nonfiction

An Introduction

This is Jayne – the woman who dated Thomas While-We-Were-Living-Under-the-Same-Roof.

That’s how Karen introduced her.

…

The corner outside Thomas’s apartment in Old Town. It’s spring, mid-afternoon, sunny. The trees along the street just budding. Shadows: dappled. Karen: waiting.

Jayne’d forgotten Karen would be there to pick up Corrine. It was Karen’s weekend.

Moments before: The three of them scrambling to cross the street. Thomas carrying Corrine’s backpack, stuffed and half-zipped, Corrine with soppy chocolate ice cream cone in one hand, her hand in the other. They are late. It happens in two seconds, rushing to beat the light: Corrine drops her cone, ice-cream-first, onto the pavement. Jayne dips down, scoops and places the ice cream cone back into Corrine’s expectant hand. One movement.

They make it across before the light changes. Nearly home. No honking cars or families flattened. The ice cream cone remarkably in one piece. No tears. Child content with slightly grubby treat. You learn to keep things moving when you have a 2-year old.

3-second rule? Jayne says to Corrine’s father as they land on the sidewalk, the first moment she actually realizes what she’s done. He shrugs. Too many other things to worry about.

The sidewalk: safe, then not so safe. The Ex there, on the corner. Of course, Jayne thinks, it’s what we’re late for. How could it have slipped her mind? Karen half-waves at Thomas, then waves-excitedly at Corrine. Karen’s father, Corrine’s grandfather, stands beside her, smiling.

Jayne had just given Karen’s daughter an ice cream cone she’d scooped off the street.

She anticipates a comment, but nothing’s said about the chocolate-flavored cone adorned with asphalt sprinkles. Instead, Karen introduces Jayne: Dad, this is Jayne — The Woman Who Dated Thomas While We Were Living Under the Same Roof.

It’s shocking-and-not-shocking. Surprising-and-unsurprising. Jayne’s amazed, again, how these feelings can strike at once. Karen has become remarkable to her in this way. Part of her forever waiting for it; the other part never believing it when it finally arrived. Jayne’s belief-and-disbelief.

Thomas interjects. Jed, this is Jayne. Jayne this is Jed Moretti, Corrine’s grandfather. Thomas is used to it. The un/surprise, the dis/belief.

Karen is technically correct, perfectly so. It’s the litigator in her. It is true they were Living Under The Same Roof. Thomas had moved back in when Corrine was born, took the guest room in their old Victorian in the Valley.

Things were in-between and the two lawyers hired other lawyers to fill out papers and divvy things up. The lawyers’ lawyers talked often. They had arguments and made offers and counter offers and not-so-veiled-threats. In the meantime, he would live in the guest room, marvel at his newborn daughter, and help with feedings and diapers as much as he could.

Before all that, in the beginning, there had been no wedding for his friends to attend and none of them were surprised – Of course, they all said, his friends shrugging together. Thomas, always capricious. Thomas had written to tell Jayne about Karen and the solo wedding. It was longhand on a funny letterhead he made from scratch, a picture of himself in the upper right-hand corner pointing to the intersection of Mullet & B Streets. He loved Karen’s fiery hair, he wrote, Karen’s blue eyes, her sophisticated upper-class Jersey-Italian background. Karen was whip-smart.

Jayne was impressed to learn that Karen had named her cat Guido.

Jayne had looked forward to knowing Karen someday, the wife of her friend, Thomas. But by the time they’d finally meet, she’d never really get to meet her. The next thing Jayne heard, Thomas was having a baby and getting a divorce all-at-once. His description changed slightly. Still whip-smart, now also bat-shit-crazy; spoiled rather than sophisticated. They would co-parent, he said. Though bat-shit-crazy, Karen would be a good mom.

Now, Corrine, on her hip working on her ice cream. Nice to meet you, Mr. Moretti, Jayne says, hoisting Corrine over.

Nice to meet you, he says.

She is grateful for the hand he extends.

Fuck you, Karen, Jayne sdid not say.

