This Is Not Over Part 15

I'm glad to hear that.

You'll pay for art school?

I didn't say that. But I can't stop myself. If you stay clean for six months, we can talk about art school.

What am I saying? Larry wouldn't go for that. After six months, he wouldn't even consider speaking to Thad, let alone paying for art school.

But it's a promise I'll never have to honor. Because in my heart, I know that Thad won't be able to do it.

I'm already halfway there.

So now it's been three months, not mere weeks. He'll say anything. Tears fill my eyes. Because I want to believe him, and every lie he's ever spun.

You need to go somewhere for regular drug tests. I need to verify.

You never trust me.

I wish he was joking. I wish he had the self-awareness for that.

Trust but verify.

I'm your son.

Oh, I know. I never, not for one minute, forget.

Did you hear me, Mother? I'm your son! Look what you're doing to me. You have tons of money, and you don't want me to have any of it. You want me to suffer.

This is no good for you. You're a grown man, begging for money.

You try to manipulate me. To control me with your money.

It's laughable, the suggestion that I control anything, least of all Thad.

You did it just this conversation. You say your circ.u.mstances have changed, you have no money for me, you're so sorry, and then you tell me if I'm clean for six months, you'll pay for art school.

I said we'd talk about me paying for art school.

See?

You're twisting my words.

You're the one who's getting it twisted. You always have.

I want you in my life. I want us to talk on the phone. I want us to have a relations.h.i.+p. I'm your mother, not your banker.

You're abandoning me when I need you. I'm talking to a gallery owner about my latest paintings. I need to finish the series. You can't do this now. Just give me two more months.

Two more months, he says, but it'll never end. I'll just be kicking the can down the road. In two months, it'll be two more. I know that. He knows I know.

No. I'm sorry, but no.

I need that money. I have to finish the paintings.

I want you to finish your paintings. Get a job during the day, paint at night.

It doesn't work that way.

It'll have to. I'm sorry, Thad.

I wait one minute, two, three. When I can wait no longer, I sign off (I love you) and walk upstairs, slowly. He's done with me, but I fear his night is just beginning.

I take a long, hot shower, trying to scrub off our interaction. I want to forget, and I want to believe. It's a terrible hinterland.

Once I'm wrapped in a robe, my skin still pink from heat, I crawl into bed next to Larry. He's reading The Economist, gla.s.ses perched low on his nose like pince-nez. I move toward him, until I'm clinging to him like a vine.

Earlier, he went on a diatribe about the colleague I don't even know by name; I just know him as The Ignoramus. I hear about every bad medical decision The Ignoramus has ever made, that he should be thrown out of the profession before he can do any more damage to any more lives. I can only hope it's out of Larry's system for the night. I can't listen to anger, not even the righteous kind.

"Hey," he says, surprised that I'm on his side of the bed, "what's going on?" He pets the shoulder of my robe. I see softness in his face and love in his eyes.

I squeeze my own eyes shut, and I take a leap of faith. I say a name far more unmentionable than The Ignoramus's. I have to know where I stand with Larry, too.

His body tenses, and when he speaks, his voice is equally tight. "You talked to Thad?" He's no longer petting me.

"No. I just read his Twitter."

"His Twitter?" This isn't what I need, a reminder of how scathing Larry can be. It confirms my fear of how quickly he could harden toward me.

I feel the proximity to the third rail of our marriage. Since everything started with Dawn, I entertained a small hope: that I was overestimating my betrayal (really, it was just a series of lapses, a mother's inability to give up on her son) and underestimating Larry's love for me.

But if I can't even say Thad's name without Larry doing a pretty good impression of rigor mortis, then it's as bad as I feared.

No Thad and no talk about the residency. Those are Larry's rules, and I'll have to abide by them.

25.

Dawn

California Code of Civil Procedure Section 527.6: (b) For the purposes of this section: (1) "Course of conduct" is a pattern of conduct composed of a series of acts over a period of time, however short, evidencing a continuity of purpose, including following or stalking an individual, making hara.s.sing telephone calls to an individual, or sending hara.s.sing correspondence to an individual by any means, including, but not limited to, the use of public or private mails, interoffice mail, facsimile, or computer email. Const.i.tutionally protected activity is not included within the meaning of "course of conduct."

(2) "Credible threat of violence" is a knowing and willful statement or course of conduct that would place a reasonable person in fear for his or her safety, or the safety of his or her immediate family, and that serves no legitimate purpose.

(3) "Hara.s.sment" is unlawful violence, a credible threat of violence, or a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person that seriously alarms, annoys, or hara.s.ses the person, and that serves no legitimate purpose. The course of conduct must be such as would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, and must actually cause substantial emotional distress to the pet.i.tioner.

