Chapter 13 #2
We sat out on the back patio, staring at the view and sipping our beers while chatting about work, his as an architect, and mine as a writer.
Since I was little, I’d been fascinated by the drawings I used to find in my dad’s home office, each one telling its own complicated story.
Mazes of math, systems, and structures. For a time, he and my mother thought I’d follow in his footsteps.
They didn’t realize until much later that all of the perusing I was doing was setting the stage for my own career.
I wasn’t trying to decipher what he was building, I was using his creations as settings for stories.
Down his carefully drawn passageways lived families, lovers torn apart and coming together, best friends plotting escapes from any number of villains.
When he finally figured it out, he began giving me his cast-off drawings, which I then used to draw all those characters into.
“How’s the latest novel going?” he asked. “Hit the midpoint yet?”
I grinned and took a long pull from my bottle.
My parents had always been good listeners, taking in what I told them intently.
Being invested in who I was and what I was interested in.
When I began to take storytelling seriously, they learned the terms, asked questions, and bought me books on the subject.
They understood it was important to me and encouraged me to keep experimenting and learning.
And when they divorced, an event the three of us had dubbed the world’s most amicable divorce in history, both continued to keep asking and spurring me on.
Despite their split, we somehow remained a threesome of sorts.
The Three Musketeers – even when we each lived in a different state.
“Midpoint done and dusted,” I said. “The end is in sight.”
“Itching to get back to it?”
I laughed. He knew me well. Being so close to the end made it hard to stop, even for a couple nights away to celebrate my little sister’s big birthday.
“It’s killing me,” I said. “But it’s good to feel this anticipation. It means I’m on to something. If it were easy to set aside, then I’d be worried.”
He lifted his bottle toward me and I clinked it.
“What else?” he asked. “How’s B getting along?”
I showed him a picture the dog sitter had sent just this morning and then sighed. “Not gonna lie. The end is nearing and it’s not easy to watch.”
“She’s a good girl. Been there for you through a lot.”
I nodded, thinking back to how she’d climbed into my lap the day I’d returned home after my mother had died.
She hadn’t left my side for days, her big brown eyes constantly seeking me out, silently asking if I was okay.
And then later, when Nadia left, she had nudged me every day, asking me to take her for a walk, as if it were her who needed to get out of the house, not me.
Losing her was not going to go well for me.
“She has. I’m heartbroken thinking about her not being around anymore.”
“Have you considered getting a puppy? To help maybe ease the blow? And the emptiness?”
“I did, once,” I said, finishing off my beer and setting it on the small glass table between us. “But it almost felt…”
“Traitorous?”
“Yeah.”
“I get it. Well… loss is a part of life. Part of having a pet. Part of being human.”
“And it sucks.”
“Damn right it does.” He finished his beer and set it beside mine. “What about women? Have you met anyone new of note?”
An image of Lior, wet from the rain and sitting beside me in the back of a cab flashed in my mind.
“Not really, no.”
“No?”
He peered at me and I shrugged, turning my face away, but Marley had gotten her keen sense of seeing people from him, and I’d walked right into his casual beer on the patio chat-trap.
“No,” I said a little more vehemently than I’d meant to.
“Since when do we lie to each other?”
Most people I knew would do anything – years of therapy, exorcism – to not end up like their parents. Me? I’d always asked why I couldn’t be more like mine. They always seemed to make healthy choices for themselves, and didn’t regret much in life.
Whereas I…
“How have you managed to not find one, but two amazing women who didn’t set out to change you, use you, make your life miserable, and then leave you in a pile of ashes?” I asked.
Dad’s eyes widened and he sat up, leaning his elbows on his knees as he considered me.
“Well,” he said, chuckling and then immediately looking guilty.
“Sorry. I’m not laughing at you. I know you’ve had a bad go of things with the women in your life.
The truth is, as wonderful as your mom was and Lisa is, it’s not always easy.
We’re separate human beings coming together to form a life and bringing with us our own ideas and ways of doing things.
And even if those things align, we’re still human.
And humans are messy. There is no instruction manual on how to get through life.
One person can live one way and be successful, and another can try mimicking it and fail miserably.