Were they in court, she’d take issue with the term “dating.” Objection your honor. “Date: noun. An engagement to go out socially with another person, often out of romantic interest.” And how would this be possible with an entire country, 3,000 miles of land, between them? Is it not true that my client Thomas, lived in San Francisco at the time in question? And my client Erin lived in New York City, did she not? How could they possibly be ‘dating,’ Mrs. — excuse me – Ms. Moretti?”

That, also, was technically correct.

But, Jayne’d often thought, she would be upset too, were she in Karen’s place. Things hadn’t gone to plan. They hadn’t worked out. Karen was alone, for now at least. Why wasn’t he? A woman Karen didn’t know would take care of her only child; he had decided it without her. Thomas would decide many things without her now; there was nothing she could do. Now, this woman would help choose what food to buy, which snacks to prepare, the clothes their daughter would wear.

It was unfair. All of it. Surely. Just standing there, Jayne’s presence confirmed the injustice, a silent reminder of Karen’s place, just as Karen made sure to remind her of hers.

If it had been said to Karen’s girlfriend, pointing Jayne out across a room, she’d have understood. But to Karen’s own father, while they all stood there?

Jayne watches Jed hold Corrine, wipe the dried chocolate ice cream from her cheeks. She imagines him embarrassed, disappointed by his daughter’s sense of entitlement, her recklessness. Or is he just sad and upset for Karen? How did she get here? A stressful job, a new town, a daughter to raise, no husband. How could Thomas do this to her? Did she do this to herself? It wasn’t what he envisioned. It wasn’t what the future was supposed to become.

She imagined her own father. He’d look nothing like Jed, who wears khaki pleated pants, his button down tucked-in, brown belt, and matching shoes. His hair neat. Her father would surely be in sneakers, the different colored neon laces on each shoe left untied purposefully, a conversation piece. Loose sweat-shirt and cargo shorts, some goofy hat. Hair wavy and wild.

They’d look nothing alike but she imagined her father equally as kind. Ignoring the undercurrents and the voltage. He too would look her in the eye, whoever she was. Say her name, shake her hand. Focus on the little one with ice cream. Maybe try and sneak a bite when Corrine wasn’t looking. Always trying to steal away the moment.

She imagined him worrying about the child he held in his arms.

She remembers that Karen left her book in the stroller last week, Jayne had put it in her bag, meaning to give it back. Thomas and Karen are talking, likely sorting out when and where to pickup Corrine Monday.

It is possible there is nowhere to go from here. It is possible there is nothing Jayne can do.

She fishes the book out of her bag and hands it to Mr. Moretti.

Karen’s, she says.

She was right.

This sucks, he writes.
He writes, I love you.
Please don’t feel like you can’t change your mind.
He writes, Think about staying, e.
Think about staying.
He writes: Fuck You.
Give me my fucking key back and..Get…The Fuck…Out.

She’s moving back to Brooklyn. It didn’t work out. What a mess, she thinks. She needs to find a place to live. Can’t believe she gave up her rent-controlled apartment. So glad she kept her job. Fuck. She needs to find a place. She needs to find a mover. She needs to tell her boss. She should tell him after she has things sorted. Christ, she thinks: so embarrassed. Didn’t she just make a heart-felt plea to work from Connecticut? She asked everyone to get behind her like she knew what she wanted. She just asked.

And Steve won’t let her say goodbye to Corrine.

A baby, just 6-months old, she held Corrine in her arms. Baked her first birthday cupcake, watched as she dove in with both hands, purple frosting becoming the first blush and lipstick Corrine would wear. She picked out Corrine’s second Halloween costume, painted on her whiskers, and watched Corrine become a black cat, circling her brand new tail, mesmerized by her own transformation. I have a tail, Er-in. I have a tail! She taught Corrine to say Peace Out, Er-in!, snapping fingers in a wild Z; taught her to say Obama and held her hand as they walked the neighborhood; listened as Corrine ‘counted’ the yard signs: One O-ba-ma, ‘nuther O-ba-ma….there’s a ‘nuther ‘bama, Er-in! She dressed that two-and-a-half-year-old-miniature-self in leopard skin stretch pants and hot-pink patent-leather Chucks, and caught Corrine when she jumped, without notice, from couches and stairways and beds, yelling SUUUU-PER-Cor-ry! Corrine, not at all understanding that she couldn’t actually fly.

She’d never be the one to break the news.