There's plenty of coastal beauty between Eureka and Oakland, but we don't have time to see any of it. We're taking the inland route, 101 all the way, baby. I want the quickest way back home, to our real lives. I don't belong in Eureka. I never did.

As Rob drives, he keeps shooting glances in my direction, asking if I'm okay. I don't know what to tell him.

The truth is, I'm more than okay with my father no longer walking this earth. What I'm not okay with is feeling like I had to give Rob what he wanted, that we had to use our wedding money to bury my father, lest my husband find me inhuman. That hurts. But I tell myself that it's my own fault for keeping the truth from him. How can he be compa.s.sionate about what he doesn't know?

We made the arrangements first thing this morning, and then we got the h.e.l.l out.

I didn't tell my mother this, but my father's headstone will be a granite pet marker I ordered online. It saved us a little cash and felt oddly appropriate, like a final in-joke that I'll share with no one. It's not like we needed much room on the stone, since it will only have his name and the dates of his birth and death. No "loving husband and father" needed; no listing of his accomplishments. Rob and I also saved money by skipping the embalming. There will be no funeral, no open casket. I've seen dear old Dad for the last time, and I'm more than okay with that, too.

It's the cheapest casket on the cheapest plot of the cheapest cemetery within a twenty-mile radius. Even so, it all came to nearly $3,000. When Rob put down our credit card, I felt like screaming. Of course my mother didn't offer to chip in. She stood five feet away, sniveling, as if none of it had anything to do with her.

I woke up this morning on the floor of my parents' apartment, sunlight flooding through the bay windows of the Victorian that's reminiscent of every residence of my childhood. The houses were always shabby, in deep disrepair, but my mother thought that a turret and a gable could camouflage any ills. We weren't disadvantaged as long as we lived in a Queen Anne or an Eastlake or a Colonial Revival. Victorian architecture has many subsets, and they're all represented in Eureka, which has perhaps dozens of historical districts, too many to be maintained. So my mother picked the right locale for perpetual downward mobility.

Eureka is not without its charms. Tourism is one of its top industries, now that lumber has mostly died. Old Town is quaint and cute, and there's a waterfront boardwalk on Humboldt Bay. Hiking among the nearby redwoods is a pretty spectacular experience. You feel so small, but in the best way.

Growing up, I felt small in the worst ways. It's stupid to blame Eureka, or anywhere, for that. The first years of your life are all about your parents, and the environment they create. Eureka didn't render me irrelevant; my parents did.

I wasn't much to look at through childhood, but early p.u.b.erty did some heavy lifting. When I was twelve, I underwent a hormonal surge. My hair grew long and glossy, and practically overnight, I was wearing a C-cup bra. The acne didn't kick in until I was almost fourteen, so looks-wise, it was an enchanted age for me.

Early development has its drawbacks, especially with negligent parents. I didn't have the brain to go along with my body. I was hungry for attention, and older guys were happy to provide it, for a price. They'd ply me with alcohol, and I'd have s.e.x with them, sometimes with condoms, sometimes bareback. It was all out of my control, and I didn't necessarily mind. If I kept carrying on like that, I thought an adult would have to step in. My parents would have to save me.

I'd been labeled as a s.l.u.t the second my t.i.ts came in, so in school I felt doomed where female friends were concerned. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, a vicious cycle: the more I slept with guys, the more alienated I was from girls, and the more I needed male attention. They were using me, but they were all I had.

That's the moment when I most needed a parent. I couldn't find my way out of that conundrum without guidance. But my mother kept talking about how nice it was that I was popular, and that she knew I'd make good decisions. It was a total cop-out, especially since she never asked any questions. I was a thirteen-year-old being picked up by a carful of sixteen-year-old boys, and she'd yell "Have fun" as I sailed out the door.

I was lucky I didn't get pregnant, or HIV. I remember that painful itching when I was fifteen, the furtive scratching, the fear of looking down, the hope that it would just go away on its own. Herpes turned out to be a wake-up call. I met a sweet gynecologist at Planned Parenthood who realized that I was being taken advantage of, that my body didn't feel like my own but a commodity that I could barter to stave off loneliness and inconsequence. She set me up with a counselor who gave me the full battery of STD tests and a whole lot of kindness. She told me I was worth something, and I'd been waiting my whole life to hear that from someone with no ulterior motive.

I stopped having indiscriminate s.e.x, and I joined a few clubs ("prosocial activities," the counselor called it), and I even developed a few friends.h.i.+ps with females, but my troubles with men were far from over. My father saw to that.

