23
SPRING
I’m at the gate.
The gate, but not that gate.
I’m parked outside a new gate now, at my new job at a film studio, wearing the same clothes I wore to the job interview, because that’s how much I care.
I lie and tell my friends I’m loving it.
I answer the stray calls on my cell from people looking for Kathi. I tell them I’ve moved on. They don’t ask where.
Kathi’s first text to me since my departure came many weeks after I left, filled with everything I could have wanted from her, a whisper that she’s well, that she’s still sassy, that I’m not an enemy.
KATHI: Is your hair still growing? Is your heart full? Are your fingernails long enough to scratch an attacker so the sweet little piggies can bring swift justice? Smooches but only on inappropriate places from Roy and me, well-bell-do-tell, I’m kissing you on the taint.
Other texts come randomly, very occasionally. Our years of traveling the globe and surviving the dramas on the home front together, of bonding and living intertwined lives, sharing sky and earth, all now stripped down to text messages sent rarely, sent in the middle of the night, when there’s little chance I’ll be awake to respond. Does she not want me to?
I see the texts early in the morning; though they’re few, they’re a reason I get up every day—I finally found something that gets me out of bed, I guess. I blush, that familiar feeling, that heightened heat rising from my feet to my face, that old insecurity reminding me how far I’ve come. Strange, my body still having an actual reaction as if she’s in the room with me. As if I can actually see her tapping at her phone, typing out the message, smiling at herself, amusing herself with her wit and charm and filthy turn of phrase. I never respond to her texts immediately. I never respond with some flippant whip or whim. That’s her, but that’s not me. I want to craft a response that’s worthy of her, clever and charming, conveying my longing for the good times. My earnest texts—sometimes I think that’s not what she wants, sometimes I worry they’re boring.
What’s Kathi Kannon doing right now?
I still see her all the time, though we haven’t been in the same room together for all these weeks. But I see her in the woman in front of me at the grocery store, with her hair in a clip just like Kathi. I see her in ladies wearing gold leggings and smelling of some variation of Tom Ford. I see her in the haze and smoke of people enjoying their e-cigarettes, everywhere these days. I’m convinced she’s the reason they make a special announcement about not vaping on airplanes. And I see her in fan T-shirts. I see her in movie posters. I see her on book covers. I’m thinking, I used to know her.
SUMMER
Kathi was with me and Reid as we traveled to Paris, my first trip out of the country with him, and my first trip out of the country without her. But she was there in spirit. She helped my relationship with Reid grow stronger with lessons—If you want to really know someone, travel with them. Reid is the one I now sit beside on planes. But the seat he occupies will always be hers, really. She literally paid for it. I used all the airline miles I racked up with her to buy the tickets.
Reid and I moved in together. It was the easiest decision ever and logistically even easier. First, I never wanted to sleep without him again, and packing night bags was growing so tiresome. Second, my entire apartment could have fit in his living room. I actually didn’t move a lot with me. I downsized, selling my cheap bed, selling my little sofa. I have my lamp to remind me of the Greenwich Hotel. I have my newly reframed Lady of Shalott. And I have my one real albatross: Mom’s boxes, still unopened, stacked neatly in Reid’s garage.
FALL
My dad is losing it. He mailed me a Ziploc bag of white goo. I’m holding it up to the light streaming in from Reid’s (and my!) kitchen window, squinting, wondering.
“Dad, what is this?” I ask into the phone, having caught him, apparently, in the middle of some construction project.
“You can’t tell?” he asks, the sound of hammers banging behind him.
“No. Did you send me something that melted?”
“Maybe,” he says. “Taste it.”
I look at the glob. “Are you crazy? No. I’m not tasting it.”
I hear him breathing heavily—it’s a new thing with him, the breathing heavily. It’s replacing the yelling. He started this a few months ago without prompt from me. I’m dying to ask about it, about what led to this change, but why mess with what’s working? Why start trying to tinker with his settings so late in the game for both of us?
“It’s Oreo fillings,” he says.
“Oreo, like the cookie?” I ask, pulling the bag closer to my face, as if proximity will now render the contents decipherable.
“Yeah,” Dad says. “I know how you like the fillings.”
I squeeze the Ziploc and examine, now recognizing some of the patterns left over from the wafers, now placing the sweet smell. “Dad, did you buy a pack of Oreo cookies and scrape off the center icing and put them in a bag and mail them to me?”
“Yup,” he says, his voice choking. “I know you like the filling.”
“Is this because when I was a kid, I ate the fillings and threw away the rest of the cookie?” DON’T WASTE FOOD, I can still hear him yelling. I don’t mention the part about how he made me eat the discarded cookie parts from the trash. Maybe we don’t always have to say everything.
“Yup,” he says again.
I put the bag of Oreo filling down on the counter and brace myself on the edge. I shake my head and smile. I’m so moved, I’m surprised Dad doesn’t hear it through the phone.
“You there?” he asks.
“Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Dad.”
“I hope that between the cookies and the stuff I mailed you, you know I’m proud of you and all that.”
“Thank you,” I say, with the sounds of banging and shouting picking up in the background on his side of the phone.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Dad yells to the people around him. “I’m talking to my son in California!” Of him yelling again, I’m thinking, Well, nothing’s perfect.
“Dad, what is going on over there?”
“Construction,” he says. “I’m gonna finish this damn house before I die, even if it kills me.”
“Kills you? Nah. You’re a survivor. You’ll be around for decades to come. I’m convinced nothing can kill you,” I say, shaking my head. That old house, no matter the work he does, it’ll never be a cheerful home, not after all we’ve been through in it.
“This house is the one thing I can leave you when I’m gone. And I want there to be at least one nice thing I gave you, one nice thing I did for you,” he says.
The thought surprises me, paralyzes me for a moment. I’m thinking, I don’t want a house. I’m thinking, All I’ve ever wanted from you was kindness. I’m thinking, You don’t always get what you want.
A deep sniffle and a moment later Dad adds, “Yeah, I better go. Talk to you later, son. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” I say, and hang up the call. I pick up the bag of filling and I open the trash can, about to toss it in—Oreos are not my thing anymore; we all change—but I note something else is different, too: my father. Perhaps we all grow from age, weathering of time. The father I remember from childhood seems gone. No more fights, angst, screaming—or less of it, anyway. It makes me wonder about the yelling that still goes on in my head every now and then. I attribute it to my dad, this man now frail and tired, but maybe, like the broken, backward horn in my Nissan, I’m only yelling at myself.