She’s moving to a new house. That’s what Steve’s told Corrine. And he won’t let her say goodbye. My daughter, he says. Who you’re abandoning, he says.

He’s keeping Taco-The-Cat-That-Fetches. Taco, who would trot back, string in mouth, and patiently wait, tail twitching, for her to throw the string down the wooden stairs one more time. She loves that cat. She fucking loves that cat. That cat would climb into her mouth just to get a little closer to her.

The thing was, she had already told her best friend, Jake, walking down 14th Street. It was exactly three years ago. Right on the corner of First Avenue, as they waited for the walk symbol, which was weird because when did they ever wait for the walk symbol? Never.

She told him: He’s Trouble.

Trouble, she said.

When I come back to you in two years, crying, she said, don’t feel sorry for me.

She actually said that, for Christ’s sake. She should listen to herself. And: Sooner. Right away. Jake shouldn’t listen to her, though, because now she needs him to feel sorry for her a little.

But she was right. Even in the timing. So: she’s got that.

She was right.

Small Spaces.

She’d have to leave the rug behind if she left, or sell it. She could not afford keeping it, or more correctly, a space large enough to hold it, at least not along with a couch and new bed, all three. Perhaps she could forgo a new bed, she thought, sleep on her couch. That would take up less room.

Sitting in the calm of the living room, taking in the whole of it, she pictured her future bedless life: Her, on the couch in some small lightless room. She imagined how her body would curl up to fit. The large rug lying beneath her, beneath the couch; like her own body, folded unnaturally to fit the small space.

A hypoallergenic cat would not take up much room, or cause her to sneeze. Perhaps she would have one there for company.

It was the thought of herself folded up to fit small spaces that upset her. That thought inspired her to get up from the couch and travel into the kitchen for a glass of Merlot. But she stopped short in the hall. Surely it wasn’t right to drink wine to erase things. Even things like futures, which did not actually exist.

On the other hand, she thought, it was quite possible that imagined futures were more disturbing than anything actual; more deserving of erasure.

Wednesday evenings.

They dreaded it. Both of them did.

On Wednesday evenings, at the sound of the buzzer, Mark and she walked up the narrow staircase and sat on the futon sofa that lay too low to the ground, their knees practically in their faces, and they waited. A short distance across the room, an old fan rested on a wooden chair next to a pile of old Psychology Today magazines. On the small table to their right sat the only children’s toy in the waiting room, a curves-and-waves rollercoaster, its red and blue and yellow wooden beads hanging from curving wires at various low points.

Fitting for this office, she had thought more than once, staring at the static, but colorful beads, how many analogies and metaphors might reside in a toy like that?

At exactly six-o-clock the counselor invited them into her office. There, they took seats on opposite sides of an old brown sofa full of pillows, and faced the counselor. A bookshelf crammed with psychoanalytic texts sat in the far corner of the room and whenever she didn’t know where to place her gaze, which was often, she found herself staring at their spines.

They spoke about each other in second and third person interchangeably for an hour. Sometimes they would say you did/said x or y and sometimes they would look at the counselor and say s/he did/said x or y. Sometimes they would use each other’s names. She tried to work out whether or not there was a pattern to their use of second and third person, but she couldn’t keep track of how and when they used each. It seemed there was a lot to keep track of, even though there were only three people sitting in a rather sparse room and just one person speaking at any given time.

She noticed how far apart they sat from each other and how Mark folded his arms and crossed his legs and leaned back and also how he would take twice as long as she did to make his points. His points were not any more or less complicated than hers and she often predicted them long before he finished.

It was true that counseling was the hardest thing to do, especially with someone else. It required special care for her to keep her mind open during these types of conversations, ones that often focused on how wrongheaded she’d been at this moment or that, whether the moment under scrutiny was three years ago one Saturday morning she couldn’t even remember but was clearly important to Mark, for instance, or Friday of last week.

She listened to the others speak about her in second and third person, desperately fighting to control the counter-attacks rising within her, the series of Yes-Buts, the examples in which he had been Just Like Her—But he did the same thing!—Or the times in which he was responsible for her more unbecoming choices—If only he hadn’t, she wouldn’t have. Etcetera.

