Chapter 36 Owen
OWEN
*One Mostly Shitty Month Later*
And that’s when she hung up. I’ve listened to that message ten or twenty times a day for the past few weeks.
I called the number back and discovered she’d called from a Texas barbecue restaurant in North Hollywood.
We’d talked about going there together, after visiting my parents, so that really hurt. But I’ll never delete that message.
I’m also never going to delete the voicemail that immediately followed it…
“Hi hi hey hey hi, Owen Brodie, this is Amy Poehler. Listen, I’m here with Fran Drescher, and I just wanted you to know that what she said about Frankie Hogan—who is a living legend and one of the most talented and underrated comedians of our time, and she’s incredible—what Fran said was mostly true, but she made up that last part because she’s drunk and insane and off her meds.
Not really though—please don’t sue—haha!
Love you, Fran Drescher! So I just want to clarify that the wildly talented and brilliantly beautiful Frankie Hogan does not think about your wiener more than five times a day, tops.
So if you could just slightly get over yourself just a teeny tiny bit, Mr. Owen Brodie, that would be fabulous, thank you so much. Bye-bye!”
And also this voicemail from a burner phone that she has either disposed of or is simply ignoring my calls from…
“Helloooooo, Owen?! This is Drew Barrymore! I am so excited to pass along this amazing message from one of my very favorite people in the entire universe—Frankie Hogan! She is the most beautiful, hilarious flower I have ever had the amazing pleasure to know, and I just want to tell you that she has blossomed. Absolutely and totally blossomed in the past few weeks as a writer’s assistant on your show.
So thank you so, so much for blessing her and believing in her enough to hire her for that job, even though you don’t think she’s special enough to be your girlfriend.
It’s absolutely totally fine and beautiful because it, like, wasn’t cosmically aligned or whatever, and that’s completely okay!
“She’s going to morning spin classes when she’s only a little bit hungover, and she’s reading my absolute favorite book, Eat, Pray, Love.
She told me it’s the funniest thing she’s ever read, so that’s obviously amazing.
Anyway, I just wanted you to know how amazing Frankie’s doing, so you definitely shouldn’t feel bad about being such a shithead loser dickbrain when you visited the Funny Business writers’ room yesterday, okay?
She completely understands that you had to act like you’ve never had your face up in her yoni business, but you could have been, like, maybe eighty-five percent less of an asshole when other people were around.
“She wasn’t embarrassed or anything—everything’s super beautiful.
She just thinks you were a little bit cold for someone who once told her you loved her and almost cried that time when you ejaculated inside her.
But like I said, she totally gets that you did it for her own good, and she appreciates it so much.
So thank you, Owen Brodie and the universe! ’Kay, bye.”
Yeah, that was my bad.
I had a meeting with the writing staff the other day, and I was so excited to see Frankie. I had tried calling and texting her to check in and see how she’s doing, but she never answered. She took Sam to Universal Studios when he was staying with Ashley, so I never got to see her.
I get it, it’s fine.
I didn’t want to be a pathetic schmo when I saw her at work, so I went the other way. I was cold. It’s what I did back in Vegas. I figured it’s easier for her to be mad at me than to be sad. But I’m miserable when I’m home alone. It actually is pathetic. It’s weird not having her around.
I would do nothing but lie in bed watching her YouTube videos and eating ice cream from the container if I didn’t have to stay in shape for the TV show.
If she wasn’t so mad at me—if she wasn’t being such a little turd—I’d try to work things out with her.
Barry and the showrunner have been so impressed with her.
She’s been kicking ass as a writer’s assistant.
Everyone else on the staff loves her. Surely they wouldn’t care if they found out we were dating.
Or maybe people would care, but you know what? Fuck ’em.
I just don’t know if Frankie will ever forgive me for ending things with her.
I don’t know if Sam will ever forgive me either.
Mama unfollowed me on Twitter for two hours when she found out—I only know this because she texted to tell me she unfollowed me and then she texted to tell me she felt guilty so she followed me again. But she only retweets Frankie now and she never “likes” my tweets.
I slip my phone back into my pocket so I can pay for Sam’s frozen yogurt.
It only took him ten minutes to load up on toppings, and I swear he just chose the heaviest ones because he thinks he can punish me by making me pay more.
Bring it on, kid. Pile on those brownie bites.
I can take it. He wasn’t even excited to come here.
He isn’t excited about anything anymore. Not even cheese.
Lady Hilarious McFunnyPants really did take all the sunshine with her.
She doesn’t even at-reply my tweets anymore.
I feel so alone.
“You want to sit over here?” I ask my son. He’s wearing his private school uniform, and he’s already managed to get chocolate syrup on it. He did that on purpose too, I’ll bet, because I’m the one who’ll have to wash it this weekend.
Well played, Samuel Brodie. Well played.
He shrugs. “I guess.”
I take a seat at one of the tables by the window, and he takes a seat at the table next to me.
“Oh, that’s funny,” I tell him. “You sure that’s far enough away from me? I can still talk to you from over here.”
“I won’t listen though,” he says. And then he practically unhinges his jaw so he can fit a giant spoonful of brownie bites into his mouth. When his mouth is full, he chews spitefully but without passion, while glaring at me.
