess I should have told you, but now it feels too late. I feel better here, clearer here.”

  “Shut up!” I screamed. “Just shut up! Just stop fucking talking!”

  So he did, and then I did, and then I stuffed the phone into the glove compartment, walked into the liquor store, and proceeded to buy the extra-extra-large tequila bottle.

  And now, my father is crouched on my bedroom floor, trying to implore me to reconstruct a life that I don’t recognize, a life that I have no interest in inhabiting.

  “Tilly, here’s the thing,” my dad says, lifting my chin so I have no choice but to meet him square on. “It’s easy to become like me. It’s a lot harder not to. But this? This isn’t you, this isn’t who you want to be. You know that.”

  I nod, exhausted, drunk tears spilling forward.

  “Come on,” he says, rising and offering me his open palm. “Let’s get you showered, and then let’s get you some food, and then let’s figure out a plan.”

  Every cell in my being wants to shove itself back under the comforter, wants to numb itself with more tequila. More tequila, please! I can practically hear them begging in my ear. But my dad’s hand is outstretched, so I grab it and stand with him, then shuffle slowly to the bath.

  “I don’t know who I am without you,” Tyler told me. Yes, well, sometimes, I guess you’ve got no other option than to find out.

  A month slips by in a haze that feels both nascent and never-ending. I wake up, I find some way to wade through my day, some way not to fall over under the weight of my exhaustion, under the oppressive sadness that tails me like a black shadow, then drive straight home and dive into bed. Grease has come together better than I could have hoped for, the prom is cruising along effortlessly, and yet, I can’t get myself to care, can’t convince myself that any of this matters, which would be funny, if it weren’t so unfunny, because that’s all that mattered before. Before.

  Tyler and I have spoken twice, once when he asked me to send him some clothes, again when he called to thank me for the care package and announce that he’d be back around the end of October to collect the rest of his things.

  So there it was. Permanent. He mentioned this casually, like it wasn’t the most catastrophic chasm to ever carve itself into his life, and I listened to him and wondered how the same act could define two people so differently.

  But I did as he asked. I flung open his closet door while Darcy muttered behind me, parked on the bed, and told me to set the bulk of his clothes ablaze in a bonfire in the front yard instead of honoring his request. I gently picked out his polos, his khakis, lovingly folded a few sweatshirts, rolled up his oxfords so they wouldn’t wrinkle. I was still angry, to be sure, but I was so tired, just so goddamn tired, that the fight had been vaporized right out of me.

  School kicks off after Labor Day, and what is usually my favorite time of year—those early days before the delinquents have proven that they once again can’t keep their smart-ass mouths shut, before the panicked skirmish to finalize college applications or community college plans, when everything is still tinged with hope and newness and possibility—offers nothing but gloom.

  “I know I’m not normally one to say it,” Susanna says while we approve wardrobe fittings after school on the third day back. “But you need to buck up.”

  “Touché,” I answer, fingering Wally’s a-little-too-Elvis-y-to-be-Danny-Zuko-but-we-have-to-settle-for-what-we-can-get leather jacket. I’m wondering if there’s any way I can find something less, I don’t know, cabaret club, until I realize that he wears this in my vision, whether I like it or not, so I just let my hands fall limp and squat onto a nearby folding chair.

  “Hey, at least I’m trying,” she says, and I nod because at least she is. She and Austin are working with a mediator to settle things as amicably as possible, which isn’t so possible when one party is still beside herself that the other disappointed her to such depths, but she’s right, she’s trying. “To be honest, though,” Susie continues, grabbing a needle and thread to sew the hem of CJ’s impossibly snug pleather pants for the finale, for when Sandra Dee has made her full transformation, “I do sort of wonder if I’m going to be alone forever.”

  I rem
ember her quiet corner on opening night, her hands a bow around someone else’s waist, and smile at her with as much love as I can muster, and assure her that she won’t be.

  “Me, on the other hand …” I trail off.

  “Hey, no one has said a word about divorce between you two yet,” she tuts. Which is true. But no one hasn’t said a word about it either. And I suspect that one day soon, Tyler will, and then I’ll crumble like a shoreline being washed out to sea. “You know what?” she continues. “You should go grab that fancy camera the cute art boy gave you.”

  “Not happening,” I interject.

  “Whatever, you still should,” she says, ripping the hem out now with her teeth. “Document this, you know?”

  “What? Our sad-sack selves trying to put up a musical?”

  “No, our sad-sack selves making a comeback from the assholes we were probably too good for in the first place.”

  “I admire your positivity,” I say before I skulk down the left stage stairs. (“Stage left!” Wally corrected me yesterday. “That’s stage left, not left stage, Ms. Farmer, which I’d expect you to know by now.”) “But I’d rather stick to my own brand of self-pity.”

  “That’s not the Tilly Farmer I know,” she calls out to me. Which is true, I think, as I exit the auditorium, but maybe this one was biding its time inside of me the whole time, a cancer waiting to spring.

  Susanna was right, of course, that I’d probably get a boost out of documenting our work, but I’ve put aside the camera for now. I avoid Eli in the hallways, though he always waves with the joviality that makes him so likable, occasionally knocks on my door and pokes his head through to say hello, and I inevitably feign busywork. His was my last flash-forward, intentionally so. After I met with Ashley, and then after it was clear that Tyler wasn’t coming back, it became all the more clear that whatever it was that I was seeing was written in indelible ink, and it felt like too much of a burden, to know what the future would bring and not be able to do one damn thing about it. I returned the camera two weeks ago when he was out on his lunch break.