She did find it astonishing that Mark remembered so many moments, so many dates and times, in so much detail, and for so long. She envied his capacity to remember. And so specifically.

Once, upon a random request from their friends, he had counted from memory exactly how many Shakespearean scenes featured monkeys and described each in detail. Her friends left in awe. She didn’t much care for Shakespeare, but she, too, respected his cosmic knowledge of it. 

On Wednesdays his capacity for recall had its rather obvious disadvantages. The crisp memory of some Saturday morning three years ago when she had, standing in the kitchen, with a mouthful of cereal, asked if he ever considered going to a shrink, implying not so subtly a certain failure and incompetence on his part — it was not the thing she wanted remembered. Clearly, she supposed, since she herself had forgotten it.

The truth was: It wasn’t that he remembered. Or even that she looked so ugly. What upset her the most was that Mark slept next to her for so long, for so many years, without telling her. It was that she always learned about him so late.

And so, on Wednesdays, she often wondered who exactly was sitting next to her. It sometimes felt as though she didn’t know him at all. Sometimes when she wished he had told her this or that already, it was because she respected him more knowing it, however good or bad it made her feel. But sometimes when she learned x or y, she wondered how she could have ever loved him at all. Sometimes she hated him. Or herself. Sometimes, sitting on that old sofa facing the counselor, she felt it would never work. She thought all of it was pointless. Neither of them would ever change, would they? Did anyone? 

Somehow, regardless, at the end of the session, when they walked down the stairs outside onto the sidewalk, they hugged each other.

She always felt closer to him for having gone through it, for having gotten through the hour.

Sean Penn.

It was because of Sean Penn. It was because of a lot of things and then it was because of Sean Penn. Because Sean Penn looked so different in Milk and she couldn’t believe it and so she looked up photographs and compared different Sean Penns. That’s why. The difference between his massiveness in Mystic River and his frailness in Milk. How he took up so much space and then took up so little. She thought: That. Is. Amazing.

She was laughing and looking at Sean Penns on her computer. Hey, she said, Check. This. Out! Sean Penn looks SOoo different.

And Thomas turns to her, and—just like this—he says: Jesus Christ, Erin. I’m SICK of hearing about fucking Sean Penn!

I don’t fu-cking CARE. That’s what he said. Just like that. And stormed out of the room.

Corrine was at her grandmother’s and they just got home from seeing Milk, so she swears she couldn’t have been talking about Sean Penn for long, maybe a half hour—a half hour off-and-on—max. It wasn’t days or anything. She doesn’t even have that kind of attention span.

He hated her, she thought. Or at least he hated when she was happy or excited. That’s what she realized, staring at Sean Penns after he left the room: she realized something about her excitement made him miserable.

It struck her: Maybe someone else would be excited with her. Or happy for her. Some other person might like her.

That’s what she thought, staring at Sean Penns after he left the room.

Strip Poker with a Married Genius???

A guy I’m not going to date, screen name TheLoverPlus1, tagline Strip Poker with a Married Genius??? wrote a Why You Should Get To Know Me section so long, with such cracked out punctuation, that despite his friendly email and the provocative screen name/headline, I put off reading it for a week. I had to build up the energy.

It was as if this guy somehow transformed his frenetic self into a profile. As though he became the page. Just browsing it, you know it’d feel exactly the same talking to him. You’re exhausted already.

So…have fun:

First half (and I swear this is what/how he writes): he’s married and not leaving her. Not leaving her….They’re both totally cool with this, etc …. He’s happy. She’s happy…He has so many friends and love and honesty and support, etc….. Don’t expect him to leave her….if you love someone set them free…everyone is so different and unique… Yay everyone! …. Explaining how funny he finds the cropped nearly nude photos of himself, it’s crazy ….ha ha ha … funny!… can’t believe he’s put these images online to seduce the reader!!! …also let’s face it, isn’t that the point here??…seduction?? his headshot photo is professionally-taken….FYI… very successful, lucrative career… thriving, really. Very high I.Q. …. list of achievements …list….list… and so young! Can’t believe it himself.….he’s handsome, he is, see photos….he’s sexy… more sexy than the photos suggest, you’ll see…I.Q. did he mention? … it’s no joke, it’s high, he’s clever …. multifaceted interests… really talented… he has interests…more interests…also, a lot of his interests — he’s really good at them… clever, took all AP and honors classes….AP! ..smart. …

Then: his desire to have strip games (have strip games?)…his desire to have strip games put another way…his desire to have strip games put differently…his desire to have strip games repeated… interest in strip games explained… desire to have strip games justified… joke about strip games…ha ha ha!!!!…hilarious…just hilarious… request for proposals for new/other kinds of strip games… he hasn’t thought of everything!!!…you could have some good ideas too!!…. he’s open!!…in closing — his desire to have strip games.

