Chapter Seven #3
She says, “I think there’s a reason you’re calling. Do you need something?”
She’s not usually this confrontational right off the bat.
Normally, when I call, she talks to me cordially, as if I were an old acquaintance.
I’ve established boundaries with her over the last decade, and she’s usually not comfortable talking to me this way unless we’ve been around each other for more than a day.
She’s probably mad at me because I didn’t reply to her voicemail.
I’m offended by her asking if I need something.
What could I possibly need from her? I’ve never asked her for anything as an adult.
I’ve never borrowed money from her. I’ve never asked her to drive me to an airport, or to cosign a loan.
She’s talking to me as if I’m someone who comes to her for help. I don’t.
I close my eyes. I used to hide granola bars in my box spring, eat them in the middle of the night, and wake up terrified my mom might find the garbage.
I inhale and picture myself eating an enormous chocolate cake. I’m sitting on the floor. I’ve smeared the dark, rich icing all over my skin. It’s around my mouth. Down my neck. In my hair. I’ve stained my boyish, dykey clothes.
“I just wanted to catch up with you,” I lie. My voice is cold, and I’m sure she can tell I feel irked by her.
She says, “Oh, lovely. You’re just bored? Well, I’m just dying to hear about whatever you’ve got going on after you’ve ignored me for months.”
“Jesus, Mom, what’s with the sour-ass attitude?” I ask.
She gasps. “Don’t use words like that with me—”
“All right, never mind, you take care, Judy,” I say. She hates it when I call her by her first name. “Tell Dad I said take care too, all right? Bye.”
I hang up.
“Why do you sound so upset? Are you still freaking out over the disturbing email?”
Joy called to check in on me. I haven’t recovered from the call with my mom.
“No. Well—yes. I just got off the phone with my mom.”
“Ah. Why’d you call Judy when you’re already worked up? She always upsets you.”
I sigh. “I know. It was stupid of me. I just thought maybe it was her who sent that email.”
“What? Why would you think that? I can’t imagine any reason why your mom would send it. What would possibly motivate her to do that? And it didn’t come from her email, right? There’s no way your mom created a new email address just to send a screenshot of you. Does she even have your work email?”
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. I have no idea why she would do that. The problem is, I don’t know why anyone would do that.”
“Can you see who viewed your Instagram story?”
“Yes, and she views all my stories,” I say. “She’s always watching everything I post. That’s part of why I thought maybe it could be her.”
I deleted her off Facebook because I rarely use it, and she relentlessly tagged me in memes. I left her on Instagram because she doesn’t seem to know how to use it beyond watching everything I post.
“I really don’t think it was your mom,” Joy says.
I sigh. “Yeah, you’re right. Me either.”
I have my list of suspects in front of me.
“What about Ruth?” I ask.
“Ruth?” she repeats. “Why the hell would Ruth—”
“I don’t know. I’m grasping at straws here, babe. I just hate Ruth, so I assume maybe she could have—”
She snorts. “Ruth isn’t a sociopath.”
“All right, that’s enough complimenting Ruth.” I roll my eyes.
She laughs. “Saying she’s not a sociopath isn’t much of a compliment—”
“Well, actually, she is kind of a sociopath, because she followed me on Instagram after only meeting me that one time. So quit talking her up.”
She laughs again. “All right, that was kind of weird of her, I’ll give you that, but that was like four years ago. She’s got a new partner. She’s living in Spain.”
I frown. “You’re really keeping tabs on her, aren’t you?”
She scoffs. “There’s no way she’s occupying her time sending you weird, creepy emails. Go ahead and cross her off the list.”
“Fine,” I say. “I guess I should just drop the whole thing entirely anyway. It’s probably pointless. There’s no way for me—”
She interrupts. “I’m so sorry, honey, I have to let you go. The baby is up.”
I can hear January crying in the background.
“Okay, that’s okay. Bye. I love you.”
“Bye. Be safe. Love you.”
There are some parts to life that we have to face on our own.
When you have a partner, sometimes you can develop codependence, and find yourself operating in the world as if you are half of something.
I’m not half of anything. I am Joy’s partner, and glad to be, but I’m also a full person alone.
I have my own thoughts, my own relationships, and my own problems. I am capable of handling things on my own.
I don’t need Joy to help me find out who sent this creepy email. I can sort out this mess myself.
I’ve placed cans of chicken paté on opposite sides of the living room.
I’ve situated Lou and Toulouse on one side, and I’m about to bring Kyle to the other side.
This will be their first meeting. The paté is supposed to help foster a positive association.
I’ve also scattered several cardboard boxes across the floor to act as cat panic rooms. The cats can hide in them if they feel overwhelmed.
I plan to keep the interaction brief, and to supervise.
I carry Kyle from the workshop into the house. I feel his usually limp body become tense as we enter the new environment. He holds himself close to me.
The girls stop eating to look up at us. I carry Kyle to the other side of the room, place him down on the floor, and show him the cat food.
He does not look at the cat food. Instead, he stands still and stares at Lou and Toulouse. They’re facing us, also standing stiff. All three cats stare at each other like statues, until a low, guttural noise starts to emerge from Kyle.
Toulouse hisses at him.
Lou hisses too.