But Rob doesn't know that chapter, since I've tried to rip it out of the book. He does know that as soon as I graduated high school, I got out of Eureka. Ten miles out, to be precise, to oppressively progressive Arcata, where I spent a few semesters at Humboldt State. It's the marijuana-growing center of the universe, and had all the harder drugs anyone could ever want, which you could pretty much take in full view of cops without fear. It was free drugs and free love, a hippie utopia. The gra.s.sy plaza in the town center reeked of patchouli and the body odor of the homeless. It was bordered by cafes, restaurants, and stores. There were festivals that went by various names but were all paeans to public nudity. In my Intro to Feminism cla.s.s, I drew the conclusion that the power lay in keeping my clothes on (my professor disagreed, and gave me a C+). I dropped out and moved to the San Francis...o...b..y Area, a place I'd long dreamed of but never actually been.

My bad-boy complex persisted, but I'd grown up some. I knew better how to string them along, how to hold their interest, how to keep any need for love and affection to myself, and how to leave sooner. The first time I knew for sure that they'd cheated or lied, I was done.

Any dime-a-dozen therapist would say that I was playing out my daddy issues. They'd probably be right, much as I hate being a cliche. But we're all cliche sometimes, or cliches wouldn't exist.

"Are you sure you're really okay?" Rob asks.

He's a good man, and I've found my place. Eureka is not going to pull me back into its clutches. I smile at him. "I am now."

"If you need anything, you know I'm always here for you, right? You know that?"

"It's the thing I'm surest of."

We smile at each other, and when he turns back to the road, I suddenly think, I should tell him. But how can I tell him now, when he's smiling at me like that?

The police have advised me to block you. All further communications should cease.

This morning, I did plenty of online searching, looking up information about hara.s.sment, cease and desist orders, anything I could think of, leapfrogging from one site to the next, until I was satisfied that Miranda is full of s.h.i.+t. Again.

But if she isn't, if she can somehow convince people that I pose a credible threat of violence, or that I've annoyed and alarmed her to no purpose . . . I don't want to even think about what that would do to Rob's opinion of me, which is already under siege.

I was going to drop it, I really was, but I can't possibly let it go now. Every time I try to get out, someone pulls me back in. My dead father, my mother, Miranda. It never ends, does it?

I'll have to be cagier in the future. I can't go right at Miranda; I'll have to zigzag. Now that she's armed me with the statute, I know just what to avoid.

I glance at Rob, who appears to be in his driving zone, and then I know exactly where to go.

His Twitter handle is @theRealThadFeldt. What an a.s.shole. Like anyone would pose as Thad Feldt, like he's that important. He's clearly got his mother's ego.

Four hundred twenty-nine followers. Now he's got 430.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for, exactly, but I feel like the real Thad Feldt could come in handy. Between every parent and child, there's something dark and secret. All I have to do is find the c.h.i.n.k in Miranda's armor, and exploit the weakness, untraceably.

He is a weakness, all right. Miranda's son is a #loser. A twenty-seven-year-old living in Tucson with no job, Instagramming his art, talking about some big break that you can just tell will never happen, and making veiled and not-so-veiled references to drug binges that he says "jump-start his creativity." He dropped out of UC Santa Barbara, and he acts like that gives him street cred or something.

Because-get this-he makes graffiti. He has these enormous canvases and he basically tags them with puffy letters and jacked-up cartoon characters. From his tweets, it sounds like he's squatting in abandoned buildings, or that could just be where he does his lame art. He might sleep somewhere else, with someone else, because he is actually pretty good-looking, though too skinny for my taste.

I cannot believe that holier-than-thou, pillar-of-the-community Miranda has a son this degenerate. It's too perfect. I might not even need to punish her for her prissy little att.i.tude; the world's already doing it for me. Even though I'm just finis.h.i.+ng college at thirty, Thad makes me feel like an overachiever.

I get a Facebook friend request, and I'm startled to see that it's Thad. It's intrusive, somehow, an unauthorized cross-pollination. I was following him on Twitter, but now he's followed me to Facebook. For some reason, the migration feels a little menacing. But I've never entirely minded that feeling.

I could just ignore him. It's not like I want to be friends with Miranda's son. But he could be useful as a "friend."

I accept. Within seconds, he's made contact.

Who are you, beautiful? Why are you following me?

I know your mother, unfortunately.

I like your art.

Cool. I like your face.

I'm married.

I can still like your face, can't I?

What's the point? I live in California. You're in Arizona.

I grew up there. In Cali.

Where?