What he’s most passionate about: Sex.uality.

He emailed me inquiring about my interest in strip games. My What I’m Looking For specifically states Single Men, but it would be out of character for him to read it, let alone take heed. Anyway, it’s possible he has the most accurate personality-to-profile conversion in existence. I feel like I know him already.

This is making my hair fall out.

She showed up at her stylist’s shop with a bottle of product. She sat down, placed the bottle on his stand, and told her stylist very directly: “This is making my hair fall out.”

She wanted a different product that did exactly the same things, except not that. She had really loved it; the way it kept her hair in place, the way it wasn’t too heavy or oily and didn’t make her hair too stiff.  Her stylist sat down on his doctor-like stool and studied the ingredients on the back of the bottle. It felt like ages had passed when he finally looked up at her, held up the bottle, and said: “I don’t think this is the culprit; a lot of things can make your hair fall out.”  He began to list “a lot of things,” like diet and stress and the-change-of-seasons, continuing on as he cut her hair, with other-reason-after-possible-reason, until she was fully annoyed.

She had only recently learned about sulfate-whatevers and parabin-whatnots, words that she had seen on the packaging of products announcing they were “Free Of!” thus making suspect everything she’d used before, all her bottles now potential-carriers. Truthfully, she didn’t know much about it all, but the more her hair continued to fall out and the more she searched for a reason, the more she was convinced of this product’s guilt, a product she used often, and was not “free of” anything in particular.

Now, there she sat, watching her stylist trim the ends of the long brown hair that remained listening to his never-ending list.

They had not occurred to her, those other questions. The ones that led to other solutions. That required other actions. But of course, she thought, settling into the news.  If only it were all contained in one small bottle, so easily swapped for another. If only she could hold the problem and solution at once in the palm of her hand.

Bare-Knuckle Dating

It’s like the world is one big boxing ring and dating is like a match with infinity-bouts of infinity-rounds of infinity-minutes.

You don’t even know what fight you’re in. You just go from one to the next.

At some point you notice you’ve got a swollen right hand and a left fist you can barely close. The other guy is five for five, all KOs, and all you can think is: Keep ‘em off balance, win. Win and you can get out of the ring for good.

But the thing is: You’re not Sugar Ray Leonard, 1976, photos of the ones you love taped to your socks.

My journey has ended. My dream is fulfilled. This is bare-knuckle boxing. No one lifts the rope up for you when you enter the ring. And no one touches gloves with you before the fighting begins. There are no girls, increasingly less-dressed as the night advances, girls wearing platform heels, circling the ring, holding up cards that mark the moment. There’s no one to let you know where you are in the midst of it all, or to give you just a minute of rest. Instead, somehow when you arrive you’re in the middle of the ring and it’s the middle of the fight and you’re already a bit dazed.

The fact is, your ring work isn’t epic. You think I’ll probably kiss the canvas. You’re not even in shape, or not as in shape as the other guy. There are no weight classes; half the time he’s twice as big as you. There are no coaches or trainers; no one to help set the strategy or cheer you on. No one yelling Gloves up! Gloves UP! or What did we practice? Stay steady! when you’re feeling the pain.

There’s no cornerman waiting to offer you water, to reduce the swelling, to stop the inevitable bleeding. And there’s certainly not the third man in the ring to call out the long series of obvious and intentional fouls, the head-butts and low blows.

You can’t go the distance, and there’s no one there to throw in the towel.

Keep ‘em off balance, win.
I’m finished…I’ve fought my last fight.
My journey has ended.
My dream is fulfilled. – Sugar Ray Leonard, 1976