“Who’s saved in your phone as Satan?” Melody asks, intrigued. I struggle to find a way to sum up my relationship with my mother.
“It’s my mother.”
“You guys must have quite the relationship.”
“Enough to put a therapist’s kids through Harvard.”
The phone stops ringing and I try to regain my composure. Something is amiss, she doesn’t call that often. Actually, she doesn’t call at all unless she’s run out of relationships to suck the life out of. “What’s your relationship like with your mother now?” I ask.
She stops in the middle of a bite, pushes her cup away from her, and lets out a deep sigh. “We don’t really have one. She left when I was sixteen, and now she only pops up when she needs something.” Her hands have gotten fidgety, and she’s struggling to make eye contact again. My hands find hers—its a simple gesture with a deeper meaning. It says you care, but you won’t pry. Or that you don’t understand, but you won’t make them suffer alone. It’s not like I wrote the book on successful relationships with parents.
“Did she ever ask if you were telling the truth?”
Her face becomes stern. “No, she never acknowledged it. That’s probably why we’ll never have a relationship.”
Hearing that made me think of my relationship with my own mother. For all her faults, she was still in the picture even though I contemplate cutting her off everyday. But I could never do that, because I see flashes of the woman I remember, and the fault for the breakdown isn’t all on her—though I tell myself it is. But, I’d rather keep her at a distance and know she was alright than see her drinking herself into oblivion and masking it as happiness.
One of the supervisors comes over and asks to take our picture for the first timers wall. Melody gives me a look indicating it’s up to me, and I agree. The lady takes two polaroids, one genuine and one funny, letting us choose which one to keep. If you looked at the photo without knowing either of our histories, you’d wouldn’t think anything was amiss. My smile was genuine, and it shook me to the core to see a version of myself that I thought was destined to live forever in the pictures above the fireplace back in Colorado. Seconds earlier, Melody had told me about the worst moment in her life; but there she was, grinning ear to ear with her head on my shoulder. It looked so natural that we could pass as a couple, madly in love with each other.
We chose to give up the crazy one, and watched her staple it on the wall with the others. If this all goes to shit—and there’s still time for that—I’ll know there’s a place I can go to see the moment that normal became a possibility instead of a pipe dream.
“I think you should keep that,” I say. “You know, in case you have a bad hair day and need a reminder of how pretty you are.” In my head it sounds cute, but in actuality, it hints at me leaving—a point neither of us want to address.
“Or maybe you could stick around for a bit. It would mean more coming from you than a picture.” She laughs and the air seems to return to the room. Humor really does help smooth over tension. She smiles at me, and that beautiful feeling of all being right in the world comes back again. “You wanna kiss me, don’t you?” she asks. I grin like a goofball, a clear giveaway. “What’s stopping you?”
I oblige and we share a long kiss, her lips just as soft as they were at the record store, but with ice cream mixed in. She runs my hands up her legs and under her skirt, then back down. When our lips part, she softly bites my bottom lip, and the hair on my body stands straight up—among other things.
My phone rings again, and I swear I’m gonna throw the damn thing. It’s Lily, which is even more maddening because I’m literally doing the thing she’s been pushing me to do, and possibly well on the way to doing something else she says I need to do. “Excuse me just one second.” I get up from the table. Melody calls my name but I wave her off, determined to nip this in the bud. A hush comes over the place as I walk away from the table to take the call.
“Lily, you had to call right now. This isn’t really the best time … hint, hint.”
“Miles, we gotta talk.”
“Since I got here, all you’ve done is tell me that I’ve been doing myself.”
“We have a real problem, there’s no time for—”
“And wouldn’t you know, at the exact moment I’m about to put that to bed—pun intended—you decide it’s time for a powwow.”
The silence in the ice cream parlor has turned to giggles and stares, with the occasional finger pointing. I can’t blame them. I know I look like a madman pacing back and forth. It’s in this moment that I understand why baseball players are constantly trying to replace testosterone, it really does make you feel invincible.
“All I’m trying to do is—”
“—is ruin the moment,” I interrupt.
“You know what, fuck it, I tried,” she says. “Now that I think about it, it’ll be that much funnier.”
“What are you talking about?”
She laughs at the sound of anxiety in my voice. Something isn’t right, like when we were driving to the strip club, she’s up to something.
“Don’t worry about it, we’re supposed to meet up soon anyway.” The cadence of her voice speeds up as she talks. “Just know, hell is running a special on travel packages. What time you coming over?”
“We’re heading over now.”
“Jeez, you work quick. I guess it has been awhile.”
“So, you’re a fucking comedian now?”
“No, the comedy show starts when you get here,” she says with a laugh that makes my stomach crawl, “and I’ve got front row seats to the show.”
“What did you mean by hell—”
“See you soon.” She hangs up before I can finish.
I stare at the phone for a second, wondering what she was talking about. Hell is running a special on travel packages. That’s something a Mafia boss would say on a phone that’s tapped by the police. Unfortunately, I have bigger problems.
People are still pointing and laughing, but I’m off the phone now. Melody is wearing a thin smile, like she’s embarrassed, and sensing my confusion, she points down. I look down and understand it wasn’t the conversation that caused the silence.
It was my erection. My old friend, awakened after eight months of lying dormant under an avalanche of grief and high sodium takeout, rising from its slumber like I’m fourteen again and Cinemax late night had just started. The place erupts in laughter as they see me finally arrive at the punchline of the joke. I couldn’t feel more alone even if the lights went out and a spotlight shined on me.
Melody gets up from the table, grabs my hand, and we briskly exit the ice cream parlor.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because there isn’t anything else to say.
“Nothing to be sorry about, it happens to the best of us.”
“You have a penis?”
“I meant embarrassment.”
We hop in a cab and head for the bar. The underrated part of being humiliated in a city like New York, is that there are so many people, chances are you’ll never see any of them again.