We all have our own paths and you just hope you can find a partner with whom your paths can co-exist in a peaceful, if not fun, way. ”
“But how did you end up with women that were innately kind and decent? And I’ve…” I let the sentence trail off, knowing I didn’t need to elaborate. He’d met them all.
“I have a theory,” he said. “And it’s only that.”
“Go ahead,” I said, leaning forward on my knees now, intently listening as always to the wisdom imparted by my father.
“You live a lot in your head. In worlds of your own creation. And when you come out, I think you realize that beyond your career, you haven’t built much of a life for yourself.
It’s a great career, but when you aren’t writing or doing things related to writing, you aren’t doing much except visiting us and walking Bronte.
I rarely hear you talk about any of your friends from school anymore.
Whatever happened to Cooper? And I think you feel that ‘lack of’ more.
So then you meet one of these women and they are full of life and laughter, and they sparkle and offer excitement and fun and parties and a social group.
You get sucked in. You’re now part of something.
It’s all good, son. But also not. Because the women who you end up with have a honing device, seeking a partner who’s seeking what they offer.
Which is all very surface level. And you’re deeper than that.
But you let them take over. For some reason you think you’re wrong and they must be right because they’ve curated a life that looks good.
At least in pictures. Next thing you know, your home isn’t home anymore and your clothes cost four times what they used to.
Ruining a t-shirt is no longer no big deal, it’s an investment down the toilet. ”
“How do I stop it?” I asked, throwing myself back into my chair in frustration. “How do I identify these women before they get their hooks in me?”
He laughed. “One, don’t blame them. They know what they want and they go for it.
It’s your fault if you fall for it.” He shrugged in response to my glare.
“Two, get a life outside that house, Graham. Seriously, where’s Coop?
You guys used to talk all the time and now you never even mention him.
And also, for fuck’s sake, redecorate that house or sell the damn thing.
Nadia ruined it. Someone will want it, but it’s definitely not you.
And three, trust yourself. Trust what someone shows you about them the first time. ”
“But what if the first thing she shows me is an emotional tirade because she’s going through something I know nothing about… yet.”
He peered at me, as if working something out and then—
“Is this about the Meet-Poop Girl?”
“Jesus,” I said, running a hand over my face. “Did everyone read that article? Can we not call her that?”
“I read all your articles, you know that! Do you know her name then? Have you two run into one another again?”
“I do. And yes we have. A few times.”
“And?”
“And… I don’t know. There’s something about her. I assumed she was a brat after our first meeting.”
“Understandable.”
“And she didn’t dispel my idea of her after our next couple of run-ins. But after the last one…” I shook my head. “I think she might not be what I thought she was. I may have misjudged her. And yet there’s still the matter of her being famous.”
“She’s famous?”
I dropped my head into my hands.
“Yeah. Really famous. Millions of followers famous. Thousands of comments on a simple post on social media famous. Billboards and sides of buses and Times Square famous.” I dragged my hands down my face. “People prying into her life, the scrutiny of the press, paparazzi famous.”
“Ah.”
After my experience with Nadia, who had been hungry for that kind of rabid attention, my father knew well what my tolerance levels were for that kind of crap.
“Sounds like a no-go then,” he said.
“Yeah. Except…”
“Except what?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Something.”
“Well, Graham. Sometimes that’s all you get. A little something that could turn into a big everything.”
His words followed me around for the rest of my visit. From my friend Cooper, who I’d ghosted at the constant badgering of Nadia because she just didn’t like him and I’d wanted the relationship with her to work, to his assessment of relationships and taking chances.
I ruminated over it all during Marley’s birthday dinner, then at Flagstaff as I hiked and got inspired by the views, and then when picking my sister up from school again and treating her to a small shopping spree at the mall for some extra birthday gifts.
I was still turning my father’s words over in my head on the plane ride home Saturday morning, and directed the cab driver to a route that would take us past Lior’s house.
As we drove by, I wondered if my poem had made her laugh.
I realized then that I never would’ve written something that included the word “poo” to any of the women I’d been with in the past. They’d have found it “icky” and in poor taste.
But Lior, despite being one of the world’s most famous models, seemed like she might appreciate the terrible poem.
And that right there was another little something to take note of.