Bad Mommy

  I reached over and squeezed her knee. “I love your foul mouth.”

  We were in my car; Jolene called it the boring old man car, mostly because of the color. Our destination was a restaurant in Fremont, somewhere we’d never been. We liked that sort of thing, trying new places, and it was date night. I’d gone all out to impress her—new clothes (for me), flowers (for her), and yes, I’d written her a poem. She read some of the lines out loud.

  “Darkness almost claimed me

  So close I was it hurt

  But you

  A fire unparalleled

  Saw fit to scald and save me

  I owe it all

  To You

  My Love

  My Life

  My Everything

  So close I was to

  Lifeless life

  But You

  A fire unparalleled

  Blazed life into my soul…”

  Jolene hated her words. Her reaction to seeing any of her own work reminded me of the Wicked Witch of the West. Meeeeltiiing, I’m meltiiiiiing. Twice a year she had to approve voices for audio books and she just straight out refused to do it. Couldn’t listen to someone read her words, she said. She made me pick them. I quite liked the responsibility of it. I had a radio voice myself.

  “It is pretty good, isn’t it?” I said. “I worked on it for days. You know I won a poetry award in high school—actually poetry and short story. I wrote this piece about a spoon. My teacher said I was the most talented she’d ever seen.” When I turned to check her reaction, she was just staring at me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said, turning away.

  “No, tell me.” I gave her a side glance. She was pissed.

  “You just always do this. You do something that’s supposed to be for me, but in the end it feels like it was for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You wrote me a love letter last year. It was beautiful, all the things you said. But, after I read it, you spent twenty minutes talking about what great handwriting you had.”

  I had, I remember being especially pleased with myself. I had the best handwriting I’d ever seen.

  “What did you want me to say? I already told you how I felt in the letter. Did you want to discuss that more? If you’re calling me a narcissist, you’re just as guilty for wanting to talk more about yourself.”

  “I suppose,” she said, cocking her head. “Or did you tell me the things I want you to feel?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  She smiled. It was the coldest smile I’d ever seen. No conviction in the eyes.

  “Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything at all. By the way, did you see that picture Kelly posted of her new baby on Facebook? Cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  A sudden change of subject. I had seen it. Full head of dark hair and features like a tiny elf. I was about to comment when what she was doing clicked and I started laughing instead.

  “You’re such an ass,” I said. She made the What? face at me, but I could see that she was suppressing her own laughter. She was always on me about how I continually posted baby pictures of myself on Instagram.

  “You don’t even post pictures of your daughter,” she’d say. “But, you’re clearly obsessed with your own baby photos.”

  Whenever the topic of babies came up I always found a way to talk about how cute I was. Yeah, maybe it was a little strange, but it was also true.

  She reached out and rubbed the back of my head.

  “It’s okay, narcissism runs deep with this one,” she cooed. I enjoyed her touch so much I didn’t even care that she was making fun of me.

  It’s true. I was a little narcissistic. Not to the extreme like some people were, but enough so that when Jolene pointed it out I couldn’t deny it. Who was the real shrink here anyway? And it was better to be a narcissist and have some concept of it, than to tilt toward Psychopathy and have no idea.

  We sat down to dinner and I checked my phone. I liked to pretend that I was checking for texts about Mercy, but I had to make sure no one was sending me things I had to keep my wife from seeing. I’m not always proud of the person I am, but we all have our struggles. When I looked up from my phone, I saw that Jolene was bent over hers with a slight smile on her lips.

  “Who are you texting?” I snapped.

  “Who are you texting?” she shot back.

  We were still locked in an eye duel when the server came to take our drink order. The blatancy of her texting Ryan while she sat at dinner with me made me angry.

  “We should get Mercy a puppy,” she said, suddenly. “For Christmas.”

  “How about a bike?” I was still focused on her phone. I’d have to check the iPad later, see what they were talking about.

  “Darius,” she said, narrowing her eyes playfully. “We like dogs. Two dog lovers against one dog hater.”