They all start turning their bodies sideways, arching their backs, posturing. Their tails are puffing up, and they’re all standing on their tiptoes. They begin making demonic, throaty cat noises. They’re growling. Snarling. Spitting.
“All right, that’s enough,” I say.
I pick Kyle up and bring him back out to the workshop.
I’m having regrets about taking all our books off our shelves.
I’m worried I’ve lost the ambition required to organize them.
I’m exhausted, lying limp on the couch next to mounds of books, questioning where I got the big, bright idea to put this room in shambles.
I could have left everything as it was. It wasn’t organized, but it wasn’t total chaos. It looked okay, at least.
Maybe I should use the Dewey decimal system.
I could teach Joy; I’ve taught pages and teen volunteers at the library how to shelve with it.
I worry it might not be any easier than our previous alphabetical system, though.
I’m also not a fan of Dewey. The system was developed for American libraries, and it shows.
It’s Eurocentric, homophobic, racist, and more.
Within the religion class, which is the 200s, the notations 200–289 are designated to facets of Christianity.
The notation 290 represents “other religions.” So, for example, the notation 297 represents Islam.
This means the notation for all of Islam is the same length as the notation for “Christian Sacred books.” It’s very biased.
That said, Joy and I don’t own many religious books, so that particular issue wouldn’t significantly impact us. It is symptomatic of larger problems in the classification system, though.
There are issues like this with most classification systems. Organizational systems are designed by humans, and we are limited and flawed.
I took a sleeping pill. I’m sprawled out in bed with Lou and Toulouse, who are still recovering from their hostile encounter with Kyle. They’re both jumpy and tense. I’m waiting to drift off.
Sometimes, when I’m alone with my thoughts, I entertain my mom’s ideas about me. I question if I’m really gay, for example. Am I actually a lesbian? Or am I bisexual? Am I demisexual? Am I pansexual? Or am I straight and confused?
I care about labels. Some people don’t, but I do.
I think there’s value to categorizing things.
We categorize fiction by genres so horror books can be grouped together.
Nonfiction books are shelved by discipline, so philosophy books are grouped together.
Categorizing books makes it easier to locate them, and it also makes it easier to discover new ones.
Readers who like Rosemary’s Baby are more likely to find Misery because a relationship between those stories was formed when they were categorized as horror.
Relationships are created between all books once they’ve been categorized.
We understand some of how Charlotte’s Web and Misery relate to each other without having to read either story because of their genres.
Labeling and categorizing things can help us understand not only what they are, but how they relate to other things.
There are subcategories within genres too.
While there are lots of readers who like horror in general, there are also people who only enjoy a specific subcategory of horror.
Such as horror monster fiction. Or even deeper than that: horror monster zombie fiction.
There are even readers who prefer horror monster zombie virus fiction—as opposed to the horror monster zombie undead fiction.
To an outsider, if someone likes horror books, the nuance of their preference for monster zombie virus horror does not seem important. It seems needlessly complicated and specific; however, to a person who is seeking out books they like, the nuance matters.
We categorize sexual orientations for the same reason we categorize anything, to better understand what it is and how it relates to other things.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not liking labels.
I understand that cataloging isn’t widely considered a thrilling discipline, and it’s true that categorizing people is restrictive and imperfect.
Humans don’t fit perfectly into boxes; however, I personally want the most accurate, specific labels for myself because I think it helps me better understand who I am and how I fit into the greater schema of humans.
For a while I thought I was bisexual. I think it was easier to recognize that I liked women than it was to recognize that I didn’t like men.
I’m pretty confident I’m a lesbian today, but it’s hard to know for sure.
I wish there were some way to check what I am, like a barcode on the sole of my foot.
Though I guess that would introduce other issues.
Being able to hide one’s homosexuality has obviously served us through the years.
Still, sometimes I wonder if I’m an imposter.
When I think of Ben, I don’t just think of him as a person, I think of him as a life I rejected. He represents who I could have been if I’d carried on marking myself as straight. I’d be a book shelved in a different part of the library, connected to the rest of the collection differently.
In a strange way, the idea of marrying a man still feels comfortable to me.
It’s what I thought I wanted when I was a kid.
It’s what I was familiar with. I pictured myself growing up to be the mom character in all the cartoons I watched and the books I read.
That image was so burned into me, the picture of my straight self feels nostalgic now.
Picturing myself married to Ben makes me feel similarly to how I feel when I look at a childhood photo. Despite the fact that I see sadness in my face and would not trade places with that version of myself, I still feel strangely homesick for the picture.
I’d feel less awkward when I talk to strangers about my life if I had a husband.
Family events would feel less agonizing.
When Joy and I bought our house, it was a seller’s market, and our realtor told us to write the owners a letter.
I wrote it and avoided using our pronouns, or acknowledging we’re both women, in case the owners wouldn’t pick us because we’re gay.
In most ways, though, the picture of the life I could have had depresses me.
I know what my life would have been like with Ben.
I can see myself packing lunches, cleaning up after him and our kids, feeling strangely like a horror book shelved as poetry.
When I envision that life, I see myself driving a minivan.
I’m on my way to pick up the kids from school.
I veer onto the highway, drive into the distance, and never come back.
Or maybe I veer into a barricade, or off a cliff.
I do think that I would be the one who wouldn’t survive in that timeline.