“So you like your new teacher?”
He shrugs and nods.
I pick up the extra spoon and hold it like a microphone. “Great! Thanks for coming out tonight! Hey, what did the booger say to the teacher?”
Sam blinks at me, shaking his head. I know he knows the answer to this fantastic joke, but he’s pretending not to, just to be a jerk.
“That’s right! He said ‘Pick me!’ And you’re loving your classmates, am I right?”
He grunts.
I’ve had tougher crowds than this, little turd. A drunk guy once threw his cowboy boot at me in Memphis. His prosthetic leg was still in it. You’ll have to do better than that.
“Hey, do you know if there’s a school for garbage collectors?”
He ignores me, stabs at the brownies, and takes another bite.
“You are absolutely right! There isn’t a school for garbage collectors—you just pick it up as you go along!”
Absolutely no acknowledgment of my existence.
“What did the right butt cheek say to the left butt cheek?”
I see a twitch of recognition. A tiny indication that this child is willing to accept—maybe not that I’m his father and he loves me—but that I’m alive and in the room with him, if only so he can find out what one butt cheek said to the other.
“What?” he mumbles.
“‘If we work together, we can stop this crap.’”
Sam’s face cheeks work together to try to stop him from laughing, but no muscle in his seven-year-old-boy body is strong enough to fight a reaction to a poop joke. He laughs, and melted frozen yogurt drips out of his mouth. It’s a glorious sight.
I pick up a napkin and wipe his chin.
“Glad you liked that one. Poop jokes aren’t my favorite jokes. But they are number two.”
Now he’s in stitches. Tiny brownie particles are spraying everywhere, and I’m king of the world. This is literally the high point of the past month for me. I feel like slightly less of a dickhead in this moment, as I wipe my son’s chocolate-y saliva from my own face.
When he’s stopped laughing and swallowing, I finally say the thing that I’ve been wanting to say to him: “You miss Frankie, don’t you?”
He glances over at me, frowning, and then looks away. “Yes.”
“I do too.”
“Then why isn’t she here?”
“Because she has another job to do. She’s not your nanny anymore.”
He lets go of his spoon and huffs. “She wasn’t just my nanny.”
“What do you mean?”
He better not say she was my shower buddy.
“She’s the only person who made you smile and laugh. You’re always trying to make other people laugh, but she was the only one who ever made you smile with your eyes and laugh with your whole face.”
“That’s not true. You’ve always made me smile and laugh. Ever since you were born.”
He shakes his head vehemently. “Not like Frankie. You’re always worried when you look at me. I make you worried. Frankie made you happy. So happy you didn’t even care how weird you look when you laugh really hard.”
“Wait a minute. I look weird when I laugh really hard?”
That response would have made Frankie try really hard not to laugh, but my son doesn’t get my hot-guy humor. Which is fine.
“Yeah, your face gets weird. It’s weird seeing all your teeth.”
“Well, I’m learning a lot about myself right now, so thanks.”
He stares at me while taking a careful bite of frozen yogurt and then says, “What did my dumb dad say to my nanny to make her leave?” It takes me a second to realize this is supposed to be a joke, but before I can respond, he says, “Nothing. He didn’t talk to her about stuff like he was supposed to, as usual. ”
“What? How do you know that?”
“I heard Frankie talking to Mom.”
“What? When?”
“When she brought me back from Harry Potter.”
“Your mom was talking to Frankie about me?” I don’t know why this surprises me, since I’ve been dreading it ever since I emailed Frankie about coming on the tour with us.
I’ve pictured my ex-wife sitting down with every woman I’ve been attracted to since the divorce, like it’s a talk show and she’s the host who’s listening to them discuss what they like about me and then she tells them exactly what’s wrong with me and how I’ll disappoint them.
That would actually be a great fantasy sequence for Funny Business… I need to remember that.
“What did she say?”
He sighs. “Nothing bad, Dad. Mom doesn’t say bad stuff about you when you aren’t around.”
“She doesn’t?”
He shakes his head. “She got Frankie talking because she could tell something was making everyone sad. They were in the kitchen, and they didn’t think I could hear them.
Frankie told her about the job you got her, for writing, but you don’t want people to know that you liked each other.
Mom rolled her eyes and said you should have talked about what Frankie wants. With Frankie.”
“Well, it’s awfully ironic that she’s telling Frankie this and not me.”
He blinks twice and then says, “I still don’t know what ironic means.”
“Yeah, I still don’t know how to explain what it means. But trust me—that was ironic.”
“Mom just said you probably were talking to your boys when you should have been talking to Frankie. But she also told Frankie that you were really sad ever since we came back.”
“Were you spying on them, buddy? You heard a lot.”
He shrugs. “People think I don’t pay attention just because I don’t talk a lot. It’s easy. People can be dumb like that.” He looks down at his dessert. “Fro-yo information, I gotta eat this before it melts now.”
I fucking love this kid so much.
“Yeah. You do that. Thanks for the talk.”
“You’re welcome, Dad. You’ll be okay.”
Crap.
I can tell jokes on stage despite having things thrown at me, but I can’t seem to say three little words when my nose is tingling and I have a stupid lump in my throat.
So I lean over to muss up his hair.
We’ll be okay.