  “I don’t hate them. Okay, I do.”

  “I want a husky,” she said. “It’s my dream dog. I’ve only ever had little dogs, but I’m a big dog person. I know it in my heart.”

  I had a physical reaction—my head jerked up and I looked her in the eyes for the first time in the ten minutes we’d been there.

  “Have you said that to anyone else?”

  She made a face. “Yeah, I guess. Why?”

  I ran a hand over my face, shaking my head. I could tell her but she didn’t listen anyway.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Is it about Fig?” She looked down at the table and played with her fork. She was bored with this. I guess I’d been a broken record about it.

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “No,” she reached out her hand and touched mine, “I’m sorry. It’s just that everyone always wants to talk about Fig and her fixation. I know, I get it. It’s exhausting. The only one who doesn’t know about her fixation is Fig.”

  “Oh, she knows,” I said. “On some level, she knows.”

  “What did she do now?”

  “She said what you just said, word for word, about a husky.”

  “To who?”

  “It was at Mercy’s birthday party. I overheard her say it to the real estate agent, that friend of yours…”

  “Oh,” was all she said. “Yeah, I guess I did tell her that.”

  I was thinking about Ryan again, that fucker. He was pretending to be her friend, pretending to care. I had this guy’s number.

  There she was pushing her way into our dates again, texting her woes to make Jolene feel sorry for her. I was frustrated, my drink sweating in front of me, untouched. We were supposed to be in Bellevue for dinner and drinks, maybe catch a movie after. I was trying to convince Jolene to see a film nominated for an Oscar, but she hated Robert Redford and was digging her heels in. Usually I could guilt her into seeing a movie I wanted to see, it wasn’t like her to hold out for this long. It was going quite well, we were sitting at the bar in one of Jolene’s favorite restaurants, her knees were brushing against mine, and I could smell her perfume—my favorite. We were laughing and kissing, arguing about this year’s Oscar nominations, when the screen on her phone flashed to notify her that she had a text message. I watched her read it, her face growing dark. I knew that look.

  “Fig?” I said.

  She nodded, her smile gone. So was the mood. I swear that woman could suck the joy right out of a room.

  “She’s only doing this because we’re out together,” I said. “Do you really think it’s a coincidence that she turns into a morbidly depressed alcoholic every time we have a date night?”

  “You always think the worst of people,” she said. She was frowning, looking at me like I was the enemy. “She’s having a hard time. I’m trying to help. I just want her to see that life can be good. She has no one and George is so withdrawn.”

  I could have answered her in a nicer way, kept my tone even and my voice low, but I was so fed up with all of it. Not being able to have my wife alone for one night a mon
th, not being able to say what I really wanted to say. Not being able to control myself.

  “Goddamnit, Jolene. Stop being so stupid.” I was loud. The bartender glanced up at us from the other side of the bar.

  When Jolene looked at me her eyes were cold. I’d crossed a line. She didn’t like to be embarrassed, and I’d raised my voice to her in public. She stood up without a word and walked out of the restaurant, leaving me there alone. I cursed, yanking my wallet out of my pocket and dropping two twenties on the bar. That had not gone the way I’d planned. I’d wanted to have a nice night, maybe bring up the lawsuit on the way home after I spent the night reminding her of how good we are together. I’d planned on laying out my sob story; the girl had a bad case of transference. She’d come on to me and when I rejected her she wanted to make me pay. And that was the truth, wasn’t it? Jolene had a way of ruining things with her moods. I’d planned this beautiful night for us and she treated me with disrespect, storming out on me and acting like a child.

  I wasn’t going to bother trying to find her. She’d be lost somewhere in the maze of the mall or had likely gone to another restaurant for a drink. I’d catch an uber home and leave her with the car. I stopped for another drink at a bar further along the strip, one where I wasn’t eyed for raising my voice at my own wife. I drank two, and by the time I left, I forgot what we’d been arguing about in the first place. I took out my phone to text her, but then I saw her as I was passing Schmick’s Seafood, perched at the bar with a martini. I watched her for a good minute before opening the door and going in. Things were not going well for me. I needed her help, or I’d end up with nowhere to live and a suspended license that wouldn’t let me practice.

  “Jolene,” I said, coming up behind her. “I’m so sorry. You’re right. I’m selfish. I just want you to myself sometimes.” She spun around on her barstool and I could tell she’d been crying.

  “You’re an asshole,” she said.

  “I am, you’re right.”

  I grabbed her face, kissed her forehead. She was stiff, unbelieving. I always had to work her extra hard, massage her shoulders, play with her hair.

  “Jo, I want to help Fig, I do. I’m just tired and stressed. Listen, tell her to meet us here.”

  I thought she was going to start crying again, but she pulled it together and nodded.

  “She’s in a parking lot somewhere crying,” she said. I wanted to roll my eyes, but I nodded sympathetically and rubbed her neck.

  I shrugged. “I know your heart. Do whatever you think is right, my love.”

  When I first knew I wanted Jolene, I was still in a relationship with her best friend. I’d look. Men look even when they say they aren’t. We are sexual creatures: long legs, the outline of nipples against flimsy fabric, the cupping of jeans against an ass—we look and our dicks get hard. We’re wired that way. Some of the more self-righteous men, the fucking pious ones, say they don’t look. They say they avoid the appearance of evil, aka the type of women who make their dicks hard. It’s not women who make my dick hard; it’s my ability to control their emotions.

  Jolene was something else to me. She transcended the games I played. When we were just friends, she’d look me in the eye and tell me I was lying when I was. She’d ask how I was and mean it. Sometimes she’d text me randomly to check on the state of my heart. That was her thing back then: “How’s your heart?” and you could try to lie to her, try to pretend, but she always knew. The confessions were like vomit. Jolene was the finger down your throat, probing until there was nothing else to do but gag. The truth came fast and hard, and it hurt. I think I grew addicted to the sort of reaction she inspired. You got to be yourself, tell her your ugliest parts, and she didn’t bat an eyelash. She was the real therapist; I was merely a pretender. I’d broken off my ten-year relationship and pursued her with an intensity I wasn’t used to. It didn’t matter that she was pregnant with another man’s child. It didn’t matter that my ex-fiancée loved her. You couldn’t fit love into the eye of a needle. You had to just take it in the form it came. And it came in the form of a very pregnant, very taboo—Jolene Avery. The girl who saw everything and nothing all at the same time.

  I couldn’t write. I stared at the wall, and I stared at the keyboard, and I stared at my hands, which I thought were lovely and graceful some days, and haggard and witchlike on others. When I stopped staring and focused, I’d tap out a sentence and then delete it. I’d grab the skin on my wrist and tug on it—something I’d done since I was a child. I told everyone I was writing when they asked, but I wasn’t. I was almost relieved each day when my alarm went off at three o’clock to remind me that Mercy needed to be picked up from nursery school. It was something to do other than stare.

  What was the truth? That love had slaughtered me? Killed my creativity? A little bit, yes. Until Darius, I had an open vein. I didn’t have to work hard for words, they poured from the nick like a proverbial fountain of creativity. Sadness is lucrative, folks. But, I wasn’t sad anymore, was I? I was, for the first time, cocooned in security and love. A man whom I loved and admired had taken me and my unborn child and given us a home. Strong hands, and soft touches, we fell under his spell. And a shrink! A shrink always knew the right thing to do. I could rest easy, take the love and trust. Such a sweet beguiling thing.

  But, I was bored.

  Not with life, life was a beautiful, ugly thing. And not with my career, it was at its peak. And most certainly not with motherhood, it was too tumultuous to be boring. I was bored with love.

  What is love anyway? Most of us had no fucking clue because our parents gave us shit examples of it: prude, nonverbal, stiff; or on the opposite end of the spectrum: chaotic, uncommitted, inconsistent. Or maybe just divorced. So, we flounced around in adulthood, taking notes from romantic comedies … or porn. Love is flowers! Love is grand gestures! Love is trips to Paris hand in hand! Love is her opening her mouth whenever you want to stick your dick inside.

  Love was whatever you decided it was, and if you’d had a narrow window to peek through, you were really fucked.

  But then you became a mother, and all of that changed. Love was sacrificing your selfish nature for someone you were more committed to than yourself. Becoming a mother made me a better wife. My personality had a makeover and Darius reaped the benefits.

  Darius wasn’t boring. Quite the opposite. But after three years, I was fairly certain our relationship was a fabrication. He’s not who he said he was. I was fascinated and horrified. My disappointment a sour stone in the pit of my stomach. I’d searched articles all over the internet on sociopaths and I was almost certain that my husband was one. Do you take this sociopath to be your lawfully wedded husband…

  I once asked him if he’d ever diagnosed himself with anything, and he laughed and said no, but that he thought I was a sociopath. That was typical sociopathic behavior. Someone brought up an issue and you turned it around and accused them of it instead. Brava! Darius manipulated people’s minds, and I manipulated words, and so the two of us could not manipulate each other. It canceled out.

  I still loved him. Deeply. How can you love someone who, in their essence, was a miserable, destructive wretch? We love ourselves, don’t we? We’re obsessed with ourselves, in fact. No? What you hate you also value. If you ever doubt me, time your self-hate. You spend ninety percent of your time finding new things to hate yourself for. Obsession.

  Moving on…

  I borrowed ideas on how to bring him back to me: date nights, home cooked meals (gluten free) a firmer body, a pussy waxed raw and always wet. None of these things took away the distant look in his eyes. So, I started asking a lot of fucking questions.

  “Why did you cheat on Dani? Was it her or you?”

  “Did you feel guilty?”

  “Have you ever been tempted to cheat on me?”

  He managed to never answer a single question. That’s when it hit me. He was hiding something. Was it last week that I’d taken his phone from him to see somethi
ng, and he’d taken it right back … tugging till I let go? If I had his phone, his hands were right there hovering.

  Well, well, well.

  But, I was bored.

  Darius brought me flowers—once a week, at least. A romantic gesture, not a sacrifice. And on Thursdays he cooked—he had to eat anyway. Sometimes he’d leave little cards in my purse. I’d be looking, rifling around for the pack of wipes I kept in there, or reaching for my wallet, and I’d find it—a bright pink or green card. Something cheesy on the outside—a toddler couple holding hands, or a fabric heart with an arrow through it. On the inside, he’d write his version of love notes. Before you I was wandering around life lost. You are the only woman I see. You are the one I want to grow old with. You are the fire in my soul. I thought my mother was the standard for a perfect woman until I met you. Beautiful, but words.

  I wondered if someone who had fire in their soul would have smoke coming out of their mouth.

  I didn’t believe his cards, didn’t buy into the words he wrote in them, or the flowers that wilted and died in the vases, sprinkling their petals on countertops. I’d pick up the velvet scraps turned crisp and hold them in my hand, wondering what happened to us. None of the gestures reached his eyes. I wanted his eyes back on me. I didn’t want his flowers, or his bright pink cards, or his scallops over quinoa. He was bullshitting and we both knew it.

  “Have I ever told you about the strangler fig?” Darius asked.

  I made a face. Darius was forever telling me facts about random things. Last week I got a full run down on geese. Geese! It was actually really fascinating, much more so than the week before when he was going on and on about the papal.

  “Go on,” I said. “I’m half listening.”

  He smacked me on the butt, then leaned in and kissed me softly on the back of the neck while his arms circled around me.

  “They are called ‘stranglers’ because they grow on host trees, which they slowly choke to death.” He squeezed a little and I winced. “Living proof that clever opportunists get along just fine, human or plant. By the time the host tree is dead, the strangler fig is large and strong enough to stand on its own, usually encircling the lifeless, often hollow body of the host tree.”